Art as a Cultural System Author(s): Clifford Geertz Source: MLN, Vol. 91, No. 6, Comparative Literature (Dec.

, 1976), pp. 1473-1499 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907147 . Accessed: 03/10/2011 08:09
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CLIFFORD GEERTZ ^

RT AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM
1.

Art is notoriouslyhard to talk about. It seems, even when made of words in the literary arts,all the more so when made of pigment, in the non-literary or whatever ones, to exist in a sound, stone, world of itsown, beyond the reach of discourse. It not only is hard to talk about it; it seems unnecessaryto do so. It speaks, as we say, foritself:a poem mustnot mean but be; ifyou have to ask whatjazz is you are never going to get to know. Artistsfeel this especially. Most of them regard what is written and said about theirwork,or worktheyadmire as at best beside the fromit."Everyonewantsto understand point,at worsta distraction not Picasso wrote,"why art," tryto understand the song of a bird? ... People who tryto explain picturesare usually barkingup the wrong tree."1 Or if that seems too avant garde, there is Millet, resistingthe classificationof himselfas a Saint-Simoniste:"The a Hoe seems to me all verystrange,and I gossip about myMan With am obliged to you for lettingme know it, as it furnishesme with to me to wonder at the ideas people attribute another opportunity ... My criticsare men of taste and education, but I cannot put in theirshoes, and as I have never seen anythingbut fields myself since I was born, I tryto say as best I can what I saw and feltwhen I was at work."2 But anyone at all responsive to aesthetic forms feels it as well. nor sentimentalists, Even those among us who are neithermystics nor given to outburstsof aestheticpiety,feel uneasy when we have talkedverylong about a workof art in whichwe thinkwe have seen valuable. The excess of whatwe have seen, or imaginewe something we can manage to get out concerningit have, over the stammerings or false. Afterart is so vast thatour words seem hollow, flatulent,

on Art(New York, 1945), p. 421 Quoted in R. Goldwaterand M. Treves, Artists Quoted ibid., pp. 292-3

MLN 91 (1976) 1473-1499 Press ? 1976 byThe Johns University Hopkins Copyright reserved. inanyform ofreproduction Allrights

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talk,"whereofone cannot speak, thereofone mustbe silent,"seems doctrine. like veryattractive is thus But, of course, hardlyanyone, save the trulyindifferent, the perception of somesilent,artistsincluded. On the contrary, thingimportantin either particularworksor in the arts generally moves people to talk(and write)about themincessantly. Something thatmeaningfulto us cannot be left just to sittherebathed in pure and so we describe,analyse,compare,judge, classify; significance, we erect theories about creativity, form, perception, social funcan act, a system, tion; we characterizeart as a language, a structure, a symbol,a patternof feeling; we reach for scientific metaphors, spiritualones, technologicalones, politicalones; and if all else fails and hope someone else willeludicate dark sayingstogether we string them for us. The surface bootlessnessof talkingabout art seems to talkabout it endlessly.And it is this matchedbya depth necessity thatI wanthere to probe,in partto explain it, peculiarstateofaffairs but even more to determinewhat differenceit makes. To some degree art is everywheretalked about in what may be called craftterms-in termsof tonal progressions,color relations, or prosodic shapes. This is especiallytrue in the West where subjects like harmonyor pictorialcompositionhave been developed to the pointof minorsciences,and the modern move towardaesthetic and by formalism,best represented right now by structuralism, those varietiesof semioticswhich seek to followits lead, is but an attemptto generalize this approach into a comprehensiveone, to create a technical language capable of representingthe internal relationsof myths,poems, dances, or melodies in abstract,transposable terms.But the craftapproach to art talkis hardlyconfined to eitherthe West or the modern age, as the elaborate theoriesof or Arabic versification, Indian musicology, Javanesechoreography, Yoruba embossment remind us. Even the Australian aborigines, everybody'sfavoriteexample of primitivepeoples, analyze their body designs and ground paintings into dozens of isolable and named formalelements,unit graphs in an iconic grammarof representation.3 is thatit and I thinkmore important But whatis more interesting is perhaps only in the modern age and in the West thatsome men and destined,one suspects,to remain such) (stilla small minority,
3 See N. D. Munn, Walbiri (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973). Iconography

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have managed to convincethemselvesthattechnicaltalk about art, to a complete understandingof it; howeverdeveloped, is sufficient that the whole secret of aesthetic power is located in the formal relations among sounds, images, volumes, themes, or gestures. Everywhereelse-and, as I say, among most of us as well-other sorts of talk, whose terms and conceptions derive from cultural concerns art may serve, or reflect,or challenge, or describe, but does not in itselfcreate, collects about it to connect its specific energies to the general dynamicof human experience. "The purpose of a painter,"Matisse, who can hardlybe accused of undervaluing form,wrote,"must not be conceived as separate fromhis means mustbe more complete(I means,and thesepictorial pictorial do not mean more complicated) the deeper his thought.I am unable to distinguishbetween the feelingI have for life and my way of expressingit."4 The feeling an individual, or what is more critical,because no man is an island but a part of the main, the feelinga people has for life appears, of course, in a great many other places than in their art. It appears in theirreligion,theirmorality, their science,their theirpolitics,theiramusements,their commerce,theirtechnology, law, even in the way they organize their everydaypractical existence. The talkabout art thatis not merelytechnicalor a spiritualization of the technical-that is, most of it-is largely directed to placing it withinthe contextof these other expressions of human sustain.No purpose and the patternof experience theycollectively more than sexual passion or contact with the sacred, two more mattersit is difficult to talk about, but yetsomehow necessary,can with aesthetic objects be left to float, opaque and confrontation outside the general course of social life.They demand to hermetic, be assimilated. What this implies,among other things,is that the definitionof and indeed but art in any societyis never whollyintra-aesthetic, rarelymore than marginallyso. The chief problem presented by the sheer phenomenon of aestheticforce,in whateverformand in resultof whateverskill it may come, is how to place it withinthe how to incorporateit intothe texture othermodes of social activity, of a particularpatternof life. And such placing, the givingto art is alwaysa local matter;what art is in objectsa culturalsignificance,
4 Quoted in Goldwater and Treves, op. cit., p. 410.

