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Authors: Erich Auerbach,Edward W. Said,Willard R. Trask

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BOOK: Mimesis
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We have compared these two texts, and, with them, the two kinds of style they embody, in order to reach a starting point for an investigation into the literary representation of reality in European culture. The two styles, in their opposition, represent basic types: on the one hand fully externalized description, uniform illumination, uninterrupted connection, free expression, all events in the foreground, displaying unmistakable meanings, few elements of historical development and of psychological perspective; on the other hand, certain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure, abruptness, suggestive influence of the unexpressed, “background” quality, multiplicity of meanings and the need for interpretation, universal-historical claims, development of the concept of the historically becoming, and preoccupation with the problematic.

Homer’s realism is, of course, not to be equated with classical-antique realism in general; for the separation of styles, which did not develop until later, permitted no such leisurely and externalized description of everyday happenings; in tragedy especially there was no room for it; furthermore, Greek culture very soon encountered the phenomena of historical becoming and of the “multilayeredness” of the human problem, and dealt with them in its fashion; in Roman realism, finally, new and native concepts are added. We shall go into these later changes in the antique representation of reality when the occasion arises; on the whole, despite them, the basic tendencies of the Homeric style, which we have attempted to work out, remained effective and determinant down into late antiquity.

Since we are using the two styles, the Homeric and the Old Testament, as starting points, we have taken them as finished products, as they appear in the texts; we have disregarded everything that pertains to their origins, and thus have left untouched the question whether their peculiarities were theirs from the beginning or are to be referred wholly or in part to foreign influences. Within the limits of our purpose, a consideration of this question is not necessary; for it is in their full development, which they reached in early times, that the two styles exercised their determining influence upon the representation of reality in European literature.

2

FORTUNATA

N
ON
potui amplius quicquam gustare, sed conversus ad eum, ut quam plurima exciperem, longe accersere fabulas coepi sciscitarique, quae esset mulier illa, quae huc atque illuc discurreret. Uxor, inquit, Trimalchionis, Fortunata appellatur, quae nummos modio metitur. Et modo, modo quid fuit? Ignoscet mihi genius tuus, noluisses de manu illius panem accipere. Nunc, nec quid nec quare, in caelum abiit et Trimalchionis topanta est. Ad summam, mero meridie si dixerit illi tenebras esse, credet. Ipse nescit quid habeat, adeo saplutus est; sed haec lupatria providet omnia et ubi non putes. Est sicca, sobria, bonorum consiliorum, est tamen malae linguae, pica pulvinaris. Quem amat, amat; quem non amat, non amat. Ipse Trimalchio fundos habet qua milvi volant, nummorum nummos. Argentum in ostiarii illius cella plus iacet quam quisquam in fortunis habet. Familia vero babae babae, non mehercules puto decumam partem esse quae dominum suum noverit. Ad summam, quemvis ex istis babaecalis in rutae folium coniciet. Nec est quod putes illum quicquam emere. Omnia domi nascuntur: lana, credrae, piper, lacte gallinaceum si quaesieris, invenies. Ad summam, parum illi bona lana nascebatur; arietes a Tarento emit, et eos culavit in gregem … Vides tot culcitras: nulla non aut cochyliatum aut coccineum tomentum habet. Tanta est animi beatitudo. Reliquos autem collibertos eius cave contemnas; valde succossi sunt. Vides illum qui in imo imus recumbit; hodie sua octingenta possidet. De nihilo crevit. Modo solebat collo suo ligna portare. Sed quomodo dicunt—ego nihil scio, sed audivi—quom Incuboni pilleum rapuisset, thesaurum invenit. Ego nemini invideo, si quid deus dedit. Est tamen subalapo et non vult sibi male. Itaque proxime casam hoc titulo proscripsit: C. Pompeius Diogenes ex Calendis Iuliis cenaculum locat; ipse enim domum emit. Quid ille qui libertini loco iacet, quam bene se habuit! Non impropero illi. Sestertium suum vidit decies, sed male vacillavit. Non puto illum capillos liberos habere. …

This passage is taken from Petronius’ romance, of which only one
episode—the banquet at the house of the wealthy freedman Trimalchio—is extant in full. Our sample is chapter 37 and part of chapter 38. During dinner, the narrator, Encolpius, asks his neighbor who the woman is who keeps running back and forth through the hall. The following translation of the answer he receives attempts to do justice to its style:

