Aaron Hill
"How an Actor is to express Wonder.
DEFINITION.
Wonder, is inquisitive Fear.
It is an ebb of spirits, rushing back upon the heart ; but leaving an alarm upon the muscles, that invigorates them toward defense and opposition : No actor can imitate this Passion with its natural propriety and force, without dividing its idea, into the following two degrees of distinction :
THE first degree is Amazement - - - the second is Astonishment.
IN Amazement, the conception catching alarm from the image of something strangely, or unnaturally terrible, the nerves upon a start of apprehension brace, at once, into an involuntary rigor of intenseness - - - under a defensive disposition of the Will —- that wou’d resist, and repel, the object.
BUT, in Astonishment (…) almost stagnates the vital progression : and arresting the breath, eyes, gesture, and every power and faculty of the body, occasions an interruption of their several uses, that wou’d bring on an actual cessation — but, that the reason, struggling slowly to relieve the apprehension, gives a kind of hesitate articulation to the utterance, and gradual motion and recovery to the Look, the Limbs, and the Countenance."1
Charles Le Brun
"As we have said that Wonder is the first and most temperate of all the passions, in which the heart feels the least disturbance, so the face also undergoes very little change in any part. If there is any change, it is only in the raising of the eyebrow, but two ends of it will remain level; the eye will be a little more open than usual, and the pupil will be situated equidistant from the two eyelids, and immobile, fixed on the object which causes the wonder. The mouth will also be slightly open, but it will appear otherwise unchanged, as will the rest of the face. This passion produces a suspension of movement only to give time to the soul to deliberate on what it should do, and to consider the object before it attentively, for if it be rare and extraordinary, out of this first simple movement will come Esteem."2
"ah! Much I fear
The inevitable time assigned by fate"
This is the repetition of the phrase that earlier was connected to Fear.
Walter Charleton
I found nothing by Walter Charleton on Wonder, only Hope:
"Art. 32,
The Motions of the Soul and Spirits in Hope
In Hope therefore (which we defined to be a gentle and sweet Effusion or Expansion of the Soul towards some good expected to come) if we have possessed with an opinion, that the thing desired will shortly come to pass ; I conceive that presently the Animal Spirits, which before were imployed as Emissaries, to contemplate the image of the object, returning toward the Soul, give notice of the approach of the guest expected : and that thereupon the whole Soul composing her self by expansion to receive and welcome the same, sets open all the doors of the Senses to admit more freely all the good belonging thereunto ; retains the imagination fixt and intent upon the grateful idea thereof ; and by copious supplies of spirits dispatched into the nerves of the Heart, so invigorates and quickens the pulse thereof, that thereby the blood is more briskly sent forth into the outward parts of the body, as it were to meet the expected thing. Whence it is, that when we are full of Hope, we feel a certain inflation both within and without in our whole body, together with a glowing but pleasant heat, from the blood and spirits universally diffused."3
Charles Le Brun
"When there is an appearance of obtaining the good which we desire, that excites Hope in us.
Now as the movements of this passion are not so much external as internal, we will say little about them, only remarking that this passion keeps all the parts of the body suspended between Fear and Assurance, in such a manner that if one end of the eyebrow expresses Fear, the other expresses Assurance, and so all the parts of the body are divided between mixed movements of these two passions."4
A SHORT REFLECTION ON EMBODYING WONDER AND HOPE
I don't think we are speechless enough in our daily life. When posing Le Brun's illustration, I realized that I hadn't felt a surprise that would manifest in a face like that in a long time. Nevertheless, after having practiced, I experienced an increasing feeling of true amazement. The process of going from shock, to Astonishment, and then end in Hope, felt physically like being an iceblock, melting, first slowly, then quicker and quicker. As Hope is a feeling I am more familiar with, it was easy to channel, and even connect with the not-so-familiar facial expression proposed by Le Brun. The heat that Charleton describes in Hope, was certainly something that I experienced when the inner images became clear.
Transferring Wonder and Hope to song, being two passions that indicates slow movements, was not the easiest task. Consequently, the pace went significantly down, from when the same phrase was connected to Fear, and even with Melancholy.
Footnotes:
1: Hill 1753, pp. 384-7
2: LeBrun 1698, translated in: Montagu 1994, p. 132
3: Charleton 1701, p. 121-122
4: LeBrun 1698, translated in: Montagu 1994, p. 135
5:Vandenhoff 1846, p. 199