Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry [1 ed.] 0520058623, 9780520058620

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Pastoral

and

Ideology

The

publishergratefully acknowledgesthe generous contribution provided by the Circle of the Associates of the University of California Press, whose

Durector’s

members

AND

VIRGINIA EDMUND

DIANE

VALERIE PENNY

LUCIA

The

AND AND

AND AND

FRANKEL

CHUCK AND

HELZEL

LEO

CHARLES

JOEL ROBERT PAUL

ADLOFF

JR.

CORVELLT, AND

FLORENCE

SANDRA

RICHARD

HOBSON

KATZ

MARSHALL

MATZGER

are

AND

RUTH

DAVID

ELVIRA

AND

HELENE

H.

AVA

ADELLE MRS. MARCIA

BYRON

NISHKIAN

OPPENHEIMER

PISCHEL

JEAN

LYDIA

MELLINKOFF

AND AND

PAUL

MARTIN

TITCOMB

ERWIN

TOMASH

WATTIS

WEISMAN

publisher also gratefully acknowledgesthe assistance of the J. Trust in the publication of this book.

Paul

Getty

Pastoral

and

Ideology Virgil to Valéry ANNABEL

PATTERSON

S

University

of California

Press

Published

the assistance

with

the J. Paul

Getty

of

Trust

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California © 1987

The

Library

Regents

of

by University

of the

of California

Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Annabel

Patterson, Pastoral

and

Includes 1. Virgil. 3. interpretation—History.

PA6804.B7P38 ISBN Printed

Bucolica.

Pastoral

ideology. index.

2. Virgil—Criticism literature—History and

1987

809'.93321734

0—520—05862-3 in the United

123456789

Data

M.

(alk. paper) States

of America

and

criticism.

86—24970

I. Title.

Thus

one

ts for

Charles, and Ins future

It’s

a

free country, they say. Daniel

Berrigan

Contents

ofIllustrations Acknowledgments List

XIII

Introduction

MEDIEVALISM::

Hermeneutic

Imitation as Interpretation Metaphors of Patronage Realm of Thoughts

19

42

the Shade”: in the

Ruins

OF

VERSIONS The

the Servian

Pastorals:

Petrarch’s “In

and

Petrarch

Commentary

Virgil for Sebastian

Reopening

versus

“Making

Them

and

Pastoral

Charles Oliver

92 106 133

Georgic:

His Own”:

of

Politics

The

The

Politics

Virgilian Quotation

133

of Translation

163

THE 193

CHAMPETRE

Philips:

Pastorals

and Social

Protest

206 214

and

214 219 224 228

at

War

Voltaire André

62

Marot

Spenser

NEOCLASSICISMAND Pope

Clément

PUBLIC

GOING

FETE

and Politian

Landino

Cabinet:

the Green

60

62

Virgilian Eschatology Brant: Illustration as Exegesis

and Edmund

Pastoral

HUMANISM

Tradition

the Medicis:

and

Vives

RENAISSANCE

57

Chénier Churchill Goldsmith

George

Crabbe Vi

vill

Contents

Images of

Belief:

Desfontaines

Illustrated

Editions

and the “Discours

234

and Translations

235 238

de Ruelle”

John Martyn and the Eye of Science The

Didot

Thornton

Virgil: Representations and Blake:

Reformist

POST-ROMANTICISM:

of Counter-Revolution

Text

and

WORDSWORTH

VALERY

André The

Paul

Index

Hard

Palmer’s Gide

“A Book

for

Cranach

Image

242

252

TO 263

Wordsworth’s Samuel

Radical

Pastoral

Virgil con

Amore

and Fin de Siécle

Kings, Press

Students

Pastoral or

Whores”:

Eclogues

Valéry and the French

Fine

269 284 303

Book

306 316

333

Illustrations

PLATES

Following I. Simone

3.

178

Petrarch’s

Martini, frontispiece to Biblioteca

2.

page

Ambrosiana,

Virgil, Caspar David Friedrich, Apollonio di Giovanni,

“The “The

manuscript

Milan, codex

of

inf.

A.49.

Solitary Tree.” Eclogues,” Riccardiana

ms.

492, fol. Ir. Codex

Latinus

Vaticanus

4.

Vergilius Romanus, “Eclogue 1,” fol. Lr.

5.

de Jacques Villon, “Melibocus,” from Les Bucoligques gile, trans. Paul Valéry (Paris, 1953), p. 2.

6.

Jacques Villon, “Tityrus,” from trans. Paul Valéry (Paris, 1953),

Les

3867, Vir-

Bucoliquesde Virgile,

p. 3.

FIGURES

Fig.

1. Claude

Grove

Mellan, portrait of James Howell, from

Riccardiana

Fig. 4.

The Medici tions

54

(London, 1650)

Fyg. 2. Funeral medal for Oliver Fig. 3. Apollonio di Giovanni, in

Palace

Pactianae

Cromwell “The

Siege

99 of Priam’s

.

.

.

Palace,” 70

492

ms.

Dodona’s

1478, from Angelo Politiani ConjuraCommentarium, Documentis, Figurts,

Notis, ed. Joannis Adimari

(Naples, 1769) 1x

71

Illustrations

x

Fig. 5. Virgil, Opera (Venice:

Bernadino

de

Portesio,

1510), 80

frontispiece Fy.

6. Sebastian

Brant, “Eclogue 1,” from Virgil, Opera (Stras95

bourg, 1502)

Judgement of Paris,” from Virgil, 97 Opera (Strasbourg, 1502) Apollonio di Giovanni, “The Judgement of Paris,” Ric-

Fy.

7. Sebastian

Fy.

8.

cardiana

Fyg. 9. Fig. Fig.

10.

11.

Brant, “The

ms.

98

492

Feasting Aeneas,” from Virgil, 99 Opera (Strasbourg, 1502) Apollonio di Giovanni, “Dido Feasting Aeneas,” RiccarSebastian

Brant, “Dido

diana

492

ms.

100

Crispin Passaeus, “Eclogues 1, 2, 3,” from Compendium 101 Virgilianorum (Utrecht, 1612) Sebastian Brant, “Eclogue 2,” from Virgil, Opera (Stras103 1502) bourg, 105 Aert Ortkens, “Virgil, Eclogue 2,” ink drawing 124 “Eclogue 1,” from Virgil, Oeuvres (Paris, 1540) Edmund Spenser, “January,” The Shepheardes Calender operum

Fy.

12.

Fy. 13. Fy. 14. Fyg. 15.

125

(London, 1579)

Fyg. 16. Fy.

Edmund

Spenser, “February,” (London, 1579)

17. William

Otia

Fy. Fig.

sacra

Marshall, second

Shepheardes Calender 125

frontispiece to Mildmay

Cleyn, “Eclogue 1,” from John Ogilby (London, 1654) Franz Cleyn, “Eclogue 5,” from John Ogilby (London, 1654)

Fane’s

161

(London, 1648)

18. Franz

19.

The

The Works

of Virgil, trans. 174

The Works

of Virgil, trans. 176

Fig. 20. F(ranz) C(leyn), “Eclogues 1 and 2,” from Les Oeuvres de 183 Virgile,trans. Michel de Marolles (Paris, 1649) Fy. 21. F(ranz) C(leyn), “Eclogues 5 and 6,” from Les Oeuvres de 184 Virgile, trans. Michel de Marolles (Paris, 1649) Fig. 22. C. N. Cochin, “The Eclogues,” from Oeuvres de Virgile, 236 trans. Pierre Francois Guyot (Paris, 1743) 23. from The “Quercus robur, Eclogue 1,” Fig. Ecloguesof Virgil, trans. 241 John Martyn (London, 1813) Fy.

24.

Jacques-Louis David,

“Aeneid

II,” from

Publi

Virgil

Xl

Illustrations

Maronis

Fyg. 25.

Bucolica, Georgica,

Aenets, ed. Pierre

et

(Paris, 1798) Francois Gérard, “Eclogue 1,” from nis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeness, ed.

Didot 246

Publi Pierre

Virgilu MaroDidot (Paris, 248

1798) Fy.

26.

Francois Gérard, “Eclogue 5,” from mis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aenets, ed.

Publi Pierre

Virgilu MaroDidot (Paris, 249

1798) Fyg. 27. Jacques-Louis David, “Eclogue 6,” from Maronts Bucolica, Georgia, et Aenets, ed. (Paris, 1798) Fyg. 28.

William

Blake,

“Imitation

of

Eclogue I,”

Publi

Virgilu

Pierre

Didot

250 from

The Pas-

torals

of Virgil... Adaptedfor Schools,ed. Robert J. Thorn256 (London, 1821) of Eclogue I, frontispiece,” William Blake, “Imitation from The Pastorals of Virgil Adapted for Schools, ed. Robert Thornton 258 J. (London, 1821) ton

Fig. 29.

.

Fig.

30. William

torals ton

Fig. 31.

ton

Fig.

33.

Fig. 34. Fig. 35.

Fyg. 36.

“Imitation

of

of Virgil Adapted for (London, 1821) ...

.

Eclogue I,”

from

Schools, ed. Robert

The Pas-

J. Thorn260

of Eclogue I,” from The PasBlake, “Imitation of Virgil... Adapted for Schools,ed. Robert J. Thorn261 (London, 1821)

William torals

Fig. 32.

Blake,

.

Portrait

of Samuel

Samuel

Palmer:

Palmer, reproduced from Carlos Peacock, and After (London, 1968) 288

Samuel

Palmer, “Eclogue 8: Opening the Fold,” from The

Shoreham

Ecloguesof Virgil:An English Verston (London, 1883) 299 Samuel Palmer, “Eclogue 5,” from The Ecloguesof Virgil: An English Verston (London, 1883) 300 from The Ecloguesof Virgil: Samuel Palmer, “Eclogue 1,” An English Version (London, 1883) 301 Aristide

Maillol,

Thomas

Achelis

“Eclogue 1,” and

Alfred

Koerte

from

Eclogae, trans. (Weimar: Cranach 313

Press, 1926)

Fig.

37. Aristide

Thomas

Maillol, Achelis

“Eclogue 6,” and

Alfred

Koerte

from

Eclogae, trans. (Weimar: Cranach 314

Press, 1926)

Fyg. 38.

Aristide

Maillol,

“Eclogue 9,”

from

Eclogae,

trans.

Xl

Illustrations

Thomas

Achelis

and

Alfred

Koerte

(Weimar:

Press, 1926)

Fig. 39.

Aristide Thomas

Maillol, Achelis

Press, 1926)

Fy.

40.

Sebastian

“Eclogue 5,” and

Alfred

Koerte

Cranach 315

from

Eclogae, trans. (Weimar: Cranach 316

Brant, “Eclogue 5,” from Virgil, Opera (Stras-

bourg, 1502)

317

Acknowledgments

This

that

ways, tion. First

has

been so generously supported by so many, in to claim my authorship is, if not a fiction, certainly a and foremost, the uninterrupted time to grapple it all

project

so

many

conven-

together provided by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Senior Fellowship at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, and a General Research Board Leave Fellowship from the University of Maryland. Second, I am of rare books and special collections at particularly indebted to the curators at at the British at the of Cornell, Princeton, Library, Library Congress where the Rosenwald Collection of illustrated Virgilsis housed, at the Bibliothéque Nationale, and above all at the Folger Shakespeare Library, whose staff have been unfailingly and extraordinarily supportive. And the third, (for which separate acknowledgments quality of the illustrations will be made hereafter) is due in part to generous subsidies by the J. Paul Getty Trust and Duke University, and in part to the University of California Press, which committed itself to making a beautiful book. But beyond these institutional benevolences, whose value no formal acknowledgment can intimate, this book has been especially blessed by individuals—colleagues and friends who have given me their time, their interest, a reference, a warning, a leg up. Whole long chapters were read by Paul Alpers, Jonathan Arac, Sacvan Berkovitch, Stuart Curran, Leopold Damrosch, Charles Dempsey, William Frost, Robert Gleckner, Anthony Grafton, Wallace Jackson, Stanley Stewart, and Joseph Wittreich, and were accordingly enriched or chastened. Virginia Brown went considerably out of her way to proffer her vast knowledge of early editions of Virgil, and on David Wright gave me, in effect, a private tutorial the manuscript trame about dition in antiquity. Alan Cameron Servius, Vincent taught to Peter the illustrations Carretta about Van Egmond Pastorals, Pope’s her work Levinson shared about Frost’s “political pastoral.” Marjorie

was

XII

XIV

Acknowledgments Wordsworth

George Pigman his personal Virgil archive; Ahl, David Erdman, John Fyler, Frederick Garber, and William Klein all, though they may not all remember it, own a piece of the stock. the selflessness came three ultimate from wonderful research asPerhaps Linda Elizabeth and Rebecca sistants, Meriens, Carmichael, Spracklen, who claimed they enjoyed what they were doing. It has been, in truth, a collaborative enterprise. Finally, I am grateful to the editors of English Literary Renassance, Harvard English Studts, the Huntington Library Quarterly, and Criticism for permission to reprint the sections of this work that have already apin their journals. peared on

Frederick

with

me,

Introduction

More

than

rolled

a

thousand

two

of poems

“book”

Tityre,

patulae

tu

silvestrem

tenui

sub

recubans

musam

privileged Roman readers following greeting:

years ago, certain and encountered

un-

the

tegmine fagi

meditaris

avena;

patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arva. nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas.' nos

You, Tityrus, reclining under meditate

pastoral poetics of

borders

our

country

and

fatherland; you, Tityrus, echo

the

name

of fair

on

the

spreading shelter slender pipe; we

your its sweet

relaxed

fields.

in the

We

are

shade, teach

of the are

in

beech,

leaving the flight from our

the woods

to

Amaryllis.*

been echoing ever since; not, I would argue, because but because readers those Roman faced, memorability, graceful audible. in these first five lines, a challenge that has remained even intensely in this apparently translucent Almost every word opening is overdeterin every generamined, making demands on interpretation that translators

These

lines

have

of their

'The Latin text cited throughout is that of R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), as modiby Paul Alpers, The Singer of the Eclogues:A Study of Virgilian Pastoral (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1979). Readers unfamiliar with Virgil may find the subject easiest of approach through Alpers’s attractive and useful volume, with its text facing a “new” verse translation, and a commentary highly sensitive to differences of opinion. from the Eclogues and other non-English *Unless otherwise specified, all translations

fied

texts

are

my

own.

2

and

Pastoral

tion

have

who

follow

wrestled

exigencies chiastic

with are

to

the dissatisfaction

of their

the

structure,

with, only

wrestlings relationships “tu.

Ideology

Among

own.

between

of the the

most

new

translators

pressing

textual

in their the pronouns, so insistent of the those Greek tu”; presence

..nos...nos..

.

Amaryllis, which invite speculation into Virgil’s recall the full meaning of resonare, echo; and the quesmusam tion of how to translate silvestrem meditaris, which permits a than its more cerebral response equally permissible alternative, “practice music.” Neither woodland option, however, is innocent. Each carries with it a rival theory of pastoral. All these issues will be explored, directly or indirectly, in the chapters that follow, but it is the first, the relationship between “tu” and “nos,” that most this book’s concerns. Modern economically represents thought has of the pronoun, done much for the status and particularly for the Latinate “ego,” with its privileged status in the various disciplines that seek to define (or to erase) subjectivity. “Est ‘ego’ qui dit ‘ego,” writes, for example, Emile Benveniste, developing an argument for the linguistic expression both of subjectivity and of its essentially dialogic nature.* But Virgil, who in his opening statement also begins with dialogue, indicates the limitaon tions of a discourse centered the first person singular. The relational of the first eclogue is not between the ego and its audience structure but between “tu” and “nos,” a plural that immediately confronts the reader with a choice of identifications. If J is normally the index of subjectivity, and you the audience who permits its expression, we is the sign of comcommunicative munity, of some common ground. But here, as Virgil insists by his contrastive of the the we represented by positioning pronouns, Melibocus must exclude the you represented by Tityrus. And every other aspect of those first five lines explains and passionately justifies that exclusion. While the selfhood of Tityrus ts associated with reflection (meditaris), with echoes, with song, with literary allusion, and especially with leisure and protection, the community to which Meliboeus belongs is connected to (at the moment of its severance the most value-laden word from) in Roman the the of national culture, patria, subsuming concepts origin, identity, and home. To which of these sets of values should Virgil’s readers (by definition here, readers of poetry) be expected to affiliate themselves? As the dialogue continues, the ethical indeterminacy posited in its lines increases. learn We that the community at risk, for steadily opening whom Melibocus claims to speak, does not “flee” the land of their fathers voluntarily, but rather that they have been expelled by an apparently unjust military force: names,

of

Tityrus

Theocritus,

and

and hence

.

*Emuile

Benveniste, Problémes

de

.

.

linguistiquegénérale (Paris, 1966),

p. 260.

Introduction

impius haec

culta

tam

has segetes. his miseros:

barbarus

produxit

3

miles

novalia

habebit,

discordia

en

cives

quo consevimus

nos

agros! (lines 70—72)

grounds? A possess these well-tilled possess these crops? See where fighting has brought our fields! we See for whom have sown countrymen.

Shall the

impious soldier

barbarian miserable

our

developed in the ninth eclogue, the ground was laid for early recognition that Virgilian pastoral cirreferred to something other than itself, and specificallyto the historical belast of the civil war in which it was cumstances phases produced—the Brutus and Cassius, representing the old republic, and Antony and tween lines, especially as their implications were

In these

Octavian, agents and

of Caesarian

heirs

centrism.

words

Here, too,

that

already saturated with value competed with each other, in apparently oxymoronic proximity to miles (member of of a disciplined armed force), discordia undoing the corporate semantics of years of scholarly quarreling as to how much of recent cives. Thousands Roman history was here embedded, and why it matters, have not resolved had

culture

Roman

impius and barbarus

tensions

the

may suppose, The status read

we

the

exchange of do

teners to

attend

that

tunate

social

function,

we

normally go unexamined. Tityrus also becomes increasingly problematic. However dialogue, it speaks dramatically of the barriers that inhibit the of

values

or

listen. the

LisQuestions go unanswered. have felt, Tityrus fails

of information.

even

Especially, many

commentators

obvious, if indirect, appeals for

he misses

his

sympathy and

responsibilities of the fortunate

is he of the

So oblivious

whose

to

was

not

to

words

established—between

here

the ethical

of Meliboeus’s

force

toward

pronouns,

concern.

the unfor-

declaring,

the contrary, that “deus nobis hacc otia fecit” of pro(“a god gives us this leisure”). The ambiguity of deus as the source tected leisure and the continued enjoyment of one’s patrimony 1s intensified of all evidence

in defiance

to

opening of the sixth eclogue, where, in eight lines full of allusions to opening of the first, Virgil attaches the speaking ego to himself; ellipa for writing pastoral at such a time; names god, tically suggests his reasons as and identifies himself as his somewhat Tityrus: playful superego; Apollo, at

the

the

Prima

Syracosia dignata

nostra cum

vellit

neque canerem

et

pascere nunc

reges admonuit:

est

ludere

silvas habitare

erubuit

versu

Thalea.

proelia, Cynthius aurem “pastorem, Tityre, pinguis et

oportet ovis, deductum ego (namque super tibi

dicere erunt

carmen.”

qui

dicere

laudes,

4

Pastoral

Vare,

iniussa

the

From

Sicilian

et

tristia

meditabor

tenui

agrestem non

cupiant

tuas

and

condere

Ideology

bella)

harundine

Musam.

cano.

beginning

verse,

our

Thalea

did she blush

nor

deigned to

to

inhabit

amuse

herself

the woods.

with

When

I would

“A me: battles, Apollo my sing kings feed fat to a slender to song.” sheep, sing shepherd, Tityrus, ought Now I (for there will be plenty who wish to sing your praises, Varus, and to celebrate melancholy wars) will meditate the country Muse on I do not sing unbidden. narrow reed. my

of

tweaked

and

ear

and warned

to the character of the protégé whose opening dialogue had exposed; the Tityrus of the first be recognized retrospectively as one aspect of the authorial poem must or however and his externally transcendentally authopastoral project, ego, from the his as exclusiveness, his difference rized, supported precisely by civic “we” who are dispossessed. We may recognize these maneuvers, pronominal and nominal play, as deone of the earliest analyses we have of the problematic author-function fined by Michel Foucault, but operating here, manifestly, to thicken rather

So, astonishingly, Virgil lays claim

limitations

than

the

to

the

erase

the

historical

which

presence

of

a

writer.

The

very

deviousness

of

Ecloguesinvites

our

in Language, Counter-Memory,Practice, N.Y., 1977), pp. 124-25.

trans.

in the

represented authorship—questions about how an artist survives in what are his obligations: to his fellowcitizens, to his patrons, to himself. Especially in Eclogue 6, we can see the notion of a link between to Virgil of Foucault’s relevance authorship as a and a state or convention authority.* The naming of controlling strategy, one actual Roman patron, Varus, supports the inference that the god who And by throwing the media, here and in Eclogue 1, is Octavian. controls of his own voice throughinto structural and linguistic question the location how a writer can protect out the ten poems, Virgil effectively demonstrated himself by dismemberment, how he can best assert his ownership of the text by a wickedly shifting authorial presence. Servius was the first to obfunctions and someserve that Tityrus sometimes as an authorial persona times merely as the name of a Greek shepherd. The sign “Menalcas” behaves in the same of different charattached to unsettling way, being singers very in Eclogues 3 and 5, and in Eclogue 9 denoting the master acter singer (again, perhaps, Virgil) whose significance in this poem is marked by his physical absence from it, his songs recorded only in fragments, those fragploys by forming the most

“persons” questions society and

are

basic

about

*Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, Bouchard Donald

Introduction

5

carefully balanced between echoes Roman history. Menalcas, then, is with his own cultural ambitions: mentariy in the Roman historical context, pastoral

of Theocritus

ments

recent

in the lament be

can

managed,

Menalcas’s

that

or

from

absence

deconstructive

and

Rome

the ninth

of

Desine

plura,

carmina

No

comes,

let

then

its

The of

Virgil to

and

allusions

leaders

(expressed also that

the fusion

deserve

the

not

mo-

the Greek

reinvent

memory)

to

invest

to

disabling poem speaks of doubt pragmatism:

it. But

absence and

of

a

voca-

agamus;

ipse, canemus.

do what

us

we

and

his doubts

current

instat

nunc

venerit

cum

singing, boy;

more

he himself

The

quod

et

puer,

melius,

tum

and

eclogue is

theory language. anxiety, but it ends on a note

tional

his desire

for his loss of voice

of Moeris

for

name

a

will

sing

needs

better

be done

to

now;

when

songs.

between

doing and singing at the end of the ninth eclogue retains, therefore, possibility that singing is doing. It alerts us to the woven argument through the Eclogues as to whether poetry has a social contrast

the

function,

and

if so, where

it

rates

the scale of social

on

usefulness.

end

of the argument stand the lovelorn, idle Corydon of his counterpart Gallus in Eclogue 10, the former defined

quality, formosus, the lovely one, and aesthetic properties count

At

one

2 and

Eclogue by his opening

belonging to a pastoral in which formal for almost everything, provided the mirror of art does not lie, “si numquam fallit ago.” Yet even this poem, with its reduction of ottum to solipsism, ends with the self-injunction to “at least do something useful,” and so points against itself to the limited instrumenis Moeris’s tality of Eclogue 9, whose saddest moment complaint that pohas not worked to its etry protect singers from a hostile environment: as

carmina

valent, Lycida,

nostra

Chaonias

dicunt

tantum

tela inter

aquila

Martia

veniente

quantum

columbas.

(lines 11—13) Our

songs,

saying goes, These own

the serves

lines

would

the Chaonian

later

to

accentuate

their

Virgil’s pastoral theory.

about

doves

become

they point Eclogues;that the tight context

to

worth

Lycidas, are

when

a

trope

the other

most

as

much

the

in wartime

eagle

of humanist

as,

so

the

comes.

discourse.

In

their

obviously provocative aspect of between them only the doubts at the heart of generic disparities,

network

of cross-references

6

Pastoral

Critics

from

Servius

onward

and

Ideology

have tried

for the

striking varidealing oppositions serious/light, high/ or low, idyllic/ironic, Theocritean/Roman, “forward-looking, peaceful, con“neoteric, ambiguous, or polemic.”*® ciliatory, and patriotic” versus Virgil himself invited such activity by his cryptic suggestion, at the opening of and Eclogue 4, that the pastoral could have both gradations of seriousness to a Jittle more relevance: he there sing grandly (“paulo political proposed maiora canamus”), producing a silvan song worthy of a consul’s attention (“silvae sint consule dignae”). But, as the history of his reception shows, he absolutely prevented any neat decisions as to how the eclogues might be order. To in recognize Eclogues 2, 3, 7, and 8 as rearranged preferential while modeled on Theocritus, directly Eclogues 1, 4, 5, 9, and 10 require a Roman perspective, is not to determine their relative value, a question that would not only be hotly debated ever after but that would bring to the ations

in

and range,

tone

in

surface, for all later readers, their early Christian readers, the series

to

account

such

as

ideological requirements. For some only worthy of preservation for the sake of the messianic fourth eclogue; for others, Virgil’s higher mood exin the sixth eclogue and to the of creation also to Silenus’s account tended for Daphnis in the fifth; while for others, all complexity, whether lament political or philosophical, was hopelessly out of place in pastoral, and only All such imitation. the Theocritean songs of love or lovely grief deserved of their authors’ cultural premises—were set revealing decisions—revealing that in motion the structure dialectical Virgil bequeathed to us, an anby cient poetics no less elliptical than those of Plato and Aristotle, and one that

has

been,

I would

own

was

argue, at least that follow, more

as

influential.

be said about the metapoetic chapters the insofar that of as was addressed Eclogues, by self-theorizing aspect But will not be another book later readers. this describing or debatVirgil’s or origins, whether literary or historical, of ing the meaning, structure, that has been remarkably fertile in the second a kind of criticism text, Virgil’s or I do not wish to augment half of the twentieth century. challenge the Eleanor Winsor such as Paul Alpers, Friedrich work of scholars Klingner, and Bruno Brooks Michael Charles Putnam, Snell, to Otis, Leach, Segal, distinctive those who have developed perhaps the most name positions on the Eclogues.°Rather, I wish to shift the focus of inquiry to Virgil’s readers, In the

will

or

‘Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964), p. 130. See Alpers, Singer of the Eclogues; Friedrich Klingner, “Die Einheit des

Vergilischen geschichtliche Welt,” in his Rémusche Gersteswelt (2nd ed. Munich, 1961), pp. 274-311; Klingner, Virgil: Bucolica, Georgica,Aenets (Zurich, 1967); Winsor Eleanor Leach, Vergil’sEclogues: Landscapesof Experience (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974); Otis, Virgil; Michael Putnam, Virgil’sPastoral Art (Princeton, 1970); Charles Segal, Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral (Princeton, 1981); Bruno Snell, The Discoveryof the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, trans. Thomas Rosenmeyer (New York, 1960), pp. 281—310. context of the Eclogues, Leach While Leach, Putnam, and Otis all emphasize the Roman Lebenswerkes”

and

“Virgil und

die

Introduction

from

the

and Octavian

Varus most

phase

recent

pretation.

What

history

will this book

toral—a to

search

in its

text

reception history

over

about

time, and the

larger

and

for

a

of pasattempt to define the nature when the genre began century, strong literary forms to propagate by

another

launch

as early as tendency of

the

miscegenation,

in this remarkable

made

curves

lost

cause

manifest

cism’s

the

from

it is the shadow.

of which

Nor

me,

that has been

learn

can

we

contemporaries, whose views are only long history of Virgilian reception and interand will I hope interest others, is the nature own

my

in the

interests

of the investment what

to

7

the sixteenth most

reduced

cause

to

of

“versions

total

confusion

in the

by modern critiunlikely places. If

pastoral” of Pastoral has been, in the second half of our century, “the most important and the least helpful” approach to the problem of definition,’ perhaps now is the time for the central question to matter to us. On that, be restated. It is not what pastoral w that should its discussion leads to the narrowis and inevitably agreement impossible, of normative statements of what constitutes the strictures criticism, ing “genuine” or the “true” to the exclusion of exemplars that the critic regards of coverage, as and, at least in terms “perverse.” What can be described 1s what since can do and has always with some neutrality, Virgil pastoral back where it or to the rather, done; belongs—how writers, put agency of all persuasions have used pastoral for a range of artists, and intellectuals and intentions that the Ecloguesfirst articulated. functions This will, therefore, be a book about the history of Virgil’s Ecloguesin to the Western culture; about the fact that, despite statements contrary, Eu-

Wiliam

Empson’s

have

ropeans

never

most

Some Versions

lost

interest

in this

remarkable

collection

of short

(the misplaced) that has I and shall here again. argue that what coming again people think of Virgil’sEcloguesis a key to their own cultural assumptions, as the text was so structured to because provoke, consciously or unconan sciously, ideological response. I mean both a more capacious and aless totalizing concept Byideology invoked that term: not than is sometimes by only the dominant structure and

poems; kept them

about

Freudian

the drive

back

to

term

is

not

it

poetry’s absorption of actual Roman landscape and customs, of the literary milieu Otis puts most decorative arts; emphasis on the Julio-Augustan themes in the Eclogues,but sees them as essentiallybenign; and Putnam offers a considerably darker view of Virgil’s attitude toward Octavian and the death of the republic. In contrast, both Klingner and Snell define Arcadia, which they equate with Virgil’s pastoral world, as an ideal interior from the brutal realities of history. To anticipate one landscape to which the poet can retreat that both Klingner’s and Snell’s of the central arguments of my Chapter 5, it is no coincidence in Germany in the period marked by the rise of the Napositions were originally formulated in the Second World War: Klingner’s two tional Socialist party and its consequences essays were first published in 1930 and 1943, respectively, Snell’s in 1944. 7 and the Pastoral (New Haven, 1984), p. 189. Andrew Ettin, Literature the

stresses

and

the

Pastoral

8

of beliefs

and

Ideology

society, but also the singular view (heterodox, subversive, and strucmaverick); only the biases inherent in class differentiation of tured by large-scale, long-term economics, but also the lonely strictures or sets of aesthetic metaits ambition or restraint; and, especially, personal physical premises, whether held at large or idiosyncratically.For aesthetic beliefs are seldom fully insulated from the first two categories and freas serve quently acceptable metaphors for them. the Among competing ideologies proleptically displayed in the Eclogues of the claims of the many are Roman republicanism, the classic statement of the the counter-claim to equal consideration; privileged few to special treatment on the grounds of special talent; the hegemonic needs of the holders of power for cultural authentication; the responsibility of the intelof stability; the in the interests lectual for providing that authentication, value of political or social stability in nurturing the arts; the responsibility of social jusof the intellectual for telling the whole truth, in the interests claim to personal autonomy. At various tice; the intellectual’s stages in Euor of has become domione more these cultural history positions ropean able to establish themselves in a society or at least among those most nant as its spokesmen, and among the most powerful ideologies in our own cenhas been the position that literature, and pastoral in particular, is or tury should be nonideological. This book charts the growth of that view from time attempting to show the eighteenth century onward, while at the same both that it has consistently been challenged by thinkers and artists of statand effect than opinions ure, and that it is no less “political” in intention whose exile it has sought. to explain why it was that modern This project began in an attempt or of the one of pastoral were often hostile to theorists contemptuous the genre could fairly be said to be ubiquitous, namely, the in which era that question took me back to Virgil, and Renaissance. Trying to answer influenced the Renaisto the Virgilian interpretation that most thence of associated with the name the of Servius. sance, commentary My system the of that inquiry and is partly structured first chapter records products of the Servian as account hermeneutics they defensively, as a revisionist Roman But the itself in the later were inquiry Empire. opened developed facts about Virgil’s Eclogues.The size of the remarkable my eyes to some of the British collections Library, Princeton University Library, and Virgil can have been so frethe Library of Congress suggested that few texts in visual and illustrated translated, imitated, annotated, edited, quently in

a

not

form.

Moreover,

ready-made while met

at

the

the

the fame

instrument same

eye, that

time more

of the

names

involved

indicated

cultural

for

history doing raising the suspicion that there had

been

invested

in this

text

with was over

that a

here

certain

more

time

a

was

rigor,

here than

than our

9

Introduction

cultural

own

system anywhere admitted.

Among early

editors

and

com-

mentators were Landino, Politian, and Vives; among translators, Clément Marot, John Dryden, and Paul Valéry; among imitators, Petrarch, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Frost; among illustrators, Sebastian Brant, Franz Cleyn, William Blake, Jacques-Louis David, Samuel Palmer, Aristide that not all of this interMaillol, Jacques Villon. It was true, of course,

pretive energy was limited to the Eclagues—someof it was directed to the as a whole; but it also Virgilian canon appeared to be true that the Eclogues had acquired a special role as a cultural catalyst and emblem. On the one in came first editions of hand, they Virgil; their brevity made them, until the classics

ceased

to

education,

mentary

so

be part of our curriculum, a natural exercise for elethat they entered the European consciousness at a

formative

stage. On the other, there was an Ecloguesat a late stage in the intellectual

the

that

text

one

sixteenth Palmer

would

make for

century, in Victorian

all

things

Blake

England,

at

the

clear.

interesting pattern life, as though

This

of the

turn

and for Paul

the

was

Valéry

of

to

the

were

for Vives

case

for

eighteenth, at

return

this

the end of his

in the

Samuel in

career

Vichy France. poetics, the Beginning, therefore, as an exploration of Renaissance whole to complete without the became retracing story impossible project in the early of Virgilian interpretation, from its first major formulations Middle Ages to developments that at least as I write can be spoken of as divided into five large blocks, whose contents recent. The book 1s therefore most common divisions of literary and art histo our roughly correspond focused on and into the Servius Petrarch, represents first, tory “periods”; the Middle Ages, both early and late; the second, the Renaissance, from the

mid-Quattrocento

seventeenth

swoop, so

century;

both

to

the

the

end

of the

Romanticism

created

its

and

classicism demarcations

own

narrative

Romanticism, that

and

content

of those

the

third, in

one

the fell

The

some

which structures, called into further

periodization suggests, again Romanticism, subjected

evalism

century;

logic of this arrangement, controversial results. The ma-

and modernism.

apparently conventional, produced

terial

sixteenth

fourth, Neoclassicism; and the fifth,

and to

sometimes,

question

the

sometimes,

skepticism

even

as

with

Neo-

already fragile as

with

medi-

the semantic

terms.

Gradually I perceived that the topic I had stumbled upon was infinitely richer than I could have imagined. Not only could I, by focusing on Virgil’s structural and its reception, acquire some text purchase on the slippery because of the signifinot this of focus, only might pastoral theory; topic of European of the figures involved, provide an integrated account cance anew our or demonstrate most cultural that history might interrogate cherished assumptions about how and when significant change occurred;

Pastoral

10

and

Ideology

important, here was a perspective from which it might be posspeak with some precision about at least one of the many relationfrom Marxist between art and society. For as distinct discussions of ships of the imagination, the issue art’s means of production, of the economics here, statistically insignificant, was therefore analytically manageable: the question, pressing to no one but themselves, of how the intellectuals in any and functions. Whether society define themselves, their sanctions they called themselves writers, artists, poets, grammatict, ingentost, docti, plalosophes,Dichter, men of letters, or professors, the arbiters of European culture since Virgil turned to Virgil’sEclogues,apparently, as a paradigm of the intellectual’s dilemma. The models for self- and societal analysis they found there were but not often, always, those I have already suggested. Often or they repressed suppressed half of what they found there or what others had found, in the interests of projects that could not afford a fully dialectical inspection. Sometimes they turned to the Eclogues as both outlet and authorization for the expression of vocational anxicty. This book, then, is candid in its admission that the culture spoken of throughout is high culture; although there are moments at which pastoral theory, as we shall see, attempts to manage—to represent, to speak on behalf of or to silence—other, less privileged social groups. The we in are to or be all who make however, rhetoric, my imagined any aliving by practicing one of the liberal arts, who must occasionally wonder to what end they do so. Three examples may suggest the applicability to ourselves of what will follow, a relation not when the case necessarily contravened before us seems or even obscure eccentric. Such was certainly the career of Nicodemus German humanist scholar and philologist Frischlin, profile but,

most

sible

to

in the second

the

half of the sixteenth been

Eclogues.Having

and author

century,

professor

the

of

a

on

commentary

of

for

university Tiibingen by the emperor, in 1582, EncyclopediaBritannica, “his unguarded lanand reckless life it necessary made that he should leave Tiibingen.” guage to the after a yudicious elseuniversity visitingappointment Returning with criminal on “he was threatened a a where, prosecution charge of a

eral years, and even crowned in the urbane of the words

immoral Main.”

conduct, and It

was

there

the

that

later, published under

as

threat

a

at

Palatine

Count

led

sev-

to

his withdrawal

the commentary

the title Introductiones

on

the

to

Frankfurt-am-

Eclogueswas

oeconomicae

simul

written

and,

%

politicae.® Considering his somewhat precarious existence as a scholar, it is not surprising that Frischlin responded to the Ecloguesas an extended allegory of worth unappreciated. In particular, he provided an original reading of ®Nicodemus

oeconomicae simul Cr politicae;Historiis, fabulis, alleFrischlin, Introductiones ac vitwrum imaginibus admirandis (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1614).

gorus, virtumque adeo

Introduction

the second Alexis. with

eclogue, the

lament

of

Whereas

Byron would glee,’ as one of

derisive

ll

for his

Corydon the

note

the

bits”

“naughty already reacted

love for

unreciprocated

homoerotic

of the

content

poem

of the

European cultural dismay, converting it into

with anatomy,’° and Erasmus had an of like between rather than unlike natures," Frischlin allegory friendship in the poem a metaphoric account saw of intelligence despised. For him, the “formosum is Cornelius who is “urbanus” and despises Gallus, pastor” as a hick. he Virgil/Corydon country Everywhere, complains, the Roman world is enjoying peace; he alone is solitary, living an unquiet life, morose

and irritable

because

in lucem

make

to

friends

in Rome:

&

emiserit.

possunt: versuum

humanitatis

& haec liberaliora

artes,

etiam

carmina

difficult

so

pleberus: ut qui nullam adhuc ingen documentum At tu quaerito ab iis, qui hac de re judicrum ferre sim: & quas res animi cultu, quibus disciplinis ornatus quo solum monumentis enim comprehenderim. Neque

rusticus

Poeta

it is

immerito

quae

pango,

.

.

.

studia

memoria

erudita

cum

sed

teneo:

antiquitate,

non

comparari queant. (p. 36)

The

so he has poet is a peasant and lower-class: his But I seek you out any proof of intelligence. who can judge of these matters: by what mental

I

For

those

in verse?

liberal

studies,

undeservedly, The

improve myself, and

disciplines should celebrate

self-reflexive

classical

be

I have

but

scholar,

I also write

compared

function

mastered with

of this

the

what

yet published from among those exercise and subjects should I

only

not

songs,

not

the humanities

which

can,

accomplishments

translation, comic

of

by a disgraced and

sad

and

not

antiquity. and

humanist

ac(as, by simultaneously of both the and the narcissistic counts, origiaspect Virgil’s Corydon), translation 1s in fact strikingly foregrounded in what folnal and Frischlin’s lows. For Frischlin glosses the extraordinary passage in which Virgil’s consoles himself that he is not bad-looking: shepherd seems

most

was

nec

adeo

sum

cum

ludice

informis: ventis

placidum te

metuam,

nuper staret

mare.

si numquam

me

in litore non

fallit

vidi,

Daphnin imago. ego

(2.25—28) Byron, Don Juan, Canto 1: 48: “But Virgil’s songs Pastor Corydon.” Beginning with ‘Formosum of The course, is, Python’s. Monty phrase Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studi, ed. J.-C Margolin, ASD 1, 2 (1971): Lord

°George Gordon, except that horrid ‘1

one

are

pure,

/

139-40.

12

Pastoral

and

Ideology

ugly: recently I saw myself, by the shore, when the was becalmed. If you were judge, I should not fear Daphnis, reflection is not that deceptive. provided Nor

I

am

sea

so

finding it, as a modern reader might be tempted to do, a statehistorical alleof phenomenological doubt, he produces a two-stage ment sea is The becalmed ambition. of Italy; Corydon’s postwar personal gory image in the water stands for Virgil’s favorable reception in peace and leisure (“in ocio & pace”) into the company of Maecenas, Pollio, Tucca, Varus, and Caesar Octavian himself, who have all approved his life and his customs meos”); and the only remaining doubt is whether (“vitam ac mores There Gallus, with his exceptional refinement, can be brought to concur. of self-esteem concould scarcely be a more egregious example damaged text. The 1614 edition of Frischlin’s comin mirror of the itself the soling of

Instead

It is somehow

natus.” as

dramatically fitting

1590 he in the fortress

it did:

in

prisoned

escape. Robert

duced

Grey.

of

Hohenurach;

coro-

concluded

writing

libelous

letters

his neck

while

and

im-

trying

to

Andrews, of

North

a

Virgil’s Works

dedication, which

The

account

politics in

1766.

Stamp

of

Act

year that ended of the day was

in

with

a

crisis

constitutional

the Hon.

to

than

Booth

Andrews’s

translation, consists

of

ec-

a

per-

through the lens of English the by English parliament’s repeal

seen

year marked vain effort to head

was a

as

it

interest

more

unreadable

Virgil’s career

This

and dedicated

is of much

centric, line-by-line, completely sonalized

England in the eighteenth century, minister, proCountry Nonconformist

from

example comes

translation

a

of the

& Poeta career

he broke

for

arrested

was

“Orator

was

Frischlin’s

that

|

second

The

when

its author

that

its audience

reminded

mentary

off the American

and

corn

riots

at

revolution,

home.

a

The word

liberty, a key word particularly associated with the propaJohn Wilkes, the spectacular radical organizer and polemicist ganda and sent into politiwho, though dismissed from the House of Commons in the summer of 1766. Again, then, it is not cal exile, quietly returned to his exactly surprising that this eighteenth-century Virgil was introduced of in the the times: language public of

inspires in his intelligent and unaffected Admirers any other Spirit of Liberty, and of universal Justice, which tho’ founded be originally in the natural Equality between Man and Man, cannot He

never

than the

executed the

happy 2

without

inviolable

Robert

the civil subordination

Authority

Constitution!

of

a

British

of Ranks

King

and

and

Offices

Parliament:

”?

Andrews, The Works of Virgil,Englished (Birmingham, 1766), n.p.

under

That

our

Introduction

13

registered as a conformist in state if not in church polity. of Virgil against the charge of supporting tyranny But his defense (a was and make would that Blake make, unmake, subsequently again) charge developed into a far more sophisticated defense against the other possibility, namely, that Virgil was apolitical: Andrews

Yet

here

he

world. sweetest

was

not

And

...

in its

a trifling

Virtuoso,

Liberty dying agonies,

or

like

which

had

Spectator of nightingale ever sings idle

mere

the

with

the

murder’d

and

the the

immortal

Augustus now settled on a Tyrant’s throne. In such a situation what did Virgil do? What Messala? Those high Ideas of nathan the virtuous could he do, more tional Independency and civil liberty, which he had suck’d with his Mother’s milk, and which to me seem clearly in his writings to have been heighten’d in him by the philosophy of Plato, these were really trial to a generous become soul, he yet visionary. In this, the severest proved himself superior: did not, like Cato, to shew his courage, prove nor his madness: yet chose to sleep life away, dissolved to annihilation and pleasures of the gay philosophy in vogue. Neither in the dreams do all the good they wish, was he like those who because they cannot do none: nor will therefore again like those who because they cannot have no influence, except that of a sly and be absolute, will therefore virulent opposition to the public wisdom, in order to multiply the of any meapublic calamities, and thereby prove the bad consequences He had other views of patriotism: saw that now sures but their own. of iniquity, nothing more rethe world had arrived to its full measure if possible to soften the rigours of divine for man to do, than mained in to be justice apprehended a line of despotic Princes: at least himself do nothing but by the inspiration of the gentle Muses. could certainly Cicero

breathed

her

last, and left the world

to

(pp. 10-11)

Although tions

Andrews

extended

did

not

himself of the

make

the

point,

tendentious

this passage funcsections of Virgil’s

gloss question as to the motives eclogue, when, in response to Meliboeus’s of his journey to Rome, Tityrus replies, “Libertas”—a mysterious answer 1 from in and had Servius onward as shall see we 2, that, Chapters suggested a republican subtext. By the trme Andrews wrote his own commentary, the arguments for and against such a reading had multiplied to the point that no Virgilian scholar could possibly have invoked the word without recalling its ideological history. Andrews’s defense of Virgil from the self-reflexive potential as charge of escapism had, therefore, the same labored efforts at self-defense, for to “English” Virgil at a Frischlin’s more to time like this was a way of reenacting the strategy he attributed Virgil, of first

as

an

on

one

most

14

Pastoral

and

Ideology

working to ameliorate the system from within. If Andrews hoped, like his for his nation of “a line of despotic original, to soften the consequences of his own Princes” principles, it by using the “gentle Muses” as the vehicle was only prudent to begin with an act of egregious submission, by formally saluting the third in a line of Georges. from The third and considerably more distinguished example comes a Hermann Broch’s Death novel conceived our own of Virgil, lyric century: in the

who

1945, when

until Broch

of

a

as an essay on the death of culture. fled from the Nazis and whose work

1930s in 1938 is

a

Der

powerful

Tod des

Vergilappeared

of the writer

instance

in

An Austrian there

both

exile,

a

—

intellectual

banned

was

in

and in

Meliboeus,

Germany America, as

it were,

But the connection with the Eclogues and greater expropriation.'* deeper than analogy. It is true that the Death of Virgil focuses what-

later

goes

the

question of whether Virgil dying destroy the unfinished persist poem or whether he will, as actually happens, bequeath it to his friends, along with its carefully unwritten dedication to Augustus. But Broch’s characterizaas author his novel’s central debate depend on a tion of Virgil and, indeed, profoundly inventive (yet not unprecedented) readingof the Eclogues. For Broch, Virgil as author was explicableprimarily as a peasant, but to one who had come conceptualize his own origins, or, as the second has to know his own it, georgic happiness. Early in the novel, as the invalid 1s carried from the at Brundisium poet port up to the imperial palace, he is torn between pastoral and political impulses. A scent of lumber makes him it contains

narrative

ever

in his

will

on

Aenezd,

determination

on

the

to

think of

forests, of olive groves,

peasant’s his

had

son

earth-bound,

which

his song

the bucolic

emerged,

the peace

peace of his

which

he himself

a

and

of

nostalgia always earthly longing, the peace dedicated since days of yore, oh the peace

earth-bent, had been

from constant

to

of

his

reflected itlonging, unattainable; and as if this lack of attainment self here, as if everywhere it must come to be the image of his selfhere between subserviated hood, this peace was constrained stones, and misused for ambition, for gain, for bribery, for headlong greed, for worldliness, for servitude, for discord.'* 'S

For Broch’s

of “a well-established career as of a Viennese for philosophy and letters,” and director textile concern see R. Hinton Broch,” Cambridge Journal 6 (1953): Thomas, “The Novels of Hermann of his novel’s evolution, see H. J. Weigand, “Broch’s Death 591-604; for Broch’s own account of Vergil:Program Notes,” PMLA 62 (1947): 551—54; and for an essay on its contributions to poetics and cultural history, see Lawrence Lipking, The Life of the Poet: Beginning and Ending Poetic Careers (Chicago and London, 1981), pp. 130—37. 4 The Death of Virgil, trans. Jean Untermeyer (New York, 1965), p. 36.

industrialist,

circumstances, including his abandonment

engineer

Starr

15

Introduction

The of

novel’s

visonary memories, the emperor Frischlin

with

will be

lyric movement the

Like

on

the

meaning

one

to

own

through a series other, by debating

this conflict

hand, and

of his

and

resolve

on

the

work. with

Andrews, though infinitely greater provocainterprets the Ecloguesin the light of his own situation. Watching the war in Europe from the safety of the United States, writing his novel with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he found the meaning of Virgil’s career in the Eclogues,and the meaning of the Ecloguesin Eclogue with its prophecies of peace in one’s own time and the desuetude of nos4, talgia."° It was this vision that empowered Broch’s Virgil in his last confrontation with Augustus and permitted him to challenge the emperor’s tion, Broch

that

view

fourth have

the Aeneid

eclogue,

his greatest, because most Roman, work. The is not as argument, reinterpreted Augustus would

was

in that

as a statement that “the glory of the ages had been fulfilled by our (p. 336), but as a new provisional statement poised between epochs and already receding before the “stronger metaphor” of a new perception. “In the kingdom of that the sword will come to be superfluous” perception (p. 360),Broch’s dying Virgil is capable of asserting, and his Augustus, grasping its radical (transgressive) spiritualism, remarks: “These are extremely dangerous and novel ideas, Virgil: they are derogatory to the state” (p. 377).

it,

time”

Yet

to

transcendence

focus

on

and

the confrontation

historical

between

poet and emperor,

between

and

pragmatism, politics, pastoral and debate comes late in the novel, as if epic, spoken narrative and dramatic modes can only reappear in a last moment of “normal” lucidity prior to death; and it is preceded by wave after wave of lyric which if one can it so self-analysis, during Virgil takes, put sharply, the other side of the argument. the slaves he muses on the Watching rowing, fate of the Aeneid: availed the he could probable “Nothing poet, right no if he portrays it as it wrongs; he is heeded only if he extols the world, never is... the would be from extracted there it, and only agreeable things was neither nor that the exhortations would be heeded” danger hope (p. 15). Meditating on his own dependency as an intellectual, a man “who had never fought for anything,” he knows himself as a man “endowed, fed, 1s

to

art

oversimplify. This

.

.

.

'©On the role of the fourth eclogue in Broch’s thought, see Timm Collmann, Zeit und Geschichte in Hermann Brochs Roman “Der Tod des Vergil” (Bonn, 1967), pp. 159-64. The novel is also saturated with allusions to, quotations from, and interpretations of other eclogues: see Death of Virgil, pp. 65, 251, 273, 281, 301, 305, 412. Significantly,Broch asa sumes for the Eclogues, referring (p. 305) to their connection with the political context Treaty of Brundisium; and his Virgil confesses that, despite his own homoerotic experiences, the second eclogue “had not come to be love-song, but an Eclogue of thanks for Asinius Pollio, dealing but in a most negligible way with love in a longed-for landscape” (p. 251).

16

Pastoral

and

Ideology

and

kept by Asinius Pollio and by Augustus—they who had fought for (p. 244). And, most importantly, forcing himself in interior monoto his aesthetics, Broch’s Virgil (and, surely, Broch himscrutinize logue self), contemplated one of the most obvious dangers facing the pastoral lyric (and even the lyric novel): Rome”

he knew its

also that

reality,

the

beauty of its

never

was

own

the

excuse

the case, whenever tacked at its very forms and empty

words, whereby

tion

fidelity, was

and

of

even

beauty roots

.

