Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind · Wilhelm Max Wundt
15. THE ART OF THE TOTEMIC AGE.
The most prominent of the artistic activities of the totemic age is _formative art_. In this field, the lowest stages of totemic development show little advance beyond the achievements of primitive man. True, even Australia possesses cave drawings which, perhaps have some sort of cult significance. As yet, however, we have not succeeded in interpreting these drawings. With this exception, the formative art of the totemic period is limited to carvings upon weapons or other implements--obviously thought, just as in primitive times, to possess magical potencies--and to the painting of the face on the occasion of cult festivals. In the regions of Oceania, particularly the Polynesian Islands, we find a far richer development of that form of pictorial art which aims at the adornment of the body, or, as we ought rather to say with reference to the beginnings of this artistic practice, at the exercise on the part of the body of a magical influence upon external things. Polynesia is the chief centre of _artistic tattooing_. Throughout these regions this practice has universally taken the form of prick tattooing. By means of separate, close-lying prick points filled with colour, various symmetrical designs are formed. This tattooing is the only art whose highest perfection is reached at the beginning of culture. As soon as clothing appears, the decoration of the body itself gives way to that of dress. On particular occasions, as, for example, in connection with certain cult practices of the American Indians, custom may continue to demand entire nakedness. Under these circumstances, there is a sort of retrogressive development in which the painting necessitated by the festivals takes the place of tattooing. This occurs even among the Australians. Moreover, even after clothing has appeared, it long remains a favourite custom to tattoo certain exposed parts of the skin, particularly the face and the arms and hands. Even to-day, indeed, the arms are sometimes tattooed. The fact that tattooing is now practised almost exclusively by criminals and prostitutes, and, occasionally, by sailors, finds its explanation in a circumstance which was also of influence at the time when tattooing was in its first flower, namely, in the interruption of occupational activity by long periods of leisure.
There is an additional factor which obviously favours the development of the art of tattooing, particularly in the territory of the Polynesian Islands. I refer to the combination of totemism with celestial mythology, which is peculiar to these peoples, and to the consequent recedence of totemism. Particularly illuminative as regards this point is the tattooing of the Maoris. The mythology of this people gives an important place to the sun, and their bodily decorations frequently include pictures of this celestial body, in the form of spiral ornamentations. Some two years ago travelling investigators brought back copies of the tattooing of other islanders, particularly those of the Marquesas group. These tattoo-patterns contain many significant elements of a celestial mythology; those of to-day, however, in so far as the custom has not been entirely effaced by the Europeans, consist almost entirely of simple geometrical ornamentations. The tattooings of early times frequently included also representations of animals. Plants were less common, as might be expected from the fact that it was only later that they acquired importance for totemic cults. At the same time, it is evident that a sort of reversal took place as regards the pictorial representation of objects. This is even more striking in the tattooing of the American Indians, a tattooing restricted to certain parts of the body.
In the preceding chapter the fact has already been noted that, among the primitive peoples of the pretotemic age, as, for example, the Semangs and Senoi of Malacca, the multiplication of simple parallel lines, triangles, arcs, etc., gives rise to plant-like and animal-like forms. Doubtless the primitive artist himself discovers such figures in his drawings and then sometimes consciously sets about to imitate more closely the actual forms of the natural objects. At the stage of development now under discussion, we find, conversely, that animal forms, particularly, are retranslated into geometrical objects in that they become, as we would to-day express it, more and more conventionalized. Since only the simplest outlines of the objects are retained, it may eventually become a matter of doubt whether these really are schematic representations of natural objects, and whether they are not, even from the very beginning, geometrical ornamentations. Nevertheless the fact that there are continuous transitions from the developed animal form to the geometrical ornament, as occurs particularly in America, is incontrovertible proof that such a conventionalization took place, though in many cases, doubtless, very slowly. This process of conventionalization, however, may be more clearly traced in connection with a different art, one that is related to tattooing but whose development is not limited, as is that of the latter, and destined from the very outset to become obsolete. I refer to _ceramics_, the art of decorating the vessels which were at first intended for the preservation, and later for the preparation, of food.
