But when one thinks carefully about it, there is nothing unusual in the fact that a limited portion of space, which of itself is atemporal, can express an instant.
The problem arises when you ask yourself how you can express a long period of time through portions of space. And you discover that, in order to express a long period of time you generally need a lot of space. There are stories in painting that represent a century-long succession of events through a series of frames, as happens with comic strips; and there are others that do so through the repeated visual presentation of the same characters in different hairstyles, situations, and ages; and these are all cases where an abundance of space is required to convey an abundance of time, and not only an abundance of signifying space, but also of the (semantic, not pragmatic) space that the beholder has to traverse.
To grasp the flow of time in Piero’s series of frescoes on the Finding of the True Cross in Arezzo you have to move, and not only with your eyes, but also with your feet, and you have to walk even more to follow the whole story narrated by the Bayeux tapestry. There are works that require a long time to circumnavigate, and a long period of attention to their minutest details, such as a Gothic cathedral. A sculpture that appears as a little ivory cube can be experienced in a second of contemplation (even though I believe it should be touched and rotated in order to grasp all its facets), but a cube in which every side was of one million by one million kilometers has to be circumnavigated, maybe with the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey, otherwise one would not grasp its megagalactic sublimity.
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.
- 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.
- 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