.

existed .

there

it

symbol, were being, that

for

for its was

art

ever

whenever

sake,

own

reduced

to

such

there

intoxication

only through

precise in

so

art

was

at-

was

with

empty

this lack of discriminaand

un-art,

to

poetry

mere

literarity. (pp. 141-42) The

pleasure of sight, this one)

the

and the

text

allure

of

in the

same

revision

constant

(a

terrible

in-

the final

temptations family temptation destroy the Aeneid because it is less than perfect.’* Passing author, an act of beyond it, Virgil allows himself to become the Aeneid submission to history marked the dictation of his “will” and its formal by “at the ninth before the calends of October in Brundisium, dating, day the seven and thirtieth hundredth after the of the of year founding city Rome” (p. 432). This book, also written from a protected position, with the help of a and other institutional Guggenheim Fellowship supports, but without any for the artist:

of the

as

to

shocks is my

are

and

hazards

that

must

have

contribution

stimulated

the

Broch’s

return

to

he embraced

with

Virgil, imperfect topic such self-analyticalrigor: the long debate on the author-function, the role of the intellectual in society, and the cultural work that pastoral, as a metaphoric poetics, has apparently being doing. It should already be clear that the structural a to neutrality I aim for is undermined by a commitment or rather aesthetic. Such selfsocially conscious, self-consciously social, contradictions are endemic to our profession, and I make no apology for mine. But I must make one appeal to my readers. As this book’s scope is It depends less on the broad, so the argument is essentially incremental. or of individual than on a network of connecdepth intricacy “readings” tions and cross-references that stretch from the first chapter to the last, as writers and artists themselves looked back to earlier stages of interpretaown

to

’°Lipking,Life of the Poet, angst and his artistic

own:

way, because

“I have

p. 135, cites Broch on the analogy between Virgil’svocational renounced the thought of completing the book in a genuinely

in this time

that, with each additional

page,

of horrors I could not would have become

dare

to

put still

more

increasingly esoteric.”

years

into

a

work

17

Introduction

in order

tion

their version

read

to

take

of the

their

own

personal

Ecloguesin their

selectively,it will

own

stance, historical

and it

locate

to

certainly disappoint; the completeness of coverage cannot

neither

of

reference, having

of

bibliographical reference

necessary one of his

to

that

themselves

and

If the book

moment.

be used nor

as

the

a

1s

work

density

genre.

usual, Virgil (and readers) said it for me. In Fielding’s has a habit of Tom Jones (book 8, chapter 4) Partridge the ex-schoolmaster classical allusion, which leads the hero to remark, “I find, Friend, you are a omnes.” His “A poor one,” was the reply, “non omnia possumus scholar.” had become a his a that source was citation, phrase Virgil’seighth eclogue; As

commonplace of humanist scholarship;" all do everything. ing: we cannot '7Eclogue 8.63;

it is also cited

by Broch,

its sensible

Death

of Virgil, p.

if

self-forgiving mean-

281.

BLANK

PAGE

I MEDIEVALISM: and the Servrian Hermeneutic

Petrarch

& Allegories are, ruins

In the front

are

in the realm

in the realm

Walter

Benjamin,

of Francis

Petrarch’s

of

The

Simone

of

thoughts, things.

Origin of German

what

Tragic Drama

manuscript of Virgil Martini—extraordinary

own

is

an

extraordi-

painting (Plate 1) by only for its and but for the it tells about certain beauty story preservation, principles of interpretation.' On the upper right sits Virgil himself, pen in hand, Below him, sheep (or perhaps goats) are being milked, and under a tree. trees pruned. Beside him stand two figures, the one in armor completing the triple allusion to the Eclogues,Georgics,and Aeneid. Yet the ambience of nary

not

chapter epigraph is from Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, (London, 1977), p. 178; first published as Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels(Berlin, 1928). "Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, codex A.49. inf.; reproduced in facsimile (Milan, 1930). The

trans.

John Osborne

19

20

Pastoral

and

Ideology

predominantly pastoral, Virgil’s own pose reflecting the makes writing possible, the pose and role that he, in the first eclogue, had permanently assigned to Tityrus. Even more telling 1s but interpreter, the presence of the other standing figure, not onlooker who draws away the veil (actually a neat muslin curtain, rings and all), behis mediation, Virgil would have remained hind which, without partially obscured. frame of the painting are two Latin epigrams which, the Within according to Pierre de Nolhac, were added in Petrarch’s own hand.” They explain, first, the significance of the manuscript, and second, the identity and function of the interpreter: the

painting

is

leisure

that

rural

alis alma

perclaros tellus

Ytala

Sed tibi grecorum

hic

dedit

poetas:

attingere

metas.

altiloqui retegens archana maronis pateant ducibus pastoribus atque colonis.

Servius ut

Italy, kind country, allowed

attain

to

you

you feed famous poets. So this the Grecian goals. [Here is]

the

enigmas of high-spoken Virgil, generals, shepherds, and farmers. Below

the frame

of the

painting

is

so

that

a

third

they

[Virgil] Servius, recovering one

revealed

are

epigram

which

in

adds,

as

it

the story of interpretation. Here Petrarch were, pays tribute stage in a statement of the msual to the commentary, simultaneously importance third

a

of the in

a

to

doctrine

humanist

of

ut

pictura poesis, of and

adventure,

of the

the

of the

collaboration

historical

time

and

sister

place

of

arts

that

collaboration: Mantua

Sena

tulit

bore

Mantua

bore

Virgilium qui talia carmine finxit, Symonem digito qui talia pinxit. Virgil,

who

fashioned

such

things

Simone, who painted such things with his

in poetry; hand.

Sienna

own

graceful frontispiece represents, then, an iconic hermeneutic—a of a system of interpretation that relates specifiand lucid pictorial account cally to Virgil, and especially to his Eclogues—aswell as certain proposiServius the originator of that system, Maurus tions about Honoratus, cenin Rome at the end of the fourth rhetoric of and teacher grammarian of his virtue dated can be career A.D. His aponly conjecturally, by tury This

2Pierre

de

Nolhac, Pétrarque

et

Vhumanisme,

2 vols.

(Paris, 1907),

1: 141.

Medtevalism

in the

pearance

of

Saturnalia

dialogue supposed

Macrobius,

have taken

21

as

one

in Rome

of the interlocutors in

but it

in

a

384;? belongs history of Virgilian interpretation. The fourth and early fifth centuries produced, in what may have been a series of conservationist efforts, a Life of Virgil by Aclius Donatus,

what

seems

teacher

tary the

on

have

to

to

been

a

crucial

of St. Jerome from 359 Virgil that now survives

chapters in

Macrobius’s

place phase in

to

367

only

Saturnalia

and

the

also the author

in the interstices

that

to

deal in

of

a

commen-

of the Servian

Virgilian criticism;

one;

and

derived from manuscripts of Virgil, with illustrations The of Servius which also colhimself, commentary iconography.* in lates older sources, the of a variorum, format was Donatus, especially the first major reading of Virgil’s work to survive in its entirety and was, in terms of subsequent influence, the greatest. Yet since at least the middle of the nineteenth have century both Servius and his interpretive methods been subjected to various kinds of criticism, suppression, and even abuse; that serves our and, by a coincidence purpose, something of the same fate has attended Simone Martinr’s painting. The reasons for this are far from simple. They combine misunderon standing of what truly distinguished Servian commentary Virgil, a but recurrent “medieval” habits of vague historically prejudice against a revaluation downward of structures that could thought, any metaphorical be designated allegory,a loss of confidence in the actual text of Servius, and a modernist bias (which actually has its roots in Neoclassicism) against any contamination of literature, and especially of pastoral, by an explicit political ideology or purpose. The reception of Servian is, therecommentary of the of fore, an inextricable part reception history Virgil’s Eclogues,and the

two

most

ancient

classical

°On the internal and external evidence for dating the Saturnalia see H. Georgii, “Zur Bestimmung der Zeit des Servius,” Philologus 71 (1912): 518-26; Alan Cameron, “The Date and Identity of Macrobius,” Journal of Roman Studies 56 (1966): 25—38, and Jacques Macrobe et le Néo-Platonisme latin, a la Fin du IV’ siécle (Leiden, 1977), pp. 15-— The imaginary dialogue took place in the house of the prefect Vettius Praetextatus, who died in 384; but its date of composition remains conjectural. Cameron and Flamant disagree to the absolutely on the relationship of Macrobius pagan revival, Cameron arguing that “the and sentimentally pagan atmosphere of the Saturnalia” non-militant required a late date in the 1430s (p. 36), Flamant that the work was precisely suited to evade the proscriptions de Peruagainst the Roman religion, both by concealing its militant paganism “sous le couvert dition” and by its limited circulation families (pp. 137-38). among a few aristocratic Roman *Both are in the Vatican Library: Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3225, the Vatican Virgil, and For the dating of the Vatican Codex Vaticanus 3867, better known as the Vergilius Romanus. of scholarship in T. B. Stevenson, Miniature Decoration in summary Virgil, see the convenient the Vatican Vergiu(Tubingen, 1983), pp. 1—23. Stevenson concludes tentatively that the manuscript derives from the height of the pagan reaction in Rome during the late fourth century (p. 223). See also David Wright, VergiliusVaticanus: Commentarium, in Codices Selecti (Graz, 1985), vol. 71, and in Codtces e Vaticanis selectt, vol. 40. For the Romanus, Erwin Rosenthal, The Illuminations (Zurich, 1972), pp. 102—5, proposed an early of the VergiliusRomanus sixth-century date but had to posit a late-fourth-century intermediary.

Flamant, 141.

22

no

Pastoral

exercise

tion of the ter

to

could to

Ideology

that all interpretamy contention shift than the attempt in this chaphe once possessed. By first examining

sharply illustrate subject to cultural

more

Ecloguesis

restore

and

the credit

Servius

unspoken premises of some of those past negative judgments, both and then by reof the painting and of the hermeneutics it represents, to the Eclogues,I the Servian investigating hope to establish the approach direction the ideological substratum of this project, that is, to demonstrate decisions of which it is the cumulaof all cultural history and the evaluative tive record. Without making Servius the hero of the story, we can certainly Martini’s the meaning of Simone make an informed attempt to recover of content their of three the and Petrarch’s verses, joint enthusipainting 1s asm. What later chapters will, among other things, attempt to confirm could not be erased from of the that the “medieval” Eclogues understanding in Servius, the cultural system. What Servius had seen in Virgil, and Petrarch be comof pastoral and could never became part of the genetic structure unwritten. pletely First, then, the painting. There is a highly instructive comparison to in the twenand assumptions it has generated even be made of attitudes tieth century. In 1902 there appeared a volume entitled Pétrarque, ses études Here Simone dart, the joint product of Prince Essling and Eugéne Mintz. of the Martini was blamed for his anachronistic costuming figures—having statue— never had the opportunity, it is supposed, to see a Greek or Roman and for his ignorance of “the laws of perspective and the rules of order,” an ignorance resulting in the arrangement of figures on a flat plane, before a or of stage trees, with no illusion of distance row landscape. But into the of that which inread a mixture faces of the central protagonists Miintz ambivalence: of and aesthetic a statement cultural and repelled him, trigued the

before which a curtain quite primitive structure iS clumsily Virgil reposes, represented with the features of a man in his sixties . . he appears to be searching for inspiration which is It is a less than happy face, with a morose slow in expression, own from our a vast distance Finally, in image of the divine poet. this skinny arm, in this seemingly atrophied hand, one feels too much that we associate with the Sienof the preoccupation with asceticism contrast with him, appears school. Near Virgil, and in absolute nese and with the commentator, Servius youth beauty, his hair shining his mustache and beard his blond, youthfully crisp, his gaze eager, of the Middle of the noblest creations color heightened; one Ages.’ Under

some

trees,

in

a

nung, .

coming.

.

.

.

*Victor Masséna, Prince Essling, and Eugéne Miintz, Pétrarque, ses études d’art (Paris, of P. Rossi, Semone Martini e Petrarca Compare, however, the account 1902), pp. 12-13. description, qualifies (Sienna, 1904), pp. 16—200, which, while repeating much of Miantz’s his attack

on

the

supposed anachronism

of the

painting.

23

Medievalism

displayed with unusual candor an appreformalist, approach to art history; a focus on human ciative, and genius as the value-bearing ingredients of art; and a conpersonality of the of Enlightenment rationalism flict between the standards (the source of mediand the of anachronism) nineteenth-century recuperation concept evalism as a positive cultural construct. is strikingly absent from an acThis turn-of-the-century ambivalence of Petrarch count published in 1982 by Thomas Greene. Or, rather, such as the subject of ambivalence Virgil and Servius might hold was transferred a view alternated between who in Greene’s to Petrarch Greene himself, by exof classics and a residual sense the Renaissance medievalism, genuinely pressed in visual terms on the frontispiece to the Virgil manuscript. “In In

remarkable

this

rather

this

miniature,”

are

passage

than

a

Greene,

wrote

Virgil appears crowned with ivy behind a thin assigned to biblical prophets or evangelists. a grammarian, possibly Servius, directs the

in

curtain

a

pose

often

pointed finger of of a knight, the The miniature breathes Aeneas, to his creator. spirit of late medieval allegory, represented in a heavily stylized Gothic manner. behind the it, how could we exmanuscript and the civilization Facing .

pect Petrarch first

to

eclogue,

he did

in fact that

he inserted

On

interlineated

an

While

at

a

the folios

gloss based

interpretation inspired by Donatus relentlessly heavy hand.°

first

sight startling

in its lack of

sedimentation”

“hermeneutic value.

Compared to composition, Greene’s

Mintz’s animus

of its

of fourteen

sedimentation not.

and reductive with

attention

.

the hermeneutic

erase

We know

turies?

.

The

own

sympathy, this and is therefore

critique of what is clearly directed

containing on

but

cen-

a

the

mechanical

spelled out

now

passage is rich in of much analytic

is maladroit

in the

visual

against what, again in his

allegory,” which for Greene (hence the references to biblical of textual exegesis (the line-by-line commenillumination) and with astyle tary) that can dyslogistically be designated “the grammarian’s approach.” a Now Servius was indeed grammarian, that is to say, a teacher whose was in making intelligible to them in to his students primary responsibility of the term as of Virgil’s works. The use detail the linguistic structure in the even in Macrobius’ and was early prevalent opprobrium is found

view, it represents: is associated

both

the

with

“spirit

of late medieval church

the medieval

and Discovery in Renaissance The Light in Troy: Imitation Poetry was p. 35. This view of the Virgil manuscript as “puerile” and “bizarre” established at the beginning of the century by de Nolhac, Pétrarque et Vhumanisme, 1: 147. Percival trans. The Saturnalia, ?See Macrobius: Vaughan Davies (New York, 1969), which alis consistent with that wealth of material p. 156 (1.24): “What Vergil says here

‘Thomas

M.

Greene,

(New Haven, 1982),

.

.

.

24

Italian version

Pastoral

Renaissance of classical

Landino, with

among

those

commentary.

and

Ideology

who wished One

to

of the first

make claims to

do

so

for their was

own

Cristoforo

object of promoting, in place of grammatical or rhetorcal exegesis of Virgil, his own uncompromusingly allegorical reading of the Landino’s own edition of Virgil was, as we shall see, Aeneid, yet, ironically, deeply dependent on Servius.* As a result of such necessary gestures of selfplacement in a tradition, conveniently directed by Servius’ nickname, Grammaticus, the dictum became accepted that Servius cared for nothing but petty linguistic detail. Thus at the end of the nineteenth century the scholar James Henry remarked that Servian commentary bore the same relation to recent work on the Aeneid “as we may suppose critiques of the dramas of Shakespeare, written some two hundred years ago by the master of a village grammar school in Yorkshire, would bear to those of Schlegel.”? On the other hand, it is distinctly misleading to allude so broadly to the “spirit of late medieval allegory,” since the commentary of Servius is and method from any subsequent allegorizing utterly distinct in content connected with Christianity, whether it be, to speak only of Virgilian interpretation, the prophetic readings of the “messianic” eclogue by the Church the moral subtext discovered Fathers, throughout Virgil’s canon by in the fifth or the Christian century, Fulgentius eclogues of the Carolingian renaissance.'° The allegory for which Servius was chiefly responsible was of quite another kind, namely, political or historical allegory, or topical allusion. Both Servius and Donatus had read the Eclogues,the first and ninth in particular, as a figurative comment on Virgil’sexperience of the civil war and its aftermath, his relationships with some of the political figures of that unsettled period, and the loss and subsequent recovery of his patrimonial estate. And not only had Servius expanded on the presence and significance of the various historical into the persons whom Virgil had inserted the

Eclogues— Maecenas, Pollio, Varus,

Gallus—but

he had

also

the

recorded

all the literary critics carelesslypass by with (as the proverb says) ‘dusty feet,—as though a most But grammarian were permitted to understand nothing beyond the meaning of words. we who claim to have a finer taste shall not suffer the secret places of this sacred poem to remain concealed, but we shall examine the approaches to its hidden meanings and throw open its inmost shrine to the worship of the learned.” Despite this language, the preoccuparemain Roman ritual and rhetorical tions of the Saturnalia figures and strategies. ®For Landino’s anti-grammarian stance, see Chapter 2, p. 63. *James Henry, Aeneida, or Critical, Exegetical and Aesthetical Remarks on the Aenets, 3 vols. (London, 1873-89), 3: 77. '° Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, De expositioneVirgtlianae continentia, written in the fifth century and published in 1589. See Fulgentius, Opera, ed. Rudolf Helm (Leipzig, 1898), trans. L.G. Whitbread, in Fulgentius the Mythographer (Columbus, 1971), pp. 83-107; see Helen pp. 105-53, esp. p. 119. For the Carolingian eclogues and their successors, Cooper, Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renatsance (Ipswich, 1977), pp. 8—33. .

.

.

Medievalism

hypothesis

that

the otherwise

fifth the

the wondrous

of the fourth

child

infant

unknown

son

25

of

Pollio,

eclogue was a figurative representation of, murdered

nizance

Julius Caesar.

All later if

of these

commentary refute

eclogue

and

that

among had

the

was

other to

Saloninus,

Daphnis take

of the

candidates, some

cog-

them, but undoubtedly the

proposals, only powerful of them was the Servian assumption that Virgil himself was present in the Ecloguesin figurative form, under the persona of Tityrus in which the first eclogue, and that the pastoral umbra, the shade under of the protection Augustus. Tityrus reposes, represented on The impact of Servian commentary Virgilian interpretation in genthe entire canon was to under, as it were, the shade of the eral, then, bring work a that Ecloguesby making early figure of the relationship between It was precisely because this argument carpoet and political patronage. ried a timeless force, providing an endlessly reusable paradigm for the relaof power, that it was writers and the holders tion between repeatedly the eighteenth century onward, increasingly successfully. denied—from And it was an early strategy, deriving from the Enlightenment, to blur the line between the Roman-historical readings of Virgil and the habit of alleThomas associated with the medieval church; thus the Victorian gorizing of the fifth the Julian eclogue in the reading Keightley protested against remarkable ternts: following to

most

required to believe that Virgil, who was perhaps the least original poet of antiquity, was the inventor of a new species of poetry We think, on the contrary, that it was the progress [i.e., allegory]. of the typical character of the personof Christianity and the doctrine

We

are

here

.

ages

and

Servius]

.

.

of the

narratives to

look

for

Old

something

Testament

similar

that in their

led the own

heathens

[t.e.,

literature."’

point out, however, that Greene arrived at of a brilliant Virgil frontispiece in the course reading his historical selfthe birth of cultural of Petrarch’s liminality, analysis consciousness, stimulated equally by the ruins of Rome and the ancient for whose fragments he also used the term texts ruznae, and his archeologitraces of Virgil's of both the physical and the intellectual cal excavation But by designating this cultural Rome. archeology “sub-reading,” Greene historicist such himself found investigation to another, in his opposing method that presumed a poetic the “Alexandrian view faulty, hermeneutic, that is It is that veil, of course, truth concealed by an allegorical veil.” It would

be

unjust

not

to

of Petrarch’s

his

Thomas

"Greene,

Keightley, Notes on the Bucolics Light in Troy, p. 94.

The

and

Georgicsof Virgil (London, 1846),

p. 75.

26

Pastoral

represented and

and

Ideology

the

frontispiece of Petrarch’s precious Virgil manuscript; against it, the entire painting fell under Greene’s critical

on

in reaction

disesteem. As

offered fessional

it

happened, another response to the painting already existed, by Joel Brink specificallyto medievalists in the current prosense of the term. be construed Arguing that the painting cannot

in 1977

built into its structure, and correctly without due attention to the verses Brink beyond them to Petrarch’s other writings and known concerns, of Petrarch that was both sympathetic to his investproduced an account in allegory and alert to his historical ment self-consciousness.'* Thus in the third of the three pairs of verses, as classical hexameters, “by recognized emphasizing the Italian origins” of Virgil and Simone Martini Petrarch was linking his own fourteenth-century culture “historically with that of Augustan Rome,” while the three figures of general, farmer, and shepherd represent not only the three major works of Virgil but also the three genera dicendt Petrarch

hence

and

wished

the

whole

tradition

of classical

rhetoric

with

which

in the identify. To Brink there was nothing “maladroit” “heavily stylized Gothic manner,” but a symbolic account of Petrarch’s interests and personal icons, including the laurel (not ivy) brow. He even discovered in the placing of the figures an wreathing Virgil’s of the example symbolic geometry widely practiced in early Renaissance art: the root-two of a rectangle from a square, in which “the top of the the rectangle at precisely the point where cuts Simone Martini square the of Servius.” places telling gesture We might take this argument further, beginning with the Latin epiwhich are literally “winged words,” shown in the painting with grams, motor their own principle attached. What the epigrams tell us is more than the identity of the figures represented, and the historical argument they and more than Brink make is more even precise complete suggests. The with absolute a translatio studi. economy, epigrams articulate, three-stage In the first, Virgil receives and passes on to Italy the Greek cultural her1in the Servius a mediates the second, (with younger perspective?) tage; of the text from antiquity through the Middle transfer Ages, revealing its and in the third, as Mantua and Siena meet under a arcana; single verb, so and collaborate in for the earliest Renaistultt, exploring poet painter be at least to its central text—or so Petrarch what was sance perhaps the historical time and place of the third stage still thought. We can narrow further by noting that Petrarch and Simone Martini met as exiles in the at Avignon and that the painting was court probably commissioned papal

composition,

to

no

*

'3Joel Brink,

“Simone

“Tbid.,

Martini,

Medtaevalia pp. 107-8.

Virgil Frontispiece,”

3

Francesco

(1977):

Petrarca

83-109.

and

the Humanistic

Program

of the

Medtevalism

there

sometime

between

1338

(when

27

the

precious manuscript was reMartini died at Avignon." 1344, theft) Given that ironic glimpse of mid-fourteenth-century problems, of the removal of the papal seat from Rome of a single and of the nonexistence to which of the a humanist the assurance adhere, patria program might is all but we the more well read the remarkable; frontispiece might meeting of Mantua and Siena under a single verb as a grammarian’s wish for Italian covered

after

its

when

and

Simone

unity. read

To

the

the of

charge

epigrams

in this

for

anachronism,

a

way is translati

to

dispose studu

for

and

once

all of

always implicitly interpretation

must

are culturally mediated and that argue that textual transfers In that spirit is inevitably an ongoing historical process.

we

can

reenter

it might tell us composition, looking for what more and the place of Servius within them. For as that interpretathe physical presence of the veil and the interpreter indicates tion itself is the primary subject of the painting, all its viewers (though of the three quoted above had mentioned none it) must surely be conof a curve from the lower scious to some degree of an upward movement, content of Virgil’s works, to level of the painting, where resides the overt are revealed. Yet we can the upper level, where their enigmatic subtexts levels make no firm appropriation of verticality to altiloquence, or between the sign and the signified, the literal and the of meaning. The line between allegorical, has been crossed by Aeneas, who is both the representative and also a representation of of the “highest” work in the Virgilian canon Augustus. and more forceThe other point that the painting makes, of course, of as a is the the even than the centrality interpreter person. fully epigrams, As Servius stands between Virgil and his greatest character, Aeneas, so the interpreter himself becomes a new character in the story of understanding, we might even say an author in his own right of one phase of that story. So

Simone

Martinrs

about

hermeneutics

Petrarch’s

become

deed

a

that

alization

personal

hang granted as

take

for

that

there

version

Danielis. '

that

the

the

be reckoned

text

the work

of textual

Servius

successors,

with.

presence at the end of the nineteenth

procedures over

now

to

undone

came

of the-then-modern fusion

of his Renaissance

for many

and

for Petrarch

had

in-

this personcentury, as a result

It

was

scholarship. Skepticism and

con-

was able to of the commentary that Petrarch known of a single mind. It is now generally

major versions, a shorter or Vulgate text, and a longer printed for the first tume by Peter Daniel and now known as Servius to be more The longer version was at first assumed authentic, but

Fredrik

two

are

Wulff,

painting Avignon.

was

Deux

added

Discours to

the

sur Pétrarque en résumé (Uppsala, 1902), p. 4, suggests manuscript in 1341, when Petrarch met Simone Martini in

at

and

Pastoral

28

to be an amalgamacentury it was discovered to commentary, subsequently attributed

the end of the nineteenth

tion of the

Vulgate The main

Donatus.

retically restored

to

Ideology

another

with

part of his commentary, but his

Donatus,

presumed lost,

theo-

thus

was

His

gain was Servius’s loss.'° possibility of a still more

had

text

deradical By 1880 the “all the who remarked that Emile Thomas, glimpsed by us under the that the editions the that world commentary gives agrees nor of one epoch.” Dename of Servius are the work neither of one man spite the fact that subsequent scholarly editions of Servius replaced this as “the text,” his state of potential anarchy with something admissible hence had been and as an as an author, authority, damaged." credibility and implicaYet such distrust exaggerates, ignoring the complex intentions

deconstructed.

been

authorization

was

”

of

tions

variorum

a

of

Servius

an

Whether

veloped

independent or

not

in classical

and even, critical mind.

it

was

studies

others

sometimes

were

had

the historical

focused thorities

not,

permitted

for the

or

one.

genesis of

shall see,

we

connected

to

this

textual

about

the

same

time

at

ticism, a tendency to discredit Donatus, with respect to matters mentary

as

commentary

of

the

reliability

of fact.

To what

the

uncertainty, another

scholars of

kind

and the textual

extent

Ecloguesin

were a

kind

of

skephim

allegory problematic and

historical

as

aware,

Servian

Servius

Roman

were

in de-

there

Servius, and with

Classical

precisely what

promoted,

of

the evidence

com-

had

Donatus

reau-

occasion, the

place after expropriations as of be trusted the of Could the battle repositories an earlier they Philippi? historical tradition, or had they merely worked backward from the apparto the ent allusions expropriations in the first and ninth eclogues and cona vita for the structed poet to fit the poems? had often quarrelled with specific aspects Editors in earlier centuries of Servian interpretation, noting (with an astonishing literalism) that slave, was Tityrus, for instance, as an elderly and only recently manumitted unfit image of Virgil, but in the modern an period there was a decided tendency in classical studies altogether to discredit the Servian approach to the Eclogues. A not rhetorically flamatypical approach, though more of Frank’s was 1922 than most, Tenney biography Virgil, which deboyant a substantial tradition was in its preface that clared part of the Servian of land

16

in favor

of Octavian’s

veterans

that

took

E. K. Rand, “Is Donatus’ Commentary on Virgil Lost?” Classical Quarterly 1 158-64. sur Emile Thomas, Scoliastes de Virgile: Essai sur Servius et son commentaire Virgile (Paris, 1880), pp. ii—vi. edition for the Ecloguesremains G. Thilo and H. Hagen, Servi Gramma18The standard tict qui feruntur in VergiluCarmina commentaru, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1881-87), vol. 3, part 1; pending, that is, the appearance of the long-awaited first volume of the Harvard edition. All subsequent citations from Servius are from Thilo and Hagen.

See

(1916):

Medtevalism

29

nothing but “a conglomeration of a few chance facts set into a mass of later conjecture derived from a literal-minded interpretation of the Eclogues,to which there gathered during the credulous and neurotic decades of the secof irresponsible gossip.” For Frank the ond and third centuries an accretion chief villain in that story of misprision was Donatus, but his mode of argument was to lump together, as equally unreliable, all “the obsequious of the Empire,” who were never to be trusted unless their acscholiasts such as Appian counts could be squared with those of “reliable historians” and Dio.” the

to revealing was Frank’s recommendation to be understood: how the Eclogueswere

Most

reader

twentieth-century

to

as

The

visitor

scope who

at

to

home.

take

should

Arcadia

Happiest,

at

perhaps

any rate,

be

urged

to

of

is the reader

edition

unannotated

leave

his

micro-

Vergil’s pastorals

his vacation

retreat, pocket the has about Donatus conjectured every inquisitive forgetting is to. The safest lie in them. that hidden way meanings possible . interpret the Eclogues primarily as imaginative pastoral poetry, and it, as a personal record.” not, except when they demand can

an

to

what

.

.

.

.

irony Frank echoed Virgil’s “happy man” passage from georgic (lines 490ff.), as he stated his version of the modernist The creed. ideological basis of this passage is unmistakable, and companabout about the Eclogues, and indeed ion statements pastoral in general, of much of the twentieth the literary criticism have characterized century. inevitable to their own statements All such critical manifest, in addition has made in the conthat Western culture biases, the profound investment has that that investment the fact of and constantly to be procept pastoral, in the currency. tected against what appear to be damaging alterations of the “safest way” to proceed in interpretation is Frank’s recommendation indeed telling, suggesting that there were procedangerous hermeneutical of innature dures afoot, procedures that would impugn the disinterested of and his distrust them with tellectual politics; activity by contaminating that focused on the was the “obsequious scholiasts” theory particularly of the for the return to his to needed Augustus gratitude express Virgil and the later to Domitian who kowtowed those estate. Only patrimonial the have so reduced could Eclogues to possibly thought Frank, emperors,

With

unconscious

the second

the

of

status

Frank’s tor

and

a

“bread-and-butter

reclusive

commentator

aesthetics on

letter.” leave unresolved

Virgil is required

to

the

problem that

face. How

Tenney Frank, Vergil:.ABiography (New York, 1922), *Ibid., pp. 110-11.

are

we

pp. v, 122, 111.

every to

edi-

respond

Pastoral

30

and

Ideology

the

injunction to ignore the possible historical context “except when they demand it”? How do we recognize such to

the the

when

text

Gallus

Tityrus

is

to

be done

of

Eclogue 10, and the fact the beginning of Eclogue 6:”

at

cum

it? What

see

we

oportet

pascere When

the Pollio

of

refers

to

Virgil

himself

ovis, deductum

dicere

no

as

carmen.”

I would

make

from

Eclogue 4,

sing of kings and battles, Apollo plucked my warned: “It behooves a shepherd, Tityrus, to feed fat sheep, a slender sing song.”

I shall

Eclogues

demand

proelia, Cynthius aurem “pastorem, Tityre, pinguis

reges admonuit:

et

that

a

et

canerem

vellit

with

of the

attempt

to

answer

ear

but

and to

such

questions—especially since the there are no right answers, only in-

governing premise of this study is that terpretations—but shall argue, rather, that Servius himself appears to have been alert to precisely this problematic. It was of course Servius who introduced into European critical discourse the crucial word polysemous,as a on comment Virgil’s cano in the opening lines of the Aenezd.”” But in his on to a the Eclogueshe shows, in addition commentary respect for polysemantics, a theoretical grasp of the problem of referentiality in a “literary” text, as well as of the critical methodology such a problem requires. In order

to

follow

the

exegetical methods

of Servius

we

need

to

recall

in late

formal structure. antiquity the commentary had a well-defined That structure we now call an accessus, or formal introduction, to a access, of a series of accepted categories of analysis. On the basis work, by means that

of the

only carly theoretical discussion of the accessus that has survived, the monk of the Dialogus super auctores by Conrad of Hirschau, a Benedictine twelfth century, it was at one time assumed that the system originated with Servius.”? E. A. Quain, however, decisively demonstrated that the origins of the system went at least as far back as the Alexandrian philosophers of the second century B.c.** Now the obvious of a well-established advantage of options system of analysis is that its very conventionality, its structure and limitations, allows the analyst to display his personal system of choices, *!

Both Calpurnius Bucolica 5.160—64 and Martial 8.56.8—13 made use of the VirgilTityrus identification, though not without a sense of its complexities. The Rediscoveryof Pagan Symbolismand Allegorical See D.C. Allen, Mysteriously Meant: in the Renasssance (Baltimore, 1970), p. 96. Interpretation 3 Conradi Hirsaugiensis: Dialogus super actores sive Didascalon, ed. G. Schepss (Wurzburg,

1889). 4E.

A.

Quain,

“The

Medieval

Accessus

ad Auctores,”

Traditio

3

(1945):

215—64.

31

Medtevalism

his

sensibility

own

and

The

concerns.

explain the Aeneid, which was the had six categories of analysis: “Poeta

basic

text

he

that

structure

placed first

used

Servius

to

in his commentary,

vita; titulus operis; qualitas carminis; scribentis numerus librorum; explanatio”; that is, a biography of intentio; the poet, the title of the work, the type of poetry or its genre, the poet’s

writing, the numerical organization of the work (which can questions of internal structure), and the explanation or detailed encompass far The last category of analysis, therefore, was on the text. commentary extensive. But when Servius approached the Eclogues,he inserted the most into his accessus to them another term, causa, that relates complexly to z7tentio and becomes the heart of his distinctive interpretation. In doing so both of them discuss the problem of he was Donatus; partly following from the prevailing in ways that are utterly different cause and intention practice of the later Middle Ages. By the time that Conrad of Hirschau defined the accessus, causa and were almost intentio invariably used to justify the existence of a text acor Christian to neo-Aristotelian premises, to assimilate into relicording or or ethics secular pagan or playful or imaginative (to use something gion from several discursive terms systems). Nowhere is this more evident than tradition on can in the commentary Ovid, where quite subtle distinctions and those other, “better” be made between original, authorial intention be made to that the text, in the light of later revelation, can intentions and value can and their are show. The terms meanings interchangeable, auctor inbetween itentio as that Thus Conrad “quid vary. distinguished “fructus a hermeneutics and causa or the tendat” finalis pious legentis,” Another twelfth-century grampenetrable, of course, by God’s intentions.” marian would make zntentio the higher term, ethically speaking, while relemotive; in translating the legends gating causa to a form of socioeconomic of the Herozdes from Greck into Latin, Ovid sought the favor of the Roman in

intentions

ladies.” What

find

we

direction.

Donatus

in Donatus

is

equally fluid, professed uncertainty as to

he merges with intentw, about the progress statement

Eclogues,which or

make

to

a

of Caesar

the

and

©

p- 28.

See

a

the the

whether

desire

the

or,

ob hanc

Arius

in

of the

rather, which

causam”).

his estate,

nearly

different

Theocritus

that followed

and

a

causa

imitate

Virgil’s lands,

expropriations right to reclaim

centurion

to

of civilization

of the recovery amiserat (“quem

indulgence lost for the following reason proceeded to the famous story of of Virgil’sbelief that he had won he was violently rebuffed by the *Ibid.,

was

it leads

but

to

gain

he had He

then

Philipp, and of how

lost his life in

pp. 219—20.

Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical

Poetic

of the

Later

Middle

Ages (Toronto, 1982),

32

and

Pastoral

the scuffle.

Ideology

This

Virgil’sninth agris dividendis

part of the story, according to Donatus, eclogue, but “sed postea et per Maecenatem

Varum, Pollionem

et

Cornelium

was

et

Gallum

reflected

in

per triumviros fama carminum

Augusto et agros recepit et deinceps imperatoris familiari perfruitus est”” (“afterward, both through Maecenas and through

commendatus amore

the triumvirate

for the

Gallus, he

commended

was

back his lands

received

of the

division

and

land, Varus, Pollio, and Cornelius

to

Augustus

was

thereafter

for the

fame

of his poetry and terms with the

the best of

on

emperor”). Donatus left it ambiguous, because of his rather offhand use of conjunctions, as to whether there were two separate stages in the recovery of Virgil’s property and what role the Ecloguesplayed in the story. Were commendatus they, as “fama carminum Augusto” implies, the cause of the of the as Donatus lost lands or, rather, recovery subsequently suggests, of were written as an they expression gratitude to those who had intervened

on

his behalf?

questions are not, as I have already suggested, capable of resolution, not even by the commonsense recogition that the composition of the Ecloguesspanned a period of several years, from before Philippi through the more stable and hopeful days of the peace of Brundisium. What the accessus 1ts and inventive in Donatan imports are, rather, powerful moves the invasion of the of causa and intentio categories by interpretation: first, material that really belongs to the vita, the penctration of the work by the life; second, a clear attempt to link the category of causa, essentially an of thought, with the concept of historical causaempty compartment tion— Virgil lost his lands “ob hanc causam,” a phrase that introduces a linked of historical from chain an causes, carefully starting original cause, Such

the assassination that

statement

Julius Caesar of this

because

than

hermeneutics

different In

of

the Ides of

on

that

March,

44 B.c.;

third,

the

of

causality, the Ecloguesrequire presupposed by a reader of Theocritus:

structure

a

bucolicis

Vergilii neque nusquam neque ubique aliquid figurate laudem et Caesaris per allegoriam. vix enim propter amissos agros haec Vergilio conceduntur, cum Theocritus simpliciter conscripserit. dici, hoc

est

(pp. 16-17) In the Bucolics of

neither

course,

things

were

and the lost 7For

Donatus,

Virgil

nowhere

there

1s

a

certain

that

everywhere, of Virgil, on account had lands, although Theocritus

allowed

see

of the historical For some umvirs ‘agris dividundis,”

to

nor

of

figurative disis, allegory. For these the praise of Ceasar written simply.

amount

Jacob Brummer, ed., Vitae Vergilianae (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 15—16. implications of Donatus’s account, see J. Bayet, “Virgile et les triRevue des Etudes Latines 5—6 (1927—28): 271-99.

Medtevalism

33

figurative discourse or allegory—not found in Theocritus, literally about shepherds and their songs—is permitted to in context the shadow of an apology) because of the historical Virgil (note of apology goes And along with the note which his pastorals were written. of methodological caution: a note figuration is to be found in the Eclogues “neque nusquam neque ubique,” a remarkably opaque and provocative

The

presence

who

of

wrote

locution.

|

of this

None

firmly that

stated

purely literary under

escaped Servius. the

mtentio

ambition.

which

he

But

of

In his

Virgil

he then

retold, though

was

own

introduced with

accessus

the

Eclogueshe

the

to

the imitation

of

Theocritus,

other

category

significant differences

a

of

of

phrasaccount. He attempted to straighten out the chronology ing, the Donatan one in which Virgil was by suggesting two stages of territorial recovery, in the and another which, after a seconly lucky man, exempted “solus,” in obtaining relief for his Mantuan ond appeal, he was also successful He used the text of the Ecloguesas documentary supneighbors. explicitly how the of Arius was to story necessary port, showing explain otherwise in the ninth statements such as the mysterious eclogue, complaint by Moeris of the inefficacyof poetry in violent times (“all our songs, Lycidas, no more doves, as they say, when prevail among weapons than Chaonian most he expanded and medicome,” And, 9.11—13). significantly, eagles between two different tated on the contrast types of pastoral, the simple and the complex, the literal and the figurative: causa,

allegoriam agit gratias Augusto, vel aliis noamissum disbilibus, quorum agrum recepit; in qua re tantum sentit a Theocrito. [le enim ubique simplex est: hic necessitate compulsus aliquibus locis miscet figuras, quas perite plerumque etiam ex Theocrito versibus facit: quos ab illo dictos constat esse simpliciter. Hoc autem fit poetica urbanitate. Et

aliquibus

locis

per favore

(p. 2) of allegory Virgil gives thanks to places by means other men, by whose favor he received back Augustus leading his lost estate; in which he greatly departed from Theocritus. For Theocritus is always simple. Compelled by this necessity, Virgil mingles figures in certain places, which for the most part he skillfully constructs out of Theocritus’s verses; things well known to be spoken Theocritus. But this makes for poetic sophistication. literally by And

in certain or

While

to

it would be going too far to claim for this passage between subsequent distinctions Virgil and Theocritus, of the recurrent habit, origin among those who have

the it

paternity of all probably was the

tried

to

define

the

34

Pastoral

and

Ideology

pastoral, of framing their definitions (and their ideological preferthe founding fathers. And it is terms of a competition between of side the to see how Servius that perpetual arguimportant promoted in which ment Virgil is valued above Theocritus, precisely by having nature

of

ences)

in

and innocence. It 1s irthe genre away from semantic transparency whether Theocritean relevant for these purposes pastoral can in fact be acdescribed as written without any figurative intention. curately simply, for the cultural history of pastoral is that Servius said it was What matters moved

so

and attributed of the

a

grasp itself.

other

Two

culable

to

lacked: namely, Virgil a sophistication that Theocritus as a for metaphor pastoral something other than

of the

uses

aspects of this

influence.

first

The

of

of intention

statement

the

was

recognition

inconsistent

were

of the

principle

reference.

historical

be of incal-

to

of discon-

What

Servius allegory locis” is further in his the by phrase “aliquibus explained gloss to the opening of the first eclogue: “Et hoc loco sub persona Tityri Virgilium ubi exigit ratio” (“And debemus intelligere; non tam ubique, sed tantum of Tityrus, we ought to understand in this place, under the persona Virgil; demands”). This is the Donatan yet not everywhere, but only where reason “neque nusquam neque ubique,” rendered considerably less opaque by exerts interpretive controls. And it makes an adding the notion that reason the with Tenney Frank position that one should interesting comparison not read the Eclogues,“except where they demand it, as a personal record.” was not in finding the safest way to read, though occaServius interested sionally, in rejecting the allegories of his predecessors, he declared that a to have simple or literal reading was “melius,” better. Rather, he seems in the manner which different kinds of meaning grasped infinitely complex and intentionality are entangled in any text, especiallyone that is attemptThus he ing to adapt an earlier text, a pre-text, to a new cultural context. notes that the song-fragment quoted by Lycidas in Eclogue 9—“Tityre, for the dum redeo (brevis est via) pasce capellas” (“Tityrus, until I return, way is short, feed my flocks,” line 23)—1s an actual quotation from the The fact that it is a quotation brings to the surthird Idyll of Theocritus. of Virgil’s intention, Theocritean face of the text the literariness recall; yet for Servius the song-fragment is genuinely polysemous. It is both a word-

tinuous

or

meant

for-word

translation Roman

Virgil's own structions Arius

to

his

men

(“verbum historical to

take

ad verbum

affairs: care

of his

translati”) and an allusion to allegorically he thereby left inestate, and for the present to obey

“for

the centurion.” When

Servius

rejected, in his commentary there the Tityrus mentioned

suggestion that sneaking up to steal someone was supposed to have had,

on

is also

else’s goat alluded his response

was

the

not

to

an

moral

third

Virgil

eclogue,

the

and

his

adulterous

that

affair he

prudishness

but

a

Medtevalism

grasp of how a historicist better,” he says, “that we

theory

it appears that it has been who have been too literal

the critics

35

of intention

and allusion

work.

must

“It is

should take this simply (“sed melius simpliciter accipimus”). For allegories in pastoral ought to be rejected, unless, as I said above, they derive from that necessity of the lost lands” (p. 33). This statement was later appropriated by those who, like the Victorian Keightley, would banish all allegory from pastoral,”*and on the other hand repudiated by those who, like the sixteenth-century Spanish scholar Ludovico Vives, would have liked to extend the allegorical potential of the text beyond the territory delimited by Servius. What Servius meant by the “neof the lost was the historical circumstance that had lands, however, cessity” directed to The of originally Virgil figurative expression. range meanings that could plausibly be extracted from the text was, therefore, to be governed by the reader’s sense of authorial motive and the historical facts that had helped to shape it. of Virgil with the Tityrus of the first eclogue, Even on the identification in their

Virgil himself set up. Whenever disputed, it has always been on nor

manumitted

when

Servius, rather

to the response the identification

the

that

grounds

“free-born

but

slave,

of

and

...

Such responses Eclogueswere written.” that Servius was not making a naive identification, ing the urbane strategy of using a persona, a much notion. On the lines (27—28) in which Tityrus

beard,

of the

persona,

remarks

Servius

that

“either

have

Servius

himself,

interpretive problem that has been subsequently Virgil was neither senex about the age of thirty”

the

white

than

overlook

the

evidence

but was, rather, discussdelicate and shifty

more

appears

to

refer

his

to

in the function

change speaking as an elderly rustic, not as or certainly there must be a change in puncVirgil, allegorically tuation, so that it is not his beard which is whiter, but liberty.” And on the word /ibertas itself the grammarian and the Roman historian met in Servius, to create a that not would resonate only gloss through the subsequent history of pastoral, but by its placement in the commentary would generate ironies throughout the Eclogues,if not the whole Virgilian canon. Libertas is explained as meaning “the love of liberty,” which, Servius indicates, is an inappropriate locution for Tityrus as erstwhile slave: that

so

receive

must

we

.

.

dicit servus, libertatem hic habere liberam servitute,

sicut

>

Vergilius

nunc

the

sub

a

him

.

Et aliter

vult

we

cupio,

aliter

vitam, pro

Tityri

persona

dicit

ingenuus: scilicet

suo se

amore

ille enim arbitrio libertatis

carere

agere: Ro-

to find in the text of Servius certain reof context, could be used as a support for his own elsewhere seems to give us the opinions of the more judicious position: “Servius critics, when he says, ‘Melius simpliciter accipimus.’” (p. 76). ”H. J. Rose, The Ecloguesof Vergil (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1942), p. 49.

strictions

Keightley, Notes on

the

use

of

on

Bucolics, was

allegory which, .

.

.

delighted

taken

out

Pastoral

36

venire

mam

tas

And

compulsum,

nisi in urbe

non

item

et

Roma

and

Ideology

latenter

carpit tempora, quibus

liber-

erat.

slave

liberty”), a freeborn man quite quit of his servitude, the second to have a free life, to act, of course, by his own free will: so now Virgil in the persona of Tityrus tells how he was compelled by his love of liberty to come to Rome, and covertly blames the times, in which there is no liberty except in the city of Rome. a

another;

speaks one way for the first desires

(“I to

want

be

the

alerts Servius to what he grammarian’s sense of linguistic nuance of and that word Jatenter he allows into his sign intentionality, by another level of meaning or source of ambiguity, permitting commentary the inference that Virgil did not always say, even through metaphor, exactly what he meant. As the term /zbertas itself was powerful but elusive ideological currency in the affairs of Rome preceding the civil wars, having been used as a slogan by both Pompey and Julius Caesar (and it would later be could incorporated into the imperial coinage), its presence in the context scarcely be innocent.*° Servius’s gloss, especially when compared with the “compulsion” (“hic necessitate compulsus”) behind the Ecloguesand their figural structure, considerably qualifies the premise that the entire text is a work of gratitude for favors received. Rather, he suggests the peculiarly difficult and equivocal stance a that poet like Virgil would have had, by necessity,to adopt toward the political leadership at the end of the civil war, when the need for a national settlement and personal security were both Here sees

no

as

a

less apparent

the

than

their

republican system;

on

costs; the

on

the

other,

one

the

hand,

the irretrievable

inevitable

loss

loss of

of intellectual

autonomy. There

other

important glosses that perform the same function. complex, perhaps, is what looks at first sight merely like an act of criticism. On the phrase “turbatur textual agris” (1.12), the words in which Virgil expresses, the through Meliboeus, sufferings that have been caused by the expropriations and from which Tityrus is so fortunate to have been exempted, Servius wrote that the reading turbamur found in some 1s without distinction of blame or and enmerit; manuscripts “any viously he covertly blames the timesof Augustus” (“et invidiose tempora Augusti carpit latenter”). “Doubtless,” he continues, “the right reading is turbatur, since it is impersonal, pertaining to all in general: for the expulare

Most

sion of the Mantuans

See

Ronald

55, 320-21,

Republic and

was

communal.

For if you read

turbamur, it

seems

to

Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939; reprinted 1952), pp. 154— 515—17; and C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Early Empire (Cambridge, 1950).

37

Medtevalism

refer

few.” The

of this

effect

is

problem of the sympathy sympathy that Tityrus fails to feel—and therefore to so noticeably recognize the dialectical force of the poem, the tension the aesthetic between value represented by ottum and the ethical claims of justice and equity. Striking, too, 1s the Servian term vidiose, in its allusion to Melibocus’s own statement (“Non equidem invideo,” line 11) that he does not envy the protected leisure of Tityrus; for the Servian locution quietly suggests that, precisely by denying unfairness, Virgil has secretly invoked it. These mildly subversive inferences are conto

a

reader’s

inevitable

firmed

gloss

with

in the commentary declares that

on

introduce

to

the

Meliboeus—the

Melibocus’s

for Servius

later

the strong

lament

for his farm

(1.70),

zmpius, the antithet

of by using nevertheless he followed ethics, Virgil “injured Octavian; the truth” secutus est veritalaesit; tamen (“hic Vergilius Octavianum tem”). In other words, Servius was not naive in his primary identification of Tityrus as the poet’s own the reproach conveyed by these glospersona; that was ses instead Virgil speaking sub persona in both the fortusuggests and the unfortunate nate shepherd, and, insofar as the protégé’s actual con-

Aeneas’s

dition

Roman

closer

was

insensitive

his

to

presentation the word

But

the

term

than

own

of ottum

the

exile’s, that

irony

was

at

his

the

own

self-enclosed

and

expense.

insofar

the problem of the relation of raises, of course, the ninth, where the restoration of the lost lands is

first

eclogue to brought question. Again, it is impossible to determine how poetic serelates to a reified quence chronology of the expropriations and Virgil’s in them. What matters for subsequent interpretation possible involvement is that Servius here perceived an expression of Virgil’s fears for the survival into

of poetry in time of civic best a provisional statement Thus

Octavian.

national

or

of the

violence, that chances

for

a

the

cultural

poem makes at renewal under

explains that when Lycidas refers to the songs of (another Virgil’s personae) as solacia (line 18), comforts, “obliquely he blames the times of Augustus, in which songs were not for delight, but for consolation, as he inures himself to unhappiness.” And the Daniel text, for good measure, comments suggestively on the meaning in this poem of quotations and song-fragments. On the lines “Nunc oblita mihi tot carmina, vox Moerim / Jam all quoque fugit ipsa” (“Now my songs are forgotten, and his very voice flees from Moeris,” lines 53—54), the gloss reads: Servius

Menalcas

et

of

.

.

.

his verbis

perdidisse (se). And

he shows

his songs

nullum

Moerin

ostendit

tulisse

derive

et

per

that

suum,

sed

omnia

Menalcae

carmina

re-

ostendit, vigorem cantandi, quem prius habueret,

allegoriam obsessum

Moeris

from

has retained

Menalcas;

in these

malis

nothing verses

animum

demonstrat.

of his own, but all that he has

he shows

38

Pastoral

and

lost the power of song that once is obsessed with loss.

he

Ideology

had, and, through allegory, that

his mind

Not

so

“The

ers:

we

find in of

sense

Yet the sound

after

distance,

a

great

from what

of

irony

not

may

this

of

Virgilian nostalgia twentieth-century readis unquestionable. .

account

perceptive of

most

and limitation

voices

our

all, divides

of the

one

in this poem be so hollow after

.

all.

.

.

.

Echoes

.

that

explicitly of other songs may be enough to sustain us.”*! The effect of these glosses is to drive home the message that Eclogues | and 9 are connected by more than the theme of the lost lands, for they both speak to the fragile relationship between art and its political supports, whether they be seen as national or unbroken ties peace, an intelligent system of patronage, between the intellectual and the land, his native soil. Moeris’s inability to a continuous is thus connected to that of Meliboeus sing song (“carmina are

nulla

canam,”

though

he

“invidiose” In

1.77), that

notes

about

the

a

what

(9.50) Lycidas pointlessness of planting

that

of Servian to

himself

Servius

echoes

This, then, is the mainframe redescribing it, I have tried and

that

connection

mediate

4s pear

commentary between

the

does

Meliboeus

of readers

the

trees on

not

has

(1.73). the Eclogues.

dangers have

make,

spoken of selec-

limited

tivity assumption majority appetite for Latin glosses. Yet surely enough has been shown to throw into cited earlier in this chapter and those question the negative assessments that can readily be found in standard accounts of the classical heritage. It is hard to reconcile the evidence above with the statement, for expresented R. R. that in Servius Bolgar, ample, by an

fail

be struck

by the

a

almost

complete absence from the problems of aesthetics and liternarrowness of approach can be observed in his and cultural material. Though it would be criticize him for to short of standards pointless falling imposed by the mental habits of a later age, a comparison between his interests and 1s those of modern nevertheless instructive. Servius does scholarship make the slightest attempt to reconstruct not the personal or cultural his or of the period in which the action of the background of poet His is set. deal ostensibly explanations poem exclusivelywith matters in a spirit of antiquarian curiosity.” of detail which he discusses one

cannot

to

of any discussion form. A similar ary of historical treatment notes

.

