Symbols And The Interpretation
of Symbols
Two articles by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Symbols
SYMBOLS 1 and signs, whether verbal, musical, dramatic or plastic,
are means of communication. The
references of symbols are to ideas and those of signs to things. One
and the same term may be symbol
or sign according to its context: the cross, for example, is a symbol
when it represents the structure of
the universe, but a sign when it stands for crossroads. Symbols and
signs may be either natural (true, by
innate propriety) or conventional (arbitrary and accidental) traditional
or private. With the language of
signs, employed indicatively in profane language and in realistic and
abstracted art, we shall have no
further concern in the present connection. By “abstracted art” we mean
such modern art as wilfully
avoids recognisable representation, as distinguished from “principial
art”, the naturally symbolic language
of tradition.
The language of traditional art—scripture, epic, folklore, ritual,
and all the related crafts—is symbolic;
and being a language of natural symbols, neither of private invention,
nor established by conciliar
agreement or mere custom, is a universal language. The symbol is the
material embodiment, in sound,
shape, colour or gesture as the case may be, of the imitable form of
an idea to be communicated, which
imitable form is the formal cause of the work of art itself. It is
for the sake of the idea, and not for its
own sake, that the symbol exists: an actual form much be either symbolic
- of its reference, or merely an
unintelligible shape to be liked or disliked according to taste.
The greater part of modern aesthetics assumes (as the words “aesthetic”
and “empathy” imply) that art
consists or should consist entirely of such unintelligible shapes,
and that the appreciation of art consists
or should consist in appropriate emotional reactions. It is further
assumed that whatever is of permanent
value in traditional works of art is of the same kind, and altogether
independent of their iconography
and meaning. We have, indeed, a right to say that we choose to consider
only the aesthetic surfaces of
the ancient, oriental, or popular arts; but if we do this, we must
not at the same time deceive ourselves
so as to suppose that the history of art, meaning by “history” an explanation
in terms of the four causes,
can be known or written from any such a limited point of view.
In order to understand composition, for example, i.e. the sequence
of a dance or the arrangement of
masses in a cathedral or icon, we much understand the logical relation
of the parts: just as in order to
understand a sentence, it is not enough to admire the mellifluent sounds
but necessary to be acquainted
with the meanings of separate words and the logic of their combinations.
The mere “lover of art” is not
much better than a magpie, which also decorates its nest with whatever
most pleases its fancy, and is
contented with a purely “aesthetic” experience. So far from this, it
must be recognized that although in
modern works of art there may be nothing, or nothing more than the
artist’s private person, behind the
aesthetic surfaces, the theory in accordance with which works of traditional
art were produced and
enjoyed takes it for granted that the appeal to beauty is not merely
to the senses, but through the senses
to the intellect: here “Beauty has to do with cognition”; and what
is to be known and understood is an
“immaterial idea” (Hermes), a “picture that is not in the colours”
(Lankavatara Sutra), “the doctrine
that conceals itself behind the veil of the strange verses” (Dante),
“the archetype of the image, and not
the image itself “ (St. Basil). “It is by their ideas that we judge
of what things ought to be like” (St.
Augustine).
It is evident that symbols and concepts—works of art are things conceived,
as St. Thomas says, per
verbum in intellectual–-can serve no purpose for those who have not
yet, in the Platonic sense, “forgot-ten”.
Neither do Zeus nor the stars, as Plotinus says, remember or even learn;
“memory is for those
that have forgotten”, that is to say, for us, whose “life is a sleep
and a forgetting”. The need of
symbols, and of symbolic rites, arises only when man is expelled from
the Garden of Eden; as
means, by which a man can be reminded at later stages of his descent
from the intellectual and
contemplative to the physical and practical levels of reference. We
assuredly have “forgotten” far
more than those who first had need of symbols, and far more than they
need to infer the immortal by
its mortal analogies; and nothing could be greater proof of this than
our own claims to be superior to
all ritual operations, and to be able to approach the truth directly.