That’s Trimalchio’s wife. Fortunata they call her. She measures money by the bushel. Yet not so long ago, not so long ago, what was she? I hope you won’t mind my putting it that way, but you wouldn’t have accepted a piece of bread from her hands. Now she sits on top of the world and is Trimalchio’s one and only. If she tells him at high noon it’s dark, he’ll agree. He can’t keep track of what he owns; he’s so filthy rich. But that bitch looks out for everything, even where you’d least expect it. She doesn’t drink; she’s level-headed; her advice is good. But she has a nasty tongue and gossips like a magpie once she gets settled on her cushion. When she likes a person, she really likes him. When she hates one, she certainly hates him. Trimalchio’s estates reach as far as a falcon flies. And some money he has! There’s more silver in his porter’s lodge than any one man’s whole estate. And the number of slaves he’s got! O my God, I don’t think one out of ten knows his master even by sight. Believe me, he could stick any of these louts here in his pocket. And don’t you think he ever has to buy anything. Everything is produced on the premises: wool, wax, pepper, everything; if you asked for chicken milk, I’m sure they’d have it. Once, you know, he didn’t produce enough high-grade wool. So he bought rams from Tarentum and had them mount his sheep … Look at these cushions. Every single one has purple or scarlet stuffing. Not bad to put a man’s mind at ease. But his fellow freedmen are not to be despised either. They aren’t badly off. Look at the one sitting all the way back there. Today he is worth eight hundred thousand, and when he started out he had nothing. Not so long ago he carried wood around on his back. But they say—of course I don’t know, except that I have heard people talk about it—they say he stole a goblin’s magic cap and then found a treasure. Well I won’t begrudge a fellow what God has given him. Still, he has just been freed and is planning to do a lot for himself. The other day he put a notice on his place: “C. Pompeius Diogenes offers this dwelling for rent
as of July 1st because he is buying a house.” That one there sitting with the freedmen—he used to have a nicely feathered nest too. I don’t want to say anything against him. He had a cool million. But somehow he slipped badly, and now I don’t think even the hair on his head doesn’t have a lien on it. …
1

The answer, which goes on in the same style for some time longer, turns out, then, to be fairly circumstantial. Not only the woman about whom Encolpius inquires, but the host and some of the guests are also described. In addition, the speaker portrays himself: his language, and the standards of value which he applies, give a clear idea of his personality. His language is the ordinary, rather mushy jargon of an uneducated city businessman, full of clichés (
nummos modio metitur, ignoscet mihi genius tuus, noluisses de manu illius panem accipere, in caelum abiit, topanta est, ad summam
—nearly all of his expressions would have to be transcribed); and it comes out in that lusty tone of voice which expresses lively but trivial feelings: astonishment, wonder, protestation, indifference, pomposity. In short, in their linguistic form the
tam dulces fabulae
(sweet bits of small talk), as they are presently called, reveal themselves unmistakably as what they are, namely, vulgar chatter, although a considerable portion of their content may be true. At the same time too, they reveal what the man who utters them is—namely, one who fits perfectly into the milieu he is describing. His standards of value provide further evidence of the fact. For obviously, under all that he says, lie three convictions: that wealth is the greatest good, and the more of it the better (
tanta est animi beatitudo
); that the good things of life are simply a superfluity of articles of the best quality and the opportunity to enjoy them in the most vulgar manner possible; and that, in this sense, everyone quite naturally acts for his own material advantage. Yet withal he himself is doubtless only a small or middling man, who looks upon the truly rich with honest awe. Thus the good fellow describes not only Fortunata, Trimalchio, and their guests, but without being aware of it, himself. Although, as we see, he has a rather one-sided viewpoint and speaks more from emotion and association than from logic, he yet speaks circumstantially and, as it were, plastically; he is completely frank and goes into everything that bears on his subject. He leaves nothing obscure; he talks himself out. As in Homer, a clear and equal light floods the persons and things with which he deals; like Homer,
he has leisure enough to make his presentation explicit; what he says can have but one meaning, nothing is left mysteriously in the background, everything is expressed.

Of course, there are important differences from Homer’s manner. In the first place, the presentation, explicit though it be, is entirely subjective, for what is set before us is not Trimalchio’s circle as objective reality, but as a subjective image, as it exists in the mind of the speaker, who himself, however, belongs to the circle. Petronius does not say: This is so. Instead, he lets an “I,” who is identical neither with himself nor yet with the feigned narrator Encolpius, turn the spotlight of his perception on the company at table—a highly artful procedure in perspective, a sort of twofold mirroring, which I dare not say is unique in antique literature as it has come down to us, but which is most unusual there. In outward form this procedure is certainly nothing new, for of course throughout antique literature characters speak of their experiences and impressions. But nowhere, except in this passage from Petronius, do we have, on the one hand, the most intense subjectivity, which is even heightened by individuality of language, and, on the other hand, an objective intent—for the aim is an objective description of the company at table, including the speaker, through a subjective procedure. This procedure leads to a more meaningful and more concrete illusion of life. Inasmuch as the guest describes a company to which he himself belongs both by inner convictions and outward circumstances, the viewpoint is transferred to a point within the picture, the picture thus gains in depth, and the light which illuminates it seems to come from within it. Modern writers, Proust for example, work in exactly the same way, only more consistently within the realm of the tragic and problematic—a matter which we shall soon take up. Petronius’ procedure is thus in the highest degree artistic, and marks him, if he had no forerunners, as a creative genius: the company at table is measured by its own standards; merely expressing these standards passes judgment upon them, and in addition the vulgarity of these parvenus is brilliantly illuminated by the mere fact that such things can be said of them at their own table. There are germs of such a technique elsewhere in the satirical literature of antiquity. But I know of no other example so well considered and so well carried out.