.

on

the wider

.

*!Paul Alpers, The Sengerof the Eclogues:A Study of Virgilian Pastoral (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1979), pp. 151, 153. ”R.R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries(Cambridge, 1954; reprinted New

York, 1964), pp. 41-42.

Medtevalism

But

it would

be

equally pointless

to

produced, in part, by an exclusive focus that elicited from Servius the kind of

39

criticize on

Bolgar for

the Aeneid.**

It

41s was

perspective, the Eclogues

analysis that deserves the term czlelliptically, locate the act of writing in a of For is truly remarkable set relations. what about the Servian complex to of is the sense the they manage give interpenetration in Virgil’s readings of different, yet not after all conflicting, objectives: the intention of text and the Roman reason for the Theocritus, causation, writing imitating such poems at such a time; the necessity of paying his respects to Octavian of the civil war, and the imperative of personal and other leading survivors /atenter as a series As of reproaches to Octavian. independence, expressed there Virgil sub persona appears and disappears in Servian commentary the composite idea of the cultural emerges spokesman, speaking, if not with many tongues, polysemously, and with the authority of more than him. one behind language What Thomas Greene recognized as the highest form of imitation, that which “dramatizes a historical repassage of history,” which “assumes one which and recreates” remembers, resuscitates, preserves, sponsibilities, is certainly represented by Virgil’srewriting of Theocritus, as Servius and Petrarch and by recognized. For precisely by remembering Theocritus him of a lost innocence that in the survives echoes and making only sign and memorable Greek names—Tityrus Amaryllis, with which the woods can still be made to echo (“formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas,” the that established principle genuine imitation, especially of 1.5)—-Virgil in a new context. Given the remakes its historical object pastoral, always need to develop a definitively Roman culture that would erase the “sceleris vestigia nostri” (4.13), the old crimes that included those against the his peace with Greek culture Greek city-states, Virgil decided to make by it into the Roman What Servius as “urincorporating present. recognized banity” or poetic sophistication, therefore, and as Virgil’s distinctive difference from Theocritus, was actually the equivalent of what Greene called transaction with the past that only writing, the the historical “transitivity,” can artificial form of memory, ever attempt.** There also emerged out of Servian hermeneutics the recognition that culture is not only necessarily cumulative but also necessarily implicated with political power. It is much too simple to say, as is often said, that Virgil deformed the pastoral idea by politicizing it. What Servius recognized in tural,

statements

that, however

**For more of Servian interpretation, though also sympathetic accounts sively on the Aeneid, see Michael O'Connell, Mirror and Veil: The Historical Spenser’s“Faerie Queene” (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 24—31; Michael Murrin, in Its Rise and Decline (Chicago, 1980), pp. 32-45. Epi: Essays * Greene, The Light in Troy, p. 41.

focused excluDimension of The Allegorical

40

Pastoral

Virgil was

self-conscious

a

who

intellectuals,

and

admission

their

Ideology of the

problems

need

for

faced

survival

and

by all writerrecognition

weigh against the demands of personal freedom and interiority. The result was a founding myth of authorial presence and motive, and a viable and far from reductive model of a metaphorical pastoral, a paradigm of self- and societal representation. It was such an interpretive system, I submit, that Petrarch recognized in Servius, for his own inspiration having it encapsulated, in both verbal and visual form, on the first page of his most precious manuscript. Historical

must

needs

he meditated

upon

as

cultural

own

have

transactions

the task his

brought preoccupations, to

two

Each

terms.

and pressures that brought it meanings partly located

environment.

only conjecturally dated,

the

In

the

of

case

interpreter of Virgil of priorities and

new

conditioned

historically

own

set

the surface

to

outside

Servius, whose

of his

of the

the

text, lifetime

text

in his be

can

be reconstructed

thought projections are nonetheless instructive. The conditions of life in the late Roman Empire, in broad in the third century and not much changed, except established terms, were for the worse. There was, first, the replacement of the military anarchy of the late third century by a ruthless and socially insensitive bureaucracy, in the

which

tentative

most

reduced

of

and

contexts

Yet such

general terms.

all classes

almost

servitude.

must

the

except

Diocletian’s

senatorial which

rank

to

a

form

“reforms,” political completed by for agriculture.**According to Constantine, were particularly disastrous and property seizures Samuel reduced farmers and Dill, unjust taxation were

brigandage.*° And Rostovtzeff pointed out that the stabilizing measure, reorganization of the landinto units of zuga and capita, effectively ownership system inseparable “made the colonus a serf,” by denying him freedom of movement.” In the the senatorial class was permitted to amass meantime huge private estates. of intellectual life was the redefiniMore important still as a determinant shepherds

what

to

a

of the

tion

a

as

emperor

absolute

all pretense of constitutional of expression. freedom political

monarch; with

abolished, along Constantine, by which

was

government The

of

state

like

looked

of

conversion

Christianity was not merely guaranteed toleration but recognized as the official imperial religion, actuof subally facilitated the cult of the emperor by removing one vast source life for the it while this worsened the situaChristians, version; improved

35M. Rostovtzeff,

1926), 36

Samuel

pp. 200—201, 3”

The Social and Economic

History of the

Roman

Empire,

2 vols.

(Oxford,

1: 447—77.

Dill,

Roman

Societyin

the Last

Century of the

220-27.

Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History, p.

472.

Western

Empire (London, 1898),

4]

Medtevalism

of those

tion

religion,

who, like Servius residual

now

Whether

the old

to

in Rome.

of

regard Servius as having actually been a contemporary Saturnalia) Symmachus, with whom (in Macrobius’s

we

and

Praetextatus

committed

apparently, remained

resistant

and

discussed

in about

384, it is clear that he shared

with

them

he

(as with

Virgil and rituals. for ancient customs Roman Macrobtus) an intense concern of any trace Taken together with the absence of Christian exegesis in his this conservative and essentially commentary, pagan approach 1s, at the very least, not incompatible with the ideology of the pagan party in Rome, who campaigned unsuccessfully against Christian suppression of the aninstitutions.

cient

Even

write

to

historical

a

origins,

Virgil, emphasizing its Roman ideological significance at alcentury, when the empire was not only

major commentary be

must

seen

as

on

act

an

any stage in the late fourth divided between East and West, but even for Milan, and the Church doned Rome

most

tacks in the

wake

consulship the

Such

the ancient

on

Curia;

of

the Western

Fathers

were

easily have

city. project might Symmachus’s appeal to Valentinian

of

of Flavianus it would

in

a

394, when

have been

in 384

the altar of

had

emperors united

Victory

been

during

or

at-

conceived the

restored

was

after the fall of Rome

inconceivable

aban-

in their

to

to

Alaric

in 410. It is

like these imagine, therefore, how from conditions of Servian commenmight preoccupations tary: the sense of the imperial presence as controlling the culture; the belief in the ancient idea of Rome as Virgil had definitively articulated it; the of focus on the issue land and the of ownership; strange concept compulof authorial In such a context sion and necessity as components motive. Servius’s gloss on /ibertas, to the effect that by using that term Virgil “covertly blames the times, in which there is no liberty except in the city of

difficult

not

have

Rome,” takes It may that of the

seemed

to to

mane

Servius

an

characteristic

additional

be that

even

resonance.

the characteristic

syncretic variorum, undermine his authority,

thought to

needed

be

had

for

scholars

at

Rome

our

commentary, own

era

has

benefits

certain

Not

Servius, after all, that the commentary

teaching Jerome

of

particularly gerwhat only did the variorum preserve preserved of early Virgilian interpretation; it

century. to

of Servian

structure

which

the late fourth

thanks

was

on

to

the

arisen

during

the brief

reign

of

of Donatus, who Julian the Apostate,

was sur-

in any form. But the variorum also, as Jerome himself pointed out, enabled the commentator, to some extent, to conceal his own opinions. In the Contra Rufinum, significantly Jerome’s self-defense against the charge

vived

of

heresy into his commentary on Ephesians, we have contemporary definition of the fourth-century commentary as

having

effect

genre:

a

written

in a

42

Pastoral

What of

is the function

and

of commentators? in

else; they express

someone

expressed in

obscure

an

dividuals

and

others,

in another

Ideology

they

say,

manner; “Some

They expound the statements simple language views that have been they quote the opinions of many ininterpret this passage in this sense,

sense”; they attempt

to

their

support

under-

own

in this fashion, so standing and interpretation with these testimonies that the prudent reader, after reading the different interpretations and which of these views are to be studying many accepted and which rewill for himself which is the more correct. Will the jected, judge who has the of in a person, quoted many individuals interpretations work that he is expounding, be held responsible for the different interpretations and contradictory views? .

.

.

**

And for the

proof

of this

commentators

ous

aeque

in

Jerome’s relation secular

literature

even

the

as

in the tender

his

own

reader

to

vari-

classics, including “praeceptoris mei Donati is

only

one

culture,

so

he defended

phrase

that

in teneris

“adeo

Georgics 2.272: habit

This

Roman

to

that

consciousness

the

on

Virgilium.”

Jerome referred

statement

of the many ironies deeply embedded

in the

story of

in his

boyhood against the charge of citing a turn was quotation from the multum est” (“so strong 1s

himself

served

his

consuescere

years”).*

Petrarch’s

Pastorals:

Imitation

as

Interpretation

of begin to see, perhaps, in what deep channels the course from flowed Servius to with it Petrarch, bringing Virgilian interpretation idea of Rome and an imperative to conserve an that idea. In Petrarch, facing the physical and ideological ruins of Rome, that imperative had, rather, to be expressed as archeological reverence and a lifetime to commitment from Petrarch’s can notes in We the how gather Virgil manuscript salvage. he perceived his own hostile to that program cultural environment to be.

We

can

On

the first folio

now

Poeta.

nobis nostra

38

he

wrote:

Tibi

permissum est Rome ustoriam et quicquid libet scribere, Rome que liquimus fines patriae, id est ustoriam communis Omnium est. et dulcia arva id est studia et atque patri

non

sic immo

Saint Jerome: Dogmatic and Polemical Works, trans. J. N. Hritzu (Washington, D.C., The significanceof this passage was noted by Anthony Grafton, “On the 1965), pp. 79-80. Scholarship of Politian and Its Context,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 187-88. (1977): ° Against Rufinus, in Hritzu, trans., Saint Jerome, p. 100.

Medtevalism

carmina

in

nostra

43

quibus agricolarum

more

labo-

exercentur

poete

rando, excolendo.*” Poet:

you

wish;

you

are

permitted

for

us

try, that is, the and the after

history

history of Rome and whatever from our counalways outcasts which is our common patrimony,

write

to

not

the

We

so.

are

of Rome

fields, that 1s, our studies and our songs, of farmers, poets are employed in labor

sweet

the

it is

custom

in

which, and

cultivation.

In this

crucial

Virgil’s first the

the exile. translated

was

humanist

he

the

and

upon

the

private gesture the metaphor for the condition

poet

in the

condition

beyond

of the

middle to

the

be

opening lines of melancholy persona entire pastoral con-

of the

himself

one

perceived that

hermeneutic

Servian

a

circumstances

own

took

In this

into

scholar

and, because

his

to

Petrarch

eclogue,

of Meliboeus struct

translatio

of the

perilous,

boundaries

that

intellectual,

fourteenth Petrarch

Servius

century, extended himself

set

for it. What

Petrarch’s

pastorals share with to commitment allegory. But

viously, the nomine, chose

small

a

not

notes

on

the

in the

Eclogues is, obhis Epstolae sine

preface to polemical character that he lifetime, he explained the principle of of such

his

carmen:

odiosa

fuerit, nunc flagitiis hominum, crevit

semper

nempe mendacio

of letters

publish them during

to

the Bucolicum

Cum

collection

his

memuini:

desinet

datum sed quam

est.

est

veritas.

Crescentibus

ac odium, et regnum blanditiis interdum etiam et dixisse, sepe scripsisse

Id

me

Ea

sepius scribendumque est. Non me pridem cogitatio induxit ut ambigui, scriberem quod paucis

dicendum dolor.

capitalis veri

ante

fletus

Bucolicum

intellectum poematis genus plures forsitan delectaret. Est enim nonnullis corruptus adeo gustus ingenii ut cos notus sapor, quamvis idem suavissimus, offendat, ignota omnia, licet asperiora, permulceant.

Carmen,

always been hated, it is now a capital crime. It is a fact that the hatred of truth and the kingdom of flattery and falsein proportion to the growing sins of mankind. hood has increased I remember often having said this, and sometimes even but writing it, it ought to be said and written more often. The lament will not cease before the grief. This idea led me some time ago to write the Bucolt-

Though

“The

Latin

truth

was

has

transcribed

by Wulff,

Deux

Discours

sur

Pétrarque,

p. 17.

Pastoral

44 cum

by

a

and

Ideology

Carmen, a kind of cryptic poem which, though understood few, might possibly please many; for some people have a

for letters

so

that

corrupt

swect,

offends

matter

how

the well-known

savor,

no

matter

only taste

how

them, while everything mysterious pleases them,

no

harsh.*

And

he added

not,

like the Bucolicum

precisely because the letters Sine nomine were covered by a veil of ambiguity that they were to be jealously from circulation during his lifetime, whereas guarded the eclogues had once fallen into the hands of “some high-ranking personages” who were themselves represented in them but who were unable to decipher those dangerous allusions. (a Making due allowance for the revisionary effects of reminiscence letter to his brother a more theraat the beginning of the project suggests peutic motive for turning to pastoral in 1346,” and the eclogues were composed over a six-year period, during which Petrarch became increasis nevertheless of central importance. As ingly pessimistic), this statement compared to the elliptical Servian premise of necessity, which served to justify and qualify the theme of emperor worship, Petrarch’s allegorical It is, therefore, not merely method in his pastorals is premarily subversive. occasional and “in certain but places,” ubiquitous, involving every pastoral details of landscape, and event and extending to the smallest character weather, and gesture. The result was a text substantially more enigmatic than its model, in which the reader was required to make informed guesses central Petrarch therefore confronted the said. about what else was being that the more of the hermeneutics of censorship, effectivelya text paradox the for the writer’s the is encoded self-protection, greater danger it runs of at all. himself felt this difficulty; able to communicate Petrarch not being for his first and fifth eclogues he supplied a personal key, sending the first and the fifth to the revolutionary leader Cola di to his brother Gherardo first readers the Bucolicum carmen Rienzi. Among Petrarch’s quickly generated its own tradition, creating a forest of competing and commentary obfuscating suggestions,** and even the modern translator of Petrarch’s eclogues, after struggling to make them accessible, advised us “to look beyond the mediaevalism, not allowing our eye to be distracted by the gargoyles of the allegory.”* *!

that

it

was

carmen,

Dotti (Rome, 1974), pp. 2, 4; trans. Book without a Name (Toronto, 1973), p. 27. * Epistolaefamiliares 10.4. See Thomas G. Bergin, ed. and trans., Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen (New Haven, 1974), pp. xiv—xv. All my citations from Petrarch (and much other valuable information) derive from Bergin. ineditt e 1 suot commenti 43See Antonio Avena, ed., I/ Bucolicum carmen (Padua, 1906). “Bergin, Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen, p. xv. Norman

Sine nomine: P.

Lettere

polemiche¢ politiche, ed. Ugo

Zacour, Petrarch’s

45

Medtevalism

Yet,

as

I have

already argued,

language begs the central question enigmas. Petrarch’s pastoral allethe Virgil as that which informs spirit a humanist twelve eclogues articulate

such

of Petrarch’s

and motives

of the character

gories were conceived in the same frontispiece. Taken together, the ideal, a dream of Italy united once government, located in the city of

under

more

a

and stable

strong

central

principles of liberty pringovernment ciples of Christianity. Petrarch confronted, in actuality, an empire divided the authority of the papacy and the so-called between Holy Roman Emof the secular as a result church the by power, hopelessly corrupted peror; to the Donation of Constantine; the papal see removed city of Avignon; central authority, and reeling from the feuds between Rome left without and

constitutional

the

of the

great houses

two

between

Years’ War

blending with

civic

and

Colonna

and

France

of Italian

the

and

Rome

England,

It

the old

the

the

Orsini;

which

deferred

transcendent

and

the

Hundred

of

any resolution

be-

unity. impossible analogy question Virgil’s objectives at the end of the civil war and Petrarch’s own hopes for a regenerate empire that would be in reality both Roman and pessimistic holy, but as his perception of the present was infinitely more Petrarch’s nascence and decadence than Virgil’s, in the vast gap between His became his from his model. obsessive; referentiality strategy diverged most for and alternated between tone and, important elegy vituperation; later evaluation, he utterly forfeited, in the service of maximum emphasis, of poetic economy. all sense the precision and the acuity that It is all too easy, therefore, to overlook in The text of the Bucolicum its details. Petrarch’s distinguish Virgilianism is not only a palimpsest of quotations from the Eclogues,a form of carmen was

not

to

see

an

tween

that

rearrangement it is studded

This is

with

true

of the

even

thest

from

fused

the secular

the

even

most

mechanical

and

incisive

Virgilian

rewritings eclogues in which

themes:

the

and the church’s

sixth

imitator

could

but manage, of the original.

redeployments apparently

Petrarch

and

meanings

seventh, those of

pastoral

that

and that

deviated

fur-

definitively introduced

satire. In the the theme of anti-clerical the genre, for better or worse, established a debate between first of these paired poems Petrarch Pamphilus, as St. Peter, symbol of true spiritual leadership, and Mitio, as Clement VI, into

Avignon pope. But they also represent, as it were, the hard of pastoral. So Mitio insults Pamphilus by calling him in of Virgil’s “Fortunate distortion “Crude senex,” and explaining senex,” 1s to the cross and suffer the that his “sors” or lot in Christian history carry Mitio identifies fetters of repression; whereas himself, again by Virgilian quotation, as a perverted Corydon: the decadent and

soft

versions

Dulcem Formosus

cantando

fieri

nactus amicam, studio; solemque perosus

46

Pastoral

Antra

umbroso

colo.

.

.

and

Ideology

.

bizantius

Speculum Corydon complaceo dono

Quo michi

istud, dedit.

(lines 142—45) Since

by my singing I have found a fair friend, I study to make myself beautiful; and avoiding the sunlight I seek out a shady cave. Byzantian Corydon gave me this mirror as a gift, in which I pleasure myself. .

This

.

.

ingenious

allusion

the Donation

of Constantine

is also

original proposal Corydon, in the Virgilian interpretation; second eclogue, is narcissistic in his passion and that Virgil had thereby of the self-reflexiveness Theocritean equated pastoral with self-deception fallit imago,” 2.26) and representational failure. (“si numquam But Petrarch’s importing of church politics into the genre was, in fact, with his Roman-historical compatible reading of Virgil and not to be confused with other procedures for christianizing the pastoral. In a discussion of prophecy in his treatise on the Repose of the Monks Petrarch carefully qualified the patristic view of the messianic eclogue, by distinguishing, in historicist between intentions and the reconterms, Virgil’s conceivable structions that Christian desire. with the premise exegesis might Starting messianic that even contribute to prophecy, though ignorant pagans might of what they spoke (“quid dicerent ignorantes”), Petrarch stated his own historicist compromise on the fourth eclogue: contribution

Huc

to

enim

et

caelo

et

de Cesare

in adventum

possunt

Virgo alto.”

demittitur

quamvis altius

illa trahi

redit

ait: “Iam

toto

aspirans

ad

dicta,

redeunt

que Virgilius in Bucolicts de alio loquens Saturnia regna, / iam nova progenies

pius lector, imperatorem, cuius

Que quidem religiosus

...

an

that

the

to

ad celestem

orbe

potius

signa precesserant, imperatoris romani, quo

trahet

et

que audiens poeta neque nil matus noverat, reflexit

adventum.*

There

is

of the Bucolics

which

speaks of how

the

Virgin returns, reign of Saturn returns, and a new race descends from heaven. Although it is merely Caesar who is referred to, a pious and devout of the heavens, whose advent reader might think it was the emperor universal on earth had been announced by prophecies. The poet, not did to soar as knew of who these, attempt high: he thought of unable to conceive of anything the coming of a Roman emperor, a text

the

.

greater. *

Tl De otio

religtoso,ed. Giuseppe

Rotondi

(Vatican City, 1958),

pp. 28-29.

.

.

47

Medtevalism

Petrarch

So, too, Servian

adapted pastoral

that

premise

his

to

is

preoccupations the self-representation and that

humanist

own

form

a

of

His first literary ambition and vocation. a of vocational anxiety, rewriting expression eclogue predominantly secular and spiritual of a choice between of Virgil’s first eclogue in terms diswriting. Although the date of the poem’s composition is somewhat puted, it was undoubtedly one of the first Petrarch wrote and connected to a

of

dilemmas

the

it articulates is

an

visit he made

in 1347

of Montreux. whose

life is fixed

happy

wanderer

his brother

to

this

In

version

and

by

role

is taken

secure,

Silvius

Gherardo,

the

Petrarch

gregis

et

reject wandering over

that

and

by Gherardo,

of the

un-

antro, curas;

colles

Monicus, hidden to

happy shepherd Monicus,

potuisti spernere silvasque pererro.

rurus

Ast ego dumosos Infelix!

able

in the Charterhouse

recluse

himself:

Monice, tranquillo solus tibi conditus Et

a

of the

alone in your tranquil cave, you have been of the flock and the pastures; but I go thorny hills and woods. Unhappy!

away

the

cares

explained, 1s a debate in which the pastoral are fully and equally articulated, cultural for the first time in Western history. Silvius expresses his admiralantion for the “generosus pastor” (Theocritus) who spoke a different he describes how which and from Virgil drank, guage and was the source his own poetry has been received by his contemporaries: the learned, or “fountains” sources themselves dryly applauding him, the uneducated that instead Monicus recommends barren echoes. his words like repeating of ambition and emulato the tensions of continually subjecting himself listen instead to monastic and cave should enter the Silvius tion, life) (the poetry of a different ontological order: What

follows,

of sacred

rival claims

Dulcius

himself

Petrarch

as

and secular

hic quanto

media

sub

videbis

nocte

Psallere

pastorem! Reliquorum

Ingeret

ille tibi.

oblivia

sensim

(lines 55-57) Here

in the

depths

of greater sweetness. of everything else.

of the

you will he will cause

night

In time

hardly need Petrarch’s gloss in David, who always reminds us of

We

the letter the

see

a

shepherd sing psalms

you

to

inhabitants

tell

to

oblivious

become

us

and

that the

the

psalmist

humble

is

walls

48

of

Pastoral

Jerusalem (“Cives whereas

et

so

Petrarch

time

leaves

Ideology

parve / Sepe Jerosolime memorat,” lines to whom Silvius turns sing of Rome and

menia

the authorities

72—73), Troy and kingly conflicts (“Hi line 75). If Virgil ambiguated

and

Roman

Troiamque

the choice

of sacred

the choice

between

being, pending completion eclogue are devoted. Yet in terms of the entire eclogue is to confirm

and

Meliboeus,

unsettled

poetry

of the

the

prelia regum,”

et

Tityrus

secular

or

canunt

for the

the final lines

which

Africa, Virgilian interpretation, the the hypothesis, only inferential in effect in the could read the Eclogues, Servian that one commentary, particular first, as a dramatized poetics, or at least that branch of poetics that deals and functions. and with poetry’s sanctions with authorial motives of the theme Another of Servian patronage and one equally adaptation is Petrarch’s first connected to eighth, the Divortium tightly Virgil’s eclogue or Separation, where he expresses as dramatic debate his parting in 1347 An old friend in Giovanni Colonna. Cardinal from his Avignon patron, of the invito return to Italy, but his acceptance Parma had invited Petrarch to Rome, recently tation was probably also motivated by a desire to return here preof di Rienzi. Petrarch the new Cola rendered attractive by regime of the

his residence

sented

by his father,

child and

who in

him

abandoned

aviti / Finibus

in France

infantem

and declares

as

of

aberrant, him

carried

to

away

as

an

from

exile forced upon him as the land of his forefathers

marshes

the

(“Huc genitor profugus me rapuit, ripaque palustri / Exposuit miserum,”

his determination

his

Few

a

ruris

lines

origins. than this, wonculturally resonant / Principia,” derfully impossible to translate: “Levis est ad prima recursus to first principles, or sources, lines 85—86); for the return may bring happiness, but it was not, as Petrarch the philologist certainly knew, a light or Equally subtle was Petrarch’s appropriation for his own autoeasy matter. /ébertas, as well as of Servius’s biographical purposes of Virgil’s tendentious gloss upon it. For two decades, Petrarch reminded Colonna, he had served him faithfully, “nor is the love of liberty, surely, an injury” (“nulla est iniuria iustus / Libertatis amor”). Using the very phrase, “libertatis amor,” of Virgilian ambiguity, that Servius had employed to suggest the presence of the identified the Petrarch zmgenuus,the man born language explicitly from the duties of clientage; his own free, with proposed emancipation 86-88),

in Petrarch’s

ments

-

and -

in the

certainly

*©

cago, which Brutus.

of Cola

context

also carried

There

was,

See Mario

can

canon

be

to

di Rienzi’s

revolution,

intensely republican another major

Cosenza,

essentially a

Cola’s

revolution

paean lasted

to

state-

Francesco

Petrarca

theme

and

a

in this

the Revolution wrote

rewriting

of the

di Rienzi (Chiin June 1347, the third Roman 1347.

of Cola to

Cola

with Cola recognized as year, from May to December

republicanism,

for less than

short-lived, it

however

connotations.*°

1913), especially for the letter (pp. 16—44) that Petrarch was

to

more

of course,

Emilio

return

Medtevalism

eclogue as Petrarch’s his

cultural name

autobiography,

and that

subtext.

that

one

has occasioned

I refer

49

is

the presence

familiarly attached

more

more

respect

of Laura

than

other

to

parts of

in this third

pastoral eclogue, a between and courtship dialogue Stupeus (Petrarch) Daphne (Laura); in his ninth the or Lamentation, occasioned eclogue, Querelus by Laura’s death in the plague in April 1348; and in his tenth eclogue, Laura occidens, where, as Bergin justly remarks, both the personal and the Virgilian motives are completely overshadowed by the excessively long and insufhroll-call of list a to which Petrarch continued to add ciently justified poets, names for several years. Yet the very structual and conceptual inadequacies of this poem point to the other great leap in “translation” accomplished by Petrarch—the recognition that the theme of love in Virgil, which Virgil himself had represented, through Corydon and Gallus, as at best solipsistic and at worst self-destructive, could itself be redeemed by translatio, that is to say, by transforming sexual love into a metaphor for something beyond itself without abandoning the literal fact. Thus Laura, as everyone knows if they have read barely a word of Petrarch, was both a real person to even whom Petrarch was and a symbol of his vocation, passionately committed the laurel tree or the laurel crown of poetic preeminence. It is a telling fact that we can prove her historical existence primarily because Petrarch himself recorded her death on the flyleaf of the precious Virgil manuscript.*”

the Shade”:

“In The

ine

last

to

significant item

of Petrarch’s

here, significant in that of

larger trajectory symbolism of trees.

Metaphors of Patronage

it

too

reading

created

its

is connected

pastoral, Calling himself

of

Virgil

that

mini-tradition

own

the

we

shall

exam-

within

Laura

the

via the

eclogues pastoral discourse, Petrarch alerted his readers to the role that trees played in his personal icoand in the tenth he arrives at an Arcadian nography, eclogue landscape where stand side by side the green laurel of Petrarch’s personal love and ambition and the towering beech offering its shade to the flocks and the umbram,” line 285) shepherds (“Optatamque gregi gregis ac ductoribus an and creating appropriate setting for Augustus. In this poem Petrarch the signifying gap that was slides over leaped in Servian commentary, the beechen shade under which Tityrus reposed was vir(umbra) whereby with tually equated imperial protection; put in its starkest form, as Servius Silvius

to

within

his

*”See de Nolhac, Pétrarque et Vhumanisme, 1: 119; but compare F. A. Wulff, La Virgie de LAmbrostenne (Uppsala, 1901), who questioned the authenticity of the graphical notes on the added first folio. le

Note

sur

autobio-

30

Pastoral

Danielis

has

it, umbra

But

in the second

g[usti].” considerably larger understood

and

its cultural

meant

and

Ideology

“allegorice sub eclogue, the Agus,

in the process ramifications.

shows

tutela the us

Imp[eratoris] Autree metaphor grows exactly how Petrarch

The

Argus is Petrarch’s response to Virgil's Daphnis and shares its cryptic and disputed referentiality. Petrarch did, however, supply his own partial gloss. In January 1347 he sent a copy of the poem to Barbato de Sulmona with a letter in which he explained that it was an elegy for “our most of Naples, who had died in Janusainted king,” that is, Robert ary 1343. In order to grasp what Robert signified to Petrarch, and hence the structure and strategy of the elegy, it is pertinent to know that despite the internecine struggles for power in Italy and despite Robert’s interventions on behalf of the Guelph party, his kingdom had by the time of his death acquired an ideal reputation as the territory of peaceful government and enlightened patronage of the arts. As Benedetto Croce put it in his the “the times of ‘the wise History of Kingdom ofNaples, King Robert,’ ‘the new Solomon,’ were long harked back to; a song written half a century later celebrates the peace and plenty of his reign, the just laws, festivities, model’s

tournaments, ‘something like

games, as

monarch

to

whom

had crowned

1341

There

music, and love songs, while another poem recalls it paradise.’”**Moreover, Robert was for Petrarch the he had

him

presented

himself

for examination

and

who

in

poet laureate.

interpretive problems or even questions of aphalf of the elegy, in which Robert is celepropriateness brated as Argus, the shepherd of manifold whose death has left the vision, other pastoral protagonists desolate. But the elegy proper is preceded by a different kind of symbolism, one that Petrarch’s letter leaves unglossed. The eclogue begins with a description of a fearful storm, suddenly interrupting a period of unusual calm: therefore,

are,

Nec

tantam

nemorum

Viderat

ulla dies:

Armenta

et

no

the second

about

per secula

passim

lenis pastores

saturata somnus

multa

quietem

iacebant

habebat;

serta canendo baculos, pars nectere Frondea, pars agiles calamos; tum fusca nitentem Phebum Obduxit nubes, precepsque repente nox Ante expectatum affuit; horruit ether Grandine terribili; certatim ventus et imber

Pars

*

teretes

Benedetto Croce, History ofthe Kingdomof Naples, ed. H. Stuart Hughes, trans. Frances of Gravina’s Chronicon de Frenaye (Chicago, 1965), pp. 51—52. Croce also cited Dominicus back with nostalgia to the time when the Neapolitans rebus in Apulia gestis, which looked enjoyed the long peace under Robert (“qui dudum peractis annis tranquillo pacis statu gaudeet bant sub regno Regis Reoberti progenitorum suorum”). See L. A. Muratori, Rerum ttalicarum scriptores(Milan, 1751), sec. 22.

51

Medtevalism

Sevire

fractis

et

descendere

Altior, ethereo Corruit

..

et

concussit

Ingentis strepitu

.

Pastorum Per

penitus

colles

turba

mox

longum

fulmina

convulsa

fragore,

arva

tremefacta

cupressus.

ruine,

sub quecunque consederat umbra.

illa

fugit, diem

secura

et

nimbis,

(2-13, For

day

no

for many

had

centuries

so

seen

great

a

calm

19-21)

in the groves:

all sides

gentle sleep possessed full-fed flocks and shepherds; some as wooden staffs, or leafy garlands, or they sang constructed fluent reed-pipes; when a dark cloud obstructed the shining sun, and suddenly and without descended on us; the sky warning night on

shuddered

with

a

terrible

rain

hailstorm;

and wind

contested

and

lightning descended through the cloud-fissures. Standing higher than the rest, deeply smitten a thunderbolt, the by cypress fell headlong, the hills and the on fields shaking impact. Trembling in the great crash of its ruin, a crowd of shepherds took flight who had formerly shade. through the long day sheltered in its secure .

In this

intense

reading tendency

his

of

vision

of the

pastoral rhetorical

shattered

a

umbra

into

idyll, a

plenitude

.

Petrarch

drama rather

.

of its

than

the

Servian

in this

instance

expanded loss;

thrift

and

works

advantage. so long in the grammatical and rhetorical construction—until, indeed, it no longer exists—and by the conceptual frame of peaceful continuity, expressed as “Per diem” looks back regretfully at “per secula repetition: longum secura multa quiectem ulla dies.” . The most natural understanding of this great and fallen shade-tree would be to associate it with Robert of Naples, a contemporary Augustus, the stability of his thirty-four-year reign, from 1309 to 1343, certainly shade.” In the elegy proper, it 1s said qualifying as a “long day in the secure that the woods his rule (“semper sub principe were safe under always and that his crowned brow tuta”) peace (“pax inerat fronti,” lines 100— Yet thanks to Petrarch’s later ones have seen in 101). early commentators, the fall of the cypress a reference to the murder of Andrew of Hungary, husband of Robert’s granddaughter Joan, who was suspected of complicity in the murder but eventually “cleared” by Clement VI.” It is hard to see how Andrew’s brief and pathetic career could have in-

The value

to

of umbra

.

as

a term

is denoted

by its

being

to

withheld

.

“Bergin, Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen, commentator; pulciano and an anonymous 254-55.

both

da Montepp. 220—21, following Piendibeni see Avena, Il Bucolicum carmen, pp. 175-78,

52

Pastoral

spired this translatw problematic solution Naples through two

and

Ideology

and multifoliate shade. A far less Virgil’s resonant see the Avgus as exploring the death of Robert of but parallel structures; different the first, an expansion of Servian commentary the protected posture of Tityrus; the second, an on of Virgil’s fifth eclogue, governed by the premise that the Daphnis imitation of that poem was Julius Caesar. Structurally far more powerful, the poem so understood also functions as an emblem of Petrarch’s pessimism. For there were two to be celebrated as Virgil political persons gods, one dead, the other very much alive and the site of cultural optimism, but in this of as befits Rome’s the two the Caesars dismemberment, poem, pastoral and are buried in a ritual. The closest Petrarch comes to an converge single is him a for to down from apotheosis Argus imagine looking peak high above and observing “our cares and tumults” (lines 117—18). Considering that the laurel of Laura occidens 1s also felled by a thunderstorm (lines 381—93), we may infer that this metaphor was indeed central to Petrarch’s poetics as well as his emotional life. It was unlikely to have been expended a on comparatively insignificant victim of those same tumults. In the subsequent history of this metaphor, however, it was not the specific reference that mattered. On the contrary, it was what Petrarch had done to Virgil’s protective wmbra that gave his fallen tree roots in the culWhat Petrarch had done, driven ture, or perhaps we should say branches.*° by his own pessimism, was to collate the sheltering beech of Eclogue 1.1 with the lightning-struck oaks of 1.17, glossed in Servian commentary as a of wrath of the Octavian; and Petrarch himself in his own intersymbol linear gloss had identified the lightning with Caesarian decree. In his version, therefore, the location of power and protection is deeply ambiguous, subjecting the tree of patronage to forces that the ruler does not control; while the tree itself is transferred from the territory of idyll to that of elegy. It

this

was

species

of the

1504

In

invaded

and divided

house

tered—and I

sing

a

of

to

of later writers

would

tree

stances.

the

is

that dozens

move

of his Arcadia

of

vary

according

vision

of

Aragon,

a

uprooted,

lamented, “Where

my verses?”*'

And

*°On the rich semantics

and

France

great orange

now

then

local

from

find

irresistible, and

the

and

temporal circumNaples which had been

Spain, built into the twelfth book (arangio)—clearly symbolic of

tree

with

shall I

all its leaves

repose?

Under

the end of the century,

toward of umbra

to

in exile

Jacopo Sannazaro, between

would

and

what from

fruit

shade

scat-

shall

the perspec-

Virgil, see P. L. Smith, “Lentus in Umbra: A Sym(1965): 298—304; Michael Putnam, “Virgil’s First (1975): 81—104. On the shadow of the laurel see and Petrarch’s Greene, The Light in Troy, pp. 131—46; and “umbrageous consciousness” in antiquity, see Julie Novakova, Umbra: Ein Bettrag zur the polysemy of umbra on dichterischen Semantik (Berlin, 1964). “UI*!Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia, ed. Michele Scherillo (Turin, 1888), pp. 274-75: di arangio et da me molto coltivato, mi parea trovare un albero bellissimo timamente tronco bolic

in

in Vergil’s Eclogues,”Phoenix 19 Eclogue: Poetics of Enclosure,” Ramus 4 Pattern

53

Medtevalism

of

tive

an

hearts,

now

Sir

English Protestant, so good townes allusion

Orange tree,” an Orange in northern

be

the

to

/ Trust

lost,

protective

shade

the

in

of the

role

Holland

“How

Philip Sidney noted,

of

Dutch

pleasing house

of

Europe.” topos particularly accessible in England, and following it a gives remarkably sharp and memorable series of images (indeed, some of them were visual) of the ideological shifts in English public affairs and the discourses they produced. In 1552 the great Tudor and Protestant patron of letters Thomas Seymour, who was executed in the reign of Edward VI, was privately lamented in a poem entitled The Hospitable Oake, ingeniously out constructed of Virgilian allusions. The tree, “Beneath whose shade did in all “Outstretch’d the of ease,” origiluxurie gladsome shepherds hie,” “in Arcadia’s londe” and nally grew supplied its protégés not only with the food of true Arcadian acorns, primitivism, but also with the “honey dew” that in Georgic 1.131 1s said to drop naturally from the leaves of trees (“mellaque decussit foliis”). Its fall is not through divine wrath but through all around, / This goodlie tree did shadowe too much envy; “’twas bruited grounde”; and Jove “aloud in thunder spoke” to express his anger at its The

was

fate.”

By the

middle

of the seventeenth

tive oak had been transferred

represented by James tended

tree-fable

to

Howell’s

of the

civil

the

century

Charles

I,

Dodona’s

a

metaphor of the protecperhaps most graphically

notion

Grove:

in which

or, the

the

Vocall Forest,

an

ex-

appeared in person epigraph, “Tutus obumbror,” alluded simultaneously to the situation of Tityrus and the allegorical mode of representation that Howell, for safety’s sake, elected. In 1658 Andrew Marvell represented the death of another “protector,” Oliver (Fig. 1)

the

under

Cromwell,

as

shade

war

of the

the fall of the “sacred

When angry At mortalls

British

oak”

poet

oak;

Latin

a

of the Puritan

revolution:

Jove darts lightning through the aire,

sins,

nor

his

and bruises

(It groanes, So many yeares

own

plant

all below

the shelter

of the

will spare; stood

that

wood.)

**

con le frondi ¢ 1 fiori ¢ 1 frutti sparsi per terra. Ove dunque mi riposero io? 1 miei versi?” On the relation between Sannazaro’s Arcadia qual ombra homai cantero and Virgil, see David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature (New Haven, and the Uses of Pastoral (Hano1983), pp. 43-69; and William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro

da le radici

.

.

.

sotto

ver,

1983), pp. *?

28-37.

Sir

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 30: 7-8. See NugaeAntiquae,ed. Henry Harington, 2 vols. (London, 1804), 2: 330—32; and The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition John N. King, English Reformation Literature: >

(Princeton, 1982), pp. 240-41. **Andrew Marvell, “A Poem upon the Death of O.C.,” Poems Margoliouth, rev. Pierre Legouis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971), 1: 136.

and

Letters, ed.

H. M.

,

y

|

i

‘ é ;

Viuvol

TT

Figure (London,

1.

Claude

1650),

Mellan, portrait of James Howell,

facing

p. 286.

By permission

from

of the British

.

UCCet

Auth

y

, .

etertvirri litt viteerer

Dodona’s

Library.

i Grove

55

Medtevalism

Figure

Funeral

2.

for Oliver

medal

Cromwell.

By permission

of the

British

Library.

official cognizance of the tree-metaphor in Oliver Cromwell, for the funeral medal issued precisely adapted and on one side an image of the Protector for 3 September 1658 showed with his sheep whose shade resides a the other a tree under on shepherd to the and its connection the tree’s The species legend explains (Fig. 2). the nation

And a

moment:

derived or

the The

it were,

as

to

“Non

from

deficient

Aeneid

oliva”

magically self-restoring Virgilianmotto

(“Let

had

them

lack the

not

avulso

6.143—44

(“Primo Bough.”°

non

olive”),

deficit

alter

a

motto

aureus”)

Golden

already

acquireddynastic P.connotations Leo

Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in MediciArt: (Princeton, 1984), pp. 4449.

See Janet mos

took,

form

ontormo,

Florence. in Medici X and the Two Cost-

and

Pastoral

26

Ideology

George Crabbe, who claimed in The Village, his supposedly poem eighteenth-century country life, to have rejected all Neohimself sought help from the anclassical pastoral imitation, nevertheless cient trope when faced with the task of writing a public elegy to commemof Granby. Shot in a orate the youngest son of his patron, the marquess went down naval battle against the French, Lord Robert Manners 1783

In

realist

on

As the tall

oak, whose

An

shade

and

vigorous brave

branches

form

the wildest

storm, ample High o’er the subject wood is seen to grow, The guard and glory of the trees below; Till on its head the fiery bolt descends, trunk extends; And over the plain the shatter’d Yet then

And

it

lies,

still the

as

wond’rous

glory, though

as

the

before,

guard

no

more”

profoundly, how deeply the pastoral shade history of Europe, I have chosen an of from the high Romanticism, from Germany, and from period example Friedrich In 1822 Caspar David the visual arts. produced for the consul a now known Heinrich Wilhelm Joachim variously as Wagener painting VillageLandscape, The Lonely Tree, or The Solitary Oak (Plate 2). None of these titles does justice to the fact that this is a pastoral, and that it carries of pastoral tradiiconographical significanceintelligible only in the context of the tree that has in the past tion. The painting offers, clearly, a version shepprotected or failed to protect the artist, and beneath it a diminutive are united in observherd with his sheep, dwarfed, as the commentators ing, by the majesty of the landscape. But this sense of nature’s sublimcentral and, as in Romanticism’s documents, ity, typical of Romanticism is of the tree’s own the marked mountains, complicated by by presence it has the sustained, perhaps by lightning. Here is a structure, by damage Bérschcentral ambiguity, on which the critics disagree. For Helmut the contours of the mountains at the oak “meets the precisely point Supan, that its trunk where it is beginning to wither,” a sign of life’s transience on in the background and by the ruined branches is echoed by other withered castle.*” For Linda Siegel, the painting needs to be read as the last of a Die political serics, landscapes in which the oak stands, as in Hdlderlin’s Exchen (1792), for the spirit of Germany. From 1806 to 1814, Friedrich of his country, and devastation obsessed was by the French domination To

tree

was

show, finally and embedded

*°George Crabbe, 1905),

more

in the

“The

cultural

Village,” in Poems,

ed.

Adolphus Ward,

3 vols.

(Cambridge,

1: 133.

*’Helmut

1974), p.

130.

Borsch-Supan, Caspar

David

Friedrich,

trans.

Sarah

Twohig (New York,

Medievalism

and

during the

German

for the anti-French

Kleist

and

these

years

from

(1810) through where

given place

series

desolate

the

herald

to

his studio

became

a

in Dresden, a group that included of paintings that chart his feelings over and

the Oak Tree in Snow

green foliage the foliage is

some

in 1812—13

nationalists

The

Schubert. runs

of liberation

wars

center

57

the

wintry Abbey in

(1821), of

coming

the tree’s

richer, despite

where

the Oak

the central

tree

Forest

shows

The

Solitary Oak, spring, dead summit, and spring has to

summer.”*

to

of the sheltered presence definitively marks the transition

It is the

shepherd with his sheep, however, cultural optimism, qualified by the Romantic of human tsolation and insignificance. What remains premises is the source. new Does it come, as is usually said of ambiguous optimism’s from loss his the of Friedrich, passionate patriotism and its transcendence natural and by supernaturalism religious mysticism? Or is his mature pastoral (so confidently beautiful that it is used for the cover of this book) a memorial not only of his own earlier oaks but of all the pastoral texts that had previously spoken of art’s contested relation to freedom and of its need for protection? There is no record in his notebooks to suggest that Virgil’s “woods worthy of a consul” entered Friedrich’s mind as he worked on his that

for the

commission

German

the

consul;

in the Realm

Ruins Since

to

coincidence

will

the twentieth its

to

the twentieth

century

and

Romantic

not

for

connections

medieval

but

value

the

to

attempt

post-Romantic

philosophical was

to

aesthetics

arcane

Unlike

|

in this

declares *$Linda

1978),

guise history life

itself

so

much

to

be

Siegel, Caspar

pp. 71,

75-77,

108-9.

of

of the few

one

terms

the biases

of

perceive its Although his focus

in which

to

he made the

his

series

astonishingly germane conception of the symbol as instantaneous fusion of image and perfrom its origins realistic in the face of to

the Romantic

which transcends time by an ception, for Benjamin allegory was change and mortality:

eternal

of the first writers

one

are

that

an

opening epigraph

and

consciousness.

Baroque allegory, the

of the

plea Virgil-Servius-Petrarch.

And

and

it is

century,

allegory from

recuperate

historical

to

remarkable.

of Thoughts

eventually follow the Ecloguesinto close this chapter by returning to appropriate its relevance here. Walter Benjamin was unfolding we

remains

does that

not

assume

the form

of the process

of

of irresistible

decay. Allegory thereby beyond beauty. Allegories are, in the realm of

David

as

Friedrich

and

the

Age of German

Romanticism

(Boston,

38

Pastoral

thoughts, what ruins are tiquity constitutes, item whole

is mixed.

and

Ideology

in the realm

for

Or rather:

of

the

item,

things.

elements

is constructed.

For

.

.

.

The

from

legacy of

which

the

annew

the

perfect vision of this subjection of antique phenomenon in a structure elements which, without uniting them in a single whole, of antiquity, would, in destruction, still be superior to the harmonies is the purpose of the technique which applies itself separately, and ostentatiously, to realia, rhetorical figures and rules. Literature ought to be called ars inveniend:. The notion of the man of genius, the master of the ars inventend., is that of aman who could manipulate models with sovereign skill.°? new

the ruin.

was

The

exuberant

In this

of classical imitation as the bravest form of profound redefinition to realcontemporaneity (and of the grammarian’s art as a commitment ism) Benjamin speaks for Servius and Petrarch as well as for the writers of the German trauerspiel of the seventeenth century. Benjamin’s perception that allegory expresses “a deep-rooted intuition of the problematic character of art” was connected to his plea, in the for some transaction between art and political Epistemo-Critical Prologue, life. The use of allegory, he suggested, is one of the signs that in certain live their lives in a sphere cut off from the periods “men of letters who . active national of the feeling people” become passionately resistant to that isolation.” It 1s very much to my point that Benjamin’s own runic critiwith its its cism, implicit political allegory (and explicit analogy between of Germany in the 1920s and that of the final period of the the decadence Roman Empire) should have itself acquired the status of a cultural ruin. .

in

Written

public the

the

Unsprung

pointed

out, and works of

quent

jamin copies of served Yet

terrifying “extinct

art

assigned or

died

his work

in modern at

almost

the truth

.

of

one

of the

Socialists

Weimar

in full

George fascinating group

a

by National

as

Socialism

Re-

evidence,

Steiner of

has

writings

and the

conse-

community.”* Benonly by chance that a few friends, to be subsequently pre-

German-Jewish It

fugitive. in the hands

editions

was

of

and translations.

same

of his

.

of the

hunted

survived the

.

oblivion

to

destruction a

tendencies

National

Trauerspiels became,

work

an

fratricidal

rise of the

des deutschen

dispersal himself

the

with

1924—25,

amid

.

time

as

the

aphorisms in

fate

of

Benjamin’s Ursprung the fate of Petrarch’s

way, proving manuscript was making another, less melancholy fact of its survival mere (even after having been stolen one

cious

‘*Benjamin, The Origin of German “Ibid., pp. 176, 55. °! George Steiner, Introduction

to

Tragic Drama, Benjamin,

The

demonstration. from

Petrarch)

was

preThe and

pp. 178-79.

Origin of German

Tragic Drama,

p. 7.

Medtevalism

59

of its

superb preservation in the Ambrosian library in Milan is an emblem continuity. And considering Petrarch’s reputation as the first of critic the papacy, it is one of history’s more ironies that literary generous the man for facsimile the superb edition of Petrarch’s manuresponsible which it to hundreds of makes accessible scholars internationally, script, of the Ambrosian was Achille Ratti, formerly director library but better one known as Pope Pius XI. However the interprets dealings between Pius and Mussolini of and the consequent the Lateran Accord, the pope signing was identified as a spokesman for peace and as a critic of Mussolini’s brand In the preface to the Virgil facsimile, written in of Italian nationalism.” to the international of we can Latin and addressed scholars, community hear, perhaps, the voice of pastoral care convergent again with the voice of of humanism’s

humanism, much

as

Petrarch

although Virgil and Petrarch joined by such great love

were

would were

and

have

wished.®?

separated by esteem

so

that their

We

are

many names

reminded

that

centuries, they are

intertwined

in the pages of the Ambrosian codex ad aeternitatem; that the whole curand we are invited to join in rent of Italian poetry flows from this source; The was a celebration. 1930, the bimillennial year anniversary Virgilian

Virgil’s birth, an event that, as we shall with an by European intellectuals consciousness, because of the political shadow

of

celebrated

pp.

see

again in Chapter 5, poignancy and that hung over them.

unusual

was

self-

® See, for example, Lillian Browne-Olf, Pius XI, Apostle of Peace (New York, 1938), 163, 174—75, 206—7. This study, though hagiographic and apologetic, effectively con-

Mussolini’s cynicism about the Lateran Accord with the pope’s Christmas message in 1930 (the ‘year in which the Ambrosian the cardinals Virgil was issued in facsimile). The preface (in a separate fascicle) was written not by Pius XI but by Giovanni Galbiati, also the author of I/ libro che il Petrarca ebbe piu caro (Milan, 1957).

trasts

to

2 VERSIONS

OF

RENAISSANCE

HUMANISM Be

“Long-winded arguments are always meant to something, especially when they try themselves on establish time-wasting philologiarguments.” “This is no philology, Octavian.”

conceal to

cal

it sounds

“But

should

add

to

like

a

commentary

“A commentary Who would want

so

end

of the

of the

fourteenth

that

you

described.”

by Virgil to

miss

Hermann

the

.

the Aeneid.”

“Yes, it might be

By

.

.

century,

his

on

work!

own

that!”

