MIMESIS I

IMITATION was called mimesis in Greek and imitatio in Latin: it is the same term in different languages. The term exists since antiquity; the concept however,

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has changed. Today imitation means more or less the same as copying; in Greece its earliest meaning was quite different. The word mimesis is post-Homeric: it does not occur in either Homer or Hesiod. Its etymology, as linguists maintain, is obscure. Most probably it origi nated with the rituals and mysteries of the Dionysian cult; in its first (quite different from the present) meaning the mimesis-imitation stood for the acts of cult performed by the priestdancing, music, and singing. This is confirmed by Plato as well as by Strabo. The word which later came to denote the reproducing of reality in sculpture and theater arts had been, at that time, applied to dance, mimicry, and music exclusively. In Delian hymns, as well as in Pindar, this term was applied to music. Imitation did not signify reproducing

external reality but expressing the inner one. It had no application then in visual arts. In the fifth century B.C. the term imitation moved from the terminology of cult into philosophy and started to mean reproducing the external world. The meaning changed so much that Socrates had some qualms about calling the art of painting mimesis and used words close to it such as ek-mimesis and apomimesis. But Democritus and Plato had no such scruples and used the word mimesis to denote imitation of nature. To each of them, howe ver, it was a different kind of imitation. For Democritus mimesis was an imitation of the way nature functions. He wrote that in art we imitate nature: in weaving we imitate the spider, in building the swallow, in singing the swan or nightingale (Plutarch, De Sollert. anim. 20, 974A). This concept was applicable chiefly to industrial arts. Another concept of imitation, which acquired greater popularity, was also formed in the fifth century in Athens but by a different group of philosophers: it was first introduced by Socrates and further developed by Plato and Aristotle. To them imitation meant the copying of the appearances of things. This concept of imitation originated as a result of reflection upon painting and sculpture. For example, Socrates asked himself in what way do these arts differ from the others. His answer was: in this, that they repeat and imitate things which we see (Xenophon's Comm. III, 10, 1). So he conceived a new concept of imitation; he also did something more: he formulated the theory of imitation, the contention that imitation is the basic function of the arts (such as painting and sculpture). It was an important event in the history of thinking on art. The fact that Plato and Aristotle accepted this theory was equally important: thanks to them it became for centuries to come the leading theory of the arts. Each of them, however, assigned a different meaning to the theory and, consequently, two variants of the theory, or rather two theories originated under the same name.

Plato's Variant. In his early writings Plato was rather vague in his use of the term imitation: he applied it to music and dance (Laws 798D) or confined it to painting and sculpture (Republic 597D); at first he called imitative only poetry in which, as in tragedy, the heroes speak for themselves (epic poetry describes and does not imitate, he said). Finally, however, he accepted Socrates' broad concept which embraced almost the entire art of painting, sculpture, and poetry. Later, beginning with Book X of the Republic, his conception of art as imitating reality grew very extreme: he saw it as a passive and faithful act of copying the outer world. This particular conception was in duced primarily by the then contemporary illusionist art of painting. Plato's idea was similar to what was in the nineteenth century advanced under the name of naturalism. His theory was descriptive and not normative; on the contrary, it disapproved of the imitation of reality by art on the basis that imitation is not the proper road to truth (Republic 603A, 605A; Sophist 235D-236C). Aristotle's Variant. Aristotle, seemingly faithful to Plato, transformed his concept and theory of imitation; he maintained that artistic imitation may present things either more or less beautiful than they are; it also may present them such as they could or ought to be; it can and ought to limit itself to their characteristics which are general, typical, and essential (Poetics 1448a 1; 1451b 27; 1460b 13). Aristotle preserved the thesis that art imitates reality but imitation meant to him not faithful copying but a free and easy approach to real ity; the artist who imitates can present reality in his own way. Aristotelian imitation was, in fact, the result of a fusion of two conceptions: the ritualistic and the Socratic. The idea of imitation, therefore, was just as applicable to music as to sculpture and theater. Later theoreticians of art referred more often to Aristotle, but tended to uphold the simpler and more attractive conception of Plato's. Due to Aristotle's personal interests the theory of imitation was for centuries more concerned with poetry than with visual arts. To Aristotle imitation was, in the first place, imitation of human actions; however, it gradually be -

came the imitation of nature, which was to be regarded as the source of its perfection. In summary, the classic period of the fourth century B.C. used four different concepts of imitation: the ritualistic concept (expression), the concept of Democritus (imitation of natural processes), Platonic (copying of nature), Aristotelian (free creation of the work of art based on elements of nature). While the

