Art and Allusion

Art and AllusionAuthor(s): Stephanie RossSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 59-70Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430353 .

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Reprinted from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXXX/1, Fall 1981. Printed in U.S.A.

STEPHANIE ROSS

Art and Allusion

WHAT IF MANET had rearranged the diners in Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, and not borrowed the composition from Raphael?1 What if Tom Stoppard had written a play about some other doomed courtiers, and not Ro- sencrantz and Guildenstern? What if Philip Johnson had omitted the Palladian pedi- ment from his design for the new AT&cT building in New York? What if T. S. Eliot had purged the references to Ovid and Dante, Shakespeare and Wagner, the Bible and The Golden Bough, from The Waste- land? I claim that in each case the imagined change would weaken the work of art. This is so because works of art are enriched by their references to one another. A work which alludes to another2 establishes a rich- er context within which to be viewed. It benefits from a new and enlarged web of associations, and our appreciation and understanding of the work are enhanced.

I believe that philosophers and critics hold two illusions about allusion. First, when we think about allusion we wrongly confine ourselves to literary allusion. Per- haps because poetry is the most condensed of arts. Second, our explanations of allusion are faulty because they commit us to errone- ous theories of art and nature. In this paper, I shall explore the problem of allusion in art. I shall first make clear the sorts of cases I have in mind by presenting an example from the visual arts and by contrasting allusion with adaptation, quotation, incorpo- ration, and so on. Next I shall discuss two of the most plausible analyses of allusion- one which emphasizes the artist's intentions, the other the intrinsic properties of the art works themselves. I shall argue that neither

STEPHANIE Ross is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

analysis succeeds. I shall close by proposing a third solution to this problem and applying it to cases of nonliterary allusion. I shall pay special attention to cross-modal cases, where allusion links two different arts.

I. Examples

I shall begin with some examples. Claude Monet painted Rouen Cathedral not once but many times.3 His canvases provide a record of its changing appearance from moment to moment, day to day, and season to season. Moreover, he purposefully exhib- ited his work with the series paintings hang- ing together. Any one of Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral is enhanced when we view it as one of a series, each picture similar but each importantly different. Although each of these canvases informs our percep- tions of the others, the relation amongst them is not one of allusion. For it is not the case that each canvas contains a covert reference to every other canvas in the series. Contrast this with a genuine case of allusion, but one still indebted to Monet. I have in mind a series of prints by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein called Cathedral. Done in Lichtenstein's familiar comic-strip dot technique, each print portrays the facade of Rouen (?) Cathedral. They differ in hue. Some use only a monochromatic palette, others use all the primary colors. Here we have the phenomenon which characterized Monet's cathedral series-a number of ren- ditions of a single subject-plus an additional act of reference from Lichtenstein to Monet. That is, Lichtenstein's prints not only inform one another, but carry us back to Monet's seminal project. The levels of meaning are complex. Lichtenstein's satiri- cal pop-art style together with the multiple



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process of print-making call into question Monet's overall enterprise of preserving the light and atmosphere of a moment.

Let us take Lichtenstein's Cathedral series as a paradigm case of allusion in art. Other good examples might be Eliot's allusion to Conrad's Heart of Darkness in the epigraph to "The Hollow Men," Brahms's allusion to Beethoven in the finale of his First Sym- phony, Milton's allusion to the parable of the talents in his sonnet "On His Blind- ness," and, finally, a nonartistic example, the title of this paper which acknowledges its debt to Gombrich's Art and Illusion. There are further ways in which works of art can inform and enrich one another which don't count as cases of allusion. Let me briefly mention a few of these in order to clarify further the notion of allusion I want to explore. I suggest that none of the following is a case of allusion: adaptation, as when Lerner and Loew transform Pyg- malion into My Fair Lady, or when Holly- wood remakes Here Comes Mr. Jordan as Heaven Can Wait; variation, as when Brahms takes Haydn's theme, quotes it, and then composes a set of xx variations; transcrip- tion or orchestration, as when Bach takes Vivaldi concerti and reworks them as harp- sichord pieces, or when Ravel orchestrates Moussorsky's piano piece Pictures at an Ex- hibition; satirization, as when Pope pokes fun at an entire genre in "The Rape of the Lock."4 The similarities and differences among these examples are interesting in their own right, but I shall not pursue them here. I group these examples together because they are all cases where two works of art are related because the second incorpo- rates or transforms the first. But in each case either the reference between the two is more straightforward than allusion, or there is no reference at all from the second to the first.5

II. Intentionalism

Let us assume that we can agree upon certain examples as cases of allusion in art. How are we to explain the apparent reference from one work of art to the other? The answer which seems most promising

and most plausible explains allusion by appeal to the artist's intentions. On this view, one art work alludes to another only if the artist of the first intended to allude to the second and incorporated a reference to it in her work. Let us call this the intentionalist account of allusion. This account is plausible because allusion, as ordinarily construed, is a speech act requiring the conscious intent of the speaker. And this re- quirement is a conceptual or logical one. A naturalist speaking of rabbit parts, webs, and bushes is not alluding to doctrines of Quine unless she intends to be offering a

philosophical discourse. I grant that the existence of subconscious and unconscious intentions muddies this point. But let us first treat of conscious intentions and then see what follows at the other levels.