Broch,

as

The Death

Petrarch

in the

of Virgil

demonstrated,

the

po-

cultural

imagination had albeen understood. Seen the lens ready (or veil) of Servian comthrough mentary, now permanently in place for all subsequent interpreters, they offered far more than an introduction (later to be relinquished) to the vast Rather civic themes of the Aeneid. than merely a test and display of craftsmanship preparatory to a major work of cultural definition, the Eclogues were themselves, it appeared, a matrix of social, political, and aesthetic And as later thought, however delicately and interrogatively recorded. writers on meditated the Servian “notes towards a theory of representation,” they were found to enable a wide range of ideological activity, whose tency

center

was

Eclogues

the concept

as

a

master-text

of the writer-intellectual 60

at

work

sub

umbra, defin-

Versions

ofRenassance

Humanism

6]

of his ing himself and his responsibilities in relation to the power structures own place and time. This chapter will reapproach the huge subject of Virgilianism in the Renaissance, which may fairly be said to have been initiated by Petrarch and may be conveniently rounded at the of end the sixteenth off, century in England, by the publication of Spenser’s ShepheardesCalender, along with its formal imitation of Servian commentary. Because Virgil was omnipresin the Renaissance, we shall inevitably be constrained ent here to a ruthless to contract into a a selectivity, attempting single chapter panorama whose enormous scale and detail have already been mapped. Giuliano Mambelli’s checklist of Renaissance of Virgil registers 275 editions editions of the works of and 75 of the of alone.’ Most these concomplete Eclogues Virgil, tained some form of commentary. Under the leadership of Virginia Brown, a team of scholars are compiling the Virgil volumes of the Catalogus Commentarirum

et

which,

Translationum,

it is

estimated, will contain

some

items, in both printed and manuscript form. Among the more imporcommentators who can only be named here were Josse Bade (Badius ManciTorrentino, Domizio Calderino, Antonio Ascensius), Ermanno Pierre de la nelli, Jacopo Pontano, Filippo Beroaldo, Philip Melanchthon, Ramée Thomas and Luis de la Cerda. DurJean (Peter Ramus), Farnaby, 200 tant

ing

the

late fifteenth dominated

expect,

philological as

a

vehicle

added

little

forms;

and

creative

the

early

sixteenth

or

English philologues and pedagogical motives, in fact,

of cultural to as

Italy, as one would spread to French, Gerpedagogues. The stronger the century,

field, but the enterprise

and

Dutch,

man,

and the

The

information.

vast

soon

the weaker

became

the genre

of such

majority commentary passed, rather, into other an act of interpretation

the story of interpretation, which Petrarch’s own eclogues constituted the various

of Renaissance pastoral ventures poets, of Enrico Carrara, Vladigiant surveys miro the Zabughin, Alice Hulubei, W. W. Greg, and others, continued of for such distinctive cultures as Meproject rediscovering Virgil’s Eclogues dicean Florence, early post-Reformation France, and Elizabethan England.” The focus of this chapter will be divided formal between commentaries and the poetry of exegesis, selecting only examples where the writer’s response to is both distinctive and Virgil sharply fully intelligible only in terms of contemporary In Quattrocento circumstance. Italy, the most significant scholarly issues, both textual and extratextual, are on striking Landisplay in the different kinds of commentary developed by Cristoforo

by

whose

imitation,

numbers

we

so

know

from

the

"Giuliano Mambelli, Gl annali delle edizioni Enrico Carrara, La poesia pastorale (Milan,

Virgiliane (Florence, 1954). 1909); Vladimiro Zabughin, Virgilio nel Rinascimento Italiano, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1921); Alice Hulubei, L’Eglogueen France au seiziéme stécle (Paris, 1938); W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1905; reprinted New York, 1959).

62

Pastoral

dino

tury is form

Ideology

and of

tion

and

to these stands, the illustrated ediAngelo Poliziano. In contrast Virgil produced by Sebastian Brant at the turn of the sixteenth cenboth an example of how visual illustration was another important

of commentary

and

instance

of how

northern

European hudistinguished Italy. again, both forand is the mally mid-century commentary on the Eclogues ideologically, produced by Ludovico Vives, Spanish-born but alienated by circumstances and internationalist by conviction, while the cultural implications of neoare Virgilian pastoral dramatically demonstrated by the linked figures of Clément Marot and Edmund and Spenser—French English versions, reof the intellectual. spectively, post-Reformation By a certain argumentative thrift, therefore, the chronological scope and the major locations of the Renaissance in Europe will be represented. It is very much to the point that these exemplars can also be said, though with marked humanism. It will be a bydiversity, to embody Renaissance of the to recall how product larger argument, therefore, polyvalent, indeed how contentious, the term /umanism has become, and possibly to recover for it some congruity of meaning by reconnecting it to the concept of the intellectual and his habit—by the Renaissance already long-standing—of self-definition. But by the same token, the possibility of grouping pastoral humanism such widely divergent sets together as versions of Renaissance of ideas and principles as Florentine neo-Platonism and German popularism is instructive in proportion to its difficulty. The apparent disparity between Landino’s appeal to the select community of the Platonic Academy at Careggi and Brant’s outreach to the zmdoctz,or between the internationalism of Vives (however anti-Italianate) and Marot’s determined Franis the of measure the power of the language cophilia (however harassed), the Virgilian language of writerly self-recognition, they have in common: embedded with historical meaning several strata deep, whose allure was less of origins than continuity and which therefore both incited and restrained the perception of historical difference. manism

The VIRGIL

In

1487

a

strong

itself

FOR

Cristoforo

from

that

of

Commentary

THE

MEDICIS:

Landino

Different

Tradition

LANDINO

AND

POLITIAN

published the text of Virgil with his own commentary Addressing the project to Pietro, a son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he explained the relationship of this commentary to his far more famous Disputationes Camaldulenses, that great repository of Florentine neo-Platonism, indicating that he regarded the earlier work, and that

of Servius.

Versions

completed

in the

meneutics

and that

early 1470s,

ofRenatssance as

the edition

of grammar and rhetoric.* ther precisely adhered to

his main

would

While

Humanism

contribution

concern

this distinction

exactly what

63

it

itself was,

Virgilian herprimarily with points to

as

a

shall see,

we

it is

neireal-

seemed, important theory, Landino distinguished between two different text of Virgil or between two rival conceptions of the and interpreter. The first, articulated in his lectures to the Florentine Studium and in their final product, the 1487 edition, was defined according to the model of the scholiasts of late antiquity, especially the second was the new model of the Servius; philosopher-critic, made the of Plato and the of Marsilio work Ficino. possible by rediscovery In his preface to the third book of the Disputations, addressing Federigo of Urbino, Landino had explained the superiority of the philosophical method he was now following. What you are seeking, he tells his audiis much nobler than ence, anything so far explained in the commentary which lies more hidden in obscurity and has never tradition, “something been revealed in its own sequential order by anyone, as far as I know, up to this point. Neither knows this, but it must be grammarian nor rhetorician to from the secrets of brought light deepest philosophy [itimis philosophiae arcanis|, for you wish to know what Virgil intended [ volwerit] in his the of Aeneas and the enigmas concerning wanderings departure of that man to Italy.” Landino was sardonic on the subject of authorial intention, as “But if you ask them [the grammarians] typically handled in an accessus: what Virgil wanted to accomplish in the poem, they will affirm that he for the of Homer.”* himself imitation But he clearly felt the need proposed to defend himself against the charge of having willfully imagined the great of the quest for the summum bonum that he was about allegorical account to discover in the Aeneid. And he justified what was coming in advance, as a privileged esotericism designed for an interpretive community of the elite. Not only poets, Landino suggested, but all who engaged in a major have been wise with various literary project enough to veil their statements fictions and figurative discourse variis (“varlis figmentis, figurarum integumentis obscurarent”). ize how

strongly, approaches to the Virgilian commentator

Putabant

sissent

°P.

nor

to

in

enim

.

maiorem

.

.

si

essent

negotium difficiltus redderent, dignitatem auctoritatemque

ut

et quae habitura

scripqui

et

commentario ChristophoriLandini (Florence, 1487). The explanaprefatory address to Pietro, which immediately precedes the Aeneid. *Cristoforo Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses, ed. Peter Lohe (Florence, 1980), In translating this section of the Disputations I have consulted, and partially folpp. 117-18. Landino’s lowed, Thomas Stahel, “Cristoforo Allegorization of the Aeneid,” Ph.D. dissertaof the third and fourth books of the tion, Johns Hopkins University, 1973, a translation Disputations.

tion

occurs

Vergili opera in the

third

cum

and

Pastoral

64

Ideology

percepissent, quoniam non sine labore atque industria id assequerenfacturos tur, ea pluris esse maioremque inde voluptatem percepturos, minime sibi cum indoctis communia $1 quae i1psitenerent essent. Hac a sanctis rebus arcebant non ratione invidia sacrisque profanos igitur moti, sed ut aliquod inter sollertem atque inertem discrimen apparent, cum non idem otiosus quod studiosus assequeretur. Sic enim et praemia quae doctis solis illis proponebantur. debentur Difficultate enim et inopia rei mortalium ingenia acuuntur: vincitque omnia labor/improbus et duris urgens in rebus egestas. .

.

.

(pp. 113-14) more difficult, not they thought that if they rendered the matter written on would the had take only things they great dignity and those who heard them but also (because they would not authority, attain them labor without and fully industry) would make more of them; and that they would take greater pleasure from them if those things which they learned were not in the least shared with the ignorant. In this way they kept the profane away from holy and sacred not motivated matters, by envy, but so that there might be some

For

distinction due

to

the clever

between

does

man

not

achieve

the learned

held

sharpened by difficulty duris

There

the ethos formed tual in

well tine

of his

with

most

scarcity:

one,

alone.

vincit

For

omnia

thus

the rewards minds

men’s

labor/tmprobus

are

et

or

sheltered

manifestations.

situation

de’ Medici

Academy. As Janet characterized

them

egestas.

the social

Lorenzo

the studious to

the idle

Because

man.

unthought in Landino’s quotation here of Virgil’s Georgics1.145—46, a quotation that transcritique of pastoral into a defense of the intellec-

from

Virgil’s selective one

as

out

and

casual

nothing

was

of labor

adapted to

scholars

in rebus

urgens

much

as

were

and the idle

in part

Cox-Rearick

in which at

its has

center

For

it

was

that

this

constituted

demonstrated,

self-endorsing fusion

was

a

produced,

of

hermeneutic the circle

of

the Floren-

Laurentian and

culture

bya pastoral georgic, only in such idyllic settings as the Villa Careggi but also by an iconography devised by and for Lorenzo the Magnificent that derived ultimately from Virgil. Much of the Laurentian iconography was an expression of idealism on the Golden based fourth Age eclogue; but the first eclogue also provided a whole series of verbal and visual allusions to the ruler as in now to Laurentian shade-tree, identified, rule, as the laurel, compliment symbol of peace, immortality (through its imperviousness to lightning), and literary accomplishment. The second eclogue yielded material for a cult of Pan Medicus, symbol of the numinous powers of the house of Medici was

not

Verstons

ofRenatssance

Humanism

65

by Luca Signorellrs Realm of Pan, definitively attached to Lorenzo Lorenzo’s about two before death in 1492.° At the beginning years painted of Lorenzo’s the Naldo Naldi had dedicated to him eleven regime poet a of the house of Medici from Cosimo to the eclogues constituting history present and concluding with dynastic allegory and prophecy, and in his Rusticus Poliziano presented his patron with an updated version of the Georgics, especially the “happy man” passage at the end of Virgil’s secand

ond

book.°® Landino’s

of the mind

definition was,

of his Camaldolese

therefore, consistent

with

hermeneutics Laurentian

the

georgics mythology, creatas

life and early 1470s a generative vocabulary of the intellectual But the of the with the Platonic Georgics alignment responsibilities. Academy at Careggi had also to be supported by a discreet but ingenious manipulation of Eclogue 1, where Virgil’s doubts about the sheltered life that the status of the had been registered. It can hardly be a coincidence indocti, that large and amorphous group whom the docti need to posit in claims to privilege, are here delimited order to establish their own by and imers—that Virgil associated with Tityrus, and Servius words— otiosus disclaimer that he did not with the Augustan protégé, while Melibocus’s here serves envy (“non equidem invideo”) his neighbor’s superior fortune of the selfishness. to protect the intellectual charge against of the This passage is obviously connected to the opening sections how a where Landino describes of “litteratissimi” with Disputations, group in the Camaldolese Lorenzo head arrived woods to seek at their respite of the city, “where in a flowery meadow from the summer heat and the cares a spreading beech [patula fagus| covered with its extended branches a clear fountain” deliberately recalling the opening of (p. 10), an environment as articulated first But by Alberti, who will lead the disVirgil’s eclogue. of associations this the cussions, (the “pastoral” environment primary word is his) are with Socrates under his plane tree, and beyond that to the image of Mary sitting quietly at the feet of Christ while her sister Martha

ing

for the

its

‘Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Co(Princeton, 1984), pp. 18—19. For Signorelli’s painting, which was destroyed in the The cult of Pan was Second World War, see Cox-Rearick, pp. 83—86. grounded in Eclogue oves 2.33 (“Pan curat oviumque magistros”) and its mystic interpretation by Servius as a complex figure of cosmic unity and harmony. For Servius, the literal translation of the Greek name

simos

“formed in the of the god’s appearance, (“everything”) blended with a figurative translation image of nature,” horned like the moon, goat-footed (and hence sure-footed) to “show the in the heavenly reeds to match the notes solidity of the earth,” and with a pipe of seven diapason. P °For Naldi, see Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, pp. 76, 84—85, and Alice Hulubei, de Medici,” a Laurent Naldi: Etude sur la Joute de Julien et sur les Bucoliques dédiées “Naldo The Rusticus of Poliziano 309—26. 3 (1936): 169-86, et Renatssance Humanisme (henceforth anglicized as Politian) was published in 1483.

66

Pastoral

busied

herself

household

with

and

active

will

and

Ideology

duties.

This

be the

most

biblical

image of

the

two

lives,

of Laucontemplative, rentian reclusiveness. And it was, as Roberto pastoral and neo-Platonic has argued, ideologically worlds Cardini apart from the work of the first generation of Florentine humanists such as Salutati and Bruni. It was certainly the effect and perhaps also the intended function of the Florentine Academy, however loosely structured and however variegated its membership, to transform the ethical and civic emphases of the early Quattrocento into a literary and poetic version of humanism.’ The response of later readers to this development has inevitably dihowever blurred verged along ideological lines, by scholarly process. Florentine neo-Platonism has had many distinguished devotees, but to those influenced by Hans Baron’s studies of Florentine civic humanism,’ or generally suspicious of any principate, let alone one that masked itself as reof publicanism, the school of Ficino has been viewed as an instrument Medicean There is of a in A. G. J. hegemony. something compromise Pocock’s suggestion that members of the Academy might have been as troubled as Cavalcanti had been by Cosimo, faced with the by Lorenzo contradiction between Cosimo’s as de facto head of exemplary success and Florentine ideals of equalstate, achieved largely by backroom politics, and which had ity participatory citizenship, demonstrably failed to produce a working social system. The recall of Cosimo from exile in 1434 and the complicity of the ott¢mati in Medicean ascendancy were themselves political compromises. And the philosophical emphases of Laurentian culbe read as to restore that ture, Pocock thought, “may attempts harmony and control

in

in Cavalcanti’s

dino

non-civic

writings

himself, who, themselves

rate to

a

become

from

the

The

ambivalences

may well have has noted, advised

Field

distractions

of

of

the Camaldolese

therefore

Disputations

based

were

pay

on

lectures

attention

more

in time on

as

well

Virgil

while

politics as on

been

in

delivered

present

himself

secretary

spiritual

to

in Lanto

sepa-

attempting Guelph

the

reclusiveness.'°

presentation

place. While in

discerned

his students

the formal

to as

defense

that Pocock

Cosimo

Florence, and served De anima, his treatise completing

We should

“Roberto

Arthur

chancellor

party while

books

as

form.”’ about

unanswerable

the last

1462—63, it is

of

two now

La critica del Landino (Florence, 1973), p. 1. See also Eugenio Garin, Philosophyand Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz (New York, 1965; orig. pub. 1947), pp. 84—88. Garin’s emphasis on the Quattrocento’s intellectuals’ transition from civic humanism to Platonism has conditioned all subsequent scholarship. *Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renatssance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (2nd ed. Princeton, 1966). °J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), pp. 97-98. Arthur in Florence, 1454— Field, “The Beginning of the Philosophical Renaissance 1469,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1980, p. 200.

Italian

Cardini,

Humanism:

’°

Versions

the whole

that

believed to

Federigo

dedication

of Urbino

work

ofRenatssance was

before

the

other

than

put

Humanism

together

67

in 1473—74

of 1474."'

autumn

That

and dedicated

fact alone—the

Lorenzo—might bear inspection; but complicated by the backdating of the dialogue to the period between death and that of Piero the Gouty, when Cosimo’s Lorenzo was still only the heir apparent. As Alberti at puts it to Lorenzo the beginning of the first discussion, “Videtis enim universam rei publicae molem iam vestris humepropter ingravescentem parentis vestri morbum ris sustinendam” of (“You see the whole weight of the state, on account father’s to be on your growing sickness, already having your supported shoulders,” p. 10). And if this places the dialogue not later than the summer of 1469, it has also been argued that its other temporal boundary is set by a reference to “this recent war against Bartolomeo Bergamense” (p. 98), that is to say, the Colleone war of 1467-68.” It is impossible to be certain whether such a glancing reference was utterly cunning and precise or a but what was chronological slip, certainly deliberate was the location of in a pastoral world of adolescentia, however Lorenzo precocious. Indeed, the trope of youthfulness, which is Landino goes out of his way to stress mentioned more often than would seem to be required for a nineteen-yearone who had been visible in Florentine old, especially already diploand whose savoir faire had to save his father from macy recently helped the

to

What been

more

'*

assassination. levels.

someone

becomes

matter

can

The

most

Lorenzo’s

allow

teacher, him, indirectly, to

would

take their

chtridia

The

this have meant?

first and

innocent

had

question can explanation

conceived

continue

in that the

a

of

a

Landino, structure

Camaldolese

long list

dedication

various

approached on

fictional

role. The

the head

thereby place tor princes; by such a view, at

of

be

is that

to

who

that

had

would

Disputations

of Renaissance

Federigo

en-

of Urbino

''For the chronology of Landino’s lectures, see Cardini, La critica, pp. 16-17, and See also Field’s report on his discovery Field, PhilosophicalRenaissance, pp. 205—6, 463—74. Landino’s First of a manuscript related to the 1462—63 lectures, “A Manuscript of Cristoforo on Lectures Casanatense, Rome),” Renaissance (Codex 1368, Biblioteca Virgil, 1462—63 draft of the commentary 17—20. Apart from this manuscript, a student of Landino’s books of the Aeneid, the traces Virgilian pedagogy that survive a are in 1463 which announces Studium (1) a prefatory oration delivered in the Florentine course of lectures of for the coming year; (2) a second inaugural oration, perhaps for a course della Fonte indicating that Landino lectures in 1467—68; and (3) some notes by Bartolomeo had lectured on the Ecloguesby 1468. See Cardini, La critica, pp. 294-308, and his Cristoforo Landino, scritti critic e teortct, 2 vols. (Rome, 1974), 1: 5-15; Arthur Field, “An Inaugural in Praise of Virgil,” Rinascimento 2nd series, 21 (1981): Oration Landino by Cristoforo 235-45. des Cristoforo LanPeter Lohe, “Die Datierung der ‘Disputationes Camaldulenses’ 2nd series, 9 (1969): 291-99. dino,” Rinascimento "8 See Disputationes, ed. Lohe, p. 10 line 27, 11 line 25, 12 line 22, 35 line 30, 254 line 3, 262 line 21.

Quarterly on

the first

31

(1978):

seven

and

Pastoral

68

(along with double

the allusion both

purpose, and providing

state

become

had)

emerges val that when

we

Lorenzo

position

of

Florence

so

primus

by delegation

campaign

of

time

were

and

ruthlessly suppressed hardly have escaped the readers was commanded by Federigo

scheme, then,

two

the

reconstructed

that, in effect, all magistracies

also

a

of

head

the time years between to assume the citizens leading

In the

a

pares he had

inter

served

one

elides.

scheme

asked

was

It could

fictional

consider

to

time

an

he had

June 1472 terra.'*

of Florence.

stop

the fictional

for the

model

war)

successful

outstandingly who would shortly (or already A second and more disturbing scenario in the interwhat had actually occurred

complimenting

the ruler

when

of the Colleone

his management

to

a

Ideology

situate

both

his

under

sacked

the

of the

voting

in

and

in

control;

at

commune

Disputationsthat

of Urbino. the

system

The

explicit and

effect

Volthis

of the

the

implicit phase of decency and innocence, while permitting Landino to remain laudatory throughout. But there may be yet a third reading of the temporal strategy, not incompatible with either the first or the second. For all the emphasis on the ultimate superiority of the contemplative life, Landino managed to incorof political commentary. The amount porate into the debates a substantial and others functioned source is usually Alberti, who for Cardini as a link dedicatee

in

between for

example,

to

earlier

an

Landino

the end

was

who

and the earlier introduces

of the second

book

tue, especially in Cicero’s stitutional government

the

tradition

long

praise of Cicero

and functions

(“libertatem

as

the chief

iam

diu

It is

Alberti,

that

appears toward example of civic vir-

dangerous to himself,

so

attempts,

of civic humanism.

intermissam

to

vel

restore

potius

con-

amis-

restitueret”) after Julius Caesar’s assassination (p. 43); and it is in the of that honor cannot be the sumwho, process proving remarks it 1s of enim cum mum that bonum, typical tyrants, “quot tyrannos, us titulis usdurissimum servitutis 1ugum patriae cervicibus imposuerint, sam

civitati

also Alberti

debentur” insignibus honestatos videmus, quae libertatis auctoribus have the hardest of servitude their coun(“when they yoke imposed upon to themselves with the titles make and respectable try’s neck, insignia that to the authors of liberty,” p. 83). belong The ideological pastoralism of the Disputations, in other words, cannot or, on the contrary, political opsimply be dismissed as utter unworldliness The are more than ts indicated even evenhanded dialogues portunism. by Alberti’s conclusion that the Mary and Martha must continue to principles

que

*Even

tended

as

a

the show

most

of

L’tmpresadi

Lorenzo

the sack

was

in

the Pitti

or

neutral

of historians

that it was inepisode concluded beginning of his regime. See Enrico Fiume, contro Volterra (1472) (Florence, 1948), p. 171. The cruelty of of to the clemency with which Piero had treated the members

strength by Lorenzo de’?Medict

striking contrast Neroni conspiracy

in 1466.

of the Volterra

at

the

Verstons

be

ofRenaissance

Humanism

69

(p. 47). And if the dialogue admits of a small but still audible republican voice, it is easier to understand what we find in Landino’s Virgil edition, a decade and a half later. Before turning to that project, we must enter the testimony of another of the Medici the illustrated circle, Virgilian property manuscript of Vir-

recognized

as

sisters, “ambae

gil's works now in the most lavishly illuminated color

opening

Biblioteca

Riccardiana

manuscript

of

at

Virgil

Florence.'*

in the

period,

the foot

at

scene

bonae”

of the

of every page of the Aeneid, and Eclogues and of the Georgics. The format

of and desire imitate knowledge their contribution to

especiallyin uity, in each scene by name. who produced at least

The

scribe

the illustrated to

has

one

This

is the

with

a

each

at

evinces

codices

from

full-

the

some

late

antiqexegesis, by identifying the figures been

identified

of classical

as

Niccolo

Rucci,

six of which

Latin

texts, manuscripts by a member of the Medici family. The illustrations, which are incomplete, running only through the second book of the to Aeneid, have been definitively attributed Apollonio di Giovanni, otherwise known as the “Dido master,” and the artist of two Virgilian cassoni in the Jarves collection at Yale University.’° Apollonio died in 1465; the is now to from date the manuscript thought early 1460s. The association of the manuscript with some member of the Medici family is to be assumed not only from the practices of Niccolé Ricci, but from the rather

indicate

their

ten

commission

remarkable Medici

in several of the illustrations presence, in Florence palace (Figs. 3 and 4).’”

for the

Aeneid, of the

The

representation of the Medici palace has been contested, if not precisely denied, by Ernst Gombrich, the art historian chiefly responsible for and date. In refuting Schubring’s thesettling the questions of attribution sis about the date and his theory that the Virgil manuscript preceded Apollonio’s success as a painter of cassoni,'* Gombrich complained that his had mistakenly identified the images of Carthage in construcpredecessor or less comtion as allusions to the building of the Medici palace, more pletedby 1452. Not only was such a hypothesis rendered obsolete by of the scribe, born in 1433, but, argued the subsequent identification *

ms. Riccardiana 492; ed. in facVirgilius Opera Bucolica Georgica Aeneis, Biblioteca by B. Maracchi Biagiarelli (Florence, 1969). See E. H. Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld in part on a poem in Ugolino Verino’s 18 (1955): 16—34. The identification rests Institutes Fiammetta, “De Apollonio Pictore insigni,” a paragone between the sister arts, in which the “cuscus Apelles” or Apollonio 1s described as having surpassed Virgil in representing all the from the first three books of the Aeneid. major scenes of the Medici '’Versions palace appear in the manuscript on folios 72r, 72v, 74v, 77v,

simile

'©

79r, 80v, 82v, 83r, 84r, 85r, 85v, 86r, 86v. On other which

structures

do

not

otherwise

resemble

the Medici

folios

detail.

'8Paul

Schubring,

Cassoni

(Leipzig, 1915),

there

palace in

pp. 430—37.

are

either

additional

general

rusticated structure

or

RIDNO

‘Iq!

dA

.

JO

UOTs

gost Ag

S

“ICQ “Jo]

4

‘

C6

“SUI

PURIP

IY

x

_‘ddeTeg Ss.

SUPT weg Jo

dBd1¢

Ig

DUT,

PUL, |

“tUUR

IY) tp

Ip Ol

OIUO ‘MUD *¢

aanlh

4;

‘LUR

ge :

es

‘mu

-24eYy 493]0.]

*

°°

ayp Jo

wuviz

uors

stuo Ag

“gg d

tuisyog ‘(69Z] oahu ‘sa{d WO UeWI *QZPT Ul

4 a

-

stuuvo ry] IDeTeq “po

ae TN

‘uo

ohn

74

‘s170N DIPS

_+

A

aoe ery +

aa

|

eyed

ary

=

urY

nGl HLF

‘Are nbz aseads su?

yop

‘seg

Pastoral

72

Gombrich,

the

entire

and

of

based

the

faulty art-historical Schubring’s generation, that Quattrothe representation of “real life.” On the

was

argument the scholars

Ideology on

premise, painters were concerned with art offers no contrary, according to Gombrich, “Quattrocento reportage of the places and persons of the time, for it operates with types and patterns, not with individualistic portrayals.” He produced as evidence that the Medici the was not building specified by Apollonio a “somewhat” palace “In bringing this in a painting by Gentile da Fabriano. analogous structure formula up to date for the representation of buildings—both complete and incomplete—in the noble city of Carthage,” Gombrich concluded, Apollonio “may well have made use of the type of the Medici Palace, but this into topographical views. Least of all need we does not turn his miniatures think that the degree of incompleteness of Carthage allows us to refer back to the building history of Florence.” to

common

cento

Behind

inform

the

this

disagreement

criticism

lie

of Florentine

contrasting

biases

neo-Platonism:

similar

both

to

those

that

structured

by relationship to society. Other art historians, of Gombrich’s own even generation, have believed that the type of architecin question, denoted ture by the status symbol of heavily rusticated stone blocks on the first story, was recognized as having been established by on a Michelozzi as a of the Medici and imitated grander scale by symbol But even those who take for the Pazzi as a deliberate political statement.”” was intended the miniaturist to be recogthat the Medici by palace granted in its most nized have not problematic aspect: queried that intention the that the scenes in which is most clearly recognizable renamely, palace to and fer not to but that the Medici Troy, Carthage palace stands for Priam’s palace under siege. What could it have meant to the Medicis 1n the have their own architectural in Florence identified 1460s to symbol early first as Carthage (which would later in Roman history be destroyed and its immolation lands sown with salt), and then as Troy, whose Apollonio It is hard to with insisted agree Buagiarelli that the alluupon? graphically as sion would have been seen simply complimentary to the dynasty;”' we the of Landino’s diamanuscript with the ambivalences might, rather, align a historical warning to the house of Medici, precisely logue, as presenting home to them. lest the analogy come

divergent principles

vanni

of art’s

"?Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni,” (Oxford, 1974), pp. 7-11, who agrees

p. 19. See also Ellen with Gombrich on

Callman, Apolloniodi

Gio-

the Medici

disfre-

palace but interrupted by Apollonio’s death, arguing that he

from his view that the work was quently left work to be finished by others. °See Ludwig H. Heydenreich and sents

are

in Italy 1400 to 1600, Wolfgang Lotz, Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 22—23. Mary Hottinger *' Biagiarelli, ed., Vergiltus Opera, p. xiii, proposed that the allusion would have been as seen complimentary to the Medici because their coat of arms, a black cagle on a field of gold, appears on the palace on folio 85r, suggesting “il simbolo della potenza imperiale, della stirpe italica.” dal fondatore a Roma trasmesso trans.

Verstons

ofRenatssance

Humanism

73

In the

light of this argument, the illustration of the Eclogues(Plate 3) is exceptionally interesting. It offers a vision of pastoral dominated by the first eclogue, with the contrast between and Meliboeus central to an Tityrus of As the whole. to the in scene understanding compared corresponding the Romanus which is assumed to have classical Virgil (Plate 4), iconography behind it, Apollonio’s shepherds are realisticallycostumed as medieval a peasants; indeed, they articulate vocabulary of realism in detail that was to leave its mark on illustration for decades to come. As in the Virgilian is seated under a tree his while Meliboeus Romanus, Tityrus playing pipes, stands in the position of a transient, holding the horns of the goat who will him into exile; but in place of the rhetorical accompany gesture of speaker to viewer he holds the traveler’s staff, and, surprisingly, turns his back on the viewer in a gesture that keeps his complaint private. The props, as it are the conical straw hat on the head of were, historically specific—notably, Meliboeus the traveler from the and the or sun, giving protection bagpipes on to the flute in the Romanus.” Tityrus’s lap in striking contrast zampogna But what distinguishes the miniature as a statement for its own time local realism of detail. the viewer’s attengoes beyonda Claiming primary tion is the central figure: an attractive youth, inexplicable in purely illustrative terms, in aristocratic and with an elegant little dog at his feet. costume, No other miniature contains a character who cannot be accounted for by the text, and the young man’s presence is the more for the abintriguing sence here of the name that elsewhere identifies each of the figures. These anomalies make it entirely plausible, as Biagiarelli suggests, that the boy was an idealized representation of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was thirteen in old 1462, the year that Cosimo endowed the Platonic Academy at years in that pastoral world beCareggi, and whose presence as an adolescent tween 1464 and 1469 was so delineated Landino. The carefully by peaceful presence of the patron in the center of the culture, then, is visually dominant. But behind the protagonists, in the background, are two other however minimalized, require interpretation: in the upper images that, left, a smaller seated figure zs playing the flute, plausiblya visual allusion to the eclogue’s classical origins; and in the upper right, a figure with raised stick threatens that a history of violent another, a reminder dispossession links the first and ninth eclogues. The far from idyllic version of pastoral, then, that this manuscript offered to the Medici was recognizably in the tradition The the

of Servian

enterprise represented by

spite Academy, is

contrasts

**On the Narrative

commentary.

not

he wished

unrelated

bagpipes in

medieval

(Stanford, 1984),

to

to

Landino’s

draw

what

we

have

iconography,

pp. 76—77, 402-3.

Virgil

between

see

just

V. A.

it and seen.

edition the

of

products

While

Kolve, Chaucer

1487, de-

the

of the

commen-

and the

Imagery of

Pastoral

74

and

Ideology

Stuproduct of Landino’s earlier lectures in the Florentine its of Servian the tradition, dium, line-by-line approach prefwith its was ace markedly different in form from a grammarian’s accessus sharply demarcated topics, its emphasis on the poet’s life and motives, on problems of intentionality, on models and metrics, all intended to explain that completed of the detailed and justify the actual nature commentary with a humanist Landino’s the scholarly exercise. preface begins praise of who have us “both to of all as the Virgil, “princeps” taught speak seriously than half of it ts and ornately, and to live well and blessedly,” but more to a history of the Medici devoted family, addressed to the son of Lorenzo

tary itself, the

followed

while

de’ Medici was

ume

was

still in control

of Florence.

The

vol-

entire

thereby politics, and the content and between contradiction is certainly no overt this history and the picture of the Medicean hegemonist developed in the

explicitly located

context

of Florentine

there

while

of

tone

here supports those fact of its presence of a sustained Disputations political concern.

the

by Cardini, the

the father

mere

Camaldolese We need

to

heir

Lorenzo’s

why such

consider

such

at

a

a

history should have been especiallywhy Landino

and

moment,

in

intimations

addressed chose

to

to re-

(who was in four years to succeed his father, and in two more to be personally responsible for the expulsion of the dynasty) of the danfaced and overcome by his Medici predecessors. In pargers and difficulties the seems to ticular, history problematize its laudatory premise by dwelling Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, in which Lorenzo on the at considerable length to death and in which his brother had narrowly escaped being stabbed As a document, therefore, the 1487 had in fact been assassinated. Giuliano of other leading Florentine with the statements invited preface comparison of the Pazzi conspiracy. In a climate of exin the aftermath intellectuals had been two extreme the signifipression suddenly polarized, positions cantly represented, as Landino certainly knew, by Politian’s polemic against Rinuccinr’s the Pazzi and by Alamanno dialogue De Libertate, written in of Landino’s had been one 1479.”* Rinuccini philosophical discussants, the identified but the De Libertate explicitly pastoral recluse as he who has abandoned civic life precisely because the Florentines, in submitting to the the principles Medicis and allowing the conspiracy to fail, have abandoned of the ancient republic. And while Landino’s preface might seem to align Pietro

mind

3

Perosa (Padua, 1958); for Congiura dei Pazzi, ed. Alessandro Conspiracy,” in Renée Neu Watkins, ed. and trans., Humanism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence (Columbia, S.C., 1978), for a discussion of its hegemonic implications, including its final association of pp. 171-83; with Octavian Lorenzo via a quotation from Georgics 1.500, see Ida Maier, Ange Politien: La a

see

@un

Formation

Rinuccint’s toscana

Della

Angelo Politian,

translation,

“The

poete

dialogue

di scienze

e

Pazzi

humaniste see

lettere

Watkins, ed., Humanism

(1469-1480)

Dialogus de libertate, La

and

Colombaria

Liberty, pp.

For the text of (Geneva, 1966), pp. 358—71. ed. F. Adorno, Atti e memorie dell’Accademia (1957): 270—303; and for a translation, see

22 193-224.

Versions

him

with

there

Politian,

lead in the other

ofRenaissance

79

Humanism

aspects of the commentary

are

itself

that

to

seem

direction.

It is much

in Landino’s on point that this occurs commentary partly depends on his reading of Servius. His preface indicates a to the Eclogues,and its scrutiny of Servius’s introduction and central distinction between Theocritus. “For what do find Virgil you

the

in

the

to

Eclogues,and

it

that

Theocritus,” Landino

asked,

if you take away that propriety of speech, which the Greeks call Idiom, which he perfected with both pastoral mores and diction, what else will you find in which the Latin poet may be the Sicilian? Yet this I admire in Virgil as I desire

missing. however

.

.

For

.

by

he did

much

less he concealed

the

fiction

not

by far,

so

beneath

that

which

was

obvious,

so

concealed

it in Theocritus

he

was

adorned

observed,

with

a

and that

if it is

that matters, neverthepersona,

greater

depart from the pastoral that vulgar surface another

that the work

lent

he

thought conquered by

double which

sense

more

exceland

argument, was

hidden,

he

perfected. And

it

certainly

concerned

and

with

then, he both

matters

that

shows

himself

went,

he

to

some

Virgil’s divine humble

conceived

Landino nature, concluded, that “he characters from the first age, so that, now those great matters intellectually and, as

degree incorporated them the generic boundaries

honor

in the text, in such of the pastoral.”

a

way

managed glance back at the Servian distinction between writing sempliciter and allegorice,it certainly looks as though Landino was appropriating that critical vocabulary to different ends. Servius’s insight into the strategic discontinuity of Virgilian allegory—“hic necessitate compulsus aliquibus locis miscet figuras” (“Compelled by this necessity, 7 certain places he minglesfigures”)—appearsin Landino as the mysterious operation of genius, over which the only real compulsion is that of generic boundaries. Landino’s repeated emphasis on the term persona is assimilated to the conof cept pastoral decorum, rather than functioning, as it does in Servius, as a in a historical central term and biographical approach to the pastoral metahoc “Et loco sub phor: Tityri Virgilium debemus persona intelligere” in this under the (“And place, persona of Tityrus, we ought to understand Virgil”). And in the “maiora illa,” those great conceptions that Landino found in Virgil but not in Theocritus, we undoubtedly hear the language of the Camaldolese to the commentary Disputations. Yet when it comes no Landino means or to intended, by managed, emancipate himself from of the old Roman historical and the glosses exhibit a patterns exegesis, and uncertain fluctuation between and_ strange philosophical political explanation. If

to

we

Pastoral

76

So the

patronage

and

on the first commentary system with its rewards and

Ideology

eclogue avoids punishments

any reference and manages

the

to to

slip in

worship 1s so called (Atir). adversary gloss to the between a Roman hisof the second eclogue clearly compromises opening one. Landino torical accepted the Servian reading and a neo-Platonic immoral referred to in the that the burning opening line seemingly premise statement of as a was admiration, Corydon, for Virgil’s really metaphorical where Servius had the as Alexis. But Caesar, glossed opening word, For“in et as to Caesar mosum, operibus gloria,” Landino proceeded pertaining of beauty and the distinction on the nature to a neo-Platonic dissertation between forma and materia (AIv). So, too, on the fourth eclogue Landino introduction of Pollio and all explanation of omitted Servius’s militaristic woods what it meant to to worthy of a consul. He took note of Virgil sing the Christian tradition, represented by Augustine, that the poem propheto endorse sied the birth of Christ, but he firmly declined the presence of Christian hieroglyphics in the poem, remarking that Virgil was “ignorant that the poet was “referring this hapof such theology,” and he concluded to Octavian” With (Briv). respect to the puer whose loss is mourned piness in the fifth eclogue, Landino again eschewed a Christian or otherwise mysof Daphnis as no tical reading, finding difficulty with the identification Julius Caesar, and remarking of the disparity in their age that “Nam allehuiuscemodi non huius sermo mutationem goricus sermo aspernatur” of does not this kind mutation,” Bvr). reject (“allegory of the second Landino’s account eclogue includes an expansive gloss he remarked on Pan as the principle of order and harmony in nature; that of the god” (Avr). Servius “has most elegantly interpreted the countenance his own with the LaurenHe therefore associated commentary potentially This may also be the reason tian iconography of Pan Medicus. for a long, on the name in and unnecessary unprecedented, gloss Daphnis Eclogue III a

gratuitous

because

as

a

it

note

overcomes

synonym

to

the effect that the host in Christian our

for the laurel.

the devil

Yet Landino’s

reminders

Yet the

that

the

laurel

is

an

pacifera” (Bir), perpetually green, and beloved of Apollo, in fact in the Natural History 15.40. In the directly from Pliny’s account of from Landino had cause to recall the Pliny process quoting directly figof Lucius Junius Brutus, that great emblem ure of Roman republicanism, and how “quoniam ibi libertatem publicam is meruisset lauriferam tellurem won freedom for the people by kissing the faillam osculatus” (“he mous plot of earth that bore the laurel”). of LanBut the most pertinent of these adjustments to any account in the long gloss provided for the word /ibertas at dino’s ideology occurs Eclogue 1.27. Here something extremely interesting happened, proving had deeply considered his own relationamong other things that Landino of had written the distinction to Servian Where Servius commentary. ship “arbor

derive

Verstons

77

Humanism

ofRenatssance

language between a slave and a man freeborn (“et aliter dicit servus, ingenuus”) on the subject of freedom and had concluded from the lexical choice that here Virgil spoke under the persona of Tityrus about his this distinction to something more converted love of liberty, Landino own “aliter servus: aliter civis optat audience: directly relevant to his Florentine forms of libwould choose different A slave and a citizen libertatem” (Attr). in

.

.

.

aliter

erty, for

a

from

manumission

slave chooses

his

bonds,

a

seeks

citizen

live

to

the state, so that his opinions may equal rights (“aequo jure”) be free (“ut libera sint judicia”). No one, unless he be in the role of magistrate, is to be served (“nemini nisi qui sit in magistratu sit serviendum’’).

within

with

this

makes

What

analysis of pher

at

gloss

still

more

is Landino’s

remarkable for what

an

we

this

be freed

Dicitur

praeterea coherci

metu

honestati

Liberty, furthermore, when

good conscience, and lawful

is

with

and in the

may

hear:

we

nullo

quin publicae utilitati a

be coerced

cannot

we

&

philoso-

intellectual

verbis

freti

possumus:

the

&

excellentia

libertas

aequitatique

the

to

move

from

abstraction, expect liberty of how the point, that is to say, an articulation does not appear. Instead, from worldly concerns, as

term

magnitudo animi cum optima conscientia apertis favemus.

and

for excellence

any fear.

greatness

of

Nay rather, relying on

by speech, we promote public service.

that

free

which

spirit, a

is honest

liberty is only apparently to transcend the by generalization and sublimation, for the “superior” to the civic and rheis not after all reclusive, but boldly committed liberty torical mode of self-expression. seems to have disLandino In this extraordinary republican moment, to the Servian correlative his own historical covered proposition that Virof a in the mouth so indecorous term the /ibertas, gil, merely by using Landino More to the blamed the times. slave, implicitly (“latenter”) point, While of Florentine civic humanism. the language and concerns echoed

The

result

civic

and

libertas

of this meditation

on

historical

itself

was,

as

Rubinstein

has

remarked,

an

ambivalent

concept

in

simultaneously connoting republican practice at home independence from foreign rule,” its appearance here is controlled by unmistakably those of the civic humanists—freevocabulary and concerns to dom of speech and equality of access political office. As Poggio had individual citiin a letter to the duke of Milan in 1438, “neither written Florentine

usage,

and

4Nicolai teenth ence

Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism ed., Florentine Studies:

Rubinstein, 449.

Century,” in (London, 1968),

p.

and Medici Politus

and

in the FifAscendancy Flor-

Societyin

Renatssance

78

Pastoral

the aristocrats

the

rule

zens

nor

with

equal rights [aeguo jure]

to

and

Ideology

city, but the entire people are admitted public offices; as a result of which high

low, noble and non-noble, rich and poor alike are united in the service has documented of liberty | conspirent in causa libertatis|,’ and Rubinstein and

the

intense

and

frequent

of 1458

mento

of freedom

discussions

of

speech

in the

Parla-

of 1465.”

councils

and the November

Eclogues,in other words, and his close attenimport interpretation seem to have given him aninto seems to have turned other kind of freedom. His neo-Virgilian ibertas has a noble echo of Bruni’s History of Florence, in which, as Nancy Struever the Florentine commune is not the of “Libertas merely slogan argued, the story of liberty; the developand the Guelph party; history becomes decline of public freedom is the strand of meaning on which all ment or political history is made to depend.””* It was also, of course, the subject of was that the rallying Rinuccinrs surely informed dialogue, and Landino Landino’s

tion

to

return

the

to

.

cry of the berta.” We

the

of Servian

.

.

Pazzis, in the heat of the have, then, a remarkable

assassination

had

attempt,

collaboration

between

been

“Li-

of

kinds

two

body of historiforegrounding: cal facts that charge a particular word with ideological intensity; on the and emphasis provided by the other, the formal procedure of selection and

linguistic selection

entire

gloss, therefore,

loyalties, and

old

one

hand,

a

tradition.

commentary The

the

on

that

a

stands

however

counter,

of

the

as

eloquent testimony

unobtrusive, leads

to

his

more

from

Landino’s

to

the

familiar

ar-

active

life,

away reading Virgil agitations, into contemplative serenity. But what it must surely or at least also counter, complicate, are the expressions of unequivocal suppolitics that Landino inserted into his prefatory address port for Medicean

gument with

a

man

all its

These

to

Pietro.

on

the life of

an

included innocent

the

statements

young

man

that who

the

Pazzis,

had offended

no

in their one,

attempt were

pre-

liberty (“illum betray simultaneously both him and Florentine simul & libertatem nostram”) and that by Lorenzo’s subsequent foreign policy the liberty of the republic had been snatched out of the jaws of its to its former enemies and restored splendor (*1Iv). By addressing himself heir once to the Medici might again have hoped apparent, Landino again without of Florence to influence the future implyinga criticism of the to work by indirection—by letting Virgil’s text present. Byagain choosing for his own earlier convictions—Lanand its interpretive tradition speak in the same dino suggested that (as Cardini said of Alberti environment)

pared

to

> Poggio Bracciolini, Epistolae, ed. T. de’ Tonelli (Florence, 1859), p. 183, cited in Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism,” p. 448; ibid., pp. 456-58. (Princeton, 1970), °Nancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance

pp.

116-17.

Versions

ofRenassance

79

Humanism

sympathies would no longer allow him to submit the intellectual’s funcin society to the constraints of political clientage.”’ But we should not forget the role that commentary, as a genre, played in this process or what it signified that Landino incorporated into his edition and into his own glosses the hypotheses of Servius, whom he had adeven in the mitted, Dzsputationes, to be “diligentissimus omnium grammaticorum” (p. 190). In this procedure Landino not only allowed himself a certain latitude of political inference but suggested another kind of idewhich and that defines the its ethos. scholarly profession By collaboology, in effect located himself near the head of a with Landino Servius, rating which was as tradition of humanist seen scholarship cooperative and cuat is what as Landino’s was least, mulative; this, commentary happened, incorporated into subsequent editions of Virgil that carried more than one The effect of such publishing practices, of the lists of learned commentary. names featured on the title pages and of the various typographical stratearound the Virgilian text, was to gies for disposing scholarly contributions as a sort of the permanent colloquium. represent exegetical project An illustration from a Venetian edition of 1508 (Fig. 5) provides another visual representation of this process: here the dynamic exegeticalrole of the commentator as conceived by Simone Martini for Petrarch has been a rather sober-sided Beneath community of the well-informed. replaced by of patronage the structure within which Virgil’s canon was developed had of structure, grown up another dependent upon the first—the structure the academy. In this representation of the scholarly tradition, the ancient grammarians Servius, Donatus, and Probus (whose commentary was published for the first time in Venice in 1507) share the stage with the early

his

tion

Renaissance Landino

humanists

Domitizio

Calderino,

Antonio

Mancinelli,

and

himself. Landino

even

ures

of humanist

*’Cardini,

La

seemed

have

anticipated and welcomed such a deDisputatins. Addressing himself to the velopment, of Landino abandoned a problem intention, any claim to having delivered definitive of the others to what he had Aeneid, inviting reading complete begun. When more learned men, he suggested, perceive that we have not non omnia been able to do everything (“cum nos potuisse intelligent”) will both able to correct the errors be and add whatever is missing. they Landino is not only willing to be emended but earnestly prays that those who are qualified to improve on his work should do so (p. 115). The disclaimer framed of a quotation sounds it in terms sincere, and Landino from Virgil’s eighth eclogue, which would become one of the figshortly Indeed,

to

in the Camaldolese

discourse:

critica, p. 140.

P.V.M.Oamnia comencantibus cinello

igenti

caftigationeexculta®psi(Tini asorg

i

Probo:Domitio:Landino:

clariffimis.Additis uiris smenciiin

rare

diAditeante

bat

multis:qux feperinSuuiom oir palin

i

§:ie .

Seladimteasl

ool

Cums HGratia4

¢

Priuilegio,

ft

Figure 5. Virgil, Opera (Venice: Bernadino By permission of Princeton University Library.

de Portesio,

1510), frontispiece.

ofRenaissance

Verstons

Humanism

8]

Haec

Damon; vos, quae responderit Alphesiboeus, dicite, Pierides; non omnia possumus omnes. So sung

Damon; all do

cannot

In his

to

which

Alphesiboeus replied,

tell me,

Muses:

we

everything.” scholarship of Politian, Anthony

of the

masterly account

that

the commentary by Politian’s own

inherited

tradition

from

Grafton

Servius

was

argued,

that

caused

and

replace

rightly rigorous philological method. Noting from late antiquity had cerinherited as encyclopedias of ancient culture and to students of mean as classroom tools “accessible even intelligence or poor as had done, to the nevertheless Politian Grafton objected, preparation,” “the of much of the annotation, donkey-work of listing syntriviality onyms—which is all that thousands of the humanists’ short glosses amount to,” and the suppression of individuality that the method required. In what he defined as a period of intense literary competition, the cumulative prin“made to tradition it impossible for its author in the commentary ciple of the phenomenon I have just 1nshine.””? This is, obviously, the obverse scholarform of collaborative terpreted more positively as the institutional on Landino’s edition would be the effect of such an 1487 ship; argument

argued more displaced that the line-by-line commentaries tain advantages, functioning both

to

declare It

him

it

to

it with had

dinosaur. desire

for

uniqueness,

abandon a

new

notations.*” tian

a

Politian’s

was

Grafton

the line-by-line commentary classical scholarly manifest, the separately published The move is all the more striking in view of the

earlier

on

created

for his

what

a

text

in effect

volume fact that

of

an-

Poli-

line-by-line working (in his personal Virgil manuscript) the works of Virgil published in Rome in 1471.*! This extraordinary docuin the library of Fulvio in the Bibliothéque once Orsini and now ment, in Paris, was described Pierre de as “a fine testimonial Nolhac Nationale by in more of Politian’s love for Virgil and an important monument, ways commentary,

much

own

the

use

was

a

had annotated way that Petrarch in the margins and blank leaves of a copy of same

*®CompareErasmus writing to Maarten Lips in 1518 about editorial practice: “Augustine declares that he has actually been helped by the difference between copies, since what do all things.” The is more in one version is obscure clearly rendered in another; we cannot 1518 to 1519, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and Letters 8442-992, Correspondence of Erasmus: F. F. S. Thomson, annotated by Peter G. Bietenholz (Toronto, 1982), in Collected Works, 6: 6. ® Anthony Grafton, “On the Scholarship of Politian and its Context,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 150—88; see also his JosephScaliger:A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship,2 vols. (Oxford, 1983— ), 1: 9-44. in 1489. centuria prima published in Florence *Te., the Miscellaneorum Virgil, Opera (2nd ed., Rome, 1471); Bibliothéque Nationale Inc. res. gr. Yc. 236.

and

Pastoral

82

Ideology *?

fifteenth-century Virgilian scholarship.” While many of the several times to the returned crammed into tiny spaces as Politian notes, is to reconstruct in genit same are virtually indecipherable, possible page, of this elaborate the focus and purpose eral terms personal commentary. that Politian If we assume acquired the Virgil soon after its publication, when he himself was eighteen, we could associate it with his own education. Alternatively, it may have been his preparatory text for the than

of

one,

he gave in the Florentine Idylls of Theocritus.**

of lectures

course

gil’s Ecloguesand notation

in 1482—83

Studium

Vir-

on

of the

first stages of anVirgil’s text, of the appropri-

One

the

clearly, the insertion, alongside Theocritus. The margins soon

was,

developed into a palimpfrom classical or late antique authors: derived sest Junius Aulus Servius, Priscian, Donatus, Probus, Macrobius, Pliny, Philargyrius, from

ate

passages of information

Gellius, Cicero, Caesar, Suetonius, Plutarch, Horace, Pausanias, and others. In

The

contribution.

of the

aspects

effect

/entus, the word

the

ninth,

beech that

tree

defines

Politian

fourth

the

In

curus.

eclogue Virgil himself.

Menalcas

as

and

interlinear

an

historical

Mantua

that

while the

of

accessus

behind

cause

and

mona

ment

the

Included

Probus, which

the

comment

Politian’s

among

included

as

a

whole

in

exegetical of how

metaphor

of Vir-

on

the

edition.

blank Here

brief

both

were

se-

as

tradition

older

a

the

to

Augustus, and,

as

Eclogues,the expropriation of the after Philippi, veterans

the

pay Octavian’s Tityrus and Meliboeus to

his

on

be understood

Tityrus, is to glossed Apollo

to the principles, then, was a core of commitment and what they meant to be written the Ecloguescame own career. gil’s This had already been unmistakably established that precede the Ecloguesin this spaciously printed

inserted, first,

was

included

first

nurturing that

by the sign “Ang.” that a gloss a long allegorical note eclogue

indicated

Politian

instances

some

own

personae be understood

pages Politian of the

account

lands and

of Cre-

the

state-

derived

from

allegorically intelligitur”). Politian followed this with an of Virgil: who had spoken with reverence anthology Macrobius; Quintilian (Imstitutes 1.8.5 and 10.1.85—86); Horace (Satires 1.10.45); Ovid (Amores 1.15.25: “Tityrus and the crops and the arms of while Rome is capital of the conquered Aeneas will find their readers of how Augustus conNatural 7.114 the in History earth”); story Pliny’s in Virgil’s will that the manuscript of the Aeneid the instructions travened to be burned; and the still more was significant story in Tacitus’s Dialogue in which Virgil was the veneration held at on 12.13 Oratory illustrating Theocritus,

(“totus

were

to

per allegoriam of classical authors

Pierre now

a

liber

3These

nito,

Eclogues

as

de

Nolhac,

La

Bibliothéquede

Fulvio

Orsini

(Paris, 1887), by Politian’s

recorded lectures survive as rudimentary notes in the Munich Staatsbibliothek, ms. Clm. 754.

p. 212. student

Pietro

Cri-

Verstons

by the

Rome

the one

occasion

of

course

man,

as

timuerim

quidem vatum inquicta et anxia

cum

ad consulatus

et

should

illud

I hesitate

the orator’s

sion

in which

either

to

the

contrast

cultural

Licet

vita.

malo

...