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classical China or classical Islam, what it is in the Pueblo southwest or highland New Guinea, isjust not the same thing,no matterhow universal the intrinsic qualities that actualize its emotional power (and I have no desire to deny them) may be. The varietythat have come to expect in the spiritbeliefs,the clasanthropologists of different or the kinshipstructures sification people, and systems, notjust in theirimmediate shapes but in the way of being-in-theextends as well to their world they both promote and exemplify, drummings,carvings,chants,and dances. It is the failure to realize this on the part of many studentsof of so-called "primitive non-western art," that art, and particularly leads to the oft-heardcomment that the peoples of such cultures don't talk, or not very much, about art-they just sculpt, sing, weave, or whatever;silentin theirexpertise.What is meant is that they don't talk about it the way the observer talks about it-or would like them to-in termsof its formalproperties,its symbolic features,except laconivalues, or its stylistic content,its affective and as though they had precious littlehope of cally, cryptically, being understood. But, of course, theydo talkabout it,as theytalkabout everything or suggestive,or moving,that passes through their else striking, who lives-about how itis used, who owns its,when it is performed, what in this or that it what role or makes it, activity, plays performs itmaybe exchanged for,whatitis called, how itbegan, and so forth and so on. But thistends to be seen not as talkabout art,but about somethingelse-everyday life, myths,trade, or whatever.To the man who may not know what he likes but knows what art is, the Tiv, aimlesslysewing raffiaonto cloth prior to resistdyeing it (he will not even look at how the piece is going until it is completely who told Paul Bohannan, "ifthe design does not turnout finished), I will sell it to the Ibo; if it does, I will keep it; if it comes out well, seems not well, I shall give it to mymother-in-law," extraordinarily to be discussing his work at all, but merelysome of his social atThe approach to art fromthe side of Western aesthetics titudes.5 as (which, Kristellerhas reminded us, only emerged in the mideighteenthcentury,along with our rather peculiar notion of the blindsus "finearts"),and indeed fromany sortof prior formalism, to the veryexistenceof the data upon whicha comparativeunder5 P. Bohannan, "Artistand Critic in an African Society," in C. M. Otten ed. and Art(N.Y., 1971), p. 178. Anthropology

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standingof it could be built. And we are left,as we used to be in studies of totemism, caste, or bridewealth-and stillare in structuralist ones-with an externalizedconceptionof the phenomenon supposedly under intense inspectionbut actuallynot even in our line of sight. For Matisse,as is no surprise,was right:the means of an art and the feelingforlifethatanimates it are inseparable,and one can no more understand aestheticobjects as concatenationsof pure form than one can understandspeech as a parade of syntactic variations, or myth transformations. as a setof structural Take, as an example, and abstractas line, and cona matteras apparentlytranscultural describesit, sider itsmeaning,as RobertFaris Thompson brilliantly in Yoruba sculpture.6Linear precision,Thompson says,the sheer of line, is a major concern of Yoruba carvers,as it is of those clarity who assess the carvers'work,and the vocabularyof linear qualities, which the Yoruba use colloquially and across a range of concerns far broader than sculpture,is nuanced and extensive.It is notjust theirstatues,pots, and so on thatYoruba incise withlines: theydo the same with their faces. Line, of varyingdepth, direction,and length, sliced into their cheeks and left to scar over, serves as a means of lineage identification, personal allure, and statusexpression, and the terminology of the sculptor and of the cicatrix specialist-"cuts" distinguished from "slashes," and "digs" or "claws" from"splittings open"-parallel one another in exact precision. But there is more to it than this.The Yoruba associate line with civilization: "This country has become civilized," literally means, in Yoruba, "this earth has lines upon its face." "'Civilization' in Yoruba," Thompson goes on isildju-facewith linedmarks. The sameverb which civilizes theface the civilizes in urbanand townlineages with of membership marks earth:6 s.dke.k;6 sdko(He slashesthe [cicatrix] marks;he clears thebush).The sameverbwhich upon a face, opens Yorubamarks and in forest: 6 0 1ddici; 0 boundaries the ino.n; roads, opens he cuta new outa newboundary; lapa(hecuta newroad;he marked In to cicatrize associations the basic verb has fact, (ld) multiple path). chunks of nature: of imposing of humanpattern upon thedisorder are all "opened".. . allowof wood,thehumanface,and theforest to shineforth.7 of thesubstance ingtheinnerquality
6 R.F. in W.L. d'Azaredo, ed., The TradiCriticism," Thompson, "Yoruba Artistic Societies in African tionalArtist (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), pp. 19-61. 7 Ibid., pp. 35-36.

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The intense concern of the Yoruba carver with line, and with particularformsof line, stemsthereforefromrathermore than a detached pleasure in its intrinsic properties, the problems of sculpturaltechnique,or even some generalized culturalnotionone sensicould isolateas a nativeaesthetic.It growsout of a distinctive the in in which whole of life the participates forming-one bility them. men leave on are the scars that of meanings things This realization,thatto studyan art formis to explore a sensibiland is essentiallya collectiveformation, ity,that such a sensibility are as wide as social existhatthe foundationsof such a formation tence and as deep, leads away not only fromthe view thataesthetic power is a grandiloquence for the pleasures of craft.It leads away view that has most often also from the the so-called functionalist been opposed to it: that is, that works of art are elaborate mechanisms for defining social relationships, sustaining social social values. Nothing very measurable rules, and strengthening would happen to Yoruba societyif carvers no longer concerned themselveswiththe finenessof line, or, I daresay, even withcarving. Certainly,it would not fall apart. Just some thingsthat were feltcould not be said-and perhaps, afterawhile,mightno longer even be felt-and lifewould be the greyerfor it. Anything may,of course, play a role in helping societywork,paintingand sculpting included; just as anythingmay help it tear itselfapart. But the central connection between art and collectivelife does not lie on such an instrumental plane, it lies on a semioticone. Matisse'scolor word is his own) and the Yoruba's line arrangements jottings (the celebrate social structureor forwarduseful don't, save glancingly, doctrines.They materializea way of experiencing;bringa particular cast of mind out intothe worldof objects,where men can look at it. The signs or sign elements-Matisse's yellow, the Yoruba's slash-that make up a semiotic systemwe want, for theoretical purposes, to call aestheticare ideationallyconnected to the society in whichtheyare found,not mechanically. They are, in a phrase of of conRobert Goldwater's,primarydocuments; not illustrations ceptionsalready in force,but conceptionsthemselvesthatseek-or forwhichpeople seek-a meaningfulplace in a repertoireof other documents,equally primary.8
8 R. Goldwater,"Art and Anthropology:Some Comparisons of Methodology,"in A. Forge, ed., Primitive Artand Society (London, 1973), p. 10.

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To develop the point more concretely, and to dissipateany inteland "concep"ideational" as lectualistor literary words aura such tion" may seem to carrywith them,we can look for a moment at some aspects of one of the few other discussionsof tribalart that manages to be sensitiveto semioticconcerns withoutdisappearing intoa haze of formulas:AnthonyForge's analysisof the four-color flat painting of the Abelam people of New Guinea.9 The group produces, in Forge's phrase, "acres of painting,"on flatsheets of sago spathe, all done in cult situationsof one sortor another. The details of all this are outlined in his studies. But what is of immediate interestis the factthat,although Abelam paintingranges from the obviously figurativeto the totallyabstract(a distinction which, as their painting is declamatory,not descriptive,has no meaning to them), it is mainly connected to the wider world of Abelam experience by means of an almost obsessivelyrecurrent and called, the belly of a womotif,a pointed oval, representing, man. The representation is, of course, at lease vaguely iconic. But the power of the connectionforthe Abelam lies less in that,hardly much of an achievement,than in the factthattheyare able withit to address a burning preoccupation of theirs in terms of colorshapes (in itself,line here hardly exists as an aesthetic element; while paint has a magical force)-a preoccupation theyaddress in somewhat different ways in work, in ritual, in domestic life: the of the female. natural creativity which between femalecreativity, The concern forthe difference a product of woman's physicalbethe Abelam see as pre-cultural, which theysee as and male creativity, ing, and thereforeprimary, cultural, dependent upon men's access to supernatural power runs throughthe whole of derivative, throughritual,and therefore theirculture.Women created vegetationand discovered the yams that men eat. Women firstencountered the supernaturals,whose lovers they became, until the men, grown suspicious, discovered what was going on and took the supernaturals,now turned into wood carvings,as the focus of theirceremonials. And, of course, women produce men fromthe swell of theirbellies. Male power, dependent upon ritual, a matternow jealously kept secret from women,is thusencapsulated withinfemale power dependent upon
9 A. Forge, "Styleand Meaning in Sepik Art,"in Forge, ed., op. cit.,pp. 169-192. in M. Freedman, ed., Social Organization See also, A. Forge, "The Abelam Artist," (Chicago, 1967), pp. 65-84.

