REAL: Vol. 2 [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783112322369, 9783112311196

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The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Volume 2

The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Edited by Herbert Grabes • Hans-Jiirgen Diller • Hans Bungert Volume 2

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Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York 1984

Notice to Contributors The editors invite submission of manuscripts appropriate to the aims indicated in the Preface. The journal does not pay contributors. Each author will receive 50 offprints of the article. Articles submitted for consideration may be sent either directly to one of the editors or to an advisor. T o facilitate correspondence, they should be sent in duplicate; they must be typed in English, doublespaced, with endnotes rather than running footnotes, and should otherwise observe the conventions laid down in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations (1977).

Editors Herbert Grabes, University of Gießen

Hans-Jürgen Diller, University of Bochum

Hans Bungert, University of Regensburg

Advisory Board Malcolm Bradbury (University of East Anglia), Jean A. Dulck (University of Paris III), Bernhard Fabian (University of Münster), Stanley Fish (The Johns Hopkins University), Wolfgang Iser (University of Constance), Murray Krieger (University of California/Irvine), Giorgio Melchiori (University of Rome), Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (Jagellonian University of Cracow) John Spencer (University of Leeds), Albert E. Stone (University of Iowa), Arne Zettersten (University of Copenhagen).

ISBN 3-110-09899-7 • ISSSN 0723-0338 Re: Copying in the USA Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by Walter de Gruyter & Co. • Berlin • New York for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) Transactional Reporting Service, provided that the base fee of $ 02.00 per copy is paid directly to CCC, 21 Congress St., Salem, MA 01970. 0723-0338/84/$ 2.00 © by Walter de Gruyter & Co. • Berlin • New York

© 1984 by Verlag Walter de Gruyter & Co. — Printed in Germany — All rights reserved, including those of translations into foreign languages. N o part of this journal may be reproduced in any form — by photoprint, microfilm or any other means — nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without permission from the publisher. Typesetting and printing: H . Heenemann GmbH & Co, Berlin. Binding: Liideritz & Bauer, Berlin

Contents

(Düsseldorf) Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry: A Critique of the Typological and Allegorical Appropriation of Medieval Literature

W I L H E L M BUSSE

(Oslo) Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes Calender

1

M A R I A N N E BROWN

VANNA GENTILI

55

(Rom)

Thomas Lodge's Wounds of Civil War: An Assessment of Context, Sources and Structure

119

(Los Angeles) Shakespeare and Alchemy: Let us not Admit Impediments . . .

165

LUMINITSA N I C U L E S C U

GIORGIO MELCHIORI

(Rom)

Sir John Umfrevile in Henry IV, Part. 2,1, i. 169—79

199

L. H I L L (East Lansing, Michigan) The Marriage of True Bodies: Myth and Metamorphosis in Antony and Cleopatra

211

(Berlin) Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon: Anatomy of a 'European' Comic Play

239

(Münster) Gems and Jewellery in Victorian Fiction

275

(Irvine, Cal.) Mastering the Images: Yeats's Byzantium Poems

319

JAMES

A L F R E D BEHRMANN

K U R T T E T Z E L I VON R O S A D O R

CARLA COPENHAVEN

LOTHAR H Ö N I G H A U S E N

Faulkner's Poetry

(Bonn) 355

(Zurich) Conrad Aiken's Aesthetic Theories: A Tandem of Methods . . .

H E L E N HAGENBOCHLE

J. C. W H I T E H O U S E (Bradford) The Human Person in the Novels of Graham Greene

371

397

Addresses of Editors Prof. Dr. Hans BUNGERT, Institut für Anglistik der Universität Regensburg, Universitätsstr. 31, D-8400 Regensburg 2 Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen D I L L E R , Englisches Seminar der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-4630 Bochum 1 Prof. Dr. Herbert GRABES, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Universität Gießen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10, D-6300 Gießen

Addresses of Contributors Prof: Dr. Alfred BEHRMANN, Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Germanistik, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-1000 Berlin 33 Marianne B R O W N , M. A., Office for Foreign Students, University of Oslo, Blindem, Oslo 3, Norway Prof. Dr. Wilhelm G. BUSSE, Anglistisches Institut der Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, D-4000 Düsseldorf 1 Carla

COPENHAVEN,

1021 Verano Place, Irvine, CA 92715, U.S.A.

Prof. Dr. Vanna G E N T I L I , Università degli Studi di Roma, Facoltà di Magistero, Istituto di Lingua e Letteratura Inglese e di Letteratura Anglo-Americana, Via Magenta 2, I00185 Roma Dr. Helen

HAGENBÜCHLE,

Im Schilf 3, CH-8044 Zürich

Prof. James L. HILL, Dept. of English, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A. Prof. Dr. Lothar H Ö N N I G H A U S E N , Englisches Seminar, Universität Bonn, Regina-PacisWeg 5, D-5300 Bonn 1 Prof. Giorgio M E L C H I O R I , Università degli Studi di Roma, Facoltà di Magistero, Via Magenta 2, 1-00185 Roma Dr. Luminitsa

NICULESCU, 4 7 2 6

Elmwood Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

9 0 0 0 4 , U.S.A.

Prof. Dr. Kurt TETZELI VON R O S A D O R , Englisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Johannisstr. 12—20, D-4400 Münster Dr.

J.

C. W H I T E H O U S E , The Modern Languages Centre, University of Bradford, Bradford, BD7 1DP, England

WILHELM BUSSE

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry: A Critique of the Typological and Allegorical Appropriation of Medieval Literature*

I When in 1965 Kenneth Sisam wrote that he disliked "lucus a non lucendo", he expressed his unease about Christological interpretations of Beowulf} H e tried to oppose an increasing tendency among scholars to read and interpret Old and Middle English literature against the background and by means of patristic exegesis, though he himself did not go on to consider the theoretical implications of the problems involved. Since then, this tendency has almost grown into a totality: the number of critical contributions which start from and share in the theoretical premises of patristic criticism of medieval literature are legion; and it is with some justification that this school of scholars was recently said to have produced a "revolution" among medievalists as well as "a vast new industry of commentary on the Christian background of medieval poetry." 2 Since about 1960, patristic criticism has thus achieved a prominent status among scholarly approaches to medieval literature. By at least some of its proponents it is moreover claimed to be the one and only profitable approach to vernacular literature of the Middle Ages, and especially to Old English poetry. In their statements, patristic criticism is purported to be a hermeneutic method of interpretation as well as a theory of medieval poetry which is said to have been totally under the influence of patristic exegesis. T h e Christian t h e o r y o f p o e t r y w a s clear and d e f i n i t e ; it w a s subscribed t o b y all Christians. T h e practice of Latin Christian p o e t r y w a s in a c c o r d w i t h the theory. C a e d m o n ' s English p o e t r y w a s also in a c c o r d w i t h the theory.

* The present paper is an abridged version of chapter 4.3 of my Habilitationsschrift Old English Literature and Its History: A Critique of the Current System of Assumptions in Its Interpretation (Düsseldorf 1981). 1 K. Sisam, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), p. 20. 2 Cf. D. G. Scragg, rev. of Exodus, ed. P.J. Lucas, Critical Quarterly, 20 (1978), 87.

Wilhelm Busse

2

Since the body of O E poetry is Christian, it should be studied, whatever its subject, from the point of view of basic Christian theory and practice. It may well be that when the relation of such poetry to biblical symbolism has been explored fully it will be possible to see clearly the place of O E poetry in relation not only to Latin Christian poetry, but to late medieval poetry as well. It may become possible to speak of one great, universal tradition of Christian poetry, written by men who sought rather to drink from the well of living water than from the springs of Helicon. 3

Of course, not all scholars who use patristic material in their interpretations would subscribe to the more extreme claims of Professors Huppé and Robertson. It follows that the school of critics using this approach to medieval literature is not as homogeneous as some of their critics would like to have it; for my own purposes, the differences within the school may for the time being be said to derive from the fact that not all of its proponents study all literature, whatever its subject, "from the point of view of basic Christian theory and practice." Nevertheless, there is sufficient conformity within the group in as far as all of them, I think, would claim that at least medieval religious poetry and some of the images and themes of secular poems can only be understood, and their meanings fully brought out, in the light of the patristic tradition. This fact has led to various attempts at coining a convenient name which comprises all of the different directions within the school. Its first and foremost theoretician has called it 'historical criticism' in order to delimitate it sharply from modern criticism.4 Others have proposed or used such labels as 'pan-allegorical' or 'typological approach', 'exegetical theory and practice', 'patristic criticism' etc. As is clear from the title of my paper, I myself prefer 'neo-exegetical criticism', for three reasons. First, by the prefix neo- I want to make it clear that despite protestations to the contrary, these critics have their own modern tradition (in the sense of hermeneutic philosophy5) : any attempt at understanding literary texts from a distant past, as any attempt at understanding generally, is condi3

4

5

B. F. Huppé, Doctrine and Poetry, Augustine's Influence on Old English Poetry (New York, 1959), p. 239. D.W. Robertson, "Historical Criticism," in English Institute Essays, 1950, ed. A. S. Downer (New York, 1951), pp. 3-31. For an attempt to deny the influence of the critic's own and modem tradition on his research, see esp. D.W. Robertson, "Some Observations on Method in Literary Studies," in New Directions in Literary History, ed. R. Cohen (London, 1974), pp. 63-75 (previously publ. New Literary History, 1 [1969/70], 21-34).

N e o - E x e g e t i c a l Criticism and O l d English Poetry

3

tioned by various historical factors of the critics' own situatedness and historicity. In so far as critics do not see or even deny this influence, they run the risk of misunderstanding, as they are no longer aware of their own preunderstandings which necessarily are brought into the act of interpretation of a medieval text. Second, in labelling it 'neo-exegetical', I want to underline that this approach is not historical in the sense that it does not try to reconstruct as far as possible the unique historicity of a medieval literary text. Almost by definition, the critic who uses this approach is interested rather in universal meanings, in timeless and unalterable truths. With the label 'neo-exegetical', therefore, I want to imply a refutation of these critics' claim to write 'historical criticism'; the label carries the implication that the view of medieval literature in neo-exegetical criticism is deeply ahistorical. Third, the term allows for comprising possible differentiations within the school itself : thus, 'neo-exegetical criticism' is a mode or method of interpretation which aims to apprehend the meaning or sense of a medieval literary work of art by setting it off against the ideas of the world and the Bible which patristic tradition had of both; or, more simply, it intends to read medieval literature with the eyes of Augustine, or Alcuin, or Bede.6 My own critique of this approach will procédé from the viewpoint of critical hermeneutic philosophy. Before explaining the consequences which result from this theory of understanding, and which at the same time constitute a theoretical critique of the neo-exegetical approach, I shall first begin by reviewing the major tenets of this 'theory and practice of interpretation' of medieval literature (II) ; I shall then go on to discuss criticism of this school which has been advanced from various theoretical standpoints, and among them mainly that of S. B. Greenfield and R. S. Crane (III). My own theoretical premises (IV) will be followed by a practical example from Old English literature, which will substantiate the theoretical critique (V).

II What, then, does this clear and definite theory of poetry look like? Did it, as is purported by Huppé, dominate all medieval literature by the in6

In the following pages the term 'historical criticism' will only be used with reference to the critiques others have advanced against this school; it is then always put into single inverted c o m m a s .

4

Wilhelm Busse

fluence of a single, though outstanding representative of Christian exegesis, namely Augustine? What, further, motivates a modern critic to search for the intentions which medieval vernacular literature had for its audience, to search for its sense or meaning? And how may we, living almost a thousand years or more after the composition of Old English poetry and trying to understand these texts, have our share in the well of living water without succumbing to the temptations which spring from the mount of the Muses? In giving his programmatic statement such a turn, Professor Huppé has raised a deeply moral question and, so it seems to me, a religious one at that, which may easily become a question of beliefs. It would follow that Christian doctrine rather than reason or logic might become the arbiter of theories of literature or of conflicting interpretations of literary texts. T o put it another way: are we, as Christian scholars working within a Christian tradition, in a position to criticize Augustine for the conceptions he had of vernacular literature? If it were a question of Christian beliefs, are we then authorized to decide whether Augustine and his followers were at all able to speak competendy about vernacular literature, about its intentions, its pragmatic effects on its audience? Are we, further, allowed to imply that his own historicity and his Christian doctrine led him to prejudgements and prejudices which in turn may have obstructed his view on other possibilities of vernacular literature, e.g. on how it functions within society, its possibly different intentions, its affective impact? The modem theoreticians of old exegetical practice would resolutely deny us the possibility of justifying criticism of patristic views of literature on the basis of modern theories. For them, our modern criticism is rather a dimming of our eyes when we come to deal with medieval literature; patristic exegesis alone, they argue, would enable us to see with clear eyes and, it follows, to listen with sound ears. It is therefore necessary to sift their main arguments in order to find out whether by their theory our view on intentions, functions, and effects of medieval vernacular literature at the time of its composition may again be clarified. There are not many theoretical contributions about the premises of neo-exegetical criticism. At the very beginning of the school, its manifestos prove this modern theory of medieval literature, and its method of interpretation, to be a conscious dissociation from post-romantic theories of literature. Above all, it seems to have been a reaction to the new or rhetorical criticism and its predilection for the verbal aesthetic nature of the

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

5

poetic text. 7 The central tenet of the new theory of the nature and function of medieval vernacular literature, as well as of the practice of its interpretations, is that this literature will disclose its true meaning and intention to us only in the light of patristic exegesis; and that this, and this alone, is also what the literature intended to do for its audience. This central tenet of neo-exegetical theory is first set forth in the contributions of Robertson and Huppé: in the programmatic paper called "Historical Criticism" 8 ; in the introductory chapter to the book-length study on Piers Plowman which is, incorrectly I think, called "The Method" 9 , and in various contributions of Huppé to Old English and of Robertson to Middle English literature.10 They start from considerations of Augustine concerning the true aim and purpose of learning in general; from his dictum that the divinely inspired language in the Bible should serve as a model for human language; and from his observations concerning the correct understanding of Holy Scripture, its reading and interpretation. Proceeding on these statements which are to be found in the De Doctrina Christiana, both modern theoreticians decide that the tenets of Augustine are not only intended for the understanding of the Bible; the same rules, they maintain, were rather applied to the production and reception of medieval vernacular literature as well. S i n c e it w o u l d be manifestly absurd t o read the w o r d of G o d f o r the letter rather than f o r m e a n i n g , the Bible (and serious literature in general) w a s n o t t o b e read ' f o r the story", or f o r 'charm o f style', w h i c h a f f o r d false and d e ceiving pleasures in that t h e y imply an attempt t o e n j o y an object of creation

7

8 9

10

Cf. e.g. Robertson, "Criticism". Again, this involves a question of Christian beliefs: for the study of the language of a poetic text for its own sake is, according to these theoreticians following Augustine, an improper use of beauty. Robertson, "Criticism". D. W. Robertson and B. F. Huppé, 'Piers Plowman' and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton, 1951), pp. 1-16. A reading of this chapter will immediately explain why the heading "The method" is incorrect: only pp. 1-3 are concerned with the method; the rest of the chapter is devoted to the medial difficulties of scholars in our own time, and already gives some interpretations. Among the various contributions of both scholars, see esp. Huppé, pp. 3-27 and passim; D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, 1962), pp. 286-390 and passim. In all contributions, the claim to the validity of this theory and practice of interpretation for all medieval literature is more or less overtly asserted.

6

Wilhelm Busse

for itself... Aesthetic pleasure derives, according to Augustine, from the very discovery of hidden meanings; the quality of the pleasure has a direct relation to the difficulty of the ambiguities to be resolved. As the mind is exercised it is prepared to receive with warmth and delight the dogmatic truth which stated plainly might be accompanied by no pleasurable movement of the mind.11

Though it is by now a well-known fact, it must again be stressed that in theoretical discussions of neo-exegetical criticism quotations on the interpretation of hidden meanings are always taken from the writings of the Church Fathers and their exegesis of dark biblical passages. It follows, and no-one would deny this, that there is a necessity to construe biblical meaning. But it is the decision of the modern theoreticians to transfer this necessity in the interpretation of the Bible, to the interpretation of medieval vernacular literature. This distinction is an important one: it again emphasizes the fact that we are dealing here with two different historical and cultural contexts, that of the Church Fathers and that of the modern theoreticians. In quoting patristic literature, they imply that they have an objective criterion at hand which enables them to arrive at a true and objective meaning of medieval vernacular literature. They overlook the fact that the transfer of patristic exegesis to vernacular literature involves an interpretation, and that this derives from their own interpretation of medieval frames of thought. Theirs is, therefore, a modern view of the medieval world, a modern interpretation of how people in the Middle Ages responded to literature, of the way they saw themselves. This is essential, as it refutes the neo-exegetical claim that its theory of understanding medieval literature derives from medieval theories of understanding, that it is not influenced by modern thought. It follows that the central tenet of neo-exegetical theory is nothing more than a hypothesis; as such, it cannot on theoretical grounds claim more interpretive force than any of the other hypotheses derived from other modern theories of the nature and function of medieval literature. In their more extreme claims, the theoreticians as a further hypothesis make it a condition that all literature in the Christian Middle Ages, like the Bible, promotes and has to promote the message of charity which, as one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, is said to have inspired

11

H u p p é , pp. 23-4.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

7

and controlled "all written attempts to set forth truth". 12 If this message is not evident, as is the case in many Old Testament passages as well as in literary texts like Beowulf or Chaucer's Miller's Tale, then the literary text, just like the biblical passage, has to be thought over " 'until an interpretation is found which promotes the reign of charity'." 13 It follows that every piece of literature which does not propagate the Christian doctrine on the surface, may under this tenet be re-shaped into what both modern theoreticians call again and again "serious literature (poetry)". Calling literary texts "serious" seems to imply that there is an alternative, that we may have to deal with 'non-serious poetry' as well. In reality, however, this second maxim leaves no such alternative, as 'non-serious poetry" would simply demand from us that we have to think it over again until we have found its true meaning, that is, one which promotes the reign of charity. 14 This second major tenet which is subscribed to by the so-called 'historical critics' alone, leaves us therefore with the impression that the literal or historical meaning of such texts is 'non-serious' : if the text has a literal meaning at all, this meaning becomes null and void. It lies within the consequence of this tenet that it leads to another radical maxim of this modern theory of understanding medieval vernacular texts. This third hypothesis follows necessarily from the second; at the same time it includes a central point of the practice of neo-exegetical interpretation. This hypothesis, as will be seen, seems to have the added advantage of giving continuity to a medieval patristic practice, namely the Fathers' approach to classical Latin or Greek literature. In the words of Professor Robertson, this hypothesis is stated as follows : Medieval Christian p o e t r y , and b y Christian p o e t r y I m e a n all serious p o e t r y written b y Christian authors, e v e n that usually called 'secular', is always allegorical w h e n the m e s s a g e of charity or s o m e c o r o l l a r y of it is n o t evident o n the surface. 1 5 12

13 14

15

Cf. e.g. Robertson/Huppé, Piers Plowman, pp. 11-2, esp.: "Charity is thus an informing principle of medieval thought, providing the inspiration for and controlling the bent of all written attempts to set forth truth." Again, we deal with a question of Christian beliefs, not with one of literary theory or criticism. The quotation of Augustine on figurative writing occurs in Huppé, p. 24. That the alternative implied is not a real one has already been noticed by F. Parmisano, rev. of Preface, by Robertson, Medium Aevum 35, (1966) 275: "And just where does one draw the line between serious and non-serious poetry? Actually Robertson feels the strait he is in; so in practice he regards all the poetry as serious." Robertson, "Criticism," p. 14; cf. Huppé, pp. 23-4. As I have tried to show above, there is no poetry unless "serious poetry".

8

Wilhelm Busse

Of course, this is what was done by patristic authors to classical Latin or Greek texts: in interpreting Virgil or Homer, they tried to show that some hidden Christian meaning lurked beneath the surface of the text. They construed a message consistent with their Christian doctrine, which they could apply to their own historical situation, or, in other words: they tried to show what Virgil or Homer had still to say to them and to their own time. In dealing with the texts in this way, they have unconsciously helped to preserve them so that they could be passed down to our own day. But no-one, I think, would nowadays claim that this is what they were written for: they were not written for a public living centuries after their composition, they were not written to be approached in the light of patristic exegesis. Rather, they were written for a contemporary audience in an earlier, and different, historical and cultural context. It follows that the approach of the Church Fathers to classical literature was a misguided attempt at understanding: they, the Church Fathers, were not interested in the meaning a classical text had in its own historical context, in its own right; rather, they had an interest in appropriating the texts, in making them relevant to their needs. Now I do not want to imply, without modification, that the same holds equally true of neo-exegetical criticism, as there seem to be fundamental differences. First, when the Church Fathers dealt with classical literature, they spoke about what they called 'pagan' poetry; their interpretations of classical texts therefore imply a transformation of pagan norms and values into Christian ones. When neo-exegetical critics approach medieval literature via patristic exegesis, they are speaking about essentially Christian poetry; so there seems to be no such transformation of values involved. Second, the example of the Church Fathers' approach to classical poems proves that they were not interested in 'historical' understanding, but rather wanted to actualize the texts for themselves. Neoexegetical criticism, on the other hand, is purportedly not interested in simply actualizing medieval literature; it rather claims that this literature should be read with the eyes of 'the medieval man'. It is implied that this approach is 'historical' in so far as it will enable us, the moderns, to get rid of the alleged subjectivism of modern literary experience, of modern theories and methods, in order to secure more objective criteria of interpretation and evaluation. As compared with the Church Fathers' approach to classical literature, neo-exegetical criticism is, then, basically right when it claims that in our interpretations we have to respect the text's own world, its own historicity and situatedness. Third, in their read-

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

9

ings of the Bible as well as of classical literature the Fathers used a method of interpretation which originated postfestum; it was developed only after the Bible had been written and classical poems had been composed. Neo-exegetical criticism differs from patristic exegesis in so far as the sententia veritatis, that is, the universal truth hidden beneath the rough shell of literal sense, is implied to have been intended by authors or poets even before they came to think about their poetry. In other words: the meaning of medieval literature was always pre-existent to its composition. Though this point is not especially important to my present argument, it needs to be made, as it will become relevant later. 16 With these modifications in mind, it seems as if neo-exegetical theory and neo-exegetical practice of interpretation were essentially correct. They seem to stress the historicity of literary texts, that is, that their composition is conditioned by historical factors which may only be reconstructed by the modern interpreter, as the frame of thought to which the texts refer is no longer his own. Thus, the neo-exegetical approach to vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages seems to differ radically from the approach of the Church Fathers to classical poems. But it is in the outcome of their interpretations that both procedures may be compared. The practical result of both ways of dealing with vernacular literature is a reduction of its meaning to universal truths; and it is this result which arouses my suspicion as to the neo-exegetical insistence on 'history'. With regard to medieval literature, 'history' should mean that in a very special and unique historical situation (which is conditioned by various social and cultural traditions, by men's learning, by their experience and interaction, by norms and values of the society they live in, by political power, by superstitions and beliefs—to name in an eclectic way but a few of the possible historical factors), that in such a special and unique historical situation, then, a literary text is produced which aims at relevance; which has something to say to its own special, historical audience; which intends to be listened to; which intends to achieve success. Does it aim, then, at universal truths which could be supposed to retain their relevance for a generation, for a century, for a millenium, despite all the changes which occur in historical processes? But this is what neo-exegetical criticism implies for all literature: for its proponents, 'history' equals patristic tradition, which is supposed to have been the one and only "informing" (i.e. conditioning) principle in medieval history from the late fourth to the late fifteenth century. Reducing history to patristic tradition at the same time enables neo16

See below, p. 23 and pp. 31-3.