Ecloguesin feet

their

as

the

cited

et

quietum Augustum gratia et

notitia.

poet’s lot

with

the

in life and

and

unrest

rather

Augustus,

or

his de-

anxiety that have

without

Virgil lived, tranquil and serene, of the sainted

at

comparare illos certamina

securum

divum

apud

my part I would

For

career.

the favour

citizens

But

the to

rose

felix contubernitum

evexerint.

lightful literary companionships mark

audience

oratorum

pericula in quo tamen Vergilli secessum, neque caruit neque apud populum Romanorum sua

Nor

from

quotation

a

the

to

fortunam

ne

83

homage the poet, who happened to be present would have done to the emperor himself.” Politian they at length, including its idealization of ottum:

this passage Ac

performance,

and did

play, just

Humanism

which, “hearing

on

theatrical

a

ofRenaissance

the seclu-

forfeiting

popularity

with

the

of Rome.*4

side

is another

there

environment.

cynical epigram panegyric to Maiorianus, in which

delivered had

he himself

of

Virgil’s own

carefully transcribed (8.56) and the preface to

Domitian

to

reconstruction

also

Politian

For

Martial’s

this careful

to

in the aftermath

in 458

of

the

an

text

of

Sidonius’s insurrec-

been

implicated. Martial, utterly without conviction, had recalled the image of Tityrus and the lost lands in order to Domitian that only patronage would remind produce the kind of poets he concluded, “Ergo ego Vergilius, si that Augustus could count on; Maccenatis / des mihi? Vergilius non Marsus ero” (“Shall I munera ero, I shall not be a Virthen be a Virgil, if you give me the gifts of Maecenas? gil, but I will be a Marsus”).*° And Sidonius, no doubt with comparable clemency with an appropriairony, had opened his appeal to Maiorianus’s tion of the first eclogue that stressed imperial anger: tion

Tityrus volveret

ut

quondam patulae

inflatos

praestitit

adflicto ad

nec

stetit

rus

concessum

ius vitae

celsior

tenuem

dum

caelum

pro terris

Tacitus,

Dialogue

on

sub

tegmine fagi

per calamos, Caesar et agri,

murmura

largo

ira reum; in

sed

principe laudat,

rustica

Musa

Oratory,

trans.

dedit; Sir William

Peterson

(Cambridge, Mass., 1914),

p. 49. *°

Martial, Epigrams, ed.

and

trans.

Walter

C. A. Ker, 2 vols.

(London, 1920),

2: 45.

and

Pastoral

84

That

of old under

Tityrus forth

his

warblings

pour him in his hour the wrath in

for that

The

added

material

by

boon

for

prince place in heaven.*°

a

Politian

the canon,

vouchsafed

Caesar

reed,

to

bounteous

a

earthly

spreading beech might

live and possess his right not against an humble offender.

the

majesty endured

of

return

the canopy of a breathed into the

of distress

Muse, praising thus

rustic

Ideology

farm

But the

restored, gave

of

Virgil, then, created a by way of the approached on the archetypal poetic meditation his copy

to

that

a

land, and

the work

personal preface Eclogues,and the Ecloguesby way of extension into the first and career. And he updated that model by historical relaand his friends that the patronage fifth centuries, reminding himself and as protean as the classical text.*” We might tionship was as continuous at the this document infer that he constructed beginning of Loreasonably renzo’s primacy, when the roles of princely patron and writer-intellectual was were being redefined in Medici Florence, and that its construction connected to his version, in the Stanze, of Virgil’s pastoral wmbra and Serto

vian

commentary

Laur,

teme

o

Giove

in vista

irato

del

accogli al?ombra

well-born

you, nor

peace, his fiercest

manifestation,

do

notations

zot

Sidonius,

1963—65), terized

Poems and

empire

a

in the shade

gloss

dedicated

1: 59. Sidonius

the late

whose

the threats

and

later

of Politian’s

include

in his Manto, %¢

under

or

veil

happy

of heaven of your

Florence

sacred

in

rests

angry Jove trunk receive

or

in

voice.*

prophetic

was

while

stelo

santo

Laurel,

the winds

fears

my humble It

piu crucciosa, tuo

umil.

voce

And

il cui velo

sotto

in pace si riposa, i venti o 7! minacciar del celo

ne

La

itt:

upon

E tu, ben nato lieta Fiorenza

one

to

Letters, ed. and had

had

on

career

Lorenzo

trans.

W. B.

caught up in the imprudently involved

been

his

that

the tendentious

early Virgilian anof Eclogue 1,

/bertas

in 1482

and

Anderson,

2 vols.

chaotic himself

connected

to

his

(Cambridge, Mass.,

of power that characof Gallofailed rebellion

reversals

in

a

Romans.

his Commento inedito alle Stanze di Stazw, ed. L. Ce*7For a parallel example, compare Martinelli (Florence, 1978), p. 51. 8 Politian, Stanze cominciate per la Gustra del Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medic, trans. David begun in 1475 and broken off with Quint (Amherst, Mass., 1979), p. 3. The Stanze were

sarini

Gtuliano’s

assassination

in 1478.

Verstons

ofRenaissance

85

Humanism

Virgil for that year, a four-line paraphrase of the first eclogue are consisconspicuously omits all reference to Meliboeus.*” Such moves unPolitian’s that informs of with the narrowing tent political perspective qualifiedpropaganda on the Pazzi conspiracy, as well as with his later conIn the development of on the science of textual reconstruction. centration of Politian’s innovations is unquestionable. It is the value editorial practice, of that erected such barriers remark Politian Grafton’s also worth noting of specially learning around the ancient texts that only a tiny minority of esoteria form to with trained scholars them; might hope engage as neodisincentive to civic humanism as much cism that was probably a lectures

on

Platonic

*°

“nonsense.”

AND

VIVES

VIRGILIAN

ESCHATOLOGY

were Beyond philology, other scholarly revolutions brewing. In 1519 the moved to Ludovico scholar (Juan Luis) Vives, exasperation by the Spanish of the University of Paris, gave his own definiAristotelianism outmoded as he to see it of humanism tion classical hoped advancing through Euof the new the advent Vives described rope. In the In pseudo-dialecticos of intellectual as the restoration freedom, significantly described learning in the classical language of republicanism:

clara, excellentia, libraque inErigunt enim se se apud nationes omnes ac violentisgenia, impatientia servitutis, et yugum hoc stultissimae suis animose simae tyrannidis ex cervicibus depellunt, civesque suos ad totam civitatem libertatem vocant, vindicabuntque prorsus litterariam in libertatem suavissimam.*! longe there

For

arise

all nations

among

clear, excellent, and free minds,

they boldly shaking from their necks impatient the yoke of this stupid and violent tyranny and calling their citizens to liberty, and they will straightaway emancipate the whole republic of freedoms. of letters, returning it far and wide to the sweetest of

It

was

no

servitude,

and

that

this

accident would

convictions

tian

and

letters

associate

an

with

name

gifted Spaniard of Jewish origin but Christo himself a concept—the republic of of scholars—that we most community readily Erasmus. at alienated Already, twenty-seven,

commit

international the

are

of

*

See Politian, Opera (Paris, 1519), folio 85r. Grafton, “On the Scholarship of Politian,” p. 183. "Vives, Opera omnia, ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, don, 1964), 3: 62. *

8 vols.

(Valencia, 1782;

repr.

Lon-

and

Pastoral

86

Ideology

the country that had formally his father Inquisition would execute

expelled the Jews

search

and

from

vatism.*

verted

independence language of Florentine

The

Vives

by

the

to

found

nothing

civic humanism

but

rigid

conser-

therefore,

was,

in

Paris

to

con-

reform, which in the minds of ideally transcend local political boundaries

of educational

cause

and his circle

Erasmus

1524, Vives had gone

in

of intellectual

and whose

in 1492

would

to the indifferent would not be able to remain objectives. rein Landino’s of European politics. If the tensions perceptible of two versions between be as to defined sponses competition Virgil may definidistinct or between two humanism ideologically early European

and

Yet Vives

course

of the

tions

certainly structs

But

to classical culture, the same may it may also be said that the competing conand moral transcendentalism. civic functionalism

in his relation

intellectual

And

be said of Vives.

were

again

once

the stakes

had

been

raised

locale

and their

widened

dramatically. Virgil’s Eclogues, the social, political, and intellectual Europe had been radically of and the leveling effects forces nationalism transformed the by centripetal circle of and secure of the Reformation. Unlike the relatively autonomous of the intellectuals Vives’s Italian within an generation principate, clientage could not avoid at least taking cognizance of a much larger and more disturbing field of operations. What Vives witnessed was, first, an unseemly struggle for power I Francis of France, Henry VUI of England, and the Holy Roman among of the Holy See. as the various incumbents as well Charles V, Emperor over in the Hapsburg-Valois wars This resulted Italy during which the conflict and the disastrous French king was taken prisoner by the emperor, now

when

Vives

between

Charles

and

quence

of which

the

By 1537,

mercenaries.

published

second

city

of Rome

the

In

Spanish spreading throughout advanced and

1526

in

Rome

the

out

of values

1527, which

and of institutional

the

across

wiping confusion

national

Medici

the

were

Turks

his commentary of structures

struck

was

meantime, northern

pope, sacked the

by

VII,

Charles’s

and from

the

Christianity.

center

conse-

and

Luther

the

basin, invading Hungary

both Lutheran

While

a

the southeast

king Louis II. acutely represented by

most

was

as

German

of Martin

of the young

army at

Clement

doctrines

Europe,

Mediterranean

on

of the classical mercenaries

The

in

inter-

the sack of

Renaissance in the

impe-

rial army defaced Raphael’s Triumph of the Holy Sacrament in the Vatican, in the language of of the Holy City was lamented the pope’s abandonment

Virgil’s first eclogue, as responsive as

ever

to

shifting

circumstances:

Norena was G. Norefia, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague, 1970), pp. 16—22. biographer to recognize the significanceof Vives’s Jewish origin. His most reliable predecessor was A. J. Naméche, “Mémoire sur la vie et les écrits de Jean-Louis Vives,” Mé-

See Carlos

the first moires

couronnées

par Académie

Royale des

sciences de Bruxelles

15

(1841).

Versions

mia:

Amarilli

Trist’

Che di Titiro

donq’é

si

tuo

87

Humanism

ofRenaissance vero

pur

stranamente

¢ li dolente Vada la grege errante Lassrl bel Tevere e Vaticano altiero.

Poor

and

Most

done

away mighty Vatican.”

scholars to

indeed

true

strangely, and

so

shocking

Italian

it is thus

Amaryllis,

wanders

had

libraries.

to

At

flee for their

stake, then,

was

Tityrus Tiber

nationality, was the fact that and that irreparable damage was only the quality of the intellectual

their

humanists, whatever

to

the flock of your the beautiful

that

sadly he leaves

lives not

of Itallife but its very survival. While Vives shared with Erasmus a dislike in its of Rome ianate culture and the self-assumed relationship superiority the classical

with

past, he also shared

with

of letters

men

all

Europe

over

a

multiple sacrilege. His response to the sack would be expressed partly terms of Virgil’s first and ninth eclogues, the poems that and its dependence on political had first thematized the fragility of culture in last the In Bucolict Vergiluinterpretatio, he and one ofhis stability; projects, of the Ecloguesthat was dominated by cultural and vogave an interpretation cational anxiety, for which the only solution was to translate Virgil’s own optimism, centered in the fourth eclogue, into Christian apocalypticism. In order to understand need to Vives’s response to the Eclogues,we recall certain of his career. His to aspects previous relationship England and to English politics in the years immediately preceding Henry VIPs break with Rome brought Vives a sharp personal awareness that the schollife carried it no immunities. Invited to with arly England by Henry in horror

at

this

in

1523, Vives spent of the

tutor

on

of the

princess Mary he lectured

ford, where

thority

much

educational

on

or

next

five years

in residence

philosophy

reform.

In 1527

at

and

there,

either

at

Christi

Corpus rapidly became

he found

himself

in

court

as

the Ox-

College, leading auan impossible a

from Catherine principle Henry’s the the defend before to queen judges appointed Aragon, yet unwilling to on the legitimacy of her marriage. The result was the withpronounce drawal of the small pension he received from the queen, and six weeks of at the order of Cardinal house arrest Wolsey, from which Vives was only released on his promise of immediate departure from the country. occurred to Vives at this there early stage the relevance to his Possibly of Virgil’s first and ninth eclogues. At any rate, both these own situation

situation, opposed

in

to

plans for divorce

of

*

23.

André

Chastel, The Sack ofRome, 1527, trans. 123—28, “The Despair of Men of

See also pp.

Beth Letters.”

Archer

(Princeton, 1983),

pp. 92,

Pastoral

88

texts to

his

July

V. Vives’s

was

treatise

dedication

surely his

most

concordia

De

to

Ideology

the emperor

et was

ambitious

contribution

discordia,

addressed

dated

from

Brussels

to on

Anticipating by just over a month the treaty of Cambrai— known as the pazx des dames, negotiated by Charles’s aunt, Marby the French queen mother, Louise of Savoy—which brought

1529.

otherwise

garet, and to

in what

internationalism,

Charles 1

figure

to

were

and

conclusion

designed

the

influence

to

of the De

the treatise

Hapsburg-Valoiswars,

concordia,

in the direction

Charles as

part of the argument

was

unquestionably

of peace. In the third book that Christian princes should

warfare but should instead unite against the engage Melibocus’s Vives Turks, complaint against civil war: “En quo disquoted miseros” cordia cives / Perduxit (5.275). Later in the same book, in explaining the necessary relationship between culture and political stability, in the ninth eclogue: he leaned on the language of Virgil’s Moeris in internecine

not

Nor

the

can

when

voice

everything

of the

wise

is thrown

man

into

be heard

confusion

in the

meeting-places, by warfare, and there is

avail songs,” said the Poet, “are of no more than, as they say, the doves of Chaonia among eagles.” among weapons Nor can anything be heard inwardly, and understood, when a great is blowing in the spirit and great shouts confound all, in those tempest tumultous conflicts in which the mind is prevented from hearing anything spoken in truth and wisdom. (5.306)

much

tumult.

“But

our

of

skepticism about Octavian’s sixteenth-century Europe an entirely circular and more deeply pessimistic application. Men of letters will not be are at war; therewill not even be able to think clearly, when nations heard, should lead the to a more civilized of fore their writings, which state way affairs, will be of no avail. Despite this sense of the writer’s inefficacy,it was to Vives’s credit, especially given his recent expulsion from England, that on the subject of his attack on Rome, comparing it to he tackled Charles the earlier sack by the Visigoth Alaric in 410 and reproaching the emperor of libraries, obliquely) for a comparable destruction (although somewhat wound” “by which studies and arts of all kinds received an indescribable (5.306—7). When the Virgil commentary appeared, it too was presented in terms life. The commentary was of a larger conception of the intellectual prethe cultural significance of poceded by a preface in which Vives defended as his authority and and Greek culture etry, citing Aristotle blaming the exclusive to Latins of recent for their attention history philosophy and nethe referred in this of Muses. Vives Presumably vague and unjust glect

Where

Virgil

settlement,

had

Vives

permitted

discovered

a

for

moment

ofRenaissance

Versions

statement

the

to

Italians

tury, but his motives tect his own image will himself

to

scholar.

mingle such

to

the

early sixteenth cenoffensive, designed to proHaving Aristotle behind him, he and

the

than

of the mind

remissions

sweet

with

But upon the festive Muses.” in he in lies what has found Eclogues

studying meanings

sublime

more

89

somewhat

comment

for

justification

them, “many

defensive

serious

a

as

fifteenth

late

rather

hesitate

“not

studies, and

severer

the chief

of the

seem

Humanism

than

were

recognized by the

crowd

of Grammarians”:

prac tim

si nihil

enim

Neque

magis recondituum, quam quod verba triennali expolitione, mutuanti praeserRoTheocrito Siculo. Adde quod maximiis

subesset

ferunt, opus ille fuisset

se

pleraque omnia a Cor. Gallo, Asinio Pollioni, Varo, ingenuis illa elaborabat Tucae, ipsi quoque principe Augusto, qui leviculis rebus et pastorici Accedit sine altiore alique sententia, haud facile fuissent capti. non huc, quod res ipsae plerisque in locis satis testantur, simpliciter nullas alledici, sed figurate; quo magis miror, Servium Honoratum gorias admittere, nisi de agris deperditis: quae aliis multis de rebus manorum

.

..

manifestissimae

sus;

ostendemus

et

pum,

in rebus

non

quae pastoriciae ad Romanos transtulisse,

et

sensu

ipsum eruditis

auribus

aptaverim,

etiam

Poetae

.

sunt...

digna.

Non

de qua Poeta

ne

mentis

reddemus

leviculis

Theocritus

illi

consumtos

rudiori

seculo

fecisse

suac

tot

esse

scover-

ea

cantasset,

sua, intelligentia quasi quin allegoriam aliquibus versibus cogitarit quidem. et

cum

dubito

(2.2)

Virgil had not concealed more in his subtext than the words overtly carry, he would not have taken three years to complete the work, especially given that he borrowed a great deal of it from TheFor

if

ocritus

the Sicilian.

the greatest Roman Tucca, as also the

Add

to

this that

he addressed

these

Gallus, Asinius

minds, Cornelius

matters

to

Pollio, Varus,

himself

Augustus, men who would never light pastoral subjects without the presence of some higher meaning. Further, things themselves in many places sufficiently testify that they are not spoken simply, but figuratively, which makes me wonder the more that Servius Honoratus with the lost would admit of no allegories, except those connected are most evident which lands, allegories concerning many other

have

been

and show

and that age,

prince

taken

and

with

We shall therefore

matters.

mind

so

what

Virgil

that

so

Theocritus

transferred

restore

many had to

verses

to

the poet the full scope of his to not reduced triviality,

were

sung in the Romans,

pastoral sense making them,

to

a

as

a

primitive

it were,

his

90

Pastoral

with

own,

that

an

intelligence worthy

I have fitted

self had We may

and

certain

to

verses

Ideology of learned an

ears.

do I dorbt

Nor

allegory of which

the Poet

put him-

conception.

no

recognize

in this

statement

a

fully self-conscious

and histor1-

cized

articulated hermeneutic, with something of the triple structure by Petrarch. For Vives, the pastoral tradition with Theocritus began singing

primitive age (“rudiori seculi”) and medium appropriate both to the Roman to

a

consideration

self;

of the Roman

in the third

stage of

intellectual

transformed

was

historical

by Virgil into and

moment

elite, including the emperor

development, for

which

Vives

takes

for

a

the him-

personal responsibility, by grammarian will be revealed to the learned of contemporary Europe. The proof that an allegorical subtext is present in the Ecloguesis both textual (“res ipsae ple(those clever and important risque in locis satis testantur”) and contextual Romans must have been given something more important than pastoral So the humanist scholar his venture justifies songs). by positing an interto the one he wishes to address and, in so pretive community comparable defines later as that doing, implicitly community being made up of those with political power. Vives is clearly aware of the principle of authorial inand realizes that his own to tention contribution Virgilian interpretation will sometimes be in breach of that principle, but he is also possessed of a rudimentary grasp of the counter-principle that all interpretation is to some degree in breach of “original” meaning and that the interpreter properly translates the text into his own cultural terms, “making it his own.” The effect of this principle on Vives’s commentary is perhaps predictable. It becomes the vehicle of a Christian humanist pacificist, who reads the fourth and fifth eclogues as Christian documents. Setting aside historicist scruples as to whether could have understood the conceivably Virgil as Sibylline verses Augustine and Eusebius did or whether he was an unconscious medium of Christian prophecy, Vives declares that there is no historical candidate for the wonderful child in Eclogue 4: “And plausible to Christ, and we therefore will everything pertains interpret them accordunbelievers Let the be for even in the silent; ingly. simple sense of the words, utterly without any allegories, what is spoken here can certainly be as understood applying to no one other than Christ” (2.32). In the fifth Vives eclogue adopted the less absolute position that Virgil had indeed lamented the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, prophetically inspired by but that he had mingled with them some other Sybilline verses, matters of of ignorance of the true out so that he could square the his own, sense, own with his So the natural application. prophecy sympathy for Daphnis’s feri death silvaeque loquuntur,” 5.28), is “an allusion, per(“montesque in Matthew that to the 27:51 marked the moment of portents haps,” what

.

.

.

was

left

unseen

or

unstated

Servius

the

Verstons

Christ’s the earth

expiring, when did quake, and

Vives’s 60—61:

“the

veil of the

the rocks

intentions

own

“Wolves

ofRenaissance

are

ambush

9)

Humanism

temple

was

rent

in twain

.

.

.

and

rent.”

gloss on lines to betray the flocks, to the “pax Christi,” by which “ex-

especially manifest for the

in his

wait

lay peace.” This refers OMnem sensuM uperat superiorum cum inferioribus, feroct1um cum manastutorum cum suctis, simplicibus, exaequante omnia caritate, et reddente all sense tuta omnia et secura” (“he overcomes of things higher with things of of with the clever with the simple, leveling the fierce the gentle, lower, all things in charity and returning things into a state of safety and secuvision and therefore, Vives revision, rity,” 2.43). Through eschatological for arrives at the Christian ultimate justification allegory, for what was as is higher meaning now, by the logic of Christian originally proposed revealed as absolute (and omnipotent) abasement. Simplicity, deparadox, on the Ecloguesin favor of poetic urbanity, moted in Servian commentary can be reinstated the new by dispensation as the “true” meaning of pastoral nostalgia. Yet Vives’s commentary is by no means consistently religious. Personal on the experience of the vagaries of patronage informs his commentary emotional first eclogue with unusual intensity: “Felicitas autem haec est, quod in omnium trepidatione sit quietus ipse ac securus, in periculo tutus” (“But this is happiness, that in all tumult he himself may be quiet and sesafe from danger,” 2.6). Later cure, interpreters, especially in England, /entus and tutus, giving the latter between would make similar connections a as they made themselves safe beneath the specificallypolitical resonance, 1s only proleptically available at the fiction. But for otium Vives pastoral end of Christian time: for the time being, his own 1s morc persona likely to is be Melibocus. at the effect of his on “En discordia That, least, quo gloss “not only the civil wars of Rome as a state, cives,” expanded to adumbrate and in the whole empire, but even intestine to individual cities.” There 1s also an unusually complicated and threatening gloss on the lightningstricken oaks: Melibocus calamitatem, si quum “effugere licuisset tantam ictas viderunt hoc est Brutos, Cassium, et alios primum fulgure quercus, Caesaris in percussores proscriptos victosque, quorum partibus Cremonenses a erant, longius discessissent contagio viciniae, tamquam a pestilensibi aliqua oratione” tia, aut victorem conciliassent (“would have been able to flee that if had when first seen the oaks struck by lightcalamity, they is to and the others say, Brutus, Cassius, ning—that proscribed and conon whose of side the Cremona had fought—they quered by Caesar, people had left far behind that contagion, as if it were a plague, or had managed to conciliate the victor by some The 2.7). speech,” revealing slippage from to local transfers these incidents of Roman singular plural history to a while the ironical of Meliboeus, “En quis larger constituency; question deer:

Daphnis

loves

no

no

nets

Pastoral

92

consevimus

should

allusion

leave

he shall be

whether

wise

I have

labour

wherein

under

the sun.” The

a

Ideology for any situation enjoyed by those

lament

a

labors

our

are

Solomon

to

all my labour which the man that it unto

I hated

“Yea,

of

the fruits An added

of them.

becomes

agros?”

when

ence

and

man

is

shall

under

be after

the And

me.

because

I

knoweth

who

fool? yet shall he have rule and wherein have shewed

laboured,

2: 18—23:

sun:

a

or

experiunworthy

are

Ecclesiastes

surely to taken

I had

in human who

all my myself wise over

the melbiographer of Vives has amply documented of his from the time the last phase of his career, expulsion a his death in 1540 at the age of only forty-eight, was

recent

most

ancholy fact that England to This did not prevent him, as period of isolation, illness, and disillusion. and others have recognized, from doing his most Norefia significant work and the philosophy of mind. But the admiration in the analysis of culture generated by his De Disciplinis (1531) and the De Animaet Vita (1538) has as Norefia dismisses his commentary on the Eclogues, which obscured of wife of the Dona been written at Mencia, request probably having of Breda Vives supervised at the court Henry of Nassau, whose education of adaptation to from 1537 until his death.** Yet the work shows no trace from

wrested

out

of his

himself

had concerned

Vives

preface shows, rather, every sign of having experience. The mere fact that he came back

earlier; its strangely defensive been

which

with

education

of women’s

the theme

own

with which Ecloguesat the end of his career suggests the seriousness its address but the to the that preface, by explaining project, approached “the of the most ears learned, including prince himself, Augustus,” places and makes it, as well arena as the De concordia the Interpretatio in the same an for international accord. for as an Vives himself, elegy appeal

to

the

he

SEBASTIAN

Sebastian

Brant

cies. Trained

(1458-1521)

in classics

ILLUSTRATION

BRANT:

was

and law

a

AS

EXEGESIS

of many competenBrant later lec-

humanist-scholar of

the

Basel,

University practiced law in his native city of Strasbourg. While his satirical poem Das Narrenschiff won him considerable of Virgil to the Renaisstanding as a writer, his role in the transmission at least as important. In 1502 he and the Strasbourg printer Josance was hannes Griininger produced a major edition of Virgil’s works, along with of Servius, Landino, Mancinelli, and Donatus’s Life and the commentaries tured

in

Calderini, poem,

jurisprudence

with

“Sebastian

more

Brant

there

than

at

and

two

hundred

ad lectorem

woodcut

operis,”

illustrations.

indicates

at

least

A Latin a

collabo-

and Poetry in the Early *Norefia, p. 111; and see, for example, H. A. Mason, Humanism Tudor Perwd (London, 1959), in which Vives, “one of the greatest, most distinguished minds among the Humanists” (p. 263), is seen as an important intellectual influence on Ben Jonson.

tabellas”

(“Lo,

the

we

Brant

volume,

equally,

gere

which, together with

in

the

explained

relationship

quatrain

a

the

between

the end

at

of

and the ill-

text

is designed for the learned, the volume the commentary “Hic lethe illustrations, accessible to the unlearned: through

While

lustrations.

is

editor

introductorypoems

two

93

“has nostras and engraver: quas pinximus ecce have painted these little pictures”). This is the second of

between

effort

rative

Humanism

ofRenatssance

Versions

historias

commentaque

illa

And

plurima doctus: / pictures were added

the

indoctus

minus

Ne

that

the

per-

readers,

legere potest.” might also see without veils, for no one has ever shown us these things so ante haec clearly before (“Charas tu quoque habere velis. / Has tibi nemo The veil ostenderat tam usquam”).* obscuring Virgil’s meaning plane and the is here to be withdrawn by a new, visual form of commentary, of ancient achievements Zeuxis, Apelles—are cited painters—Parrhasius, of painting: and social usefulness for the intellectual as authorities dignity Nobilis

imprimis opifex: qui pingere & outinam

Novit:

Noble

ac:

mores

Would

that

for

boys,

our

While Brant

then,

quoque virginibusque bonos. pingeret ipse

the first artificer

was

he

alive

were our

continuing

to

of the In

discovered

who

today,

that our

how

he could

girls and

matrons.

membership in a learned community, in the Virgil as a revolutionary document

of his one

that

embodied

an

ethics

anti-elitist

be

his

this

paint behavior. paint good customs to

his

assert

classics,

so

and also

old men,

also conceived

dissemination

mores

senibus

Quo pueris nostris: Matribus

we,

hodie:

idem

viveret

so

the

of

biblia

might compared program respect production. with woodcuts and used primarily by bibles crudely illustrated pauperum, for pedathe pauperes praedicatores in Germany and the Low Countries were in a sense while the dzblia But pauperum anticipagogic purposes.** ideology, it seems, was a mixture of tory of the Reformation, Brant’s own and

social

religious conservatism,

combined

with

to

possible criNarrenschiff he inveighs

the broadest

tique of abuses in both church and state.*” In the of unfit, against the holding of multiple benefices and the ordination of Antichrist both he combines under the heading worldly priests; yet ©

Publi

Virgil

Maronis

opera

cum

quinque vulgatis commentarus:

Expolitissimisquefiguris

Brant superadditis (Strasbourg, 1502), folio A5Sv. atque imaginibus nuper per Sebastianum *°See Max Sander, Le Livre a figures italien depuis 1467 jusqu’a 1530, 6 vols. (Milan,

intermédiaire comme 1: xxi—xxii: “pour les illettrés, Pimage devait remplacer le texte compréhension.” Edwin H. Zeydel *”For Brant’s ideology and a bibliography, see The Ship of Fools, trans.

1942), de la

(New York, 1944),

pp. 1-19,

45—54.

Pastoral

94

those

Ideology

take it upon themselves basis for attacks on

preachers who

for

and

interpret Holy

to

the

the

Writ

(using

commercialization

it, instance, ance) and the printers who make their reformist as

of penaccessible. Ar-

arguments

guing against financial corruption, Brant reminded his readers, “Das Rom von burne lang regiert / Dar noch durch hyrten gbuwen sy / Von armen richtum verfuhrt” was founded (“Rome gantz by shepherds, long ruled by and then riches poor peasants, through quite undone,” Section 83). Yet the most in section the Narrenschiff (Section 99: “Of powerfully argued the Decline of the Faith”) is a defense of the Holy Roman Empire, of which from

his

flicting values, between

his northern

the classicist’s

tionalist of

sense

monarch

German

own

became

pre-Reformation perspective,

a

version

perception that all was stemming from

not

Italy, and the insidious internal apparently sufficient to inhibit any are

we

to

of humanism well with

the advances

of

How, then,

was

understand

invasions

coherent the

Like

in 1486.

Vives, but

clearly oppressed by cona precarious compromise

for the idea of ancient

veneration

menace

leader

Brant

Rome

the Roman

reformist

Virgil, with

and

to

ra-

while

church;

of the Turks

of Lollards

and his

a

the outskirts

Beguines, was

program. its explicit

appeal to

the

intellectually underprivileged? It has been established that Brant’s illusdo indeed accomplish what he claimed for them, that they constia on tute the text of running gloss Virgil by providing a visual equivalent, in either narrative or symbolic form, for as many elements of the text as the artist could manage to incorporate into any single design.* As in the surviving illustrated Virgils from late antiquity, the characters are identified by name, clearly a pedagogic device; the designs are often erudite, including details that can only be accounted for by one of Servius’s glosses; and they also sometimes visual articulation to “give images that appear in the poems as thus mental imaginary images, organizing space as real space.” But if the intellectual content of the woodcuts is agreed to be sophistihas been disputed. Their medievalism, especated, their aesthetic status has been decostume, cially in their use of “anachronistic” contemporary as inferior to the “realistic” traditions of illustration plored being deriving from Italy; realistic, that is to say, in the handling of anatomic detail and the disposition of landscape according to true perspective.*° Realism is, one could equally well argue that however, a notoriously unstable term: Brant’s designs are realistic in another sense, especially (and this is crucial trations

*”

First

*°See the Illustrated

on Brant K. Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the by Theodore Vergil,” Princeton Library Chronicle 21 (1960): 187—99, and the one as by Eleanor Winsor Leach, “Illustration Interpretation in Brant’s of Vergil,” in The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor ofLessingJ. Hindman (Washington, D.C., 1982).

pioneering

Edition but unreliable

brilliant and Dryden’s Editions

Rosenwald, ed. Sandra * Leach, “Illustration,” This

is the

essay

of

pp. 178—79. of Rabb’s essay; see also A. F. Didot, Essai typographila gravure sur bois (Paris, 1863), where it is claimed travesti€” in the Brant woodcuts.

prevailing argument que et bibliographique sur Pinstotre de (p. 98) that antiquity is “bizarrement

Verstons

Figure 6. 1502), fol. Alv. ton,

ofRenaissance

Humanism

95

Sebastian

Brant, “Eclogue 1,” from Virgil, Opera (Strasbourg, Collection, Library of Congress, WashingLessing J. Rosenwald

D.C.

intentions) in the Eclogues,which are unique in this early being given a woodcut apiece. Realism, in this sense, inheres in period and setting, on what we might lavished on details of costume the attention for the first eclogue call local color. This is especially true of the woodcut and Meliboeus are where represented in peasant costume, Tityrus (Fig. 6), a tree the the former seated under playing bagpipes, the latter, in a conical to

the volume’s in

Pastoral

96

hat and

straw

these

seen

carrying a

details

before,

associated

script

The be

traveler’s

and

Ideology

staff,

in the Codex

in the wanderer’s

Riccardianus

in

We have

stance.

Florence,

the

manu-

the Medici.

with

1s in fact

Riccardianus

one

of the

of Brant’s

sources

designs. We

Brant

is so, astonishing though it seems, by noting that in most of the designs for the first has also followed the Riccardianus

book

of the Aenezd.*’

can

that

sure

this

His

for

characteristic what

details

procedure in the

was

to

turn

to

that

guidance required illustration, copying actual images, especially for what I have called props, but altering the larger design so that its origins are partially obscured. He condenses two or sometimes three of the Riccardianus scenes frequently into one; thus his scene of the Trojans’ arrival at Carthage after the storm combines Apollonio’s representation of the ships in harbor with the subsedebts quent portrayal of their meal on the beach. There are unmistakable of the to Apollonio, however, in Brant’s three representation goddesses in the Judgment of Paris (Figs. 7 and 8), in the storm dominated scenes, by the puffing heads of the winds, and in Dido’s feast for Aeneas (Figs. 9 and 10), where the row of pots on the shelves is only the most obvious of his imitations. Yet this imitation ceased abruptly beforeApollonio himself ran manuscript

as

to

text

sometimes

of time.

out

There

of the

tion

along

with

access

to

stopped

siege

are

of

no

discernible

Troy

and

the unanswerable

that

manuscript

where

goes

connections

between

Medicean

Brant’s

translation;

concepso that

Apollonio’s question of how Brant or his engraver got the equally mysterious problem of why he

he did.

his eclogue, then, Brant derived from the Riccardianus and their of the course, Virgilian protagonists appurtenances, excluding, figure of the youthful patron; and from this point onward, because of the of his woodcuts, an illustrated extraordinary success Virgil is likely to include one or more of his speaking details. Thus the bagpipes and the walking staff are featured in the Venice edition of 1507 by Bernardino Staghat in the illustrated nino, and the straw Compendium of the Eclogues produced by Crispian Passacus in Utrecht in 1612 (Fig. 11). The last is particularly entertaining in its choice of hats, Tityrus’s rustic headpiece into a rakish being clearly recognizable and yet just as clearly transformed fedora adorned with flowers; while the cityscape behind the two figures reveals another important feature of Brant’s influence. Brant’s visualization of the first eclogue began with the Riccardianus, of significant changes of greater ideological import but it made a number on and of equal influence subsequent illustrators. Most striking, perhaps, For

>!

the

first

to show that Brant approached the task of illustration “uninfluenced method” the Brant woodcuts (“Sebastian Brant,” p. 195), actually contrasted in point of realism of perspective, without in the Riccardianus with the illuminations noticing the specific debts.

by

a

Rabb, concerned

previous

Versions

Figure

Humanism

97

Brant, “The Judgement of Paris,” from Virgil, Opera Collection, Library of ConLessing J. Rosenwald

Sebastian

7.

ofRenatssance

fol. CXXI.

(Strasbourg, 1502), Washington, D.C.

gress,

is the visible

the distance

and hand other to

corner

are

marked

be sure,

a

he has the

pathos of Mclibocus’s situation, his traveled already manifest, while down

in the

increase

two

alteration naturalistic

newborn

kids he has had

in the

left-

(1.15). The is in Brant’s treatment of the background, not, landscape receding according to true perspective, to

abandon

exhaustion

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Brant, “Dido CLI.

99

Humanism

ofRenatssance

Feasting Aeneas,”

Lessing J. Rosenwald

from

Virgil, Opera

Collection, Library of

Con-

representation of the two cities, Rome and Mantua, contrasted by Tityrus (1.19—Z5), which represent, as Eleanor Leach observed, “the poof the poem.”*? How important they are to Brant’s litical consciousness of the conception eclogue may also be discerned in the formal arrangeof the images, for Mclibocus’s ment newly central position in the design provides literally a pointer, his conical straw hat leading the eye upward the other to roof of the barn pointed forms, particularly the thatched but

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are.

**

Leach,

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de Marolles

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185

aristocracy whose royal leaders are missing. Instead of the impebeginning, fulfilled by placing the Aeneid first and by representing to Louis XIV that Aeneas is the model he should follow, Ogilby’s volume begins with the Ecloguesand qualifies heroism with strategic quietism. Marolles’s Virgil is consistent with the move in French culture after the Fronde to emphasize the of the crown at the expense of the nobles;** authority is consistent with Ogilby’s English royalist policy during the Protectorate to define the aristocracy as the keepers of the flame, those on whose loyalty would depend the regeneration of the monarchy from its virtual know,

to

rial

annihilation. We come,

then,

to

of the

re-presentation

tention, and almost

John Dryden’s close-of-the-century master-text

that

all of that

attention

has hitherto

having

been

been

the Virgil, serious

given

directed

only at-

Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid. Yet the entire volume is, as a cultural document, as a visual and textual emblem of historical and aesthetic change, extraorand not least in its and of dinarily rich, adoption adaptation Ogilby’s plates to an of Sebasentirely different set of premises. Unlike the reappearance in later sixteenth-century editions tian Brant’s woodcuts of Virgil, the decision of Dryden’s publisher Jacob Tonson, and of Dryden himself, to recycle Cleyn’s designs almost half a century later is rich in ideological import. We have on record Dryden’s letter about his quarrel with Tonson as to where the volume was to stand in the politics of the 1690s. Was it to be dedicated to William, and thus accommodarepresent the last phase of Dryden’s own tion to the principle of stability and the power of success? the volOr was to stand in uneasy relationship to a government ume hence a (and religion) that Dryden, after The Hind and the Panther, could never regard as his or his country’s own? Tonson’s in default of an actual dedication to answer, William, was to adjust the plates illustrating the Aenezd, so that the features those of William, rather than Charles IT.*? But Dryden’s of Aeneas resemble to the same answer questions must be deduced from the entire volume: to

*$On the history of the Fronde, see Ernst H. Kossman, La Fronde (Leiden, 1954); Pierre-George Lorris, La Fronde (Paris, 1961); A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement (Princeton, 1971). On French royalist iconograofParis and the Fronde, 1643-1652 phy at the time of the Fronde, see Erica Harth, Ideologyand Culture in Seventeenth-Century France between the Fronde and the English civil (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), and on the connections war see Knachel, England and the Fronde (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967). Philip » The trials of being a conservative writer with a Whig publisher are recorded in Dryden’s letter to his son. See The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles Ward (Durham, N.C., 1942), p. 93: “[Tonson] has missed of his design in the Dedication: though He had prepared the Book for it: for in every figure of Eneas, he has caus’d him to be drawn like K. William, was with a hookd Nose.” That the visual emendation as a generally understood Whig stratagem in a contemporary that “Old Jacob, by deep judgment is indicated satire, which remarked head / On swayed, / To please the wise beholders, / Has placed old Nassau’s hook-nosed and struck back with an unflattering “parallel” between William and poor Aeneas shoulders” Aeneas. See Sir Walter Scott, The Life ofJohn Dryden (1808), ed. Bernard Kressman (Lincoln,

Neb., 1963), p. 330.

186

and

Pastoral

from

the dedications

became

the

Ogilby’s plates strategies and nuances to such a project tance to

of the

tion

parts of

of the three

reader,

the

Aeneid; essay cultural aristocracy of the on

of

from

of introduction

of all forms

both

the last of which

Virgil’s canon,

reassignment of nineties; from Dryden’s translation; and, given the interpretive impor-

critical

extensive

an

Ideology

of

the

the

theoretical

or

and

prepara-

the

Life Virgil introductory essay on contributed anonymously by Dryden’s friend Knightley pastoral poetry We can be sure Chetwood. (as from his dispute with Tonson) that Dryden with his into his volume would not have allowed anything not concordant own and political opinions purposes. At first sight it might appear that the principle of blending the economics of subscription publishing with the politics of dedication (the principle that Dryden learned from Ogilby) had been used to place this Unlike Ogilby’s address to volume firmly at the heart of the establishment. defeated and a class, Dryden’s Ecloguesare beleaguered temporarily upper to the entrusted individually protection (and self-interest) of men at the John Sommers, the Lord Chancellor, to Thomas, Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Privy Seal, to Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain, to Dorset’s eldest son, Lionel Cranfield, to James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon and Lord Chief Justice, and as a so on. On the other hand, the Eclogues group are dedicated, with ento different Lord Clifford, fourth son and heir of tirely implications, Hugh of William’s

center

very

the

Treasurership

and who

had

boyna

as

a

dolences.

And

now,

Clifford’s

heir,

two

reception

of the volume

as

the Roman

patrons

He

points

that

istration

World;

still

mentioned is

now

the remembrance introduced

from

himself

he shone

Mysteriously, 1690.

whole:

in

later, that

against by suicide.®°

merely a

been

have

had

the

However, Arthur

flourishing twenty

Dictionary of National

critical been

been

to

for the

Dryden Virgil, true to

cultural

warm

when

in the me,

in the

I Flourish’d

And

short that

Biography states

opinion

my Fortune, till he He was that Pollio, or

to

tho’ time

he

of his Admin-

like the heat

that

dis-

soon

Hugh

of

Clifford

Rus-

a

died

Collins, The Peerage ofEngland (London, 1710), p. 113, records years later.

cli-

memory:

advantage of my Royal Master. me to Augustus:

powerfully upon

Am-

his

congratitude Dryden’s self-presentation to

Eclogueshad

State-Affairs, yet so

tragedy and

his

should

in the

In the immedi-

his

dedicated

first, that Clifford

of my Manhood, though with small

Varus, who

miss’d

a

as

years made

are

the Patron

awakened

Catholics

both

offering

Privy Council and was passed

IPs

poetry possible; and second, that the

made

was

of the

as

twenty

of the Restoration

mate

Charles

the Test Act

of

way

patricians

who

resigned from

when

very shortly after, perhaps of the resignation, Dryden had

Clifford,

to

had

in 1673

died

aftermath

ate

who

Clifford

the Thomas

to

government:

in him

Going Public

sian-Summer, he ripen’d the me

gave succeeded.*

wherewithal

Fruits

subsist

to

of at

187

Poetry

in

a

cold

Clymate;

least, in the long Winter

and

which

The

Eclogues,then, are to be read primarily as an elegy for the Restoration the rise of Shaftesbury, yet are addressed to someone who both embodies (by descent) the old values and represents a new and more hopeful generation: before

What

offer

Lordship, is the wretched remainder of a without sickly Age, Study, and oppress’d by Fortune: other support than the Constancy and Patience of a Christian. You, my Lord, are yet in the flower of your Youth, and may live to enjoy the benefits of the Peace which is promis’d Europe: I can only hear of that Blessing. I

now

to

out

worn

your with

It is

appropriate to Dryden’s mood in this passage that the anticipated Treaty of Ryswick, which he implicitly compares to the Peace of Brunthe efficiency of William’s and left disium, both demonstrated government all the major issues of the war of the League of Augsburg undecided, enNor need we suppose that his suring a renewal of hostilities with France. audience for this dedication, as represented by the Catholic Clifford, would have been deaf to the irony that a French in the war would have victory reversed the revolution of 1688 and almost certainly resulted in the restoof the Stuarts.

ration

According to this dedication, Dryden began work on the Virgil in his “great Clymacterique,” that is to say, aged sixty-three, in 1694. There is a that he perceived it as both the climax of his career and a retrostrong sense Life of Virgil enhances this inference by dwelling spective; and Chetwood’s on the psychological aspects of Virgil’s personal history, as well as on his legendary role as a cherished advisor to Augustus. Considering that Chetwood was how much he was translating from Donatus, it is remarkable able to personalize the old story, and how much of both pathos and contemporary for

nuance

example,

he

was

able

is the traditional

make

to

account

the

of Donatus

text

of the occasion

absorb.

of the

Here,

Eclogues,re-

°!

The Works of Virgil; containing Ins Pastorals, Georgics,and Aeneis; Translated into Verse by (London, 1697), n.p. Dryden ° in Nahum Tate’s A Compare the Whig application of Virgil to William’s militarism Pastoral Dialogue (London, 1690), pp. 24—25, where, in response to one shepherd’s request that his colleague repeat a heroic song about William’s campaigns, the other replies that he must leave that task “Io happy Swains / Who sing beneath the Shade of their own Vine,”

Mr.

.

and

who

through

therefore have the the dusty Plain.”

means

to

.

.

“rouze

the noble

Din

of War.

.

.

/ And

trace

a

Hero

188

and

Pastoral

told

in

language appropriate

revolutions,

with

all the shifts

consequent

upon

them:

to

Ideology

readership

a

had

that

of party

and reversals

and

experienced two personal fortune

Virgil thus enjoy’d the sweets of a Learn’d Privacy, the Troubles Italy cut off his little Subsistance; but by a strange turn of Human Affairs, which ought to keep good Men from ever despairing; the loss The occaof his Estate prowd the effectual way of making his Fortune. stroke of a sion of it was this; Octavius by Masterly Policy, had into his that the Veteran Service, (and by step, outLegions gaind all the Republican Senate:) They grew now clamorous for witted very he was fore’d to make Astheir Pay: The Treasury being Exhausted, in it self none but would and content Land, Italy signments upon from Rome; but as the most distant them. He pitch’d upon Cremona threw in part of the State of Mantua. that not suffising, he afterwards was a Rich and noble Colony Cremona [which] had done several But past Services Services to the Common-Wealth. are important Act of Ingratitude: In a fruitless Plea; Civil Wars are one continued vain did the Miserable Mothers, with their famishing Infants in their Whiulst of

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Arms, fill the Streets with their Numbers, and the Air with tions; the Craving Legions were to be satisfi'd at any rate.

Lamenta-

(pp. 5—6)

explanation of the ninth oddly anticipates post-modernist emphasis on its eclogue, and memorial fragmentary aspects. Recalling the episode of Arius the centurion and the forcible expulsion of Virgil from the lands he thought he had recovered, Chetwood explained that the poet was therefore “fore’d to half a sick the drag Body length of Italy, back again to Rome”: This

emotional

and

by

seem

to

extends

tone

into

a

causal

the

that

one

way, probably, compos’d his Ninth have been made up in haste out of the

the

and

he

Pastoral, which

Fragments the

disorder

other

pieces;

Poets

Mind, by its disjointed Fashion, tho’ there be another

be

given

naturally enough represents

of its

elsewhere

want

of

may some

of the

Reason

to

of Connexion.

(pp. 6—7) The lence effect lation

poem’s thematization is thus presented of

stress

itself

on

we

a

the mind’s

may deduce had Ludovico

personally as 1690s the problem of

incompatibility between poetry and viobiographical and psychological problem, the capacity for order; and if we turn to the transthat Dryden also felt that inhibition, felt it as

of the as

Moeris

Vives was

more

than

a

Dryden’s own.

earlier, that in the of fact, his translation

century In

189

Going Public Moeris’s

those ration

in the

complaints

of Meliboeus

On

for these

we

these,

Good

let

The

Fruit

me

this

Thy

Childrens

The

rest

But

with

from

dire Effects

of Moeris

Civil

an

more

exile than

felt than a

Resto-

poachers:

Discord

flow!

shall

Children

I have

have

forgot, things, and once

tender

the Chime

untune

sung of

Poetry hoarse; I feel

Voice grows As if the Wolves

My

had

enjoy

for Cares

down

seen

a

and

sur-

Shoot; the Fruit.

and Time

my Soul Summers

Rhime:

to

Sun,

is done. the Notes first

me

Dryden’s couplets,

penetrates

influence, graft the

all

now

less like

graff my Pears, and prune the Vine; is theirs, the Labour only mine.

Under

I cou’d

trouble

infinitely

seems

sounds

plant and sow, happy Fields bestow?

our

what

the distress By contrast, vives their smoothness:

Change

eclogue

who

Barbarians

these,

on

Heavwn

Now

ninth

first,

gentleman having

country Did

in the

to

decay, Day.

is application of the ninth eclogue to Dryden’s own condition In of his translation of its lines. confirmed, finally,by closing place Virgil’s will ensure “better return to the mysterious “ipse” whose allusion songs” to his uncontributes and whose Dryden mythical potency, anonymity of Moeris in the world of locates the contemporary equivocally problem and factionalism: preferment

And

the

let

mind

Cease

to

Another

Song requires another good Menalcas comes,

When

And

find

It would

request

a

me,

Friend

have been

us

our

Court, PI find

at

way;

Day. if he rejoyce, a

Voice.

unusually self-defeating enterprise, however, to the Virgil solely or even primarily as a stateAs Zwicker has shown Steven of personal and cultural ment decrepitude. in his analysis of the Aenezd, complete with its long interpretive dedication for series of individual dedications the Earl of Mulgrave and its new to of poa last work each illustration, Dryden created out of that combination litical propaganda: “maneuvering the Aeneid into an oppositional stance”; rewarding his friends, exposing his enemies to some highly oblique insults; of epic enterand “asserting his literary and political identity under cover have

conceived

and

an

executed

190

Pastoral

the

But

prise.” dedication

and

Ideology

allusions

contemporary

that

retrieved

Zwicker

from

in the

The

the

Life. Mulgrave already anticipated in connection with a crucial story—crucial, we striking example occurs may be sure, for Dryden—when Virgil actually superseded the politicians in determining the emperor’s policy. In retelling this anecdote, Chetwood on motives, especially on those motives that both exput an unusual stress and discredit the plain political process. According to Chetwood, it was either because Octavian was bored (“cloy’d with Glory”) or anxious “to with the People, or possibly to feel the Pulse gain the Credit of Moderation of his Friends” that he began to debate “whether he should retain the Sovor restore the Commonwealth.” These ereign Power, suggestions were all additions to the story as he found it in Donatus’s Life. Because Agrippa and Maecenas him so the story went, was gave conflicting advice, Virgil, called

to

in

were

mediate

to

wood

had inserted

tavian

and

them.

between

mining the greatest Point and Favourite of Caesar.” an

that

“Thus

before

But

a

in

was

ever

getting

analogy, which

was

Politick

to

had the Honour

Poet

Debate, betwixt yet

that

to

mot

most

of deter-

the

Son-in-Law, “Point,” Chet-

crucial

analogy, between

an

Oc-

Cromwell:

That

Emperour

well,

in

been

more

King.

.

he,

who

by

too

Court

a

desirous .

too

was

deliberation

.

But

by

something

the

commit

over-sight

of Crom-

Cromwell

had

resembling this.

never

of the Power, than he was afterwards of the Title of too vehement Allegation of Arguments against it,

had out-witted

body besides,

every

dissimulation:

deep by assenting to

his

For

his

judgment,

at

last out-witted

Council, thinking voted

himself, make

to

unanimously for

im

their

against

his Inclination.

(p. 9) When The

the advice

1s

delivered,

it

too

becomes

subject

to

time-warp.

of

Popular into an Absolute Government, has generally been of very ill Consequence: For betwixt the Hatred of the People, and Injustice of the Prince, it of necessity comes to pass that they live in distrust, and mutual But if the Commons knew a Apprehensions. whom confided it would be for the advanin, just Person, they entirely of all a that such one should be their WhereParties, tage Soveraign: fore if you shall continue to administer Justice impartially, as hitherto

change

you have to

*

ton,

done, your Power Mankind.