It was as signposts of the Way, or
as a trace of the Hidden Light, pursued by hunters of a supersensual
quarry, that the motifs of traditional
art, which have become our “ornaments”, were originally employed. In
these abstract forms,
the farther one traces them backward, or finds them still extant in
popular “superstition”, agricultural
rites, and the motifs of folk-art, the more one recognises in them
a polar balance of perceptible shape
and imperceptible information; but, as Andrae says (Die ionische Saule,
Schlusswort), they have
been more and more voided of content on their way down to us, more
and more denatured with the
progress of “civilisation”, so as to become what we call “art forms”,
as if it had been an aesthetic
need, like that of our magpie, that had brought them into being. When
meaning and purpose have
been forgotten, or are remembered only by initiates, the symbol retains
only those decorative values
that we associate with “art”. More than this, we deny that the art
form can ever have had any other
than a decorative quality; and before, long we begin to take it for
granted that the art form must have
originated in an “observation of nature”, to criticise it accordingly
(“That was before they knew
anything about anatomy”, or “understood perspective”) in terms of progress,
and to supply its deficiencies,
as did the Hellenistic Greeks with the lotus palmette when they made
an elegant acanthus of
it, or the Renaissance when it imposed an ideal of “truth to nature”
upon an older art of formal
typology. We interpret myth and epic from the same point of view, seeing
in the miracles and the
Deus ex machina only a more or less awkward attempt on the part of
the poet to enhance the presentation
of the facts; we ask for “history”, and endeavour to extract an historical
nucleus by the apparently
simple and really naive process of eliminating all marvels, never realising
that the myth is a
whole, of which the wonders are as much an integral part as are the
supposed facts; overlooking that
all these marvels have a strict significance altogether independent
of their possibility or impossibility
as historical events..
The Interpretation of Symbols
by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
The scholar of symbols is often accused of “reading meanings” into the
verbal or visual emblems of
which he proposes an exegesis. On the other hand, the aesthetician
and art historian, himself preoccupied
with stylistic peculiarities rather than with iconographic necessities,
generally avoids the problem
altogether; in some cases perhaps, because an iconographic analysis
would exceed his capacities. We
conceive, however, that the most significant element in a given work
of art is precisely that aspect of it
which may, and often does, persist unchanged throughout millennia and
in widely separated areas; and
the least significant, those accidental variations of style by which
we are enabled to date a given work
or even in some cases to attribute it to an individual artist. No explanation
of a work of art can be called
complete which does not account for its composition or constitution,
which we may call its “constant”
as distinguished from its “variable.” In other words, no “art history”
can be considered complete which
merely regards the decorative usage and values as a motif, and ignores
the raison d’etre of its compo-nent
parts, and the logic of their relationship in the composition. It is
begging the question to attribute
the precise and minute particulars of a traditional iconography merely
to the operation of an “aesthetic
instinct”; we have still to explain why the formal cause has been imagined
as it was, and for this we
cannot supply the answer until we have understood the final cause in
response to which the formal
image arose in a given mentality.
Naturally, we are not discussing the reading of subjective or “fancied”
meanings into iconographic
formulae, but only a reading of the meaning of such formulae. It is
not in doubt that those who made use
of the symbols (as distinguished from ourselves who merely look at
them, and generally speaking
consider only their aesthetic surfaces) as means of communication expected
from their audience some-thing
more than an appreciation of rhetorical ornaments, and something more
than a recognition of
meanings literally expressed. As regards the ornaments, we may say
with Clement, who points out that
the style of Scripture is parabolic, and has been so from antiquity,
that “prophecy does not employ
figurative forms in the expressions for the sake of beauty of diction”
(Misc. VI. 15)1 ; and point out that
the iconolater’s attitude is to regard the colours and the art, not
as worthy of honour for their own sake,
but as pointers to the archetype which is the final cause of the work
(Hermeneia of Athos, 445). On the
other hand, it is the iconoclast who assumes that the symbol is literally
worshipped as such; as it really
is worshipped by the aesthetician, who goes so far as to say that the
whole significance and value of the
symbol are contained in its aesthetic surfaces, and completely ignores
the “picture that is not in the
colours” Lankavatara Sutra, II As regards the “more than literal
meanings” we need only point
out that it has been universally assumed that “Many meanings underly
the same Holy Writ”; the distinction
of literal from ultimate meanings, or of signs from symbols, presupposing
that “whereas in
every other science things are signified by words, this science has
the property that the things signified
by the words have themselves also a signification” (St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa IIIApp 1.2.5 ad 3
and 1.10.10c)2 .