10

Wilhelm Busse

exegetical critics to reduce the meaning of literature to universal truth, just as it enabled the Church Fathers to reduce the meaning of classical texts in the same way. It is because of this reduction of history to patristic tradition alone, that the existence of a literal level of meaning in its own right (e.g. in texts where the literal sense evidently does not promote the reign of charity) is persistently denied in both approaches; it is interpreted away in favour of a truth of religion. Thus reduced to dogmatic and moral ends the vernacular literary texts, classical and medieval alike, which participated in a special and unique historical communication, become universally applicable for the teaching of Christian belief, then as now. In fact, then, if not in theory, the procedure of the Church Fathers in dealing with classical poems in the early Middle Ages is resumed by neo-exegetical critics in our own time, when they come to deal with medieval vernacular poetry, despite the latter interpreters' different insistence on 'history". Or, to put it another way: in only looking, like the Church Fathers, for the atemporal continuity of a single tradition within medieval society, in only recognizing the enduring within perpetual change, neo-exegetical critics release themselves from the assiduous labour of true historical understanding. It follows that neo-exegetical criticism is rather as ahistorical an approach to medieval vernacular literature as the Church Fathers' to classical literature had been. Further, there is not only identity of outcome between the approaches, there is also identity of interests. Just as the Fathers wanted to appropriate classical texts for themselves, so neo-exegetical criticism in practice produces, as the alleged meaning of vernacular texts, what these texts still have to say to us, the moderns; implied is an interest of appropriation which derives essentially from the understanding of the modern critic, not from that of 'the medieval man'. Consequently, both procedures are basically identical; both neglect the historicity of the text, both aim at appropriating the literary text to their own interests. The interest of appropriation implied in neo-exegetical theory may be inferred from the outcome of neo-exegetical practice. That it does not derive from my own subjective inference, may more clearly be seen when we consider A. A. Lee's attempt at a synthesis between what he calls "mediaeval and modern theories and practices" in order to bridge the gap between 'historical' and 'modern criticism'.17 He tries to link the theories 17

A. A. Lee, "Old English Poetry, Mediaeval Exegesis and Modern Criticism," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 8 (1975), 47-73; the quotation appears on 48-9.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

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with the professed object of exploring "some of the possible implications of exegetical theory and practice for the study of Old English poems in modern times." 18 Lee further wants to show that patristic exegesis of the Middle Ages has a sequel in modern theories. A closer look at these modern theories, however, reveals that behind his alleged pluralism of "other critical and scholarly hypotheses also now current", we find the desire to synthesize medieval exegesis and its theory of the fourfold levels of meaning with Northrop Frye's theory of symbols; for Lee, then, Frye's theory is clearly the ideal, pure and simple, of all modern theories. 19 In it he finds "similarities, at times surprisingly fundamental, between the mediaeval and modern theories and practices." 20 Further, he maintains that Frye's theory of symbols may be derived from and has grown out of medieval exegesis in such a way that it could, so he argues, claim a position in our culture comparable to that which patristic exegesis had in the Middle Ages. 21 As the ultimate aim of his synthesis, Lee imagines a balance of two kinds of consciousness, . . . the one a product of the painstaking work of the literary historian, achieved through laborious recreation of perspectives and meanings from the past, the other the possession of the modern critic both cognizant of the thought forms and sensibilities of his own time and interested in describing the significance for modern men of Old English poetry.11

It is evident, I think, that Lee's main interest as concerns Old English poetry consists in actualizing this literature for the present. He finds reason for this interest, on the one hand, in an inherent capacity of literature to formulate unalterable truths, which critics working with historical cate-

18

"

20 21 22

Lee, 47; Lee evidently overlooked the earlier attempt of Norman Hinton at combining medieval literature with the theory of archetypes of Northrop Frye and the Jungians: cf. N. Hinton, "Anagogue and Archetype: The Phenomenology of Medieval Literature," Annuale Mediaevale, 7 (1966), 57-73, esp. 67-71. Lee, 48: "Since, moreover, Frye's 'Theory of Symbols' is first of all a description and analysis of the theory and practice of the major schools of modern criticism and scholarship, it can hardly be disregarded as idiosyncratic or the work of only one theorist among many." To look, almost 20 years after its publication, to Frye's Anatomy of Criticism in order to find in it a knowledge of the "major schools of modern criticism", reveals the gap which has opened between current theoretical discussion and scholarship of neo-exegetical criticism. Lee, 48-9. Lee, 49. Lee, 49; italics mine.

12

Wilhelm Busse

gories alone will never be able to understand. The modern critic, on the other hand, possesses a capacity which may lead him towards "a substantial measure of genuine understanding" of literary texts from a distant past; he will achieve this, it is implied, even without historical knowledge. 23 It is the constant, then, that which I have called above the atemporal or the enduring, which Lee is interested in; and it is in this theoretical conception of literature as a body of atemporal knowledge that he is in fundamental agreement with Frye's theory of symbols and archetypes. It follows that the universal applicability of literary texts is the declared aim of this synthesis of 'medieval' and 'modern', i.e. the universal applicability is what the critic is interested in perceiving. As long as Lee devotes himself to the problem of the relation between literal sense and verbal aesthetic structure of poetic texts, he achieves a definite and necessary correction of neo-exegetical criticism, in so far as it neglects the linguistic organisation of the text as an aesthetic product. To be sure, this criticism of Lee almost necessarily follows from critical contributions, as it is a critique which has most frequently been voiced about neo-exegetical practice. 24 But when Lee turns to the other levels of the sententia, his synthesis remains completely rooted in neo-exegetical criticism, according to which the first and foremost task of interpretation is the unveiling of unalterable, religious, moral truths. For Lee, it is an a priori fact that "knowledge of the Bible in its typological dimensions" is the first and indispensable tool towards an understanding of Old English texts; the Bible, he maintains, as a "vast, unified structure of wisdom and energy within which to think about human experience", is exactly the frame of thought within which poetic work took place.25 It follows, he further maintains, that we have to deal with a completely different relation of literary texts and their authors to historical reality, to exemplary behaviour, to the position of man in the universe : different, that is, from

23 24

25

Lee, 49; italics mine. Lee, 50-8; cf. e.g. 53: "By taking only the literalness of the sensus literalis, what Frye would call the descriptive meaning, and ignoring the rhetorical and aesthetic subtleties also embraced by the term (Frye's words as motif), the modern exegete undercuts and impoverishes his account of mediaeval poetic texts." For earlier critique of this kind cf. e.g. T. P. Dunning, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, RES, n.s., 12 (1961), 412; J.J. Murphy, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 47 (1961), 201; R. O. Payne, rev. of Preface, by Robertson, Comparative Literature, 15 (1963), 270; and esp. S. B. Greenfield, The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London, 1972), passim. Lee, 60-1; quotations on 61. Cf. also 59-65.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

13

our own. According to Lee, Anglo-Saxon poets saw themselves and their poetry as part of God's universal plan of salvation which led them far beyond the situatedness of their own special historical context. From a modern perspective, the interpreting of human life in terms of angels and devils, and of saint-like heroes and demonic monsters, may not be too convincing as an 'imitation of nature' or of 'the order of Creation'. But from such imaginings we can begin to understand how these early artists and thinkers, working within the Christian religion, were able to vest historical or literal meanings with a deeper and more mysterious significance that transcended, even as it worked with, the facts and words of human history. Such activity was a crucial means for bringing into existence in Anglo-Saxon England what Gregory the Great called 'the edifice of faith'. In the world of the imagination revealed in the Old English poetic version of biblical or sacred history, then, we can see at work a power that contains morality, beauty, and religious truth, making possible a vision of spiritual freedom and the redemption of man.26 According to Lee's synthesis of medieval exegesis and Frye's theory, all Old English literary texts participated in each other within this universal plan of salvation in a quasi ritual desire "to be either a direct or a displaced version of the myth of the ongoing war between Christ and Satan", in the presentation of archetypal modes of behaviour which, as ethical constants, are said by Lee still to control our own culture and civilization. 27 Relying on Frye, his synthesis necessarily leads Lee to assume a " 'self-contained literary universe'" in which . . . in poem after poem, the reader's attention is lifted from the human to the divine perspective, from tropology to anagogy, from the ruined guesthalls of middle-earth to the perfect security and dream of the heavenly dryht. . . . In this containing, informing structure of biblical myth the ideal forms of an Anglo-Saxon, Germanic civilization centred on the gift-hall simultaneously show their historical uniqueness and their identity with the cultural realities pointed to by Christian anagogy.28 Unquestionably Lee puts his finger on sore points where he criticizes two extremes, namely the one-sided confining of literary analysis to the linguistic organisation of poetic texts, and the historicists' procedure of

26 27 28

Lee, 64; cf. 63-5. Lee, 66-70; quotation on 69. Lee, 72-3; cf. 70-3.

14

Wilhelm Busse

using literary texts as a quarry for their own historical interests; though, it must be added, some of these wounds already heal up as such one-sided interests no longer predominate. 29 He is also, I think, basically right when he claims that literature presents a fictional view of historical reality. But he does not intend this insight to be profitably used for a scrupulous analysis of the relation between the fictitious world presented in a given text and the text's own historicity; rather, he uses this insight only as a critical weapon against historicist interpretations of Old English literature. 30 Apart from these two points, Lee comes to the less profitable conclusion that every scholar may take his own choice among 'modern theories'; but if he chooses another than that promoted in Lee's synthesis, then he will necessarily miss "all such early theory", that is, "the main lines of mediaeval exegetical theory and practice." In other words: only Lee's own theory will stand up. His 'synthesis', therefore, is no synthesis at all: he is completely in accordance with neo-exegetical and especially 'historical' criticism. Though he never uses the latter term, he has by his 'synthesis' simply re-instated 'historical criticism'.31 It goes without saying, then, that the critique of neo-exegetical criticism as advanced so far, applies to his alleged synthesis of "mediaeval and modern theories" as well.

Ill From its very beginning, neo-exegetical theory and practice has been attacked by an increasing number of other critics. The reproach most frequently met with is that it falsifies history in that it makes Augustine's conceptions a compulsory norm for the whole of the Middle Ages, in that it conceals inconsistencies and divergent trends within the period in favour of a simplistic construction and sweeping statement. Finally, the assumption of the organized use of the symbolic method in medieval literature is essentially simplistic. It imposes a non-historical order and system on what was in fact disordered and unsystematic . . . actually there was never any consistent application of that theory anywhere at any

29

31

Cf. Lee, 55-6 and 65-6, his critique of new criticism and historicism. Cf. Lee, esp. 56. Lee, 73. Lee persistently uses "mediaeval exegetical theory (and practice)"; 'historical criticism' is used by him in order to denounce an antiquarian interest which looks at Anglo-Saxon poetry as if it mirrored Anglo-Saxon society.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

15

time, except for particular biblical passages, in Christian medieval exegesis and, above all, in literary composition. 32

Further, it has been objected that the neo-exegetical approach, being mainly derived from Augustine, is more dogmatic than Augustine ever formulated it himself; that only parts of his arguments have stood sponsor to the neo-exegetical theory; that serious misunderstandings have influenced the reception of the De Doctrina Christiana by the modern theoreticians; that medieval philosophical concepts have been falsified. 33 The literal sense which was accepted as a necessary level of meaning by Augustine, has been insisted on; or its neglect by neo-exegetical theory and practice of interpretation has been objected to as a disregard for the rhetorical and aesthetic structure of literary texts, which, in turn, fragments meaning. 34 Moreover, errors of linguistic (morphological, semantic) analysis in interpretations of Old and Middle English texts have been vehemently denounced, they have even been regarded as proof that the theory as well as the practice of neo-exegetical criticism are necessarily defi-

32

33

»

M.W. Bloomfield, "Symbolism in Medieval Literature," MP, 56 (1958-9) 81. Cf. further, the more or less overt reproaches of falsification in M. W. Bloomfield, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, Speculum, 27 (1952), 247-8; T. P. Dunning, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, Medium Aevum, 24 (1955), 23-5; T. P. Dunning, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, 409-11 ; C. Albertson, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, Comparative Literature, 14 (1962), 217-9; Payne, 271; Parmisano, 274-5; E. John, "Beowulf and the Limits of Literature," New Blackfriars, 52 (1971), 174-5; Greenfield, p. 138; E. John, "Beowulf and the Margins of Literacy," BJRL, 56 (1973-4), 398-405; etc. Cf. e.g. Bloomfield, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, 245-7; R. Quirk, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, JEGP, 52 (1953), 253; J. E. Cross, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, JEGP, 59 (1960), 564; T. P. Dunning rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, 409-10; Murphy; Payne, 271; Parmisano, 277-8; C. Donahue in "Allegorical, Typological or Neither? Three Short Papers on the Allegorical Approach to Beowulf and a Discussion," ASE, 2 (1973), 292-3; etc. Cf. e.g. R. W. Frank, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, MLN, 68 (1953), 195; S. Neuijen, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, ES, 34 (1953), 81-3; Dunning, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, 24 and passim; Bloomfield, "Symbolism," 75-6; E. T. Donaldson, "Patristic Exegesis in the Criticism of Medieval Literature," in Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature : Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-1959, ed. D. Bethurum (New York, 1960), pp. 1-5; Dunning, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, 410, 412; Murphy; Parmisano, 275-6; S. B. Greenfield, "The Canons of Old English Criticism," ELH, 34 (1967), 141-2; P. Rollinson, "Some Kinds of Meaning in Old English Poetry," Annuale Mediaevale, 11 (1970), 5-6; M.W. Bloomfield, "Allegory as Interpretation," New Literary History, 3 (1971-2), 311-7; Green-

16

Wilhelm Busse

cient. 35 Finally, some unease has been expressed about the claim of some proponents of this school, that all medieval vernacular literature is said to have been influenced by this theory; some of the interpretations have been characterized as exaggerated, others have been stigmatized as reading into a text what was essentially not there.36 All this, be it sound criticism or mere assumption, does not affect the essence of the neo-exegetical theory of understanding medieval texts; it misses the theoretical premises. Generally, the criticism advanced so far is directed at errors in the application of the theory; errors of practice, then, which do not necessarily invalidate the theory as such. Already in the earlier stages of critical discussions about the neo-exegetical school, it was recognized that the critique has to be theoretical; Payne's remark in a review of Robertson is clearly to the point. . . . w e now have before us an extensive formal statement, heavily illustrated and documented, of a theory for critics of mediaeval literature. It must be accepted or rejected on theoretical grounds. This, I think, is the real debt which mediaeval literary studies will owe to the work of Professor Robertson and others of his persuasion long after their theories have been confuted. T h e y

field, Interpretation, passim; Donahue, 294-6; Silverstein in "Allegorical, Typological or Neither? Three Short Papers on the Allegorical Approach to Beowulf and a Discussion," ASE, 2 (1973), 296-7; P. Rollinson, "The Influence of Christian Doctrine and Exegesis on Old English Poetry: An Estimate of the Current State of Scholarship," ASE, 2 (1973), 282; S.B. Greenfield, "Old English Words and Patristic Exegesis hwyrftum scripad: ACaveat," MP, 75 (1977-8), 44-8;etc. Cf. e.g. S. Brook, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/Huppé, RES, n.s., 4 (1953), 151; Frank, 195-6; Quirk, 253-4; P. Clemoes, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, Anglia, 78 (1960), 363-4; R. P. Creed, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, MLN, 75 (1960), 605; S. Neuijen, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, ES, 48 (1967), 166-7; Greenfield, "Words"; etc. Cross, 563-4, gives evidence of what he thinks to be a defect of the method as well as the theory, from Huppé's linguistic analysis : " . . . The author's method causes him to ignore other factors in the composition of OE poetry; and this, to my mind, leads to irrelevance and inaccuracy and suggests an error in his premises" (Cross, 562). B.J. Timmer, rev. of Doctrine, by Huppé, MLR, 56 (1961), 464, likewise finds fault with "doubtful translations" which give, to his mind, reason to refute the "unproven and doubtful premise". Cf. e.g. Brook, 150; Frank, 195; Neuijen, rev. of Piers Plowman, by Robertson/ Huppé, 80; Bloomfield, "Symbolism," 76-7; Donaldson, pp. 1-5; Clemoes, 363-4; Cross, 562; Timmer, 464-5; Parmisano, 274-8 passim, esp. 277; Rollinson, "Influence," 275-6; etc.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

17

have helped to force us to an open reconsideration of fundamental issues in critical procedure. 37

On behalf of Anglo-Saxonists, the first to accept the challenge of neo-exegetical criticism in order to refute its theoretical premises was S.B. Greenfield.38 After reading his book and studying his "critical framework", I am sorry to say that he does not come up to his own claims.39 The reasons for his failure to disprove this theory are basically twofold. First, he does not fulfil his promise to oppose neo-exegetical theory and practice on the theoretical level; second, he is not able to confront it with a different, and convincing, theory of understanding. As, even in his first chapter, he does not use theoretical arguments consistently, he feels free to borrow something from everybody, taking some insights from Hirsch and others from Krieger, borrowing something from the linguists, and even, though cautiously, from 'historical criticism', despite the fact that these different insights are gained by way of theoretical premises which to a certain extent are mutually exclusive of each other.40 It lies within the consequence of this neglect of the theoretical level that his own "theory of expectations and implications" is nowhere stated clearly;41 it follows almost logically that in its 'application', that is in his own practical analysis of texts, he does not "attempt to use the critical framework . . . in any systematic way." 42 The main difficulty with his terms "expectation" and "implication" arises from the fact that though he seems to

37

38 39

40 41

42

Payne, 269; italics mine. Payne himself does not redeem this claim but confines himself to a "descriptive review" (270). Greenfield, Interpretation, pp. 1-29, 133-59. Of course, reviews of Greenfield's book from the heterogeneous camp of neo-exegetical critics tend to be rather harsh; cf. e.g. M. Goldsmith, Essays in Criticism, 23 (1973), 298-302; J . E . Cross, Medium Aevum, 43 (1974), 42-6; R . E . Kaske, MP, 72 (1974-5), 190-4. See further J . J . Campbell, Speculum, 50 (1975), 123-7. Greenfield's attempt at refutation is more positively reviewed by P. Gradon, Notes and Queries, 218 (1973), 342-4; B. Mitchell, RES, n.s., 24 (1973), 319-21; T. A. Shippey, The Yearbook of English Studies, 4 (1974), 242-4. Mitchell's conviction that Greenfield's attempt gives " a much-needed blast against the selectivity, circularity, and rigidity of some allegorical interpretations of Old English poems" (319), does not take account of the theoretical issues involved. Cf. Greenfield, Interpretation, pp. 1-29, esp. pp. 4-6, 11-7, 25-9. See, e.g., the different meanings "expectation" assumes in his line of reasoning: Greenfield, Interpretation, pp. 12, 16, 18, 25-7. Greenfield, Interpretation, p. 29.

Wilhelm Busse

18

be conscious of the problem involved, he does not in his analyses take account of the situatedness of both the text and the critic.43 Without paying due regard to the latter's own historicity, he persistently claims his own insights into the poems to be expectations and implications of the AngloSaxons; 44 he does not take account, then, of the fact that the "critic's imagination" is essentially a product of our own time, as it is conditioned by different historical factors as compared with that of an Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, immediately after his theoretical discussion, Greenfield returns to the positions held by new criticism.45 It is there, in the ahistorical and idealistic premises of this school and in its language theory, that his own practical criticism is ultimately based.46 He maintains that he will go beyond it in order to give a "'contextualist' view of literature" its rights which, he states, will lead "from the poem itself to 'history'". But a closer look at the application of his theory of expectations and implications immediately reveals that Greenfield does not, as he purports, work "outwards from a poem to its contemporary cultural environment"; he simply and constantly fuses so-called intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives, he totally disregards the historical difference between the text and its interpreter and thus remains, in the end, bound up with that subjective reading of the poem qua poem which characterizes new criticism, despite his protestations to the contrary.47 'History', for this critic, seems only to mean the avoidance of "modern meanings" for the old words in the texts. When he comes to deal with 'historical criticism' (a term which he uses for both neo-exegetical and historicist interpretations), he does not draw

43

44

Cf. e.g. Greenfield, Interpretation, p. 5: "For it is one thing to be attracted to a work of former times, say the Old English Wanderer, by what seems to be a timeless and universal theme of loss and transiency applicable to our modern lives; but it is another to write criticism as if the poem were a product of our times." Cf. also pp. 2, 6-7. Greenfield also speaks of "past (historical) significance" and "present meaning (significance)" though the distinction between both is not at all clear: cf. e.g. pp. 27, 30, 133, and passim; cf. also p. 8 for the relevance of texts which, it is said, "can and must be both historical and modern." For the application, cf. chapters 2 - 5 of his book.

45

Greenfield, Interpretation,

46

For a critique of the new critics' theory of language and their ahistorical, idealistic

p. 30.

premises cf. K. L. Pfeiffer, Sprachtheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie und das Problem der Textinterpretation: Untersuchungen am Beispiel des New Criticism und Paul Valery 47

(Amsterdam, 1974), pp. 4-8, 20-5, 108-30, and passim. The quotations appear in Greenfield, Interpretation, pp. 2 7 - 8 ; for his reading of the texts, cf. again chapters 2-5.

N e o - E x e g e t i c a l Criticism and Old English P o e t r y

19

on current historical research in order to refute simplistic or reductionist views of medieval history; he simply quotes as warning examples two interpretations in which the historical scene is reduced to mere stereotypes. 48 In the end, the distinction which he persistently claims to make between "present and historical meaning", does not exist in his analyses; this distinction rather leads to the same reduction of meaning to universal truths which we have already observed in the neo-exegetical approach. Relevance can and must be both historical and modern, focusing upon that aspect of text and context which has a special resonance in our own moral and aesthetic consciousness without, at the same time, falsifying or distorting historical probability. 4 '

Even when he formulates his "fallacy of similarity" which means an inadmissible transfer of meanings from one text to another, he does not gain this important insight on the basis of theoretical considerations. 5 0 It is rather derived from the preunderstanding of the artwork as autonomous; the interpreter, according to him, can ultimately approach this artwork only through his own literary experience. For example, our understanding of the relationship between the so-called 'palinode' to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and all that has preceded it in the poem is, first of all, a question of interpretation, though evaluation lags not far behind: is it a superficial, irrelevant, tacked-on, conventional recanting of the courtly-love values the poem has celebrated? is it an ironic negation of those values which it has only pretended to celebrate? is it a juxtaposed second perspective that recognizes the superiority of supramundane values without condemning worldly ones? is it something else again? Literary and cultural historical knowledge will take us only so far towards establishing 'Chaucerian' meaning; thereafter we must resort to our own experience with literature, to our own sensitivity to tone, word-meaning, characterization and structural patterns.51

In a word, then, what Professor Greenfield introduces as a theoretical framework against the theory of neo-exegetical criticism, means mainly, in the end, individualized close-reading. 48

C f . Greenfield, Interpretation,

49

Greenfield, Interpretation,

pp. 6 - 1 1 .

50

For the " f a l l a c y of similarity" cf. Greenfield, Interpretation,

p. 8; italics mine. pp. 17-25. His " f a l l a c y

of h o m o g e n e i t y " (pp. 9 - 1 1 ) corresponds to the critique of historical simplification: cf. above, pp. 1 4 - 5 , and fn. 32. 51

Greenfield, Interpretation,

p. 7 ; italics mine.