Intentionalist explanations have been at- tacked in aesthetics, both as means of determining the meaning of a work of art and as means of determining its worth. One of the most indefatigable critics of the intentionalist view has been Monroe Beardsley. In his early paper "The Intentionalist Fal- lacy" co-authored with William Wimsatt, Beardsley argues that a work of art ought to be interpreted on the basis of its internal properties, for these provide the only public and objective basis for understanding. He states, "The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art."6 I find two distinct arguments against intentionalism in Wimsatt and Beardsley's work. The first is an empirical argument alleging that we can find discrepancies between authorial intention and finished poem; the second is a more general reductio argument alleging that the intentionalist view yields an absurdly generous view of artistry. Since this is familiar territory, I shall just briefly indicate the course of these two arguments.

The first argument attempts to discredit the role of intention by producing two sorts of cases where intent and result do not agree: first, cases where no allusion is present although the artist intended to incorpo- rate an allusion into her work; and second, cases where an allusion is present although

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the artist had no intention of incorporating an allusion into her work. An example of the first sort of discrepancy is the line "I heard the mermaids singing, each to each" from Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," and its relation to a line from Donne, "Teach me to heare the Mermaids singing." Beardsley and Wimsatt claim that poetic analysis and exegesis alone provide the answer to the question "Is Eliot/Pru- frock alluding to Donne?" They believe that biographical or genetic inquiry is not relevant, and that asking Eliot (were he still alive) whether he intended such an allusion would not further the inquiry at all.7 The authors clearly imply that the following scenario is possible: exegetical considera- tions suggest that the lines from Eliot do not allude to Donne, Eliot makes a statement to the contrary, yet informed critics overrule him and declare that Prufrock's lovesong does not allude to Donne's poem.

The complementary sort of case is one where the author/artist denies that her work has an aspect which critics claim to find in it. Wimsatt and Beardsley do not discuss a case of this type concerning allusion. How- ever, Beardsley's remarks about a related example in his book Aesthetics indicate how their anti-intentionalist argument would go. At issue is whether the concluding stanza of A. E. Housman's poem "1887"-"Get you the sons your fathers got / And God will save the Queen"-is ironic. Although Hous- man vehemently denied any such intent, Beardsley counters: "[the author] is not necessarily the best reader of his poem, and indeed he misconstrues it when, as perhaps in Housman's case, his unconscious guides his pen more than his consciousness can admit."8 Thus here again Beardsley holds that a critic can rightly overrule and dis- regard an artist's statement of intention.

Does this first "empirical" line of argument discredit the intentionalist approach to criticism? Appeal to unconscious intentions might allow the intentionalist to over- turn half of Beardsley's examples. Whenever an artist denies having made an allusion which critics find in her work, the intentionalist can respond that an unconscious intention was present. Of course, attribution

of such unconscious intent is plausible only when additional evidence-evidence of the sort Beardsley would call external-shows that the artist had some knowledge or ex- perience of the work alluded to. As Frank Cioffi notes in his paper "Intention and Interpretation in Criticism,"

There are cases in which we have an interpretation which satisfies us but which we feel depends upon certain facts being the case. It may involve an allusion and we ray wish to be reassured that the author was in a position to make the allusion.9

There remain those cases where the artist insists on the presence of an allusion which critics do not find when the work is interpreted in light of internal evidence alone. Appeal to unconscious intentions is irrele- vant here. The question to decide is whether any allusion, no matter how outlandish, can be established by artistic fiat.10 Beards- ley takes up this question in the second argument against intentionalism which appears in his book Aesthetics. This argument reveals Beardsley's overriding motive for attacking the intentionalist view. He fears that giving critical weight to the artist's intentions will result in a ridiculous state of affairs where an artwork can be said by its maker to mean anything at all. Beardsley takes this to be a reductio of the entire intentionalist approach. He argues:

Suppose the sculptor says his statue symbolizes Human Destiny . . . should we say that we have simply missed the symbolism . . or should we say that the question is whether that object can be made to mean Human Destiny? . . . The former course leads in the end to the wildest absurdity: anyone can make anything symbolize anything just by saying it does, for another sculptor could copy the same object and label it 'Spirit of Palm Beach, 1938.'1

Beardsley speaks of symbolization here, which covers a number of quite different sorts of reference. Denotation, allusion, exemplification, and expression might all be said to be modes of symbolization. And some of these can be performed by fiat. For example, naming or denoting can be ef- fected simply by declaration.'2 And Nelson Goodman has cogently argued in Languages of Art that representation is not dependent on similarity.13 If representation as much

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effects as follows our standards of similarity,14 then representation, too, could sometimes be achieved by fiat. Any object could represent the Spirit of Palm Beach, 1938; its just that some do so more aptly than others. (Cp. our judgments of the effective- ness of various metaphors.)