We find in fact that those who themselves speak “parabolically,” for
which manner of speaking there
are more adequate reasons than can be dealt with on the present occasion,
invariably take it for granted
that there will be some who are and others who are not qualified to
understand what has been said: for
example Matt.XIII.13-15: “ 3 1 speak to them in parables; because they
seeing, see not; and hearing,.they
hear not, neither do they understand ... For this people’s ears are
dull of hearing, and their eyes they
have closed lest at any time they should see” etc. (cf Mark VIII15-21).
In the same way Dante, who
assures us that the whole of the Commedia was written with a practical
purpose, and applies to his own
work the Scholastic principle of fourfold interpretation, asks us to
marvel, not at his art, but “at the
teaching that conceals itself beneath the veil of the strange verses.”
The Indian rhetorician, too, assumes that the essential value of a
poetic dictum lies not so much in what
is said as in what is suggested or implied:3 To put it plainly, “A
literal significance is grasped even by
brutes; horses and elephants pull at the word of command. But the wise
man (panditah= doctor) under-stands
even what is unsaid; the enlightened, the full content of what has
been communicated only by a
hint.”4 We have said enough, perhaps, to convince the reader that there
are meanings immanent and
causative in verbal and visual symbols, which must be read in them,
and not, as we have said above,
read into them, before we can pretend to have understood their reason,
Tertullian’s rationem artis 5 .
The graduate, whose eyes have been closed and heart hardened by a course
of university instruction in
the Fine Arts or Literature is actually debarred from the complete
understanding of a work of art. If a
given form has for him a merely decorative and aesthetic value, it
is far easier and far more comfortable
for him to assume that it never had any other than a sensational value,
than it would be for him to
undertake the self-denying task of entering into and consenting to
the mentality in which the form was
first conceived. It is nevertheless just this task that the professional
honour of the art historian requires
of him; at any rate, it is this task that he undertakes nominally,
however great a part of it he may neglect
in fact.
The question of how far an ancient author or artist has understood
his material also arises. In a given
literary or plastic work the iconography may be at fault, by defect
of knowledge in the artist; or a text
may have been distorted by the carelessness or ignorance of a scribe.
It is evident that we cannot pass a
valid judgment in such cases from the standpoint of our own accidental
knowledge or ignorance of the
matiere. How often one sees an emendation suggested by the philologist,
which may be unimpeachable
grammatically, but shows a total lack of understanding of what could
have been meant originally! How
often the technically skilled restorer can make a picture look well,
not knowing that he has introduced
insoluble contradictions!
In many cases, however, the ancient author or artist has not in fact
misunderstood his material, and
nothing but our own historical interpretation is at fault. We suppose,
for example, that in the great
epics, the miraculous elements have been “introduced” by an “imaginative”
poet to enhance his effects,
and nothing is more usual than to attempt to arrive at a kernel of
“fact” by eliminating all incomprehensible
symbolic matter from an epic or gospel. What are really technicalities
in the work of such authors
as Homer, Dante, or Valmiki, for example, we speak of as literary ornaments,
to be accredited to the
poet’s imagination, and to be praised or condemned in the measure of
their appeal. 6 On the contrary:
the work of the prophetic poet, the texts for example of the Rgveda
or of Genesis, or the logio of a
Messiah, are only “beautiful” in the same sense that the mathematician
speaks of an equation as “elegant”;
by which we mean to imply the very opposite of a disparagement of their
“beauty”. From the
point of view of an older and more learned aesthetic, beauty is not
a mere effect, but, properly belongs
to the nature of a formal cause; the beautiful is not the final cause
of the work to be done, but “adds to
the good an ordering to the cognitive faculty by which the good is
known as such”7 ; the “appeal” of.beauty is
not to the senses, but through the senses, to the intellect.8
Let us realise that “symbolism” is not a personal affair, but as Emil
Male expressed it in connection
with Christian art, a calculus. The semantics of visible symbols is
at least as much an exact science
as the semantics of verbal symbols, or “words”. Distinguishing “symbolism”
accordingly, from the
making of behaviouristic signs, we may say that however unintelligently
a symbol may have been
used on a given occasion, it can never, so long as it remains recognisable,
be called unintelligible:
intelligibility is essential to the idea of a symbol, while intelligence
in the observer is accidental.