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Wilhelm Busse

Another, and profounder critique of the theoretical premises of neo-exegetical criticism has, earlier than Greenfield's, been advanced from the point of view of critical rationalism of the Chicago School of philosophers by R. S. Crane. With his contribution, we leave the closer confines of medieval literary studies and enter the field of philosophy. In making this distinction, I do not want to imply that philosophical contributions were less relevant, or even not relevant at all, to medieval literary scholarship. On the contrary: the problem of understanding a literary text, the analysis of understanding in general, is essentially a philosophical problem. Crane inquires about the logical status of the assumption that a knowledge of the patristic tradition of biblical exegesis holds the key to an adequate understanding of medieval vernacular texts. To this basic tenet of neo-exegetical criticism, he ascribes the status of a working hypothesis which, however, has been transformed into a "ruling hypothesis" by some proponents of this school of critics.52 On the one hand, they have presented the 'exegetical tradition' not simply as one important and neglected element in the general 'intellectual background' of medieval poetry but as, in effect, the one 'background' essential for understanding that poetry, thus giving it priority over other possible sources of literary inspiration in this period. On the other hand, they have assumed its relevance, as the essential explanatory principle, not merely to many medieval poems, but to 'all serious poetry' of the Middle Ages 'written by Christian authors, even that usually called "secular"'. . . They have thus transformed what is at most only a general working hypothesis - one capable of suggesting particular hypotheses about the possible meanings and devices of medieval poems, which then have to be tested independently - into a ruling hypothesis, or what my colleague, Elder Olson, has called a subsumptive hypothesis. 53

Thus, Crane is able to reduce the all-embracing law of the neo-exegetical theory to the status of a privileged hypothesis, a working hypothesis, that is, which is a priori given greater likelihood of producing 'correct' understanding than all other conceivable hypotheses. 54 From the 52

53 54

R. S. Crane, "On Hypotheses in 'Historical Criticism': Apropos of Certain Contemporary Medievalists," in his The Idea of the Humanities and Other Essays Critical and Historical (Chicago, 1967), II, 236-60, esp. 254-8. The different ranks of hypotheses as well as the postulate of falsifiability which arises from the logic of critical rationalism, are described pp. 236-46. Crane, II, 255. Cf. Crane, II, 238-41 and 251-2.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

21

more extreme tenet of 'historical criticism' that texts have to be interpreted allegorically if the message of charity is not evident, it follows that this approach becomes a matter of belief rather than of logic and reason. Thus, the privileged hypothesis is removed from falsifiability; it becomes irrefutable if one accepts this article of faith. 55 T h e r e is no w a y of showing it to be w r o n g with respect to a n y individual p o e m to which it is applicable, that is, any serious p o e m of the M i d d l e A g e s written by a Christian author. T h a t is precluded by the assumption that if the m e s s a g e of charity is not explicitly present in a given p o e m of this class, it, o r ' s o m e corollary of it', will be present allegorically, that is, 'by interpretation' a c c o r d i n g to rules laid d o w n in the hypothesis itself. 5 6

The results of this procedure are what Crane calls "determinant judgments". H e first wants us to believe that these judgements have their logical cause in the impossibility of falsifying the hypotheses used in this approach, in the impossibility of testing them by quasi scientific experiments. As an afterthought, he however remarks that these determinant judgements de facto have their cause in the "postulated background", in the unverified postulation of a cultural milieu which cannot be derived from the texts themselves. With this final insight, Crane escapes from his own postulate of falsifiability by scientific tests, and therefore achieves a major result: that the ultimate failure of all neo-exegetical interpretation of meaning may be derived from their own postulate of a background into which the literary texts are then fitted. 57 Crane's critique is essentially theoretical; it is at the same time the most comprehensive one of the dogmatic claims of the neo-exegetical school, and particularly of those of 'historical criticism', as far as I know. The critique of W. E. Rogers does not go beyond the questions raised by Crane's line of reasoning. Rogers is mainly concerned with the logical status of and the relationship between analytical and causal explanation, and the respective role both play in the hypotheses of 'historical criti-

55

56 57

Cf. II, 256-8. That Crane sees the cortex-nucleus-hypothesis of 'historical criticism' as belonging to the sphere of beliefs is evident from such phrases as "article of their historical faith" (II, 256) or "this we must believe . . . before we can think ourselves competent interpreters" (II, 257). Crane, II, 257. Crane, II, 259; cf. II, 258-60, as compared with his previous arguments on II, 236-58.

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Wilhelm Busse

cism'. 58 But he gains further insights when he discusses judgements of value used within this school, which as a minimal claim pretends to reveal the 'coherence' or 'consistency' of an artwork said to be meaningless on the literal level. Rogers argues that literary evaluation which looks for particular kinds of 'coherence' will lead the critic into logical difficulties. For the patristic critic knows ahead of time, prior to his definitive experience of the work, that he is looking for a particular kind of coherence. It is doctrinal coherence . . . 5 9 As this particular kind of 'coherence' decided on beforehand as the one criterion of value will condition the critic's understanding of a text, we arrive at a vicious circle since the critic will then use his reading to prove the doctrinal coherence of the text. Rogers's insights into the establishment of value judgements within neo-exegetical criticism are important, as they may throw light on the concept of 'unrealistic collocations' which currently is going through a boom in neo-exegetical studies of Old English texts. 60 At present, this concept may be said to be replacing to a certain extent the a priori claim of 'historical criticism' that all literature must be interpreted allegorically, if the doctrine of charity is not evident on the surface. As this claim has met with severest criticism, the search is now on for 'unrealistic collocations' on the literal level of meaning. If it can be shown that a phrase, a line, a sentence in a given text is 'unrealistic', it would follow that at least on the literal level the text seems to be less meaningful, if not meaningless, and therefore incoherent; whereas it doubtless will have a meaning on the allegorical or typological level, where coherence, then, may be reestablished. 'Unrealistic collocations' could, so it seems, therefore be taken to be contemporary proof that a given text can only be understood on that higher level of meaning; contemporary, it must be stressed, here

58

59 60

W. E. Rogers, "The Raven and the Writing Desk: The Theoretical Limits of Patristic Criticism," Chaucer Review, 14 (1979-80), 260-77; for his discussion of analytical and causal explanations see esp. 264-71. Rogers, 274; cf. 271-5. The concept was first introduced with admirable restraint by J. E. Cross and S. I. Tucker, "Allegorical Tradition and the Old English Exodus, " Neophilologus, 44 (1960), 122-7.

Neo-Exegetical Criticism and Old English Poetry

23

means contemporary with the composition of the text.61 But the question to be asked about 'unrealistic collocations' is the following: who decides what is 'unrealistic', and why? The critic. Consequently his understanding is again preconditioned by both his notion of what is 'unrealistic' and his preunderstanding of doctrinal coherence. For how can we be sure that his conception of realism is the same as that of an Anglo-Saxon? He will, therefore, find out what was already known to him, even before he reads the text. It is this line of reasoning which logically leads to Rogers's final statement that neo-exegetical criticism, up to now, stops "with the assertion that the literary work merely reproduces a pre-existing sententia in terms of pre-existing symbols."62 With these criticisms in mind, we may now ask how understanding of meaning in general is possible, in order to arrive at a better theory for the comprehension and interpretation of Old English texts.

IV When we interpret a medieval text, we try to understand it, that is, we are willing to enter into what the text intends to say, into what its sense, its meaning is.63 Understanding, then, is communication about something,

61

62

63

A good example of this line of reasoning, which may suffice for my present purpose, may be found in J. Vickrey, " 'Exodus' and the Battle in the Sea," Traditio, 28 (1972), 119-40, where the 'battle' is said to be a "supreme example of 'unrealistic collocations' " (121). See further, below pp. 46-7, and fn. 107. Rogers, 276; cf. 275-6. I have not had available R. R. Barkley's Texas dissertation, A Study of the Historical Method of D. W. Robertson, Jr., University of Texas at Austin 1974. According to what I gather from Dissertation Abstracts International, 36 (1975), 278 8-A, Barkley's aim has been to prune 'historical criticism' down to more moderate claims, as well as to consider the reasons why this school of criticism originated in our own time: he seems to see the main reason for the upsurging of this theory and practice of interpretation in the loss of a coherent world view in modern thought. In what follows, I heavily rely on contributions to philosophical hermeneutics and language philosophy which for the most part were written in German. A good and readable introduction to it is D. C. Hoy, The Critical Circle: Literature, History, and Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley, 1978) (with a profound critique of Hirsch's Validity in Interpretation in chapter 1); for another discussion of hermeneutic philosophy cf. J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (London, 1980). I have not yet seen R.J. Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding (Berkeley, 1982). An English translation of Gadamer's 2nd ed. of Wahrheit und Methode by W. Glen-Doepel, ed. by J.

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it is essentially a dialogue. As long as we communicate in everyday life, even when we communicate with written texts, we normally presuppose that the dialogue will work in a rather unproblematical way, that understanding will ensue directly and immediately. But when we come to deal with medieval literature, this dialogue is complicated by the fact that two different worlds are speaking to each other. Their encounter is characterized by a far-reaching unfamiliarity with each other, so that mutual understanding is no longer a matter of course; we then resort to interpretation in order to restore understanding. Interpretation, therefore, presupposes that understanding has become a problem which may only be solved in an indirect way, in so far as we have to establish meaning in a circumstantial manner. We have, for instance, to reconstruct historical knowledge of e.g. a linguistic, social, religious kind, in order to be able to reproduce what the author of a medieval text could presuppose as self-evident, because it was part of his own world, part of his own language and that of his audience, just as we ourselves tacitly presuppose a whole frame of references when we communicate with others. Interpretation, then, is proof that communication is impaired; it is the means to restore understanding. The reason for this lack of immediate understanding of medieval texts is to be seen in the fact that all understanding is conditioned by and bound up with what hermeneutic philosophy calls 'preunderstanding'. As historical subjects living within a speech community, we always refer what is new for us to what we already know; we assimilate it to our previous knowledge, which is itself conditioned by our tradition, by our historicity. In this way previous knowledge, conditioned linguistically and Cumming and G. Barden, is available as H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. (London, 1979). In what follows, I use Hoy's English terminology for some key concepts of hermeneutic philosophy. Some of its consequences for literary criticism are discussed in H. R. Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 144207, which is now available in an English translation by Timothy Bahti, as chapter 1 in H. R. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (London: Harvester Press, 1982), pp. 3 45 ("Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory"). My own views of the essentially social function of medieval literature have been influenced to a great extent by G. Kaiser's discussion of the conception of literature in the High Middle Ages; cf. "Zum hochmittelalterlichen Literaturbegriff," in his Textauslegung und gesellschaftliche Selhstdeutung: Die Artusromane Hartmanns von Aue (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 9-46; all translations from this book are my own. Helpful in clarifying some problems were further Pfeiffer, Sprachtheorie, and D. Bohler, "Das dialogische Prinzip als hermeneutische Maxime," Man and World, 11 (1978), 131-64.

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materially (or, in Wittgenstein's words, partaking in the language-games of society), constitutes preunderstanding. Without such preunderstanding, we are unable to understand: if any communication is to be meaningful at all, it must necessarily start from such preunderstanding. But just as understanding is bound up with preunderstanding, so is the possibility to misunderstand; for only if we apply our preunderstandings critically, only if we control them and are therefore able to alter or correct them within the process of communication about something (e.g. a literary text), are we then able to avoid misunderstanding. Let us for a moment return to the example of the Church Fathers' approach to classical, and the neo-exegetical approach to medieval vernacular literature; it will then become clearer in what way misunderstandings may occur. In both approaches, the category of historicity is fundamentally neglected. The Church Fathers' interpretations of classical literature are dogmatic in so far as they treated the texts in a rather violent way: they did not listen to what the texts had to say, but rather pinned the meanings down to their own preunderstanding of Christian doctrine, being unable to have themselves corrected by the text itself. They only wanted to perceive what the texts still had to say to them, to perceive that classical poetry had an undiminished topicality for them; they appropriated the texts directly to their own interests and needs. The neo-exegetical interpretations, on the other hand, proceed on the assumption that a critic is able to understand a medieval text by making himself contemporary with it; the critic tries to show 'how it really was', and wants to read the text with the eyes of its contemporaries. In approaching a text in this way, neo-exegetical critics claim to be able to comprehend it without preconditions derived from their own time. By thus transposing themselves into the past, however, they leave themselves out of consideration: they deny their own preunderstanding, their own situatedness, and thereby minimize the historical difference which separates the interpreter from the text.64 Both ways of looking at literary texts from a different historical situation lead to misunderstanding: they suffer from a lack of historical consciousness. Both read their truths into the texts, and both make no serious attempt at historical understanding. Their misunderstanding derives from the fact that they do not take account of the historical differ64

The neglect of the text's historicity in neo-exegetical criticism which is here left out of consideration, is identical with that of the Church Fathers' neglect of the same; cf. above, pp. 9-10, and below pp. 25-6, pp. 27-30.

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ence which estranges the meaning of the text from us, the modern interpreters; they do not respect this difference, and are therefore unable to profit from it. Otherwise, they might have noticed that this difference enables us to see that our own point of view is historically conditioned, and therefore finite and relative; that we have, then, no right to dispose of the unfamiliar, the otherness, in a prejudiced way. History and the historical difference are, then, fundamental categories in the theory of understanding of hermeneutic philosophy. At the very least, the historical difference effects impaired and therefore more difficult comprehension: and since we no longer share the same preunderstandings with the medieval text, we are incapable of immediately recognizing what it intends to say; interpretation of its meaning becomes necessary. But it should now be clear that the restoration of understanding cannot be achieved by the surrender of the one world or the other: neither the abandonment of one's own historicity nor the abandonment of that of the text will help. Rather, an understanding of an old, transmitted text is first dependant on the conscious and controlled application of one's own preunderstanding: it must neither negate itself, nor must it slip its own world over the text. On the contrary: only if within the process of interpretation both worlds, past and present, enter into a dialogue, only if they speak to each other, will it then become possible to experience one's own preunderstanding as hypothetical, which means that it may undergo changes, that it may be corrected within the process of interpretation itself. Another, second, precondition of understanding medieval texts is that the text is allowed its own right, that we give it a hearing in its own world. An interest in communication about the text therefore demands that we have scrupulously to respect and to take into account the text's own preunderstanding, that is, the historical context with which it is bound up. Because of the historical difference which separates us from medieval texts, this means that we have to reconstruct as far as possible the situatedness of the text, its own preunderstanding to which it refers as a matter of course, with the help of modern historical research. I have until now proceeded on the tacit assumption that a medieval text was always composed with the intention to claim relevance for what it had to say to its contemporary audience. Or, to put it the other way round: it was never "written to be read and interpreted philologically by philologists." 65 It rather addressed the gentle reader or listener who was 65

Walter Bulst, as quoted by Jauss, "Literary History," in his Aesthetic, p. 19.

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willing to be impressed by what it had to say; who was willing to respond in a competent and interested way, who shared a set of common preunderstandings with the text, but was nevertheless willing to reflect on them. The literary text, then, claimed to be acknowledged; if this claim was accepted, it set up a dialogue relationship between text and audience. Old English literary texts also claimed to achieve significance for the world and the lives of their listeners: they intended to initiate a communication about their mentality; about collective attitudes; about the way people saw or should see themselves; in short, they claimed relevance for their listeners' lives by giving meanings to them. That this is beyond doubt may immediately be gathered from the fact that Old English religious poetry, for example, always and almost by definition aims at mediating between God and its audience : its intention to render its audience a good service may be taken as proof of the intention to achieve an effect on behaviour, by giving life a new meaning or by strengthening the Christian faith. Secular texts claimed their relevance in a similar way: they may propose models of behaviour to their audiences, or they may urge it to share in views presented within the fictitious model of society.66 But if such intentions to achieve effects were explicitly expressed in the texts themselves (as, e.g., swa sceal man don; gehyre se pe wille), or if they may otherwise be deduced, then we must all the more urgently enquire about the conditions of the possibility to communicate about life and society within the medium of medieval literature. We have to look for the social context within which literary texts first participated in processes of communication, within which they may have initiated such processes or may have tried to arrive at a new understanding of the world of their audiences. We are, then, confronted with the problem of how we may be enabled to reconstruct the self-evident understanding shared by a literary text and its audience, which in turn may help us to understand their communication about their own world. A further step towards a solution of this problem may be taken by using the concept of the "communication community as a frame of resonance for the literary work" which was first

66

Together with my colleague Rainer Holtei I have tried to show elsewhere that an intention to achieve effects on the behaviour of contemporaneous social groups is likewise found in Beowulf and Maldon; cf. "Beowulf and the Tenth Century," BJRL, 63 (19801), 285-329, and "The Battle of Maldon: A Historical, Heroic and Political Poem," Neophilologus, 65 (1981), 614-21.

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introduced into German medieval scholarship by G. Kaiser. 67 Within such communities, the way the historical subject saw itself was conditioned by its participation in the way social groups saw themselves; this constitutes an identity which, as a way of seeing oneself, was mostly available to historical subjects only "in the interpreted form of a bundle of norms, or in the desire to create for oneself or to adopt a structure of norms which was regarded as suitable." 68 The social identity of the single person and the group required constant representation in the Middle Ages: in order to be identified, they had to show their status by clothing, weapons, implements, behaviour. Social identity is, therefore, "observably worked into all communicative manifestations in life": With r e g a r d to the u n d e r s t a n d i n g of such m a n i f e s t a t i o n s — i n o u r case, of literary texts—this m e a n s : to b e l o n g to such communities which are socially conditioned in this w a y , o r rather, to be able to understand the structure of their n o r m s , brings a b o u t the disposition to understand the social dimensions of literary w o r k s . 6 9

A literary text, then, had to refer to social identities, had to refer to bundles of norms, if it intended to be understood as a communicative manifestation, if it intended to achieve significance within the world of its audience. It is implied, further, that authors knew the preunderstandings of their listeners. Kaiser deduces this familiarity of medieval authors with the predispositions of their recipients from two factors. First, there was no literary market comparable to that of our time; consequently, the public for which a text was written was relatively small and could there-

67

Kaiser, p. 43; for what follows, cf. pp. 29-46. Kaiser's use of the term "communication community" implies the presupposition of Apel's transcendental hermeneutics that the communication community is a necessary precondition of the possibility and validity of all communication: cf. K. Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (London, 1980), pp. 93-135 ("Scientism or Transcendental Hermeneutics? On the Question of the Subject of the Interpretation of Signs in the Semiotics of Pragmatism"); his Analytic Philosophy of Language and the 'Geisteswissenschaften' (Dordrecht, 1967); his "Die erkenntnisanthropologische Funktion der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlagen der Hermeneutik," in Information und Kommunikation, ed. S. Moser (München, 1968), pp. 163-71; his "Die Frage nach dem Sinnkriterium der Sprache und die Hermeneutik," in Welterfahrung in der Sprache (Freiburg, 1968), pp. 9-28 (all referred to by Kaiser, p. 43, fn. 61); Cf. also Apel, Transformation, pp. 136-79 ("The Communication Community as the Transcendental Presupposition for the Social Sciences").

68

Kaiser, p. 31; italics mine. Kaiser, p. 31.

49

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fore be defined rather clearly. Second, a wide-spread illiteracy led to joint listening in groups as the dominant mode of reception, which in turn produced an especially intense experience of community feeling: the listeners could know themselves as a community of those involved, and therefore the possibility of individual interpretation would have been largely eliminated.70 An intense and shared experience of community feeling further derives, as another condition of its possibility, from the fact that social identity is observably worked into the texts: the recipients re-encountered moments of their own experience, elements of their own actions in life. The recognition of such moments initiated identifications which are a necessary precondition of achieving social effects by literary texts.71 We may easily observe this intention to offer identifications at work in the texts, when we consider their anachronistic assimilation of old stories, of past historical events, to the present of their audiences. The heroic deeds of Beowulf, for example, are rewarded within the institutional frame of Anglo-Saxon social hierarchy; he receives 7000 hides of land, becomes a leading magnate in the fictitious world of the text, but may as such be compared with an Anglo-Saxon ealdorman. We also see this anachronistic assimilation at work in biblical poems, when Abraham and his people appear as an Anglo-Saxon leader and his retainers; and, to give a final example, when the Greek Troilus in Chaucer's poem arms himself and

70

71

Kaiser, pp. 31-3. Kaiser is speaking of an audience of laymen; the same holds, I think, equally true of monastic audiences though, of course, illiteracy will not have been the main reason for their joint listening. Kaiser here uses a concept which H. R. Jauss introduced into theoretical discussions as the "pre-reflexive, primary experience" of literary texts; it means an aesthetic experience which serves as a "precondition of aesthetically conveyed social learning" and is a "fundamental condition of the social impact of literary texts": cf. Textauslegung, p. 34, and cf. further pp. 33-8 for possible patterns of identification and their being initiated and controlled by the literary texts. Jauss first introduced this concept in "Negativität und Identifikation: Versuch zur Theorie der ästhetischen Erfahrung," in Positionen der Negativität, ed. H. Weinrich, Poetik und Hermeneutik, 6 (München, 1975), pp. 263-339; a shortened English version appeared as "Levels of Identification of Hero and Audience," New Literary History; 5 (1973-4), 283-317. Jauss has recently modified his views on aesthetic identification as an important element in pre-reflexive aesthetic experience, but the fundamental significance of the category 'identification' as a precondition of a possible social effect of the literary text is not affected by his modifications; cf. his Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik 1 (München, 1977), pp. 137-9 (for modifications), and pp. 212-58 (on identifications).

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fights like a medieval knight. This naive assimilation of old stories or of history to one's own present proves that, for author and audience, there is no historical distance to what is told. The modern interpreter has to recognize and respect this distance in order to avoid mere appropriation; but its absence in medieval literature reveals to us that precisely this willingness to appropriate the story, did exist at that time. The audience, therefore, was prepared to be involved, to identify themselves, to take what was said as a new experience, or as an old and therefore confirmed insight, in order to make use of it in their own world. 72 In this way, then, medieval literature could initiate identifications, could question them, could revoke them or strengthen them by dogmatic urging; a whole range of possibilities was available to the authors. But points of identity between narrated world and historical world remained a precondition for the possibility to identify oneself: after all, assimilation is a precondition of understanding, in so far as what is to be understood must be compared with and assimilated to a preunderstanding. 73 The conditions of the possibility to communicate about one's own world within the medium of literature thus delineated, logically lead to a fundamental dictate: If, then, it is correct that communication communities of the Middle Ages are essentially shaped and structured by points of social identity, if it is further correct that literary texts aim at and are dependant on an impact within these communication communities, then the philologist should no longer be dispensed from the task of reconstructing the sphere of this communicative impact which belongs to the text. Without its social frame of resonance, the text remains silent; or, it can be interpreted at will. 74

If we now return, with this theoretical framework in mind, to the theory and practice of the neo-exegetical school (which I shall from now on call a 'model' of understanding), we may specify previous criticism in certain points, but we may also at the same time define the misunderstanding of this model of understanding medieval literature. It is now obvious that, indeed, the postulated background is the decisive criterion for an evaluation. It lies within the consequence of this model that the postulated background cannot profitably be applied in the process of communication

72 73 74

Cf. more comprehensively in Kaiser, pp. 20-9. Cf. above, pp. 24-5, and Kaiser, pp. 27-8 with fn. 38. Kaiser, pp. 40-1.

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with a text, as it is not recognized as the critic's own preunderstanding of the social frame to which the texts refer; it is rather brought into the dialogue as a prejudice, as an axiomatic presupposition. The Christian theory of poetry was clear and definite; it was subscribed to by all Christians. The practice of Latin Christian poetry was in accord with the theory. Caedmon's English poetry was also in accord with the theory.75

A model derived from Augustine, and upheld by Bede, Aldhelm and a few others, is thus raised dogmatically to the one and only model of understanding the texts :76 as it is not recognized as their own preunderstanding applied to the text, the ensuing communication with the text will go wrong, as the preunderstanding (as prejudice) can now no longer be relativized within the process of interpretation, it can no longer be reconsidered in the dialogue communication with the text. By their postulate, these critics rather produce themselves what they think to be an objective horizon of truth, within which meaning in general is fixed and at their disposal. It follows that the meaning of a text is likewise defined in advance, even before it is created or before it is read by ourselves as interpreters. This postulated horizon of truth constitutes a closed system, within which a medieval author had at best possibilities of shaping his material to his own taste on the literal level alone. But this re-shaping of material does not, or rather, is not allowed to produce a new and different meaning, as the sententia as interpretation of the littera is pre-existent because of the closedness of the system. We see that the littera is an open system, like any plot, capable of extension in any direction and for any length. But the allegoria and moralia are closed systems, offering completed structures whose instance depend on the littera. In one sense, all allegorical stories are one story, since the story of the Christ and the Church, and of the Vices and Virtues, are unchanging. But from what aspect they will be approached, and which sections are of major relevance, depend on the literal level and what uses it makes of this material.77

75 76

77

Huppe, p. 239; cf. full quotation above, pp. 1 - 2 (italics mine). It should be remembered that these insights have been criticized as an incorrect understanding of patristic tradition: cf. above, pp. 14-6, and fnn. 32-6. Hinton, 64-5. On the basis of patristic exegesis and myth analysis, Hinton then proceeds from allegoria and moralia to anagogia, that is, towards those atemporal, ahistorical, metaphysical, and ontological truths which, in the end, remain unkown: cf. 67-71.

