The Raven and the Bust of Pallas: Classical Artifacts and the Gothic Tale

Abstract

Classical artifacts, particularly busts and statues, play an important part as image, symbol, plot element, or even character, in a large number of “Gothic” (i.e., romantic horror) contexts. Eighteenth-century neoclassicism provides “classically” serene artifacts to contrast with “Gothic” ones in, for instance, Poe and Hawthorne. But medieval tradition provides the Venus statue story, where the statue itself is the focus of Gothic horror, in Eichendorff, James, Merimee, Gautier, and others; this, especially in the subtler artist parables, is the key nineteenth-century usage. For the twentieth century, statues become “Dionysian,” classical yet fearful, as in Forster and Lagerkvist. More recently, statues represent a frivolous, melodramatic terror, or else mere emblematic pageantry. In contemporary poetry, however (Rilke, Plath, Seferis), the wheel has in a sense come full circle; classical statues are serious emblems of art and of the artist's obligation to put together the maimed and shattered fragments of a personal and “classical” tradition.