by Umberto Eco
If, then, to represent a lot of time one needs a lot of space, is it not the case (with the arts of time) that to represent a lot of space one needs a lot of time? Let us start by limiting this topic. We shall not be asking ourselves whether, for instance, music can represent space, even though intuitively we would reply yes. Even if we did not want to be extreme descriptivists, it is hard to deny that Dvorak's New World Symphony or Smetana's Md Vlast conjure up vast expanses, so much so that the conductor is tempted to conduct with expansive, smooth gestures, almost as if to suggest something "flowing," and that the length of these pieces contributes to the creation of that effect. Of course, certain kinds of music dictate a pirouette, others a leap, others a calm walk, and so there are rhythmic structures that determine or represent bodily movements with which we move through space—otherwise dance would not exist.
But let us limit our discussion to verbal discourse, and take up again the distinction between space of expression and space of content, emphasizing the fact that we shall have to deal not so much with the form of expression as with its substance.
We saw before that, however well intentioned Quintilian was, saying of two boxers that they stood upright on the tips of their toes does not strike us as a great hypotyposis, whereas describing the invasion and sack of a city event by event and moment by moment seems more visually evocative. But this latter description implies a certain number of pages (or at least of verses).
As a result, in speaking of spatial expression I would not consider those cases where, on the level of expression, something is said about space that, on the level of content, is not really about space but rather about something else, and it could even be about the flow of time, as happens in expressions such as "the party line," "it is a bleak outlook," "boundless culture," "he followed the discussion step by step," "he is on the wrong track," "in the middle of the night,"—see what Lakoff and Johnson write about these spatial metaphors.* I am thinking more of the substance of the expression, the quantity of which impinges on the spatiality expressed. I simply want to say that between mentioning a beautiful valley and describing it over one hundred pages, something should happen on the level of content; or, in other words, we ought to see something more of that valley.
Let us examine some techniques of verbal expression of space.
1. Denoting. This is the most simple, immediate, mechanical form, as when one states that there are twenty kilometers of distance between one place and another. Naturally it is up to the addressee, if's/he wants, to associate an image with the conceptual content just acquired (maybe the image of himself as overheated jogger, if the information is about an area devoid of transport), but one cannot say that the statement on its own does anything to force the addressee to picture that space for himself.
2. Detailed Description. Things are already different with a space that is described, as when we say that a square has a church to the right and an ancient palace to the left. Note that the simple mention of the respective positions of the two buildings would already be sufficient to make us recognize the piazza in question, and therefore we would have to say that every description of visible objects is of itself hypotypotic. But let us imagine that in the city where we are told this there are two squares with a church and a palace, and suddenly the force of the description as hypotyposis would diminish. We would then need to supply more details.
Here we come up against a problem of quantity: how many details do there need to be? Enough to encourage the addressee to build up an image in his mind, but not too many, because in that case the image would become impossible to build up. Take the case of this description in Robbe-Grillet s The Voyeur:
The stone rim—a sharp, oblique edge, at the intersection of two perpendicular planes: the vertical wall that rose upright toward the quay and the flight of stairs that went up to the highest part of the pier—at its upper extremity (the high part of the pier) was extended in a horizontal line straight toward the quay.
The quay, which the perspective effect pushed into the distance, sent out on both sides of this main line a group of parallel lines, which, with a precision that was further heightened by the morning light, delimited a series of long planes that were alternately horizontal and vertical: the upper plane of the massive parapet protecting the passage on the water side, its inner wall, the paving on the high part of the pier, and the unprotected side that plunged into the sea in the harbor. The two vertical surfaces were in shadow, the other two brightly lit by the sun: the upper floor of the parapet throughout its entire breadth, and the paved walkway, except for a narrow strip which was in darkness: the shadow projected by the parapet. In theory one should also have been able to see the mirror image of the whole construction in the harbor water, and on the surface, still within the same system of parallel lines, the shadow projected by the high vertical wall going off straight toward the quay.
