Laocoön at the Frontier, or The Limit of Limits

Laocoon at the Frontier, or The Limit of Limits DANIEL GEROULD FATHER ] had a bit of bad luck. I get there, I go over to the blindingly white Laocoon Group, of course there's a crowd, a mob, a lot of tourists. I elbow my way through. And there's a sign on the base of the statue: "Laocoonte - Cako in Gesso. DelIo Originalle in Restauro." What could I do? SON But, Daddy, what makes the Laocoon Group so beautiful? FATHER (Pacing up and down the room) My boy, it contains all the inner harmony of the ancient Greek. Ancient man developed his body. mind, and soul harmoniously, and that is why he created an an that is unique in its form. Truth and beauty were one. In the marvelous harmony of the human forms that are entwined by the serpents, the Laocoon Group expresses even suffering in a fonn that is harmonious and full of moderation.... I'm a bit tired.... SON Is that true of the snakes too? FATHER The snakes? SON Did the snakes too live in that marvelous harmony that's expressed by their coils? FATHER Of course they did. SON (Enthusiastically) Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant. FATHER You've got the periods mixed up. SON (Shrugging his sholliders) I only just .. . (The Son raises his thumb up in "Caesar's gesture, " then turns it down) ingula! FATHER What's that supposed to mean? SON Oh, nothing.... Tadeusz R6zewicz, The Laocoon Group (196 1)1 Almost all the classical myths - the House of Atreus, Return of Odysseus, Medea, Oedipus - providing impetus for modern versions and offshoots have 24 DANIEL GERQULD been transmitted in literary form as dramatic or epic poetry. An interesting exception is the Laocoon, which exists spatially as something seen - a sculptural myth less remembered for its narrative content than for the immediacy of a single visual anecdote. Although recounted at length in Book II of The Aeneid, the myth of Laocoon finds its enduring shape in the Hellenistic Greek statue mentioned by Pliny as standing in the palace of the Emperor Titus, lost for many centuries, and then rediscovered in the Italian Renaissance. Laocoon is thus exceptional on two counts: it has made its mark on Western consciousness as an image rather than a story, and this process began in modem times. Not surprisingly, the sculpture gave rise to other works of art - by EI Greco and Blake, most notably - rather than to drama.2 The Laocoon Group has always had something of a public, rhetorical character, lending itself to doctrines and declarations. The sensational unearthing of the statue on Esquiline Hill on January 14, t506, was a major cultural event. Within an hour Michelangelo was on the scene to view what was immediately acclaimed to be one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient art. On June I, under the sponsorship of Pope Julius II, who had purchased the sculpture and placed it in the Vatican Museum, Romans held a festival to honor the finding of the Laocoon.3 The statue became the object of such admiration that the pious and moral Pope Adrian VI referred to it as idola allliquorum and tried having the entrance to the museum closed off.4 So there arose in the Renaissance a second myth - not of Laocoon, priest of Apollo, but of the sculpture itself. The world's reactions, not what gave rise to them, became the center of attention. The Laocoon Group as an artifact to be confronted became high drama, starting with a discovery and containing many reversals ofassessment and interpretation. Without a context, detached from its original setting and housed in the Vatican as a museum piece, the Group was above all an object provoking speculations on aesthetics, each age finding in it verification of its own principles and predilections. A cultural monument, the Laocoon saw other, figurative monuments erected in its name. Eversince Pliny declared it to be unequaled among ancient sculpture, the Group has been taken as an exemplar to be defined and categorized. If the late Renaissance found in the Hellenistic sculpture the pathos of the baroque, Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century discovered support for a...