Even though the art of making pottery is not to be found in primitive culture proper, it nevertheless dates back to a very early age. It is not impossible that this age coincides approximately with the beginning of the totemic period. At any rate, it was totemic cult which, from earliest times on, furnished the motives for the decoration or--as is here also doubtless generally true of the early beginnings--for the magical protection of the vessels, or for the imparting of magical potencies to their contents. Doubtless the clay vessel was originally modelled partly after the natural objects that were used for storing food, and partly after the woven basket. The latter, in turn, may, in its beginnings, have been copied from the bird's nest. When it was discovered, probably accidentally, that clay is hardened by fire, the clay vessel came to be used not merely for the preservation of food but also for its preparation by means of fire. Or, perhaps it would be truer to say that the attempt to accomplish this latter purpose with the unhardened clay vessel led to the art of baking clay.
Now, even before the art of making pottery was known, implements, weapons, women's combs, and even the body itself were marked with simple and regular linear drawings to which a magical significance was attached. These geometrical forms, which arose semi-accidentally, were, even from very early times, apperceived as the outlines of animal or plant forms, and it was under the influence of these ideas that they attained a further development. Precisely the same process was repeated in the case of ceramics, only, as it were, upon a broader scale, challenging a richer play of imagination. It is precisely here, however, particularly in the ceramics of the American Indians, that we can trace the ascending and the descending developments of primitive linear drawings, first into completely developed animal designs with meagre suggestions of attempts at plant ornamentation, and then regressively, through a continued conventionalization, into purely geometrical figures. At the same time, it was ceramics, especially, that developed a combination of these two designs, the systematic arrangement of which marks the perfection of this art. Thus arose representations of natural objects framed in by geometrical ornamentations. In this respect also, tattooing furnished a preparation, even though imperfectly, for ceramics. In inner significance, moreover, the latter was a direct outgrowth of the former.
By tattooing, man originally guarded his own person with protective magic; in ceramics, this magic was brought into connection with man's utensils, with the food necessary for his life, and with its preparation. In ceramics, therefore, just as in tattooing, the animals represented were at first primarily _totem animals_. Among them we find particularly snakes, fish, and birds, and, in America, the alligator. Especially characteristic of the totemic age is the fact that the decorations scarcely ever include the representation of the _human figure_. It is by this mark that the art products, even of the earliest age of Greece, may be distinguished at first glance from those of totemic culture. In the former case, the human figure is introduced, either along with that of the animal or even alone; in the latter case, only animal representations occur. Strange to say, it is in only _one_ respect that the ceramics, more particularly of the American Indians, copy man--the vessel as a whole represents a head or a skull. Doubtless this is connected with the obnoxious custom of head-hunting. Just as the Indian adorns the roof of his hut with the heads of his conquered foes, so he perpetuates the memory of his feats of war in his ceramic objects. No portrayal of activities in which human beings participate, is to be found in the totemic age.
Connected with this, no doubt, is the lack of any real _sculpture_, with the exception of crude idols representing animal or human forms. These idols, on the whole, are of the nature of fetishes, and as such may, of course, be regarded as the precursors of the divine images of a later period. As there is no sculpture, so also is there, strictly speaking, no _architecture_. In this respect, again, there is a wide difference between this age and the succeeding one. In its higher forms, architecture presupposes gods who are worshipped in a temple. In the totemic period, however, there are no temples. True, the Australian preserves his magic wands and pieces of wood, the churingas, in caves or huts, but the latter differ in no wise from other huts. In the totemic age, therefore, man alone has a dwelling-place. Of such structures there are, in general, _two_ types, the _conical_ and the _spherical_. The conical hut apparently had its origin in the tent. The rounded or beehive hut, as it has been called in Africa, may originally have been copied from a natural cave built in the sand. The two forms, moreover, are not always mutually exclusive.
