18                            Peppino G. Mangravite

ing may ha\'e been slower, more cumbersome than under the
present progressive methods, but we learned to read and grew
up with a genuine desire to read. It was not unusual then to read
Dante's Divine Comedy at sixteen or seventeen. Would I could
write of the living pictures and dramatic compositions which the
poetry of Dante exoked in my mind! Those mental pictures were
real to me; they had individual character, they were the result of
Dante's visions interpreted by my imagination. It was some years
later when 1 saw for the first time Dore's literal illustrations of the
Divine Comedy reproduced alongside the literary equivalent—
the poetical visions of Dante converted and reduced to a banal
and miniscule scale—that I realized how futile it is to overlap word
language with graphic or pictorial illustrations. Ever since, I have
avoided books for adults with pictures that o\-erlap words.

Most illustrations for the Divine Comedy by great artists,
though designed to interpret the narrative in visual terms, were
not intended to distract the reader's interest from the text—an
interest which is apt to be weakened by the eye's instantaneous
comprehension of picture reproduction alongside it. \\'riting,
drawing, and painting are separate languages, and most fine artists
realize this. I myself was lucky enough to have learned it at an
early age. As Aldous Huxly puts it: "i\Iusic can say four or five
different things at the same time, and can sa\' them in such a way
that different things will combine into one thing. . . . Painting too
can exhibit the simultaneity of incompatabilities—serene com¬
position alongside agonized brush work. . . . We can see more
than one thing at a time, and we can hear more than one thing at
a time. But unfortunately we cannot read more than one thing
at a time." Literature cannot be perceived :is significant form at a
glance as drawing and painting can. It is a known fact that the
average reader, accustomed to reading illustrated books, often
skips that part of the literary text paraphrased by visual illustra¬
tions. For aesthetic enjoyment, the poet's visions and the artist's
interpretations of them should be read apart, in spite of their
historic kinship.