Steven

1984),

will prove

safe

to

your

self,

and

beneficial

Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden’s Poetry: The Arts ofDisguise (Princep. 205.

Going Public those

certainly compatible with the conditional praise and support that Virgil and Dryden characteristically offered their monarchs. But Chetwood’s added comment pushes what otherwise have been as even to William, in anmight perceived loyalism, other direction. Virgil, he wrote, spoke to the “true state of Affairs at that time: For the Commonwealth Maxims no were now longer practicable; the Romans had only the haughtiness of the Old Commonwealth left,

Turning

on

without

one

little

central

“ifs,” the verdict

19]

of its Virtues.”

discernment

Given

perceive

to

referents; the question

is

his earlier

that

“that

allusion

time”

at

it takes

Cromwell,

to

has

least

two

historical

it has three, the third being open whether in the aftermath of the revolution of 1688, in which remains

reign of the Whigs possible to argue (if one was a Whig) that there had been a return to in the absolute control of the monthe principles of the Commonwealth, the and the The arch, economy, army by parliament. cynicism with which in Octavian’s motives Chetwood initiating this consultation presented entire passage, making it impossible to determine spreads through the in the ideological spectrum of the of the Life stands where this version of the Virgil Glorious Revolution, and matching the paradoxical intentions

the it

was

as

a

whole:

the

life-work

publican principles translated the service

into

the

to

last

of the

a

poet who

statement

of constitutional

of

service

of

had

empire, a

learned for

poet who but

government,

the

to

accommodate sake

of

re-

1s

stability,

taken many in his last years embodied it.

had

who

turns

in

was

in-

capable of giving his loyalty to the ruler who be understood without Dryden’s version of the Eclogues,then, cannot of meant to him and his as someof what the a Lzfe Virgil colleagues, grasp thing which could explain the history of their country to them, and their lives as part of this history. Dryden and Chetwood own clearly saw the and Donatus had as documents as Servius inexthem, Eclogues presented to Roman and as texts connected politics, deeply occasioned, in tricably of being part of a long chain of historical causes. From Dryden’s the sense perspective, of course, that chain had lengthened to include not one but of Roman reenactments two history as bounded by Virgul’slife, the second of the of which was either incomplete as fact (pending a second restoration as it to or whether Stuarts), say incomplete analogy, making impossible William, or Cromwell, was to be recognized as Augustus. If Dryden’s advice on this subject seems manifestly obscure (and markedly less courain than Ogilby’s comparable circumstances) it must be remembered geous that he was not only old and depressed by 1697 but also working, in more senses than one, against time. There is another paradox that attends his presentation of the Eclogues as

a

fin de siécle

mistakable

imported

document.

but nonetheless from

France

It arises

from

ambiguous,

and which

run

the presence of Neoclassical

counter

to

in the

volume,

theories

of

everything

stated

un-

pastoral above.

_

192

Pastoral

and

Ideology

The

and the reading of Virgil’s Eclogues subject of French Neoclassicism in detail in the next chapter; yet a reader produced will be taken up of Dryden’s Virgil who has also read Rapin and Fontenelle on the subject of pastoral will recognize a problem that cannot be entirely postponed for later discussion. hand Dryden, in his dedication On the one to Clifford, of of Fontenelle as “the the French” and speaks living Glory speaks of the as and focused terms, pastoral in Fontenelle’s essentially simple in nature on love as its proper subject, from which it follows that Theocritus is superior to Virgil in his rusticity, and Virgil has erred in allowing into Eclogues of his Persons.” 4, 6, and 8 “some Topicks which are above the Condition On the other, the Ecloguesare preceded by Knightley Chetwood’s preface on on to an attack Fontenelle. pastoral, which 1s almost entirely committed Chetwood’s defense of the dignity of the life of shepherds in ancient culwith the situation of seventeenth-century tures, which is not to be confused Wit, peasants, “leading a painful Life in Poverty and Contempt, without Courage, or Education,” is primarily in refutation of the idealized, gentleman’s version of pastoral promoted by Rapin and Fontenelle, from which not of the “real” world, and especially only rural labor but all consciousness

that

it

political consciousness,

be banished.

to

were

As Chetwood

wrote,

in his

comically explosive style: F. 1s a great is still the same.

Mr.

deal

Uniform; begin where

too

We

find

toujours

de PAmour.”

He

the

thing.

same

Has

Triumph

over

true

seems

Human

Ambition, Avarice, Pride, often

it

you please, the Subject what he says of himself, “Toujours, to take Pastorals and Love-Verses for

Nature a

no

Capricio

other

Passion?

of Honour,

and

Does

not

Laziness

Fear, it self

Love?

precisely the workings of those other passions that were maniat the Dryden’s re-presentation of the Ecloguesto his countrymen turn of the century, and his hesitant to Clifford of the idealized expression and deodorized concept of pastoral that would later be endorsed by Pope is marker. itself a cultural Here, says the symptom of Dryden’s self-contradicin process, of the disequilibrium induced tion, is a sign of mutation by to ourselves ideas new but already fashionable elsewhere. And it is with those fashions, their French origins, and their sociopolitical substratum that the next chapter will now directly engage. It

fest in

was

4.

NEOCLASSICISMAND THE CHAMPETRE

FETE

eB Beauty heard the news, gay green-woods amang, man, Where gathering flowers and busking bowers They heard the blackbird’s sang, man; A vow they seal’d it with a kiss

When

and

Love

The

Sir Politicks

to fetter, alone, the Patent-bliss,

As their’s To hold

Féte

a

Politicks

When And

circ?’d round

He

But

for

humble This

the

he nane, he quat

man:

his name,

shame, letter,

féte champétre stand

join and share Champétre.

to

prayer

festive Robert

Let

man,

magic ground,

it every

Forswore

Wr

the found

entrance

blush’d

He

mix

there, to ether-stane,

cam

his

make

Champétre.

Féte

Burns, “The

Féte

for the version

Champétre” (1788)

of

pastoral,

French

sometimes

theorists

denomi-

in the

second promoted by and into at the century imported England beginning of the eighteenth. What Robert Burns clearly saw, one year before the French Revolution, was the sociopolitical meaning of that version as it was represented in his own country, in the form of a pre-election garden-party held by a young Scottish aristocrat, supposedly to celebrate his majority Burns’s but actually, it was suspected, to prepare for the coming election.’ of the double this Scottish message gentleman’s poem neatly allegorizes

nated

that

Neoclassical,

was

half of the seventeenth

"The

Henderson,

gentleman

was

William

Cunningham

eds., The Poetry of Robert Burns,

4 vols.

193

of Annbank.

See

W.E. Henley

(New York, 1970),

2: 394.

and

T. F.

Pastoral

194

and

Ideology

and aesthetic pleasure that pastoral, the magic circle of idyllic manners were supposed to exclude political experience while implicitly supporting a conservative ideology. It would be putting it too strongly to call this version or theory of pastoral, and the reading of Virgil’s Ecloguesthat it demanded, a cultural conspiracy. But the business of this chapter will be to in literary history tell a different currently enshrined story from the one about how Neoclassical pastoral was conceived, what it signified, and by In addition, the analysis should countered. what it was produce some reformaboth as a cultural of what we mean consideration by Neoclassicism, that of a or tion movement, replaced previous positions complex positions technical sense and would itself be replaced, and in its more (with a lowerare classical texts as the which case constantly rewritten. 7) process by is one of our a as term, Neoclassicism, self-imposed burdens, whether as it is by all Attended as art historians. or with it as we literary struggle can of the comparable Renaissance, which the chronological difficulties and fifty similarly designate cultural phenomena as much as a hundred from its us embarrasses Neoclassicism by excluding additionally years apart, imitators of classior such mobile however boundaries, disputed, temporal of our or Marvell or Marot cal antiquity as Petrarch (to speak only literary as a self-contradictions). But it is also impossible to align Neoclassicism or idealizing view theory—of containment, of rationality, of a benevolent defines a historical cultural dominance of the social order—whose “pein that of textual neoclassicism the actual with riod,” period. In practice and to do intellectuals continued through pastoral, especially practice, through their attitudes to Virgil’s Eclogues,what they had done throughout

the

and

Renaissance

ideological

stance

earlier

the

seventeenth

in relation

writers

as

their

to

their

denote

to

century:

sociopolitical environment;

accepted and supported the premises of Neoin their strategies, posiclassicism, others, equally neoclassicist or tioned themselves quo. anger against the status through irony, anxiety, formation was If Neoclassicism as a cultural force, stabilizing pastoral a was with its supporting and competing theories potentially destabilizing. This chapter will once again bring the cultural history of France and England back into a close and indeed causal relationship, by beginning and imported into England as to with the disputes generated in France or correct what constituted legitimate pastoral. What should gradually and

while

of them

some

who

emerge

is that

this

debate

gentleman’s pastoral closer

France

like

intellectuals

potential and

of

that

to

Voltaire

the

was

certain

never

Revolution and

settled

French Chénier

in favor

theoreticians

itself, the to

more

rediscover

of the

aristocratic

desired,

or

and that

the

French

likely were the

anti-Neoclassical

Virgilian pastoral. In England, the debate initiated was taken up by Whig and Tory intellectuals the eighteenth century as a way of articulating their

of

Fontenelle

decade

drew

were

by Rapin in the other

first

diver-

Neoclassicism

Stuart

the

initially over

gences,

connections

and

question based

the

of

195

Féte Champétre a

to

successor

in

The

Queen Anne

(whose quarrel bedisrupted literary

result

France). Pope and Philips and their various supporters that of friendships for a generation and led, on Pope’s side, to the renunciation pastoral as a viable mode of expression, and its deliberate sabotage by the parodies of Gay and his followers. from an England, of course, was meanwhile being rapidly transformed into a modern commercial A state. massive agricultural society reorganization of landownership dispossessed thousands of lease- and copyholders, not to mention cottagers and their time-honored though partial dependence upon commons The circle of exclusion grounds. magic recognized Burns had therefore as its that of the enclosure, which by counter-image was frequently performed in the service of the gentleman’s park as well as for agricultural progress. So complete a transformation certainly enfrom pastoral as eclogue, with its comcouraged a transfer of attention paratively simple model of agrarian policy, to the novel and to other more expansive genres such as the topographical poem or the philosophical traveldetail. book, where the ideology of landownership could be aired in more that Squire Allworthy’s Fielding’s Tom Jones, published in 1750, assumes “Inheritance of one of the largest Estates in the County” is compatible were

tween

with

sheer

his

worthiness,

scale

and

of enclosure

complacency became

it “Paradise accordingly the second half of names

mounted

a

was

in

Hall”;” the

but

the

as

such

century

question, even in fiction.’ In Henry The Man of Feeling (1771), both melancholy and irony invest the information that the squire has pulled down the schoolhouse “because it stood in the way of his prospects” and has ploughed used to play, “because, he said, they hurt up the green where the children his fence on the other side of it.”* This point of view was rearticulated in of the light the French Revolution by John Thelwall, whose Peripatetic, a series of “Politico-Sentimental” journals, was published in 1793 under an epigraph from Virgil’s second georgic. Thelwall inveighed against “im provements” that result in the tearing down of cottages in favor of finer views: “The imperious lord is not content with his own superiority; he envies the poor peasant (by the sweat of whose brow he eats) even the wretched offal of his own or industry perhaps, his tender feelings can not endure the sight of such wretchedness; and he finds extermination less open Mackenzie’s

to

.

.

.

*Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, ed. Sheridan Baker (New York, 1973), p. 27. *After mid-century there was a in Enclosure Acts. As compared steep increase previous three decades, produced, respectively, Century Novel,” D.Phil. p.

which

showed,

respectively, 33, 35, See April

and

38

Acts, the

next

the three

to

i the Eighteenth156,424, and 642. London, “Landscape Oxford, 1980, p. 108. dissertation, The Man 1771; reprinted New York, 1974), ofFeeling (London, *HenryMackenzie, 196. See also London, “Landscape, p. 108. in

196

Pastoral

and

Ideology

Virgilian lines with which Thelwall identified himself, “Me vero primum dulces ante fero ingenti percussus amore omnia Musae / quarum sacra / [accipiunt]” whose all the sweet Muses under the spell above (“first holy emblems, may of a mighty love, I bear, receive me,” 2.475—76), expressed the poet’s rein the country for philosophic purposes; nor that solve to use his retreat followed statement that as she Justice, quitted the they immediately Virgil’s / Justitia in the illos left her last earth, (“extrema per country footprints Thelwall’s excedens terris vestigia fecit”). On the other hand, great anin the included his on in Edmund Burke Revolution Reflections tagonist relief.”*

expensive than

France

a

satire

“meddling

.

.

rural

with

probably

was

of the

architects

the

on .

It

economy.”

no

new

“At

that

accident

French

the

and

constitution

first, perhaps,” Burke

their

mocked,

susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the unprofitable delights of a pastoral life, but in a little time laborious, and they will find that agriculture is a trade much more than that which much less lucrative they had left. After making its panegyrick, they will turn their backs on it like their great precursor and prototype. They may, like him, begin by singing “Beatus ille”—

their

tender

innocent

but

he

And

and

and

will be the end?°

what

quoted

the

cynical conclusion

of Horace’s

second

epode,

where

the

praise of the country life is revealed as the daydream merely of a usurer. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the social (as well as the of Austen’s Jane sexual) premises Mansfield Park would have been clearly

recognizable tradition

as

reactionary

in fiction

Peacock’s

continued

in the to

Burkean

sense;’ while

challenged,

of

1831.

of country

as, for

landowners

the

conservative

example, in

Thomas

in his Crotchet

Castle portrait “game-bagging, poacher-shooting, trespasser-pounding, footpath-stopping, common-enclosing, rack-renting, and all the other liberal pursuits and pastimes which make a country gentleman an ornament to the world, and a blessing to the poor,” are personified in Sir Simon sarcastic surely derives from William Cobbett’s Steeltrap, whose name in his Rural Rides of the preceding year (“Paraof a sign observed mention Love

satirical

be

Their

‘John Thelwall, The Peripatetic: or Sketches of the Heart, ofNature and Society,in a Series of Journals, 3 vols. (London, 1793), 1: 134-35. 6Edmund Burke, Works, 16 vols. (London, 1826), 5: 344. of Mansfield attributes ’The pastoral, Neoclassical, and aristocratic Park—“elegance, peace and tranquillity”’—are depropriety, regularity, harmony—and perhaps, above all, of her lower-middle-class home. See Jane Austo the muddle fined by Fanny Price in contrast A. Brower (Boston, 1965), vol. 3, Chap. 8, p. 298. The esten, Mansfield Park, ed. Reuben in vol. 1, chap. 10, is represented by the scene of women tate’s social and moral enclosure the key” and without her fiescapes from the garden “without p. 76, where Maria Bertram

Politico-Sentimental

.

£9,

ancé’s

“authority and protection”

in

.

a figurative prolepsis of

.

her later

adultery.

Neoclassicism

dise

Place:

back

on

ever

man

and

the Féte

197

Champétre

spring guns and steel traps are set here”) that in turn reflects Fielding.*Cobbett himself began Rural Rides with an elegy for the of misery contemporary sheep-farmers unable to get a fair price for their recall of Pope’s eulogy animals, and proceeded, with or without conscious to Windsor Forest, to decry that ultimate symbol of the policies of Pitt and Canning: the forest itself 1s “as bleak, as barren, and as villainous a heath as set

his eyes

And

on.

the

here

However,

are

new

without

enclosures

side of Windsor

“is

end.”

spot all made of it have beg-

Park, Sunning Hill, The inhabitants ‘grounds’ and gardens by tax-eaters. gared twenty agricultural villages and hamlets.”’ We can now begin to see, also, that the misappropriation of eclogue as a also of the georgic) to urban subjects, its weakening to the forgenre (as of dialogue, and its sabotage by parody may have causes mal notion beor the perception of critics such as Samuel yond its own “decadence” Johnson that certain aspects of classical pastoral, notably its vocabulary, had uncertainties over the status of pastoral had, become vacuous. Theoretical as well as an a social aesthetic and were connected to a content, certainly, reluctance intellectuals to admit that the “golden age of power, among and wealth” was enjoyed increasing produced by industrialism privilege the the In visual Barrell has John arts, only by minority.’ brilliantly shown, itself in the development of English landscape this reluctance manifested in the painting, growing pressure for a native genre of landscape that would on

western

into

mediate

between

realism

of Dutch

the

neoclassical

models

of Claude

the

but

and

a

Poussin

and

restraints

the

painting; ideological imposed, sciously or half-consciously, on Gainsborough and Constable, and even on the underdog sympathies of George Morland, produced in the second half of the century paintings in which pastoral was redefined by georgic eleand georgic in turn redefined as the aesthetic containment of the ments, As of the introduction in figures engaged agricultural laworking poor." bor

was

that

view

mal

necessary altered

strategies were

“dark

side

of the

to as

the

nation’s

the French

view

of itself

Revolution

developed to landscape” and

maintain to

support

and

its class

structure

and

receded),

approached an

aesthetic the

con-

fiction

distance that

from

the

labor

(a for-

the of

®’Thomas Love

Smith Rides

Peacock, Crotchet Castle (London, 1831), in Works, ed. H. F. B. BrettC. E. Jones, 10 vols. (New York, 1967), 4: 5—6, 65—66. William Cobbett, Rural and Political Observations with Economical (London, 1830), p. 209. °Cobbett, Rural Rides, pp. 59, 61. 0H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815) (Harmondsworth, and

.

1950),

.

.

of the agricultural revolution account p. 84. For an early and influential Kenneth see MacLean, Agrarian Age: A Backgroundfor Wordsworth

writers, 1950). "John

on

Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: the Rural Poor in English Painting (Cambridge, 1980). Barrell, however, accepts as given the Neoclassical definition pastoral as “idyll.”

1730-1840

of

and its effect

(New Haven,

198

and

Pastoral

the poor

Ideology be conceived

oppressive to them, that it could even semi-pastoral language of Virgil’s second georgic. So a Dedham Vale with Ploughman over couplet taken from not

was

The Farmer's

Robert

exhibited Bloomfield’s

Boy:

But, unassisted With

Constable

in the

through

smiling

brow

each

toilsome

the Plowman

day,

cleaves

his

way."

in the light of progress as Virgil’s own text had also to be reconceived As to and document. a less Dryden’s cynical troublemaking compared pointed emphasis on Roman history, for example, the translation by John Martyn, professor of botany at Cambridge, successively (as his translation changed its tone and format) directed attention away from its Roman historical context, reshaping the Ecloguesinto a treatise on Italian plants and

their

As the

uses.

as

system

century

the American

however, such massive cracks in the of John Wilkes, and the Revolution, the career drew

out,

accompanied by some striking experiments in of anti-slavery and 1780s produced a number political pastoral; of the French the full Revolution was and when significance eclogues; of one of in it forced a reassessment England, inevitably Virgil’s grasped most provocative pastoral concepts, liberty, in all its political, cultural, Results varied from the marginally pastoral and psychological functions. to Wordsworth’s sustained of and Shelley attempts to “eclogues” Southey renovate the genre, rejecting, as we shall see in the next chapter, both the and the his evasions of Neoclassical idealism excesses (in view) of the new political realism.” a more extreme fluctuation beIn France, as political history showed as a cultural stabilization—the chief objective of Neoclassicism tween movement—and disruption, there was a more obvious (if inverted) relationship between pastoral as a cultural phenomenon and the real structures and its The appropriation of pastoral by the court, it has always described. of not in the form the have decadence féte champétre, may sociopolitical of the the aristocaused but was certainly answered by dismembering great that most in the Revolution. Yet within cratic estates sweeping of revisions of surprises and internal all sorts there were contradictions, and on the Gordon

riots

of 1780 the

”

Barrell, Dark

Kor

Thomas

Eclogues (1787), Stuart

Curran,

and Poetic

were

1770s

Landscape, p. 151. West-Indian African Eclogues (1770), Edward Rushton’s Henry Mulligan’s Poems Chiefly on Slavery and Oppresston (1788), see

Side of the Chatterton’s Form

in British

Romanticism and

Southey’s Botany Bay Eclogues,written in 1793 of the anti-slavery eclogue to social criminals Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue, written (lines 610—731), a paean to the early Romantic

(New York, 1986),

published in 1797,

extradited in

to

Australia.

1819, contains

view

of the French

a

Robert pp. 95—99. the concept extended

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s digression on “Liberty” Revolution.

Neoclassicism

the Fete

of French

199

Champétre

political history the impact path. as a Voltaire, whose career p/tlosophewas

graph own

and

of

Virgil’s Ecloguesfollows

its

eccentric

recorded

Revolution, of those

letters

are

that

of the direct

one

in hundreds

of

he conceived

of his role

of the

causes

letters.

personal punctuated by deeply personalized allusions career

Dozens to

the

intellectual

in Eclogues,showing terms of Virgil’s analysis of both patronage and persecution. One would assume that Voltaire’s disreputable enemy, the abbé Desfontaines, would a of Virgil that have taken different tack; yet he produced a translation emasculated combined a critique of Fontenelle’s pastoral with implied at-

that

tacks

on

the

court

and the Académie

as

a

Francaise. André

radical

Chénier,

of the

in

a

mood

starkest

revicentury’s prerevolutionary reformism, of Virgil’s first eclogue, transforming it into a cry for “La Liberté”; but Chénier was put to the guillotine. Jacques-Louis David, who above all with supplying the Revolution with a Roman is credited republican 1cowith his students Gérard and to the most contributed, Girodet, nography, of the French had edition that since that of magnificent Virgil produced

of

wrote

one

sions

1798; but while the edition may have been in the spirit of the Revolution, it became in the course of pro-

Marolles, the Didot conceived

edition

of

The languid and naked reactionary monument. figures of the of David’s rein the Hellenism, Eclogues,clearly post-revolutionary spirit with a document more in historicized the spirit of pastoral place Virgil’s of Hesterkeit, or an idealizing serenity. and his doctrine Winckelmann these With complexities in prospect, then, we can reapproach the of what readwas, and who was question responsible for, the Neoclassical of The first to be and it is a crucial is made, one, point ing Virgil’s Eclogues. atthat Neoclassicism, with its emphasis on order and definition, shifted of pastoral to its theory—the theory of the from the hermencutics tention of this phein abstraction. J. E. Congleton, whose account genre conceived I must on the whole disagree with, nevertheless remarked with nomenon of critical discourse on the force that the amount some theory of expended all to either the in this was out of proportion quantity or period pastoral is that the enthe quality of pastoral writing."* What he did not consider in writing about pastoral was symbolically displaced, that it ergy invested in of intellectuals the bigger arguments otherwise participation signified The their intervention. corollary, equally important, is that pasbeyond entered a new toral’s representation of ideology now phase. As compared with which Renaissance as a to the self-consciousness pastoral functioned language, however encoded, of sociopolitical dialogue, the presence of ide-

duction

43.

reprinted

a

E.

Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England York, 1968), p. 295.

New

1684-1798

(Gainesville, 1952;

200

Pastoral

and

Ideology

eighteenth-century pastoral discourse is more inferred and intiversion, spoken. This 1s especially true of the Neoclassical of Rapin and under the sign of the féte champétre. In elucidating the texts Fontenelle and Pope we may also, as with the landscape of Gainsborough of incomplete if not false consciousand Constable, have to think in terms and to deal with repressions (and admissions) that were ness, perhaps not their authors. understood fully by When René Rapin published his essay De carmine pastoral, as a preface to his religious eclogues in 1659, he wrote ostensibly as a good Aristotelian. His stated object was to lay down rules for the writing of pastoral, as a had overlooked, by starting with a mimetic premgenre that Aristotle is of the Action of a Sheapard, or of one taken “the imitation ise—pastoral under that Character”—and deducing principles of the appropriate subjectand Virgil, as Aristotle matter and style from the practice of Theocritus Yet he found himself had done for epic from the example of Homer.'® him in an ethical at can find least we so) predicament. On the caught (or him to models one hand his appeal to classical required try to validate Virgil’s practice at all costs; on the other, his personal preference was for an idealized pastoral from which not only the excessive rusticity of Theocritus of Virgil’s eclogues should character have but also the specificallyRoman should imitate was neibeen eliminated. What a Neoclassical really pastoral as an ther Theocritus nor so much idea, necessarily nonexistent, “of Virgil of that Golden the simplicity and innocence age” (p. 14) to which Virgil and Theocritus could only allude.

ology

in

mated

than

The course,

Rapin

of this

nexus

the

tho

the

as

the

about

the

and

conflict

historical

unhappily on

sat

for

Roman

Civil

between context

different

of the

Genius

to

of

Eclogues. Here

in themselves

are

too

of

Virgils Eclogues are of the Emperor, and too great lofty for

murder

reach, yet because they are of Shepherds, may be the Subject of an Pastoral

humble

was,

the fence:

us; most Interpreters assure war, planting Colonyes, the

like, which

types of mimesis

subtext

or

accommodated

to

the

Eclogue. (p. 26)

bring himself to accept the principle of “carmina maiora” eclogue; expressed himself passionately on the subject of pastoral’s essential peacefulness, its ability to keep all thoughts of war in and tried to bring Servius around to his own opinion: “And abeyance;

Yet he could

not

in the fourth

René Thomas

1684).

Rapin, Eglogae, cum dissertatione de carmine pastorali (Paris, 1659); trans. The Idylliums of Theocritus, with Rapin’s Discourse of Pastorals (London, in the edition from Creech by J. E. Congleton (Ann Arbor, 1947), p. 19.

Creech, in I cite

Neoclasstcism

upon this account Bucoliks reckons

I suppose

and

’tis that

the Féte

201

Champétre

Servius

in his Comments

ten

and

Virgil’s onely ten of Virgil’s Eclogues, Theocritus’s pure Pastorals” (pp. 26—27). That word pure, the sign of a normative genre theory, was to have a long and dignified history in European poetics, and many exclusionary actions would be committed only thirty, to be

in its

we

earlier

of

on

name.

We

if

seven

can

see

compare Guillaume

which

more

he restated

Pastoral

clearly how revisionary was Rapin’s response to Virgil what had immediately preceded it. A mere two years had published his Discours du poéme bucolique,in Colletet the importance of the Servian/Renaissance hermeneutic.

it with

is the genre in which “Sous des du grand monde, des morts

des affaires

illustres, des calamitez

termes

des

de

Pasteurs

Princes,

& des

ils s’entretienent autres

hommes

temps, des changements des Estats & des leur voix jusques aux quwils osent pousser orcilles des Consuls” are the affairs of discussed (“Under pastoral language the great world, deaths of princes and other famous men, calamities of the of states and even to the extent that dare adtimes, changes empires, they dress Consuls”).'° Virgil’s own wish, in the sixth eclogue, that his “silvae” be “consule was still significant for Colletet in 1657; almight dignae,” like a full Sebillet the function of earlier, century though, allegory 1s less of for the French and a more of an opporintellectual, necessary protection for cleverness. The affairs of the are “sous des termes tunity great presented des si si si agréables, & avecque justes, que les Allégories ingénieuses & le secret, ce bien tost intelligens en découvrent quils veulent cacher un voile Pastoral” sous (“under such agreeable terms, and with such inand genious apt allegories, that the intelligentsia quickly discover the secret that they wished to conceal under a pastoral veil”). Nevertheless, the differbetween his essay and Rapin’s is both absolute ence and, given their chronoBoth wrote from a difficult to logical proximity, explain. post-Fronde per“the of and empires” when the to discuss alteration states spective, impulse the controls exercised was continually being satisfied, despite by Richelieu, fictions.’? Both wrote within an institutional frameby all-too-historical work that would seem to have promoted orthodoxy rather than dissent, as one of the first members of the Académie Colletet Frangaise, Rapin as a Jesuit theologian.'* Yet Colletet clearly respected the Renaissance/Servian it away. This difference model and Rapin just as clearly wished can be ac-

Empires,

...

&

méme

de leur lors

.

'©Guillaume Colletet, Discours du poéme of the historical romans '7See the account

.

.

bucolique(Paris, 1657), p. 18. a clef by Erica Harth, Ideologyand Culture in France N.Y., (Ithaca, 1983), Seventeenth-Century pp. 99— 103, 116—22, 129-79. '® a critic of the court Under Colbert, Rapin actually became hegemony and a defender of an objective historiography, in his Instructions pour Viistotre (Paris, 1677). See Harth, Ideologyand Culture, pp. 143-44.

202

Pastoral

counted

for

only partly by the

and

Ideology

fact that

Colletet

wrote

descriptively of

the

past, and Rapin prescriptively for the future. We can better understand Rapin, perhaps,

by observing what he did authority from the previous century he could afford neither to ignore nor openly to refute. As the first historicized account of the Ecloguesand their subsequent reception, Vives’s position could theoretically have allowed for further cultural adaptations. But what is astonishing about Rapin’s response to Vives is that he quotes him as if he were an authority for the position argued in De carmuine pastoral1, calmly suppressing those parts of Vives’s preface that dignified Virgil’s Ecloguesby reference to their Roman subtext, and changing Vives’s his preface into a Neovocabulary by misquotation so as to transform classical document. Since the Golden Age is to be preferred to the heroic he is to the epic, as it is also in the “unage, argues, pastoral superior affected smartness of the expression, or the poneatness, elegant, graceful lite dress of a Poem.” But the most telling passage is as follows: with

the

theory

tis

not

Gallus,

men

For

or

that

probable of the

Augustus

of the

or

correct

a

Vives,

that

neatest

an

Asinius Pollio, Cinna, Varius, Cornelius Wit, and that lived in the most polite Age,

the Prince

Caesar

should

Wealth,

common

Bucolicks, so

of Ludovico

Virgil himself judgement, should that

Persons; unless

he had known in those

nary elegance tho far above the

sort

of

more

the Common

of Grammarians

sort

and

admired sublime

well

as

with

extreamly Virgils singular prudence, and his Eclogues to those great

of such

dedicate

there

is somewhat

Composures,

understanding

elegance, as taken

so

a man

that

man, very learned there is somewhat a

of the Roman be

which

more

the wise

than

ordi-:

perceive,

of the Crowd:

Vives, nay if Ludovicus for politer studies may be believed, and excellent in those Pastorals, than

imagine. (p. 6)

A

(cited above, p. 89), or its Recomparison with Vives’s own statement naissance by Latham (p. 165 above) will show the deEnglish translation liberate misprision. In place of Vives’s defense of the hermeneutical dignity of the Eclogues,their ability to represent matters of national, international, and, ultimately, cosmic significance, we have here a defense of pastoral in formalist terms: “neatest Wit,” “correct judgement,” “politer studies,” Augustus Caesar “the Prince of the Roman elegance, as well as of the common is the vocabulary of academic Wealth”—this Augustanism.’ .

This

effect was not suavissimi

.

.

the product of Creech’s translation. Rapin described Virgil’s paingeni, & aetatis omnium elegantissimae,” and Virgil himself as “tam singularis prudentiae, judiciique tam politi virum.” See Hortorum libri, Eclogae,Liber de carmine pastoral: (Leiden, 1672), p. 76. trons

as

“Viros

Neoclassicism

the Féte

and

203

Champétre

Rapin was responsible for inaugurating a thoroughly idealized concept pastoral is a familiar argument, although his aggressive relationto Vives has not ship previously been explored. But according to Congleton, the critic most responsible for articulating English pastoral theory in this period, Rapin’s opinions were of limited influence; Golden Age idealism was soon challenged in its basic premises and eventually replaced by a todifferent tally theory of pastoral, originating in the Discours sur la nature de Peglogueby Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, published in 1688, and translated into English in 1695 by Pierre Motteux.”® Again according to into Fontenelle introduced Congleton, pastoral theory a rational critique rules and definitions and of Neoclassicism, a reyection of neo-Aristotelian their replacement by an account of how pastoral works, or ought to work, based on an empirical description of the human psyche. What the human mind desires, Fontenelle discovered into his own, is a pastoral by looking from which everything has been excluded that vision of the countryexcept which gives the most a vision side and its inhabitants that permits pleasure, of us to “Pidée de and how little it costs to be tranquillité,” grasp happy (“le peu qu’il en cofite pour y étre heureux”).”? Somehow, by focusing on the psychologism of Fontenelle’s argument, Congleton managed to make all “school” of thought which decried him into the father of a rationalist of imitation of classical pastoral and which led, therefore, to the celebration “true” country poetry—in other words, to Romanticism. for the moment Without attending to the logic whereby a theorist “la nature telle quelle est” (“Nature as it 1s,” who rejects in Theocritus foundations for Romanticism could the (whose founders claimed lay p. 59) to for that Theocritus to quality), I wish to reVirgil precisely prefer of Fontenelle’s the examine question supposed antiphony to Rapin. For in makes perfectly clear what it is that he wishes to delete from fact Fontenelle and his motives for doing so—motives that differ from tradition, pastoral in more Fontenelle begins, not, explicitly sociopolitical. Rapin’s only being with the that all men wish to be as premise happy but, Congleton states, of his own motives for embarking on this rather, with a brief introduction topic and of his own qualifications as critic, in which, interestingly, the That

of

of the critic

“liberté”

and he then slaved

of

countryman

Il

est

an

tranquillité

et

liberty

Poisiveté

Motteux,

in

out

advanced

vraisemblable

assez

Pierre

strike

to

the

contrasts

directions

new

of the

is twice

in

shepherd antiquity society like his own:

que ces dont is

mentioned; with

the

en-

premiers pasteurs s’avisérent, dans la jouissaient, de chanter leurs plaisirs et

Of Pastorals, published

with

Bossu’s

Treatise

of the Epick Poem (Lon-

don, 1695). 1Bernard neva,

1968),

le Bovier 3: 56.

de

Fontenelle,

Oeuvres

completes,ed.

G.-B.

Depping,

3 vols.

(Ge-

204

and

Pastoral

leurs

amours.

.

.

.

Ils vivaient

ils Mavaient

suit

4 leur maniére

au-dessus

personne les rois de leurs troupeaux; Pabondance

et

la

Ideology

de leur

je

et

liberté,

doute

ne

ne

les

dans

grande opulence,

une

téte, ils étaient pas

portat

qu'une encore

pour ainsi dire certaine joie qui au

chant

et

4 la

poésie. La société

perfectionna, ou peut-étre se corrompit: mais enfin les passérent 4 des occupations qui leur parurent plus imporde tantes; plus grands interéts les agitérent,on batit des villes de tous et avec le temps il se forma de grands états. Alors les habitans de cétés, la campagne furent les esclaves de ceux des villes; et la vie pastorale étant devenue le partage des plus malheureux d’entre les hommes, m rien inspira plus dagréable. se

hommes

(3: 52) It is

that

the first

in the

quite probable shepherds conceived, quility and leisure they enjoyed, of singing about their pleasures and their loves. They lived in their own way in great opulence, they had in over were so to them, nobody power they speak rulers of their I and have no that a doubt certain flocks; joy which results from and led them also into well-being liberty song and into poetry. but eventually Society evolves, for better or perhaps for worse: men move on to which to them more occupations appear important; interests drive build towns them, they greater everywhere, and in time

great

states

are

formed.

become

the slaves of those

become

the

most

unfortunate

Then in the

the inhabitants

of the country

and the

cities, lot,

human

tran-

no

pastoral life, having longer inspires any

pleasurable expression. Given

the

premise that the lives of present-day peasants are “trop misérables” could theoretically have (p. 58) for them to sing about, Fontenelle argued either for a realistic poetry of country life (which implies the need for amelioration) or for a philosophical pastoral (the route taken by that restated the of rustic labor as a theme that can Wordsworth) hardships ennoble the spectator while leaving the social structure untouched. Instead, he proposed a Neoclassical solution, an idealized pastoral from which all signs of contemporary were banished. “Lillusion et en hardship méme des consiste donc a moffrir aux temps Pagrément bergeries yeux que la tranquillité de la vie pastorale, dont on dissimule la bassesse; on en laisse voir la simplicité, mais on en cache la misére” (“The illusion and at the time the delightfulness of pastorals consists, then, in only offering to same view the tranquility of the pastoral life, whose baseness is concealed; one hides the misery,” 3: 59). The result was, shows the simplicity, but one and Virgil as models: in inevitably, a depreciation of both Theocritus

Neoclassicism

Theocritus

it

and

the elements

the Féte

of rustic

205

Champétre

realism

that

Fontenelle

despised; altiloquence of the “Pollio” and the “Silenus.” But Fontenelle’s exclusionary tactics were also in strikingly personalized, language revelatory of the political unconscious at work. Sannazaro’s piscatory eclogues are antipastoral, because fishermen work: manifestly “j’y sens toujours que Pidée de leur travail dur me blesse” (3: 58). This admission leads to reflections on the role of sympathy, or psychological transference, in aesthetic pleasure: in

Virgil

the

was

failure

of vraisemblance

and

indecorous

représente le repos qui régne a la campagne, la simplicité laquelle Pamour s’ytraite, mon imagination touchée et €mue me de berger, je suis berger: mais transporte dans la condition Pon me toute exactitude et toute la que représente, quoiqu’avec les viles des elles ne me font justesse possible, occupations bergers, point d’envie, et mon imagination demeure fort froide. Le principal 4 nous avantage de la poésie consiste dépeindre vivement les choses qui nous intéressent. Quand

on

me

la tendresse

et

avec

(3: 59) When the

someone

to

represents

simplicity

and

my imagination, touched herd’s condition, I am a me,

with

although shepherds do,

ing What it

cold.

stone

for

us

we

vivid

pictures is

travail

and

a

I

which

envy

when and

advantage of

of what

interests

blesse.”

reigns me

someone

in the country,

experienced, into the shepto

represents

justice,

the wretched

them, and my imagination

guilty conscience,

dur

that

love is there

transforms

affected,

cannot

chief

The

have here “Leur

with

shepherd: but possible accuracy

all

tasks that remains

the calm

me

tenderness

Their

consists

poetry

in

paint-

us.

and hard

one

that

work

tells

more

than there-

pains him; shepherd is a negotiated condition, one that can only be maintained by a rigorous imaginative control over the idea of an and determined equally pretense that the experience so excluded pastoral and was thereby socially politically marginalized. That was, of course, the notorious “illusion” (Fontenelle’s word) of Marie Antoinette, repeating errors of Henrietta the mimetic Maria, with equally violent consequences. But as an intellectual, Fontenelle’s language is professionally, confessionally, It is the intellectual’s privilege to choose only those subjects for precise. nous a has intéressent,” contemplation “qui phrase into which self-interest insinuated itself. his of And, despite rejection textually Virgilian pastoral for not being ancient (primitive) enough,” Fontenelle’s poetics have clearly meant

fore,

to.

for

**

of his

Fontenelle, being

Fontenelle was of the

critique

four

times

ancients;

he

me

a

rejected as a candidate was finally elected in

for the Académie 1691.

Frangaise because

206

and

Pastoral

infiltrated

been

the

by

model

what

he

one

does

liberté,” and the “envie”

he fails

to

his standards

is

privilege

exclude

to

Meliboeus

of charm

rejects. not

The

wish

to

distant

echo

academic

contemplate 1s, again, “la

pastoral life

feel for the

of the

clearly idyll of Tityrus. divisible into opposed being a

and

aristocratic

that fails envy

that

to

meet

Virgil’s

feel for the

refusesto

Instead, Golden

Ideology

then, of Neoclassicists

theoretical

camps,

rationalists, both

Rapin relocating pastoral under the sign all the Virgilian dialectic, along with of the féte champétre, which excluded the “high” subjects of history, prophecy, and metaphysics, and the comof hermeneutical tradition difficulty and contingency. Sweet, mentary was it and also, docile, unmistakably, a gentleman’s version of untroubling, pastoral. Age

Fontenelle

and

versus

contemporary

responsible

were

for

Pope and Philips: Pastorals

at

War

or self(rather than being a sign of confusion Alexander Pope should have appealed to both Rapin in his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, published in his collected and Fontenelle Works of 1717. Pope suggested genially that “if we would copy Nature, it is an image of may be useful to take this Idea along with us, that Pastoral that “we must and two Golden call the what they paragraphs later, age”; some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful; and this consists use therefore in exposing the best side only of a shepherd’s life, and in concealing its than the marginal differmiseries.” We need, therefore, something more to explain the extraordinary quarrel between those French theorists ences over the pastoral practice of Pope and Ambrose that occurred Philips, a quarrel that engaged on Pope’s side Gay, Swift, Congreve, Walsh, and Arbuthnot, and on that of Philips, Addison, Steele, Tickell, and Dennis. The competition between Pope and Philips was formally initiated in 1709, when Tonson’s Miscellany for that year included six pastorals by Philips as in the anthology, and four by Pope as the last.’* As Pope’s the first item editors have observed, “the opposing principles on which the two modern their poems could not have been more had fashioned dramatically poets But those opposing principles were not, as was suggested by suggested.””°

It

only natural, contradiction), that was

then

??

Pope, Pastoral Poetry and an Essay on Criticism, ed. E. Audra and Aubrey (New Haven, 1961), pp. 25, 27. The Sixth Part 4Jacob Tonson, ed., Poetical Miscellanies: (London, 1709). Four of

_?3Alexander Williams

Philips’s eclogues

had

previously appeared,

Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany

in Fenton’s

Poems, in January 1708. >

Pope,

Pastoral

Poetry,

ed. Audra

and

Williams, p.

17.

Neoclassicism

Addison

and

Tickell,

as

patrons

and

or

the Féte

207

Champétre

promoters

of

Philips, a

natural

or

native

conception of pastoral (Philips) as against an artificial or neoclassical imitation (Pope). Philips was in fact as dependent on Virgil as was Pope, however differently they chose to interpret their model; and what each poet was in large part by the role selected from Virgilian tradition determined in the each wished to play time. English affairs at to there editors admitted cautiously Pope’s having been some element in the war of political causation over I would say, rather, that it 1s pastoral. the of Queen Anne’s without structural frame absolutely unintelligible her difficult with and the Scotland, relationship problem (once again) reign, of the succession, created when her only surviving child, George, Duke of succession Gloucester, died in July 1700. The anxieties for a Protestant in and now activated the inthat had animated 1579—80 Sidney Spenser of Anne’s tellectuals not without direct allusion back to Elizabeth reign, and, significantly, the pastorals of Spenser and Sidney. But loyalties now were divided between George, the Elector of Hanover, and James Stuart (the Old Pretender), a focus of Jacobite conspiracy and Roman Catholic hope who was, until the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 (when Louis XIV agreed to expel him from his dominions), domiciled in France. We know that Ambrose Philips was prominent in pro-Hanoverian in 1712, circles. He became Secretary of the Hanoverian Club, established which, according to John Oldmixon, “met once a Week at Charing Cross, from that Illustrious and took the Name Family, for whose service they assembled.” ised

to

”°

solicit

1712, Swift, who had

In December

from

Harley

the

post

of

two

years

queen’s secretary

earlier

promfor

in Geneva

Philips had “run Party-mad” and forced him to disclaim any Pope, who continued of course, a Roman Catholic. active affiliation to the Tories, was, Although his first response to Philip’s Pastorals was privately expressed as admiration, he was provoked into open rivalry by Addison and Tickell, who published successor to Theocritus their praise for Philips, declaring him the manifest to depreciate Pope.” Tickell and Virgil, in a way that was clearly intended Philips, reported to

withdraw

to

Stella

that

his recommendation.””

*°John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns ofKing William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, King GeorgeI (London, 1735), p. 509. See also Robert Allen, Clubs of Augustan London (Hamden, Conn., 1967), p. 55. *7Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1963), 2: 589. 8 1710, in Alexander Pope to Henry Cromwell, 30 October Pope, The Correspondence, Addison announced in the Speced. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1956), 1: 100—101. 523 (30 October natural tator, no. 1712), that Philips had “given new Life, and a more Beauty to this way of Writing, by Substituting in the Place of these Antiquated Fables, the superstitious Mythology which prevails among the Shepherds of our own Country.” See The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1965), 4: 362—63. For Tickell, see John Calhoun Stephens, ed., The Guardian, nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. Tickell’s fourth essay suggests a political understanding of “Our own Country.” Under the motto “Redeunt Saturnia Regna,” Tickell set conditions for a new golden age, describing himself as “a good Patriot” whose

208

was

Pastoral

himself

a

Hanoverian

gissimi.”’?

Addison

mission

the

when

to

Addison

became

in to

we

reconsider

the

1707

invest

secretary

undersecretary. Clearly more pastoral of the Ancients or If

Ideology

activist, described

had

Elector,

and

casus

from

was

by Swift as accompanied Halifax

him

of at

with

the

in 1717

stake

than

of the

on

a

of the

Order

state

one

he chose

whether

one

“Whigdiplomatic

Garter; and Tickell

as

preferred

his

the

of the Moderns.

belli, the poems the

themselves, there dedicated

his

are

first

signs of pastoral,

ideological divergence Pope “Spring,” to Sir William Trumbull, who had been secretary of state under William but was now retired. Explicitly, the dedication praised the ethos of retirement, calling Trumbull “too Good for Pow’r” and inviting him to The poem itself is an elegant and “Enjoy the Glory to be Great no more.” of Virgil’s third eclogue, underlining the formal prinseamless imitation the (“Then sing by turns, by turns ciple of Theocritean song-contest of pastoral with the finely turned Muses sing,” line 41), and the connection artifact, the carved wooden bow! that is simultaneously the singer’s prize, an icon of the seasonal cycle, and an emblem of art’s dependence on le1sure.*! Pope’s emphasis on “Four / The Figures rising from the Work. various Seasons of the rowling Year” (lines 37—38) is a structural prolepsis of his four Pastorals; and in the 1717 edition of his Works the centrality of the bowl in his poetics is asserted visually, in the engraved headpiece Gribelin that we have to Simon by every reason suppose Pope himself selected.*” with this and with his carefully symbol, Compatible emphasis in on the Ducourse Neoclassical ideas of pastoral—it “consists in simplicity, brevity, and delicacy” (p. 25)—1s Pope’s system of Virgilian allusion. With one as an major exception, the Pastorals are constructed elegant tissue of echoes from Virgil, selected according to the principles of Rapin. There is no of war historical or trace, in Pope’s rewriting, of the Roman context, are or love dispossession. The only concerns poetic competition; and as start.

*°

.

.

definition

of pastoral “will satisfie the courteous Reader that I am in the Landed Interest” of the Guardian’s (p. 128). Stephens (pp. 609-10) explains this in the context policy to mediate between the Whigs and the Tory landowners. The promotion of Philips, then, served not a rationalist view of pastoral but a nationalist a redefinition of “Country” interests in one,

Hanoverian terms. ° Swift to Rev. Thomas Sheridan, 25 September 1725. See Jonathan Swift, Correspondence, ed. Harold Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1963), 3: 101. *°Pope,Pastoral Poetry, p. 61. *'On the significance of the carved cups in Virgil, see Charles Segal, “Vergil’scaelatum Journal of Philology 88 (1967): opus: An Interpretation of the Third Eclogue,” American 280-83, reprinted in his Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral (Princeton, 1981), pp. 234—70; and for a comparable account of Pope’s imitation, see Martin Battestin, The Providence of Wit pp. 64—67. Vincent Carretta, “Images lected Works of 1717,” in Poems in Their pp. 195-233.

(Oxford, 1974), See

Reflect

Places,

from ed. Neil

Art

to

Fraistat

Art:

Alexander Pope’s Col(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986),

Neoclasstcism

the Discourse

also would

with

was

ideal third

make

whose

and

the Féte

clear,

one

209

Champétre of

object

ShepheardesCalender

Pope’s competitiveness subjected to the to four tranquil seasons. of the riddles in Virgil’s

he had also

Spenser, of simplification, reducing its twelve months But (and this the exception) his adaptation eclogue served a rather different purpose: *

say, in what glad soil appears Tree that Sacred Monarchs bears?

Say, Daphnis, A wondrous

Nay

tell

The

Thistle

in what

first,

me

springs,

to

happy Fields Lilly yields?

more

which

the

(lines 85—86, 89-90) The

first riddle

alludes,

Charles

II after

ond,

Anne’s

to

the Thistle and

the

Scottish

in 1703

of the

placement The royal arms. first keeps open These in March

Pastorals

and

in March

Scotland

language

ending

least

intimations

riddle

with

The

fleur-du-lys by at

loyalty, to

of Worcester

1708.

second

of Stuart

the escape oak tree; the by hiding her revival of with the Order policy, beginning

in the

battle

in

an

the Act of Union

“yielding” the thistle

is therefore

on a

of the

between

lily referred

the heraldic statement

of

of

England to

“fields”

the

re-

of the

patriotism;

possibility of Jacobite sentiment. would have been fully confirmed by the

of sec-

the

the

publication,

to the 1713, of Pope’s Windsor-Forest, a poem tightly connected both in its closing lines, which echo the opening line of “Spring,”

preliminary epigraph from Virgil’s sixth eclogue, lines 9— 10. Yet significant change in Pope’s strategy, offering a generic compound that was at least half explicit about its engagement with contempoThe “Varus” invoked by the epigraph was at least as deeply rary events. involved with English politics as was the original with Roman: George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, a prominent Tory and known Jacobite, who and was in 1712 one of in 1710 had replaced Walpole as secretary for war twelve new by Anne to give the Tories control over Parliapeers created the Peace of Utrecht, signed on 11 April 1713, an This enabled ment. to which event Pope’s poem looked forward and on which it presumably aimed to capitalize, as had Tickell’s Prospect of the Peace six months earlier. his poem, Pope indicated on In a series of contradictory and elliptical notes his wish that it should be read as the product of two stages of his developtime” with the Pastorals, in the as a ment poet, one prior to or at “the same on which note one the either other reads) 1710, (depending year 1704, and in its it marks

°°

to

Kor

increase

a

a

discussion

their

of the

topicality,

see

riddles, and Pope’s revisions to them, between 1704 Pope, Pastoral Poetry, ed. Audra and Williams, pp.

and 39-41.

1707,

210

Pastoral

1712, his

seemingly

obsessive

toral, and part, should

its

survey peace’s commercial such

line is

a

Ever

of the trope of It was Pope’s stated

of the

section

of British

Pope’s compositional chronology,

use

innocence.

claiming political guish a “country”

of

have the Pastorals, the Discourse on Pasof Windsor-Forest back-dated to his adolescence

of Marot’s

us

Ideology

to

concern

least,

at

remind

the truth

Whatever

1713.**

or

and

benefits;

poem

and

history

from

its

but it is

its

youthfulness

by

means

also

strategy

a

to

way of distin-

political conclusion, both

arguments no

as

for

with

for peace if where, anywhere,

clear

and

be drawn.

to

Earl

since

brilliant

Wasserman’s

reading

of

Windsor-Forest, how-

subtle and encoded poem recognized and Jacobite sentiment, including an explicit Tory policy of Anne as a Stuart monarch, an elegy for Charles I, a referidentification back to the riddle, in the first pastoral, about Charles I’s concealment ence Oaks the precious Loads are born,” 1.31), and in the oak (“While by our the Conqueror. III disguised as an attack on William an attack on William In addition, the hunting theme of the poem was revealed by Wasserman to in which Magna Charta and the be an allegory of the English constitution, of the Forest, itself best represented by royal Windsor, are emCharter of pastoral/georgic, the pacificism of the first in a modification bodied of the second, yet excluding the militarism with the activism of blending

ever,

that

it has been

instrument

the entire

is

a

of

the Aenezd.* There man

however,

were,

overlooked.

expropriation “The

Fields

The to

are

but

two

first is the

important Virgilian strategies that Wasseradaptation of the ancient pastoral theme of

William

I’s notorious

ravish’d

from Monarchs

creation

th’ industrious heard

the

of the forest Swains”

for his hunt.

