The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [20]
About that time, I began to take renewed interest in Henri Boulan’s Le Visage, which I mentioned before. Previously, I had the impression that his plausible analysis smacked rather of the scholar’s habit of classification, and I, driven by purely concrete motives, was plagued by the irritating question of just what use such explanations could be. However, when I came down to the manual task of fashioning the face, I discovered more in Boulan than classifications. There seemed to be quite a difference between the map of a country one knew and that of some unknown foreign land.
The following is a general summary of Boulan’s classification:
First, trace a large circle, using the nose as the center, and making the radius the distance between the nose and the tip of the chin. Next, on the same center make a small circle, taking as radius the distance between the nose and the lips. There are two types of face, depending on the relationship between these two circles: concave and convex. Further, one may obtain a total of four basic facial types by differentiating between bony and fatty types of each:
Concave type, bony: strong projection of the flesh in forehead, cheeks, and chin.
Concave type, fatty: slight swelling of the fatty tissue in forehead, cheeks, and chin.
Convex type, bony: sharply pointed face, centering around the nose.
Convex type, fatty: slight frontal projection, centering around the nose.
Of course, these do not cover all facial types. The four basic types may be further ramified into any number of secondary types, depending on a synthesis of contradictory factors, on sectional emphasis, or on the shading of details. However, as far as I was concerned, there was no need to trouble myself with such subtleties. Since I would build up the tissue from the bottom, layer on layer, things could not be expected to go according to calculation. As long as I did not forget the base itself, I could well let the rest take whatever course it would.
A Jungian analysis of the four basic facial types would suggest that the first two types are introversial, and the second two are extroversial. Also, numbers one and three tend to be antagonistic to the outside world, while numbers two and four tend to be conciliatory. It is possible to make up a personality combining the two odds and the two evens.
Even more order is brought to the problem if you link to this method of classification Boulan’s ideas in Les Eléments de l’expression, a work that shows quantitatively the respective influences exerted on expression by over thirty muscles controlling nineteen areas of movement by order of their degree of mobility. The method of calculation is also interesting. By continuously photographing, from about 1,200 models, expressions ranging from laughter to perplexity, and dividing them up with contour lines as in a map, Boulan seems to have obtained the mean value of the function of the various points of movement. His conclusions may be summarized thus: The density of expressive factors is greatest in the triangular area extending from the nostrils to the sides of the lips, gradually lessening around the eyes and the central forehead, which is the least dense area of all. In short, the faculty of expression is concentrated in the lower part of the face, more precisely in the area around the lips.
The distribution of factors by area is furthermore influened and modified by the state of the subcutaneous tissues. The density of factors decreases in proportion to the thickness of these tissues. But sparseness of factors doesn’t necessarily mean lack of expression. There is sometimes no expression even when the density is great, and there are frequent instances of expression where the density is low. In short, lack of expression exists with both high and low density of factors.
EXCURSUS: Shall I try applying Boulan’s law of classification to our faces