With regard to denotation and representation, then, Beardsley's reductio does not work. Exemplification, by contrast, is more constrained. To exemplify a property, an object must both possess it and refer to it; and the first relation, possession, can not be achieved by fiat. Since expression is de- fined by Goodman as metaphorical exemplification, similar constraints hold here as well. An object cannot express a particular emotion or idea unless it possesses a property which-metaphorically-is that emotion or idea.15 And again, such possession cannot be achieved by fiat. This, I think, explains the force of Beardsley's reductio. The Spirit of Palm Beach 1938 is an abstract notion, one best symbolized by creating some art object which expresses that spirit rather than one which portrays or depicts it. And to express that spirit, an object must both metaphorically possess it and refer to it.

I suggest that allusion functions more like exemplification and expression than like denotation. (In fact, allusion is often achieved through the former modes of symbolization.) I cannot at random choose two objects and declare that one of them alludes to the other. The one must contain some feature which can plausibly be said to refer to the other-and, moreover, to do so obliquely. Recall a few of the examples with which we began. Allusion was accomplished by various means including use of the same theme or subject-matter (Lichtenstein), quotation of a snippet of another work (Eliot), shared properties such as form or tonality (Manet, Brahms). Thus there seem to be some constraints which hold, some similarities which are required, before it can be said of two objects that one alludes to the other. This fact supports Beardsley's reductio argument, and supports his claim that intention is not always an appropriate guide to allusion.

III. Internalism

If we follow Beardsley and reject the intentionalist view of allusion, we are in dan- ger of endorsing another mistaken view dia- metrically opposed to it. I shall call this the internalist view of allusion. It is the view that the presence of allusion is properly determined by appeal to only one sort of data-the internal or intrinsic properties of the artworks themselves.16 Let us examine this view.

Beardsley was right to insist that attribu- tions of allusion must appeal to intrinsic features of the poem, painting, sonata in question. Yet reliance on intrinsic features alone will result in the following situation: any two works which share a subject matter, or structure, or tone, etc., will be said to be linked by allusion. I believe that such a view is too generous. Let me construct a hypothetical example to show the shortcom- ings of internalism. I propose to "add" a still-life to the oeuvre of Georges Braques. Suppose that in addition to all the paintings he did in fact paint, Braques in the middle of his career painted an additional canvas in his familiar post-cubist style. Suppose further that this was a painting of seven bananas on a silver salver, flanked by a glass tumbler on the left and a loaf of bread to the right. One more leap of the imagination is needed to complete the example. Let us suppose that some obscure Dutch genre painter of the seventeenth century who never gained the fame of his contemporaries painted a still-life remarkably similar to that done by Braques: seven bananas, silver salver, tumbler, and loaf are all present, ar- rayed as in Braques's composition, but ren- dered this time in that stunningly life-like style characteristic of Dutch work of the time. Suppose, finally, that this unheralded Dutch painter never managed to sell the work, that it has lain unharmed but un- viewed in a Dutch shed for the past 200 years.

I claim that this example is such that an internalist critic would declare that the Braques still-life alludes to the much earlier Dutch work. I also claim that most of us would disagree. Of course the two works are

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related in that both are still-lifes; both are works within the same enduring tradition. Knowing about this shared tradition helps us to understand both works more fully. But I do not think the shared tradition is itself sufficient to establish the presence of allusion. I shall say more about this in a moment. But first let me indicate one more formal flaw in the internalist position. This is a problem about the direction of allusion. If two works are similar in certain respects such that a nonintentionalist critic deter- mines that one of them alludes to the other, then the later work will be said to allude to the earlier. But what of contemporaneous works which stand in this relation? Which alludes to which, or do they each allude to the other?

I have claimed repeatedly that art works enrich and inform one another because of similarities amongst them-for instance, because they involve the same subject matter or the same formal devices, because they were produced in the same era or by the same artist, because they exhibit the same style or are instances of the same genre. None of these similarities necessarily involves the notion of allusion. The Braques example was meant to show that the following situation is possible. Two works of art possess similarities such that one of them appears to allude to the other. Yet we appeal to genetic evidence to argue that the appearance is misleading, no allusion is present. How then can we distinguish those cases where the internalist's evidence is relevant? Let us borrow a notion from Nelson Goodman and distinguish those cases by distinguishing two different directions of reference. When two works of art are similar because they are both Dutch genre paintings from the seventeenth century, or both overtures in the gallant style, or both son- nets about death, then acquaintance with one work might help us to understand the other. However, it does not follow that one of the works refers to the other in some manner, but only that some one predicate or concept subsumes them both. Both fit under the label "Dutch genre painting" or "overture in the gallant style" or "sonnet by Shakespeare." When one art work al-

ludes to another, on the other hand, it is not a case of some predicate or concept re- ferring to the two of them. Rather, one of the works refers to the other. Thus allusion involves reference between two works of art.

IV. The Middle Ground

How are we to detect such reference? What sorts of properties count as evidence for it? I believe the correct view occupies a middle ground between intentionalism and internalism. It borrows from both and recognizes two sorts of evidence as relevant to the establishing of allusion: the artist's intentions and the intrinsic properties of the work of art. For reasons which I shall explore below, these two sorts of evidence are accorded different weight when we are dealing with different arts. In sum, then, I claim that one artwork, A, alludes to another artwork, B, only if the artist of A

(1) intended to refer to B, and (2) incorporated into A an indirect reference to B.