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original concept was gradually falling into eclipse and the ideas of Democritus were recognized only by a few thinkers (e.g., Hippocrates and Lucretius), both the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions proved to be basic enduring concepts in art; they were often fused into one and the awareness that they were different concepts was frequently lost.
II

When several centuries later Cicero contrasted imitation with truth (Vvncit imitationem veritas; De Orat. II, 57, 215) he of course understood it as a free expression of the artist and upheld the Aristotelian doctrine. Nevertheless, in Hellenistic and Roman days the interpretation of imitation as the copying of reality pre vailed. Such an oversimplified interpretation of the arts

could not but evoke dissent. Imitation was then contrasted with and replaced by such ideas as imagination (e.g., Maximus Tyrius, Or. XI, 3; Pseudo-Longinus, XV, 1), expression and an inner model (Callistratus, Deser. 7, 1; Dio Chrys., Or. XII, 71; Seneca, Epist. 65, 7), freedom of the creator (Horatius De arte poet.; Lucian, historia quo modo conscr. 9), inspiration (Callistratus, Deser. 2, 1; Lucian, Demosth. encom. 5), invention (Sextus Emp., Adv. math. I, 297). Philostratus Flavius regarded imagination (fantasia) as wiser and more creative than imitation, because the latter confines itself only to what it has actually seen while the former represents also things it has not seen. The theory of imitation was a product of the classical era of Greece. The Hellenistic and Roman epochs, although preserving the doctrine in principle, brought out reservations and counter-proposals: this, in fact, was their contribution to the doctrine's history.
III

The ancient theory of imitation was founded on typically Greek premisses: that the human mind is passive and, therefore, able to perceive only what exists. Secondly, even if it were able to invent something which does not exist, it would be ill-advised to use this ability because the existing world is perfect and nothing more perfect can be conceived. In the Middle Ages other premisses were advanced, formulated early by Dionysius the Areopagite and by Saint Augustine. If art is to imitate, let it concentrate on the invisible world which is more perfect. And if art is to limit itself to the visible world, let it search in that world for traces of eternal beauty. This may be better achieved by means of symbols than by imitating reality. Early and radical thinkers like Tertullian went even so far as to believe that God does not permit any imitation of this world (omnem similitudinem vetat fieri; De spectaculis, XXIII); the iconoclasts thought the same; Scholastics, although free from such extreme views, believed that only spiritual representations are important. At the height of the Middle Ages Bonaven -

tura was to say of painters and sculptors that they only show externally what they have thought internally (III, Sent. D 37 dub). Painting which faithfully imitates reality was derisively labelled the aping of truth (simia veri, e.g., Alain of Lille, Anticlaudianus, I, 4). As the result of such predilections the theory of imitation was pushed aside in the Middle Ages and the term imitatio rarely used. However, it did not disappear completely; it survived in the twelfthcentury humanists, like John of Salisbury. His definition of painting was the same as that of the ancients: it is an imitation (imago est cuius generatio per imitationem fit; Metalogicon, III, 8). Above all, Thomas Aquinas, the great Aristotelian philosopher of the Middle Ages, repeated the classical definition without any reservations art imitates nature (ars imitatur naturam; Phys. II, 4).
IV