In winter, for example, the Esquimo of Behring Strait lives in a round hut made of snow; in summer, he pitches a tent. In Melanesia, Polynesia, and other regions, the erection of dwelling-places on the seashore or on the shores of large rivers led to the _pole-hut_, a modification which came to resemble the houses of later times. This hut, which is generally occupied jointly by several families, is erected on poles that are firmly driven into the ground and reach far up into the air. Such a pole-hut, even at this early age, develops the typical form of a commodious dwelling. One of the factors here operative is the institution of men's clubs, which is prevalent in these regions: the necessity that many individuals live together leads to the erection of buildings of considerable size. In this connection, we note a characteristic difference between the beginnings of architectonic art and that of the other arts. The latter, whether in the case of tattooing, ceramics, or the fetishistic precursors of sculpture, always originate in mythological and, primarily, in magical motives; the sole impetus to architecture is furnished by the immediate needs of practical life. Thus, then, it is not to religious impulses but to the social conditions which require that many individuals shall live together, that we must trace a more perfected technique of building than that of primitive times.
Much more nearly parallel to the development of the other forms of art is that of the _musical arts_, meaning by this all those arts which consist in the direct activity of man himself. The musical arts include the dance, poetry, and music, as well as the various combinations into which these enter with one another. Since it is the third of these arts, music, that manifests a particular tendency to combine with and to supplement the other two, all three may be comprehended under its name. This will also serve to suggest the fact that, just as the formative arts are closely related in that they give objective embodiment to the creations of the imagination, so also are the musical arts allied by virtue of their reliance on subjective expression. Of all these various arts, the _dance_ preserves the closest connection with the more primitive age. In the cult dance of the totemic period, however, the dance receives an extraordinarily rich development, reaching a stage of perfection comparable to that to which formative art attains in the external adornment of the body--that is, in tattooing. The dance and tattooing, indeed, are closely related, since nowhere else is the _personal body_ so directly the object and the means of artistic activity.
To the dances of the primitive period, however, the totemic dance adds _one_ external feature--the _mask_--whose origin is directly due to totem belief. Even the Australians, of course, are not familiar with the mask-dance. They sometimes paint the face or mark it with single lines, and this may be regarded as the precursor of the mask; the mask itself however appears only in the later development of totemism, and continues far into the succeeding age. Moreover, as regards its distribution, there are considerable differences. It plays its most important rôle in American and Polynesian regions, a less prominent one in Africa. In America, the mask-dance and the elevation of masks into cult objects, to which the mask-dance occasionally gives rise, extend from the Esquimos of the north far down to the south. Koch-Grünberg has given a clear picture of the mask-dances and the mask-cult of the natives of the Brazilian forests. Here the masks are not a secondary means of magic, as it were--much less an occasional object of adornment. Every mask is a sort of sacred object. When the youth attains to manhood, he receives a mask, which is sacred to him throughout his entire life. After the great cult festivals, which are celebrated with mask-dances, the masks are carefully preserved.
In the mask there is supposed to reside the demon who is represented by it, and the fear of the demon is transferred to the mask. The dancing of this period consists primarily of the animal dance, which is a rhythmic imitation, often wonderfully skilful, of the movements of an animal. The mask also, therefore, always represents, in a more or less altered or grotesquely exaggerated form, an animal's head, or a being intermediate between animal and man, thus vividly calling to mind certain totemic legends whose heroes are sometimes animals and sometimes human beings. On the more advanced stages of totemic culture, there are also masks representing objects of external nature. Mention has already been made of the cloud masks used in the vegetation festivals of the Hopi and Zuni. The rain-priests of these tribes, with these masks on their heads and with pictures of zigzag lightning on their garments, are the living representatives of storm demons. Thus, the mask imparts to its wearer the character of the demon represented by it. The characteristics of face-masks, such as enormous beards and teeth, huge eyes, noses, etc., cause them, particularly, to be the living embodiments of the fear of demons, and thus to be themselves regarded as demoniacal beings. Whatever may be their more specific nature, whether, for example, they represent demons of sickness or of fertility, they always present the same fear-inspiring features. A certain diversity of expression is much more likely to come as a result of the external character of the dance in which the masks are used. This may give rise to expressions portraying surprise and astonishment, or the more lively emotions of fear, terror, or exalted joy. In the latter case, we must bear in mind that representations of grinning laughter differ in but a few characteristic marks from those of violent weeping.