(line 65), wrote (line 85), and

cries”

subjects “Succeeding Goddess” (line 91). The second is a Liberty, Britannia’s from Georgics4.176 that more from the first than clearly quotation eclogue a functions as key to the poem’s entire metaphorical system. “Sic parvis componere Virgil, speaking as Tityrus about magna solebam,” wrote his own at attempts metaphor, comparing the superiority of Rome over Mantua to that of dogs over puppies; and Pope, comparing the use of dogs in a hunt to the strategies of besiegers in a real war, used a simular disclaimer: “Thus (if small Things we may with great compare)” (line 105). and decorously Virgilian statement of Windsor-Forest’s The result is a neat to the issues. And conflicting and elliptical tesrelationship larger political about its of of notes timony Pope’s process composition may not have been merely, as his editor’s suggest, the result of faulty memory but, rather, an

Pope,

reinstated

“Fair

“*Tbid., pp. 125—28. See also the evidence assembled Ault, New Light on by Norman Pope (London, 1949), pp. 27—48, for an earlier planned edition of Windsor-Forest in the Miswhich appeared, with Pope as editor, in the spring of 1712. cellaneous Poems and Translations ** Earl Wasserman, The Subtler Language (Baltimore, 1959), pp. 101-68.

the Féte

and

Neoclassicism

211

Champétre

camouflage. Windsor-Forest, n fact, goes far toward explaining hostility of Philips to Pope, and his somewhat manic behavior in April 1713, when he publicly charged Pope with disloyalty to the govcolernment and refused to turn over the subscriptions to Pope’s Homer

essential

part of the

the

from

lected

members

of the Hanoverian

had

the

from

Philips sympathies.*° His

verian

enth

earl

Halifax

on

and

first duke

his mission

to

been

start

Pastorals

Club. about

comparatively open

were

dedicated

of Dorset, who in inform the Elector

Lionel

to

April

Cranfield,

had

1706

of the

his Hanosev-

accompanied

Regency Act, confirm-

provided they remained its eclogue, figure of Menalcas, asserts third a author’s to Addison. The begins by tracing genealogy of gratitude pastoral as a form of address to a sovereign: Virgil to Augustus, Spenser to Elizabeth, and (presumably) Philips to Anne; and it proceeds to lament, under the figure of Albino, “Pledge of peaceful Times” (p. 19), the death of The sixth pastoral introduces a the Duke of Gloucester. medley of Spenserian and Sidneyan speakers, including “Lanquet,” or Hubert Languet, which under Sidney’s Huguenot mentor,*”” who explains the conditions is, under the protection of Cranfield, English pastoral may continue—that who has now replaced Sidney as “the Shepherds Friends”:

ing

his

family as

Protestants.

successors

The

the

to

English

under

second

throne

the

happy Shepherds now: for Dorset loves Country Muse, and our delightful Groves; While Anna reigns. O ever may she reign! And bring on Earth a Golden Age again.

Thrice The

(p. 43)

Philips, in other words, the Golden Age 1s, as it was for Virgil, a hy1s as impossible as Anne’s imat this moment pothesis, whose realization The of the “O must have reminded the ever,” mortality. absurdity appeal, of the problematic succession, as the analogy made between audience For

and

Anne

“Eliza’s

Maiden

Rule”

would

remind

them

contest ends, the series concludes, but with the clouds of an unsettled shadows, evening

When

the song

A

Adown

that

steepy Rock:

mizling Mist And

not

of childlessness. with

the

political

Virgilian

forecast:

descends

this way tends

6] cite from Tonson’s Miscellany, where Philips’s Pastorals appeared on pp. 1—48, under nec erubuit Silvas habitare Thalia, 1708, and under the Virgilian epigraph “Nostra Virg. Ecl. 6.” defers to “Languet, the 37In a crucial eclogue in the Arcadia, Sidney’s persona Philisides shepherd best swift Ister knew,” for a fable about monarchy. See The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Jean Robertson (Oxford, 1973), pp. 255-56. the

date

212

and

Pastoral

Yon distant

And,

Rain.

the

see,

Shore-ward

Boys

their

Ideology

the Vessels

Flocks

strive; drive.

shelter

to

(p. 48)

Miscellany,then, as early as 1709 these pastoral recognized as rivals in a more than literary sense. Two young men as could be seen making preliminary of English culture in the reign of Anne and statements about the directions beyond. Philips could plainly be identified as a Hanoverian poet, warning the queen and the nation about the dependence of literature upon a sure and stable Protestant succession. be could already perceived as hedgPope his most the as were of bets, ing leading politicians of the day, while initiata that and consistent would be characteristic of his career with ing pattern his pastoral theory; that is to say, espousing a poetics of retreat, defined in warfare.* Virgilian terms,** while cautiously engaging in undercover vot have been able to discern What that public would was any differin of ence between and the amount obeisance Pope Philips paid to Virgil. As Robert was a Thornton to remark century later, Philips’s second pastoral was an unmistakable rewriting of Virgil’s first eclogue: To

different

an

alert

reader

versions

of

of Tonson’s

could

have been

Philips, an admirable poet, has ably imitated this first Pastoral of Virgil, and designates himself under the character of a shepherd, 1n order that he might publicly declare his gratitude to his patron; for he had come to up a lad from Scotland England with very scanty means, was attacked in his writings by ill-natured critics, and envious pocts; but found at length a Maccenas who stood forward as his friend, and him into notice. Thenot 1s the brought public happy, and Colinet is the unhappy shepherd.* .

.

.

.

While

Thornton’s

chronology may Pope/Philips quarrel back into

the

58 See Maynard Mack, “Secretum Iter: of etry Pope,” in Aspects of the Eighteenth 207-43.

.

.

have

been

the

poetry

Some

Uses

Century,

ed.

somewhat

that

erratic, reading helped to cause it, we

of Retirement Earl Wasserman

Literature

in the

Po-

(Baltimore, 1965),

.

re

*

Despite Pope’s protests against “party” writing (Correspondence, 1: 244—45, 246— his suggestion to Gay that they shared Whig principles (1: 254), he had already been accused by John Dennis of Jacobitism by allusion. See Dennis, Reflection Critical and An Essay Upon Crituism (London, 1711; reprinted New York, 1975), Satyrical, Upon the first of many such accusations. See G. V. Guerinot, Pamphlet Attacks on p. 27. This was A DescriptiveBibliography (London, 1969). For Pope’s later poAlexander Pope, 1711-1744: A. Goldgar, litical involvements and his opposition to Walpole’s Tory ministry, see Bertrand (Lincoln, Neb., 1976), Walpoleand the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722-1742 especially pp. 166—78, 208-16. Robert J. Thornton, ed., The Pastorals of Virgil, with a Course of English Reading, Adapted for Schools, 2 vols. (London, 1821), 1: 13. 47),

and

...

Neoclassicism

build

can

his basic

on

in which

he denoted

Meliboeus

and the Féte

insight. Philips’ssecond his

own

stance

as

a

213

Champétre

pastoral was

poet,

and claimed

indeed as

the

one

his persona

the exile

(although the notion that he was a Scottish expatriate was Thornton’s invention). As Colinet, who is young and unhappy, admits to the and would-be aged consoling Thenot, he succumbed to a “lewd Desire strange Lands and Swains to know” (p. 13); but the motive for deparis not, as it was in the original, an unwilled ture expropriation but, rather, a and unsatisfied “With dimly perceived subjectivity: wand’ring Feet unfond / I I and of know not bless’d, Fame, what, besides a Name” sought (lines 75—76). This was a revision of Virgil that anticipated by a century one of the of the conception of the intellectual as alienRomanticism, major premises ated from his culture, while leading more to Wordsworth’s rethinkdirectly ing of the relationship between Recluse and Wanderer in The Excursion. Even more was of the prophetic of Romanticism Philips’s transvaluation pastoral umbra: in

yonder

the Thunder

Scar,

My piteous Plight, That

bears

destitute

Quite The

Mark

of

it stands

too

of shelter

Sport

of

Tree, well I

see:

kind,

evry

Wind:

thy Shade shall Shepherds throng merry Tale, Pipe, or pleasing Song. and more Tree! unhappy I! Unhappy From thee, from me, alike the Shepherds fly. No

beneath

more

With '

and

storms

naked

or

(pp. LO-—I11) For

the been

Philips, the cultural shade that denotes protection of writers and lightning-struck oaks that symbolized the revenge of Augustus have folded together, as they had previously been collated by Petrarch, and

Marvell; but whereas those writers had seen the tree of patronage fall, leaving them destitute, the stricken tree here 1s the figure of the poet’s own condition, a portent that remains untouched by the efficacyof Sannazaro,

later

Menalcas/Addison tion

it extends

the Pastorals

are

in the poem. The symbol and the mood of desolaappropriate to the muted tone and warning function of

significantly,it operates as the sign of a new pastoral hermeneutics, a reading of the landscape that is performed within the poem, not imposed upon it by the learned commentator annotator. The act of figuration is here decisively the poet’s responsibilor ity; he reads the landscape as tropical of his own feelings, which in the of his pastorals are culturally determined. Nor is his exile larger structure his is from in or anywhere; melancholy literally being, being afraid of direction

in

as

a

group.

Most

214

and

Pastoral

Ideology

Although in the most narrowly conceived view of his intentions Philips’sforebodings were canceled by the his prognosis was sadly accurate. accession of George I, in the larger sense His career records the destabilizing effects of party politics on the older patronage system. And although there is no evidence that the mockery of Pope and Gay did Philips serious damage during his lifetime, he was subsequently the loser in the battle for canonicity and was driven into exile on the fringes of English literary history. Philips’s discovery—of pastoral as metaphor for imaginative work, for the ways in which the self registers its responsibility to, yet difference from, its environment—could conceivably have been widely acceptable to of all persuasions. But because of letters men Philips eighteenth-century that pastoral should also clearly believed engage major political issues, the the issue and delayed until the followconfused local uproar so occasioned that reche had accomplished. When of what the recognition ing century 1821 ognition came, it came in the highly eccentric form of Thornton’s for schoolboys in which analogues to and imiPastorals of Virgil, a textbook tations of the Ecloguesappeared as part of the interpretive apparatus. Along with the first eclogue, Thornton printed Pope’s Discourse on Pastoral Poetry ilsecond Ambrose and pastoral; along with other conventional Philips’s of William Blake, lustrations, there appeared the first and only woodcuts to illustrate had commissioned whom Thornton Philips’s poem.

being,

athwart

his social

environment.

Pastoral

and Social Protest VOLTAIRE

Throughout

his

long

self in the service

of

a

and contentious secular

free

career

Voltaire, who renamed

will,*’ did what

he could

to

awaken

the

sociopolitical aspects of culunderstanding contemporaries as a his at all of ture; and, philosopheand champion of development stages in Virgil’s terms, most of himself as an intellectual civil liberties, conceived for this is contained of the first eclogue. The evidence often in the terms in the massive correspondence that has survived for our inspection, for and reported extensively to was an Voltaire indefatigable letter-writer friends on every phase of his battle for intellectual independence and surof both more tolerant the was France that in a vival, witty savant than it and more sixteenth in the Marot of was century, arbitrary and cruel in its of his

abuses *!

of the lettre See

John E.

N.

to

the

him-

de cachet.

Hearsey,

Voltaire

(London, 1976),

pp. 33, 38.

Neoclasstcism

1736, for instance, when

In

world

of

that he shared

study unpublished poem

Mondain

irreverence

ciently immoral wrote

the

to

naiveté

make until

count

than

et

of his

a satire

prosecution inevitable, the scandal

of Tressan

died

complaining

but

Age,

its

looked

sufh-

Voltaire

prudently

took

9 December

his

he

1736, has been

de-

“repos” badinage plein de a design to chase him

of “un

account

have

formed

country:

yavais déja quitté Paris pour L’amitié la plus respectable a le fond

connaissent vivre

Golden

On

how

private

copy of his Le authorities. a

civilization so

down.

the

Cirey,

of the

the

on

into

at

the hands

this

own

retreated

of contemporary

incident, and how, on d’innocence,” certain people

stroyed by out

to

in Holland

got into

more

in favor

had

du Chatelet

Mme

215

Champétre

Voltaire

with

Le Mondain

much

not

was

cheerful

cover

and the Féte

paix avec dignes peut-étre je mYarrache encore

de

en

mon

étre

conduit

de la fureur

dans

qui

et

coeur,

homme

honnéte

un

a Pabri

de

ennemis.

mes

la retraite ont

dont

des personnes qui au monde pour les moeurs leur ont paru renoncé

persécution. S’il faut que solitude, que j’aille dans les pays étrangers, il m’en cotitera, sans Vous doute, mais il faudra bien s’y résoudre. resonare doces Amaryllida silvas,” faudra-t-1l nvécriviez: “Formosam que je réponde, “Nos patriam fugimus?e?” de

tout

a

que @une

prix

autre

cette

et

.

I have

The who

already left Paris to find a refuge from respectable friendship has led into know the depths of my heart, and who

the

world

to

seemed

live in peace with worthy of a reward

leaving

certainly

do it. You have written

to

resound

honest

my enemies.

those

have

renounced

whose

.

persons the

have

perhaps persecution. If it is again, and that I go something, but I must

man

mores

from very different myself out of this solitude

that I pluck necessary into foreign lands, it will resolve

an

fury of

retreat

most

.

with our

the

of fair

name

country

cost

to

me,

me

“You

Amaryllis”;

must

teach

the woods

I answer,

“We

to are

behind?”

completeness Voltaire perceived, and aris revealed, the before its Virgilian source and those of the protagonists— his own circumstances between match the first eclogue; on the one both of them—in hand, the possibility of a quiet idyll at Cirey (“repos,” “solitude,” “retraite,” “innocence,” “paix,” an “amitié” even [however glossed as respectable] that fulfilled his need for

With

remarkable

ticulated

precision

in his letter’s

and

lexicon

“Voltaire, Correspondance, ed. D1222.

Theodore

Besterman,

102

vols.

(Geneva, 1953-65),

216

Pastoral

and

Ideology

Amaryllis of the flesh as well as of the mind); on the other, the exile from the “patrie,” which for all it will cost him will confirm his status as a man of international for news of his arrival in When, significance. example, Amsterdam had reached a of his admirers in London, large group young took the to visit this notorious Voltaire was England opportunity celebrity. made increasingly aware that his relationship with his patrie was happy in inverse relationship to his fame abroad. Two months later he had found a still more penetrating use for the of opposed fortunes. dialectic On 18 February 1737 he wrote to Pierre Robert Le Cormier that he could not imagine anything more pleasant than to sing with him “lentus in umbra,” as compared to traveling in “le pays de démonstrations”; but that on the other hand it was important to be open to new les portes de son ame 4 toutes les experiences, to “ouvrir toutes sciences et a tous les sentiments” Whether the of dem(D1285). “country onstrations” referred in literally to France, to which he would return or March, metaphorically to the condition of living with confrontation, on intellectual alert, the point Voltaire wished to make was the superiority of an

the Meliboeus

role, the role of the wanderer, in contemporary of this

importance clopédieis that from

the recluse Back

ness,

that the

it

implies

in Brussels

Voltaire

the

transfer

future

of

culture.

contributor

philosophy

the

to

and

rational

The

Encyinquiry

adventurer.

briefly in 1739, though this time on his own busiin July to another friend, the marquis of Argenson,

wrote

hoped to literary scene

the

the intellectual

to

he

from

statement

him

see

at

soon

in all other

was

the head

respects

of Jelles lettres

depressing

in

in the

Paris, because extreme:

La décadence

du bon goust, le brigandage de la littérature suis né citoyen. Je suis au désespoir de voir une je que aimable, si prodigicusement gatée.

font

me

sentir

nation

si

(D2054) The

decadence

that

I

was

of

born

good citizen.

a

taste, the pillaging of literature, make I despair to see so attractive a nation

me

Richelicu’s

a

feel

so

extremely decadent. The

immediate

performance Gaise was bearable

so

cause

of this

of Scarron’s

ashamed

if dedicated

chagrin

L’Héritier

that

they

scholars

was

ridicule, of which

refused

play

to

be

in it. But

support

for

the Comédie even

court

Fran-

that would those

without

be

persecuted by intrigue and lettres de cachet. “I say with Voltaire, “barbarus has segetes”(“the seeds we sowed are now in the hands of barbarians”). And it is striking to hear his self-identification, in this anti-courtly context, as citeyen, a term which by mid-century had it a already, seems, acquired republican nuance.

“esprit” or you,” wrote

whose

spirit

is

were

only

for

not

to

Neoclasstcism

There of the to

of course,

were,

of

ritual

than

more

or

Prussia, whom

appropriate misquotation: on

one

the Féte

occasions

Ecloguesfor purely

Frederick

and

on

which

Voltaire

exploited

complimentary

he honors

“Deus

217

Champétre

nobis

purposes, his Pollio or

as

haec

occasion

munera

(“It is a god who “leisure”).** But much

gave

as

Augustus,

fecit,” me

the

these

text

in his letters

wrote

with

Voltaire

rewards,” in

more place of Virgil’s subtler consistently, Virgilian for functions as it had for Marot two centuries him, earlier, as the pastoral model for an analysis of French culture and its apparent hostility to free His own difficulties in to access the Académie Frangaise thought. gaining served as an emblem of the equivocal role played by that institution, the most itprestigious academy in Europe, and yet one that had condemned self, precisely because of the royal patronage under which it sheltered, to the dreariest of hegemonic routines. It was not until the 1760s, when a dAlembert conceived the project of making the Académie stronghold of the philosophes,that it would an to Voltaire; become environment fruitful the acceptance that a yet from the early 1730s he passionately desired would fauteui symbolize.* In April 1743 he wrote to Jean Dumas D’Aigueberre about the “petite he that had suffered at the hands of Boyer, the Bishop of Mirepersécution” who had his the seat vacated by Cardinal Fleury, poix, prevented getting and in the same letter he reported the imprisonment in the Bastille of the abbé Lenglet, for merely having published some notes supplementing the Mémoires de Condé, a historical work already well known and scarcely polemical. “Il a rendu un trés grand service aux bons citoyens,” wrote Voltaire that term “et aux des amateurs recherches sur c7toyen), bitterly (again using Phistoire, 11 méritoit des récompenses, et on Pimprisonne a Page de so1-

xante

et

huit

Meliboee, pone ordine vites” (“He has rendered in historical research, he good citizens, and to amateurs

Insere

ans.

great service deserves some a

to

nunc

they have put him in prison at the age of sixty-eight. ‘Now, Meliboeus, go graft, set your vines in order’” [1.73], D2744). Here, obviously, was one reader of Virgil whom the ironic tone of Meliboeus’s self-injunction did not escape. In his old age Voltaire frequently referred to himself in the terms of ninth with and the Virgil’s eclogue, respect to the failing voice of Moeris the wolf. The in vision of occurs his four times trope writings silencing and

recompense,

Voltaire, Correspondance,D1255, D2020. “For

recorded in Les Registres de VAcadémie Francoise 1672 (Paris, 1906), included a “prix de poésie” for 1743 on the perfectionnée sous le regne de Louis XIV,” and one for 1780 on “La serles domaines du Roi, sous le réegne de Louis XIV” (4: 105, 108; Table

example, the competitions

1793, ed. Camille

subject

“La

vitude

abolie

Police dans

Doucet,

-—

4 vols.

Analytique). *

See

pp. 71-75.

Karlis

Racevskis,

Voltaire

and

the

French

Academy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975),

Pastoral

218 between

1756

and

1776, though

and

Ideology in the

form

of

modesty topos (apologizing inadequacy literary exchanges) than as an expression of the cultural frailty implied by Virgil (and transmitted by Dryden).* More significant for his self-image and its classical conwas his in 1755 to go into voluntary exile in Switzerdecision figurations a move that land, ironically changed him, literally and in his imagination, back into the sheltered Tityrus whose security he had earlier reyected. Four times in these late letters Voltaire cites the statement of Tityrus that his has been late in sera tamen liberty coming (“Libertas quae respexit”), with the emphasis, presumably, on “late.” What 1s even more striking is the way in which he remade his life in the of the described image idyll by Melibocus, the happy life of the man who owns his own land and his own time. At Ferney, the philosopher became a farmer, and his estate became, as Hearsey puts it, something of an agricultural showplace. But it was also, clearly, a space for symbolic action: “Until when he reached of the there was one field which 1772, age seventy-eight, no one else was allowed to touch, and which Voltaire ploughed and sowed In 1773 he wrote himself.’ to his lifelong friend, Charles Feriol, comte D’Argental, a letter that makes it clear how intensely the metaphors of Virgil were being reworked in actual experience: to

a

friend

for

more

a

in his

some

*”

*

J’avoue que javais choses

ne

a

parti

la

renoncer.

.

.

que

celui

mort

tout

prendre

frangaise,

mais

les

Les affaires y Je n’ai plus de pas trop de la poésie. de finir mes jours en philosophe obscur,

s'accommodent

d’attendre

et

peu

tellement

sont

sericuses

la scéne

de

passion pour changées, qwil faut

un

doucement,

milieu

au

.

.

.

.

des souffrances

du

corps.

(D18552) I admit are

that

I have

changed,

so

a

that

be accommodated

to

finishing my days for

on

culture,

must

I have

no

the French

Serious other

obscure

philosopher, by bodily pains.

his exile

while

Voltaire,

passion for give it up.

poetry. an

maintaining

of French

tion,

as

death, surrounded

Insisting

small I

from

he continued

the

heart, to

role

to

and of

or

intervene

but

scene,

matters

at

can

no

things longer

play than that of gently waiting

the least

from

the loca-

the sidelines

Correspondance,D6999, D11117, D13491, D19848. *"In Correspondance,D8642, to Algarotti, 10 December 1759, on the subject of freedom of the press, Voltaire asked ironically whether the Jacobins had control over the library of a Roman and added (in English), “Yes, good sir, I am free and far more free than all senator, the citizens of Geneva.” See also D8033, 8400, 8909. **

Hearsey, Voltaire, p.

314.

Neoclassicism

the Féte

and

219

Champétre

politics, Voltaire complained self-mockinglyof business difficulties at Ferney, remarking that he had failed to find himself a “Mecéne” and so did not know if in the end they would be able to speak of him as a “fortunate old man lands” (“fortunate senex manewho retains his own ergo tua rura triIn last of his the this before bunt,” 1.46). stage development, however, umphal return to Paris as the grand old man and his ceremonial crowning at the Comédie Frangaise, the querulousness induced by local frustrations made even that “if” seem overly optimistic, and on at least one occasion the threat of financial disaster brought back the other voice in the perpetual mes was his life. “Tous travaux vont that devenir inutiles; toutes dialogue mes peines perdues, et cent maisons que j’avais baties vont étre abandonnées. Insere nunc Melibeae piros pone ordine vites’ (“All my work is to be useless, all houses that I have my efforts lost, and a hundred going ‘Graft your pear trees now, Meliboeus, set built are going to be abandoned. your vines in rows,’” D20325). in its

.

.

.

ANDRE

Neoclassicism

Voltaire’s

CHENIER

then,

mode

of vocational

self-analysis, reconstantly being excited by the sembling sixteenth-century experience or even the thought of persecution. For André Chénier, Neowas in a less egocentric way an aspect of his republicanism; and classicism one of most of his although might suppose that the delicate Hellenism in his leaned as far as it could the direction from Bucoliques opposite political was statements both in prose and poetry, the antithesis neither unplanned In his poem on nor absolute. L’Invention, which actually consists of a of Chénier imitation, began by invoking Virgil, “fils du powerful theory Mincius. / Par qui le Dieu des arts fut roi du peuple roi” (“Son of Mincius / Through whom the god of art became ruler of a royal nation”) who, on all with bestowed Homer, subsequent poets “un ciel pur, les together simples, des lois, la paix, la liberté” (“a plaisirs, la beauté, / Des moeurs clear sky, pleasure, beauty, / Simple customs, laws, peace, liberty”).” In with these monumental comparison figures (whose contributions, howin terms as to are such anti-heroic ever, expressed suggest idyll), the con.

temporary

night.

In

at

remake

must as

well

tion

as

“L’esclave

least

in

imitateur”

passes

and rewrite

it could

Chénier,

away like a shadow for Chénier “liberté”

important sense, then, originary imagination, slavery the

one

of the

of imitation André

a

humanism

.

poet,

the freedom

was,

for their

own

culture

be. Yet the poem moves, that allows for a limited Oeuvres

completes,ed.

Gerard

not

what

condition

meant

of all who

has

already been done entirely securely, to a defini-

freedom: Walter

in the

(Paris, 1958),

p. 123.

and

Pastoral

220

Changeons en Pour peindre Allumons

miel

notre

leurs

leurs

feux

a leurs

flambeaux

Sur des pensers

plus antiques fleurs;

idée, empruntons

notre

nos

Ideology

des

faisons

nouveaux

couleurs;

poétiques; vers antiques. (p. 127)

We

change conception, poetic fires;

their

most

ancient

flowers

their

colors;

borrow

we

of

the basis

on

restorations

into

honey; paint light our torches at their thoughts we erect antique verses.

new

to

our

our

we

Colbert, especially in the but, more drama, are compatible with interestingly, the program; classical poetry with the findings be able to reconcile must now intellectual here. As Deto conjure with of modern science. And Virgil’s is the name afar have from mocritus, Plato, Epicurus, Thales, whispered to Virgil the of a nature for them “trop voilée,” so Torricelli, Newton, Kepler, and secrets Galileo, in their greater learning, have reopened Virgil’s treasury of knowldes trésors,” p. 125). This exVirgile ont ouvert edge (“A tout nouveau as a however statement, program for uniting all the traordinary implausible himself had Colbert arts and sciences (as hoped to unite them in a single a offers us nevertheless sharp view of the depth and encyclopedic academy) of where French and indeed Euhis of Chénier’s thought, grasp originality ropean culture stood in the 1770s, and especially his insight into historical cultural

The

of Louis

such

process. These

long

aspects of Chénier’s unfinished

but

Essai

Décadence

thought les Causes

sur

and

XIV

a

les

des Arts,first

articulated

fully

more

are

et

Effets de la

in the

Perfection

et

de la

the end of the nineteenth

des Lettres published by Abel Lefrance, who gave it that unwieldy title. The Essaz was a sign of Chénier’s astonishing ability to take the large and unprecedented unusual view, all the more given the fact that he was only twenty-three when he began work on it and only thirty-two when he left it, still in progto ress, keep his appointment with the guillotine. Based on his reading and of Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau’s both of classical authors Contrat Social, Chénier delivered an intelligently left-wing analysis of the for literarelationship between literature and society. The golden moment had after a ture he stabilized, when the was, young republic hypothesized, et

at

century

that

great actions

ciety

had

leisure the

this moment, but

decadent;

quirent masses.

étaient

en

In

at

foule.”

this

freed to

it from

make

monuments

“un

polis precise was

that

The

arts

had

its enemies

peu

moment

of what

out

rude

of

been

has

happened.

so-

Before

agreste”; afterward, it became equilibrium, “les arts de paix naet

of peace are born en masse; letters become “augustes

situation, citoyennes” (pp. 622—23).

and

undertaken,

or, et

perhaps, sacrées,

car

for the elles

Neoclasstcism

and the Fete

221

Champétre

language (which in citoyenneshappens also to recall the Virgilianism Voltaire) it takes little guesswork to imagine what historical model Chénier had in mind, for the only one to which his story could conBut his description of the be is Augustan Rome. accommodated ceivably of decadence era could be rather more widely applied, including to France of letters are integrated under Louis XVI. Whereas in a healthy culture men into the republic and can serve both physically and intellectheir country tually (“par la main et par le conseil”), in a decadent one there are two unfrom fine action, console men of honor, excluded acceptable alternatives: themselves with the fame of fine writing, usually in the role of satirist or sociopolitical critic; the majority, frightened by the danger involved in leur esprit such alienation and attracted by financial incentives, “vendirent et leur plume aux puissances injustes” (“sell their spirit and their pen to unjust powers”), teaching men to forget their rights, and only contesting In such a who shall give the most illustrious as to examples of servitude. read what was written men Chénier culture, yesterday, and argued, only As for himself of “les lettres the (and here the fact study antiques.” neglect that France has been his subject is made explicit), Given

this

of

les yeux

ouvrant

gent

et

Pintrigue

solus

donc

dans

la retraite

.

.

.

autour

de moi

étaient

presque

de vivre et

dans

au

de

sortir

la seule loin

de

toujours plus entiére

voie toutes

Penfance, je vis que Parpour

aller

affaires,

4 tout;

je réamis,

mes

avec

liberté.

la

(p. 624)

opening

my eyes

to

what

about

was

money and intrigue anywhere; I resolved therefore

I

saw

that

affairs, with my friends,

in

retreat

were

me

as

almost

I

emerged the only

from route

childhood, to

get

always live far away from all public and in the most complete freedom. to

by his membership in the Société journalism (fatal himself) on behalf of moderand centrists ates during the Revolution, the opening analysis of the Essaz nevertheless provides the best explanation we have for the Bucoliquesand their extraordinary resistance (again with one exception) to Chénier’s reformist passion. The Essaz also engaged directly with pastoral theory and practice. exon the origin of eclogues in comedic After a fragmentary statement changes (versibusalternis), Chénier launched into an attack on Italian favole boschereccie and French bergeries,which, he argued, have rendered the idea who placed at the authors In particular he disliked of pastoral ridiculous. of on the a discourse of their head theory pastoral, since their thebergeries the for each other; and he contrasted ory and their practice are made

Despite

the fact that

de 1789

this resolution

and his

was

broken to

222

Pastoral

“nudité

décente”

of the

ancient

and

Ideology with

poetry

subtilités

And

the in

“fades later

et

énigmatiques

section, he specifi-

appelées galanteries” (p. 661). for their attacks on the ancients cally attacked La Motte and Fontenelle Both of these he remarked men, astutely, were possessed “infin1(p. 664). ment et de connaissances,” but neither of them had any talent for d@’esprit the fine arts. They were absolutely without taste, yet absolutely determined to be busy about such matters. In a crushing paragraph Chénier summed had such the intellectual limitations that had influence on up pervasive French culture: mid-century D/ailleurs, n’ayant

plus sage faciles

nation,

idée de la

aucune

langue

faits pour

a

approuver grand, plus qu’a émouvoir, plus doués

que

repos, ils étaient quent, de bien ciens

de

que absolument

connaitre

de [Italie

peuples guignorants dans

et

sensibilité,

mois

incapables jamais lesprit, de la

caractére

un

que pour admirer, plus de raison

4 convaincre

de finesse

avec

grecque,

que de la liberté

amis

de bien

sentir

les moeurs,

et,

le

d’imagi-

par

génie

que du consé-

des

an-

Gréce, quoiqu’usne fussent rien moins

leurs Instotres.

(pp.

665)

idea of the Greek

language, having a character more than more made for approving than for admirknowing great, more to convince than to more move, ing, ready gifted with reason than with imagination, with finesse rather than sensibility, less friends of liberty than of repose, they were absolutely incapable of ever really really knowing the spirit, the understanding and, in consequence, the genius of the ancient peoples of Italy and Greece, while customs, they were nothing less than wynorantin their Instory. Besides, having

In the

phrases that

no

I have

italicized

lies the

Chénier’s

personal brand that sense of insisting deeply historicized, on knowledge of past cultures as a precondition of judging their products; and one that was passionately politicized, in the sense of recognizing the threats to the intellectual’s “repose” that would inevitably be raised by a that free, 1s, democratized, society. What Chénier saw in La Motte and Fontenelle (for our purposes, most interestingly in Fontenelle) was both a failure of the historical imagination and a sociopolitical selfishness—the of a leisured class—that vitiated all their other accomplishments; “repos” of a new, rationalist not the invention approach to the arts that would, in an outworn of imitation, bring in modernity. system banishing Knowing this, we can better appreciate Chénier’s intentions in the one unit of the Bucoliques, the poem entitled La Liberté. discordant In his of this Chénier had entered both its central dialogue, manuscript copy premise and its date of composition, March 1787: of Neoclassicism:

one

was

key to

in the

Un

jeune berger

Pautre

libre

jouissent.

.

.

.

style de

Pun

des

peinture répond qu'il lui-méme

doux

homme

beautés

de la

les voit

point

ne

les

4 toutes

libre

.

et

fait a

dont

nature

extases

dur

fleuri, celui de Pautre

et

223

Champétre recontrent.

se

la

contre

est

esclave

un

Lesclave

malédictions

des

et

ravissement

avec

the Féte

and

Neoclassicism

ils

et

oppose Le de Pautre. .

.

sauvage. (p. 859)

A young shepherd, a freeman, paints for the other the beauties

replies that to

harsh

goatherd,

who

allusion

addresses

The

slave.

which

nature

style of primitive.

The

his

the first

freeman

rapturously they enjoy. The slave curses against himself is sweet and flowery,

unhappy shepherd and a companion as “berger infortuné,”

is between

Meliboeus’s

to

of

a

them, and opposes

see

and

itself the debate

In the poem

mistakable

not

ecstasies.

of the other

that

ful

he does

all the other’s

meets

an

senex.”

“Fortunate

It takes

little

cheer-

in

un-

percep-

recognize La Liberté, then, as Chénier’s revision of Virgil’s first eclogue, especially since the infertile landscape inhabited by the slave (“Un noir torrent pierreux y roule une onde impure”) resembles the stony and marshy territory of Tityrus, whose long-delayed “Libertas,” however, had and enough for him. In reversing finally rendered it a place of contentment and making the central issue not stability of his personae the mental states versus versus freedom, Chédisplacement but sociopolitical enslavement nier was able to accomplish two things: first, by suggesting the actual case Fonof peasants in a still feudal agricultural system he flatly contradicted and more tenelle as to what pastoral should Second, subtly, he represent. of how central to a theory of pastoral is one’s view, how point suggested cultural is the presuppositions. When the genre by absolutely penetrable goatherd speaks of the beauties of the maternal earth, the presence of the of Peace and Hope, all ways of seeing “agrestes déités” and the immanence one’s relationship with the landscape that depend on certain idealizing preconceptions, the shepherd replies: tiveness

to

leurs pas. yeux elles montrent Moi, jai des yeux d’esclave et je ne les vois pas. Je n’y vois qwun sol dur, laboricux, servile, Sans

doute

qu’a tes

d’étre fertile; Que jai non pas pour moti, contraint le grain moissonne ciel un sous brélant, je Oj, ma faim. me laisse Qui va nourrir un autre, et

Voila

quelle est

la

terre.

Elle mest

point

ma

mére.

(p. 51) Without have

doubt

the eyes of

they a

reveal

slave and

their

ways

I don’t

see

your eyes. As for me, I them. I only see a harsh soil,

to

224

Pastoral

and

Ideology

laborious, servile, which I am constrained, and not for myself, to render fertile; where, under a burning sky, I harvest the grain that will nourish another, and leave me hungry. That is what the earth is like. She is

It 1s beside

not

my mother.

the

point, then, to call the poem a “false note” in the idyllic Bucoliques,°°since by its presence Chénier was able to signify that he recognized his own an privileges for what they were: enabling perof want and spective that freed him and his imagination from the sourness the bitterness of meaningless labor. of the

context

CHARLES

It is instructive

with

formed

CHURCHILL

compare the social perspective of Chénier’s sympathy for the underprivileged, with another to

dialogue, inpastoral dia-

directly recalls Virgil’s first eclogue. Written two decades earlier, English audience not yet alerted to the larger ideological tensions and class antagonisms perceived by Chénier, Charles Churchill’s Prophecyof Famine: A Scots Pastoral is nonetheless thoroughly unnerving to satire against the read, even today, because it combines the most venomous Scots with the misleading suggestion (carried by the title and the exto tremely devious use of pastoral conventions) that the poem was meant be read from their point of view. The point of the satire was Scots poverty, both financial and cultural, a subject newly relevant the accession of with HI in 1760 and the of his Scottish Lord tutor, Bute, George ascendancy who was promptly made Treasurer. Englishmen naturally feared once as more, they had done in the early years under James I, an influx of Scots hungry for place and privilege. The economic rivalry thus generated was fed by the memories of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, an event that revealed Anne’s Act of Union as a superficial compromise, utterly incapable of pastover the ancient ing hostility between the kingdoms. This was not the first time that Virgil had been called in to authorize some In 1669—70, when Lord position on Anglo-Scottish relations. Tweeddale had proposed a union, Andrew Marvell had incorporated into the text of his Loyall Scot a supporting argument that made use of Virgil’s bees in the fourth cooperative georgic, suggesting that Charles II, as the could reconcile his island’s quarrelsome swarms “prudent Husbandman,” in by sprinkling them with dust.*' His argument for union was motivated logue and

that

for

an

°°

Here I disagree with Francis ford: 1965), p. 66. Scarfe attributes Alfieri’s Del principe et delle lettere *'

2 vols.

Andrew

Marvell,

(Oxford, 1971),

Poems

1: 178.

André

Chénier:

His

Life and

Work 1762 —1794 (Oxinfluence on Chénier of V. (1795), which Chénier had seen in manuscript. and Letters, ed. H.M. Margoliouth, rev. Pierre Legouis, Compare Georgus 4.86—87.

Scarfe,

La Liberté

to

the

temporary

Neoclassicism

part by hatred second

land, Maitland,

for the avowed

work

the Féte

The

Jacobite,

earl a

of

Lauderdale,

translator

and when

in

consulted

bishops, especially John

fourth himself

was

225

Champétre

Scottish

repressive

of Lauderdale.

earl

an

and

of

Lauderdale’s

Mait-

Richard

Virgil

whose

translation

Dryden manuscript, posthumously published in 1718 its editor remarked in his preface would show “that that a comparison of Dryden’s version with Lauderdale’s Britain is no more the Poetry of South and North Incompatible than the Meanwhile Constitution.”** Pope had alluded favorably, in his first pastoral, to the Act of Union by way of rewriting Virgil’s riddles in the third had produced a prose translation of eclogue; and in 1742 James Hamilton both the Ecloguesand the Georgics,with an explicit emphasis on contemporary agricultural theory and practice and “an Appendix, shewing Scotlands Churchill?s chief and principal worldly interest.”°* chauvinist Virgilianism was not as eccentric, and it appears therefore, as it might otherwise seem, of at least one of his predecessors in this continuous that he was conscious polemic. Churchill of Enrepresents Scotland, with heavy irony, as the source gland’s cultural enrichment:

was

To that

What Doth us

fraud, and

When

we

prosperity’s

Come

not

her generous

Listing the

clust’ring grow, not mighty England owe, waggon-loads of courage, wealth and sense, each revolving day import from thence? she gives, disinterested friend,

without

Faith

“That

among

old,

new,

these

Stuarts

rich

trappings

sons,

dubious

without wear,

and take

Scottish

end.

a

share.*

imports Macpherson, Ramsay, was supposed to have

Epic Pastoral, Fingal,” and also Alan

much-praised

standard

virtues

blessings doth

What To

soil, where

rare

of realism

Gentle in

Shepherd, which

pastoral,

Churchill

author

of of

author set

a

new

concluded:

Thence

simple bards, by simple prudence taught, town by simple patrons brought, In simple manner utter simple lays, And take, with simple pensions, simple praise.

To this wise

(lines 135-38) *?

of Virgil, Translated in English Verse, By the Right Honourable Richard Late (London, 1718), folio A4v. *>James Hamilton, Virgil’sPastorals Translated into English Prose; asAlsohis Georgtks,with Such Notes and Reflextonsas Make Him Appear to Have Wrote like an Excellent Farmer (Edinburgh,* 1742). Charles Churchill, The Poetical Works, ed. Douglas Grant (Oxford, 1956), p. 198.

Earl

The Works

of Lauderdale

226

Pastoral

and

Ideology

words, the political strategies of the poem

In other

pastoral theory, and a harsh primitivism extolled by writers such the naked greed and untrustworthiness

temporary new

and

Scottish

national

as

Hugh

Blair and

con-

the

between

Joseph Warton attributes

Churchill

that

with

enfolded

is made

to

the

character.

confuses

What

are

connection

this

and makes

procedure

initial

reader’s

a

grasp

of this

alternative, the parody of the pastoral, particularly as practiced by Pope. Churchill’s ironic rare reference to “that soil, where virtues clustr’'ing grow,” looks susfirst an to like allusion pastoral, with its Stuart riddle, “Say, Pope’s piciously tree that sacred monin soil what glad appears / A wondrous Daphnis, say, that makes no a Neoclassicism on attack arch bears.” And his subsequent at first sight to be aimed seems therefore transvaluation effort at historical disavowed: at the type of pastoral that Pope first perfected and then Trifles

The

with

passes

Classic

courtly

Sicilian

on

our

if

to

wear

Modern

air,

is

call’d from

Maro

as

a

gracd,

the stamp of Taste. is ransack’d o’er,

Theocrite

Muses

and free

Easy

a

ornaments

with

current

the rude

And

with

of Antients

robes

Nonsense

Then

with

dignified, and taught

are

And

it opens

is that

poem uneasy Golden Age

other

Mincio’s

mountains

they

at

were

shore;

roam,

home.

(lines

But

this

is

a

set-up.

be followed

pects it

to

already

associated

of

dose

Accustomed

with

political satire

by

an

Scottish

critiques approving account to

poetry;

in the central

of this

but what

kind, the

of the he

new

43

reader

—50) ex-

primitivism, a heavy new pastoral

receives, after

section, 1s a parody of the

“realism.”

simple strain, / Which Bute may praise, and Ossian not of both Scotin fact produced a debasing caricature disdain,” Churchill Both of his shepherds, as comtish pastoral and Anglo-Scottish relations. pared to Chénier’s antithesis, inhabit a miserable and infertile region (the by English view of Scottish agriculture) that is primarily characterized “Thistles now held more thistles: precious than the rose” is perhaps anto Pope’s riddle. other allusion Jockey, the cheerful one, momentarily atinto to song; to which Sawney replies with a partempts provoke Sawncy of the adynata, impossibilities, of Virgil’s first eclogue:°° ody Promising

*°

“a

The name of Alexander, was another uncomplimentary allusion Sawney, a diminutive Pope. Compare Sawney and Colley:A Poetical Dialogue, a satire on Pope and Colley Cibber published in 1742. See Popetana XXV: Folto Verse Attacks, Defencesand Imttations 1716 —1743 (New York, 1975), GG.

to

and

Neoclasstcism

Ah, Jockey, ill advisest Sooner Sooner

shall fleeces

Sooner

shall Want

And

Than The

I

thou,

of songs at such shall herbage crown

To think

a

227

Champétre

wis,

time

as

these

this. barren

rocks, ragged flocks, seize shepherds of the south, live from hand to mouth, these

cloath

forget to Sawney, out of season, songs of gladness with we

the Féte

shall

impart aching heart.

an

(lines 351—58)

point of the parody happy shepherds. For after

is

Yet the

and

1715

goddess livers a prophecy For

us,

them

has rendered

1745

of Famine

a

the earth

a

change

of fortune

for the

un-

of Jacobite rebellions in of the view, indistinguishable point

for the

failed

of

Pope’s Dullness)

new

golden

age for the Scots:

shall

bring

(a daughter of

predict

to

lament

a

forth

her

raises

her head

and de-

increase;

a us, the flocks shall wear golden fleece; not our Fat Beeves shall vield us dainties own,

For

the grape

And For

our

And

bleed

advantage

Scotsmen

a

yet unknown;

nectar

shall their

reap,

what

harvests

they

grow, to disdain’d

sow.

(lines 455-60) that he has tilled lament couplet viciously translates Mcliboeus’s his fields for another (“barbarus has segetes”), and as the prophecy continues, the twisted echoes of Virgil’s first and fourth eclogues converge deliberate with Churchill’s misprision of the “happy man” passage from of and military activities where all the commercial the second georgic, are which Virgil’s rustics are innocent triumphantly adopted by a new race the prophecy, however, is the of Scottish Beyond imperialists. peasant outer frame provided by the authorial voice, returning us from the dizzyto candid polemic. The poem ends ing experience of cultural inversion to be deceived to the English not with Churchill’s by false ideals of plea and forgetting what they owe peace into making friends with the Stuarts

The

to

last

William

and

to

Protestantism.

ProphecyofFamine was actually prophetic, pointing generic violence (however local may seem the by linguistic issue of anti-Scottish prejudice) toward the social agitation of the last of John Wilkes, whose career quarter of the century in England. The name from 1768 until the Gordon to be the focus of political radicalism was in Churchill’s riots of 1780, is already inscribed poem (line 159). But its chief value, perhaps, is in showing, through its manipulation of realist/ In another

its

own

way the

and

228

Pastoral

idealist

ing

that

arguments,

substituted

Ideology

pastoral theory and practice were now capable of as metaphors for sociopolitical arguments.

be-

for each other

OLIVER

discussion

Any

and

of

AND

GOLDSMITH

pastoral

of the controversial

as

social

GEORGE

CRABBE

in this

protest

period

must

take

ac-

and

and contrasting figures of Oliver Goldsmith George Crabbe, whose poems The Deserted Village (1770) and The Village that Crabbe (1783) were dialectically locked together from the moment his and whose was clarified published poem, relationship by Crabbe’s attack on Goldsmith in The Parish Register (1807). There is nearly absolute critical disagreement about where these poems stood in the linked stories of pastoral and ideology. While some readers emphasize the radical sociocount

economic the

revolution

agricultural

have

criticized

ruined

of Goldsmith’s

posture

(or praised) of Auburn

poem, with the increased

and

his

indictment

of

of

others

enclosures, pace in his “memories” of the

presenting

idealized

its emotional

now

and

village mythical vision of country life, which, if it had an empirical base, derived from Ireland, not England.* as an Crabbe, on the other hand, has been regarded by some important in the defeat of Golden the new realism,*’ standing figure Age pastoral by midway between Philips and Wordsworth, and his realism has sometimes been taken as coordinate with a radical critique of the social order, more soundly based on fact than Goldsmith’s; whereas other readers, from Hazlitt to socialists, have seen him, rather, as a deeply concontemporary servative

figure

whose

an

commitment

factual

of the

working divergences reflect standing premises of their authors, they will probably have to remain unmediated; but some sharpening and even settling of the issues may result from a closer look at the Virgilian ingredients of both The Village, where the subject of Virgilian pastoral is addressed and The Dedirectly, where its presence is only inferential. sertedVillage, Goldsmith’s focus on the theme of dispossession might reasonably have been developed by some intelligent appropriation of Virgil’s first But the eclogue.* Virgilian presence in The Deserted Village is manifestly was

poor the

°°

that of

an

“overseer.”

**

to

To the

a

extent

that

account

such

Compare, for example, Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, pp. 73-88, with RayWilliams, The Country and the City (New York, 1973), pp. 75—79; and, for a sympaaccount of Goldsmith’s “Politics of Nostalgia,” Laurence Goldstein, Ruins and Empire 1977), pp. 95-113. (Pittsburgh, *” See Congleton, Theories ofPastoral Poetry, pp. 149-50; Oliver Sigworth, Nature’s Sternest Painter (Tucson, 1965), p. 18—33. S William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (London, 1818), pp. 190—92; Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, pp. 73—88;, Roger Sales, English Literature in History, Pastoral and Politics (New York, 1983), pp. 36—51. 1780-1830: *° As proposed by Ricardo Quintana, Oliver Goldsmith: A Georgian Study (New York, 1967), pp. 132-35. mond thetic

Neoclassicism

the

and

the Féte

229

Champétre

identified

of subject: “Sweet by its opening statement / Where health and plain, plenty cheared the laboring swain.” The part of the Georgicsin question is the “happyman” passage in Georgics2.458 ff., with its emphasis on the secura quies, rest without the poem’s central argument is that encare, of the husbandmen; of England of their wideclosures, by depriving the village communities their inhabitants of the decent and not spread agricultural base, deprived too arduous work on which their welfare (and, ultimately, their right to and Thelwall would later quote the leisure) holiday evening depended. same in his in his own on attack enclosures. But GoldPeripatetic, passage smith’s adaptation of Virgil was more and subtle. He precise carefully anfailed in to the outcome the of avert) ticipated (though charge unrealism by echoing Virgil’s own admission that his country idyll belonged to the lived,” wrote past. “Such a life the old Sabines once Virgil (“hanc olim ve-

Georgics, as

Auburn!

lovliest

vitam

teres

village of the

coluere

A time

there

Sabini,” 1.532); and Goldsmith:

England’s griefs began, its man; ground maintained For her wholesome store, spread Just gave what life required, but gave no more: His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. But times are altered; trade’s unfeeling train Usurp the land and dispossess the swain. ere

was,

When

every rood of him light labour

He

also absorbed

from

the

Georgics,and perhaps also from a profoundly influential

gro and II Penseroso, what was to be of incalculable use to Wordsworth: who

philosophic outsider, from

the presence distinguishes his own

the unself-conscious

man

retirement, friend

O blest

from

Retreats

care

that

A

For

him

no

Explore Oliver 4: 287.

the

device,

idyll of the happiness

In Goldsmith’s

travels

in the

intellectual

hope labor,

revision, of is

settling deprived

life’s

to

decline, be mine, shades like these,

must

never

happy he who crown youth of labour with an

How

L7Alle-

formal

rustic

fully meditated

of the rustics.

pleasures however,the returning from his down as a country gentleman, his reward for of his happiness by the ruin of the village: learned

in this

Milton’s

in

age of ease;

wretches, born to work and weep, mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;

Goldsmith,

Collected

Works, ed. Arthur

Friedman,

5 vols.

(Oxford, 1966),

230

and

Pastoral

No

stands

surly porter

in

guilty

Ideology

state

To spurn imploring famine from the gate, his latter end, But on he moves to meet

around

Angels

befriending

virtue’s

friend.

(lines It is

impossible to freta

remis

caeca”

of

miss the echoes

(“others

Virgil’s “felix qui”

with

disturb

oars

the

97—

and “sollicitant

unknown

108) alu

sea”), though

also, with equal visibility, negating the premises of the earlier country-house poem, quintessentially expressed in Jonson’s To Penshurst, Goldsmith

is

equally dependent on the second georgic. Goldsmith’s between is a striking difference appropriation of whose of Robert and that Agriculture, published in 1754 Dodsley, georgic of was to the Prince and dedicated Wales, unabashedly hegemonic in inhad banished Fontenelle and his English followers tent. any sign of exerfor the georgic, tion from the pastoral; Dodsley attempted to do the same of the in the farmer so as to describe far George II as “blest reign going with ease”: “he views / All products of the teeming earth arise / In plenaid / Of culture nor scarce the needful teous deigns to ask.”° crops, Dodsley had Epicurus himself deliver an argument, typical of the second was half of the century, that the agricultural laborer especially happy in luxuries: denied unhealthy being and

There

the

So small

board

Our Or

herbs,

The

hand

To thirst

of nature,

wants

with or

plenty,

well

roots

or

supplies

wholesome

fruits, and from the

flavour’d

of moderation

fills

a

pulse, stream

cup

delicious.

(p. 38)

(by abstaining from nameposition. The Deserted Vilcalling) as it might have been from as is easily distinguished lage not, therefore, if Goldsmith’s and as such invidious critique misrepresentations Dodsley’s; was as of enclosure socially radical as that of those who had spoken against to the it a century earlier, his implied solution (a return supposedly good rural patriarchy) was conservative old days of a benevolent (in the sense of the of sense unrealistic and on (in being out of the nostalgia) relying question). But

it

was

to

6!

Richard

Goldsmith’s

have

bad

luck, if discretion

insufficiently specified his

Dodsley,

Works

(London, 1797),

own

p. 26.

