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St. Augustine use of allegory compared to symbolism in the visual arts We can explain St. Augustine's interest in emotional aspect of symbolism and allegories by fact that Augustine was a professional shrewd critic of poetry and an outstanding expert of artistic flair. St.
Augustine tried to attract attention of his contemporaries both by allegory and symbolism to show and explain an endless nature of God. According to Dictionary of Literary terms, allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning (web) Symbolism (as it is written in European Art: 19 century), is based on the idea of the symbol, either the artist's personal symbol or a universal symbol known to all. Symbolist paintings are very visually-based, and are considered modern for what they represent rather than for the way they were painted. (n. p. ) When we compare St.
Augustine use of allegories and allegories in visual arts, we see several similarities. We can understand and interpret art as symbolism expressed by feelings. This symbolism resides in harmony and symmetry. Both visual art and literature masterpieces can be interpreted as symbol of divine nature as they result from actions of God.
Lets examine City of God (De Civitate Dei), one of the most prominent fundamental works of St. Augustine. He notices that we can understand paradise as life of blessed people. Four rivers symbolize four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Paradise trees symbolize useful knowledge. Garden symbolizes morals and manners of pious people.
The tree of life symbolizes wisdom as the cradle of earthly blessings. The tree of knowledge of good and evil symbolizes violation of divine commandments. At the same time St. Augustine speaks about the paradise in relation to the Holy Church.
The four rivers can be understood as four books of the Gospel. The trees can be understood as the saint people. Garden can be interpreted as actions of blessed people. The tree of Life is the allegory of the Saint of the Saint (Jesus Christ).
Tree of knowledge of good and evil can be interpreted as freedom of choice. St. Augustine compares paradise with divine Jerusalem (Moses and Paul saw this spiritual paradise in their visio spiritual). Finally, St. Augustine discerns the Paradise of the Paradise (paradise paradiso rum), - the Word of the God as divine constituent. St.
Augustine also uses allegories in his Confessions. He is surprised that interpretation of Holy Bible doesnt fit the language of Cicero. It is interesting that St. Augustine, as a professional rhetorician, didnt try to use the Alexandrian exegesis. However, St. Augustine discovers explanation of the most confusing parts of Bible, using allegoric method of interpretation.
St. Augustine uses allegories to underline the unity of Old and New Testament, explaining them as the testimony of belief in God. According to him, The New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament can be perceived via New Testament. (In Venture Novum latest et in Novo Vegas page). Visual art is also influenced by Christian symbolism and allegories. The concept of idealistic, religious dogmatic symbolism stays in keeping harmony with ideas of St.
Augustine. Symbolism in visual art shows us the emotion caused by aesthetic feeling and helps to discover some special hidden meaning. One of the most famous Symbolists, Gustave Moreau, preferred Biblical and mythological themes in his paintings. Nevertheless, one of his paintings of Orpheus were considered a homosexual symbol because of his rejection of women after losing his wife, reveal homoerotic desire in the softness and beauty of the figure (European Art: 19 century, n.
p. ) In the masterpieces of Gustave Moreau, J. -K. Huysmans, Pierre Paris de Chavannes and others animals were often fantasy hybrids: unicorns, chimeras, griffins, and sphinxes, with the occasional peacock or swan; and figures tended to be androgynous, cruel, or erotic (European Art: 19 century, n. p. ) We can underline several differences between allegory and symbolism. In contrast to symbolism, allegory has transitivity function. Allegory has direct meaning, whereas symbolism exists before all and has some peculiar meaning as a definite object.
Allegory has finite and static idea, whereas symbolism expresses an endless and dynamic concept. In conclusion we can resume that interrelation between use of symbolism and allegory was the central problem in medieval history. Both of them were often interpreted as reflection of pretersensual world. The symbolism (both in literature and visual art) was placed both on theological and objective-ideological footing. Theological explanation was mainly based on interpretation of beauty as divine symbol and attached trace of mysticism to Christian symbolism. At the same time, philosophical interpretation explained aesthetic symbolism as ontological complicity under the influence of actual, formal and final reasons.
Use of allegory in visual art and literature was also quite popular. Allegory played role of specific peculiarity of the whole medieval aesthetic conscience. In such a way, allegory was the best instrument to express understanding of visual art. Modern Western researchers often notice that medieval use of allegory and symbolism dont have much in common with modern interpretations of visual art as symbolism. Yet, the fact is that both symbolism and allegory have common philosophical background expressed by idealistic understanding of art and literature Bibliography European Art: 19 century. Retrieved September 2, 2005.
web Dictionary of Literary terms. Retrieved September 2, 2005. web
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