Corresponding to these differences in the character of the masks that are worn, are _two_ main forms of the dance, particularly of the cult dance. The first of these is the _ceremonial dance_, which moves in slow and solemn rhythm. This is the dance that generally inaugurates the great cult festivals of the semi-cultural peoples of totemism or that accompanies certain of the chief features of the festival--such, for example, as the entrance and procession of the cloud-masked ancestral spirits in the vegetation festivals of New Mexico. Contrasting with the ceremonial dance are the _ecstatic dances_, which for the most part form the climax of the festival. Only the men are allowed to take part in the ceremonial dances, and the same is generally true also of the ecstatic dances. The women, if not altogether excluded from the ceremonies, are either silent witnesses or accompany the dance with songs or screams. It is only in the more extreme form of the ecstatic-orgiastic dance that both sexes participate. The mixed dances probably arose in connection with the vegetation festivals, as a result of the relation which was thought to exist between the sexual emotions and the creative forces of nature. It was doubtless because of this late origin that the Greeks long continued to regard the dances of the Dionysian festivals, which were borrowed from Oriental cults and executed by women alone or by women and men together, as in part a degeneration of good custom. In the drama, whose origin was the mimetic dance, the rôle of women was taken by men.
Closely connected with the dance is _music_, the preparatory stage of which is constituted by the participation of the voice in the rhythm of the external movements of the body. These articulatory movements, which form a part of the mimicking activity of the face, supplement the dynamic rhythm of the dance with the melodic rise and fall of tones. The emotion which finds its outlet in the dance itself, then seeks a further enhancement through objective means. These means also involve the activity of the bodily organs; noises are produced by clapping the hands, by stamping on the ground, or by the rhythmic clash of sticks. In the latter case, the transition from instruments of noise to those of tone is easily made. The earliest forms of tone instruments are of two sorts, according as they copy the production of sound by external means, on the one hand, or by the vocal organs, in the accompanying tones, on the other. Thus, the two original forms of musical instruments are _instruments of concussion_ and _wind instruments_. In origin, these are directly connected with the dance. They are natural means of intensification created directly by the emotion, though later modified by systematic invention. The later development of musical art continues to remain in close relation to the two main forms of the dance, the solemn ceremonial and the ecstatic dance, between which there come to be numerous transitions. From the most primitive to the highest stages of music, we continually find two sorts of musical expression, the _sustained_ and the _animated_. These correspond to the contrasting feelings of rest and excitement, which are experienced even by animals, and which man therefore doubtless carried with him from his natural state into his cultural life. With the progress of culture, these feelings constantly become more richly differentiated.
The totemic age may be said to include only the first few advances beyond the simple emotions already expressed in the dance. Nevertheless, there are ethnological differences that register in a very characteristic way those specific musical talents of the various races which are obscured on higher levels of culture because of the increasing complexity of international relations. Thus, Africa is apparently the chief centre, if not the original home, of instruments of concussion and of the great variety of stringed instruments that develop from them. America, on the other hand, is the region in which wind instruments, in particular their original form, the flute, have attained their chief development. The flute of the American Indians is not, of course, like our own; it is blown, not with the lips, but with the mouth. It therefore resembles a shawm or a clarinet. As regards production of tone, however, it is a flute, for the tone is produced by the extension of one lip over the other in a manner similar to that of the flute-pipes of our organs. That which distinguishes the sound of the flute and of its shorter form, the fife, from that of stringed instruments is primarily the greater intensity and the longer duration of the tone. Corresponding to the difference in musical instruments is that of the noise instruments which characterize the two regions. Africa possesses the drum. This it employs not only for purposes of accompaniment in cult ceremonies, but also as a means of signalling, since it renders distant communication possible by use of the so-called drum-language. In America, we find the rattle. Though this, of course, is not entirely lacking in Africa, it nevertheless occurs primarily within the cultural realm of the North American Indians. Here it is employed as an instrument of noise and magic, similarly to the bull-roarer of the Australians. As between the rattle and the drum, the difference is again one of the longer duration of sound in the case of the American instrument.