With the Renaissance the theory of imitation became again the basic theory of art and poetry, and only then reached its apogee. Saved from oblivion, it appeared as a revelation and made the most of privileges enjoyed by new ideas. Modern theory took the term imitatio from the Romans: imitazione in Italian, imitation in French and English (while the Slavs and Germans coined their own equivalents). The translator of Averros in 1481 used the word assimilatio; G. Fracastoro wrote in 1555 that it is irrelevant sive imitari, sive representare dicamus. Nevertheless the term imitatio won an easy and complete victory. At the very beginning of the fifteenth century, the doctrine of imitation was accepted earliest of all in the plastic arts. It appeared clearly in L. Ghiberti's Commentaries (1436), where he spoke of having tried to imitate nature (imitare la natura) as well as it was possible for him (I Com., ed. Morisani, II, 22). L. B. Alberti adhered to the same theory; he maintained that there is no better way to beauty than by imitating nature (Della pittura [1435], part III). Leonardo da Vinci had even more radical views. According to him

the more faithfully the painting depicts its object (conformit co'la cosa imitata; Tratt. frag. 411)the more praiseworthy it is. These were the pioneers who were followed by other Renaissance writers. The concept and the theory of imitation did not enter Renaissance poetics until the middle of the sixteenth century, that is, only after Aristotle's Poetics had been fully accepted; from that time on it became the

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most essential element of poetics. F. Sassetti (1575) explained in an Aristotelian way that imitation is one of the four causes of poetry, namely, the formal one, the poet himself being the efficient cause, the poem the material one, and the pleasure produced by poetry the final one (Weinberg, p. 48). The Italian theory of imitation penetrated into Germany attracting Drer (Aesth. Excurs. [1528], ed. Heindrich, p. 277), then to France where it was taken up by Poussin (Letter to Frart, 1, 3 [1966]) and many others. Even in the days of baroque and academism the Italian theory remained in all countries the basic theory of art. In the beginning of the eighteenth century it was still regarded as an important principle of aesthetics even by such innovators as Abb Dubos and Vico; it was Vico who declared in Scienza nuova

([1774], I, 90) that poetry was nothing else than imitation (non essendo altro la poesia che imitazione). On the whole, the modern theory of imitation held its position of strength in the theory of art for at least three centuries. It was not during that period a uniform theory however. Various meanings were assigned to it in the theory of visual arts and different ones in poetics. Some understood it in the Aristotelian way and others in accordance with Plato and the popular conception of faithful imitation. Hence there was more agreement in terminology than in matters of fact; controversies abounded. Various thinkers tried to overcome in many different ways the obstacles which imitation encountered. Some Renaissance writers stressed the point that not all imitations serve art but only those that are good (G. B. Guarini, 1601), artistic (B. Varchi, 1546), beautiful (Alberti), imaginative (Comanini's imitatio fantastica, 1591). Other theoreticians tried to interpret imitation more accurately and in doing so they departed in various ways from the concept of literal copying of nature. Imitation ought to be original, bluntly wrote Pelletier du Mans. In Alberti's interpretation art imitates the laws of nature rather than its appearances; according to Scaliger (1561) art imitates nature's norms. According to some, art ought to imitate nature's beauty; according to Shakespeare (Hamlet, III ii)
Let your own discretion be your tutor:... With this special observance that you o'erstep not The modesty of nature.

The followers of Aristotle (e.g., the Polish poet and theoretician of poetry, M. K. Sarbiewski, De perfecta poesi [ca. 1625, 1954 ed.], 1, 4) maintained that nature should be imitated as it could and ought to be. Michelangelo assigned a religious meaning to the doc trine of imitation; it is God in nature which should be imitated. Torquato Tasso (1587), concerned with imitation in poetry, realized what a complicated process it is: words (parole) imitate concepts (concetti) and these, in turn, imitate things (cose).

