Freud - Complete Works (474 page)

   ‘I have often tried to
interpret this recollection, which, as I have already mentioned,
has always been of the greatest importance to me on account of its
connection with my mother; but none of my interpretations has
satisfied me. It is only now, after reading your book, that I begin
to have a suspicion of a simple and satisfying answer to the
conundrum.’

Fausse Reconnaissance ('Deja Raconte') In Psycho-Analytic Treatment

2842

   There is another kind of
fausse reconnaissance
which not infrequently makes its
appearance at the close of a treatment, much to the
physician’s satisfaction. After he has succeeded in forcing
the repressed event (whether it was of a real or of a psychical
nature) upon the patient’s acceptance in the teeth of all
resistances, and has succeeded, as it were, in rehabilitating it -
the patient may say: ‘
Now I feel as though I had known it
all the time
.’ With this the work of the analysis has
been completed.

2843

THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO

(1914)

2844

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2845

THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO

I may say at once that I am no connoisseur in
art, but simply a layman. I have often observed that the
subject-matter of works of art has a stronger attraction for me
than their formal and technical qualities, though to the artist
their value lies first and foremost in these latter. I am unable
rightly to appreciate many of the methods used and the effects
obtained in art. I state this so as to secure the reader’s
indulgence for the attempt I propose to make here.

   Nevertheless, works of art do
exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature
and sculpture, less often of painting. This has occasioned me, when
I have been contemplating such things, to spend a long time before
them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e. to explain to
myself what their effect is due to. Wherever I cannot do this, as
for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any
pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in
me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am
thus affected and what it is that affects me.

   This has brought me to recognize
the apparently paradoxical fact that precisely some of the grandest
and most overwhelming creations of art are still unsolved riddles
to our understanding. We admire them, we feel overawed by them, but
we are unable to say what they represent to us. I am not
sufficiently well-read to know whether this fact has already been
remarked upon; possibly, indeed, some writer on aesthetics has
discovered that this state of intellectual bewilderment is a
necessary condition when a work of art is to achieve its greatest
effects. It would be only with the greatest reluctance that I could
bring myself to believe in any such necessity.

The Moses Of Michelangelo

2846

   I do not mean that connoisseurs
and lovers of art find no words with which to praise such objects
to us. They are eloquent enough, it seems to me. But usually in the
presence of a great work of art each says something different from
the other; and none of them says anything that solves the problem
for the unpretending admirer. In my opinion, what grips us so
powerfully can only be the artist’s
intention
, in so
far as he has succeeded in expressing it in his work and in getting
us to understand it. I realize that this cannot be merely a matter
of
intellectual
comprehension; what he aims at is to awaken
in us the same, emotional attitude, the same mental constellation
as that which in him produced the impetus to create. But why should
the artist’s intention not be capable of being communicated
and comprehended in
words
, like any other fact of mental
life? Perhaps where great works of art are concerned this would
never be possible without the application of psycho-analysis. The
product itself after all must admit of such an analysis, if it
really is an effective expression of the intentions and emotional
activities of the artist. To discover his intention, though, I must
first find out the meaning and content of what is represented in
his work; I must, in other words, be able to
interpret
it.
It is possible, therefore, that a work of art of this kind needs
interpretation, and that until I have accomplished that
interpretation I cannot come to know why I have been so powerfully
affected. I even venture to hope that the effect of the work will
undergo no diminution after we have succeeded in thus analysing
it.

   Let us consider
Shakespeare’s masterpiece,
Hamlet
, a play, now over
three centuries old.¹ I have followed the literature of
psycho-analysis closely, and I accept its claim that it was not
until the material of the tragedy had been traced back by
psycho-analysis to the Oedipus theme that the mystery of its effect
was at last explained. But before this was done, what a mass of
differing and contradictory interpretative attempts, what a variety
of opinions about the hero’s character and the
dramatist’s intentions! Does Shakespeare claim our sympathies
on behalf of a sick man, or of an ineffectual weakling, or of an
idealist who is merely too good for the real world? And how many of
these interpretations leave us cold! - so cold that they do nothing
to explain the effect of the play and rather incline us to the view
that its magical appeal rests solely upon the impressive thoughts
in it and the splendour of its language. And yet, do not those very
endeavours speak for the fact that we feel the need of discovering
in it some source of power beyond them alone?