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The interpretation of meaning thus becomes available by technological means: the interpretation is characterized as a quasi scientific experiment, within which understanding is not restored by a dialogue communication which in turn leads to a process of approximating meaning; rather, meaning is found when the correct source, the correct image or theme has been sorted out from the available material, the index of patristic tradition. This consequently leads to balancing of identities, to passing the literary text to the patristic account; 'misunderstanding' is then, within this model, simply an error of calculation, an inaccuracy of measurement, as long as the correct solution has not been found. It is one of the consequences of this model that these operations of calculation may in future be churned out as 'interpretations' by a computer. In the meantime, the practice of producing a real profusion of source studies proves the critics' desire to arrest and take hold of 'meaning'. The dilemma of such scholarly enterprise lies in the fact that it can never arrive at the hoped for, total identity of alleged source and literary text. But this dilemma does not, as is often assumed, derive from a fragmentary tradition (i.e. loss of the 'real' source). It is rather to be derived from the fact that in such studies, as in the model as a whole, the relationship between source and literary text is not seen as one of dialogue communication, it is not seen as a relationship of mutual and interpretive understanding. In such studies, this relationship is rather seen as a monologue in which the one (source) slips its meaning over the other (the text).78 As there is no such thing as a 'real' or 'direct' source understood in this way, the method of neo-exegetical criticism necessarily leads to splitting the text up into details which are then, on a higher level of abstraction and interpreted by material from patristic tradition, welded together into such handy formulas as 'charity', 'ritual of birth and resurrection', 'theme of salvation' and so forth. The consequence for the modem interpreter who uses this model of understanding now becomes clear: as he does not need to communicate with the text in a dialogue, he no longer needs to examine himself critically, he no longer needs to reflect on the postulates of the model itself as his own preunderstanding, he does not need to relativize and correct his own treatment of the text in a dialogue process of approximating meaning. As the closed system with its closed method does not allow him to ret

78

That the relationship between source and literary text is essentially a dialogical one has been correctly perceived by Rogers, 276.

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lativize himself and, therefore, to call himself into question, he constantly moves within a closed circuit, within which the interpreter can only find out what he has fed into it beforehand. Within such a system, neoexegetical criticism confirms its own assumptions and interpretations over and over again. It is a logical consequence that the results of this procedure can only be reproduced by those outside the circle if they submit to the same dogma; as Crane has correctly observed, "we can know it to be correct, and a literal hypothesis about the poet's meaning wrong, only . . . 'by the methods of historical criticism'." 79 The meaning of a medieval text is, then, according to this model, technologically available by deriving it directly from the dogmatically postulated and allegedly objective horizon of truth: T h e medieval a u d i e n c e , by virtue that they held in common,

of the vast store of images and

commentary

w o u l d n o t necessarily n e e d t o k n o w the precise

s o u r c e o f the allusion; n o r w o u l d the p o e t necessarily n e e d to cite a s p e c i f i c c o m m e n t a t o r ( a l t h o u g h at times he m a y d o so) t o c o m m u n i c a t e his m e a n i n g . T h e modern critics, h o w e v e r , w h o n o l o n g e r h o l d this b o d y o f i m a g e s in c o m m o n are forced to rely upon exegetical

material as an index to these images.*0

The historical difference which separates us from the medieval text, is logically reduced within this model to a mere gap in one's learning, which may easily and quickly be filled up by the search for the material in this 'index'. Eventually, therefore, a simple reference to Migne's index to the Patrologia Latina proves sufficient to make the meaning available for those interested in it.81 It further lies within the consequence of this model that the failure to produce historical evidence for the postulated preunderstanding of "the medieval audience", that is, for their constant and conscious use of patristic material in their own understanding of life, is regarded as an ex-

79

80

81

Crane, II, 256. It is not without a certain piquancy that a quotation from Augustine, used in neo-exegetical criticism, proves the same point, namely: " . . . anyone who does not see the temple as the Church is not fit to belong to the Church itself." Those outside the school, it would follow, are not able to recognize its true achievement. The quotation is taken from J. R. Hall, "The Building of the Temple in Exodus: Design for Typology," Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 620, fn.4. A.L. D e N e e f , "Robertson and the Critics," Chaucer Review, 2 (1967-8), 219; italics mine. Cf. e.g. R.M. Trask, "Doomsday Imagery in the Old English Exodus," Neophilologus, 57 (1973), 296 with fn.6.

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cusable sin by neo-exegetical critics. It does not lie within their interest of perception to give historical evidence for such abstract and much quoted clichés as, for example, 'the medieval audience', 'any learned Christian', 'an Anglo-Saxon recipient'; they have never tried to break these clichés up into historically tangible subjects, to dissolve them into social groups with a social identity, as delineated earlier in this paper. For them, the one and only reference to the ahistorical horizon of truth as a quasi objective, given constant (constant and ahistorical, as it is not subject to change) is sufficient as 'historical' evidence for the contention that "an Anglo-Saxon" would always have interpreted and understood historical situations "in terms of multiple levels of understanding"; 82 for them, their postulated horizon is sufficient evidence for the contention that "an early medieval Christian" would have known patristic commentary about Moses's wife as a matter of course, as there was " a large body of information available in the poet's time." 83 And finally, an uncritical reference to Ogilvy's Books Known to the English which in its title is misleading, is regarded as sufficient evidence by them for the contention of a universal patristic erudition of all listeners, despite the fact that this contention is contrary to what modern historical research has found out about education in the Middle Ages. This final contention, then, is one of the greatest falsifications about the Middle Ages ever disseminated.84 The im-

82

93 84

M. Goldsmith in "Allegorical, Typological or Neither? Three Short Papers on the Allegorical Approach to Beowulf and a Discussion," ASE, 2 (1973), 299. F. C. Robinson, "Notes on the Old English Exodus, "Anglia, 80 (1962), 375, 377. A reference to Ogilvy in order to establish the contention is given, e.g., by J. H. Wilson, Christian Theology and Old English Poetry (The Hague, 1974), p. 112; Lee, 58. The error arises from the title of Ogilvy's book, as a massive majority of his evidence proves nothing more than the erudition of a few authors, e.g. Bede, Aldhelm, Alfred, Aelfric, Wulfstan. To deduce that all quoted sources would have been books known to the English simply falsifies the evidence and history. As concerns education in the Middle Ages, the study of H. Grundmann is still a classic; cf. "Litteratus - illitteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter," Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, 40 (1958), 1-65. For England, cf. D. A. Bullough, "The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to Aelfric: Teaching utriusque linguae," Settimane Spoleto, 19 (1972), 453-94; C. P. Wormald, "The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours," TRHS, 5th series, 27 (1977), 95-114; cf. also M.B. Parkes, "The Literacy of the Laity," in The Mediaeval World, ed. D. Daiches and A. Thorlby (London, 1973), pp. 555-77. These authors stress the Church's monopoly in education; but they are able to show that within the Church a learned and erudite few contrasted with a far greater number of half-educated.

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plicit presupposition that England was "full of men as learned as Bede", 85 can therefore scarcely conceal the unconscious prejudice with which the education and erudition of the modern interpreter is slipped over all his Anglo-Saxons from the seventh to the tenth century, despite the fact that medial and other preconditions of learning have undergone serious historical changes. The consequence of this model of understanding for the texts themselves may now be clearly defined. The literary text is not, by this school of critics, placed in its frame of resonance of social communication about life in Anglo-Saxon times, though this is absolutely necessary for our understanding of its meaning. Its affective impact, its possibility to offer identifications, which both work primarily on the literal level, are reduced by this school of critics; they split it up into details which are then, point by point, set off against a postulated background where they are ticked off on the list. T o the extent that all this happens, the texts are deprived of their communicative function. It is significant that neo-exegetical criticism has seldom arrived at other interpretations of their meanings than a mere reduction to 'themes': the rational perception of universal, abstract values such as love of one's neighbour or redemption, remains the sole aim of perception of these interpreters, and is therefore purported to be the sole possibility of identifications offered to the texts' audiences. In proceeding in this way, the singularity and historical uniqueness of the literary works are abandoned: their possibility to enter into a dialogue with their own world is contested; it is denied them a priori to reflect in a relativizing way on their own world, on social norms and values, on social identities. The consequence of this model of understanding is a dogmatic monologue: the texts can only say what neo-exegetical interpretation will make them say. T o sum up: from the point of view of an interpreter who tries to reflect hermeneutically on his own preunderstandings, who tries to reflect on the process of his communication with the text, who further tries to approximate an understanding of it in a process of spiral learning by asking questions about the text which are answered, and in turn lead to changed or new questions, from the point of view of such an interpreter, then, a judgement on the neo-exegetical model can be nothing short of scathing. Raising this model to an absolute standard makes the critics unable to ana85

This is a criticism of M. Goldsmith's interpretation of Beowulf by John, "Beowulf . . . Margins," 395.

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lyse their own preunderstanding; they move within a static and closed system; they do not try to enter into a dialogue, neither with themselves nor with the text, they rather proceed in monologue fashion. The construction of a wrong historical context makes a dialogue with the text impossible. The arbitrariness of the method puts it beyond doubt for the critic who uses it, therefore makes it a dogma, a question of beliefs, an ideology. It is closely connected with the type of misunderstanding which intends to approach a literary text without preconditions, and therefore does not see how its own interest of appropriation slips its own preunderstanding over the meaning of the text. As a model of understanding medieval vernacular literature which necessarily produces misunderstanding instead of the understanding aimed at, the neo-exegetical 'theory' as well as its 'practice of interpretation' are, therefore, of little value. V It is a matter of course that this harsh criticism will provoke contradiction. After all, the relevance of patristic tradition in the Middle Ages cannot be denied; the practice of interpretation proves that in many instances this tradition is also relevant to the understanding of Old English poetry; moreover, the neo-exegetical school of critics is not homogeneous, there are not many who subscribe to the more dogmatic claims of Robertson's 'historical criticism'.86 It would follow, then, that obviously theory is one thing, and practical criticism quite another. And though I hasten to add that in all our practical analyses we proceed on theoretical premises even if we are unconscious of them (which may happen if we do not reflect on our preunderstanding), it would of course be sensible to substantiate the theoretical critique by a practical example. To avoid such justified criticism of my own critique, I shall add an example in order to show how neo-exegetical interpretation may distort the meaning of a text. As my example, I take a single passage from the Old English Exodus, 11. 519b-32a. After all, it is tempting to put critique and new ways of understanding to the test, using exactly that text which is looked upon as the show-piece of neo-exegetical criticism; even as professed an opponent of this school of critics as Professor Greenfield allows for the possibility that the poem

86

Cf. Cross, rev. of Interpretation, by Greenfield, 42: "I know of only one, B. F. Huppé. The inaccuracy implies that all 'historical' critics are Robertsonians."

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may legitimately be interpreted christologically.87 For the proponents of the school, Exodus is the typical example which, they think, justifies the necessity of their model of understanding, for the poem seems to conform to all preconditions of exegetical interpretation: its source is ultimately the Bible itself; the possibility to expound the text is explicitly expressed within the poem itself; and, finally, the exegesis of the biblical exodus has a long tradition in patristic literature. As a religious work on an important biblical subject - the exodus was the founding-event for ancient Israel - Exodus is intrinsically suitable for the kind of critical analysis that (when necessary) looks to patristic exegesis as an aid in interpretation. As far as Exodus is concerned Alcuin's famous question, 'What has Ingeld to do with Christ?' does not require an answer. In a passage towards the end of the poem, attributed to Moses but more Pauline than Mosaic in viewpoint, interpretation according to the Spirit as well as the Letter is evidently called for. Gif onlucan wile lifes wealhstod . . . ginfaesten god gastes caegon, run biJ gerecenod. If the interpreter of life [the intellect] . . . wishes to unlock ample benefits with the keys of the Spirit, the mystery will be explained. 88

It is self-evident that in my own reading of the text I proceed on the theoretical premises outlined above. As the first and fundamental basis, they require that we have to examine in a dialogue with the text whether Exodus may only be understood if we use the horizon of truth, the postulated background of patristic tradition; the process is meant to clarify whether the poem served as mere game of riddles or as a medium of meditation, within which a monastic audience could consider eschatological ends in an introverted way - for this is what neo-exegetical interpreta-

87

Greenfield, Interpretation,

pp. 154-5, following Rollinson, "Kinds of Meaning,"

16-8. 88

P.J. Lucas, "Old English Christian Poetry: The Cross in Exodus," in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the 13th Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), p. 194. That Moses—instead of the narrator—is said to speak these lines belongs, to my mind, to one of the mysteries read into the text by neoexegetical criticism: see below, pp. 44-51, and fn. 100.

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tions seem to imply. 89 Proceeding on the theoretical premises, then, I first assume in a general way that the poem was intended to be a contribution to communication about the world of its audience. As another, and second, assumption I presuppose that the poem as w e have it today was composed in the second half of the tenth century: its language as well as the date of the manuscript require it to be seen in this way. 90 If the poem ever had a previous tradition (i.e. in form of other Old English poems, a possibility I do not deny), this tradition is irrevocably lost to us, and I am therefore unable to say anything about it. In putting it this way, I imply that Anglo-Saxon England in the tenth century had a living tradition of poetry: this tradition, therefore, as a literary experience, belongs to the preunderstanding of the biblical poem's audience; they would probably have known at least some of the texts which we know today. 91 W e have historical evidence that (heroic) poetry was composed 89

90

91

Exodus is seen as monastic literature of meditation e.g. by M. S. Allen, "The Interior Journey: Monastic Spirituality as Theme and Structure in the Junius MS," Diss. Princeton University 1976; cf. also P.J. Lucas, ed., Exodus, Methuen's Old English Library (London, 1977), p. 72. Many source studies in which patristic material is used to 'interpret' the poem, imply this as well; they presuppose a standard of education and erudition which only highly educated monks could achieve; cf. e.g. W. Helder, "Etham and the Ethiopians in the Old English Exodus,"Annuale Mediaevale, 16 (1975), 5-23; J. R. Hall, "The Old English 'Exodus' and the 'Antiquitates Judaicae': More Parallels," ASNSL, 216 (1979), 341-4; D.R. Letson, "On the dxgweorc of the Old English Exodus," ELN, 16 (1978-9), 195-8; etc. At the same time, such studies are evidence of the critics' tacit assumption that clerical games of riddle in a monastery (i.e. identifying the images of the text with patterns of patristic exegesis), must have been the intention of both the author and his text; cf. e.g. P. F. Ferguson, "The Old English Exodus and the Patristic Tradition," Diss. SUNY Binghamton 1977, p. 197: "That the poet has deliberately chosen to adorn such a simple meaning [i.e. a conflict between "good and evil, man and sin, God and the devil"] within such a complex framework merely indicates that he is following the Augustinian dictate that that which is searched for with difficulty is more delightfully discovered." Even E. B. Irving as a proponent of a literal reading of the poem thinks that the monastery may have been its place of recitation, and monks the audience addressed by the text: cf. his "Exodus Retraced," in Old English Studies in Honour ofJohn C. Pope, ed. E. B. I. and R. B. Burlin (Toronto, 1974), p. 212. I ask my readers' patience that I must refer them to the first part of my Habilitationsschrift, where I have dealt in great detail with all the assumptions which have been advanced in order to solve the problem of dating Old English poetry. The conclusion of my discussion of these assumptions is that we have to interpret Old English poetry in the historical context of roughly the tenth century. On the other hand, I do not imply that all literary works we have today were known to all members of a historical community; this is, I think, implied in some neoexegetical interpretations, when other Old English texts are quoted at will in order to

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in this century: The Battle of Brunanburh, the Liberation of the Five Boroughs, and The Battle of Maldon. With the historical dates of the battles to which these poems refer, we have a time limit which stretches from the second quarter to the end of the tenth century. The much quoted assumption that these texts are only evidence of a "studied revival of the older style and diction", is a preunderstanding which in itself presupposes a whole world of further assumptions: it therefore reveals itself as an unverified preunderstanding applied to the texts, as it imputes to them an individualistic and antiquarian interest, without giving any historical evidence for this assumption. 92 Another approach to this poetry is, then, called for: as its authors were themselves necessarily bound up with what Wittgenstein called the language-games of a society, as they further had to refer to the social and cultural preunderstanding of their audiences so that their works could be understood at all, these poetic texts are our most important, historical evidence of a living tradition of poetry in this century; at the same time, the poems evidence an interest on the part of the aristocratic warriors to see themselves reflected within the medium of literature. As the dates of composition of these poems are relatively certain, we may therefore deduce, from their mere existence, a lively interest in literature, in literary communication about one's own world, in the tenth century. At the same time, these poems tell us something about the aristocratic way of life; or, to use Patrick Wormald's phrase, they open up a window on the mentality of the late Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. It is vital and lively interest in social identity, then, which produced these texts, and not alleged antiquarianism. As another, and third, assumption I presuppose a social community of those involved. There is little doubt that a monastery may have been the place of the poems' composition: the Church's monopoly of education lends probability to the thesis that at least the process of preserving an oral tradition in written form would have been the task of learned monks. The latter, therefore, would have had a suitable opportunity to exercise a great influence on the written version of literary works. The tradition

elucidate a text: cf. my previous criticism of this procedure in "Assumptions in the Establishment of Old English Poetic Texts: P.J. Lucas's Edition of 'Exodus'," Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (1981), 211-3. The quotation appears in C. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature (London, 1967), p. 182. For the date and intention of The Battle of Maldon cf. Busse/Holtei, "Battle," esp. 614-5 and 618-20.

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of the Legend of S t Edmund is an example of this process of transmission and ensuing change. It w a s first transmitted o r a l l y b y the king's s w o r d bearer t o St Dunstan, w h o in turn told it to A b b o of Fleury; the latter composed a Latin p o e m , which w a s then r e - w o r k e d into an English legend by Aelfric. 9 3 In the case of the O l d English Exodus, there can be n o doubt that w e are dealing with a monastic author. But w h e t h e r the monast e r y alone w a s the scene of the poem's recitation, and w h e t h e r exclusively monastic listeners constituted its first audience, m a y be queried. If it can be s h o w n that the p o e m addressed a lay audience as well (this always means: an aristocratic one), it w o u l d p r o b a b l y be in the hall of the A n g l o S a x o n king that such a p o e m could be recited. W e k n o w f r o m charters, chronicles and o t h e r sources that lay and ecclesiastical magnates met in the king's hall: the evidence f r o m Asser of A l f r e d ' s organisation of service at c o u r t is o n l y an early indication of these meetings. 9 4 T h e witness

93

94

The transmission is described in Aelfric's "St Edmund, King and Martyr," in G. I. Needham, ed., Aelfric, Lives of Three English Saints, Exeter Medieval Texts (Exeter, 1976), p. 43; cf. pp. 17-9. That Aelfric does not simply translate, but rather re-shapes his sources, further proves the impossibility for modern critics of inferring a so-called 'original' from a so-called 'late copy'; there is no way, then, of knowing what any earlier version of Exodus looked like. For Aelfric's use of OE awendan cf. A. E. Nichols, "Awendan: A Note on Aelfric's Vocabulary," JEGP, 63 (1964), 7-13; for an analysis of his treatment of his sources cf. e.g. J. E. Cross, "Oswald and Byrhtnoth: A Christian Saint and a Hero Who is Christian," ES, 46 (1965), 93-109. Cf. Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed W. H. Stevenson, new ed. by D. Whitelock (Oxford, 1959), p. 100; cf. EHDl, 2nd ed.,p. 301. For the tenth century cf. e.g. the testament of King Eadred which lists various offices at court and thereby proves the presence of a familia regis: F. Harmer, Selected English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Century (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 34-5; cf. EHDl, 2nd ed., pp. 554-6; for its authenticity cf. Sawyer's list of charters, no. 1515 (dated 951x955). All charters with witness lists prove the meeting of lay and ecclesiastical magnates and the familia regis, e.g. Birch, CS, nos. 1029, 1234, or Kemble, CD, no. 1289; cf. EHDl, 2nd ed. nos. 108, 113, 118; for their authenticity, cf. again Sawyer's list, nos. 659 (dated A.D. 958 for 956), 773 (A.D. 969), 883 (A.D. 995). As the study of Anglo-Saxon charters is still in its beginnings, and historical research on the charters has hardly begun, Simon Keynes's book is now of great help for the reign of Aethelred II: The Diplomas of King Aethelred 'The Unready' 978-1016, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd series, 13 (Cambridge, 1980); cf. pp. 126-34 for a study of the witenagemot. Detailed information about many leading persons in the 10th and 11th centuries will be found in C. R. Hart, The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands, Studies in Early English History, 6 (Leicester, 1975), pp. 253-380; cf. the same author's study of a single family, "Athelstan 'Half King' and his Family," ASE, 2 (1973), 115-44; see also A. Williams, "Princeps Merciorum Gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of Aelfhere, Ealdorman of

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lists of charters suggest that the persons involved in such meetings, constituted a group which included the leading bishops and abbots, the ealdormen and high-ranking thegns. The lists, therefore, give us historical subjects who are in evidence for several years at a time, who may be identified and therefore may be investigated. It is helpful that the composition of the witenagemot only changed gradually over the years. 95 It is this group of magnates who gathered in the royal hall, which I assume to have been the community of listeners at which the poem was first addressed. It remains to be seen whether the text, read with this preunderstanding, can say anything at all. As another, and fourth, assumption I presuppose that the poem was first addressed to such a community. It is implied that no-one except the author himself (and perhaps a very few others), knew the text, as we have it, beforehand. The poem was, then, completely new to the audience; it follows that the listeners could not share in the philologist's manner of reading a text. As it was their first encounter with the poem, they would rather have been open to a pre-reflexive experience, which is exposed to all manipulations a text may intend to make; their experience of the Old English Exodus may therefore be compared to a dialogue within which the audience, by way of gradual learning, came to understand what the poem meant. Or, in simpler words, their communication had to start at its beginning, and not at its end. As a last, and fifth, assumption I presuppose that the outlines of the biblical story of the exodus would have been known to the lay part of the audience, and that these outlines may therefore be regarded as part of

95

Mercia, 9 5 6 - 8 3 , " ASE, 10 (1982 for 1981), 143-72. Still a standard for the witenagemot is F. Liebermann, The National Assembly in the Anglo-Saxon Period (Halle, 1913). For a more general description of the 10th century cf. e.g. D. E. Landon, "Church-State Relations in the Late Anglo-Saxon Period," Diss. Univ. of Illinois 1969; H. Kleinschmidt, Untersuchungen über das englische Königtum im 10. Jahrhundert, Göttinger Bausteine zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 49 (Göttingen, 1979); E. John in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell (Oxford, 1982), pp. 160-207. For the present state of charter studies, cf. N. P. Brooks, "Anglo-Saxon Charters: The Work of the Last Twenty Years," ASE, 3 (1974), 211-31; M. Gelling, The Early Charters of the Thames Valley, Studies in Early English History, 7 (Leicester, 1979), p. 7. Cf. Keynes, Diplomas, tables in appendix. If we are to believe William of Malmesbury, poetry was recited at Athelstan's court ( E H D I, 2nd ed., p. 306), whereas the Vita Oswaldi mentions that "buccinae sonitus . . . vel salpinx joculatoris" accompanied the festivities of Edgar's coronation: cf. The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine, Rolls Series, 71 (London, 1879), I, 438.