Particularly important was the following: many writers thought that art should not imitate nature in its rough state but after its faults have been corrected and a selection has been made. This view was held mainly by the French classicists. Other theoreticians stressed the fact that imitation is not a passive act; first nature has to be de-coded and its beauty has to be extracted (herausreissen, as Drer said). Some writers assigned to imitation such a broad meaning that it embraced not only imitation of nature but also of ideas (Fracastoro, 1555). Others included in imitation even allegories (as Petrarch had done) and metaphors (E. Tesauro: metafora altro non che poetica imitatione; see Cannocchiale Aristotelico [1655], p. 369). Eventually Varchi (Lessioni [1590], p. 576) thought that (if correctly understood) imitation is indeed nothing else but spinning of fiction (fingere). G. Del Bene (1574) was of a similar opinion; imitatio is the same as finzione. Those writers might have seemed revolutionary but in fact they were close to Aristotle. Some, like T. Correa (1587) differentiated two kinds of imi tation; one is literal, the other one free, imitatio simulata et ficta. Similarly, when R. de Piles separated two kinds of truth: the simple and the ideal, he had in view two imitations, i.e., one that is faithful copying and the other which is preceded by selection and which synthesizes the elements of perfection scattered about in nature (Cours de peinture [1708], pp. 30-32). However, many Renaissance and baroque writers reached the conclusion that it is pointless to stick stubbornly to the old theory instead of producing a new and a more accurate one. They were prompted by two entirely different reasons. A minority maintained that imitation is a task too difficult for art be cause imitation can never equal the model. A majority thought the opposite; imitation is a task too insignifi cant and too passive. The term imitatio was gradually being replacednot by creatio however which belonged to theologybut by inventio. Ronsard offered a compromise; imiter et inventer, one should imitate and invent. In V. Danti's view the aim of art was not imitare but to portray, ritrarre (Trattato [1567], II, 11). F. Patrizi said (Della poetica [1586], p. 135) that the poet is not an imitator but a facitor (which, after all, was a literal translation of the Greek poet

poiet s). Danti maintained that the poet produces new wholes, if not new things. F. Robortello was bolder; art presents things such as they are not (Explicationes [1548], p. 226). In the next century the great Bernini was to say painting shows that which does not exist

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(F. Baldinucci, Vita di Ber ini [1st ed. 1682; 1948 ed.], p. 146). And G. P. Capriano in his poetics said: Poetry is an invention out of nothing ( Della vera poetica [1555]; cf. Weinberg, p. 733). If that is so, then art indeed does not imitate. The new idea was that art may be more perfect than the object of its imitation, i.e., nature. M. Ficino called art wiser than nature (Theol. plat. [1482], 1, XIII, Opere [1561], p. 296). Michelangelo professed that he makes nature more beautiful (pi bella); Dolce wrote that the duty of a painter is to surpass (superar) nature, and G. Vasari (1550) stated that nature was conquered by art (natura vinta dall'arte; Vite, VII, 448). The Renaissance introduced a new thesis which although of doubtful value was, nevertheless, rich in consequences; the object of imitation should be not only nature but also, and foremost, those who were its best imitators, that is, the Ancients. The watchword of imitating antiquity appeared as early as the fifteenth

century and by the end of the seventeenth century it supplanted almost completely the idea of imitating nature. This was the greatest revolution in the history of the concept of imitation. It changed the classical theory of art into an academic one. A compromise formula was devised for the principle of imitation; nature should be imitated but in the way it was imitated by the Ancients. This meant that sculpture ought to be modelled on Apollo Belvedere and writing on Cicero. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries called for more imitation of Antiquity in poetry, and the seven teenth and the eighteenth centuries asked for the same in the visual arts. However, dissenting voices were sometimes raised. During the Renaissance at least three protests against the imitation of Antiquity took place: Poliziano (1491) against Cortesi said that only he writes well who has the courage to break the rules; Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1512) maintained against Cardinal Bembo that aemulator veterum verius quam imitator; and finally Desiderius Erasmus (1518) argued that he acts truly in Cicero's spirit who, in keeping with the changing times, departs from Cicero. To give a very general outline of the development from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century we may say that some theoreticians defended the principle of imitation at the expense of some concessions, while others abandoned it completely. It was abandoned by those who adhered to the radical (Platonic) concept of imitation and maintained by thos e who voiced the moderate (Aristotelian) concept. All in all, between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries there was no principle more commonly applied than imitatio. And it is hard to understand how Ch. Batteux could announce in his Les beaux arts Rduits un seul principe, (1747), that he had discovered the principle for all the arts, namely, imitation. The point of it is that countless earlier treatises applied the principle of imitation but only to a particular group of artssome to poetry, others to painting and sculpture. Batteux generalized this principle for all arts. He could manage to make such a generalization because he had a vague idea of imitation; he regarded it as a faithful copying of nature. He was apparently the