  
¹
Perhaps first performed in 1602.

The Moses Of Michelangelo

2847

   Another of these inscrutable and
wonderful works of art is the marble statue of Moses, by
Michelangelo, in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. As we
know, it was only a fragment of the gigantic tomb which the artist
was to have erected for the powerful Pope Julius II.¹ It
always delights me to read an appreciative sentence about this
statue, such as that it is ‘the crown of modern
sculpture’ (Grimm). For no piece of statuary has ever made a
stronger impression on me than this. How often have I mounted the
steep steps from the unlovely Corso Cavour to the lonely piazza
where the deserted church stands, and have essayed to support the
angry scorn of the hero’s glance! Sometimes I have crept
cautiously out of the half-gloom of the interior as though I myself
belonged to the mob upon whom his eye is turned - the mob which can
hold fast no conviction, which has neither faith nor patience, and
which rejoices when it has regained its illusory idols.

   But why do I call this statue
inscrutable? There is not the slightest doubt that it represents
Moses, the Law-giver of the Jews, holding the Tables of the Ten
Commandments. That much is certain, but that is all. As recently as
1912 an art critic, Max Sauerlandt, has said, ‘No other work
of art in the world has been judged so diversely as the Moses with
the head of Pan. The mere interpretation of the figure has given
rise to completely opposed views. . . .’
Basing myself on an essay published only five years ago,² I
will first set out the doubts which are associated with this figure
of Moses; and it will not be difficult to show that behind them
lies concealed all that is most essential and valuable for the
comprehension of this work of art.

  
¹
According to Henry Thode, the statue was
made between the years 1512 and 1516.

  
²
Thode (1908).

The Moses Of Michelangelo

2848

I

   The Moses of Michelangelo is
represented as seated; his body faces forward, his head with its
mighty beard looks to the left, his right foot rests on the ground
and his left leg is raised so that only the toes touch the ground.
His right arm links the Tables of the Law with a portion of his
beard; his left arm lies in his lap. Were I to give a more detailed
description of his attitude, I should have to anticipate what I
want to say later on. The descriptions of the figure given by
various writers are, by the way, curiously inapt. What has not been
understood has been inaccurately perceived or reproduced. Grimm
says that the right hand, ‘under whose arm the Tables rest,
grasps his beard’. So also Lübke: ‘Profoundly
shaken, he rasps with his right hand his magnificent, flowing
beard . . .‘; and Springer: ‘Moses
presses one (the left) hand against his body, and thrusts the
other, as though unconsciously, into the mighty locks of his
beard.’ Justi thinks that the fingers of his (right) hand are
playing with his beard, ‘as an agitated man nowadays might
play with his watch-chain.’ Müntz, too, lays stress on
this playing with the beard. Thode speaks of the ‘calm, firm
posture of the right hand upon the Tables resting against his
side’. He does not recognize any sign of excitement even in
the right hand, as Justi and also Boito do. ‘The hand remains
grasping his beard, in the position it was in before the Titan
turned his head to one side.’ Jakob Burckhardt complains that
‘the celebrated left arm has no other function in reality
than to press his beard to his body’.