This definition is quite vague as it stands. While I believe that (1) and (2) are necessary conditions for allusion in art, I have little hope that a sharper version might provide conditions both necessary and sufficient. Instead, I think that the fruitful task is to survey a variety of cases and see just what constitutes indirect reference in the various arts.

Before beginning such a survey, let me briefly contrast the definition proposed above with that put forward by Goran Her- meren in his book Representation and Meaning in the Visual Arts.17 Hermeren suggests that the following three conditions must hold when a work P alludes to something Y in a strong sense of allude:

(1) The artist who created the work P intended to make beholders think of Y,

(2) as a matter of fact, beholders contemplating P make associations with Y, and

(3) the beholders recognize that this was what the artist wanted them to do (intended to achieve)."8

While Hermeren's first condition parallels the first clause of our definition, I believe that our vague second condition is prefer-

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able to Hermeren's equally vague concluding pair. Hermeren's Gricean account explains what happens when allusion succeeds -beholders make associations by recogniz- ing the artist's intent that they do so-but it does not tell us why it happens. By con- sidering in some detail what counts as indirect reference between poems, between paintings, between symphonies, from poem to photo, from sonata to painting, etc., I hope to show what sorts of similarities in fact prompt us to make those associations which comprise allusion.

One further issue is raised by Hermeren's account. Allusion cannot proceed through private atypical methods of association. Sup- pose an entire population were insidiously conditioned (through subliminal additions to the CBS 7 PM News) to associate red rectangles with Poussin's Landscape with the Burial of Phocion, green circles with his Triumph of Flora. Suppose too that an artist who was aware of this situation know- ingly took advantage of it by incorporating red rectangles and green circles into her work, intending thereby to allude to Pous- sin. We would not, I think, judge that she had successfully alluded. Hermeren's definition supports this verdict, since condition three is violated by my example. Yet I find Hermeren's final formulation too strict. We have already agreed that artists sometimes allude unconsciously (that is, through unconscious intentions). Why can't an audience unconsciously associate rather than ex- plicitly recognize the artist's intent? Going farther still, why demand audience uptake at all? Are all allusions appreciated by their audience?

These last questions bear on the issues of obscurity and conventionality. I cannot at present untangle their ramifications for allusion, but let me offer a few speculations before turning to a defense of my definition. First, allusions can be obscure. They can demand considerable background knowledge on the part of their audience. For instance, allusions can refer to little-known works; they can be established through similarities of which only an expert would be aware. On the other hand, the "mechanism" of allusion must be, at least in principle,

an accessible one. While allusions are not themselves conventional, they operate within (or between) symbol systems whose significance is in part conventional. That is, the meaning of a string of words is determined in part by semantic conventions, the significance of even a dab of paint or a string of notes depends on current pictorial or musical practice. I suggest that artists must acknowledge such conventions in creating allusions, for the conventions govern- ing different artistic media help determine what features of a work of art an audience will find noteworthy, what they will attend to. Thus the associations which Hermeren mentions in clause two cannot be automatic responses "wired in" to the audience at the neurological level, nor can they be haphaz- ard pairings decreed by artistic fiat without any grounding in the actual properties of the works of art or the artistic practices prevalent at the time.

Let us now turn to some examples of allusion and see just what sorts of reference are at work here. The OED defines allusion, as covert, implied, or indirect reference. In its primary sense, allusion is a special sort of speech act. Here is an example cited by Laurence Perrine in his textbook Sound and Sense. It concerns Lord Chesterfield and a dinner given by the Spanish ambas- sador.

At the conclusion of the meal the host rose and proposed a toast to his master, the king of Spain, whom he compared to the sun. The French am- bassador followed with a health to the king of France, whom he likened to the moon. It was then Lord Chesterfield's turn. 'Your excellencies have taken from me,' he said, 'all the greatest luminaries of heaven, and the stars are too small for me to make a comparison of my royal master; I therefore beg leave to give your excellencies- Joshua.' 19

Consider the mechanisms of Chesterfield's witticism. He mentions the name of Joshua so that his Biblical exploits with regard to the sun and moon will characterize the English monarch vis-'a-vis the Spanish and French kings. Thus Chesterfield's allusion to the Bible claims that metaphorically the English king is Joshua. Some relevant facts: Lord Chesterfield intended to make an allusion. The allusion is appropriate only

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because the relation between Joshua, sun, and moon mirrors the relation Chesterfield intended to attribute to the three kings. Moreover, the allusion succeeds only if Chesterfield's audience has sufficient Bibli- cal knowledge to catch the reference. This social dimension is significant. It is not clear that any sense attaches to private allusions which one makes exclusively to oneself. (Though Chesterfield would still have alluded had none of the audience "gotten" his witticism.)