The tones produced by these early musical instruments, however, even those of the stringed instruments and their vocal accompaniment, by no means, of course, form harmonic music. On the contrary, harmony is an achievement of the succeeding age; it is here foreshadowed in only imperfect beginnings. Such beginnings, however, may everywhere be discerned in the records that we have of the melodies of the Soudan negroes and the American races. Nevertheless, most of the records that are as yet available are still of doubtful value. The auditor is too prone to find in them his own musical experiences. For reliable data we must wait until, following the beginnings that have already been made, a greater number of such natural songs will have been objectively recorded by the aid of the phonograph. As yet we can only say that, if we may judge from their musical instruments, the Africans surpass all other natural peoples in musical talent. Their melodies ordinarily move within the range of about an octave, whereas those of the North American Indians seldom pass beyond a sixth. The fact of this small tonal compass will itself indicate that the melody of all natural peoples tends to very constant rhythms and intervals. The latter, moreover, show some similarity to those with which we are familiar. The chief characteristic of these songs, however, is their tendency toward repetition. One and the same motive frequently recurs with tiresome monotony. The melodies thus reflect certain universal characteristics of primitive poetry as they appear in the songs of the Veddahs and of other pretotemic tribes.
Nevertheless, the forms of _poetry_ exhibit an important advance over those of the more primitive peoples just mentioned. Particularly in the case of the _song_, we find that the simple expression of the moods directly aroused by nature is supplemented by a further important feature. This feature is closely bound up with that more lively bodily and mental activity of totemic culture which is reflected likewise in its use of implements and weapons. Karl Bücher was the first to point out that common labour gives rise to common songs, whose rhythm and melody are determined by the labour. The increasing diversity of the work results in a wider range of content and also in a richer differentiation of forms. Such _work-songs_ are to be found throughout the entire totemic era, whereas, of course, they are lacking in the preceding age, in which common labour scarcely exists. Contemporaneously with the work-song, the _cult-song_ makes its appearance. The latter is essentially conditioned by the development of totemic ceremonies. As these become more numerous, the cult-song likewise gradually grows richer and more manifold, in close reciprocal relations with the dance and music. In the case of the cult-song, as well as of the work-song, the above-mentioned repetition of motives comes to exercise an important influence on the accompanying activity.
Give more room, Joyous folk, give room for the totara, Joyous folk, Give me the maro. ***************************** Slide on, slide on! Slip along, slip along! Joyous folk! etc. 'Totara' and 'maro' are the names of trees that they have felled. In its rhythm and its repetitions, the song gives us a direct portrayal of the work itself. These song-forms are still entirely the product of external motives and never arise under the independent and immediate influence of subjective moods. Far superior to them is another field of literary composition, the _narrative_. The totemic age, particularly, has produced a great variety of forms of narrative. Predominant among these is the _märchen-myth_, a narrative which resembles the fairy-tale and which, as a rule, continues during this period to be of the nature of a credited myth. It is a prose narrative circulated by word of mouth, in which manner it sometimes traverses wide regions. With occasional changes or in connection with different mythical ideas it may survive many generations. So far as these general characteristics are concerned, the märchen, indeed, is the most permanent of all forms of literary composition. It extends from the most primitive levels of culture down to the present. In the form of the märchen-myth, however, it is especially characteristic of the totemic age. We now possess numerous collections of such tales from the most diverse regions of totemic as well as of later civilizations. An Englishwoman, Mrs. Parker, has brought together a number of Australian tales, and these have been augmented in more recent times, particularly through the labours of the German missionary Strehlow.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.