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their preunderstanding. As I have, however, presupposed that there were ecclesiastics within the audience, we have to consider another, and different, preunderstanding on their part: probably, they knew more about the biblical exodus and its exegesis than any of the laymen. My assumption of a mixed audience with different preunderstandings approaches Irving's interpretation which also presupposes listeners with a different degree of education. 96 But his contention that the text may be understood by the uneducated in one way (literal meaning), and by the educated in quite another (typological meaning), is not convincing: it fails because he does not recognize that a dialogue structure is explicitly expressed within the poem itself, which aims at an assimilation of these different receptions of the text. Irving thus reduces the poem to a monologue, in which the individual recipient may read 'his' meaning into the text; the reception of the poem is thereby reduced to an individualistic appropriation in which understanding (as an interpreting communication about world) does not take place. The 'meaning' of the text is thus again reduced to a mere formula: though Irving perceives the affective impact of emotional experience aimed at by the text, the meaning he construes is "simply the good news of salvation, addressed to all men ( 'we' in lines 1 and 529, 'us', 531), who have the freedom whether or not to hear it." 97 In that he cedes the interpretation of the poem's meaning to the individual recipient and his freedom of choice, Irving surrenders the interpretation of the poem to the preunderstanding (or rather, prejudice) of the historical subject. He therefore is unable to perceive that this is precisely not what the poem intended: the text provokes discussion about itself and ensuing communication about the way relevant social groups saw themselves. This dimension of the text, which gives an impulse to discuss different ways of seeing oneself, has not been perceived in previous interpretations; they lead to misunderstanding in so far as their proponents have not understood the question to which Exodus intended to give an answer.98 I have outlined my assumptions in order to indicate what influenced my own reading and interpretation of the poem up to 11. 519b-32a. Up

96 97 98

Irving, p. 212. Irving, p. 211. The English historian R. G. Collingwood maintained that "one can understand a text only when one has understood the question to which it is an answer." Cf. his An Autobiography (London, 1970), pp. 29-43, where he develops what he calls the "logic of question and answer".

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to that passage, the text can be understood literally as offering two patterns of identification." First, the Egyptians as well as the Israelites are called a fyrd> that is, they both represent an aristocratic warrior group. These two groups are presented by the poem in such a way that identifications of an aristocratic lay audience are shifted from the one group towards the other, and back again. As the poem proceeds, it becomes apparent that the identity of a fyrd is one of the problems dealt with in the text. Is it possible to identify with a fyrd which exhibits ostentation, determination, and boldness, which shows all the martial splendour an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat would have appreciated, but which lacks other values such as, for example, historical truth? On the other hand, could an aristocratic warrior identify himself with a fyrd which shows almost no sign of that most urgently needed quality of a warrior, martial valour? The problem of identifying oneself with either fyrd is brought into focus in the opposition of the military determination within the one group (the Egyptians are antnod and peodenholde, but they will be the losers in the conflict) and the lack of such determination in the other (the Israelites are also peodenholde, and though they lack eorla mod, they will be the winners). It is obvious, then, that the social values and norms of the fyrd are at stake, the way the Anglo-Saxon aristocratic warrior caste saw itself: in order to enable a final and meaningful identification, it is necessary to offer a solution to the conflict of values exhibited in the poetic treatment of these two military groups. The poem gives a decided answer to this problem: it presents Moses as an intermediary, as a type of lifes wealhstod, the interpreter of life. His way of acting constitutes the other possibility of identifications offered; with him, the ecclesiastics in the poem's audience could easily identify themselves. It is he who gives a new identity to the Israelite fyrd: he reminds them of the true basis of their actions. With the story of God's covenant with man, the poem offers a new social norm to the Anglo-Saxon warriors; the right way of living and acting may only be found in a synthesis of warrior ethos and Christian ideals. The horrific destruction of the 99

I must again ask my readers' patience that I cannot, within the short confines of this paper, offer a complete interpretation of Exodus. What follows, may therefore not seem too convincing; however, what I here say about the poem up to 11. 519b ff, does not invalidate my main argument that the failure of neo-exegetical practical criticism may be proved by a different and, I think, correct understanding of 11. 519b-32a. For a complete interpretation, I have to refer my readers to chapter 4.3 of my Habilitationsschrift.

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Egyptian fyrd, which must have had a tremendous emotional effect on the poem's listeners, proves that ostentation, determination, and boldness alone will not be sufficient as an ethical code of the fyrd. The Israelites, on the other hand, are only able to achieve this new synthesis with the help of Moses: it is he alone who is able to communicate this new ideal. Consequently, any fyrd Wi\\ have to accept the lifes wealhstod, who is able to restore true meaning in a historical situation where understanding is impaired by conflicting values and norms. The social identity of the lifes wealhstod is disclosed in the justly famous passage which I now take as the practical example, in order to substantiate my theoretical critique of neo-exegetical criticism. panon Israhelum ece raedas on merehwearfe Moyses sasgde, heahimngen wer, halige spraece, deop aerende. Daegweorc nemnad swa gyt werdeode, on gewritum findad doma gehwilcne, para de him Drihten bebead on pam sidfate sodum wordum. Gif onlucan wile lifes wealhstod, beorht in breostum, banhuses weard, ginfaesten god gastes caegon, run bid gerecenod, raed ford gaed; hafad wislicu word on faedme, wile meagollice modum taecan, paet we gesne ne syn Godes peodscipes, Metodes miltsa. He us ma onlyhd, nu us boceras beteran secgad, lengran lyftwynna. pis is laene dream . . . (11. 516-32) After that, Moses spoke eternal counsel to the Israelites on the sea-shore by holy speech, the noble man, (he told them) a deep message. The nations still tell (name) that day's work, within the scriptures they (still) find each of the laws which the Lord commanded to him (i.e. Moses) on his journey with true words. If the interpreter of life, bright in the hearts, the warden of the body, will disclose ample benefits with the keys of the spirit, the riddle will be explained, and counsel will ensue; he has wise words in his power, he will earnestly teach the hearts so that we shall not be absent from God's community, (so that we shall partake) in God's grace. H e offers us more, now that

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learned scribes announce better and more enduring delight of the air (i.e. of heaven). This (life) is joy which passes a w a y . . . 1 0 0

The poet here, in a sweep, passes from the shores of the Red Sea via the present of his audience to the future of Doomsday, and then goes back to the shores of the Red Sea (11. 516-49 and ff). He begins at the seashore where Moses gives his counsels (11. 516-9a); he passes to the present of his audience saying that the event is still known in their own day (11. 519b-22); he then intimates that still better counsel will be had if his text is expounded by the lifes wealhstod, who may solve the riddles enclosed in the poem and, it is implied, in the biblical story as well (11. 523-32a); he then goes on to speak about the futility of the world of his listeners, and refers them to Doomsday when God, similar to his judgement of the Egyptians, will judge their actions (11. 532b-43); as an enticing reward which may influence their actions and behaviour, he then offers redemption in eternal life (11. 544-8), and finally returns to Moses and his counsels at the sea-shore (11. 549ff). In making this circle, he is able to include the world of his listeners in his text and thereby proves the relevance of what has been told, for their own practice in their own lives. No-one has ever, I think, missed the fact that within these verses, we get a clear and explicit hint as to the poem's interpretation and understanding. But according to each interpreter's interests of perception, 11. 519b-32a have received widely differing explanations: some interpreters try to play down the significance of this passage,101 others take it to be 100

101

I quote from Lucas's ed. of Exodus, retaining the MS reading in 1. 519b and following Krapp's ed. (ASPR) for the interpunction of 11. 519b-20a. Lucas's reading consequently leads to the assumption that Moses himself expounds the allegorical meaning of their journey to the Israelites; it would then follow that 11. 532b ff with their reference to Doomsday were indeed part of a speech of Moses: it is this interpretation which seems to me to be the basis for claiming that Moses must be seen here as a type of Christ. Apart from its presupposition of an unnecessary emendation, this interpretation imposes its preunderstanding on this passage, and therefore it cannot be seen to whom these lines are addressed. This almost necessarily leads to wrong evaluation; cf. Lucas, ed., p. 142, note: "Moreover, the content of the speech is so inappropriate to the narrative context that Moses must be considered here as a type of Christ . . . " (italics mine). According to Irving, pp. 211-2, the message of the poem itself (i.e. "the good news of salvation", "that God's mercy exists", pp. 211, 211-2) is cryptic and may only be really understood at Doomsday when "the message of salvation makes its own exodus out of mystery" (p. 212); Irving thus shifts a meaningful understanding of the poem into eternity. In a similar way, these 11. are interpreted as timeless mystification by L. A. Craker Nazareth, "Language as Theme in the Old English Exodus," Diss. S U N Y at Stony Brook 1979, pp. 5 4 - 7 , 1 0 9 - 1 1 .

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a contemporary attestation of their own preunderstanding that from the very beginning of the poem we have to read it as typology or allegory, or it has been taken as a contemporary confirmation that neo-exegetical criticism of the poem is, by this very passage, given its rights.102 But noone has, at least to my knowledge, ever provided a convincing explanation why these verses occur towards the end of the poem, and nowhere else; that is, no-one has so far perceived their communicative function as an impulse to discuss the meaning of the poem immediately after its recitation, in order to arrive at a new understanding of conflicting norms and values in the historical world of its audience. Some have thought the passage to be a "strange interpolation"; 103 others have for various reasons re-arranged the last part of the poem; 104 others, again, have accepted the MS arrangement, but have expressed some doubt as to the correct place and function of the passage within the poem; 105 others, again, have defended the MS arrangement by resorting to typological explanations. 106 The neo-exegetical failure to understand these verses derives from the fact that its unverified preunderstanding (a prejudice, then) makes a dialogue (i.e. the logic of questions and answers) impossible. The neo-exegetical critic's interest to perceive this passage simply as a confirmation of his preunderstanding, prevents him from perceiving by way of questions that the possibility of a dialogue between the text and its audience is here explicitly expressed, within the text itself, as a structure of provoking

102

J.W. Earl, "Christian Traditions in the Old English Exodus," NM, 71 (1970), 547, is explicit: "It is for the sake of clarity, and not out of perversity, that I begin my argument at the end of the poem." Cf. further e.g. Cross/Tucker, 123; J. P. Hermann, "The Green Rod of Moses in the Old English Exodus, "ELN, 12 (1974-5), 243; Lucas, "Poetry," p. 194; J. R. Hall, "Pauline Influence on Exodus, 523-48," ELN, 15 (1977-8), 88; etc.

103

Cf. e.g. W. A. Craigie, "Interpolations and Omissions in Anglo-Saxon Poetic Texts," Philologica, 2 (1925), 8-9. Cf. e.g. I. Gollancz, ed., The Caedmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry (London, 1927), pp. lxxv-lxxvi; E. B. Irving, ed., The Old English Exodus, Yale Studies in English, 122, (1953; rpt. with suppl. bibl. Yale, 1970), p. 11. Approval of Irving's rearrangement is expressed in reviews of his ed. by E.V. K. Dobbie, JEGP, 53 (1954), 229; B.J. Timmer, ES, 36 (1955), 111; S. Potter, MediumAevum, 25 (1956), 33. Cf. e.g. Krapp's ed. of Exodus, in AS PR I, p.xxxi; C. L. Wrenn, rev. of Exodus, ed. Irving, RES, n.s., 6 (1955), 184. Cf. e.g. N. D. Isaacs, Structural Principles in Old English Poetry (Knoxville, 1968), pp. 153-7; E.B. Irving, "New Notes on the Old English Exodus," Anglia, 90 (1972), 320; Lucas ed., Exodus, pp. 32-3.

104

105

106

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communication about itself.107 Those, however, who "for the sake of clarity" begin their interpretations at the end of the poem, have already excluded from their interpretations the important stage of experiencing the poem in a process of joint listening, for which the poem was explicitly written. 108 They therefore do not, and may not, take account of this stage. They are therefore unable to ask the first and important question, why the reference to the poem's understanding and meaning occurs only towards the end of the text; why not at its beginning or at its end. In the first place, if the poem were really composed for an educated monastic audience (as is implied in all neo-exegetical contributions) which, therefore, had a preunderstanding in the way that they knew about exegesis, that they were trained in it: why, then, does this reference occur at all? It would have no function, if the poem aimed at a preunderstanding which from the very beginning of its recitation knew that it had to decode the text, in order to understand its meaning on a higher level of significance. Such listeners would know beforehand, why the Israelites appear as seamen, why Solomon's temple is so important, why Moses's rod is green, why the African woman is adorned with gold: for them, a reference that they had to decode such instances of riddles within the poem is meaningless. We can only construe a meaningful understanding of 11. 523-6, if we perceive that they are meant to be an impetus to ask, and this impulse can only aim at those listeners who had no similar preunderstanding at their disposal, who did not know. These listeners would therefore quite naturally have tried to construe a meaning at the literal level, up to this point in the text; it would have been self-evident for them to do so. It is, then, for this first reason that the passage occurs here, and not at the beginning: namely, that the poem up to these lines may be understood literally. Otherwise, there would have been no possibility for the lay audience to identify themselves, to experience themselves as a community of those concerned, to become interested in the conflict of values presented in the poem. The text itself, therefore, proves that we also have to understand it literally in order to arrive at its true meaning. At the same time, the text

107

108

Earlier in the text, this structure may be observed in the various riddles which impair understanding and thereby provoke questions (e.g., the Israelites as seamen). Though the poem provokes questions, it does not give answers; it follows that these questions may be asked immediately after the poem's recitation. Cf. e.g. linguistic signs within the poem which prove the presence of an actual narrator: 11.1,7,98, 368,377, and the apostrophe addressed to the audience in 11.519b-48.

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proves that my own preunderstanding of a mixed audience is correct, and that this preunderstanding may help us towards a better understanding of the poem. In the second place, the poem itself provides the means for (what the poet supposed to be) a better understanding of the audience's world, that is, it provides the conditions for a transformation of the literary experience of its first listeners into practical action. It does not reflect on these means, it does not provide practical solutions, it does not itself explain the riddles it has posed. Rather, it provides these means by provoking questions, and thereby making itself a question; the poem thus enforces communication about itself which must ensue immediately after the process of joint listening within the community of listeners. Those urged to ask questions are those who may be interested in the social norms and values of the fyrd, but who could not easily identify themselves. For - by constantly delaying their literal understanding of the poem by riddles, by finally calling itself a riddle (1. 526) - the text prevents a simple and flat identification with the winners. Such an identification with the winners would have been quite easy for an Anglo-Saxon aristocratic layman, since in the rest of the poem, if understood literally, the Israelites are promised possession of land, victory over their enemies, a reign of victory, and even beorselas, beer-halls (11. 556-64). Moreover, any of these listeners would probably have claimed that they themselves had always kept to the balige lare (1. 561), and that they could, therefore, easily share in the experience of the Israelites. But this kind of identification is prevented by the poem itself : the reference to its correct understanding by interpretation makes a literal understanding, and thereby a simple appropriation of what follows in the poem, impossible. It is for this second reason that the passage occurs here, and not at the end : the rest of the text, more than ever, calls for competent interpretation. In the third place, these verses occur before the end of the poem in order to establish the claim and the right of one special community within the audience, namely the community of those who knew and who were therefore able to interpret the text in a different way. The claim to interpret life in a meaningful way is offered as a possibility of identification to those who knew boceras; these, and only these, listeners were able to solve the riddles the poem has posed, in a competent and final interpretation. In making the great circle from the shores of the Red Sea to the world of the listeners and back again, lines 516-48 establish a legitimation of a single social group within late Anglo-Saxon society: as a possibility to identi-

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fy themselves, the members of this social group are offered the claim to be, just like Moses, an interpreter of life. In view of this claim, it is all the more relevant to establish it before the poem is over. It is for this third reason that the passage occurs here, and not at the end. Otherwise, a layman in the audience would have been able to identify himself with the winners, he could therefore have left their different interpretation to the monks, as he would no longer have been interested in the question as to who is able to give a meaningful interpretation of life. After the poem's recitation, therefore, those who knew could immediately prove within the ensuing discussion that their claim was relevant for a meaningful understanding of the poem and of life. I have given three reasons which, I think, convincingly answer the question as to the function and the place of 11. 519b-32a within the poem; we may now have a closer look at how the poem establishes the claim I have spoken about. The most important contribution of neo-exegetical criticism to medieval studies is the perception that patristic tradition deals with biblical history in a very special way: exegesis was the prerogative and the task of the oratores who, according to clerical conceptions in the late tenth century, function as one of the pillars of a kingdom, the other two being the bellatores and the laboratores. Oratores syndon pe us pingiad to Gode 7 cristendom fyrdriad on cristenum folcum on Godes peowdome to dam gastlican gewinne, to pam anum betaehte us eallum to pearfe. 109

Patristic education and, it follows, the capacity to expound, are only to be sought after within this group. The historical misunderstanding of neo-exegetical criticism may not recognize their claim, as such critics tend to place the capacity of patristic interpretation into the intellect of all historical subjects, oratores, bellatores, and laboratores alike, and thereby make every Anglo-Saxon from 700 to 1050 into a learned Bede. They are therefore unable to use the historical evidence which proves the claim of the late tenth-century oratores and especially the reformed

109

Cf. Aelfric's treatise on the Old and N e w Testament in S. J. Crawford, ed., The Old English Versions of the Heptateuch, EETS, OS, 160 (1922; rpt. with text of two additional mss. London, 1969), p.71; cf. pp. 71-2; W . W . Skeat, ed., Aelfric's Lives of Saints, 4 vols., EETS, OS, 76, 82, 94, 114 (1881-1900; rpt. London, 1966), II, 120-2; K. Jost, ed., Die 'Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical', ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York, Schweizer anglistische Arbeiten, 47 (Bern, 1959), pp. 55-7.

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monks, that they alone are capable of adapting biblical history for their listeners.110 As concerns the Old English Exodus, this claim is revealed by the simple and trivial question as to who has the lifes wealhstod at his disposal said to be able to interpret the poem. Is it, as the syntactic parallel banhuses weardseems to suggest, really the intellect of every historical individual? The introducing ^//should, I think, be taken seriously: it implies alternatives (to expound or not to do it), and thereby becomes the precondition of the possibility to differentiate between the intellectual capacity demanded by the poem itself on the one hand, and the actual knowledge of the listeners on the other. The logical subject of he (1. 527a) is lifes wealhstod, just as he in 1. 530b equally refers to the same subject. Now who, then, is "the interpreter of life" who has wise words in his power (1. 527) ? Who is able to teach the others so that we (i.e. the listeners during the process of joint listening) may partake in God's grace (11. 528-30a)? Who, further, has the teaching of the boceras at his disposal so that even better counsel will ensue (11. 530b-32a)? Within the historical context of the late tenth century, the answer must be : no-one else but the reformed monks, abbots, and bishops. The poem's quick turn from the Red Sea to the present of its audience first seems to imply that Moses himself could be meant: but such an understanding proves to be a misunderstanding when we arrive at 11. 530b32a. Nevertheless, the observation is important as it points to the fact that the identity of the lifes wealhstod is only gradually disclosed. This gradual disclosure links the rôle Moses plays within the poem, to the present of the listeners. It underlines the identification offered to those listeners in the audience who, like Moses, knew more than even the frod fadera cyn (1. 29a); who, like Moses for the Israelites, mediated between God and man. Moses's rôle within the poem is plain and unequivocal: he is the lifes wealhstod for the Israelites, he explains, he helps, he reminds them of their own history and thereby gives their fyrd a new meaning. He does not primarily play the rôle of military leader: anyone who looks at him in order to detect a Germanic warrior chief, is frustrated. Only those may identify with him who, in a similar function within their own world, define the way they see themselves, as interpreters of life. Moses's military 110

Cf. Aelfric's preface to Genesis in Crawford, ed., pp. 76-7, 80; cf. also the illuminating remarks in M. McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), p. 13 and notes 12-4.

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function, then, serves only to underline the claim that without him, the Israelite fyrdwould be lost: it is only at his side and with his help that the Israelites are able to overcome their difficulties. This means: those who want to identify with the new meaning of fyrd, i.e. to be peodenholde on the basis of the covenant, must not only accept the interpreter of life as a necessary evil, but rather as a sine qua non, that is: communication about a new meaning, about a new understanding of life, is impossible without the interpreter of life. The poem establishes, then, a claim of intellectual leadership, offered to the reformed monks, abbots, and bishops as a pattern of behaviour in their relationship with another social group, the late Anglo-Saxon aristocratic fyrd. This is, I think, the function and the meaning of the passage I have chosen as my practical example, in order to refute the claim of neo-exegetical criticism to provide meaningful and objective interpretations by setting the texts off against the background of patristic tradition. The contribution of the Old English Exodus towards a new understanding of the world of its listeners may only be established in a dialogue between text and interpreter on the one hand, and by reconstructing the dialogue between text and socially relevant groups in the poem's historical context, on the other. The relevant theme of the poem is to propagate a new norm for the fyrd, to propagate the claim of a special group of ecclesiastics to be interpreters of life. The poem itself proves that interpretation is a necessary precondition of understanding life: by constantly using riddles to delay understanding, it makes communication about practical questions of life a vital precondition for a meaningful world of its listeners. The claims which the poem intends to raise, are expressed in a dogmatic way, in so far as they are forced upon the audience under penalty of eternal perdition. Against mere military power which is annihilated with the fyrd of the Egyptians, the poem advances the claim of monks, abbots, and bishops to be the real leaders and interpreters of life, to be alone capable of giving a new and meaningful significance to the aristocratic fyrd, to be alone able to restore understanding. The expression of this claim to authority is the enticing offer of identification for those among the poem's first audience who, as ecclesiastics, would have been able to fulfil this claim. The poem, then, could only achieve an effect if both groups, the aristocratic members of the fyrd as well as those ecclesiastics who could claim to know or to be boceras, were among its first audience. As to the historical context of the poem, may I add two final considerations. The full meaning of Exodus suggests itself, I think, when we read

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the poem in the light of the late tenth-century Benedictine reform movement. In its critical phase immediately after King Edgar's death, part of the Anglo-Saxon lay magnates under the leadership of Aelfhere of Mercia were in open opposition to the reformed monks. This opposition took on belligerent aspects and lasted for about five years. 111 As one of the causes of this opposition, we may determine a conflict between lay and ecclesiastical magnates which ensued from Edgar's vigorous prosecution of the reform. 112 One of the central aims of the reform was to ensure the economic basis of the reformed monasteries by abolishing saeculariumprioratus, that is, the power of lay magnates over the monasteries which they had endowed; it aimed at establishing the dominium regis over the reformed and the newly founded houses. At the same time, the reform movement led to a reduction of the power of lay magnates in administration and jurisdiction, to a re-distribution of land, and, therefore, to a redistribution of political power. 113 T o many of the great nobles the advancing power of the church could only seem a threat to their own, the extravagance of the king to the monasteries a threat to his own position. Moreover in a land-hungry society the monks were great engrossers of land, threatening men's inheritance. 114

The grievances which had accumulated by injured interests, broke out immediately after Edgar's death : it is in this historical situation that the opponents of the reform were called Godes withersacan, the adversaries of God. 1 1 5 What is at stake, then, in this situation, is the problem of the

111

112

113 114

115

Cf. D . J . V . Fisher, " T h e Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr," Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1952), 254-70; for the date of the 'reconciliation' ca. A.D. 980 cf. D . J . Sheerin, " T h e Dedication of the Old Minster, Winchester, in 980," Revue Bénédictine, 88 (1978), 261-73. For some of the consequences of the reform which led to conflicts, cf. E. John, Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies, Studies in Early English History, 4 (Leicester, 1966); pp. 51-63, 154-209; see also E. John, " T h e Church of Winchester and the Tenth-Century Reformation," B/RL, 47 (1964-5), 404-29, and E. John, "Saecularium Prioratus and the Rule of St Benedict," Revue Bénédictine, 75 (1965), 212-39; Fisher, 257, 262-4; Williams, 158-9,160,166-8. Cf. John, Orbis, p. 163: " . . . the monks had come to power." P. A. Stafford, "Church and Society in the Age of Aelfric," in The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds, ed. P. E. Szarmach and B. F. Huppé (Albany, 1978), p. 17. ASC, D 975 (referring to Mercia and Aelfhere); Earl Edwin of Kent and his followers are equally stigmatized in this way; cf. Fisher, 257, translation from Kemble, CD, no. 1258.