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biology; and it is this prodigious fact the paintings,packed with red, yellow,white,and black ovals (Forge found eleven of them in one small paintingwhich was virtually composed of them) are, as we would say "about." One could as well about it,not illustratively. But theyare directly of family the or or the the that rituals, myths, organization argue life,or the divisionof labor enact conceptions evolved in painting as that paintingreflectsthe conceptions underlyingsocial life. All these matters are marked by the apprehension of culture as generated in the womb of nature as man is in the bellyof woman, and all of them give it a specificsortof voice. Like the incised lines on Yoruba statues,the color-ovalsin Abelam paintingsare meantheyjoin in creatingingfulbecause theyconnect to a sensibility here, one where, rather than scars signing civilization,pigment signs power: are appliedonlyto things In general colour(or strictly paint)words intheAbelam classifiofritual concern. Thiscanbe seenvery clearly to an elaborate classificaTree speciesare subject cationof nature. the but... thecriteria used are seed and leafshapes.Whether tion, or leavesare rarely and thecolourofflowers treehas flowers or not, the Abelamhad use only mentioned as criteria. Broadly speaking, as [ritual] bothof which served and a yellow forthehibiscus flower, of anycolour formenand yams. Smallflowering decorations plants as grassor underand wereclassified wereof no interest merely biteor sting arecarefully all thosethat with insects: Similarly growth. of size or form one huge classregardless butbutterflies classified, colouris ofvital ofbirdspecies, colour.In theclassification however, and butterflies ... butthenbirds are totems, and unlike importance flowers are central to theritualsphere... It wouldseem . . . that The words for the tobe describable interest. colour hastobe ofritual wordsforpaints.Paintis an essentially fourcoloursare . . . really that theuse of and itis perhaps notso surprising substance powerful to thoseparts of thenatural environment colourwordsis restricted ... relevant thathavebeen selected as ritually can alsobe The association between colourand ritual significance Coloured seen in Abelam reactionsto European importations. and occasionally find their sometimes wayintothevillage magazines to thematting at thebaseof them and attached pagesare tornfrom werebrightly theceremonial house facade. . . The pages selected ... [and]theAbelamhad no foodadvertisements coloured, usually thatwiththeirbright but thought idea of whatwas represented to be theselected coloursand incomprehensibility pageswerelikely and therefore [sacred powerful.10 designs] European
10A. the Forge, "Learning to See in New Guinea," in P. Mayer, ed., Socialization, fromSocial Anthropology (London, 1970), pp. 184-6. Approach

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So in at least two places, two matterson the face of them as fromrathermore self-luminous as line and color draw theirvitality that real as as than their intrinsic mightbe. Whatever the appeal, innate capacities for response to sculptile delicacy or chromatic drama, these responses are caught up in wider concerns, less and it is thisencounter withthe locgeneric and more contentful, ally real that reveals their constructive power. The unityof form and content is, where it occurs and to the degree it occurs, a cultural achievement,not a philosophicaltautology.If there is to be a semioticscience of art it is thatachievementit will have to explain. to talk,and to other And to do so itwillhave to give more attention sortsof talkbut the recognizablyaesthetic,than it has usuallybeen inclined to give. 2. A common response to thissort of argument,especiallywhen it is to say, that may be all comes from the side of anthropologists, who confuse the realms of theirexwell and good for primitives, whole, but it doesn't apply to perience into one large, unreflective more developed cultures where art emerges as a differentiated activity responsivemainlyto itsown necessities.And like mostsuch between peoples on differentsides of the literacy contrasts easy it is revolution, false, and in both directions: as much in underthe internal dynamicof art in-what shall I call them? estimating its autonomy in letunlettered societies?-as in over-estimating tered ones. I will set aside the first sort of error here-the notion of are withouta kinetic thatYoruba and Abelam typeart traditions theirown-perhaps to come back to it on a later occasion. For the at the matrix momentI wantto scotchthe second bylookingbriefly aesthetic in two quite developed, and quite different, of sensibility Islamic and poetry. enterprises:quattrocentopainting For Italian painting, I will mainly rely on Michael Baxandall's recentbook, Paintingand Experience in Fifteenth Italy,which Century Baxantakes preciselythe sortof approach I here am advocating."1 dall is concerned withdefiningwhat he calls "the period eye"-that is, "the equipment that a fifteenth-century painter's public [i.e., other painters and "the patronizingclasses"] brought to complex A picture,he says,is sensitiveto like pictures."12 visual stimulations
in Fifteenth " M. Baxandall, Paintingand Experience Century Italy(London, 1972). Ibid., p. 38.

12

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the kinds of interpretiveskill-patterns, categories, inferences, analogies-the mind bringsto it: or relationship kindofform a certain todistinguish A man'scapacity for the attention withwhichhe willhave consequences of forms if he is skilled in noting a picture. For instance, addresses proporin reducing forms or ifhe is practiced tional complex relationships, for tocompounds setofcategories ofsimple or ifhe hasa rich forms, theseskills different kindsof red and brown, maywelllead himto differAnnunciation of Pierodella Francesca's orderhisexperience than and muchmoresharply theseskills, from peoplewithout ently to relevant skills has notgiventhem many peoplewhoseexperience are morerelevskills thepicture. For itis clearthat someperceptual in classifying the thanothers:a virtuosity ant to any one picture forinstance, of flexing lines-a skill ductus Germans, many possessed in thisperiod... wouldnot findmuchscope on theAnnunciatheconformity between Muchofwhat we call"taste" liesin this, tion. of discrimination and skills demandedbya painting discriminations bythebeholder.13 possessed But what is even more important,these appropriate skills,for both the beholder and the painter,are forthe mostpartnot builtin like retinalsensitivity for focal lengthbut are drawn fromgeneral experience, the experience in thiscase of livinga quattrocentolife and seeing thingsin a quattrocentoway: a man ordershis visualexperi... someof themental equipment is culturis variable, and muchof thisvariable encewith equipment which the in of determined the sense relative, by society ally being are categories has influenced hisexperience. Amongthesevariables he willuse with theknowledge which he classified hisvisualstimuli, and theattitude vision tosupplement whathisimmediate giveshim, must he willadoptto thekindofartificial objectseen.The beholder ofwhich few are suchvisual skills as he has,very use on thepainting his and he is likely to use.thoseskills normally specialto painting, The painterrespondsto this;his public's esteemshighly. society Whatever his own specialized visualcapacity mustbe his medium. for ofthesociety he works he is himself a member skills, professional
and shares its visual experience and habit.14

The first fact(though,as in Abelam, onlythe first) to be attended Italian to in these termsis, of course, that most fifteenth-century in and not matter were just subject paintings religious paintings, but in the ends theywere designed to serve. Pictureswere meant to
13

14

Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 40.