This example reminds us that allusion is a speech act whose referent is determined by the speaker's intent but also by the content of his speech. These correspond to the factors emphasized by the intentionalist and internalist views, respectively. Chester- field's allusion is indirect not because it is metaphorical. The grandeur of the English king could be portrayed directly but figur- atively: "My royal master is the heavenly empyrean itself, through which the other heavenly bodies wander lost and lonely." Rather, it is indirect because it brings to mind a particular Biblical story not by naming it, telling it, citing Biblical chapter and verse, but merely by mentioning the pro- tagonist. Considerable contextual setting is required for the allusion to succeed. Think how flat Chesterfield's rejoinder would have fallen had he compared his patron to some other Biblical hero: "I give you Jonah," or, "I give you Joseph."

Chesterfield's allusion is a conversational one, but its mechanism would hold for any allusion from one literary work to another: from novel to novel, poem to poem, and so on. Let us now compare the situation in the other arts. One might argue that attribution of allusion in the visual arts is prob- lematic because there is no clear analogue to direct quotation for pictures. Therefore the correlative notion of indirect or oblique reference is equally clouded, and we are likely to mistake coincidences of properties for allusion. Nelson Goodman establishes the first premises of this argument in Chapter Three of Ways of Worldmaking, but I don't believe the overall anti-allusion argument is sound. Let me sketch Good-

man's position and then defend an account of allusion compatible with his claims. Good- man proposes two necessary conditions for quotation: containment of what is quoted or of some replica or paraphrase, and reference to what is quoted by naming or predi- cation.20 He then argues that paintings can not be directly quoted because they belong to singular symbol systems. Since painting is not a notational system in Goodman's sense, we have no criteria for sameness of spelling which could determine when one painting is a replica of another (a token of the same type). Yet just such a relation is required for direct quotation.

I agree with Goodman that the notion of direct quotation does not apply to pictures. We can construct parallel arguments to discredit the notion of indirect quotation in the same realm. Just as direct quotation relies on the syntactic notion of same spelling, indirect quotation requires the semantic notion of same content. We have no more idea of what constitutes a paraphrase of a painting than what constitutes a replica of it. Does the impossibility of direct or indirect quotation between pictures dash all hopes of allusion here as well? I think not. Quotation is a rather rarified form of reference. As Goodman notes, it not only refers to what is quoted, but also contains it (direct quotation) or a paraphrase of it (indirect quotation). While we do not know what it is to quote paintings, we constantly refer to them. Most paintings have names and we can refer to those paintings by using those names. In addition, we can refer to paintings through descriptions ("that Pous- sin picture with the funeral cortege coming up from the left foreground," "the abstract painting on the second floor of the Fogg with those streams of color flowing down from the top"), through gestures ("that one there," with pointing finger) and more. I claim that allusion in painting is to be understood by taking the notions of direct and indirect and applying them to reference alone, forgetting the additional containment condition required to elicit quotation. Go- ing back to Hermeren's terminology, one painting alludes to another if the first in-

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corporates some reference which makes us think of the second. The question is how to sort out direct from indirect reference here. Certainly a copy of a painting does not allude to it. Nor does a canvas which copies or reproduces a part of that painting. (I have in mind Nelson Goodman's example of a painting of a museum gallery showing one edge of Rembrandt's Night Watch.)21 Again, there are traditional subject matters, traditional scenes, traditional symbols. There is no reason to suppose that an artist employing these alludes to the works in which they originated. When, then, do coincidences of properties between paintings function to establish an allusion, a reference from one painting to the other? Returning to our initial definition, one important fac- tor is the artist's intention. Bearing in mind Beardsley's cautions about the availability of data about intentions, we can still see that in certain cases such knowledge is de- cisive in attributing allusion. For example, I claimed above that Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe alludes to Raphael, that Lichten- stein's cathedral prints allude to Monet. Among the grounds for these claims was the belief that reference to the earlier works was crucial to the artists' purposes. Both Manet and Lichtenstein are commenting about previous traditions; both are in fact commenting ironically. Manet takes three

figures from a classical composition detail- ing the judgment of Paris and transposes them to a contemporary and secular setting. He thereby mocks not only Raphael and Marcantonio, but also the whole tradition of mythological and heroic paintings as well as the mores of his contemporaries. Lich- tenstein, too, was saying something about Manet's canvases, as his comments in a later interview reveal:

The Cathedrals are meant to be manufactured Monets . . . it's an industrial way of making Impressionism-or something like it-by a machine- like technique. But it probably takes me ten times as long to do one of the Cathedrals or Haystack paintings as it took Monet to do his . . . although Monet painted his Cathedrals as a series, which is a very modern idea, the image was painted slightly differently in each painting. So, I thought using three slightly different images in three colors as a play on different times of the

day would be more interesting . . . they deal with the Impressionist cliche of not being able to read the image close up-it becomes clearer as you move away from it.22

In both these cases, knowledge of the artist's purpose helps establish the presence of allusion. By contrast, a contemporary still- life should not be construed as alluding to the entire genre that preceded it, nor to particular members of that genre.

