Theoretical Outlines

Lately, literary studies have increasingly taken into account that mind and body are closely intertwined and that the way we think and perceive our surroundings is shaped and influenced by the body.Footnote ⁵ The ongoing interaction between mind and environment has been viewed from different angles: the mind may be described in a broad sense as ‘embodied’, it may also be conceived of as ‘embedded’ in its physical and further contexts, as ‘extended’ through the body into its surroundings, or as ‘enactive’, that is: engaged in constant interaction with the environment.Footnote ⁶

Since we all have a body, we usually know intuitively what it feels like to be, stand, or sit somewhere, to move around, and to use our limbs to whatever purpose we have. The phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty points out that our body is never an object like other objects or positioned next to them in the same manner and describes this notion we usually have of our body in the following way:

And shortly later he adds:

The body schema explains why we do not need much information or a detailed description to understand the spatial situation our body occupies:Footnote ⁹ most of us would, for example, know by instinct what it feels like to sit back in an armchair, to walk around in a room, or to kneel on the floor. In none of these situations do we need an explanation of where feet, shoulders, arms, or any other limbs are to be placed. The position is easily, even automatically comprehensible—in fact, we usually efface it from our conscious perception and do not pay attention to how it is conveyed or why we comprehend it so easily.Footnote ¹⁰

Apart from the body schema, an equally important corollary from the inextricable connection of body and mind is our focus on action: we mainly perceive the world around us with respect to the possible ways of acting within it or making use of the items that surround us. As Terence Cave succinctly puts it:

This means that our perception focuses on action or, vice versa, that the environment and things around us constantly appeal to our sensorimotor system and perceptual apparatus. We move around in a given environment and act automatically with(in) it without pausing to think how we should move our limbs. When we, for example, see somebody opening a can of soda, we immediately understand both, the object and the movement: we know what holding an unopened can full of liquid in our hands feels like and how its surface is smooth and hard; and most of all, we know by instinct what necessary adjustments our fingers have to make in order to open the can. What is not of primary importance in this situation and what we therefore do not think about immediately is the brand of soda or the color of the can.Footnote ¹² (This focus on possible actions also explains why we usually have the impression that our perception is complete even when it is not.)

The focus on action is also the reason why simple bodily movements such as ‘open the can of soda’, ‘stand up’, or ‘sit down’ strongly appeal to our sensorimotor system and are a very effective means to create vividness. As Thor Grünbaum has shown, such verbs resonate within our perceptual apparatus whereas verbs that summarize action or give very detailed descriptions of movements do not create the same effect.Footnote ¹³ As Jonas Grethlein and Luuk Huitink put it: ‘the relevant verb phrases [i.e. here: of simple bodily movements] indicate schematically the various elements of the experience of agency as posited by the enactivist account, which relates pragmatic intentionality, bodily movement and perception to each other in systematic and unifying ways; we know what it is like to enter a room or pull up blinds in terms of the bodily poses and the change in visual input which comes with such actions, because it is at the level of such actions that we ourselves perceptually-enactively experience the world and know others to experience it’.Footnote ¹⁴

These insights have proven fruitful in the analysis and interpretation of literature.Footnote ¹⁵ After all, our perceptual structures are constantly at work without us necessarily noticing it. This is also the case in literary works of art because evoking the experience of agency in language follows the same patterns of perception we use everywhere else, i.e., perceptions and imagination, as neuroscientific studies suggest, both use the same neuronal structures in the human brain.Footnote ¹⁶ As a consequence, our perceptual structures can be easily exploited in literature, which contributes enormously to the immediate comprehensibility of a text: appeals to our sensorimotor system create ‘an imaginative experience of perception’Footnote ¹⁷ and therefore render a text immediately understandable and imaginable.Footnote ¹⁸ After all, such appeals to the sensorimotor system do not require much reflection and hence do not have a strong distancing effect when used in a text.Footnote ¹⁹ It is easy to see how literary, especially narrative texts can effectively use these means not only to provide a vivid account of a story but to even create an immersive effect in which a recipient is transported into a fictional world. More descriptive, factual, or, in the case of Vitruvius’ homo bene figuratus, technical texts usually do not aim at such an immersive effect; however, they do, as will be shown, make use of the same strategies to render an abstract idea easily comprehensible.Footnote ²⁰