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regulation of the relationship between part of the Anglo-Saxon lay aristocracy on the one hand, and the reformed Church on the other. My second, and shorter consideration concerns another group also involved in this conflict, the clerici nobiles. They had been driven out of some of the monasteries by Edgar and Aethelwold; after Edgar's death, some of them came back again into monasteries from which the reformed abbots and monks had been driven away by the opposing party. 116 We may recognize here another conflict, that between reformed and unreformed monks: the former opposed the latter as far as they were not willing to live according to the new rule.117 At the same time, it is implied that many of the latter neither knew the true teaching of the Church, nor were they able to expound the Bible, that is, they did not know patristic tradition. 118 In posing the riddles which for their solution presuppose a knowledge of this tradition, the Old English poem thus also helped to distinguish between those among the ecclesiastical listeners who had this knowledge at their disposal, and those who had not. 119 This historical background with its conflicts between lay magnates, clerici nobiles and reformers gives a new and fuller meaning to Exodus. We come to realize that the poem gave an answer interested in a very special solution to the problem as to how the relationship between these groups in the late tenth century should be regulated; we may also now perceive that the poem as we have it, originated in this context as an answer to an urgent social problem. 120

116

117

118

Cf. Vita Oswaldi, in Historians, ed. Raine, pp.427, 443 for the events; cf. Fisher, 264, for clerici nobiles or dignissimi. Cf. again Vita Oswaldi, in Historians, ed. Raine; Aelfric's life of Aethelwold in Three Lives of English Saints, ed. M. Winterbottom, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 1 (Toronto, 1972), pp. 22-4; for the latter, cf. also EHD I, 2nd ed., pp. 907-8. For one piece of historical evidence as to the differences in learning, see Aelfric's remark in his preface to Genesis that neither he himself nor his teacher could, first, distinguish between the meaning of the Old and that of the New Testament: Crawford, ed., p. 76.

119

120

Historical research in the witness lists and the status as well as the provenance of abbots and bishops, as to whether they were reformed monks or not, may help towards a better solution of this problem. As one consequence of my interpretation within this historical context, we may also now compare what has been called the exclusive style of Exodus, to what Dr. Lapidge has called the 'hermeneutic style' of Anglo-Latin poetry in the tenth century; cf. his "The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature," ASE, 4 (1975), 67-111.

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We may, then, finally state that the neo-exegetical model of understanding, and the practice of neo-exegetical interpretation, does not deal with a text in dialogue communication; within this model, it is impossible to perceive that a text was composed as an answer to a social problem. Neo-exegetical criticism only offers patristic explanations of details of a text: as far as the Old English Exodus is concerned, neo-exegetical critics of our day will tell us what Aelfric or others might have said, if asked about details of the poem; but this does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of the text. Because of the critic's limited interests of perception, neo-exegetical criticism is unable to demonstrate that the details it tries to explain (in our case, the use of riddles in the structure of Exodus) provoked questions, forced the poem's first audience to communicate about meanings. It follows that neo-exegetical practice of interpretation is as insufficient as its theory; consequently, the claim of this school to have an objective theory, and a practice of interpretation which establishes meaningful understanding at its disposal, must be rejected.

MARIANNE BROWN

Spenserian Technique : The Shepheardes Calender

This study explores certain fundamental principles or modes of organisation underlying the text of The Shepheardes Calender. T o the extent that these principles have previously been identified, they have, I suggest, been inadequately correlated. But in some respects and at some levels they seem simply to have been overlooked, and their implications with them. The Shepheardes Calender is a rich, multi-layered — and to some of us haunting — poem of substantial length (over 2,000 lines),1 and to attempt to delineate its total structure in an essay of this kind would be quite impracticable. My own real concern here is with what may be called, in a sense to be defined below, the many interlocking aspects of the poem's 'circularity'. But at least two further types of organisation {linear progression, and linking of successive units) also inform both the Calender as a whole and its individual eclogues, and it may help clear the ground a little to give some attention to these first. In many respects, therefore, this essay proper may be regarded as beginning with the discussion of 'Circular Structure' below. What comes before, is preface — though I think a necessary preface if a fully balanced picture of Spenser's compositional practice is to be achieved. "In addition to the pattern of repeated cycles", suggested S. K. Heninger, "Spenser traced another, straight-line pattern, a pattern of continuous decline . . . " 2 Linear progression tends perhaps to be taken for granted in most forms of literature. The hero or protagonist moves from a specified position to a definite end, passing through recognizable stages 1

1

2209 lines excluding the emblems. Quotations from The Shepheardes Calender in this study follow the Variorum Edition, which is based on the first Quarto Edition of 1579. The only exception is the name of the sixth eclogue, where I have preferred the first Quarto reading ' J u n e ' rather than the 'Iune' of the Variorum Edition. See Bibliography items 6 and 7. Heninger, 318.

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The circular structure of The Shepheardes Calender, using the 2 :1 proportion of the diapason in its disposition of the plaintive, moral, and recreative eclogues.

Overall structure Plaintive

Moral

Substructures 'Januarye'

Poet's arrogance

'Februarie'

Youthful

P r i d e vs " old-age stoicism

'March' Rec. 'Aprili' Moral

Moral

Rec.

'Maye'

Youthful vanity vs. old-age warning

'June'

Poet's humility

'Iulye'

The Fall

'August'

'September'

'October'

Resulting corruption and dualism

'Nouember'

Poet's achievement

'December'

Poet's resignation

- Moral -

Plaintive

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en route. Such progression may assert itself strongly or only vaguely — if strongly, 'thrust' is a better description. In The Shepheardes Calender\ Colin's own linear progression is set within the movement of nature's annual cycle. His development clearly shows in the change from youthful feelings of despair and frustration in the opening eclogue, where he breaks his pipe, to his alienation — from himself as well as from society — and desire to revenge himself on his rival ('June' 14-6, 102-4), and then on to the final reconciliation when he hangs his pipe on a tree before his December death. The man who had been a "pale and wanne" shepherd's boy whose sheep's "ill government" witnessed to his neglect of his pastoral duties, finally becomes the tender and responsible shepherd whose speech reveals his profound concern for his flock: 3 Gather ye together my little flocke, My little flock, that was to me so liefe: Let me, ah lette me in your folds ye lock, Ere the breme Winter breede you greater griefe. ('December' 145-8)

However, below the immediate surface of the changing seasons and the descriptions of Colin's changing attitudes, we find an interlaced network of themes related to the traditional roles of the shepherd in pastoral poetry. (All the male characters, actual or referred to, save for one neatherd, are shepherds. Algrind is a shepherd 'great in gree', Dido is a great shepherd's daughter, and she herself clearly has many people in her care. The biblical and mythological characters are likewise represented as shepherds : Adam was a shepherd, as was Paris, the shepherd of Ida.) But the development of these themes can be better understood if one distinguishes between the shepherd as lover, as poet, and as pastor.4 Naturally, the three roles are not enacted in total separation from each other: it is, after all, the unhappy lover who usually neglects his sheep in favour of his poetry. — As Willye says in 'August', "Never knewe I lovers sheepe in good plight." Nor can any classification of the eclogues in terms of these three shepherd-categories exclude the possibility of alternative schemati-

3

4

It will be apparent that I do not share Prof. Heninger's view of a continuous decline in the case of Colin. The distinction is a common one. See, for instance, MacLure, p. 68; Durr, 270; Hamilton, 177; Dixon, 153.

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sation: not least because the two themes of love and poetry, in particular, are so often inextricably bound up together in individual eclogues. Nevertheless, those eclogues which discuss the shepherd's pastoral duties — 'Februarie', 'Maye', 'Iulye', 'September' — are not concerned with love or poetry, and are differentiated from the rest by their metrical patterns — three being in couplet, and one in quatrain. 5 All these eclogues are classified by E. K. as "moral", as distinct from "plaintive" or "recreative". (He also includes 'October' in the "moral" group, which is justifiable in one way; although in terms of the 'lover'/ 'pastor'/ 'poet' distinction 'October' is better numbered among the stanzaic eclogues dealing with the shepherd as poet.) The progression in these moral eclogues (see Diagram 1) shows evil coming gradually closer to the shepherd's real world. In 'Februarie' youthful arrogance is contrasted with the stoicism of old age, but Pride, the first and foremost of sins, is relegated to the attached fable, whose vegetable kingdom is at a safe distance from the world of men. And the husbandman's sin (in cutting down the oak) comes from faulty judgement, not evil intention. 'Maye' presents temptations in innocent-seeming pleasures, while the fable offers a story of a fall and subsequent destruction caused by an evil fox in disguise. And the kid's death seems more terrible than the oak's, as the kid is young, not old and worn like the oak. Here, then, evil has progressed to the animal kingdom, and temptation is felt as real and dangerous. Mention is made of wolves 'under colour of shepeheards' who 'devoured their owne shepe', but the reference is too general to imply specific dangers. 'Iulye' opens with the description of a "goteheard prowde" whose herd is "straying". Innocence is here left behind as the Fall is explicitly mentioned (lines 67-8), and the contrast between good and bad shepherds is expressed structurally. The pastoral corruption hinted at in parts of 'Maye' and 'Iulye' reaches a climax in 'September', where the wolves are let loose among the flock and where the wickedness of the wolf in the attached tale is matched by the wickedness of the actual pastors whom Diggon met on his travels, where even the "shepheards swayne" may be known by his pride. However, there is an 'upward turn' at the end of this series: Hobbinoll offers consolation and friendship to his fellow-shepheard Diggon, who — in turn — shows real

"Iulye" is the only eclogue composed entirely in quatrain. See below for reasons to include it with the three couplet eclogues.

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gratitude. This makes a clear contrast to the endings of 'Februarie', 'Maye' and 'Iulye'. A similar downhill moral progression is traced in the group of eclogues dealing with the shepherd in his capacity as poet (see Diagram 1). The harmony and unity of the 'Aprill' lay of Elisa is shattered in 'August' with its themes of competition and judgement, where a simple roundelay is overshadowed by an elaborate, Italianate song, and where love is described as an experience that 'cleaues thy soule a sonder'. Then, too, the roundelay of 'August' may be seen as a travesty of the lay of Elisa, since it contains so many verbal echoes from the lay.6 (Another reason why 'Aprill' should be connected with 'August' will be found in my discussion of circular structures below.) In the 'October' discussion of poetry, irreconcilable views are juxtaposed, views concerning the nature of poetry and poetic inspiration, as well as the poet's reward and the nature of love — "lordly" and "lofty" love. Only after the nadir of grief for Dido's death in 'Nouember' does harmony return as she is envisaged among the saints in heaven. A downhill progression is also evident in the 'lover' series (see Diagram 1), for instance in Colin's emblems for 'Januarye' and 'June': "Anchor a speme"a.nd "Gia speme spenta". In these two eclogues, and in 'December', the progression is of course intimately connected with Colin, while 'March' and 'August' present additional illustrations of physical love and its shattering effects. (I have included 'August' in two groups, as the themes of love and poetry are especially interwoven in this eclogue.) It might be objected that since the progression in this series ends with death, there can be no 'upward turn' at the end here. But since we have been told, at the close of the previous eclogue, of the promise held out to shepherds of "fieldes ay fresh . . . grasse ay greene", this death can mean no final end, but a return to man's origin in God. 7 Also, at the time of his

6

7

The name 'Bellibone' for the Queen in 'Aprill' is also used of the 'August' lass, and both ladies are embellished by violets and compared to the sun and the moon. McLane, pp. 342-3, makes this observation but does not think that it amounts to "much evidence that would connect" the two songs. However, he does point to the Astraea-Virgo connection and its association with Elizabeth. See Rastvig, "The Shepheardes Calender," 49-50. I am especially indebted to Professor Rjastvig, my one-time teacher, whose interest in rhetorical schemes and verbal patternings prompted the investigations on which this article is based. I am also much indebted to Mr. R. T. Eriksen, Research Fellow of Oslo University, and to Dr. H. N. Davies of Birmingham University.

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"latter terme" Colin has learned to be a good shepherd, a fact which should not be overlooked in a shepherd's (or shepherds') calendar. In individual eclogues, linear progression is further to be found in the many instances of chronographia, especially at the close of each eclogue. Two thirds of the eclogues contain descriptions or mention of night falling or the sun setting. ( 'September' may be said to have implied chronographia, in the reference to the bed that Hobbinoll offers Diggon.) The exceptions are 'December', where the end of the day is replaced by the end of life; and 'Iulye' and 'October', both of which contain discussions that fail to be resolved. Whether this failure may be connected with the absence of chronographia is difficult to say. All that may be deduced here is that chronographia are a marked feature in some of the eclogues where linear progression is most apparent: in 'Januarye' the poet, after having been introduced as a skilled piper, presents his state of unhappiness, then explains the reasons for this state and proceeds to find someone to blame, after which he expresses his anger by breaking the pipe. The chronographia are explicit. Colin sets out in " a sunneshine day", then drives his sheep homeward at sunset in the "frosty Night'. 'December' too shows clear linear progression in the treatment of Colin's life in terms of the four seasons; so does the dirge for Dido in the catalogue of mourners which gradually intensifies the grief.

L I N K I N G OF S U C C E S S I V E U N I T S It is the consistent verbal linking of the successive units of the poem that is largely responsible, it seems, for the impression of peculiarly easy flow imparted by Spenser's verse. N o units are ever left separate or unsupported by what has gone before or by what follows; everything is tied together to form an interlocked textual fabric. Such an aesthetic technique had, of course, its philosophical counterpart in ideas about the chain of being and in Christian concepts of union with God: only the Devil stood alone. 8 If one takes the Calender as a whole, one thus finds each eclogue linked by verbal echoes or repetitions to the eclogue preceding and to the one following. In order for such echoes to be registered as what they are, 8

Cf. Satan's claim that he is "self-begot, self-raised" in Book V of Paradise Lost, line 860.

Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes

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they must of course relate to recognizable themes; the mere repetition of frequently-occurring words cannot of itself constitute a verbal echo. (A sample of such linking is set out in Diagrams 2 and 3.) Similar patterns have been found in individual eclogues, of both the couplet and the stanzaic kinds. The links show up most clearly in the stanzaic eclogues; the others are divided into paragraphs, of varying length, linked to preceding paragraphs. In general these links are based on two rhetorical figures, the ploce and the polyptoton.9 'June' provides a clear example, shown in the following list of words repeated from stanza to stanza: (1) wandring (2) wander . . . flock (3) flocks . . . night (4) night. . . pleasures (5) love . . . pleasures (6) sing of love (7) singe . . . shame (8) Muses . . . shame (9) Muses . . . strove (10) strive . . . feede (11) fedde . . . wayle hys Woes (12) fledde . . . wayle my woe (13) Flye . . . wexe (14) woxe . . . faithlesse (15) faithlesse. The same pattern is found in 'Aprill', 'October' and 'Nouember'; the framing quatrains also have linking by repetition of rhyme (sometimes actually in the same words, though mostly by sound). An extreme case of such linking occurs in the 'August' sestina, where a preconceived, strict order of repetition obtains. When verbal linking is particularly strong between an opening and a closing unit, however, a 'circular'effect is in a sense created. [Thus, the strongest linking between any two eclogues is that between 'Januarye' and 'December', where the verbal repetitions are actually worked into the text in corresponding stanzas (see Diagram 3). In addition to the verbal links, these two eclogues "are both alike monologues, and agree in the stanza used." 10 ] Let us move on, then, to the rather larger subject of 'circularity' as a Spenserian poetic device.

CIRCULAR STRUCTURE What we are concerned with here, is essentially one particular type of manifestation, in the work of one particularly great poet, of that general correlation, so regularly made by Renaissance poetry, of visible form and poetic meaning. That is to say, our concern is with content made into

9

10

Ploce: "A speedie iteration of one word, but with some little intermission by inserting one or two words betweene." Puttenham, p. 211. Polyptoton: Called traductio by Puttenham, "when ye turne and translace a word into many sundry shapes." P. 213. Greg, p. 91.

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visible form — neatly frustrating the stock content- vs-form dichotomy of the usual literary handbook. Behind such a conception there necessarily lay — inter alia — traditional notions of the poet as a Maker whose act of construction is akin to God's creation of the world (since both acts in mensura et numero etpondere disposuisti — Wisdom of Solomon 11. 21). "Every reader of mediaeval Latin texts", says E. R. Curtius, "knows that few Bible verses are so often quoted and alluded to as this." 11 In the Renaissance the tradition came to full flower in buildings and churches whose own man-created harmony was a visible echo of a celestial and universally valid harmony. But belief in the intrinsic value and spiritually significant perfection of simple geometrical figures like the square and the circle was of course not just the preserve of architects. The age-old notion of the circle and its centre as symbols of God surfaces equally in Pico della Mirandola's definition of felicity, for example, as "the return of each thing to its beginning . . . the end of all things is the same as the beginning of all: one God, omnipotent and blessed." 12 And just as circular structures were praised in architectural treatises, 13 so too the literary critics: Puttenham says of the 'Roundell or Spheare' that it is the "most excellent of all the figures Geometrical . . . for his indefinitenesse having no speciall place of beginning nor end, beareth a similitude with God and eternitie", and quotes as an example of a 'Roundell' a poem where the closing couplet repeats the words of the opening couplet, and contains the same rhyme-words in reverse order. So too in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586)14 William Webbe writes of "pretty rounde verse" and "rounder wordes", actually using The Shepheardes Calenderto illustrate his point. See also Maren-Sofie Rjastvig's comments on Samuel Daniel's A Defence of Ryme.15 Daniel here uses the phrase 'Orbe of order and forme' about rhymed poetry. The analogy with music is, however, perhaps even more obvious in the thinking of the period than the analogy with architecture. Puttenham speaks of musical proportion, and his Arte of English Poesie abounds with references to music, particularly its quantitative aspect. (And in the Calender itself, "music", "pype" and "sing" are synonymous with poetry 11 12 13

» 15

Curtius, p. 504. Pico, p. 148. Alberti's De re aedificatoria (written ab. 1450) contains a eulogy of the circle; see Wittkower, p. 3. Webbe, p. 60. Rastvig, "Frame," 128 and 135.

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and the making of verse.) "Proportion", "harmony", "measure" and "concord" are all key concepts with Puttenham, and carry equally positive values whenever used by the poets. One such musical term, twice used by Spenser himself, is 'diapase'. At one of its occurrences, appropriate architectural terms have just described the castle of Alma, and the allusion to music rounds off the stanza: "All which compacted made a goodly diapase" (The Faerie Queene II. 9.22). The other occurrence comes near the end of The Teares of the Muses: For the sweet numbers and melodious measures, With which I wont the winged words to tie, And make a tunefull Diapase of pleasures. ( 5 4 7 - 9 )

Here, the reference is solely to poetry, while in the previous quotation the allusion is to harmony in general. (The diapason in musical terminology refers to the 2 :1 ratio of the octave: a string halved in length will produce the same tone but in a higher register.) Spenser's own use of 'diapase' (as perhaps also the fact that scholars of the standing of Maren-Sofie R.0Stvig, Alastair Fowler and S. K. Heninger, Jr. have explored the 2 :1 ratio) gives at least prima facie plausibility, then, to the possibility that such a ratio may also be an element in the design of The Shepheardes Calender itself. Professor Rostvig has noted that St Augustine sees the ratio of 2 :1 as prevailing in both the Triune God and His creation, and that this ratio therefore expresses the relationship between the two; 16 while another Scandinavian scholar, Gunnar Qvarnstrem, also referring to St Augustine, has stressed the importance in Renaissance aesthetics of the first four numbers: These numbers are taken to 'create' the harmonic proportions not only of the tonal intervals, but also of the 'times' of a perfect metrical system, in imitation of the cosmic system. . . . in this classical theory of esthetics, consequently, tones and times are inherently treated as self-evident analogues; so that it will be both practical and logical to operate with . . . the 'octave' ( 1 : 2 ) . . . when our concern is with the temporal movement of the epic theme. 17

I quote Qvarnstrom thus fully because, even though The Shepheardes Calender obviously cannot be treated as an epic, "temporal movement" 16

Rijstvig, " A r s , " 46.

17

Qvarnstrem, p. 141.

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is still an inescapable element in any work based like the Calender upon the cycle of the year; and so his point remains. Time moves in a kind of spiral: there is linear progression from year to year, though the cycle of the seasons returns, just as in music the diapason can be considered to move on from register to register. The use of the 2 :1 octave proportion thus becomes a natural and appropriate decorum in a Calender which itself combines cycle with progression. Yet at the same time, the poem's cyclicity will be most naturally reflected, not merely in the assymetric (i.e. graded) 2 :1 proportion, but in the blending of this with a more elaborate utilisation of the kind of verbal and thematic symmetries touched upon in Puttenham's comments on the Roundel. At all events, quite regardless of whether or not this organisational scheme does have such semantic implications it certainly does seem to correspond to something that is really there in the poem, as perhaps a preliminary glance at Diagram 5 (to be more fully discussed later) may show. 18

T H E CALENDER'S

Y E A R AND E . K . ' S " T H R E E R A N C K E S "

As already noted, the cycle of the calendar year of course affords the most obviously 'circular' movement in the poem. In 'Januarye', winter's "wasteful spight" was "almost spent" as Colin led forth his flock, and chronographia relating to the seasons appear persistently though unobtrusively throughout. 19 All of the four months represented in Diagram 4 refer to the wind; apart from these, only 'Februarie' describes "bitter blasts". 'September' especially names the "Westerne wind", which may refer to the equinoctial storms common at this time of the year. The opposite points in the diagram are connected by contrasting treatment of the same theme. In midsummer, when there are no signs of death and Hobbinoll is in his paradise, Colin feels utterly estranged and homeless. In midwinter, when the signs of death prevail in nature, Colin finds peace and is in harmony with all creation. In 'March', at the time of the vernal equinox, Spenser introduces the theme that the shepherd must always be on his guard against danger. (Argus is cited in 'Iulye' as an example of a

18

T h e problem of intention in Spenser's work is taken up in the concluding section of this essay, " S o m e Problems and Distinctions."

19

Mary Parmenter lists many indirect instances, such as February being the proper month for the cutting of trees, Parmenter, 201.

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good shepherd because he was "well eyed".) And in 'September', the theme is extensively discussed by Diggon and Hobbinoll, although they fail to reach agreement. It is worth noting, in this connection, that Spenser had broken with tradition in commencing his Calender in midwinter, rather than with the beginning of spring in March, a month which also partly coincides with the first sign of the zodiac. E. K. gives an explanation for this in 'The generall argument' when he writes about the "incarnation of our mighty Saviour and eternall redeemer . . . who as then renewing the state of the decayed world, and returning the compasse of expired yeres to theyr former date and first commencement." Thus the appearance of Christ in midwinter is a sign which acts seminally to bring forth new life in the spring, so that the end of the year is joined to the beginning in a perfect circle. In Pico's words, "He is the beginning of all things" and "He is the end, rest and absolute felicity of all things."20 Hence, Spenser's break with tradition achieved a double purpose: it gave his poem an implicitly Christian stamp right from the outset, while also pointing-up the contrast between nature's seasonal cycle and man's microcosm. For as S. K. Heninger remarks, "Unlike the year, man when he reaches the final stage cannot repeat the cycle." 21 That similar conditions prevail in nature in both 'December' and 'Januarye' simultaneously helps both to close the circle and to heighten, by contrast, the difference between Colin as a young man and as an old one. In addition Spenser further tied the end to the beginning of his Calender by metrical means: 'December' and 'Januarye' being both plaintive monologues in identical stanza-form. Moreover it seems significant, as Professor Rjastvig noted, that the last eclogue contains twenty-six stanzas and the first eclogue thirteen, so that the ratio of the diapason again links the end to the beginning. Thus Spenser "took the greatest possible care to indicate by formal means that the circle is closed."22 The opening of the Calender's year with January rather than March is simply of a piece with his general carefulness on this point. No attempt to deal with the organization of The Shepheardes Calender should ignore the observation of its first commentator, E. K., and his division of the eclogue into "three formes or ranckes . . . Plaintive,. . . re-

20 21 21

Pico, p. 148. Heninger, 319. Rastvig, " I m a g e s , " pp. 23-4. Also Rastvig, "The Shepheardes Calender, " 6 4 .