Another important difference from Homeric procedure is the following: In his description, the guest considers it particularly important to stress what all these people formerly were, in contrast to what they
now are.
Et modo, modo quid fuit
, he says with reference to Fortunata;
de nihilo crevit
, and
quam bene se habuit
, referring to two fellow guests. Homer too, as we remarked earlier, likes to bring in the lineage, station, and previous history of his characters. But the facts he gives are of a very different nature. They do not lead us to a situation of change, to something in process; on the contrary, they lead us to a fixed point from which we can take our bearings. His Greek audiences are schooled in mythology and genealogy; Homer undertakes to give them the family-tree of the character in question as a means of placing him. Just so, in modern times, a newcomer into an exclusive aristocratic or bourgeois society can be placed by information concerning his paternal and maternal relatives. Thus, rather than an impression of historical change, Homer evokes the illusion of an unchanging, a basically stable social order, in comparison with which the succession of individuals and changes in personal fortunes appear unimportant. But our guest (and in this, as in everything that he says, his feelings are those of the type he represents) has in mind actual historical change, the ups and downs of fortune. For him, the world is in ceaseless motion, nothing is certain, and wealth and social position are highly unstable. His sense of historical reality is one-sided, since it is centered entirely upon the possession of wealth, but it is genuine. (The other guests too perpetually refer to the instability of life.) The acquisition and loss of worldly goods is what interests him in life, and is what has taught him and his fellows to distrust all stability. Yesterday you were still a slave, a porter, a catamite—yesterday you could still be whipped, sold, deported—today you are suddenly a rich landowner, a speculator, enjoying prodigious luxury—and tomorrow it may be all over. Naturally, he asks:
et modo, modo quid fuit?
It is not, or not only, his envy and jealousy speaking—basically he is doubtless a kindly man; it is his most real and most profound interest.

Now, it is well known that the instability of fortune occupies an important place in antique literature and that antique philosophical ethics often takes the same concept as a starting point. But strangely enough, elsewhere it but rarely conveys the impression of a living historical reality. It appears either in tragedy, as a fate without precedent, far outside the common course of things; or in comedy, as the result of a wholly extraordinary concatenation of events. Whether the subject be King Oedipus, whom the long-prophesied curse finds and casts into the utmost wretchedness; or the poor girl or the slave who, turning out to be children of rich parents, given up for lost after a shipwreck
or a kidnapping, can marry as their hearts desire—in both cases, something extraordinary happens, something especially arranged, something which is outside the usual course of events, and which affects only one person or a few people, while the rest of the world appears to remain apart from it and indeed to witness the extraordinary event from a spectator’s viewpoint. In the mimetic literary art of antiquity, the instability of fortune almost always appears as a fate which strikes from without and affects only a limited area, not as a fate which results from the inner processes of the real, historical world. And though, to be sure, proverbial literature and the gnomic maxims of popular philosophy conceive of change of fortune as coming to all men in all conditions, they express the idea only theoretically. Sententious reflections upon the instability of earthly happiness are heard often enough at Trimalchio’s banquet; and, on the other hand, in the guest’s reference to a goblin (
incubo
), there lingers something of the tendency to ascribe changes of fortune to specific interventions from without. But in Petronius’ book the highly practical and mundane, or what we may call the intrahistorical, concept of the instability of fortune, predominates; the account which Trimalchio gives of his rise to wealth is entirely practical and mundane, and there are similar passages elsewhere. In the passage before us, however, it is the very similarity of the cases cited, the fact that they are so similar as to constitute a series, which more especially conveys the impression of an intrahistorical process. This is no matter of one person, or a few people, being stricken by a fate without precedent, far outside the common course of things, while the rest of the world remains calm. On the contrary, merely in the guest’s narrative, four persons are mentioned who are all in the same boat, all engaged in the same turbulent pursuit of unstable Fortune. Though each of them individually has his private destiny, their destinies are all similar; their lot, for all its turbulence, is the common lot, common and vulgar. And behind the four persons who are described, we see the entire company, every member of which, we surmise, has a similar destiny which can be described in similar terms. Behind them again, we see in imagination a whole world of similar lives, and finally find ourselves contemplating an extremely animated historico-economic picture of the perpetual ups and downs of a mob of fortune-hunters scrambling after wealth and stupid pleasures. It is easy to understand that a society of businessmen of the humblest origins is particularly suitable material for a representation of this nature, for conveying this view of things. Such a society most clearly
reflects the ups and downs of existence, because there is nothing to hold the balance for it; its members have neither inward tradition nor outer stability; they are nothing without money. In all of antique literature there is hardly a passage which, in this sense, so strongly exhibits intrahistorical movement as the passage before us.

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