Measuring the homo bene figuratus

In accordance with the definition of proportion in Vitruvius 3.1.1 (proportio est ratae partis membrorum in omni opere totoque commodulatio, ‘proportion consists in taking a fixed module, in each case, both for the parts of a building and for the whole’), the first part of the description of his homo bene figuratus consists mainly of measurements, individual ratae partes that are to be related to a whole, the omne opus totumque. But on closer inspection, it becomes obvious how the passage goes beyond the mere statement of numbers and acquires a more illustrative force by appealing to the recipient's intimate knowledge of her own body. Instead of listing numbers and only stating proportional relations, the passage makes the proportions and fractions comprehensible or even palpable:Footnote ²¹

Apparently, the most important information given in this passage is the fraction which is placed effectively at the end of each phrase or sentence: one tenth, one eighth, one sixth, one forth (decimae partis, octauae, sextae, quartae), and so on. As each number is not a concrete unit of size but only a fixed part of a whole, a rata pars, its only informational value lies in the relation to that whole.Footnote ²⁴ But the mathematical precision notwithstanding, an abstract number is hard to imagine, least of all vividly (or at least, it is for many people).

What is easier to understand and much more illuminating in the passage are the distances given between specific points on the body. In the description of the face, for example, four measuring points are used to divide it into three parts: from the bottom of the chin to the bottom of the nostrils, from there to the brows and on to the roots of the hair. Each of the three sections, Vitruvius says, is equal in size, one third of the face. Although it is not possible to tell how long the face actually is, the tripartite structure comes easily and clearly to the fore.

This immediate comprehensibility of the passage is brought about by the body schema and the sensorimotor apparatus: after all, we all have a face and can intuitively locate the points mentioned above on our body and face. In addition, the description also has an activating and prompting effect because it uses what Mark Johnson calls an ‘image schema’, a ‘dynamic, recurring pattern of organism-environment interactions’,Footnote ²⁵ that is: a spatial pattern which is based on human perception and experience. Such patterns enable us to ‘define the contours of our world and make it possible for us to make sense of, reason about, and act reliably within this world … [I]mage schemas are precisely these basic structures of sensorimotor experience by which we encounter a world we can understand and act within’.Footnote ²⁶ In Vitruvius’ passage, the schema applied is a ‘source-path-goal-schema’,Footnote ²⁷ which consists of a starting point, a destination point, and the vector between them.

In Vitruvius 3.1.2, the ‘source-path-goal-schema’ is evoked by very unobtrusive means, namely the prepositions used.Footnote ²⁸ They set an initial point (e.g., a mento, ‘from the chin’) and an endpoint (e.g., ad frontem, ‘to the forehead’) and at the same time prompt a directional movement between them (‘from–to’). As a result, the sentences gain an activating aspect because the prepositions sound like an exhortation to measure or retrace the path mentioned, ‘start here, stop there’, even though no explicit imperative is used.Footnote ²⁹ Whenever the schema occurs, we mentally carry out these movements; and since every one of us has a body and knows where, for example, the chin and the top of the forehead are, the points and distances mentioned can be easily retraced on our own faces. The description appeals to the knowledge and bodily experience of the reader—the fact that we know our body ‘inside out’—and thereby makes the distances immediately understandable. That way, the abstract principle of proportion becomes palpable.

A short digression needs to be inserted here. What the text is not explicit about is the matter of perspective. So far, it has been assumed that the distances are perceived ‘from within’ and retraced on the recipient's own body. But it may also be possible to perceive them from an outside position and trace the distances on somebody else's body. The text is not specific about it but seems to allow for changing positions. We may imagine the distance ‘from the wrist of the hand to the tip of the middle finger’ easily because of the daily and familiar experience of looking down at our hands instead of ‘feeling’ the two points mentioned on our own hand; similarly, it may be as likely that one would retrace the distance ‘from the middle of the breast to the crown’ on somebody else's body rather than our own.

This ambiguity is comparable to a similarly ambiguous effect evoked by verbs that denote simple bodily movements. According to Grünbaum, we understand such verbs equally well in two ways: executing them ourselves and watching them being executed by somebody else. Therefore, Grünbaum assumes that the perspective is twofold, too, looking ‘from inside’ (as if we were executing the movement ourselves) and ‘from outside’ (like an onlooker), and cutting across this dichotomy.Footnote ³⁰ The same phenomenon seems to be at work when it comes to the body schema: we may perceive the measure points ‘from inside’, on our own face, but also ‘from outside’, on somebody else's. Vitruvius’ description does not determine the vantage point from which the distances are perceived. (Interestingly, though, the measure points are understood before the question is raised as to how they are understood.)