The two examples I have chosen of allusion in the visual arts are cases which both allude to an earlier work and are, in a sense, about that work. Allusion is not always in- voked to introduce a subject of discourse.23 Lord Chesterfield, for example, did not allude to the book of Joshua in order to say something about Joshua, but to say something about three European kings. Simi- larly, one painting might allude to another painting, but merely in order to characterize its own subject matter more economically yet more richly. However, since twentieth- century art is so often pre-occupied with its own necessary conditions and its own history, it will often be the case that contemporary paintings allude to other paintings in order to say something about them, and about painting in general.

Consider next the case of music. Very little music is representational. And much of that which is representational achieves its reference through linguistic means- through titles appended to various sections of the work ("Spring," "Summer," "The awakening of pleasant feelings upon arriv- ing in the country," "The Fountains of Rome"). With such programmatic works, allusion can be achieved derivatively. The words or phrases appended to one composition can allude to another musical work in the standard linguistic way. That is, in the way one literary work alludes to another.

What of musical works which are not representational or programmatic, but whose interest lies primarily in formal and expressive properties? Here, too, allusion is possible. But in such cases allusion will be achieved largely through shared formal properties-rhythm, tonality, melodic themes, overall structure, and so on. The cases will

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Art and Allusion

be much more like those the internalist focuses on, and appreciably greater empha- sis will be placed on the audience's knowledge of the works in question, their similarity to one another. Thus Brahms's First Symphony alludes to Beethoven's Ninth by introducing a theme in the finale which recalls-both melodically and emotionally- the Ode to Joy which blossoms in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. The similarities are melodic, tonal, emotional, and structural. Moreover, we know that Brahms con- sciously sought to return the symphony to its classical purity and that he was unusually knowledgeable about the history of music. These are further external facts which help us to decide that the reference to Beethoven was indeed intended, and thus the allusion is a genuine one.

Comparison with direct and indirect quotation illuminates allusion in music as well as in the visual arts. Once again my discussion is indebted to Goodman's treatment of this topic, though in the case of music I disagree with some of Goodman's conclu- sions. To begin with, I believe that direct quotation is applicable to music.24 For example, when Brahms first states a theme by Haydn, then composes variations on that theme, he presents and then refers back to that original melody. Goodman's containment and reference conditions seem both to be met here (though only in the context of the entire work does reference back to the theme become apparent). On the other hand, indirect quotation is not musically relevant because it is a semantic relation. An indirect quote is a paraphrase; what- ever is paraphrased must have a specifiable content or meaning. And not even programmatic music has a content determinate enough to meet this condition. Suppose someone tried to musically paraphrase Res- pighi's Fountains of Rome or Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Not only would this require a composition with the same programmatic subject; in addition, the paraphrase or indirect quote would have to say the same thing about the fountains or the seasons. Yet we have no satisfactory way of specifying what either of the original compositions says about its subject matter. Thus there is no

sense to the question "Are the purported paraphrases meaning-preserving?"

Given the failure of indirect quotation between musical works, cases of works with the same subject matter might well be instances of a looser sort of referential relation-namely, allusion. Of course, often two such works will not be linked by allusion. The shared subject matter will be accidental or due to the fact that both are works in the same genre-say, lieder about lost love and the coming of winter. The point is that there is room for the notion of musical works alluding by means of their shared subject- matter. We can make sense of this notion. Moreover, we can decide, in individual cases, whether or not allusion is present by consulting a host of external factors; by re- calling, for example, that much twentieth- century art is especially conscious of its own history and takes that history as subject matter; also by taking into account what- ever information we can gather about the composer's knowledge and purpose.

In sum, we have three means by which one musical work can allude to another. First, by incorporating formal and expressive elements of that work; second, by ex- amining the same subject matter (this is limited to programmatic works); and finally, and derivatively, by incorporating language (in titles, program notes, etc.) which alludes to that work in the standard way.

I have been discussing allusion within a given art. What of cross-modal allusion? Consider first the case of allusion from the literary to the visual arts. Poetry and literature can allude to painting through the mention of titles and authors, through descriptions, through shared subject-matter, and so on. The indirection condition requires that we distinguish a poem which is about a painting from one which alludes to a painting. These are not exclusive cate- gories. One art object can allude to another in order to comment upon it (as Lichten- stein's prints allude to Monet's paintings). Whether or not allusion is present in a given cross-modal case will depend in part on the manner in which reference is achieved. Cases of allusion will be those intended references which are relatively

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indirect. And of course the "measures" of indirection will depend on the referential possibilities available between two different media. I can think of no example of a poem- to-painting allusion, but William Carlos Williams's poems "Pictures from Brueghel" provide a helpful contrast here. Each of the ten poems bears a descriptive title ("Self- Portrait," "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," "The Hunters in the Snow," etc.) and each poem describes a different Brue- ghel painting. Here we have a relationship too straightforward for allusion. The poet both names and describes the paintings. His poems are about those paintings (and also no doubt about artistry, innocence, and play). Similar comments apply to W. H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts," which also names and describes a particular canvas by Brueghel.