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deepen human awareness of the spiritualdimensionsof existence; of Christianon the truths to reflections theywere visual invitations The of with an Faced Annunciation,The Asarrestingimage ity. of the Magi, The Charge to sumptionof the Virgin,The Adoration St. Peter,or The Passion,the beholder was to complete itbyreflecting on the event as he knew it and on his personal relationshipto it recorded. "For it is one thingto adore a painting," the mysteries as a Dominican preacher defending the virtuousnessof art, put it, "but it is quite another to learn froma painted narrativewhat to Yet the relationbetweenreligiousideas and pictorialimages (and thisI thinkis true forart generally)was not simplyexpositive;they The painter,or at least the were not Sunday school illustrations. his public to concern religiouspainter,was concerned withinviting with and not withfirst themselves last, providingthemwitha things of with a transcription nor recipe or a surrogatefor such concern, it. His relation,or more exactly,the relationsof his painting,to the wider culturewas interactive or, as Baxandall puts it,complemena generalized, of Bellini's Giovanni Transfiguration, tary.Speaking but of course marvellously almosttypological, plastic,renderingof the scene, he calls it a relic of cooperation between Bellini and his experience of the Transfiguration public-"The fifteenth-century on the between the painting,the configuration was an interaction mind-a of the the and wall, public mind public visualizingactivity with differentfurniture and dispositions from ours."16 Bellini fromthe other side and designed his could count on a contribution as to call that contribution so out, not to depict it. His vocapanel tion was to constructan image to which a distinctivespirituality could forcibly react. The public does not need, as Baxandall remarks, what it has already got. What it needs is an object rich enough to see it in; rich enough, even, to, in seeing it, deepen it. active in There were, of course, all sortsof cultural institutions which of the converged with sensibility quattrocentoItaly forming of them were and not all the to "period eye," painting produce were not all the (as religious).Among the religipaintings religious the revand subclassifying ous ones, popular sermons,classifying and Christian of the and events setting myth personages elatory
15 16

adore."15

Quoted Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 48.

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forththe typesof attitude-disquiet, reflection, inquiry,humility, dicta admiration-appropriate to each, as well as offering dignity, as to how such matterswere represented visually,were probably the mostimportant. "Popular preachers ... drilled theircongregations in a set of interpretive skills right at the centre of the Gestureswere classified, fifteenth-century response to painting."17 and the physical apcolors symbologized, typed, physiognomies pearance of central figuresdiscussed withapologetical care. "You ask," another Dominican preacher announced, darkor fair? Albertus Was theVirgin Magnussaysthatshewas not Foranyone norsimply nor dark, red-haired, simply just fair-haired. to of thesecoloursbyitself a certain imperfection a person. brings or one says:"God saveme from a red-haired This is why Lombard," "God saveme from or "from a black-haired a fair-haired German," or"from ofwhatever colour." wasa blend a Belgian Spaniard," Mary of ofcomplexions, of all of because a face them, partaking partaking authorities all ofthem is a beautiful one. It is forthis reasonmedical ofredand fair isbestwhena a complexion declarethat compounded we must third colouris added: black.And yetthis,saysAlbertus, on thedarkside.There are three reasonsfor admit:she wasa little since this-firstly byreasonofcomplexion, Jewstendto be thinking sinceSt. darkand she was a Jewess; byreasonof witness, secondly of her now at Rome, Loreto and Luke made the threepictures thirdly by reasonof Bologna,and theseare brown-complexioned; and vice versa; A son commonly takesafterhis mother, affinity. ... 18 Christ was dark,therefore Of the other domains of Renaissance culture thatcontributedto the way fifteenth-century Italians looked at paintings,two which Baxandlall finds to have been of particular importance were another art,though a lesser one, social dancing, and a quite practihe calls gauging-that is, estimating cal activity quantities,volumes, proportions,ratios,and so on for commercial purposes. Dancing had relevance to picture seeing because it was less a temporalart allied to music,as withus, than a graphicone allied to spectacle-religious pageants, streetmasques, and so on; a matter moof figural grouping not, or anywaynot mainly,of rhythmic tion.As such,itboth depended upon and sharpened the capacityto discern psychological interplayamong static figures grouped in subtle patterns,a kind of body arranging-a capacity the painters
17 Ibid.
18

Quoted, ibid., p. 57.

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the shared and used to evoke theirviewer'sresponse. In particular, bassadanza, a slow paced, geometrizeddance popular in Italyat the time presented patternsof figuralgrouping that painterssuch as Botticelli,in his Primavera(which revolves,of course, around the dance of the Graces) or his Birth of Venus,employed in organizing the bassa danza represented,Baxandall theirwork. The sensibility a genfigurepatterns, says,"involveda public skillat interpreting human eral experience of semi-dramatic bodies] [of arrangement and other paintersto assume a similarpublic thatallowed Botticelli readiness to interprettheir own groups."19Given a widespread of dance formsconsisting withhighlystylized essentially familiarity discretesequences of tableaux vivants,the paintercould count on an immediatevisual understandingof his own sort of figuraltableaus in a way not veryopen in a culturesuch as ours where dance is a mattermore of movement framed between poses than poses framedbetween movementand the general sense fortacitgesture of a vernacularsocial art of grouping is weak. "The transmutation or lunging intoan art where a patternof people-not gesticulating or grimacing people-can still stimulate a strong sense of... is the problem: it is doubtfulifwe have the interplay, psychological to see such refinedinnuendo at all spontanerightpredispositions ously."20 Beyond and behind thistendencyto conceive of both dances and implicitmeanpaintingsas patternsof body arrangementcarrying in ing lies, of course, a wider tendency the whole society,and particularlyin its cultivatedclasses, to regard the way in which men grouped themselveswith respect to one another, the postural orderings theyfell into in one another's company, as not accidental, but the resultof the sortsof relationships theyhad to one another. But it is in the other matterBaxandall takes to have had a forming impact on how the people of the Renaissance saw paintingsgauging-that this deeper penetrationof visual habit into the life of society,and the life of societyinto it, is apparent. he notes, thatcommodities It is an importantfactof art history, in standard-sizecontainersonlysince the ninehave come regularly teenthcentury(and even then, he mighthave added, only in the West). "Previouslya container-barrel, sack, or bale, was unique,
19Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 76.