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creative . . . or Moral". 23 Diagram 5 sets out a list of all the eclogues with these designations, and if one applies the structural principle of the diapason to the list, one discovers that the eclogues fall into a perfectly regular circular pattern. 'Januarye' matches 'Nouember' and 'December' as being all plaintive; 'Februarie' matches 'September' and 'October' as moral, while the recreative pair 'March' and 'Aprill' match the only remaining recreative eclogue, 'August'; and finally the two moral eclogues flanking 'June' are also matched. That the ratio of the diapason, as we have just seen, also clinches the annual cycle by linking the opening and closing eclogue would seem to give some warrant for this analysis. The 2 :1 ratio then, spelling circularity, can be seen to impose a circular pattern on the eclogue-sequence when analyzed in terms of E. K.'s classification. And it is of course a scheme in which 'June' — the midsummer month — also becomes the central eclogue, plaintive like the beginning and ending ones. Many critics have seen 'June' as the turning point for Colin: it is here he realizes the falseness of Rosalind's love, and it is here he professes poetic humility. Moreover, 'June' is given central accent through the reference to Paradise and Adam as types of Christ and through the homage shown to Spenser's poetic ideal, Chaucer. And finally, as again Professor Rostvig has pointed out, the stanza of 'June' has a circular rhyme pattern. This is "not only beautiful in its perfectly poised symmetry — ababbaba — but may be said to express that return to Paradise that Hobbinoll has achieved." 24 Thus 'June' seems particularly well suited to its central place in the Calender. The two halves of the poem, when it is thus divided, also show circular structures: thus the sequence from 'Januarye' to 'June' constitutes one long substructure, and 'June' to 'December' forms another. Corresponding themes link 'Januarye' with 'June' and 'Februarie' with 'Maye', leaving the two recreative eclogues in central position in the first substructure. The second substructure demonstrates the 2 :1 ratio, as 'June' links up with 'Nouember'/ 'December', and 'Iulye' with 'September'/ 'October', leaving 'August' in the centre as the last recreative eclogue. (See Diagram 5, right-hand side, for the thematic links in the two substructures.)

It has almost seemed the accepted thing for commentators to dismiss E. K.'s critical apparatus as "often pedantic and occasionally inaccurate." See for instance Maclean, p. 424. The focus has been on E. K.'s identity, and only recently have critics begun to pay attention to the worth of his gloss. See, for instance, Cornelius. Restvig, "The Shepheardes Calender," 64.

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It may seem somewhat surprising that the recreative eclogues hold central positions in both substructures, as most critics agree that these are lighter in content than the other eclogues. This makes more sense, however, if one considers the fact that 'Aprill' — with its celebration of Queen Elizabeth — occupies the textual centre in the first six eclogues, with 441 lines preceding and 437 lines following it. And the 'August' roundelay, which of course comes after the Fall described in 'Iulye', contains what I hold to be a travesty of the lay of Eliza. At the textual centre of the first half, Queen Elizabeth as the idealized virgin is offered a milkwhite lamb, while in the second half she may be seen as the "spotted Lambe". Thus there is a clear downhill moral progression here, too, illustrated in the contrast between the two structural centres. The "spotted Lambe" may be a significant part of the 'dark conceit' described by Paul McLane whereby the Calender contains an allegorical warning against the Queen's proposed marriage to the French Duke of Alengon. (The Queen had issued an edict against all mention of the marriage plans, whether in speech or writing.25) For the two prizes given in the 'August' contest are a mazer decorated with carvings, one of which shows a lamb in a wolf's jaws saved by the shepherd at the last moment, and a "spotted Lambe". Thus the prizes, both of which are prominently displayed in the accompanying woodcut, may be seen as symbolizing innocence saved26 and innocence defiled. The prizes are given prominence, too, through being described in the only three complete stanzas of the eclogue, the remaining stanzas being split between the speakers. The significance of the spotted lamb becomes clear when it is contrasted with the milkwhite lamb of 'Aprill', associated with the Virgin Queen, or 'Syrinx daughter without spotte': the spottedla.mb represents what would happen were the Queen to forsake her maidenhead by marrying the French Duke. The other prize would, of course, represent the Queen rescued

25

26

McLane offers a convincing illustration of Spenser's need for caution. Mr. Singleton who printed the Calender had only two months previously been sentenced to have his right hand cut off because of the contents of the book published from his press immediately before The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to he swallowed by an other French manage, etc. by John Stubbs, published in late August or early September 1579. It was a flaming attack on, and warning against, the Alen?on Marriage plans. The printer was pardoned, but not so the writer and the publisher: each lost his right hand. McLane, pp. 18-9. Cf. Stubbs, sig. A. 2.r, "our deere Queene Elizabeth (I shake to speake) ledd blyndfold as a poore Lambe to the slaughter".

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from the marriage by her faithful counsellors. Thus the 'light' recreative eclogues acquire a political significance which would certainly be consistent with their central position. This circular structure based on E. K.'s three ranks can, furthermore, be seen to be supported by verbal echoes and repetitions in the eclogues linked. The verbal links for the overall structure of the Calender are set out in Diagram 6, and for the two long substructures in Diagram 7. The repetitions all relate to important themes, and in a few cases even occur in exactly or nearly corresponding lines, as in 'Januarye' and 'Nouember'/ 'December', in Diagram 6 (remembering that 'December' is twice as long as 'Januarye'), and in the 'March' and 'August' references to the "ranckling wound". Diagram 7 shows the exact correspondence between line numbers in 'Januarye' and 'June'. The connection between the three central recreative eclogues is brought out by the references to Cupid in the words "shaft", "darte" and "arrow". It is striking how well the structure of the Calender as a whole, as described above and set out in Diagrams 5, 6 and 7, consorts with the many overall structures within the individual eclogues — the stanzaic eclogues in particular. These are often framed by two opening and one closing stanza, with the remaining stanzas arranged in a pattern of recessed symmetry around one or two central stanzas. This centre is frequently linked to the beginning and/or the ending, while substructures tend to centre roughly on the one-quarter and three-quarter points. The centres of these substructures will usually be found to relate to each other in treating the same theme, or variations of it.

CIRCULAR STRUCTURE IN INDIVIDUAL ECLOGUES I Stanzaic eclogues In discussing the formal technique of the Calender, it is natural to make a distinction between the stanzaic and the couplet eclogues. (The latter, as I define them, being 'Februarie', 'Maye', 'Iulye', 'September'.) And this stanza/couplet distinction will be found to correspond with the distinction made earlier in this essay between eclogues concerned with the shepherd as Lover and/or Poet, and those 'moral' eclogues concerned with the shepherd as Pastor. Of the four 'couplet' eclogues, 'Iulye' is however actually written in undivided quatrains, rhyming abab, but with only alternate lines furnished

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with initial capital letters; the 'feel' of this is quite unlike normal stanzaic verse, and much more analogous to that generated by a run of couplets. Indeed, if one takes the visual cue of the alternate capitalisation seriously (and I do not believe it to be accidental for the Facsimile Edition shows it to be duplicated nowhere else in the poem except in the light August roundelay) then what one has here is, in effect, unusually long-line couplets decorated with an additional internal rhyme. When, simply as a convenient shorthand, I refer to 'couplet eclogues' in the course of this discussion, therefore, I include 'Iulye' without further apology. But let us consider the stanzaic eclogues first. Every stanzaic eclogue can be shown to exhibit an overall circular structure that echoes and resonates in (and is reinforced by) sub- and micro-structures within the body of the eclogue. It is not, however, possible to offer a demonstration of this for every eclogue within the confines of these pages, although I have done so elsewhere. 27 Here, we must confine ourselves simply to sufficient exemplification to make comparison possible between the structural technique of the stanzaic and of the couplet eclogues. And what will emerge, I suggest, is that both types of eclogue in fact utilise essentially the same structural techniques, the differences being only: 1) that in the couplet eclogues these techniques tend to be used in a more casual, c rule-of thumb' way; and 2) that where this is not so, the symmetries of those eclogues not conveniently segmented for the reader by stanza-divisions prove merely to be less immediately visible, less " o n the surface" — at least until we have grasped the inherent 'paragraphing' of an eclogue of this latter type. For initial demonstration, then, I have selected — without there being any necessity in the choice, for examples f r o m any of the remaining sections of the poem would have served just as well — 'Januarye', 'June', 'December' and a glance at 'August', from among the stanzaic (i.e., shepherd-as-lover/poet) exlogues, and then go on to the four 'moral' (i.e., shepherd-as-pastor) couplet eclogues. The reader is therefore warned that we are now about to embark on a sequence of relatively detailed analyses, not perhaps always all equally exciting in their detail — yet a necessary exercise, I think, if one is really to get a sense of the articulation of Spenser's work clearly into one's mind. And in so doing one gains also a better sense for much else in Renaissance literature too: for instance, for

Brown, passim.

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those similarly casual-seeming, yet precise patternings that sometimes inform the columns of Elizabethan dramatic blank verse quite as much as they do the columns of Spenser's eclogue-couplets.

'Januarye'

(It is in 'Januarye' that Colin disdains the love of Hobbinoll, with whom he comes face to face in 'June' and whose love he finally accepts with gratitude in 'December'.) 'Januarye' is typical of the stanzaic eclogues in its overall structure: strong verbal and/or thematic linking between beginning and end, a central point as usual emphasized either through a reference to some deity or to poetry (as here) ; 28 and a pattern of recessed symmetry (abcxcba) around that central point (see Diagram 8). The two stanzas in the beginning and the one at the end which frame Colin's "dolefull dittie" are all in the third person, while the intervening stanzas are in the first person. The substructure is framed by two stanzas preceding and four stanzas following — thus this, too, is framed by the ratio of the diapason. Note also how the substructure gives added emphasis to the overall structure, as the central stanzas in both structures contain the tree image. Stanza 6 apostrophizes the "naked trees" while in stanza 7 Colin sees himself in terms of a tree. (The tree image is indeed an important one in the whole Calender. It returns, with religious overtones, in 'Februarie', and again in the central stanza of the lay of Dido, and finally in 'December'.) It is, in fact, frequently the substructures which best illustrate the particular themes of each eclogue. The five-stanza passage in 'Januarye' beginning "Thou barrein ground . . . Art made a myrrhour" (Stanza 4) shows how Colin's state of mind reflects the seasonal frost and barrenness. It opens with the description of the ground wasted by "wynters stormy state", proceeds to the tree image and ends with the comparison of Colin's mind to his flock's appearance. The structure here is one of progression contained within recessed symmetry: a pattern of paired reflec-

All the four eclogues where Colin is actually present have poetry at the centre: " M y timely buds with wayling all are wasted :/The blossome, which my braunch of youth did beare,/With breathed sighes is blowne away, and blasted." ( 'Januarye' 38-40) "And from the fountaine, where they [the Muses] sat around,/Renne after hastely thy siluer sound." ('June* 60-1) "All Musick sleepes, where death doth leade the daunce." ('Nouember' 105) " T o make fine cages for the Nightingale" ( 'December' 79).

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tions obtains throughout these five stanzas, framed by the statements that love contains both joy and pain. Stanzas 4, 6 and 8 contain apostrophes to objects in nature, while the intervening stanzas describe the poet: the second line in each of these begins "My . . . " and this word occurs in almost every line. A glance at the five stanzas shows that there is indeed here a mirror effect, in the description of Colin himself in the same terms used to depict nature. And the very phrase in Stanza 4 "Art made a myrrhour" is neatly illustrated by the rhetorical figure employed in the last line of Stanza 8: With mourning pyne I, you with pyning mourne.

One cannot, of course, prove that the pun on 'Art' and the self-referring phrase in line 20 ("Thou barrein ground . . . Art made a myrrhour") are intentional, but such a device would certainly be in keeping with the general design of these five stanzas.

'June' 'June' shows very clear thematic pairing of stanzas. This pairing is to be found elsewhere, too, but not with the same consistent regularity throughout an entire eclogue as here. The figure below shows linking by theme, and this has been underpinned by verbal linking of various kinds. Both the introductory stanzas, and the concluding one, specifically name Colin and describe his misery; the "hilles and dales" of the third stanza are matched by the "hylls, or dales" of stanza 14, both these stanzas also having two succeeding lines beginning with "And . . . ", while the end rhymes of stanza 4 match those of stanza 13. Stanzas 6 and 11 describe how Colin could "sing of love" and how Tityrus was the "head Of shepheards all, that bene with love ytake". Stanzas 7 and 10 refer to "rymes", "song" and "frame" while the central stanzas 8 and 9 describe the Muses. The textual centre in stanza 8 (which is both preceded and followed by fifty-nine lines) contains the climax: Hobbinoll's praise of Colin's poetry. Colin's plaint then takes over, and in the downward movement away from the centre Colin now sees the subjects previously mentioned in a contrasting light. This contrast is most clearly seen if the b-rhyme of stanza 4 is compared to the same b-rhyme of stanza 13. In the former stanza,

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Overall thematic structure in

'June' Frame 2 :1

Stanzas

1 & 2

Introduction

3 & 4

Hobbinoll's paradise

5 & 6

Colin sings of love, but to no avail (Circular structure)

7 & 8

Hobbinoll's hyperbolic praise of Colin's poetry

9 & 10 Colin's humble appraisal of own poetic powers 11 & 12 Tityrus succeeds where Colin failed (Circular structure) 13 & 14 Colin's flower (Rosalind) turned to weed 15

Conclusion

three of the four words carrry positive meanings, while in the latter stanza all four words carry negative meanings. 'December' 'December' shows a similar pairing of stanzas around the two, 13 and 14, that occupy central place. Among the more interesting verbal echoes that link the stanzas on either side of the central pair, are the rhetorical figures of anaphora and parison (i.e., successive lines beginning with the same word, and repetition of the same structure). However, in 'December' the reader is more likely to focus on the sequence of four substructures which runs through the main part of the eclogue — Colin's review of his life in terms of the seasons. This review begins in stanza 4, following the invocation to Pan. His "ioyfull spring" is described in five stanzas forming the first substructure. Appropriately, autumn — where Colin reaps what he has sown — also contains five stanzas: "Of all the

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seede, that in my youth was sowne,/Was nought but brakes and brambles to be mowne." (101-2) The ratio between summer and winter is 8 :4, or the diapason. (As will be seen from Diagram 9, this division into 5 + 8 + 5 + 4 stanzas can also be made on internal evidence, in the form of symmetrically placed verbal links.) The centres of all these substructures are concerned with death, progressing from the oblique hints conveyed by the mention of the Raven and the "ghastlie owle" in "her grievous ynne". 29 Significantly, in his youthful daring Colin tries to chase away death — "dislodge the Raven of her neste", whilst in his more mature "Sommer season" he accepts the owl's existence beside the chanting birds that lulled him asleep (stanza 12). These lines of course anticipate the "eternall sleepe" of stanza 15, the companion stanza to this one. Next we come to death in the vegetable world, where the withered flowers and the dried-up roots symbolize the drying out of the springs of poetic inspiration. Then in the section on winter, or old age, death comes nearer and is explicitly mentioned — first as "dreerie death" and then as "timely death". The two further allusions to death outside these centres occur in the last two stanzas of summer and are thus placed in the middle of the year, "eternall sleepe" and "thy deathes wound". The latter represents the death-in-life inflicted by the dart of love (which is referred to intermittently throughout the Calender). Thus, different aspects of death are brought out, so that we are made to realise that death inheres in, or is potentially present in, every stage of life. The winter section of 'December' is exceptional in that the present tense is used throughout. The opening line of this section (127) begins "So now", emphasized by the anaphora closing the stanza "So nowe . . . so now". This makes for a dramatic immediacy matched only twice in the other plaintive eclogues — towards the end of 'Nouember', when the poet describes the vision of Dido in heavenly bliss, and in the 'Januarye' stanzas on winter, 4-8. In fact, these two passages from 'December' and 'Januarye' are similar in that both blend natural imagery with descriptions of Colin's mental or physical state. In 'Januarye' he likens his state to that of "naked trees . . . clothd with mosse and hoary frost" and in 'December' finds his head "besprent with hoary frost". 29

The raven of course is a notoriously bad omen in literature, and instances of the owl symbolizing death are likewise legion. An example from The Faerie Q ueene, II, vii, 23 combines the use of both: "And after him Owles and Nightrauens flew,/The hatefull messengers of heauy things,/Of death and dolour telling sad tidings."

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The progression in this last winter section is readily perceived if one looks at the use of "My" and the other words connected with it. The poet begins by describing his approaching winter and its stern and stormy nature in general terms. Then in stanza 23 he describes how his "face", "head" and "eie" are marked by "eld". Next, his Muse is said to be "hoarse and weary", and Colin resigns his role as poet — hanging his pipe upon a tree. This contrasts strongly with his breaking of the pipe in 'Januarye' and testifies to his greater maturity. The last stanza of the group shows that Colin has now learned to be a good shepherd, and the picture given the reader in the central stanzas (13 and 14) is confirmed. His last thought before the final Adieux, is to see that his sheep are well protected against the coming "balefull breath" of winter. He talks to them in endearing terms, "my little flocke". Colin has taken up his responsibility at last; the bitterness and the spite are gone; what is left is regret for wasted opportunities. But not regret only: the beautiful Adieux show love and gratitude, as well as recognition of true friendship not appreciated before. It is an achievement which makes a not altogether negative ending to a life — or a poem.30 'August' Finally, let us turn to a microstructure in 'August' which leads attention towards what has been termed "deviation from an established metrical norm"?1 This microstructure centres on the bad shepherd Paris, first introduced in 'Iulye' where in contrast to the good shepherds he "left hys flocke, to fetch a lasse, / whose loue he bought to deare." So when he is mentioned in 'August' as "The shepherd of Ida, that iudged beauties Queene" his identity has already been firmly established.

30

31

Rastvig's essay "The Shepheardes Calender" seems to be the only previous one to stress a positive view of the conclusion. The end is usually interpreted negatively by critics. Rjastvig first noted the deliberate use of this device. See her essay on Milton's Nativi t y Ode in Fair Forms, particularly pp. 61-2. Also E. Bjorvand's and H. N. Davies's essays in the same volume, pp. 26-7 and p. 115.

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75

Microstructure in 'August'32 line 130

Areede

[first word of line]

131

Fayth of m y s o u l e [6 lines]

138

The shepheard of Ida [6 lines]

145

F a y t h o f my s o u l e

146

areede

—>

The couplet at the centre of this microstructure is interesting because it properly belongs somewhere else in the eclogue. The ninth stanza consists of four lines only (49-52), the couplet that should end the stanza being omitted. The 'missing' couplet may be found in lines 137-8, which are inserted between two regular stanzas, and therefore do not fit in with the stanza scheme. (The two separate parts of this 'stanza' are verbally linked: line 52 has "iudge . . . king" while line 138 has "iudged . . . Queene".) This deviation from the established metrical norm seems an apt comment on the shepherd whose appearance in history meant war and disruption of the normal order. One might, however, ask why Spenser should want to disturb the smooth run of his stanzas only for the sake of an old example which was well enough known anyway. This may, in fact, very well be another instance of Spenser's 'dark conceit': the mention of 'beauties Queene' and Paris would not be unfamiliar to Elizabethan readers. There were descriptions, both in painting and literature, of Elizabeth as the fourth beauty to whom the golden apple is awarded; 33 and it would not be a long step from this identification to an identification of Paris as the Duke of Alen^on. Paris was supposed to be a younger son, like the Duke, and both of them "left hys flocke, to fetch a lasse." Also, it was feared that the Duke, like Paris, might cause war, "by drawing 32 33

See the Explanatory Note on the Diagrams concluding this essay. See the painting, dated 1569, reproduced in Yates, plate 9a, also p. 63.

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into England a great spark of that family which hath ben a fyrebrand in Europe." 3 4 Such an identification would certainly explain Spenser's deviation and would furthermore tie up with the general theme of judgement in this eclogue, as — by this interpretation — the deliberate disturbance of order in the poem reflects the poet's judgement of the Duke. (A comparable deviation from the metrical norm in 'March', where the last stanza is left incomplete, seems similarly accountable for as a comment on Willye's immature attitude to time, and the disruptive force of physical love described in the poem. 35 )

II The Couplet eclogues: Shepherd as pastor These are eclogues — 'Februarie', 'Maye', 'Iulye' and 'September' — concerned with gradually intensified failings and corruption. Their overall structuring, except in the case of 'September', is relatively weak, though not non-existent, and the main weight of interest lies in their pointing-up of meaning and theme by the use of substructures. 'Februarie' simply has a minimal chronographic frame — four couplets at beginning and end referring to the cold weather, all spoken by Cuddie — while 'Maye', like 'Iulye', has only about four elements symmetrically disposed about its centre. And even the firmness of the overall design in 'September' is relieved by a casual-seeming discrepancy between the lengths of its introduction and conclusion (a discrepancy which may or may not reflect the disorder which entered into Diggon's life when he set out on his travels). 36

M 35

36

Stubbs, sig. D. 8 V . The emblems for 'March' point towards such an interpretation. In view of Spenser's allegorical warning against the Alenfon marriage plans referred to in this chapter, one might wonder whether he chose to give the emblems for 'March' in English (all the other emblems being in foreign languages) in order to make use of the word-play on 'Gaule' as an allusion to the French Duke. D a y is normally referred to as an eclogue begins, and/or night as it ends. T h e beginning of 'September' brings them together: " F o r day, that was, is wightly past,/ And now at earst the dirke night doth hast." If this is, as I believe it to be, a comment on the autumn equinox falling in September, does it then also hint at the grounds for the greater regularity of this eclogue? I do not think so myself. But it is the kind of question that will often repay the asking in the Calender, nevertheless.

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'September' 'September* consists of Diggon's tale of misery, framed by 12 introductory couplets and 9 concluding ones, with certain verbal echoes between them. (Sixteen lines preface "Each thing imparted is more eath to have" and sixteen lines follow "all this long tale / nought easeth the care"; and there are some rhyme-echoes too.) In Diggon's tale-plus-commentary, 44 couplets precede his summing-up of bad shepherds, and 45 succeed it. 'September' can thus be described as an eclogue filled, and centered, by commentary on an 'inset tale'. The inset fable, or tale, plays indeed an important part in this group of eclogues. The first two ('Februarie' and 'Maye') contain fables about plants and animals respectively, while the last two ( 'Iulye' and 'September') have tales about real shepherds held up as ideals, Algrind and Roffynn. The tales form separate substructures which may themselves contain several microstructures. ( 'Iulye' is an exception here, as its tale is so short as to afford one microstructure only.) The shepherds' discussions which lead up to the telling of the tales are likewise firmly structured: in 'Februarie' with one, and in 'Maye' with two, separate substructures. In the 'Februarie' tale, one finds Spenser's characteristic linking between beginning and middle, and between middle and end. The centre here is marked by anaphora, echoing Thenot's earlier description of youth, "Whose witt is weaknesse, whose wage is death, / Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce." It is amusing, too, to see Thenot's advance recommendation of his tale linked with Cuddie's subsequent reaction to it: for all his powers, Tityrus could not bridge this generation gapThat gap still exists in 'Maye' but is of less interest there, Palinode being young in inclinations only — as Piers says, "We tway bene men of elder witt." 'Maye' is an eclogue that particularly repays really detailed structural analysis. That the details of such an analysis, as they accumulate, tend to make for somewhat slow reading — at least, until one is ready to put the pieces together again — is of course unfortunate. Yet there is really no other way to develop a proper understanding of quite how vital a part Spenser's continuous but unobtrusive orchestration plays in the (often too-facilely) celebrated music of his verse. It will be recalled that 'Maye' falls into three parts, and it is worth keeping these distinct in one's mind. The first part is dominated by Palinode's description of the seasonal festivities, while Piers sounds the moral note. In the second^zit the two have one long speech apiece, the theme

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being, broadly speaking, the right way of life for shepherds. Piers says at the beginning, "But shepheards . . . Mought not live ylike, as men of the laye." (75-6) And Palinode puts the question in the middle of his speech, " H o w shoulden shepheardes Hue, if not so?" The question is a real one for Palinode, and his predicament poses the poignant problem of how to preserve human happiness in a fallen world. — Central in this second part is a triplet, the first of three in this eclogue.