first to say: Imiter c'est copier un modle, and on the other hand, is a selection from nature, is imitation of a beautiful nature.
V

The idea of imitation having been thoroughly discussed and analyzed nothing much was left to be done. The eighteenth century inherited and accepted this idea but ceased to be preoccupied with it. These sentiments were best voiced by an aesthetician who was typical of his century, Edmund Burke: Aristotle has spoken so much and so solidly upon the force of imita tion in his poetics, that it makes any further discourse upon this subject the less necessary. This appeared in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful ([1757], Part I, Sec. XVI). However, Burke himself did not interpret imitation in the Aristotelian way, as he demanded faithful copying. At the end of the eighteenth century after the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii and the archeologists' travels in Greece, it became more popular than ever to imitate antiquity. It was the era of Mengs and Winckelmann, Adam and Flaxman, Canova and Thorwaldsen. However, the concern was a matter of practical application; the theory of imitation did not advance farther. The nineteenth century laid the greatest stress on being faithful to nature (not to antiquity). Nevertheless, the term imitation, which for ages played the leading part in the theory of art, disappeared suddenly; it acquired a pejorative meaning and was used to denote something unauthentic, fakedimitations of diamonds, marble, furs, etc., and could no longer be applied to art. Which other terms have taken its place? Mainly realism and naturalism. Those were the watchwords of writers like G. Planche (1816), J. H. Champfleury (1857) and . Zola (about 1870) and artists, beginning with G. Courbet (1855). The theory of naturalism was, in fact, a continuation of the theory of imitation but with a certain difference; it was concerned not so much with art reproducing things but like scienceexploring them.

The twentieth-century theorists of art abandoned not only the term imitation but also its principle.

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Our age does not deny that art relies on natureeven Picasso says that it could not be possible otherwise but it does not maintain that art imitates nature. For some art is construction, for others expression; for none is it imitation. We indeed agree with the Greek mimesis in its original sense of expression and the Democritian sense of being guided by the laws of nature. We do not wish to copy nor to reproduce nature, writes Mondrian, we want to shape it as nature shapes the fruit. On the other hand, our times do not wish to imitate in the sense of copying the appearance of things, the idea which was in the fore ground for so many centuries after Plato. Th e majority of contemporaries would rather agree with Girolamo Savonarola in his De simplicitate vitae humanae (ed. Lyon [1638], III, 1, 87) who asserted that what in fact belongs to art is only that which does not imitate nature (ea sunt proprie artis, quae non Vere naturam imitantur).

IBLIOGRAPHY
The newest interpretation of the idea of imitation in Greek and especially in Aristotelian thought has been developed by R. Ingarden in his paper on Aristotelian

Poetics (Proceedings of the Polish Academy of Learning, 1945) and in four books: H. Koller, Mimesis in der Antike (Bern, 1954); G. F. Else, Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); G. Srbom, Mimesis and Art (Uppsala, 1966); and W. Tatarkiewicz, The History of Aesthetics, 3 vols., (Polish ed., Wroclaw, 1960-68; English ed., The Hague, 1970). The three volumes of the present writer follow the development of the idea of imitation from antiq uity until 1700. B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1961) makes available the variety of opinions of the seventeenth century on imitation. The earlier book of B. Weinberg, French Realism: a Critical Reaction (New York and London, 1937) discusses the point of view of the nineteenth century. W. TATARKIEWICZ [See also Baroque; Classification of the Arts; Form; Iconography; Naturalism in Art; Religion, Ritual in; Ut pictura poesis.]