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and calculatingitsvolume quicklyand accuratelywas a conditionof And the same was true of lengths,as in the clothtrade, business."21 One did not as in brokerage,or ratios,as in surveying. proportions, survivein commercewithoutsuch skills, and itwas merchants who, for the most part,commissionedthe paintings,and in some cases, like Piero della Francesca,who wrotea mathematicalhandbook on gauging, painted them. In any case, both painters and their merchant patrons had a similareducation in such matters-to be literatewas at the same timeto have command of the sortsof techniquesavailable tojudge the dimensions of things. So far as solid objects were concerned these skillsinvolvedthe abilityto break down irregularor unfamiliar masses into compounds of regular and familiar,and thus calculable, ones-cylinders, cones, cubes and so on; for twodimensional ones, a similar abilityto analyze ununiformsurfaces into simple planes: squares, circles, triangles, hexagons. The heightsto which thiscould rise is indicated in a passage Baxandall gives fromPiero's handbook: There is a barrel, the each of itsends being2 bracciin diameter; between diameter at itsbungis 21/4 bracci and halfway bungand end itis 22/9 bracci. The barrel is 2 bracci is itscubicmeasure? long.What like This is a pair of truncated cones. Square the diameter at the

ends: 2 x 2 = 4. Then square the median diameter 22/9x 22/9= 476/81. Add themtogether[giving]876/81. Multiply2 x 2/9 = 44/9.Add this to 876/81= 1331/8s.Divide by 3 = 4112/243 . . . Now square 21/4 [giving]51/16.Add it to the square of the median diameter: 55/16 + 476/81 = 101/129. Multiply 22/9x 21/4=5. Add thisto the previous sum [getting]151/129. Divide by 3 [whichyields]5 and 1/3888.Add it to the first result... = 91792/3888. Multiply thisby 11 and thendivide by 14 [i.e. multiply This is thecubic bypi/4]:the finalresultis 723600/54432.

measure of thebarrel.22

This is,as Baxandall says,a special intellectual world; but itis one in which all of the educated classes in places like Venice and Florence lived. Its connection with painting, and the perception of painting,lay less in the calculational processes as such than in a of complex formsas combinadispositionto attendto the structure tions of simpler, more regular, and more comprehensible ones.
21Ibid., 86. p. Ibid.

22

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Even the objects involved in paintings-cisterns, columns, brick towers,paved floors,and so on-were the same ones that handbooks used to practicestudentsin the art of gauging. And so when as set in Piero, in his other hat as painter,rendersTheAnnunciation a columned, multilevel, advancing and receding Perugian portico, or the Madonna in a domed, half-roundedcloth pavillion,a framing dress to her own, he is calling upon his public's abilityto see such formsas compounds of others and thus to interpret-gauge, if you will-his paintingsand grasp theirmeaning: to geometriwas reducible To thecommercial manalmost anything cal figures surface pile of grainreirregularities-that underlying oftruncated or a compound ducedto a cone,thebarrel to a cylinder allowedto lapse intoa cone of cones,thecloak to a circleof stuff the bricktowerto a compoundcubic body composedof a stuff, calculablenumberof smallercubic bodies,and ... thishabitof As a of appearances. is very close to the painter's analysis analysis In bothcasesthere a figure. mangaugeda bale,thepainter surveyed massesand voidsto combinareduction of irregular is a conscious werepracbodies... Because they tionsof manageable geometric or surface thevolume and in analysing ratios tisedin manipulating to of compoundbodies,[fifteenth-century Italians]were sensitive of similar themarks processes.23 pictures carrying The famous lucid solidityof Renaissance painting had at least partof itsoriginsin somethingelse than the inherentpropertiesof mathematicallaw, and binocular vision. planar representation, Indeed, and this is the central point, all these broader cultural to produce and othersI have not mentioned,interworked matters, in which quattrocentoart was formed and had its the sensibility Baxandall connects and the Orators, being. (In an earlierwork,Giotto the development of pictorialcomposition to the narrativeforms, most especially the periodic sentence, of humanist rhetoric; the orator's hierarchyof period, clause, phrase, and word being consciously matched, by Alberti and others, to the painter's one of picture, body, member, and plane.)24 Different painters played but the moralismof reupon different aspects of that sensibility, ligious preaching,the pageantryof social dancing, the shrewdness of commercialgauging,and the grandeur of Latin oratoryall combined to provide what is indeed the painter's true medium: the
23

24

Ibid., pp. 87-9, 101. and theOrators M. Baxandall, Giotto (Oxford, 1971).

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capacityof his audience to see meaningsin pictures.An old picture, Baxandall says,though he could have omittedthe "old," is a record that one has to learn to read, just as one has to of visual activity culture. "If we observe that learn to read a text from a different Piero della Francesca tends to a gauged sort of painting, Fra Angelico to a preached sortof painting,and Botticellito a danced sort of painting,we are observingsomethingnot only about them but about theirsociety."25 The capacity,variable among peoples as it is among individuals, to perceive meaning in pictures (or poems, melodies, buildings, pots, dramas, statues) is, like all other fullyhuman capacities, a product of collectiveexperience which far transcendsit, as is the far rarer capacity to put it there in the firstplace. It is out of participationin the general systemof symbolicformswe call culture that participationin the particularwe call art,which is in fact but a sectorof it,is possible. A theoryof art is thus at the same time a theoryof culture, not an autonomous enterprise.And if it is a not in semiotictheoryof art it musttrace the lifeof signsin society, an invented world of dualities, transformations,parallels, and equivalences. 3. There is hardlya betterexample of the factthatan artistworks with signs which have a place in semiotic systemsextending far beyond the craft he practices than the poet in Islam. A Muslim making verses faces a set of cultural realities as objective to his intentionsas rocks or rainfall,no less substantialfor being nonmaterial,and no less stubbornfor being man-made. He operates, of his and alway has operated, in a contextwhere the instrument art,language, has a peculiar, heightenedkind of status,as distinctivea significance, and as mysterious, as Abelam paint. Everything the patto morphology,scriptureto calligraphy, frommetaphysics ternsof public recitation to the styleof informalconversationconspires to make of speech and speaking a mattercharged with an certainlyextraordinary. import if not unique in human history, and not The man who takes up the poet's role in Islam traffics, culture. his of in the moral substance whollylegitimately, In order even to begin to demonstratethisit is of course neces25

