Читать книгу The Play of Man - Karl Groos - Страница 22

When sight is the medium of perception movement plays are at the same time visual plays, otherwise consciousness is reached through the sense of touch. We will here give special attention to experimental exercise of the motor apparatus, as actual movement play is treated of in detail in another section. After some general remarks, a few cases will be cited whose most important feature is the pleasure derived from the contemplation of the movement, as is especially the case when it is not self-produced. The powerful attraction which movement has for us is well grounded biologically, for evidently it is of the utmost importance in the struggle for existence that attention should be at once and instinctively aroused by any stir or change in the environment.141 But perception of movement by means of the eye alone, and consequently the instinct of keeping absolutely motionless, is of great importance to the pursued animal. Thus Edinger says: “I have repeatedly seen a hungry snake pause in the midst of his pursuit of a fleeing mouse, when it crouched down and was quiet. I have seen it recoil from the frog, which it was trying to catch, as soon as the creature kept still.”142 Even our own involuntary attention to motion has some analogy to instinct, and recalls the violent and sudden reaction with which we respond to an unexpected touch on the bare back.143 As a matter of psychological fact, there is associated with movement, as with sensations of hearing, a strong emotional effect.

It is no wonder, therefore, that all his life long man shows a peculiar interest in movement, and acquires the capacity to detect its intimations very early in life. Indeed, this capacity is one of the first to be developed, and depends, apart from skin stimuli and the so-called after images which reveal objective movement to the eye at rest, principally on the ability to follow the moving object with the glance. Practice is necessary for the mastery of this capacity. The eyes accompany, in addition to the regular objective motion, a constantly renewed backward movement as well, by means of which we again grasp the escaping object, an effort requiring the simultaneous exercise of volition and attention. “This process requiring continuous and constantly renewed attention,” says L. W. Stern, “this lying in wait that the object may not give us the slip (for any laxity would at once be avenged by an increased difficulty in fixing the object), bears witness to a condition and teaches us that the object with which we are carrying on this game of ‘catcher’ is in motion.”144 This explains why little children so easily lose sight of a moving object which they wish to follow with the eye.

Here again we find that playful experimentation is essential, and, according to Raehlmann, it commonly appears toward the end of the fifth week, rarely earlier.145 That Preyer’s boy on the twenty-third day followed with his eyes a slowly moving light was probably an instance of forced development, as a result of much experimenting. On the twenty-ninth day the same child crowed aloud at the sight of a swaying tassel. On the sixty-second day he gazed at a swinging lamp with constant manifestations of delight for nearly half an hour, but his eyes did not follow the swing of the pendulum; they moved, it is true, now left, now right, but not in time with the lamp. “On the one hundred and first day a pendulum making forty complete swings in a minute was for the first time followed with mechanical exactness by his glance.”146 As his capacity for following the movement increased, the greater his interest in it became. A dog racing away or leaping about the child, the fast horse, the hopping toad, the crawling worm or gliding snake, running water, leaping flame, a rolling wagon, and, more than all, the fast-rushing train, with its cloud of steam—all these excite a really passionate sympathy. The smoke of a cigar, too, gives great satisfaction, and if a father knows how to make the beautiful blue rings he must at once renounce his peaceful contemplative enjoyment of his own play, for the youngster will demand a very different tempo in the repetition than is agreeable to him. In enumerating instances of animal motion I omitted one because it deserves more extended notice—namely, the flight of insects, in which children take such lively interest. The common illusion that an insect which has been caught can be induced to fly away by the recital of a form of words is highly interesting, in itself considered as well as in view of its probable origin. May not such poetic formulæ be traceable to a religious or at least superstitious origin? The commonest of these rhymes are those addressed to the ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) and the June bug. Rochholz has made a collection of the names of the former, and found that in India it was sacred to the god Indra, and among the old Germans to Frega. I give two German forms of the verse:

“Muttergotteshühle, Mückenstühle,

Fliege auf, fliege auf! Wohl über die Bussenberg,

Dass es besser Wetter wird.”

“Marienkäferchen, wann wird Sonne sein?

Morgen oder heut?

Flieg weg in den Himmel!”

An English one is:

“Ladybird, ladybird,

Fly away home;

If you’ll be quick,

The sunshine will come.”

All are familiar with the adjuration to the June bug. French children sing:

“Hanneton, vole, vole!

Ton mari est a l’école,

Il a dit qu’si tu volais,

Tu aurais d’la soupe au lait

Il a dit qu’si tu n’volais pas,

Tu aurais la tête en bas.”

To the butterfly, which is not so easily caught, the invitation is to alight:

“Molketewer sett di,

Kömmt e Pogg de frett di!”

And in Scotch:

“Le, la, let,

My bonnie pet!”

The snail, too, is addressed in a rhyme which favours the illusion that he will put out his horns to order:

“Schneck’ im Haus, kreich heraus,

Strecke deine vier Hörner heraus!

Sonst werf ich dich in Graben,

Fressen dich die Raben.”