Admitting the possibility and the actual frequency of a degeneration
from a significant to a merely
decorative and ornamental use of symbols, we must point out that merely
to state the problem in
these terms is to confirm the dictum of a well-known Assyriologist,
that “When we sound the arche-type,
the ultimate origin of the form, then we find that it is anchored in
the highest, not the lowest.”9
What all this implies is of particular significance to the student,
not merely of such hieratic arts as those
of India or the Middle Ages, but of folk and savage art, and of fairy
tales and popular rites; since it is
precisely in all these arts that the parabolic or symbolic style has
best survived in our otherwise
self-expressive environment. Archeologists are indeed beginning to
realise this. Strzygowski, for ex-ample,
discussing the conservation of ancient motifs in modern Chinese peasant
embroideries, en-dorses
the dictum that “the thought of many so-called primitive peoples is
far more spiritualised than
that of many so-called civilised peoples,” adding that “in any case,
it is clear that in matters of religion
we shall have to drop the distinction between primitive and civilised
peoples.”10 The art historian is
being left behind in his own field by the archeologist, who is nowadays
in a fair way to offer a far more
complete explanation of the work of art than the aesthetician who judges
all things by his own stan-dards.
The archeologist and anthropologist are impressed, in spite of themselves,
by the antiquity and
ubiquity of formal cultures by no means inferior to our own, except
in the extent of their material
resources.
It is mainly our infatuation with the idea of “progress” and the conception
of ourselves as “civilised”
and of former ages and other cultures as being “barbarous””11 that
has made it so difficult for the
historian of art—despite his recognition of the fact that all “art
cycles” are in fact descents from the
levels attained by the “primitives,” if not indeed descents form the
sublime to the ridiculous—to accept
the proposition that an “art form” is already a defunct and derelict
form, and strictly speaking a “superstition,”
i.e. a “stand over” from a more intellectual humanity that our own;
in other words, exceedingly
difficult for him to accept the proposition that what is for us a “decorative
motif” and a sort of upholstery
is really the Vestage of a more abstract mentality than our own, a
mentality that used less means
to mean more, and that made use of symbols primarily for their intellectual
values, and not as we do,
sentimentally.12 We say here “sentimentally,” rather than “aesthetically,”
reflecting that both words are
the same in their literal significance, and both equivalent to “materialistic”;
aesthesis being “feeling,”
sense the means of feeling, and “matter” what is felt. To speak of
an aesthetic experience as
“distinterested” really involves an antimony; it is only a noetic or
cognitive experience that can be
disinterested. For the complete appreciation or experiencing of a work
of traditional art (we do not deny
that there are modern works of art that only appeal to the feelings)
we need at least as much to eindenken
as to einfühlen to “think-in” and “think-with” at least as much
as to “feel-in” and “feel-with.”
The aesthetician will object that we are ignoring both the question
of artistic quality, and that of the.distinction
of a noble from a decadent style. By no means. We merely take it for
granted that every
serious student is equipped by temperament and training to distinguish
good from bad workmanship.
And if there are noble and decadent periods of art, despite the fact
that workmanship may be as
skilful or even more skilful in the decadent than in the noble period,
we say that the decadence is by
no means the fault of the artist as such (the “maker by art”), but
of the man, who in the decadent
period has so much more to say, and means so much less. More to say,
the less to mean - this is a
matter, not of formal, but of final causes, implying defect, not in
the artist, but in the patron.”13
We say, then, that the “scientific” art historian, whose standards
of explanation are altogether too facile
and too merely sensitive and psychological, need feel no qualms about
the “reading of meanings into”
given formulae. When meanings, which are also raisons d’être,
have been forgotten, it is indispensible
that those who can remember them, and can demonstrate by reference
to chapter and verse the validity
of their “memory,” should re-read meanings into forms from which the
meaning has been ignorantly
“read out,” whether recently or long ago. For in no other way can the
art historian be said to have
fulfilled his task of fully explaining and accounting for the form,
which he has not invented himself,
and only knows of as an inherited “superstition.” It is not as such
that the reading of meanings into
works of art can be criticised, but only as regards the precision with
which the work is done; the scholar
being always, of course, subject to the possibility of self-correction
or of correction by his peers, in
matters of detail, though we may add that in case the iconographer
is really in possession of his art, the
possibilities of fundamental error are rather small. For the rest,
with such “aesthetic” mentalities as
ours, we are in little danger of proposing over-intellectual interpretations
of ancient works of art.