op. cit., p. 152. Paintingand Experience,

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sary firstto cut the subject down to size. It is not my intentionto surveythe whole course of poetic development fromthe Prophecy forward;butjust to make a few general, and ratherunsystematic, remarksabout the place of poetryin traditionalIslamic societymost particularlyArabic poetry; most particularlyin Morocco, where my wife,Hildred Geertz, has done an extensivestudyof it; most particularly on the popular, oral verse level. The relationship between poetry and the central impulses of Muslim culture is, I think,rather similar more or less everywhere,and more or less since the beginning.But ratherthan trying to establishthat,I shall merely assume it and proceed, on the basis of somewhat special materialto suggestwhat the termsof thatrelationship-an uncertain and difficult one-seem to be. There are, fromthis perspective,three dimensionsof the problem to review and interrelate.The first,as always in mattersIslamic is the peculiar nature and status of the Quran, "the only miracle in Islam." The second is the performancecontext of the poetry,which,as a livingthing,is as much a musical and dramatic art as it is a literary to deone. And the third,and most difficult lineate in a short space, is the general nature-agonistic, as I will call it-of interpersonalcommunicationin Moroccan society.Togethertheymake of poetrya kind of paradigmaticspeech act, an archetypeof talk,which it would take,were such a thingconceivable, a full analysisof Muslim culture to unpack. But as I say, whereverthe matterends it startswiththe Quran. The Quran (which means neither"testament"nor "teaching" nor of fromthe other major scriptures "book," but "recitation")differs the world in thatit containsnot reportsabout God by a prophetor his disciples, but His direct speech, the syllables,words, and sentences of Allah. Like Allah, it is eternal and uncreated,one of His like Mercy or Omnipotence, not one of his creatures, attributes, are abstruse and not very like man or the earth. The metaphysics Allah's translationinto do with worked to out, consistently having Arabic rhymed prose of excerpts from an eternal text,the WellGuarded Tablet, and the dictationof these, one by one and in no particularorder over a period of years,by Gabriel to Muhammad, Muhammad in turn dictating them to followers, the so-called themto the who memorized them and transmitted Quran-reciters, has continued them at which, daily, rehearsing community large, them since. But the point is that he who chants Quranic verses-

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or the ordinaryMuslim, Gabriel, Muhammad, the Quran-reciters, not words about the chain-chants centuriesfurther thirteen along His essence, are those words as and but of indeed, Him, God, chants God himself.The Quran, as Marshall Hodgson has said, is of factsand norms,it is an event,an act: a statement not a treatise, or evenforinspiratobe readforinformation It wasnever designed ... What in worhsip as an actof commitment butto be recited tion, theQur'anwasnottoperuseitbuttoworship one did with bymeans it for it but,in reciting receive of it; notto passively it,to reaffirm timeone of the was renewed theeventof revelation oneself: every theQur'anic relived in theactofworship, is,respoke] [that faithful,
affirmation.26

Now, there are a number of implicationsof this view of the is Quran-among them that its nearest equivalent in Christianity is the critical one not the Bible but Christ-but for our purposes as not is set Meccan Arabic, thatitslanguage, seventh-century apart just the vehicle of a divine message, like Greek, Pali, Aramaic, or of but as itselfa holyobject. Even an individualrecitation Sanskrit, uncreated an is considered of the Quran, or portions it, entity, somethingwhichpuzzles a faithcenteredon divine persons,but to thatspeech is an Islamic one, centered on divine rhetoric, signifies sacred to the degree thatitresemblesthatof God. One resultof this is the famous linguistic schizophreniaof Arabic-speakingpeoples: the persistence of "classical" (mudari) or "pure (fi4ha) written Arabic,contrivedto look as Quranic as possible and rarelyspoken veroutside of ritualcontexts,alongsideone or another unwritten considand or "common" called nacular, (darija), "vulgar"(Cammiya) ered incapable of conveying serious truths.Another is that the status of those who seek to create in words, and especially for secular purposes, is highlyambiguous. They turn the tongue of God to ends of theirown, whichifit not quite sacrilege,borders on it; but at the same timetheydisplayitsincomparable power,which rivaledonlyby architecifnot quite worship,approaches it. Poetry, and espeture,became the cardinal fine art in Islamic civilization, of the the while of the it, edge treading Arabic-speakingpart cially of form blasphemy. gravest This sense for Quranic Arabic as the model of what speech should be, and a constantreproofto the way people actuallytalk,is
26

M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture ofIslam, Vol. I (Chicago, 1974), p. 367.

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reinforcedby the whole patternof traditionalMuslim life. Almost everyboy (and more recently, many girls as well) goes to a drillschool where he learns to recite and memorize verses from the Quran. If he is adept and diligenthe may get the whole 6200 or so by heart and become a hafiz,a "memorizer,"and bring a certain he is not,he willat least to his parents;if,as is more likely, celebrity learn enough to conduct his prayers,butcherchickens,and follow sermons.If he is especiallypious, he mayeven go to a higherschool in some urban center like Fez or Marrakech and obtain a more exact sense of the meaningof whathe has memorized.But whether versesor the a man comes away witha handfulof half-understood entire collection reasonably comprehended, the main stressis always on recitationand on the rote learning necessaryto it. What were seen Hodgson has said of medieval Islam-that all statements a fixed as either true or false; that the sum of all true statements, the which at from least contained Quran, implicitly corpus radiating themall, was knowledge;and thatthe way to obtain knowledgewas to committo memorythe phrases it was stated in-could be said today forthe greaterpart of Morocco, where whateverweakening faith has experienced it has yet to relax its passion for recitable truth.27 Such attitudes and such training lead to everyday life being punctuatedby lines fromthe Quran and other classical tags. Aside fromthe specifically religiouscontexts-the daily prayers,the Fricantationsin the day worship,the mosque sermons,thebead-telling mysticalbrotherhoods,the recital of the whole book on special of versesat funerals, occasions such as the Fast month,the offering weddings, and circumcisions-ordinaryconversationis laced with Quranic formulaeto the pointwhere even the most mundane subjects seem set in a sacred frame. The most important public speeches-those from the throne, for example-are cast in an Arabic so classicized that most who hear them but vaguely underin standthem.Arabicnewspapers,magazines,and books are written can who number of the result that the a similarmannerwith people read them is small. The cryof Arabization-the popular demand, swept forwardby religious passions, for conducting education in and administration-isa classicalArabicand using itin government to a hypocgreatdeal of linguistic potentideological force,leading
27

Ibid., Vol. II, p. 438.

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on the partof the politicaleliteand to a certainamountof public risy disturbancewhen the hypocrisy growstoo apparent. It is thissortof world,one in whichlanguage is as much symbolas medium,verbal and the experience of God's eloquence wars styleis a moral matter, withthe need to communicate,thatthe oral poet exists,and whose feelingforchantsand formulashe exploitsas Piero exploited Italy's forsacks and barrels."I memorizedthe Quran," one such poet told theversesand hard,to explain hisart."Then I forgot trying mywife, remembered the words." at the tombof meditation the versesduringa three-day He forgot a saintrenownedforinspiring poets,but he remembersthewordsin the contextof performance.Poetryhere is not first composed and thenrecited;it is composed in the recitation, put togetherin the act of singingit in a public place. Usually thisis a lamp litspace before the house of some wedding celebrant.The poet stands,erect as a tree,in giveror circumcision to eitherside the centerof the space, assistants slappingtambourines of him, in front of him.The male partof theaudience squats directly his into individual men risingfromtime to time to stuff currency the out from either turban,while the female part peeks discreetly houses around or looks down in the darknessfromtheirroofs.Behind him are twolines of sidewisedancing men, theirhands on one another's shoulders and their heads swivelingas they shufflea couple half-stepsright,a couple left. He sings his poem, verse by the verse, paced by the tambourines,in a wailed, metallicfalsetto, be fixed and tends to which the him for assistants refrain, joining only generallyrelated to the text,while the dancing men ornament howls. matterswithsudden strangerhythmic he does notcreate Of course,likeAlbertLord's famousJugoslavs, a piece at a but builds it up, molecularly, his textout of sheer fancy, numberof a limited of out Markov like artistic some time, process, of death establishedformulas.Some are thematic:the inevitability of women the if live a on ("God ("even you unreliability prayerrug"); help you,O lover,who is carriedawaybytheeyes"); thehopelessness of passion ("so manypeople gone to the grave because of the burnof religiouslearning("where is the schoolmanwho ing"); the vanity can whitewash the air?"). Some are figurative:girls as gardens, wealth as cloth, worldlinessas markets,wisdom as travel,love as jewelry, poets as horses. And some are formal-strict,mechanical schemes of rhyme,meter,line and stanza. The singing,the tam-