Compare a case from the opposite end of the continuum. A poet goes to an art exhibit, is deeply affected by what she sees, and returns home and writes a poem in response. The resulting poem, though trig- gered by the paintings, need not be about them nor allude to them. Thus allusion is present only when a poet intends to refer to a work of art (or, in Hermeren's terms, intends to make us think of that work) and does so obliquely. (The intention needn't be conscious. But, there must be reference from the poem to the painting, and not merely a causal influence in the other direction. I grant that the practical task of distinguishing (a) an unconscious intention to refer to the painting, from (b) an unnoticed suggestion or influence exercised by the painting, would be formidable.)

Consider next the other modes of cross- modal allusion. First, reversing the previous case, a picture (or photo, or sculpture) can allude to a poem or literary work through similarity of setting or subject matter. Once again we would have to distinguish genuine cases of a picture-to-poem allusion from other situations-for instance, a picture illus- trating a poem. Blake's woodcuts do not allude to the poems they accompany, nor do the heroic paintings of the seventeenth century allude to the Greek myths which they straightforwardly picture. On the other

hand it is likely that court painters from that era frequently alluded to myths in order to characterize and glorify their royal patrons in much the way that Chesterfield alluded to the Bible. But here is a clear-cut example of a painting-to-literature allusion: William Frith's 1858 painting Derby Day which alludes to Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop. Frith's allusion is not her- alded in the title of his painting. Rather, the artist has incorporated an incident from Dickens's novel into his canvas. Off to the right foreground amidst the hustle and bustle of the derby we see a little girl with a flower basket approaching an elegant lady seated in a carriage. It is, in fact, Little Nell innocently stepping up to the prostitute. I am told that it was some time before the allusion was even uncovered.25

I have claimed that allusion can operate in either direction to link literature to the visual arts. I hazard the guess that allusion from painting to poetry is likely to be the rarer of the two. It is, first of all, the more difficult to accomplish since language is not available as the vehicle of allusion. Instead, reference to the literary work would have to be achieved through similarity of content, structure, or tone. This rules out many twentieth-century works which lack a traditional subject-matter. And it would be difficult to pinpoint reference on the basis of structural or emotional similarities alone. Shared sadness cannot establish to which of countless literary works a given canvas alludes. Allusion in the other direction-from poem to painting-seems more feasible, perhaps because poetry is a condensed art and thus characteristically allusive. The critic Harold Bloom has in fact built an entire theory of criticism around the many modes of interaction possible between poets and their predecessors.

Four possibilities remain. Allusions from music to literature, from music to visual art, and their reverse-allusions to music by either of the other arts. The wherewithal for allusion is more impoverished here than in any of the cases considered previously. This is because the juxtaposition of music with one of the other arts tends to rule out allusion by means of shared subject matter or

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shared formal properties. As stated above, comparatively little music is representational. Thus few musical works have a content or subject-matter which could be shared by a poem or a painting in order to establish allusion in either direction. Nonpro- grammatic musical works which do purport to refer raise the very same problems that Beardsley addressed in his discussion of a statue depicting Human Destiny and/or the Spirit of Palm Beach. For example, Bee- thoven reported to his friend Karl Amenda that the adagio of his Quartet in F Op. 18 #1 referred to Romeo and Juliet:

According to Amenda, Beethoven said that he composed the piece with the vault scene of Romeo and Juliet in mind. Sure enough, Notte- bohm was able to read "les derniers soupirs" over an early sketch for the end of the movement, a sketch which already stresses the characteristic pathetic interval of the diminished 7th.2

Yet nothing about the adagio itself reveals this allusion. The fact that Beethoven was thinking of some literary work while com- posing does not suffice to establish an allusion to that work. Reference to it, as well as influence by it, is necessary for allusion.

With regard to shared formal properties, music and painting are even further re- moved than music and literature. Structure, tonality, melody, rhythm, and so on are not shared between a painting and a musical work. Music and literature could share rhythmic properties. Thus we could imagine a poet alluding to Ravel's Bolero by creating a poem whose meter matches that of Ravel's famous piece. In fact, it is claimed that a chapter of Joyce's Ulysses has the structure of a musical fugue and thereby alludes to the entire genre rather than any particular composition with that form. Rhythmic allusion in the other direction (music to literature) is much harder to imagine. Finally, expressive properties could be shared amongst music, literature, and painting. But, as noted above with regard to allusion between painting and literature, shared expressive properties rarely suffice alone to establish allusion. For example, how could we tell whether a heroic musical composition alluded to the Odyssey, or to War and Peace, or to Gravity's Rainbow, or to all, or to none of these?

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Because of the difficulties of establishing reference through shared content, form, or mood, allusion between music and the other arts is probably best established by append- ing titles, headings, inscriptions, and so on. Just as Eliot establishes an allusion to Con- rad by preceding "The Hollow Men" with the epigraph "Mistah Kurtz-he dead," so too musical works could allude to pictures or poems in a similar manner. As always, the reference involved would have to be oblique or indirect. Thus Moussorsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is a case of music which is about a set of paintings, and which refers to each directly by naming it. The relation of music to painting here is too straightforward to count as allusion, but we can imagine composers incorporating more oblique references in their titles, headings, inscriptions, just as painters and poets could include oblique references to musical compositions in their works. Such cases of allusion would be derivative. They depend on allusion being established by accompa- nying text and so reduce to cases of literary allusion canvassed previously.