This passage (the description continues for almost two pages) is interesting because it says too much, and by saying too much it prevents the reader from building an image for himself (unless he is one of those few readers who manages to do so with considerable effort and intense concentration). This seems to point to the conclusion that for hypotyposis to exist, it must not say more than what leads the reader to collaborate with the text by filling empty spaces and adding details on his own initiative. In other words, hypotyposis does not so much have to make us see, as make us want to see. But where can one find a rule? In the case of Robbe-Grillet we could say that the passage fails deliberately in its attempt to make us see (an interestingly provocative act for a book entitled The Voyeur and belonging to the école du regard), because it does not offer a hook on which to hang any priority: everything is as important as everything else.
What does offering priority mean? It could mean emphasizing verbally, in a certain sense almost dictating, an emotional reaction ("in the center of the square there was something terrifying..."), or insisting on one detail at the expense of others.
There are countless examples of this, but I will restrict myself to a passage that has elicited thousands of attempts at translation into visual terms, from Revelation, chapter 4:
And lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper, and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures...
This is hypotyposis if ever there was one. Yet the description does not include everything. It stops only at surface details; only the elders' clothes and crowns are mentioned, not their eyes or beards.
3. Lists. This is a technique that undoubtedly leads to the evocation of spatial images without establishing priorities. Three examples: one classical, or at least from late Latin, and two modern.
Here is the description of the city of Narbonne in Sidonius Apollinaris:
Salve Narbo, potens salubritate,
Urbe et rure simul bonus videri,
Muris, civibus, ambitu, tabernis,
Portis, porticibus, foro, theatro,
Delubris, capitoliis, monetis,
Thermis, arcubus, horreis, macellis,
Pratis, fontibus, insulis, salinis,
Stagnis, flumine, merce, ponte, ponto;
Unus qui venerere iure divos
Leneum, Cererem, Palem, Minervam
Spicis, palmite, pascuis, trapetis.
Hail, Narbonne, famous for your healthy air,
Both your town and your countryside are good to see,
As are your walls, citizens, periphery, shops,
Harbor, colonnades, forum, theater,
Sh
rines, capitols, banks,
Baths, arches, granaries, butchers,
Meadows, fountains, islands, salt flats,
Pools, river, merchandise, bridge, and sea;
The only town that can rightly worship the gods
Bacchus, Ceres, Pales, Minerva,
With your vine sprigs, corn ears, pasture land, and olive presses.
And here is a single paragraph from the description of the drawers in Leopold Bloom's kitchen, in the penultimate chapter of Ulysses:
What did the first drawer unlocked contain?
A Vere Foster's handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Millicent) Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked Papli, which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, 1 triangular foot: 2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend Mizpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr + Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle: May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and peace and welcome glee: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores department of Messrs Hely's, Ltd., 89, 90, and 91 Dame Street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt "J" pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sandglass which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed prophecy (never unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, no 2004, of St. Kevin's Charity Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes...
And in this case the list continues for page after page. If we can say about the Narbonne passage that the presentation of architectural elements acts as a cinematic panning shot suggesting a shape (today we would say it suggests at least a skyline), for Joyce all that matters is the gargantuan abundance of irrelevant objects that opens up its unfathomable depths before our eyes, the labyrinthine richness of that drawer. Let us look at the description of another drawer, this one belonging to the old aunt in the "Othys" chapter of Nerval's Sylvie:
She rummaged once more in the drawers. What delights! How everything smelled good, how all the bits and pieces shone and shimmered with lively colors! Two slightly damaged mother of pearl fans, Chinese porcelain boxes, an amber necklace and a thousand frills, among which shone out two little white woollen shoes with buckles encrusted with Irish diamonds.
We certainly see shining in the drawer those nice things of terrible taste that enchant the two young visitors, and we see them because priorities stand out—that is to say that some objects are emphasized at the expense of others. But then why do we also see Bloom's drawer, where no article has a privileged role? I would answer that Nerval wants us to see what is in the drawer, whereas Joyce wants us to see the unfathomability of the drawer. I do not know whether the reader manages to see Bloom's drawer better than Robbe-Grillet's pier, seeing that both are devoid of priorities. We can say, however, that Robbe-Grillet puts together objects that in themselves are not surprising, like a pier, a parapet, some surfaces and lines, whereas Joyce puts together things that are mutually incongruous and for that very reason surprising and unexpected. In some way (I presume) the reader has to prioritize a disordered ensemble of objects, or make some choices (perhaps by focusing on the sandglass), and by doing so collaborates in the task of making mental images.