NOTES
1 A derivative of sumballo (Greek) especially in the senses “to correlate”,
“to treat things different as
though they were similar”, and (passive) “to correspond”, or “tally”.
Cf. the Hasidic Anthology, p. 509:
“let us now hear you talk of your doctrine; you speak so beautifully...
.. May I be struck dumb ere I speak
beautifully.” As Plato demanded, “About what is the
sophist so eloquent”? a question that might be put to many modern artists.
2 We need hardly say that nothing in principle, but only in the material,
distinguishes the use of
verbal from visual images, and that in the foregoing citation, “representations”
may be substituted for
“words.”
3 Pancatantra, I. 44.
4 Edgerton, Fr., “indirect suggestion in poetry: a Hindu theory of
literary aesthetics,
Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., LXXVI, 1936, pp. 687 f.
5 Tertullian, Docti rationem artis intelligunt, indocti voluptatem.
6 As remarked by Victor-Emile Michelet, La Secret de la Chevalerie,
1930, p. 78. “L’enseignment
vulgaire considère que le poéme èpique en vertu
de sa tradition et de la technique du genre, renforce le
recit des expoits guerriers par des inventions d’un merveilleux plus
ou moins conventionnel destiné à
servir d’agrément et d’element decoratif.”
7 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa., 1. 5.4. ad 1, and Comm. on Dionysius,
De Div. Nom. V.8 And thus, as
recognised by Herbert Spinden (Brooklyn Museum Qtly., Oct. 1935), “Our
first reaction is one of wonder, but our second should be an effort
to understand. Nor should we
accept a pleasurable effect upon our unintelligent nerve ends as an
index of understanding.”
9 Andrae, W., Die ionische Saule 1933, p. 65. The reader is strongly
recommended to the whole of
Andrae’s “Schlusswort.” Cf. Zoltan de Takacs, Francis Hopp Memorial
Exhibition, 1933 (Budapest,
1933), p 47: “The older and more generally understood a symbol is,
the more perfect and
self-expressive it is” and p. 34: “the value of art forms in (the)
prehistoric ages was, therefore, deter-mined,
not simply by the delight of the eyes, but by the purity of traditional
notions conjured by the
representation itself.
10 Strzygowski, J., Spuren indogermanischen Glaubens in der bildenden
Kunst, 1936, p. 334.
11 Gleizes, A., Vie et Mort de I’Occident chrélien, Sablons
(1936), p. 60 “Deux mots, barbarie et
civilisation, sont à la base de tout developpement historique.
Ils donnent à la notion de progrès la
continuité qu’on lue désire sur tous les terrains particuliers
en évaillant l’idée d’infériorité et de
supériorité. Ils nous débarrassent de tout souci
d’avenir, la barbarie etant derrière nous et la
civilisation s’améliorant chaque jour.” I cite these remarks
not so much in confirmation, as to call
attention to the works of M. Gleizes, himself a painter, but who says
of himself “Mon artje I’ai voulu
métier ... Ainsi, je pense ne pas être humainement inutile.”
M. Gleizes’ most considerable work is La
Forme et I’Histoire; vers une Conscience Plastique, Paris, 1932
12 Despite the recognition of a typical “descent,” the notion of a
meliorative “progress” is so attractive
and so comfortably supports an optimistic view of the future that one
still and in face of all the evidence
to the contrary fancies that primitive man and savage races “drew like
that” because they “could not”
represent natural effects as we represent them; and in this way it
becomes possible to treat all “early”
forms of art as striving towards and preparing the way for a more “mature”
development; to envisage
the supercession of form by figure as a favourable “evolution.” In
fact, however, the primitive “drew
like that” because he imagined like that, and like all artists, wished
to draw as he imagined; he did not
in our sense “observe,” because he had not in view the statement of
singular facts; he “imitated” nature,
not in her effects, but in her manner of operation. Our “advance” has
been from the sublime to the
ridiculous. To complain that primitive symbols do not look like their
referents is as naive as it would be
to complain of a mathematical equation, that it does not resemble the
locus it represents.
13 It is extraneous of the business to the art historian or curator,
as such, to distinguish noble from
decadent styles; the business of these persons as such is to know what
is good of its kind, exhibit, and
explain it. At the same time, it is not enough to be merely an art
historian or merely a curator; it is also
the business of man as patron, to distinguish a hierarchy of values
in what has been made, just as it is his
business to decide what it is worth while to make now.