   If mere descriptions do not agree
we shall not be surprised to find a divergence of view as to the
meaning of various features of the statue. In my opinion we cannot
better characterize the facial expression of Moses than in the
words of Thode, who reads in it ‘a mixture of wrath, pain and
contempt’, - ‘wrath in his threatening contracted
brows, pain in his glance, and contempt in his protruded under-lip
and in the down-drawn corners of his mouth’. But other
admirers must have seen with other eyes. Thus Dupaty says,
‘His august brow seems to be but a transparent veil only half
concealing his great mind’.¹ Lübke, on the other
hand, declares that ‘one would look in vain in that head for
an expression of higher intelligence; his down-drawn brow speaks of
nothing but a capacity for infinite wrath and an all-compelling
energy’. Guillaume (1876) differs still more widely in his
interpretation of the expression of the face. He finds no emotion
in it ‘only a proud simplicity, an inspired dignity, a living
faith. The eye of Moses looks into the future, he foresees the
lasting survival of his people, the immutability of his law.’
Similarly, to Müntz, ‘the eyes of Moses rove far beyond
the race of men. They are turned towards those mysteries which he
alone has descried.’ To Steinmann, indeed, this Moses is
‘no longer the stern Lawgiver, no longer the terrible enemy
of sin, armed with the wrath of Jehovah, but the royal priest, whom
age may not approach, beneficent and prophetic, with the reflection
of eternity upon his brow, taking his last farewell of his
people’.

  
¹
Quoted by Thode, ibid., 197.

The Moses Of Michelangelo

2849

   There have even been some for
whom the Moses of Michelangelo had nothing at all to say, and who
are honest enough to admit it. Thus a critic in the
Quarterly
Revue
of 1858: ‘There is an absence of meaning in the
general conception, which precludes the idea of a self-sufficing
whole. . . .’ And we are astonished to learn
that there are yet others who find nothing to admire in the Moses,
but who revolt against it and complain of the brutality of the
figure and the animal cast of the head.

   Has then the master-hand indeed
traced such a vague or ambiguous script in the stone, that so many
different readings of it are possible?

   Another question, however,
arises, which covers the first one. Did Michelangelo intend to
create a ‘timeless study of character and mood’ in this
Moses, or did he portray him at a particular moment of his life
and, if so, at a highly significant one? The majority of judges
have decided in the latter sense and are able to tell us what
episode in his life it is which the artist has immortalized in
stone. It is the descent from Mount Sinai, where Moses has received
the Tables from God, and it is the moment when he perceives that
the people have meanwhile made themselves a Golden Calf and are
dancing around it and rejoicing. This is the scene upon which his
eyes are turned, this is the spectacle which calls out the feelings
depicted in his countenance - feelings which in the next instant
will launch his great frame into violent action. Michelangelo has
chosen this last moment of hesitation, of calm before the storm,
for his representation. In the next instant Moses will spring to
his feet - his left foot is already raised from the ground - dash
the Tables to the earth, and let loose his rage upon his faithless
people.

The Moses Of Michelangelo

2850

   Once more many individual
differences of opinion exist among those who support this
interpretation.

   Burckhardt writes: ‘Moses
seems to be shown at that moment at which he catches sight of the
worship of the Golden Calf, and is springing to his feet. His form
is animated by the inception of a mighty movement and the physical
strength with which he is endowed causes us to await it with fear
and trembling.’

   Lübke says: ‘It is as
if at this moment his flashing eye were perceiving the sin of the
worship of the Golden Calf and a mighty inward movement were
running through his whole frame. Profoundly shaken, he grasps with
his right hand his magnificent, flowing beard, as though to master
his actions for one instant longer, only for the explosion of his
wrath to burst out with more shattering force the next.’

   Springer agrees with this view,
but not without mentioning one misgiving, which will engage our
attention later in this paper. He says, ‘Burning with energy
and zeal, it is with difficulty that the hero subdues his inward
emotion. . . . We are thus involuntarily reminded of
a dramatic situation and are brought to believe that Moses is
represented at the moment at which he sees the people of Israel
worshipping the Golden Calf and is about to start up in wrath. Such
an impression, it is true, is not easy to reconcile with the
artist’s real intention, since the figure of Moses, like the
other five seated figures on the upper part of the Papal tomb, is
meant primarily to have a decorative effect. But it testifies very
convincingly to the vitality and individuality portrayed in the
figure of Moses.’