A DIALOGUE WITH W. H.
AUDEN
77
"audacity" was due to a physiognomical error. The nouns "lip" and
"cheek" have come to stand metonymically for impudent speech;
this was caused by a visual effect.
A: Emotions can be projected even from the lines of one's back–
as any good actor knows.
l: Apparently Shakespeare had little faith in the physical betrayal
of character. He makes Duncan say "there
is
no art to find the
mind's construction in the face."
A: He puts those words in the king's mouth because Duncan was
a weak person with no foresight. Blind to those around him, he
lacked insight into the character of Cawdor and saw no danger in
elevating the ambitious Macbeth to thaneship. He was anything but
a physiognomist.
l: To what degree can a physiognomist make generalizations about
facial structure?
A: The eye should take in the over-all, the posture, the
gestalt
of
a person.
If
one watches carefully one can discern whether someone
is dishonorable. True, willful blindness may intervene for physical
reasons... . But when one thinks back, one finds no cause for sur–
prise; one should have foreseen the crookedness. The trick is always
to continue the observation. One
is
surprised only when people act
a little better than they need have.- Of course the matter of age
enters into this.
I:
You mean that in youth duplicity may be concealed by super–
ficial glitter?
A: Yes. After 30 the face exposes, bit by bit, what lies behind it,
the flesh being as it were a kind of negative and on that surface
you see the fears, disappointments, spiritual powers coming out. Sin
shows itself in the face. Guilt and history are revealed in the body;
not only in the form of physical scars but in texture, bone-formations,
skin marks. Eckermann says that Goethe's body in death had a god–
like youth about it. The same thing was claimed of Catherine of
Bologna and Hector- that their unembalmed bodies long after death
continued to exhale a scent of sweetness. Psychosomatic reasons may
exist for such phenomena.
l:
If
examined closely, the naked body becomes a symbol of life.
A: Medieval writers tried to find moral reasons why the pagans