“Snail, snail, put out your horn,

Or I’ll kill your father and mother the morn.”147

As a final example, I will mention the gruesome custom which, according to Papasliotis, obtains in modern Greece, and especially in Crete, of attaching a small lighted taper to a beetle and releasing it amid the acclamations of excited children. A passage in Aristophanes gives the impression that the children of ancient Greece also indulged in this cruel sport.148

The eye of the adult, too, delights in movement; absolute immobility is as disturbing as absolute stillness. Here, as elsewhere, in considering the playful indulgence of sensuous perceptions, we must distinguish between pleasure in movement as such and pleasure in sensuously agreeable movement. Even children seem to exhibit this difference. Some weeks after the experiments in form described above I drew irregular zigzags and some even, wavy lines in the air before Marie G——, then five years old, and asked which she liked better. She chose the latter, though the others were calculated to produce a much more exciting impression, giving as her reason that the wavy lines were “straighter”; evidently meaning, as in the case of the figures, that these were more regular. In adults susceptibility to sensuously agreeable movement is doubtless still stronger, yet with them, too, there is a wide margin of pleasure in movement as such. From the multiplicity of available examples of this I select first the observation of street scenes, which I have already noticed in the case of animals,149 especially the dog. The pleasure which we find in gazing out of our own windows or from behind the plate glass of a café at the bustle and swarm of a city’s traffic detaches itself from all intellectual or even imaginative associations, and is gradually merged into a dreamy consciousness of a sensation of movement, mingled with mild enjoyment of its contrast with our own repose. With similar sensations we observe the stir of an ant-hill, the swarming of gnats in the evening glow, the confusion of snowflakes, and the whirling of leaves in a wind. A special interest attaches to the witnessing of skilful acrobatics where the feeling of inner imitation is strongly excited, and well does the juggler know how to turn this interest to account. The dexterous leaps which Amaranthus records at the beginning of the eighteenth century furnishes us an historical example: “Many are the leaps by which the jugglers cause the money of the spectators to jump into their own purses, and they have names as strange as they are ridiculous. There is the monkey jump, which throws one backward, landing him on both feet; the trout leap, which does the same thing twice in quick succession and with the legs crossed; twenty-two monkey jumps without stopping; a great variety of table and board jumps; the goat and hare leaps; the leap through eight rings, one from floor to ceiling, over chairs, etc.”150

The enjoyment is of course strengthened when the already interesting motion becomes sensuously agreeable; a low degree of such pleasure is experienced in witnessing regular motion in a single direction, such as that of a rushing stream or of clouds sailing across the heavens. In one of his verses Gottfried Keller calls these latter the “friendly companions of the dwellers on earth.” “As they wander on they attract and distract the burdened soul of him who observes them with wonder, and keep him amused all through the weary hours.” Gurgling springs add to their upward gushing motion the soft underground murmur of their waters, while the beauty of circling motion is perhaps never more effectively shown than in the majestic floating of birds of prey. Darwin says in his Voyage of the Beagle round the World: “When the condors are wheeling in a flock round and round any spot their flight is beautiful. Except when rising from the ground, I do not recollect ever having seen one of these birds flap its wings. Near Lima I watched several for nearly half an hour, without once taking off my eyes. They moved in large curves, sweeping in circles, descending and ascending, without giving a single flap.” Perhaps our pleasure is even greater in wave motions, as they roll over the ocean or are produced by the wind on a field of grain, or surge in the current of a rapid stream. These noble verses of Mörike’s on the Rhine falls bear witness to the power of the æsthetic feeling so aroused:

“Halte dein Herz, o Wanderer, fest in gewaltigen Händen!

Mir entstürzte vor Lust zitternd das meinige fast.

Rastlos donnernde Massen auf donnernde Massen geworfen,

Ohr und Auge wohin retten sie sich im Tumult? …

“Rosse der Götter, im Schwung, eins über den Rücken des ander

Stürmen herunter und streu’n silberne Mähnen umher;

Herrliche Leiber, unzählbare, folgen sich, nimmer dieselben,

Ewig dieselbigen—wer wartet das Ende wohl aus?”151

Finally, we will notice dancing movements. It is not only among birds that the courted female gazes with interest at the dancing of the male; we see it in all public dancing. This is one of the instances where visual play is as important as the movement, for even among the participants pleasure is heightened by the exciting spectacle of the other dancers,152 and it is true the world over that spectators of a dance always become as passionately aroused as do the performers themselves. The piercing trills with which the women of some negro tribes at intervals accompany the dance of the males are surely not merely invitations to the latter, but indications as well of their own excitement. For this reason many onlookers are impelled to keep time with the rhythmic dance by clicking the tongue or clapping the hands. “The feeling of pleasure which is kindled in the performer,” says Grosse, “sheds its rays on the beholder as well. … In this way both become passionately excited, intoxicated by the sounds and movements; the transport constantly increasing, swells at last to veritable madness, which often results in violent outbreaks.”153 The solo dances of primitive peoples presuppose an onlooking public more than mass dances do. Among Bushmen and Eskimos the men dance alone, while, according to Eyre, Australian women do it sometimes alone and sometimes in companies to, arouse the men.154 Among the civilized people of the Orient professional dancing girls perform in the presence of men, in which case the spectators alone can be said to play. And the same is true of our ballet, which, indeed, except for its direct sexual effect, possesses but little pleasurable quality.155