The openness of choice regarding the perspective helps to effect a smooth transition in the concluding lines of chapter 3.1.2:Footnote ³¹ ‘And by using these, ancient painters and famous sculptors (pictores et statuarii) have attained great and unbounded distinction.’ This is the first time that art is explicitly mentioned in the passage, and yet it seems to confirm an impression that has been silently at work all the time: that the homo bene figuratus is not a living human being but a work of art.

This impression is also enhanced by several other factors. The text is abstract insofar as it portrays a face but not a specific face. Additionally, the range Vitruvius’ description covers reminds one more of a bust than of a complete body: what is actually mentioned are mainly head and chest, with a short remark about hands and feet and a general statement that the theory of commensus also holds true for all other limbs which are, however, omitted—but because of the body schema, the recipients know how and where these limbs need to be placed. It is not astonishing that we readily assume the homo bene figuratus to belong to the realm of art though this is never stated explicitly.

Furthermore, the beginning of the passage, Vitruvius 3.1.2, contributes to (or maybe also primes) the impression of being faced with a work of art: corpus hominis ita natura composuit (‘Nature has so put together the human body’). The personification natura along with the simple bodily movement of composuit, ‘put together’,Footnote ³² evokes the notion of someone standing somewhere and assembling items of a manageable sizeFootnote ³³ that are laid out before themselves (even though the exact position within their environment is not clear and does not have to be made explicit to be immediately comprehensible).Footnote ³⁴ It thus subliminally supports the idea of an artist or sculptor working on a bust or statue rather than the more abstract idea of nature as the principle of creation that brings forth a living and breathing human body.

As we have seen so far, the text uses very effective but rather unobtrusive means to make this abstract principle of proportion understandable: it appeals to the familiar notion of having a body and also conveys the procedure of composition implicitly by prompting the reader to put the ratae partes together.

A Palm-sized Man

The second part of the description of the homo bene figuratus and also of the illustration of proportion in Vitruvius 3.1.3 consists of the appropriate measure between the single constituents and the whole. Here too, the enactive mind and appeals to the sensorimotor system play a crucial role in conveying proportion and making an abstract principle comprehensible. Most impressive in this regard is the following sentence:

The position of the man lying on his back is immediately understandable because everybody knows what it feels like to lie on the floor with one's arms and legs stretched out. This example shows impressively how much information the reader infers silently exactly because of the intimacy with body and position: the floor is not mentioned explicitly here,Footnote ³⁶ and, besides, it is not at all clear whether the man's hands are stretched out sideways or above the head or in whichever angle else they are to be imagined.Footnote ³⁷ Nevertheless, the body's position is probably understood without any effort (even before we start thinking about the exact angle at which arms and legs must be).

A second element greatly enhances the easy comprehensibility of the scene: the use of the compasses. Again, we know from experience what compasses feel like, how they are shaped, what it feels like to hold them in our hands, and how we have to move our fingers to inscribe a circle with such an instrument.Footnote ³⁸ The phrase centrum circini conlocatum activates the knowledge of what the spike of a pair of compasses feels like and how it must be placed (conlocare) on a surface—no more details are needed to improve the understanding. The movement of drawing is itself expressed in the ablative circumagendo, another verb that denotes a simple bodily motion,Footnote ³⁹ prompting the knowledge of what ‘turning a pair of compasses around in a circle’ feels like when it is being executed. Additionally, the somewhat redundant accusative object rotundationem captures the most apparent and haptic aspect of the circle, namely its roundness. ‘Turning around the bent line of the circumference’ appeals to the sensorimotor system and elicits the knowledge of how to execute this movement with a compass.

As in Vitruvius 3.1.2, this is a compelling example for a scene which the recipient immediately understands because of the responses the text elicits in her sensorimotor system. This effect is even greater if we take into account that what is described here cannot be performed in reality. There is no compass in the world big enough to draw a circle around a grown-up man—and even if it were, it would be impossible to actually put such a tool to use. As McEwen puts it: ‘Who, if anyone, is to hold the compass in this hypothetical situation … Vitruvius does not say’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The pair of compasses, their material, design, size, and most of all the way it is handled produce another, quite astonishing effect: they reduce the man lying on his back to a size at which the compasses function. It is as if we could take the man in our hand just because we can operate the compass with our hands; and the three-dimensional life-sized man suddenly turns into a two-dimensional small figure that can be encircled effortlessly.Footnote ⁴¹ (As in the preceding section of the passage, the description seems to subliminally turn the human body into an image or a representation—here a drawing instead of a bust or statue, thus indicating how the principles of art must be the same as the principles of nature.Footnote ⁴²) A single simple bodily movement, the drawing of a circle, easily conveys the abstract principle that all proportional constituents must be related to the whole.