Neoclasstcism

doubt

No

affected

undecided

blurred when

Crabbe,

/ As Truth

Cot,

the

and the Féte

intentionalist

he

set

will

out

and

more

paint it, focus, since Crabbe’s as

Bards

231

Champétre

image

of Goldsmith’s

than

decade

a

will not.”

also

poem

“paint the Villagehas a still English landowning later

to

The

approach to the Anglo-Scottish relations, at first represents itself as an an attack on the Neoclassical version essay merely on literary matters, of pastoral. It is further the fact that the most memorable complicated by lines in this opening polemic were contributed by Samuel Johnson:

more

like Churchill’s

system,

to

©

On Mincio’s

If

banks, found

Tityrus sleepy bards

bounteous

in Caesar’s

reign,

the Golden

Age again, flattering dream prolong, Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way. Must

the

(1: 120) The result real the

is, as

Terence

“motive-spring” destruction

of

Bareham of his of

noted, that famous

most

life,

we

poem

cannot

is “a attack

be

sure

whether

political that

the

attack

on

of life

sociological way superannuated genre.” ™ Golden By Age pastoral, the approach via genre diverts from attention the other documents theory against which Crabbe’s brand of realism set itself, namely, the versions of georgic which had also, in his view, distorted the reading public’s view of rural life. It is here, of that The Villageis inarguably radical in its analysis. Crabbe was decourse, to termined of the backbreaking work, poverty, account give an accurate and that from his rural life ignorance, brutality perspective characterized incredible and rendered it and the classical happy husany analogy between But it was bandman. clear that he made no political distinction between on Goldsmith’s a well-earned leisure and emphasis country Dodsley’s absurd denial that anybody worked at all. On the subject of the supposed of the country life, it was surely Dodsley’s offensive remarks on healthiness nutrition that inspired one of Crabbe’s most effective rebuttals:

itself,

°

or

a

way attack upon its apparent focus on a

poetic

a

on

a

George Crabbe, Poems, ed. Adolphus Ward, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1905-07), 1: 121. See James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1950), 4: 175. For Johnson’s own characteristically independent pastoral theory, see Leopold Damrosch, The Uses of Johnson’s Criticism (Charlottesville, 1976), pp. 78—92. a distaste for Neoclassical Johnson, who discussed the Ecloguesin Adventurer 92, combined artifice with respect for Virgil’s first and tenth eclogues (but only those), on the grounds that they deal with real events. Terence Bareham, George Crabbe (New York, 1977), p. 135. °

232

Pastoral

Oh!

trifle

Nor

mock

with

not

Homely,

the

wants

of

misery

a

and

feel, you cannot stinted meal,

wholesome; plain,

not

As you who

Ideology

praise would

never

plenteous; deign to touch. not

such

(1: 124) Yet Crabbe

such

ting lieved better not

was

hard

as

reproaches

with

on

the poor

debasing

a

as

he

that here were any argument of living would standard improve. Even

by

the rural

games

that

the

remembered

Goldsmith

on

was

the

of peasant essentially decent

account

and

or

rich, undercutcharacter, unre-

people whom a country pleasures are imagined, but drink-

if there

And

are distinct limits to ing, fighting, poaching, smuggling. Crabbe’s social sympathies, there are also inconsistencies 1n his approach to the classical pastoral as something that realism must leave far behind. For Crabbe’s was in fact a matrix of constructed on polemic Virgilian postulates. We have already encountered, in Chapter 1, his version of the once now but stricken tree of the cultural wmbra. This protective patronage, to Sir of Robert son the to Manners, younger closing elegy family which Crabbe owed his clerical living, reveals him as at the least conventional, at the worst that would remain unjust no complicit in a social structure matter how enlightened the aristocracy might be; and it is hard to argue with the critical and political outrage it has provoked. Yet it 2 possible to allusion to the “ample argue that in its very conventionality, Crabbe’s shade” that was once the “guard and glory” of the “subject wood” was a self-conscious of himself in the line of writer-intellectuals placement long since Virgil who had recognized the impossibility, at least for themselves, of the system. The outside very appeal (in Johnson’s words) working the illusion of country prosperity sleepy bards the flatter(“Must against echo of Eclogue 1.55— ing dream prolong”)is a conscious or unconscious 56, as mediated by Dryden’s translation:

The

buisie

with

soft

murnYring Strain gentle sleep lab’ring Swain. from the While Neighb’ring Rock, with rural Songs, The Pruner’s Voice the pleasing Dream prolongs.” Invite

We should

sive work

Bees

also of

a

the

to

note

that

he chose

sociopolitical

to

publish

analysis, under

the

The

Borough, his most Virgilian sign “Paulo

exten-

maiora

canamus.” It is

possible that Crabbe, for all The Villageand his later

and between

John

Dryden,

The Works

the contradictions

poems

on

of Virgil (London, 1697),

rural

p. 4.

within

life,

was

The

Village,

less confused

Neoclassicism

than

he seemed.

the shelter

sity that

and

bringing his

In

the Féte

first and

of patronage he confessed, drove him originally to seek

233

Champétre radical

most

symbolically, help from Burke to

poem formally under the economic necesand thereafter

kept begin-

him in attendance

on

ning of

Register he admitted, along with his specific resistance to that social change is incompatible with human

The Parish since

Is there

place, save one love, of liberty

a

of

Where

labour

Th’eternal Where

And

at

the

cares not, nor suppress of rustic happiness;

proud

keeps

the poet sees, and ease;

wearies

flow

no

frowns

mansion

the sunshine

Since

vice the world

Auburn

and Eden

There

of Rutland.

the Fall:

A land

Or

and Duchess

his conviction

Goldsmith, nature

the Duke

is, however,

from subdued no

can

in awful

the

state,

cottage-gate?

and

drown’d,

waters

be found.®

more

of The

section

Villagethat

both

relatively view of the class structure and unby this Calvinist and origin. To illustrate his argument that mustakably pastoral in content not even old age brings with it the leisure that Goldsmith has posited, that no in the real countryside of Georgian England “crowns one in shades A youth of labor with an age of ease,” Crabbe .../ introduced the figure of an old shepherd, clearly in the tradition of the Virgilian imfortunatus, and especially as mediated Ambrose by Philips: one

seems

uncontaminated

For

yonder with

Can

that

see

no

whose

hoary swain,

cares

except that

his

own

Who, propp’d

on

rude

staff,

The

broken

from

the

boy, he joy, but

climb’d

bare

On

arms

which,

Then

a

his first

the

age

engage; looks up

to

see

withering tree, loftiest bough,

his sad emblem

now.

(p. 124) And nized

as

the ruined

here

shade-tree

emblem

of

has, following Philips, been formally recoglater

phase of pastoral, in which ease, whether no financial, psychological, both, longer available, so Crabbe develops at length the of obsolescence, in language that admits also of psychology as

an

or

socioeconomic

Crabbe,

criticism:

Poems,

1: 158.

a

is

Pastoral

234

Oft

see

may you

His

winter-charge,

Oft hear him

mends

“Why At

live, when

I desire

from

Like leaves

life and life’s

in

the

Without

weep; blow

by rage the broken

do I

once

that

locks and

When, roused He

the winds

to

sheep,

bury them in snow. and muttering in the hedge with icy thorn:

his white

O’er

the

the hillock

beneath

murmur

Ideology

he tends

when

him,

and

spring, sorrows

to

long

the young of a slow

morn,

be labour

free?

blown

are

away,

decay;

I, like yon wither’d leaf, remain behind, Nipp’d by the frost, and shivering in the wind;

others’

Are

To

gain,

but

flocks

numerous

killing cares

to

I see,

me:

of my youth are lords, looks, but hasty in their words:

the children

me

in their

Cool

of their

Wants

Feels

fields, these

fruitful

These

his

own

own

want

their

demand and

others

succours

lonely, wretched man, None need my help, and

A

in

and who

care;

pain

relieve

none

too?

I go,

my wo.”

(p. 125)

ing

It would

be Wordsworth’s

emblem

of cultural similar

Wordsworth’s rience

of the “smooth

self-assumed

responsibility to

take this chill-

function. very different denial that the shepherds of his world have any expelife” of classical pastoral is accompanied, in The Pre-

decay

and

convert

it

to

a

representation of the shepherd as an emblem of the nobility of spirit that only rural hardship is capable of producing but whose efficacy can be spread, through the mediation of poets like himself, to regenerate from however, not, within; by any adjustment of the ratio between society and “others’ cares” gain,” that adjustment which was, even for “killing of before the collapse of the French Revolution. easier to Crabbe, speak

lude, with

a

Images ofBelief: Illustrated ana

Editions

Translations

with the French féte champétre; a botanist’s partial confrontation up of Virgilian flora; naked and melancholy “Greek” shepherds; and visionary series of druidic figures: these were the major variants in

A

close-

Blake’s the vi-

Neoclassicism

sual

tury and the first illustrated editions to

of

representation

account

show

not

but

cess

decades

out

or

AND

itself.

text

to

The

itself

translation

is

Published

establish

as

“DISCOURS

THE

of this series

member

Desfontaines.”

the Jesuit Catrou’s abbé de la Landelle nue”

of

eighteenth

All of the above

cen-

refer

I shall attempt

to

here

Virgil’s extraordinary divergence of interpretation, hoping to only the impact of local historical event and larger historical proalso the role of that unpredictable factor, individuality.

earliest

sions.

the last half of the

of the nineteenth.

translations

235

Champétre

for this

the abbé set

the Féte

Virgil’s Ecloguesin

two

DESFONTAINES

The

and

a

in

definitive

French

1743,

DE

RUELLE”

translation the

of the Oeuvres

Desfontaines

by attacking previous

French

ver-

by Marolles is asserted to be “ridicule et barbare,” “toujours rampante & souvent burlesque,” that by the de S. Remy “froid & ennuyeux,” and Fabre’s “peu con-

As part of his four-volume (pp. i—111). production, Desfontaines a “Discours sur la Traduction des Poétes,” in preliminary

included

he outlined

by

translation

also which

the

he supposed his own to principles of translation exemplify. was concerned with the of status equally pastoral in midFrench his in a “Discours sur les Pasreaders, century society. Warning torales de Virgile,” not to expect the inhabitants of a pastoral world to sound like their own, he unfavorably contrasted the “politesse” of modern French pastoral with the ancient “candeur,” attributing the latter to the “liberté champétre,” and its disappearance to man’s design for civilizing himself by imprisoning himself within walls. Rather than concluding, as had Fontenelle, that the modern should do all it could to conceal pastoral this original fall from freedom, Desfontaines instead that it should argued and refuse to be appropriated distinguish itself from contemporary mores remarked that if by the court. Of Fontenelle’s own pastorals, Desfontaines were to substitute one for the (empty) signifiers “de hameaux, de brebis, de fleurs, de bois, de fontaines,” Versailles, the Opera, the Tuilleries, nothing would have changed except that one would recognize without disguise “des entretiens de Cour & des discours de ruelle” (“the dealings of and the discourse the court of the bedchamber,” p. lix), and he asked “la peinture @une vie innocente whether & dune société entiérement difn’est pas digne de notre férente de la nétre attention” (“the representalife and of a society entirely different tion of an innocent from our own is not worthy of our attention,” p. Lxiii). issued his translation under an icon Accordingly, in 1643 Desfontaines

Desfontaines

.

*’Pierre M. L’Abbé

de

.

.

Francois Guyot, Fontaines,

4 vols.

Oeuvres

de

Virgile traduites

(Paris, 1743).

en

francois,

avec

des remarques,

par

. io

aug foedonn tmiten; tine? aonsakemeplaire, :

skit

ard

ton

22.

C. N. Cochin,

“The

Eclogues,” from Oeuvres de Virgile, trans. 1, frontispiece. By permission of PrinceFrangois Guyot (Paris, 1743), University Library. Figure

Pierre

vol.

Neoclassicism

and

the Féte

237

Champétre

(Fig. 22) that set against each other, in visual contrast, these two conflicting styles of pastoral. Under a substantial shade-tree is seated a rustic group of figures, dominated Flanked by the reclining figure of a young woman. and supported by youths in peasant costumes, she dismisses with a gesture of her left hand another boy on the right, dressed in the pretty outfit of a Watteau staff and flute which he féte galante, complete with beribboned holds out to her and which, by her gesture, she rejects.The meaning of the at the foot of the group is explained in the two lines of verse engraving: Je hais, jeune Berger, Si

vous

voulez

Young shepherd, imitate

In other

your

tous

I hate

airs fredonnés.

ces

plaire,

me

imitez

these

ainés.

vos

trilling

words, the girl is

no

There no

to

seems

control,

to

please me,

Amaryllis, but the spirit of an authenrejection of the courtly figure represents what mere

tically rustic pastoral, whose Desfontaines thought of both Fontenelle mendation that the youth imitate his elders to models. antique pastoral had

airs. If you wish

elders.

and

be

here, however,

that

blurs

a

and is

Watteau, while

clearly

conflict,

the confrontation

over

he

an

the

appeal which

for

recoma

return

Desfontaines

intended, for the de-

about it that sets form sign by Cochin has a certain air of the rococo and a exists between Desfoncontent, against parallel incongruity certainly taine’s implied ethical argument—that contemporary French pastoral is as his own character. morally decadent as the court where it flourishes—and An ex-Jesuit who made his living partly by pirating other men’s works, in 1725 he had been narrowly saved from being burned at the stake on a of the intervention of whom he then Voltaire, charge sodomy—saved by spent the rest of his life persecuting in the public press. In 1743, the same of Virgil appeared with all its noble sentiyear in which his translation Desfontaines was ments, prevented by the authorities from continuing publication of his scandalous journal, Observations. Two years later, Hearsey “he was dead from reported, dropsy, and Voltaire and the whole literary in Paris were scene rid of a most dangerous enemy.” The story of pastoral and ideology is continually throwing up such contradictions. But in terms at least of Desfontaine’s to have noticed pastoral theory, somebody seems what was wrong. After the Revolution, and of course posthumously, his translation was reissued in a larger and more expensive format, with the

“Hearsey, Voltaire, p. 135. Desfontaines in its notes caise by his Virgil, which contained et

a

plusieurs

de

ses

membres

en

particulier.”

also managed to outrage the Académie “des chose injurieuses 4 PAcadémie en See Registres, 2: 536.

Fran-

général

238

Pastoral

and

Ideology

rejected féte champétre replaced by the figure of Virgil in from a distinctly intimidating female receiving instruction

icon of the costume,

EYE

THE

AND

MARTYN

JOHN

Roman Muse.

SCIENCE

OF

appeared also produced English translation. John Martyn, professor of botany at Cambridge, had had a distinguished career as a scientist, was a member of the Royal Society, and corresponded with Linnaeus. At Cambridge, however, come he discovered that no one would to his lectures; we may speculate had something to do with his rather that this professional embarrassment strange decision to translate Virgil’sEclogues.Martyn began with the premto be conducted ise that a defense of Virgil needed against both idealists and realists. His preface began by refuting Rapin, but proceeded to argue equally strongly against those whom nothing will please but “downright rusticity.” To those who prefer the primitivism of Theocritus to Virgil’s urbanity, he quipped: “If the Originals of things are always the most valuable, we ought to perform our Tragedies in a cart.”™ Yet he did in fact produce his own rather homely version of Fontenelle’s theory of erasure:

The decade a

in which

first

translation

Desfontaine’s

new

Surely, we ought to able and pleasing.

imitate .

.

that

The

.

part of Nature,

lowing

of the

which

herds,

the

is

most

bleating

agreeof the

the solemn shade of a flocks, the wildness of an extensive common, thick wood, and the simplicity of the buildings, furnish us with pleasing images: and whilst we are contemplating these beauties, we sel-

dom

have

inclination

much and

of

smell

ral, sight conclude, that though resent

such

everything images only which

those

as

to

the

admire

dunghill,

or

a

disagreeable, though natuhogstye. We may therefore

is to be followed, yet we are natural, without distinction; but

Nature

is

that

would

a

pleasing, throwing a

are

veil

at

the

not are

same

to to

repselect

time

over

give offence. (pp. vii—viil;

italics

added)

Eclogueshas traveled a point. being drawn aside by long the learned interpreter so that the reader may penetrate the pastoral fiction the protective covering drawn the higher meaning, it is now and determine of so that only those phenomena our the over world, physical experience with pleasure and decency. remain visible that are consistent

The

hermeneutical

cultural

John Virgil, with ous

editions

veil

distance

so

to

long

reach

associated

this

with

Instead

the

of

Martyn, trans., Pub. Virgilit Maronis Bucolicorum EclogaeDecem. English Translation and Notes (3rd ed., London, 1749), p. xviii.

an

were

in 1741

and

1746.

The Bucolicks of The two previ-

Neoclassicism

and

the Féte

239

Champétre

Apparently Martyn also wished to throw a veil over certain aspects of Virgilian reception, or, more accurately, to distinguish, in true Enlightenment fashion, between fact and legend. On the one hand, he included a Life of Virgil that consisted of solid Roman history, discrediting some of the Donatan anecdotes and locating the Ecloguesin a rigorous, if hypothetical, chronology; on the other, he took issue with the Servian tradition of commentary, applying an intense logical scrutiny to all propositions that read Virgil’sown life into (or out of ) the text, and writing elaborate glosses, to show that no with references back to earlier commentators, allegory was intended. His comments to range from the engagingly commonsensical not that the downright distortive. On Catrou’s Tityrus represented fantasy Virgil but his aged father and that Thestylis in the second eclogue configured his mother, Martyn remarked: “By this method of criticizing, we of Virgil, need not despair of finding out, not only the father and mother he all his relations and friends” but even Vives, 30). (p. thought, showed in the fourth and fifth ec“more than Christianizing judgment” piety cannot lébertas awaited The by Tityrus possibly indicate logues (p. 148). he

that to

a

ever

“Servius

(p. 10). seem

and fies wish

We

can

farm

bondage

explanation, For

a

as

of his own; it must therefore of his passion for Galatea”

hermeneutic.

in the

except in terms no one could

The

third

of accuse

a

willed

blindness

Martyn

of

not

to

will

comment

light of Chénier’s dialogue misprision of Martyn’s last |

sary

refer

a

historicist

the bold-faced

freeman; but see.

a

(p. 8). rule, in the life of Virgil, that we are not anything in the Bucolicks figuratively, that is, allegorically” smile approvingly at the first and concur with the second,

noting the lack of more revealing now

to

the

has laid it down

understand

while

slave, for he has from

his “releasement

And to

was

what

having

between

slave

de-

comment one

does

had the

not

neces-

scholarship. The

overall

effect

of

Martyn’s

volume

is of different

cultural

impera-

attempt to deal space. wrestling in the display of rathe history of Virgilian interpretation results tionalist preconceptions. The botanist’s desire to make use of his special knowledge results in a large number of scientific footnotes identifying, in the various flowers and herbs to which Virgil had literal manner, the most alluded, however decorative, metaphoric, or even symbolic the allusion. Thus we are told the medicinal properties of the herbs pounded by Thesheat-exhausted for the (while averting our eyes, of course, reapers tylis on the fantasy of spontaneously colored from the reapers themselves); and, had related to Etruscan fleece in the fourth eclogue, which Macrobius in the /utum is the remarks that of state question leadership, Martyn myths two of between these The tension weed. common ways reading the dyer’s and scientific Neoclassicism positivism—is amusingly Eclogues—moderate that Martyn chose for his volume; the registered by the two illustrations

tives

with

in the

same

textual

The

classicist’s

240

and

Pastoral

Ideology

first, in illustration of Eclogue 2.31, an engraving of the second, a folded insert of botanical drawings.

Ironically,

of this

some

tension

resolved

was

Pan

for

playing the pipes; Martyn

after

his

botanical with the are an into disquisitions figures of the put Appendix together are annotations referred and the to, literary separated; those which plants have a direct reference words are placed under the to the original Latin the story, are placed under which serve to illustrate text, and those notes death.

the

In 1813

his translation

translation.”

So the

was

in

reissued

grammarian,

the

a new

format.

“The

critic, and the botanist

part

is beautifully illustrated company; disappears; in But what also disappear, sicolor. with full-page botanical drawings, lently, are Martyn’s long arguments with his predecessors, and perhaps historical subtext to the of a Roman with himself, as to the presence dialectic as follows: all survives of that is Almost that Eclogues. passionate and

Pan

the

volume

new

only a poetical name for a shepherdess. Those this Eclogue in an allegorical sense, interpret Amarylwho understand lis to mean Rome; but this interpretation is liable to so many objecit must be entirely rejected. tions, that on the slightest consideration Servius in his life of Virgil, has laid it down as a rule, that we are not to interpret any thing in the Bucolicks figuratively:though this rule may not be always absolute, yet, bearing it in the mind, will often relieve the critic from many perplexities.

Amaryllis appears

to

be

(p. 17)

as

Modernism, which will manifest itself in the reception of the Eclogues it will be possible to read ahistoricism, has already arrived; hereafter

simplicity’s forms will be that of the perplexities of national or To mark the change, almost more international culture into horticulture. neatly than one could hope for, the 1813 edition presented a visual interpretation (Fig. 23) of Virgil’s “De coelo tactas memini praedicere quercus” (1.17), by now, as Martyn himself would certainly have known, heavily not But nineteenth-century readers were overdetermined. encouraged to himself. The 1813 text offers no rebe any less forgetful than Meliboeus of the Servian gloss, with its reading of this line as a metaphor of minder Caesarian wrath, nor of the subsequent interpretive history of the British oak as a symbol for English kings and patrons. Instead, reversing the adage of the miraculous growth of the great from the small, the eye of science of the “Common Oak.” of the acorns view a close us gives them the

increasingly stmpliciter; and one who, like Martyn, retires

reader

John Translation

Martyn, and

trans.,

of

from

Virgilit Maronis Bucolica, The Ecloguesof Virgil: With (London, 1813), pp. ii—iv.

Notes, New Edition

an

English

>>

ra QUERCUS De

coelo.

tactas

memini

ROBUR

praedicere

queretis

Figure 23. “Quercus robur, Eclogue 1,” from The Ecloguesof Virgil, trans. John Martyn (London, 1813), plate 21. By permission of Princeton University Library.

242

Pastoral

THE

DIDOT

and

VIRGIL:

Ideology

REPRESENTATIONS

OF

COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The

Didot

date

on

for 1798 his

above

Virgil was,

its title

page

balanced

by the

Pierre

preface,

all,

revolution

a

that

of its divided

failed.”1

Roman

The

numerals

heart, sign (yet neoclassical) chronology, “Reip. VI.”

new

Didot

of

icon

an

is the first the

elder

referred

back

to

1791, articulating the principles of textual

his earlier

In

edition

of

and

accuracy typographical purity that informed it. The new edition matched the previous one in also exhibiting the “elegantissimos typos” cut for the family firm by his brother Firmin Didot, and surpassed it in being not only printed on a and candidiora charta,” in royal instead of regular folio, but also in “pura containing twenty-three engravings by (and I translate) the “eminent painters Gérard and Girodet (who occupy the places of honor in their art closest to their master David)” (p. xi). This remark accretes significance when compared to the preface to the 1791 edition, in which Didot had promised that this second, greater volume would be ornamented with twenty-seven “the chief of David” who “even now labors himself, engravings by painters, to of his Homer, through assiduously express [the spirit] painting, to the and the mind.”” the commission to David had foundered eyes Obviously, in the intervening seven to his students years, resulting in its transfer (as well as a reduction in the number of engravings actually executed). What complicates the story is the survival of proofs of the engravings, in a portin the Library of Congress, in which four that were folio now attributed to .

.

Gérard

in the bound

The

cultural

structed

from

ily

in the

as

chief

Maurice

volume

of

this

development iconographer for Audin’s

account

the

against raise

a

French

pages, of the

which

no

The

sometimes

David’s.

volume

can

be

recon-

the role of the Didot

at

and

second

at

David’s

famcareer

press, the Revolution. We can begin by translating of what he called “la révolution des Didot”:

round

sacrosanct

hand.

as

extraordinary

Didots, with the audacity

tacked

identified

directions, by looking first

two

of the

The

instead

are

meaning

.

except

one,

“didot”

of

demigods born of academicism, atand popularized by Garamond and his had dared to Grandjean pupils, letter

looked

bounded of the

austere, bya rigid line.

sober, constructed It

was

the

same

in

severe

style as

that

into letters David, transcribed and textual masses, and it was also, in illustration, a theater in miniature where people were transfixed the before immobilized, grandeur of

the

compositions

spectacle. In

”

Pierre

”

Pierre

art

Didot, ed., Publius Didot, ed., Publi

p. iv.

Presumably Didot

ding

Farewell

to

Hector’s

it

was

wild

an

man

infertile

epoch,

but

it

was

necessary

to

VirgiliusMaro. Bucolica, Georgica,et Aeneis(Paris, 1798). Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis (Paris, 1791), referred to David’s “Funeral of Patroclus” Bid(1778), “Andromache Corpse” (1783), and “Paris and Helen” (1788).

and

Neoclassicism

destroy what

the

the Féte

had

eighteenth century

243

Champétre

produced

of the

superficial,

the

and to rediscover the sincerity on which facile, and the mannered would be embroidered, brilliantly and inexhaustibly, the great romantic

In the

folly.” development

of their

famous

type, then, the Didot

by Frangois-Ambroise Didot, produced nected

the

to

of David’s

in the French

move

by producing cheap than

that

analogous to

statement

and

in aesthetic

in

press

painting;

to

mass-produced

and

democratize editions

family, founded a revolutionary they were also conthe reading process

terms

bound

in paper

rather

leather.

Didot, who took

Pierre

him

with

over

the press

the task

from

his father

in

1789, appar-

of social

ently brought responsibility that exof tended the and In 1786 distribution. book beyond territory typography he had published a remarkable little volume entitled Essaz de fables nouvelles, dediées au Rot, Susvies de poésiesdiverses et Pune épitre sur le progres de Pimprimerie. The epistle on the progress of the press, addressed to his father, supports the hypothesis that Louis XVI 1s the ideal patron and that the nation flourishes under his regime: L’aftreuse

servitude

L’horreur

de

to

prisons par vigueur, la liberté

nos

Le marine

en

L/asyle des

vertus

ses

est

le

sense

lieux

tous

en

a

coeur

abolie, adoucie,

soins

des mers, de Louis.

(p. 109) Dreadful our

slavery is everywhere abolished, by his care prisons has been mitigated, the navy flourishes,

Louis’s

heart

is the haven

sea

is

of

free;

of virtue.

imply a rather different view directly to the king, advises him emblems of either lion or eagle, who the by des tyrans, non des rois”) but, rather, to

of the ancien

régime. The first, aspire to representation both live by carnage (“Ce sont emulate the cock, symbol of a more domestic and benevolent governance (p. 9). A later fable, “Les anidevenus maux that esclaves,” begins with the nakedly republican statement in est né la liberté” And one “Phomme before the 1797, pour (p. 55). year the Pierre Didot addressed National edition Institute appeared, on Virgil the necessity for the new republic of encouraging artists, so that they may share in the general enfranchisement. Why, then, should Pierre Didot have thought it appropriate to bring But

the fables

the horror the

addressed

>

Maurice

Audin,

Histoire

de

not

to

Pimprimerie(Paris, 1972),

p. 186.

244

Pastoral

and

Ideology

the great of its

Virgil in 1798, in a luxury format which, whatever the symtypography, would have been economically out of reach of all but a privileged few and which, in its choice of author, suggested the apby the fact that he proach of imperialism? The paradox is only accentuated brought out simultaneously a small octavo version of the text alone, in the “éditions raise still furstéréotypes des citoyens” format. The illustrations of David from the project and in ther problems, not least in the withdrawal

out

bolism

the character

of what

of his contribution.

survives

happened implicit in David’s own history during these painting, appearing years. David’s Oath of the Horatu, his first great Roman in 1785, was hailed for its “fierté inevitably républicaine” even before the that it seemed, retrospectively, to have prophesied; and in stylisrevolution it also, as Anita Brookner tic terms puts it, “reorganized the Neoclassical in France, and in bringing it to fruition endeavour made its life shorter.” Part

of what

is

*

In

June 1789, when

the Third

reconstitute

the

Estate

convened

in the

Jeu de Paume

and

may well have been present in kingdom, His as well as in Salon person imagination. picture of that year was Brutus the Bodtes His which Sons, of Recetving again was read in the afterlight of to

swore

David

history as a revolutionary document, a justification of violence in the cause of principle. In 1790 David embarked on his own form of revolutionary action, directed against the Académie Royale de Peinture, which had disapfor his pupil Drouais. exhibition pointed him by refusing a memorial of reformist academicians held at house sent petitions to David’s Meetings the Constituent in November he 1792 Assembly; resigned from the Acaon démie; and in August 1793 he successfully addressed the Convention the need to abolish all “les trop funestes Académies, qui ne peuvent plus subsister sous un régime libre.””* His revolutionary fervor did not of the stop at the commonwealth In September 1792 he was arts. elected Deputy for Paris to the National Convention; in 1794 he took his turn as its president, and embarked vigorously on the signing of orders for arrest and execution; and on 2 August 1794 aftermath of Robespierre’s fall, (15 Thermidor), in the immediate David himself was arrested, only narrowly escaping execution. In 1797 he had already received a offer from to him and bejoin generous Napoleon the official painter-historian of his battles; in December come of the same year Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Paris, and David painted his first pre-Imperial portrait. There follow from this chronology (more certainly than can usually be about the argued with respect to events in art and life) certain conclusions “

Anita

Brookner, Jacques-LouisDavid (New York, 1980), pp. 68, 79. see also Ronald F. Paulson, Representations of Revolution 1983), pp. lO—12, 28-36. ” Brookner, Jacques-LouisDavid, p. 101.

man

iconography,

For

David’s

Ro-

(New Haven,

Virgil. In 1791, when grander edition with David tion was already established

Didot

Pierre

a

as

assumed.

least

The

volume

its

and

245

Champétre

spoke of his intention to reissue illustrator, the painter’s political reputaits connection with his cult of antiquity Didot

have

therefore,

must, the idea

with

consistent

the Féte

and

Neoclassicism

been

of “un

conceived

of

and

libre”

in

terms

at

neoclassicism

régime republican phase of Roman history. It is hard to imagine quite how that would have been accomplished, but there is perhaps a in record of the transitional to David phase in one of the designs attributed choice of illustration for the second the portfolio. David’s book of the of Aeneas escaping from Aeneid was, not surprisingly, the famous emblem on with Anchises his and shoulders, holding Ascanius by the hand Troy, the classical emblem of national (Fig. 24). But he shockingly reconceived ptetas, patriarchy, and dynastic continuity in a newly darker language, showing the father as a sinister burden and Creusa not merely lost in the confusion but discarded at Aeneas’s feet. We might be tempted to interpret this as a negative image of the ancien régime, and so perhaps it was for work on the project; but a counter-message David when he started seems once we notice that the terrible of the is unavoidable father surweight one the central mounted of Revolution’s the symbols, by “liberty cap,” whose shape echoes but is yet clearly distinguishable from Aeneas’s heroic that

a

the

stressed

helmet.”

confess to experiences like these. The perBut few of the illustrations vading tone is melancholy, sentimental, and, especially in the Eclogues,rothat David, when finally We know from Délécluze mantically Hellenistic. with his confessional released under the amnesty of 1795, combined rejection

of the Revolution

ferent

a

commitment

of neoclassicism.

form

to

a

group of his pupils who deliberately espoused a new his allegiance from republican Rome David transferred

ting

from

self, therefore,

of Winckelmann

the influence

all

of Les

of

too

Greek

to

do

something entirely new. by the Greeks. When

I

laid down

still under One

the influence

would

mans

76On the

(Berkeley and

.

of Rome. little

therefore

must

Greek.

been

have

.

.

The

go Greeks

I

more

back .

.

.

to

take

to

want

Greece, admit-

to

protecting himtopical application. simplicity, purity,

But.

.

than

the

thought,

.

without

to

source.

and

..

they

David

the

.

I

I

Greeks, the

want

right,

re-

principles

in artistic

were

1s

and Brutus

the

barbarians

liberty cap, see Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, Angeles, 1984), especially p. 118.

Los

back

art

the Horatia

painted

Penseurs,

and

iconography capable figure, especially in its nakedness, connoted the origin, formalism, first principles. “I have undertaken,” ported to have said,

The

an

dif-

stylistic Hellenism,

a

for the first time

a

program,

the influence

under

Perhaps

aesthetic

new

was

Ro-

matters.

to

do

that

and Class in the French

pure in the

Revolution

Figure 24. Jacques-Louis David, “Aeneid II,” from Publi Virgilit Maronis Georgica, et Aenets, ed. Pierre Didot (Paris, 1798). From the portfolio of proofs, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C,

Bucolica,

Neoclassicism

arts

the idea is much

expounds This

it than

program

more

and

fully contained

in the idea

was,

the Féte

of Winckelmann’s

in the

in which

manner

one

itself.””

evidently, incorporated

1798, and fully adopted by Gérard tance

247

Champétre

doctrine

and of

Girodet.

into

the

Didot

It expresses

Virgil of

both

accep-

Herterkeit, serenity, and rejection of

principled and however providentially arranged for. The illustrations to the Georgicsare sentimental, eschewing any reference to of bees in Book 4 and instead choosing for emphasis the commonwealth is provided with only one battle the death of Euridice, and the Aeneid to for scene contrast the (in striking Cleyn program Ogilby’s Virgil). But the six illustrations tone the volume is set most the of definitively by provided for the Eclogues.The fact that there are only six is itself significant, Didot’s original plan and its exesince it is here that the disparity between of numbers. can be located, at least in terms cution Particularly distinfor are the the fourth their absence plates eclogue, with its guished by the its of an unof and with reminders Christian ninth, freight allegoresis, solved problem of landownership and its warnings that poetry cannot preof the same the illustration the first vail in time of war. token, eclogue By between (Fig. 25) has been rendered politically neutral, its conversation as as untroubled Cleyn’s was dynamic, without a Tityrus and Meliboeus of the expulsions in the background; and that for the fifth visual trace eclogue (Fig. 26) is equally innocent of disturbing allusions to the death of

violence, however

a

ruler. The

one

discordant

note

in this program is the presence of the Sdenus, to David What it surely (Fig. 27).”*

attributed

raunchy representation is David’s familiarity with the royalist iconography of Franz Cleyn, of Virgil’s works by Marolles as (comdeveloped for the 1649 translation of visual echo in a volume The this otherwise dedi21). presence pare Fig. of the fundamental contradiccated to a contrary ideology is a symptom tions on which the Didot Virgil was based: an attempt to atone for an early commitment all things Roman to by Hellenizing the most Rorepublican of interpretaman poet of all; a rejection, therefore, of previous traditions have left their traces; and the imposition of an aestion, which nonetheless time anticipating a thetic that privileged the Eclogues, while at the same a smaller than Pierre It was Didot could new step perhaps imperialism. his from the of edition or to the have wished realized, production Virgil a

shows

”

Brookner, Jacques-LouisDavid, p. 134, translating Etienne Délécluze, Louis David, son temps (Paris, 1855). ”’The subject was more readily associated with French court painting. See G. de TerPrésence de Virgiledans Vart (Brussels, 1967), pp. 14—15 and fig. 20, on the painting varent, of the Silenus by Antoine Coypel (1700) for the Dauphin at the Chateau de Meudon. école

et son

Figure 25. Francois Gérard, “Eclogue 1,” from Publit VirgilitiMaronis Georgica, et Aeneis, ed. Pierre Didot (Paris, 1798). From the portfolio of Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. proofs, Lessing J. Rosenwald

Bucolica,

Figure 26. Francois Gérard, “Eclogue 5,” from Publit Virgil Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis, ed. Pierre Didot (Paris, 1798). From the portfolio of Collection, proofs, Lessing J. Rosenwald Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Figure 27. Jacques-Louis David, “Eclogue 6,” from Publit Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aenets, ed. Pierre Didot (Paris, 1798). From the portfolio of Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. proofs, Lessing J. Rosenwald

Neoclassicism

and

blatantly Napoleonic appropriations “Je roi du Rome” But

the

the Fete

251

Champétre

of the fourth

for the birth

eclogue

of

in 1811.”

pacific quality

of Didot’s

volume

did

presumably

displease the Didot, Eight years later, family firm’s typeface, but who did not restrict himself to typographical projects, published and dedicated to his brother Les Bucoliquesde Virgile, précédéesde plusieurs Idylles de Théocrite, de Bion et de Moschus, suivies de tous les passages de Théocrite que Virgile a tmités; traduttes en vers francais; in other a which in also its own to words, pastoral anthology, way was determined reverse culliterary history and return Virgil to his origins in Hellenistic ture. Most revealing of Firmin Didot’s intention in this volume was his “Discours préliminaire sur les anciens poétes bucoliques,” in which he set out the connection between the pastoral impulse, as he understood it, and course of the history. him.

the

Firmin

brother

who

not

reformed

had

aprés de grandes révolutions politiques et quand les peudu de la bruit fatigués trompette ples guerriére, que se fait enle plus de charmes tendre avec le flageolet de la muse pastorale. Les d’Alexandre venaient d’étonner la terre, lorsque Théconquétes ocrite parut: César venait d’achever la conquéte du monde alors et Auguste recueillait avec un connu, peine héritage sanglant, lorsque Pon vit paraitre Virgile, Virgile admirateur passionné de Théocrite, et Telles furent les quelquefois son égal dans une langue moins riche. du de la chez les Grecs et é€poques remarquables régne poésie pastorale chez les Romains: et il nest pas impossible qu’elle ait un jour de la méme sorte chez les Frangais. Dans ces temps de trouble, Pame, tour-a-tour ebranlée, tantdét par et tantdt Pespérance par Padmiration, par Pinquiétude et la terreur, ramenée enfin a des idées générales de justice et ordre par ces images et de destructions, est disposée a perpétuelles de ravages, dincendies avec interét les tableaux @une vie silencicuse et calme, contempler aimer a ces douces rendues douces encore images, plus pure; par le C’est

sur-tout

sont

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

contraste.

(pp. 1—2) It is

especially after great political revolutions

tired

of the noise

and the

pastoral

Alexander’s

and when

of the trumpets of war, that muse make themselves heard

conquests

had

astonished

just had just

to

.

are

of the flute

delight.

greater

the world

.

.

when

The-

ocritus

appeared:

known

world, and Augustus gathered up with difficulty a bloody

”

Caesar

See, for example, M. de Loizerolles, Le quatriéme Eglogue de Virgile (Paris, 1811); and Napoléon (Paris, 1812).

achieved

people

the charms

Roi N. E.

de

the conquest

of the then

Rome, poéme allégorique, wmité de la Lemaire, Virgil expliquépar le stécle de

252

and

Pastoral

the appearance of Virgil, Virgil the pashis equal in a language of Theocritus, and sometimes

when

inheritance,

admirer

sionate

like

saw

the

were

and

the French.

day among In these

men

epochs remarkable for pastoral poetry among Romans; and it is not impossible that it will have a

less rich. These the Greeks

Ideology

of

times

the

trouble,

soul, continually diminished,

as

as by instability and terror, returned by hope and admiration of justice and order by these perpetual images to general ideas rapine, fire, and destruction, 1s disposed to contemplate with inter-

much

last

at

of

visions

est

of

images,

1s

life that

a

all the

rendered

calm, silent, and pure;

by

sweeter

the

love these

to

sweet

contrast.

description of the 1conographical program of speaks of far more than that. In one long historical of the curve, ideology Rapin is hereby linked to that of post—World War to similar commitment with its modernism, “poésie pure” and its similar belief that pastoral offers the mind relief from the experience of violence. Between them, and already being articulated by Wordsworth, is the comof also aesthetic Romanticism, directly a product of the program plex to French Revolution and equally committed “general ideas of justice and now that their enactment the more order”—all by political process general

This

is, in effect,

statement

the Didot

had

been

seen

silencicuse

et

tiful

volume,

to

a

it

Virgil. But

be

so

disastrous.

pure”

that

those

“douces

Firmin

But

Didot

those had

“tableaux

admired

dune

douces

rendues

vie

calme,

in his brother’s

beau-

encore”

by eraimages, plus were connected to quite explicitly interpretive traditions, aussi “C’est his own revolutionary experiences: peut-étre Pimpression qu’a la lecture des pastorales, dans les temps dune révolufaite sur moi-méme les anciens m’a déterminé a traduire tion orageuse, qui poétes bucoliques” (p. 3). It was the effect that reading pastorals had on him during the Revofrom

sures

lution

that

shall

earlier

motivated

his decision

to

translate

the Romantic

in

bucolic

the ancient

and modernist

version

Chapter 5, an between idealized pastoral tionship, of the connection litical experience, would usually remain unspoken.

we

see

THORNTON

AND

AND

BLAKE:

RADICAL

REFORMIST

poets. As of this rela-

and violent

po-

TEXT

IMAGE

England, the Napoleonic wars made their own impact on Virgilian inPastorals of terpretation in the last of our four exhibits, Robert Thornton’s a Course with of English Reading, Adapted for Schools, published in Virgil, back therefore, as promised, to William Blake’s illustrations 1821. We come of Ambrose Philips’s version of pastoral, an accident of cultural history that in Thornton’s resulted Virgil, as it is familiarly referred to, acquiring a cewhich some have In fact, as I lebrity thought was completely undeserved. In

Neoclasstcism

shall

Thornton’s

and

the Féte

253

Champétre

far

more complex document, as a usually admitted, and not least in its mixture of sophistication and imperception, both of which are featured in Thornton’s treatment of Blake. A botanist, like Martyn, Thornton this school ediapproached tion of the Eclogueswith very different motives and premises than his predecessor: rather than suppressing as far as possible the Roman historical in context of the Eclogues, Thornton raised it to a prominence not seen since and And like and Virgilian interpretation Ogilby Dryden.” Ogilby subjected Roman history to contemporaneity, structurDryden, Thornton on edition the model of Renaissance ing his two-volume Virgils,with their massive interpretive apparatus, but extending the commentary tradition explicitly into his own concerns. One of his themes is, once between again, the connection pastoral and In his on the ninth Thornton remarked, pacificism. commentary eclogue, of war, as afflicting the country, in clear defiance of Rapin, “The horrors merit a place in Pastoral poetry. We are not, in such compositions, entirely or manners.” But he then proceeded to personto expect Arcadian scenes, alize and topicalize the issue, in ways that clearly spoke to or, rather, Euroagainst, the violence that from 1789 until Waterloo had structured “But when I Christian nations, contemplate civilized, nay pean politics. butchering and murdering cach other, and laying waste the fair peaceful scenes of Nature, my blood boils with honest indignation, and I attribute much of this to the fault of education” (2: 557). It was Thornton’s proin the course of this, his third edition of the revealed gram, only gradually Eclogues,to exploit their complex dialectic on the subject of war and peace ends simultaneously—that is to say, his own for political and educational

argue, whole, than

Virgil

was

a

is

contribution

to

be

to

was

peace

an

for the civic

argument

education, and the provision of the

for him

that

text

of a liberal

uses

could

teach

the

hu-

values.

mane

his

Thus

of the ninth

account

Virgil, with great address, in power, in order to fore endeavours

shall

preserve

they

as

the had

was

recommends

Romans

he

can

to

as

follows:

himself

the lands

shew, that if

teach

to

of peace,

arts

of

be able

to

eclogue

about

to

with

meet

surpass the

already gained

of those

the favour

Mantua.

.

.

.

there-

He

he

encouragement,

all other

nations

superiority

in the

in the

arts

war.

(2: 540)

To

home

drive

eclogue his *°The in

1814)

two

and

the

own

poem

previous in 1819.

point, On

editions

Thornton the Horrors

were

in 1812

inserted

of War (with

some

as

analogues

and

the second

illustrations

to

the

ninth

of Collins’s

published separately

254

Pastoral

and

Ideology

Eclogues.And he was careful to point out that Virgil’s chief addressee, Augustus, required some apology from the poet, “for he, as do all tyrants, feared the soldiery, and only kept the people in subjection by Thornton derived from means of his armed force” (2: 547). The “moral” instat agamus,” was on its final line, “quod nunc the poem, and focused What Ogilby had work as hard as they can. that his schoolboy readers must for as a subdued royalist solidarity, and Dryden as an campaign interpreted as an read imperative to develop “a liberal appeal for patronage, Thornton mind” (2: 548). Thornton’s skeptical portrait of Augustus was clearly intended to be on the fifth eclogue, from which he read in the light of his commentary Thornambition. “The following,” wrote a of extracted critique imperial “is a true the later Roman ton, under the pretext of discussing emperors, picture” of life “under a despotic government.” Oriental

inquisition. The few, having a separate interest many, always on the watch, prepared to nip every it apin and to quench every the bud, spark the moment conspiracy a general conflagration. pears, knowing that the least delay may cause or not not if The despot must guilty, but must at all enquire, guilty his own events secure repose, by confining, by banishing, or by cutting In a country where the subjects are all off, suspected persons. must to see state looked as we enemies, prisons inaccesexpect upon of the monarch’s sible to all, but the unhappy victims jealousy, or the

There from

be

must

state

a

the

must

be

...

favourite’s

revenge.

(2: 263) that

It was, in fact, the political context tives in bringing out this third edition

of his

moexplains Thornton’s textbook, and in so massively

best

annotations, illustrations, and interpretive and the economic tensions reaction exanti-Jacobin By 1820, in had reached a climax the Peterloo the wars acerbated by Napoleonic Massacre and the Six Acts regulating all forms of assembly. By this time their Godwinian had long abandoned Shelley, Southey, and Wordsworth

expanding

its

with

structure

“imitations.”

sentiments; edition

1821

but

there

can

of the

be

doubt

no

that

Thornton

take

conceived

had

trators, 8!

moved

in radical

to

an

circles

since

the

a

And volume’s

he

was

illus-

1780s.*'

coterie” of Blake’s associations, both social and conceptual, with the “remarkable Paine, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, Price, Thomas Schorer, William Blake: The Politics of Vision (New York, 1946), pp. 151—220; David

For

Richard see Mark

of his

stand, however discourse, against the

Eclogues opportunity of academic discreetly sheltered by the structures of most Castlereagh’s Tory government. disreputable aspects probably aware that Blake, whom he accepted as one of the as

Erdman, Blake: Prophet against Empire (Princeton, 1954), pp.

138—47.

Neoclassicism

It is all the

should

have

the Féte

in

255

Champétre

ironic, therefore, that

more

resulted

and

this

celebrated

commission

almost

complete misunderstanding between Thornton, misunderstanding that resulted from the clash between two different exsystems of encoding ideology. Whereas Thornton pressed himself primarily through significant juxtaposition, by aligning ancient against contemporary history and by setting the Virgilian text in a frame of eighteenth-century “analogues,” Blake profrequently contrastive ceeded to explore the emotional potential of Philips’s second pastoral and to reinvest it with a deep social power. While Blake’s woodcuts have been almost universally admired (the himself), the range of commentary on strange exception being Thornton them has been oddly limited, perhaps because they fail to cohere with the of Blake’s his career, general understanding philosophy of art and history, and his personal repertoire of symbols. This in itself is interesting, not least in accepting the Thornton because commission Blake apparently suppressed, or forgot, or rethought, his well-known antipathy to classical poand to an based on a view of Virgil as an etry, especially Virgil, antipathy we Blake’s emperor’s apologist.* If, however, reapproach Virgilian iconography in the light of its antecedents, images that are otherwise puzzling or of motivation. disturbing fall into place, along with a plausible structure The profound melancholy of Blake’s interpretation can be recognized, not only as an expression of what has been called his “negative pastoral,” his lifelong suspicion of natural phenomena when not read with visionary of a series that passed from Virgil’s first eceyes, but also as an extension logue through Clément Marot and Edmund Spenser to Ambrose Philips. In this series, the dialectic between the sad and happy shepherd had been as we have in the direction of cultural revised, seen, continually pessimism; and there was an increasingly close identification between the unfortunate shepherd and the poet himself: It is all too easy to imagine how and why such a premise would have appealed to Blake at this late stage of his career, following his own unsuccessful experiment with “pastoral” life on Hayley’s estate at Felpham, the total failure of his exhibition in 1809, his sense of neglect, and his decreased artistic activity. It has been suggested, for example, that the series of images represents “a dark allegory of the artist’s subversion through patronage,” the damage to his independence initiated by Hayley’s demands and continued, out of necessity, in accepting this very commission. Blake

Blake

and

an

a

**

**

**

Erdman

See his remarks

“On

Virgil,”

(New York, 1982), p.

The

CompletePoetry and

Prose

267.

William of

Blake,

ed. David

V.

*°The phrase is Leopold Damrosch’s, in Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton, 1980), pp. 229-30, n. 139. Compare Jean Hagstrum, William Blake, Poet and Painter (Chicago, 1964), pp. 52—53, and David Bindman, Blake as an Artist(Oxford, 1977), pp. 204—5.

All read

Blake’s

woodcuts

(briefly) as visions of Wagenknecht, Blake’s Night: bridge, Mass., 1973), p. 8. **See David

a

“fallen

William

world.”

Blake

and

the Idea

of Pastoral

(Cam-

COLINET,

of Eclogue I,” from The Pastorals Figure 28. William Blake, “Imitation of (London, 1821), vol. I, facing for Schools, ed. Robert J. Thornton Virgil... Adapted p. 15. Rare Books and Special Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Neoclassicism

himself

has been

to

London

as

63

It is hard sense

his

own

Hard

is

And

hard

But

neither

To

blasting

of

bear

to

is

to

not

of cultural

returning,

marks

his distance

in

disillusion,

from

the

city image ts, then, a brilcandor and illustrative sympathy, since were themselves set wandering by desire for believe that Philips’s poem articulated

(Fig. 28), by miles, precisely the distance liant collage of autobiographical Philips’s “wandering feet unblest” Blake

257

Champétre

the traveler that

milestone

a

of “a Name.”

the Féte

figure of

in the

seen

and

of

Felpham.*

The

alienation:

pinching cold the pain; the unpractis’d swain; nor pinching cold, is hard, of calumny compar’d. _

to

want

want, storms

(p. 16) And

the fact that

toral

instruments

Blake’s

frontispiece (Fig. 29) specificallyfeatures the pashung up on a tree, the symbol of the shepherd who can (“Carmina nulla canam”), strongly suggests a personal and

sing no more psychological motive in every other cal tradition, also The

for his acceptance of Thornton’s commission, which his attitude to expressed respect, given Virgil and the classione him If to refuse. the frontispiece was might have expected

designed as an allusion Songs of Innocence, the

mark

his

Blake

own

decided

apologetic eler’s

passage to work

tribute

broad-brimmed

their

reveal

visual

to

from

to

Blake’s

visual

earliest

echo

innocence

and to

serves

non-Virgilian pastoral, frame

his

career

experience.*° It 1s also

to

and

to

likely that

wood, for the first and only time, as a late and Calender;*’ and that the travSpenser’s Shepheardes in the Blake canon,® at last hat and staff, recurrent in

genealogy

in recall

of

Spenser’s “January” (compare

Fig. 15). ®

See G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Oxford, 1969), plate XL; and Frederick Garber, in Blake’s Illustrations to Thornton’s and Metatext Review, Virgil,” Centennial by Blake about patronage, see A Viston of the Last Judgforthcoming. For telling statement of Art can only be produced in Perfection ment, in CompletePoetry and Prose, p. 561: “works the Argument is better for or is Above the Care of it where the Man is either in Affluence have been a greater Artist yet he would have not than Poverty & tho he would Affluence “Intertext

a

.

produced 8

Greater

Garber,

works “Intertext

of Art and

in

proportion

to

.

.

his means.”

Metatext.”

to Blake’s 8’Wagenknecht,Blake’s Night, pp. 4—5, implies that the Calender contributed pastoral; but Robert Gleckner, in Blake ¢ Spenser (Baltimore, 1985), p. 30, sees the at least in the 1780s. as to Blake the /east interesting of Spenser’s poems, If, howas Gleckner also argues, Blake was ever, rethinking his relationship to Spenser in the decade of The Faerie Queene, immediately prior to the Virgil project, in preparation for his illustration In the visual similarities bethe Calender. would have that he ‘t seems all, ignored unlikely reconsideration: the dimensions, the compressed deserve series of woodcuts ween the two urvilinear landscapes, the positioning and gestures of the figures, and even the echo, in

of Calender

idea

Blake’s 88

Neoclassical mansion, of the Roman and Metatext.” “Intertext

Garber,

architecture

of

Spenser’s “October.”

ILLUSTRATIONS

IMITATION

OF

I,

ECLOGUE

FRONTISPIECE,

IN SY 7

=i 7

Ze