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bourines,the dancing men, the genre demands, and the audience sending up you-yousof approval or whistlesof censure as these eithercome effectively or do notmake up an integral things together whole fromwhichthe poem can no more be abstractedthancan the of it. It, too, is an event,an act; constantly Quran fromthe reciting renewable. new, constantly And, as with the Quran, individuals,or at least many of them, punctuatetheirordinaryspeech withlines,verses,tropes,allusions taken fromoral poetry,sometimesfroma particularpoem, sometimesone associated witha particularpoet whose work theyknow, sometimesfromthe general corpus,whichthough large,is, as I say, limits.In thatsense,taken containedwithin quite definiteformulaic as a whole, poetry,the performanceof which is widespread and and among the common regular,mostespeciallyin the countryside classes in the towns,formsa kindof "Recitation"of itsown, another less valuable,of memorizless exalted but not necessarily collection, able truths:lust is an incurable disease, women an illusorycure; contention is the foundation of society,assertivenessthe master moral hypocrisy; virtue;pride is the springof action,unworldliness the end death of the of is flower life, pleasure. Indeed, the pleasure and means word for poetry, scir, though no Muslim "knowledge," kind it a of secularcounterit that stands as would explicitly way, put What man hears itself. the Revelation a to poise, worldlyfootnote, about God and the dutiesowed Him in the Quran, fix-worded facts, he hears about human beings and the consequences of being one in poetry. The performanceframe of poetry,its character as a collective speech act, only reinforcesthisbetwixtand between qualityof ithalf ritual song, half plain talk-because if its formal, quasiliturgicaldimensions cause it to resemble Quranic chanting, its rhetorical, quasi-social ones cause it to resemble everydayspeech. As I have said, it is not possible to describe here the general tone of interpersonalrelationsin Morocco withany concreteness;one can only claim, and hope to be believed, that it is before anythingelse of willsas individualsstruggleto seize combative,a constanttesting what they covet, defend what they have, and recover what they have lost.So faras speech is concerned,thisgivesto all but the most in words, a idle conversation the quality of a catch-as-catch-can head-on collisionof curses, promises,lies, excuses, pleading, commands, proverbs,arguments,analogies, quotations, threats,eva-

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whichnot only puts an enormous premiumon version, flatteries, bal fluencybut gives to rhetorica directlycoercive force. candu klam,"he has words, speech, maxims,eloquence," means also, and "he has power, influence,weight,authornotjust metaphorically, ity." Not In the poeticcontextthisagonisticspirit appears throughout. this in the what of is the content says argumentational poet only way-attacking the shallownessof townsmen,the knaveryof merchants, the perfidyof women, the miserliness of the rich, the of moralists-but it is treacheryof politicians,and the hypocrisy A directedat particulartargets, usuallyones presentand listening. local Quran teacher, who has criticisedwedding feasts (and the poety sung at them) as sinfulis excorciated to his face and forced fromthe village: theteacher See howmanyshameful did; things to fillhis pockets. He onlyworked venal. He is greedy, all thisconfusion, By God, with and tellhim"go away;" Just givehimhis money itwith "Go eat cat meatand follow dog meat." had memorized only Theyfoundout thattheteacher to his a reference fourQuran chapters [this thewhole]. claimto havememorized If he knewtheQuran byheartand couldcall himself a scholar, theprayers so fast. He wouldn't hurry through in his heart. He has evilthoughts hismindis on girls; evenin themidst of prayer, Why, he wouldchaseone ifhe could findany. A stingyhost fares no better: and weak,hejust sitsthere As forhimwhois stingy and doesn'tdare sayanything. wereas in a prison[thefood Theywhocame fordinner was so bad], and neversatisfied all night The peoplewerehungry wifespenttheevening The host's doingas she pleased, By God, she didn'tevenwantto getup and getthecoffee ready.

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And a curer, a formerfriend,withwhom the poet has fallen out, lines of the followingsort of thing: gets thirty man. Oh, thecureris no longera reasonable He followed theroad to becomepowerful, And changedintoa mad betrayer. He followed a tradeof thedevil;he said he was but I don'tbelieveit. successful, And so on. Nor is it merelyindividualsthe poet criticises (or can be paid to criticise;for mostof these verbal assassinationsare contract of a rivalvillage,or faction,or family;a jobs): the inhabitants betweenmembersof such parconfrontation politicalparty(poetic led their have had to be broken up by the each own ties, by poet, lead when to to words blows); even whole classes of began police his be civil bakers or servants, may targets.And he can shift people, immediate audience in the very midst of performance.When he lamentsthe inconstancy of women, he speaks up into the shadows of the roofs; when he attacksthe lecheryof men, his gaze drops to the crowd at his feet.Indeed, the whole poetic performancehas an agonistic tone as the audience cries out in approval (and presses and hoots in disapproval,sometimes moneyon the poet) or whistles to the point of causing his retirement fromthe scene. But perhaps the purest expressions of this tone are the direct to outdo each otherwiththeirverses. combatsbetweenpoets trying Some subject-it may be just an object like a glass or a tree-is chosen to get things going and then the poets sing alternately, sometimesthe whole nightlong as the crowd shouts itsjudgment, untilone retires, bested by the other. From a three-hourstruggleI is lost in brief some give excerpts,in whichjust about everything the the of translation thing: except spirit Well into the middle of the battle,Poet A, challenging,"stands up and says:" on him[therivalpoet]he That which God bestowed clothes fora girl;he will wastedto buynylon findwhathe is looking for, And he willbuywhathe wants[i.e.,sex] and of [bad] places. aroundall sorts go visiting Poet B, responding: on him[i.e.,himself, That which God bestowed and charity, PoetB] he used forprayer, tithe,

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norstylish And he didn'tfollow eviltemptations, to run nortatooedgirls;he remembers girls, Hell-fire. awayfrom Then, an hour or so later on, Poet A, stillchallenging,and still responded to, shiftsto metaphysicalriddling: being effectively Fromone skyto theotherskyitwouldtake500,000years, whatwas goingto happen? And after that, Poet B, taken off guard, doesn't respond directly, but, sparing for time,erupts in threats: Take him[PoetA] awayfrom me, Or I'll call forbombs, I'll call forairplanes, And soldiers of fearful appearance. I willmake,oh gentlemen, warnow, one. Even ifitisjust a little See, I havethegreater power. Still later,the aroused Poet B recoversand replies to the riddle it witha stringof about the skies not answeringit,but by satirizing unanswerable counter-riddles,designed to expose its angels-onsort of foolishness: the-head-of-a-pin I was goingto respondto thatone who said,"Climb sky up to theskyand see howfaritis from to sky, bytheroad." I was goingto tellhim,"countforme all thethings thatare in theearth." I willanswer thepoet,though he is crazy. will havewe had,which Tell me,howmuchoppression in thehereafter? be punished that Tell me howmuchgrainis therein theworld, on? we can feast ourselves that Tell me,howmuchwood is therein theforest, youcan burnup? Tell me,howmany from westto east? bulbsare there, electricity Tell me,howmanyteapots tea? are filled with At which point, Poet A, insulted,hooted, angry,and defeated, says, Giveme theteapot. I am goingto batheforprayer. I havehad enoughof thisparty. and retires.