Let us review the final results. I have argued that in addition to the standard examples of allusion from one literary work to another, we ought to recognize allusion within the other arts-from one painting to another, one symphony to another-and also allusion between the different arts-allusion from painting to poem, from sonnet to sonata, and so on. While I have not been able to offer examples of these last sorts of allusions, and have in fact speculated a bit about why some of these modes of reference aren't likely to be courted or explored by contemporary artists, I think it is important to acknowledge an expanded set of referential possibilities.

Goran Hermeren in Influence in Art and Litera- ture (Princeton University Press, 1975) claims that Manet borrowed his composition from the lower right-hand corner of Marcantonio's engraving The Judgment of Paris. However, others add that Mar- cantonio's engraving is itself after a painting by Raphael. (See, for example, Leo Steinberg's intro- duction to Art About Art, edited by Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall (New York, 1978), pp. 16-17.)

21 shall speak throughout this paper of one artwork alluding to another. Since allusion, like other modes of reference, is an intentional relation, my



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usage is shorthand for the claim that an artist alludes through her work. This is in turn somewhat misleading, since artworks allude, represent, express, depict, etc., only as part of a larger symbol system. A full account of any one of these referential functions would have to mention the context within which the work of art was alluding, representing, expressing, and so on. This would require a theory of meaning-like those of H. P. Grice and David Lewis-which emphasized such background factors as representational conventions, current artistic practice, and audience expectation.

Other subjects to which Monet returned were haystacks, poplars along the Seine, a Japanese foot- bridge in his garden at Giverny, and of course the famous waterlilies.

4 Granted, "The Rape of the Lock" contains many allusions. I am merely claiming that the poem's classification as a satire (as a mock epic) is not itself based on the presence of allusion.

5 Brahms states Haydn's theme to begin his variations, Ravel leaves the melody and structure of Moussorsky's work intact. Beattie's remake and Bach's transcriptions do not refer to their predecessors. They stand on their own. They can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of the earlier works from which they sprang. Contrast Anne Sexton's poems based on Grimm's Fairy Tales.

"William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," in The Verbal Icon, William

Empson, ed. (University of Kentucky Press, 1954), p. 3.

7Beardsley and Wimsatt comment as follows on

asking Eliot his intentions: "Such an answer to such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the poem 'Prufrock'.. Critical inquiries are not settled this

way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle." Empson, pp. 17-18.

8Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the

Philosophy of Criticism (New York, 1958), p. 26. 9Frank Cioffi, "Intention and Interpretation in

Criticism," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1963-64, pp. 89-90.

0 Since Eliot never was asked about the allusion to Donne, we don't have a sufficiently detailed real- life example against which to test our intuitions.

11 Beardsley, Aesthetics, p. 21. 12 Nelson Goodman gives an example about paint-

ings in a commandeered museum being used to represent-i.e., denote-the disposition of the enemy troops. Here denotation is established by fiat. See Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968), p. 41.

1S "Reference to an object is a necessary condition

for depiction or description of it, but no degree of resemblance is a necessary or sufficient condition for either." Languages, p. 40.

14 See Languages, p. 32. 1 For the identification of expression with meta-

phorical exemplification, see Chapter II, Section 9 of Languages of Art:

What is expressed is metaphorically exemplified. What expresses sadness is metaphorically sad. And what is metaphorically sad is actually but not literally sad . . . Thus what is expressed is

possessed. (p. 85) Goodman summarizes his discussion as follows:

In summary, if a expresses b then: (1) a possesses or is denoted by b; (2) this possession or denotation is metaphorical; and (3) a refers to b. (p. 95)

Thus a work cannot express sadness unless it meta-

phorically possesses that property. This in turn, I take it, requires literally possessing some property which metaphorically is sad.

16 The label "internalism" is meant to recall Wimsatt and Beardsley's distinction between two sources of critical evidence-the work and its authors. It is also meant to bring to mind a meta- physical doctrine whose failings the view shares-

namely, the Doctrine of Internal Relations. 17I am grateful to Jenefer Robinson for bringing

Hermer6n's treatment of allusion to my attention. 18 Hermeren, p. 77. 9 Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense (New York,

1977), p. 122. 20 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indi-

anapolis, 1978), p. 46. 21 Goodman, Ways, p. 47. 22Art about Art, p. 92. 23This was pointed out to me by Jenefer Robin-

son, in correspondence. 24 Goodman believes that the case of music paral-

lels the case of the visual arts, but that the failure of direct quotation here is due to the reference rather than to the containment condition.

25See Angus Wilson, The World of Charles Dic- kens (New York, 1970).

2 Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York, 1967), p. 36.

An earlier version of this paper was read at the 1980 Western Division meeting of the APA. I am greatly indebted to my commentator, Jenefer Robin- son, for helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Susan McCleary, David Conway, Larry Davis, Chris Roman, Fred Schwarzbach, Carl Smith, and Michael Taylor for useful discussions of matters treated in this paper.

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Art and Allusion