4. Accumulation. Another technique (which was already suggested by Quintilian's third example) is the excited accumulation of events. The events have to be either incongruous or extraordinary. Naturally elements of rhythm intervene, and this is why the following hypotyposis from Rabelais (Gargantua 1.27) lets us visualize the scene (whereas we would not be able to see the scene from a procedure that was merely one of listing, as in the wonderfully amusing list of "balls" in 111.26 and 28, which is more enjoyable in phonic than in visual terms):
With one lot he spilled their brains, with others he broke their arms and legs, and with a third he dislocated the neck bones, split their kidneys, slit their nose, burst their eyes, battered their jaws, shoved their teeth down their throats, shattered their shoulder blades, splintered their legs, dislocated their thigh bones, and plucked their limbs from their trunks.
If any tried to hide among the thicker vine leaves, he broke the whole ridge of their back, breaking their spine like a dog's.
If others tried to run and escape, he knocked his head away in pieces shattering his lamboidal joint. If any tried to climb up a tree, thinking he was safe, he impaled him through the arse with his stick [...]. Others he would stab beneath the ribs, wrecking their stomachs, and they died on the spot. Others he struck so fiercely on the navel that their tripes spilled out. And with others he pierced their bum-gut through their balls. It was, you must believe, the most gruesome spectacle ever seen [...]. Some died without speaking, others spoke without dying; and some died speaking, and spoke dying.
5. Description appealing to the addressee's personal experience. This technique requires that the addressee bring to the discourse something he has already seen and suffered. This activates not only preexisting cognitive schemes but also preexisting bodily experiences. I would suggest as a key example one of the many passages in Abbott's Flatland:
Place a penny in the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.
But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view; and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatland citizen) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.
Part of this technique involves the evocation of interoceptive and proprioceptive experiences on the part of the addressee. In other words, it makes the reader recall experiences in which he has suffered the effort of proceeding through a space. On this topic I would like to cite these two lines from Blaise Cendrars's Prose du transsibérien (by the way, this is a text that, since it has to describe a very long journey, uses many of the techniques I have already defined, from the list to minute description). At a certain point Cendrars reminds us that
Toutes les femmes que j'ai rencontrées se dressent aux horizons Avec les gestes piteux et les regards tristes des'sémaphores sous la pluie...
(All the women I have met rise up on the horizons With the piteous gestures and sad looks of signals in the rain...)
If we bear in mind that in French "sémaphores" are not our city traffic signals (which in French are "feux rouges") but rather signals along the railroad tracks, those who have experienced trains proceeding slowly on misty nights will be able to evoke these ghostly shapes that slowly disappear in the drizzle, as though fading away, while one looks out of the window at the countryside immersed in darkness following the panting rhythm of the carriages (that carioca rhythm evoked by Montale in "Addii, fischi nelbuio").
The interesting problem is, rather, how much these lines can be appreciated by those born in the age of high-speed trains, with their hermetically sealed windows (for which there is no longer even the trilingual notice banning us from leaning out). How does one react to a hypotyposis that summons up the memory of something that has never been seen? I should say the answer is by pretending to have seen it, and on the basis of the elements that the hypotyposic expression supplies us with. The two lines appear in a context that mentions a train traveling for days and days across endless plains, the signals (specifically named) in some way remind us of eyes twinkling in the dark, and the allusion to horizons makes us imagine them lost in a distance that the train's movement can only magnify second by second....In any case, even those who only know today's express trains have seen through the window lights disappearing into t
he night. And suddenly the experience we have to remember becomes tentatively outlined: the hypotyposis can also create the memory it needs for it to work.
On the other hand, if it is actually true that those who have experienced their first kiss can easily savor a line like Dante's "la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante" (he kissed me on the mouth all trembling), would we say that those who read of a first kiss for the first time cannot pretend to have experienced it? If we try to deny this, then neither Paolo and Francesca's sin nor their trembling would be understandable, victims as they were (in turn) of a fine hypotyposis.