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In short, in speech terms, or more exactly speech act terms, of the Quran and the poetrylies in betweenthe divine imperatives of everydaylife,and it is that rhetoricalthrustand counter-thrust which gives it its uncertain status and strange force. On the one more thantransithand, it formsa kind of para-Quran, sung truths in a more and less than eternal studied than the ory language style On the less arcane than the classical. and other,it projects colloquial the spiritof everydaylife into the realm of, if not the holy,at least the inspired. Poetryis morallyambiguous because it is not sacred enough tojustifythe power it actuallyhas and not secular enough forthatpower to be equated to ordinaryeloquence. The Moroccan oral poet inhabitsa region between speech types which is at the same timea region between worlds,between the discourse of God and the wrangleof men. And unless thatis understood neitherhe nor his poetrycan be understood, no matterhow much ferreting or parsing of verse formsone engages in. out of latentstructures or this poetry,constructsa voice out of the voices Poetry, anyway that surround it. If it can be said to have a "function,"that is it. a usefullymediocre one, is "the con"Art," says my dictionary, scious production or arrangement of colors, forms,movements, sounds or other elements in a manner that affectsthe sense of beauty,"a way of puttingthe matterwhich seems to suggest that men are born withthe power to appreciate, as theyare born with the power to see jokes, and have only to be provided with the occasions to exercise it.As what I have said here ought to indicate,I do not thinkthatthisis true (I don't thinkthatit is true forhumor either); but, rather, that "the sense of beauty," or whatever the to face scars, painted ovals, domed abilityto respond intelligently pavillions,or rhymedinsultsshould be called, is no less a cultural artifactthan the objects and devices concocted to "affect"it. The artist works with his audience's capacities-capacities to see, or hear, or touch,sometimeseven to tasteand smell,withunderstanding. And though elementsof these capacities are indeed innate-it usually helps not to be color blind-they are brought into actual existenceby the experience of livingin the midstof certainsortsof thingsto look at, listento, handle, thinkabout, cope with,and react to; particularvarietiesof cabbages, particularsorts of kings. Art and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same shop. For an approach to aestheticswhichcan be called semiotic-that is, one concerned withhow signssignify-whatthismeans is thatit but mustbe a cannot be a formalscience like logic or mathematics,

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social one like history or anthropology.Harmony and prosody are and syntax; hardlyto be dispensedwith,anymorethan composition of a work of art and accounting for its but exposing the structure impact are not the same thing.What Nelson Goodman has called of aestheticex"the absurd and awkward mythof the insularity perience," the notion that the mechanicsof art generate its meaning, cannot produce a science of signs or of anythingelse; only an of verbal analysis.28 emptyvirtuosity If we are to have a semiotics of art (or forthatmatter, of any sign we are going to have to systemnot axiomaticallyself-contained), engage in a kind of natural historyof signs and symbols, an ethnographyof the vehicles of meaning. Such signs and symbols, or some such vehiclesof meaning,play a role in the lifeof a society, part of a society,and it is that which in fact gives them their life. arises fromuse, and it Here, too, meaning is use, or more carefully, as we are accustomed to is by tracingout such uses as exhaustively for irrigation techniquesor marriagecustomsthatwe are going to be able to findout anythinggeneral about them. This is not a plea for inductivism-we certainly have no need for a catalog of instances-but for turningthe analyticpowers of semiotictheory, whether Peirce's, Saussure's, Levi-Strauss's,or Goodman's, away from an investigation of signs in abstractiontoward an investigain them their natural habitat-the common world in which tion of men look, name, listen,and make. It is not a plea, either,forthe neglectof form,but forseekingthe roots of formnot in some updated version.of facultypsychology but in what I have called elsewhere "the social historyof the imagination"-that is, in the constructionand deconstructionof symbolicsystemsas individuals and groups of individuals tryto make some sense of the profusionof thingsthat happen to them. When a Bamileke chieftook office, Jacques Maquet informsus, he had his statuecarved; "afterhis death, the statuewas repsected,but it was slowlyeroded by the weather as his memorywas eroded in the mindsof the people."29Where is the formhere? In the shape of the statueor the shape of itscareer? It is, of course, in both. But no analysis of the statue that does not hold its fate in view, a fate as
28 N. Goodman, LanguagesofArt(Indianapolis, 1968), p. 260. A Macaleb Module in An29J.Maquet, "Introductionto AestheticAnthropology," thropology (Reading, Mass, 1971), p. 14.

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intended as is the arrangementof its volume or the gloss of its surface,is going to understand its meaning or catch its force. It is, after all, not just statues (or paintings,or poems) that we have to do with but the factorsthat cause these things to seem important-that is, affectedwith import-to those who make or possess them,and these are as various as life itself.If there is any commonality among all the artsin all the places thatone findsthem (in Bali theymake statuesout of coins, in Australiadrawingsout of dirt) thatjustifies including them under a single, Western-made rubric,it is not thattheyappeal to some universalsense of beauty. That may or may not exist,but if it does it does not seem, in my experience, to enable people to respond to exotic arts with more in the absence of a knowledge than an ethnocentric sentimentalism of what those artsare about or an understandingof the cultureout of which they come. (The Western use of "primitive"motifs,its undoubted value in itsown termsaside, has only accentuated this; mostpeople, I am convinced,see Africansculptureas bush Picasso and hear Javanese music as noisyDebussy.) If thereis a commonaleverywhereseem specifiityit lies in the factthatcertainactivities that ideas are to demonstrate visible,audible, andcallydesigned one needs to make a word up here-tactible, thattheycan be cast in formswhere the sense, and through the senses the emotions,can address them. The varietyof artistic expression stems reflectively of conceptionsmen have about the way thingsare, fromthe variety and is indeed the same variety. To be of effective use in the studyof art, semioticsmust move of signs as means of communication, the consideration beyond code to be deciphered, to a consideration of them as modes of that thought,idiom to be interpreted.It is not a new crytography we need, especially when it consists of replacing one cipher by but a new diagnostics,a science whichcan another less intelligible, determinethe meaning of thingsfor the life thatsurroundsthem. not pathology, It willhave, of course, to be trainedon signification, But byconnectingincised and treatwithideas, not withsymptoms. statues,pigmentedsago palms,frescoedwalls,and chanted verseto jungle clearing,totem rites,commercialinference,or streetargument, it can perhaps begin at last to locate in the tenor of their settingthe sources of theirspell.
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