Substructure in the second part of 'Maye' (lines 73-163). line [17 couplets]

107—8

sbeepe / keepe [4 couplets: shepherds in golden age]

117-9

[TRIPLET] But. . . long prosperitie: . . . insolencie . . . securitie [4 couplets: shepherds in sin and corruption]

128-9

sbeepe / keepe [17 couplets]

The third part of 'Maye' is taken up by the tale of the fox and the kid, with the structure of the tale placing at the centre the objects of temptation which caused the Kid's downfall. See Diagram 10. (There is a marked similarity in organization and structure between the tales of 'Februarie' and 'Maye', and other links between these two eclogues are shown in Diagrams 5 and 7.) The divisions between the three parts of 'Maye' are marked by the verbal pointers "none" and "end" or "ended". The first part closes with "Good is no good, but if it be spend: / God giveth good for none other end." (71-2) And the second part ends "Let none mislike of that may not be mended: / So conteck soone by concord mought be ended."{162-3) The third part opens "Shepheard, I list none

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79

Calender

. . . " and the tale closes "Such end had the Kidde . . . And such end..." (302-4, my italics throughout). Thus at the final conclusion "end" occurs twice. The pointers thus almost take on the characteristics of stage directions. But now let us alter our picture of the third part of 'Maye' a little. For if we let the two triplets here be our pointers, the centre of the tale would then come at the mother's speech of warning to her kid (215-26). This speech is marked by double anaphora and repeats the rhyme-word 'mee' from linked couplets on either side. It may seem, therefore, that we have a case of two centres here: one a centre by line-count focussing on worldly temptations, the other the 'true' centre, midway between the two triplets, focussing on the loving mother's advice to her kid.37 As this eclogue is concerned with false appearances — not only the fox's but also that of the springtime pleasures yearned for by Palinode — it would seem fitting to work in two such centres. Substructure in 'Maye' tale (lines 182-263) showing 'true' centre (Compare with Diagram 10.)

line 182-4

TRIPLET

191-2

God blesse the poore Orphane, as he mought me And send thee ioy of thy iollitee. [Mother to Kid]

18 c 193-4

payneI twaine

221-4

For thy my Kiddie be ruld by mee, And never give trust to his trecheree And if he chaunce come, when I am abroade

241-2

braine/ payne

|

[Mother's warning] -

247-8

Ah deare Lord, and sweete Saint Charitee, That some good body woulde once pitie mee. 18 c [Fox to Kid]

261-3 37

TRIPLET

The mother is, in fact, not as loving in deed as in word. Her action as she "Yode forth abroade vnto the greene wood,/To brouze, or play", is "suspiciously like those of the May revelers at the opening of the poem". See Hoffman, p. 112. This aspect further adds to the theme of false appearances.

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Both diagrams show only one link in the form of identical endwords, "twaine" in the 'false' structure and "payne" in the 'true' structure. These words aptly describe, respectively, the fox's falseness ("For deceitfull meaning is double eyed", 254) and the mother's "old sorowe" and "great mone" (210 and 301). It may be opportune to stay with 'Maye' a little longer, however, to examine the remaining substructures and ask whether there is any significant interplay between them within the context of the larger structures and sections. Four substructures in 'Maye' line 11-2

dight/light [10 couplets]

33-4

. . . lovely Nymphs. (O that I were there,

[Palinode]

To helpen the Ladyes their Maybush beare) [10 couplets] 55-6

spight/ delight

130-1

sorowe/borrowe [4 couplets]

140-1

But of all burdens, that a man can beare, Moste is, a fooles talke to beare and to heare.

[Palinode]

[4 couplets]

150-1 227-8

borrowe / sorrowe sonne/done [9 couplets]

247-8

Ah deare Lord, and sweete Saint Charitee, That some good body woulde once pitie mee. [7 couplets + 1 triplet]

266-7

donne / sonne

[The fox's false words]

Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes Calender

245-6

81

hys pack / Alack [8 couplets + 1 triplet]

266-7

I am a poore Sheepe, albe my coloure donne; For with long traueile I am brent in the sonne. [9 couplets]

286-7

[The fox's false words and appearance]

knack/ his packe

These substructures are clearly connected: the first two centres share the same rhyme and the endword "beare". In the first central couplet (33-4) Palinode longs to help the ladies "beare" the "Maybush", and in the next couplet "beare" is used of a burden he wants to lay down. The first instance represents temptation in innocent-seeming pleasures, whilst the second represents the danger of false reasoning through humorous arguments. (Palinode is unaware of the give-away in his three examples of "thinges to beare" in lines 134-9: they all represent excessive desires.) Two elements in the overall structure of this eclogue — "withouten reason" and "good reason" (endwords in 146 and 177) — thus connect with this theme. (The elements are both placed at a distance of six lines from the textually and thematically central paragraph in 152-71.) The last two substructures are from the tale and show the fox's false words and appearance, which fooled the kid. This juxtaposition brings out Palinode's weakness, which thus becomes obvious: although his arguments in favour of concord rather than 'conteck' seem quite reasonable, he is incapable of right reasoning as long as he judges by false appearances and cannot distinguish between seemingly sensible but facile argumentation on the one hand and serious moral issues on the other. The spatial relationships between these various substructures may be seen from Diagram 11, which shows the numerical precision with which the structural centres have been placed. The two substructures outlined in heavy ink in the middle column, centre on statements by the 'good' characters, Piers and the goat. 'Iulye' is above all an eclogue about contrasts: initially, the physical contrast between hills and lowland, although this soon turns into a discussion of good and bad shepherds. Foremost among these is "the great God Pan"who, in characteristic syncretistic fashion, is celebrated for his triumph on "Mount Oliuet". (The gloss to 'Maye' explains that "Great

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pan" is Christ.) The two quatrains about him here (49-56) constitute the only explicit reference to Christ's triumph and redemption in the whole Calender. It is perhaps worth noting, although she herself has not done so, that these are the lines which conclude the first half of the period seen by Maren-Sofie Rjastvig as in "medio annorum", that is, the two central eclogues 'June' and 'Iulye'. 38 This direct mention of Christ is then followed up with several indirect references through biblical types, Abel and Moses in particular. (Others include the sun as a type of Christ as judge, and the "brethren twelve" who may be seen as a type of the twelve apostles.)39 The juxtaposition of contrasts comes to a head in lines 65-8, in a quatrain which brings together Paradise and the Fall.40 Significantly, these lines come at the exact textual centre by line-count of the entire Calender. One separate substructure in 'Iulye' comes right at the beginning in the reference to the zodiacal sign for July, the lion. Appropriately, as this is the seventh month, the structure takes up seven quatrains. The placing of the "Sonne" in central position here rather than the zodiacal sign (which occupies the centre in a similar substructure in 'Nouember') would certainly support a typological reading of this passage. Two substructures in 'Iulye' and 'September' are framed by the same phrase — "seely sheepe" — and have at their centres first an example of a bad shepherd, and secondly a type of Satan, namely the "bigge Bulles of Basari'.41 The 'Iulye' structure occurs in Thomalin's long speech where he lists many examples of good shepherds; but as it happens, his one bad shepherd occupies the central place — surely a telling sign of his failure to discriminate properly between right and wrong. 38

39

40

41

Rostvig, "Structure," pp. 57 and 62-3. Also Rostvig, "The Shepheardes Calender," 57. Rastvig, "The Shepheardes Calender," 67. Prof. Rastvig argues that from the placing of these references in the middle of the Calender, it follows that they "should be seen as types of events associated with Christ". Whilome there used shepheards all to feede theyr flocks at will, Till by his foly one did fall, that all the rest did spill. ( 'Iulye' 65-8) E. K. glosses the four lines so explicitly that these two central themes cannot be overlooked. See Psalm 22: 12-3. See also St Augustine's comments, in his Expositions on this passage in his sermons on the Psalms.

Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes Calender

Substructure in 'Iulye' (lines

5-32).

line 5-7

shepheards swayne / playne

6

come vp

13-5

fast/hast

17-20

the Sonne . . . golden Diademe

21-3

fast /hast

31

C o m e downe

30-2

shepherds swayne / sayne

Substructure in 'Iulye' (lines

93-204).

line [3 quatrains] 105

seely sheepe

130-5

sheepe/ keepe . . . keepe/ sheepe [Antimetabole]

130-2

simple . . . f l o c k e

145-52

thilk shephearde [of] Ida . . . a lasse, whose loue he bought to deare

166-8

flocks . . . simple

168-72

simple . . . theyr weede . . . Their weedes . . . simplesse [Antimetabole]

190

seely sheepe [3 quatrains]

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The central statement here clearly echoes the quatrains about Pan who "bought his flocke so deare": which draws attention to the fact that here it is the bad shepherd who occupies the central position. It is interesting, too, to find that the figure antimetahole has been employed in each passage, thus constituting a rhetorical link. The first instance shows a perfect mirror-effect where Abel's humility is described, whereas the second instance (where the chiastic pattern is less regular) occurs at the point of ironic transition, from the simplicity of true shepherds to the shepherds who live like lords. The relevant quatrains are quoted here to illustrate the difference: As meeke he was, as meeke mought be, Simple, as simple sheepe, Humble, and like in eche degree The flocke, which he did keepe. Often he vsed of hys keepe a sacrifice to bring, Nowe with a Kidde, now with a sheepe the Altars hallowing. (129-35, my italics) A n d simple w a s theyr

weede.

But now (thanked be God therefore) the world is well amend, Their weedes bene not so nighly wore, such simplesse mought them shend. (168-72, my italics)

The substructures of 'September' must be left to the reader's own exploration: consider lines 184-229, for example, or 59-145 (and, within that segment, 59-101 and 104-145). But the use of anaphora in Diggon's characterisation of the foreign shepherds, "Or they will buy his sheep out of the cote / Or they willcarven the shepheards throte" (40-1), and Hobbinoll's symmetrically-disposed six-line speech (68-73, with losse in the opening and closing line) framing the essential "pastoral assertion", 42 lead us on to the subject of microstructures, so often used in this group of eclogues to emphasize points of view expressed by the shepherds in their debates. The shepherds' invectives are in fact frequently worked into microstructures where the poet's use of rhetorical figures is fairly evenly balanced between the two protagonists: one instance of this (in 'Februarie') 42

Smith, p. 45.

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being the microstructure extending over the 22 lines centered around Cuddie's accusation that Thenot's "Lambes bene starved with cold / All for their Maister is lustlesse and old" : Microstructure in 'Februarie' line

73-4

bent / Kent

[4 couplets by Cuddie] 83-4

93-4

[Cuddie's accusation] cold / old [4 couplets by Thenot] Kent / bent

Anaphora, compar, and antimetabole will be found to be here matched against anaphora, compar and epanados — and even that still does not exhaust the rhetorical arsenal of these structurally tight-packed lines! But perhaps we should conclude this look at the Shepherd-as-Pastor sections of the Calender by returning again to the matter of deviations from the established metrical norm, already noticed above when discussing the stanzaic eclogues. For here again we find (disregarding 'Iulye' for the present) some marked deviations from the established metrical norm. Thus 'Februarie' has one unrhymed line and one half line, as well as one triplet; 'September' too has one triplet; while 'Maye' has three. The unrhymed line comes at the end of Thenot's introduction to his tale ("Now listen a while, and hearken the end") while the last couplet of his tale begins "Such was thend". It seems that Thenot deliberately did not finish his couplet before the tale in order better to hold the attention of his audience, rounding off by repeating "end" only in the last couplet. But he barely succeeds in this, for Cuddie rudely cuts him off, so that Thenot's last half line, "For scorning Eld", is left ringing in our ears. And "scorning Eld" is of course an exact description of Cuddie's behaviour, unmindful as he is of the warning given in the tale. The unfinished line may be seen as directly connected with the earlier, unrhymed line, so that the deviation here serves the purpose of illustrating Cuddie's false values. (In Colin Clouts Come HomeAgaine an unrhymed line — 693 — may similarly be seen to illustrate the contents quite literally. The line ends "deceitful

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wit" and the deceit is exemplified by letting the line fail to produce the expected sequel.43) However, the common deviant form in the couplet eclogues are the triplets, each of which seems to contain a self-referring phrase. In 'Februarie' the triplet marks the beginning of the second half, since 123 lines precede it while 120 lines follow. This triplet neatly includes characterizations of both protagonists in the fable — "this foolish Brere" and "the good Oake . . . old" — as well as the word "wexe" which surely is intended to explain the reason for the sudden intrusion of a triplet. The briar is made to "wexe so bold", and the triplet provides a metrical expression for the enormity as well as the abnormality of the briar's boldness. That Spenser's choice of "wexe" in this context must be seen as significant, is borne out by the discovery that the three triplets in the 'Maye' eclogue are similarly marked by such internal pointers. The central triplet here is framed by descriptions of blossoms and colours associated with shepherds' daughters and a maiden queen. Before the triplet we have the story-teller's sober description of the briar, Yt was embellisht with blossomes fayre, And Thereto aye wonned to repayre The shepheards daughters, to gather flowres, To peinct their girlonds with his colowres.

(118-21)

After the triplet comes the briar's own description of itself in "painted words", recalling Cuddie's boasting of his flock, "Seest, howe brag yond Bullocke beares", Seest, how fresh my flowers bene spredde, Dyed in Lilly white, and Cremosin redde, With Leaves engrained in lusty greene, Colours meete to clothe a mayden Queene.

(129-32)

Thus, the triplet may be said to have introduced excess — of boldness and of self-estimation. And excess is precisely what is brought in by the first triplet in 'Maye' (see description of substructure in second part of 'Maye' above). The next two triplets in 'Maye' (182-4 and 261-3) similarly have a double function: as a structuring device, to give central accent to the

43

I owe my awareness of the unrhymed line to Meyer, p. 57, note 82. Meyer gives no explanation, only refers to W. L. Renwick's conjecture of "a possible missing line".

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mother's advice to her kid and as a means of authorial comment. In the first of the two triplets, the kid is described as "fresh and lovely to see, And full of favour" (my italics). In the context of the triplet one may be allowed to read this as too full of favour, which is of course the reason for the kid's vanity and thus the cause of his downfall. The last triplet, describing the fox and how he "medled his talke with many a teare" (my italics), shows the excessive sorrow of falseness — he shed too many tears. The triplet conveys a measure of exaggeration leading to evil consequences. In 'September' the structural function of the triplet is to mark the beginning of Diggon's tale of misery. Here, too, it is commented on by Spenser: "more" is the last word. And in the following two couplets — In forrein costes, men sayd, was plentye: And so there is, but all of miserye. I dempt there much to have eeked my store, But such eeking hath made my hart sore. (28-31, my italics) —

excess is associated with misery, and the effect is increased through the repetition of the '-ore' rhyme of the triplet. Thus, as in 'Februarie' and 'Maye', deviation from the established metrical norm illustrates the evil results of some measure of exaggeration, here greed. Or, to put it in more general terms, disruption of order spells evil. In Aristotelian terms, excess is of course associated with lack of virtue. To quote the 1561 translation of Castiglione: H e must have a knowleage, and govern him self with the wisdome that is a companion unto all the other vertues whiche for that they are in the midle, be nygh unto the two extremities, that be vices.. . . For as it is a harde matter in a circle to find out the pricke in the centre, whiche is the middle beetwene two extreme vyces, the one for the overmuch, and the other for the overlitle. 44

Thus, disruption of the poetic ordo may be seen as a direct comment on content, and as a sign portending evil. A deviation from the established metrical norm apparently constitutes a metaphor in the poem, on a line with (although subservient to) the controlling metaphor of the calendar form itself. 44

Castiglione, p. 330. In his introduction to this edition, Walter Raleigh points to the influence of Castiglione's fourth book on Spenser's Hymns (p. lxxvi), and this claim has been given detailed substance by R. W. Lee.

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It will be seen then, that the degree of organization and structuring of the couplet eclogues (or non-stanzaic ones, to include 'Iulye' as well), is at least on a par with that of the stanzaic eclogues. Again, Spenser creates patterns with words placed in initial position — patterns which in this case have in fact illuminated content. Broadly speaking, this type of verbal patterning may be seen as based upon the rhetorical figure anaphora; and the use of this figure itself to emphasize structural centres seems to be a particular feature of these moral eclogues. If we move on to the "higher vaine" of those stanzaic eclogues which are especially concerned with poetry, we may reasonably expect to find the various features noted above becoming perhaps still more pronounced.

Ill Stanzaic eclogues: Shepherd as poet The eclogues in question are 'April', 'August', 'October' and 'Nouember'. A thematic link unique to these four eclogues, is the giving away of a lamb or a kid; Colin offers Eliza a milkwhite lamb in 'Aprill'; Willye wins a spotted lamb in 'August'; Piers presents Cuddie with a kid in 'October' and, finally, Colin is awarded a cosset or hand-reared lamb in 'Nouember'. (The distribution of the two last awards shows poetic justice : Cuddie, who is so concerned about material reward, is left with the young of a goat — of far less symbolic value than the cosset awarded Colin, whose concern is more for poetry than for personal gain.) 45 The theme of the poet's reward thus illustrated gets its first, light treatment in 'August', anticipating the full discussion in 'October'. Since 'August' has been glanced at earlier in this essay, I turn first to the other two eclogues with inset lays, 'Aprill' and 'Nouember', and we may begin by noting how prominently unhappy love — especially Colin's — figures in the dialogue enclosing the 'Aprill' lay. First Hobbinoll's love for Colin and then Colin's hopeless love for Rosalind occupy the first seven quatrains. Rhyme intermittently links these quatrains, and the words "love" and "payne" recur throughout in a fairly regular pattern. This section concludes with the anaphora in lines 27-8, "So nowe . . . So now", which creates an effect similar to a closing couplet. And the next quatrain turns the attention towards Colin's lay.

45

See E. K.'s gloss to 'Iulye', "By Gotes in scrypture be represented- the wicked and reprobate."

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In 'Nouember' the most interesting substructure, since it invests this eclogue's well-known astrological error with a central accent, is that contained in the first seven quatrains: Substructure line 1-2

in

'Nouember'

quatrain 1

3-4

Colin. . . songs Thy Muse to long slombreth . . . Lulled a sleepe

7

2

thy loued lasse advaunce

11

3

myrth

12 13

summer shade 4

14-6 17

sadde Phoebus . . . in Fishes haske

5

sadder

19

myrth

20

sommer dayes

22

6

24 25-8

songs of love thy Oaten pypes, . . . sleepen long

7

song. . . Colin

This substructure has much in common with that in 'Iulye' which equally occupies seven stanzas at the beginning of the eclogue. In 'Iulye5 it was "the Sonne . . . making his way betweene the Cuppe and Golden Diademe" which held the textual centre, while the zodiacal sign — the lion — appeared slightly off-centre. Comparison between the two pas-

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sages heightens by contrast the effect of Spenser's November error. The error consists, of course, in attributing Pisces instead of Sagittarius to that month (even though it is the latter sign which is in fact shown in the accompanying woodcut). It is hard to believe that the scholar-poet Spenser could make such a mistake and that E. K. — assuming, of course, that E. K. was not identical with Spenser — did not spot it. This justifies the assumption that the error is intentional, and plays a part in some 'dark conceit5. Paul McLane explains this 'conceit' in terms of the Alengon marriage plans: Phoebus is the Queen, who has now taken up her abode in the "Fishes haske", which refers to the Catholic Duke. The obvious association between fish and the Catholic Church seemed particularly noxious to Protestants at the time. And references to the sun were often used as complimentary allusions to Queen Elizabeth. 46 One might also note that Spenser's Dido was 'drent': the element of Pisces caused her death. This point, too, invites further comment. Virgil's Dido — the Dido — was of course not drent, but brent on a pyre after she had stabbed herself. (One might indeed suspect here a misprint, since the two words are so similar, but there is no sign of any such variant in the Variorum Edition.) Moreover, the drowning of Dido in November's tenth quatrain may be linked to the astrological error in the fourth, since the 'errors' are symmetrically placed in relation to the centre-point of the lay's thirteen quatrains — quatrain number seven, with its "soveraigne of song". And the fact that these thirteen quatrains are verbally integrated in other ways, too, does seem to bear out such a reading. 47 Admittedly, death by drowning rather than burning does seem more appropriate to a pastoral context; but Spenser had found neither the name of his Dido nor the manner of her death in Marot, 48 and the memory of Virgil's Queen is so strong that it is hard to see how anyone could read of a drowned Dido without a mental jolt. Perhaps the erroneous sign is also intended to establish a link with 'Februarie', the proper month for Pisces, where the fish is prominently displayed in the woodcut? Other links between these two eclogues are the character of Thenot, and the theme of death and former glory (respec-

McLane, p. 54. The single stanza following the lay of Dido is not a quatrain but identical in form with the stanza of the next eclogue, 'December'. Herford comments that the drowning "has no counterpart in the eclogue of Marot, from which the plan and many details are taken." In Spenser, Minor Poems, I, 396.

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tively that of Dido and of the oak which "Whilome had bene the King of the field"). When 'Nouember' states that "The faded lockes fall from the loftie oke" (125) this recalls the oak in 'Februarie', which "oft his hoarie locks downe doth cast" (181). Both eclogues show a concern with matters of state, and 'Februarie's' husbandman (held to be an allegorical representation of Queen Elizabeth49), commits an error of hasty judgement which costs the oak its life. Is the error of the fish, then, to be seen as alluding to another possible error of judgement — the proposed marriage — which likewise might have far-reaching consequences? (The presence in the eclogue of another 'deliberate mistake', of the type termed 'metrical deviation', might be thought to lend further colour to these interpretations. For the 'Nouember' quatrains rhyme abab, but are linked, with one exception, by the device of repeating the b-rhyme of each quatrain as the a-rhyme of the next. Since the exception falls after the second quatrain, and the quatrains were printed undivided in the first edition, this might suggest that Spenser was really thinking in terms of 8line stanzas — were it not for the fact that 13 times 4 equals 52, which does not divide by eight. The truth seems rather to be that the 'missing' rhyme in quatrain 3 reflects the disagreement between the shepherds at the outset of the eclogue; for the 'missing' rhyme is finally supplied in the — in a sense, metrically supernumerary — thirteenth quatrain, when the shepherds have reached complete agreement.) Be that as it may, in its elaborate form the lay of Dido certainly calls to mind the lay of Elisa in 'Aprill'. Furthermore Paul McLane has noted, in connection with his identification of Queen Elizabeth with Dido, 50 that opponents of the Alenfon marriage feared that their own Queen's death might actually follow as a result of such a union, seen as imminent by many people in England towards the end of 1579. Thus Spenser's astrological 'error' should perhaps be regarded both as a 'marker', intended to draw attention to an allegorical warning against the Queen's marriage plans, and also as a conscious 'deviation' similar to those deviations from 49 50

McLane, pp. 62-3. Parmenter first made the identification of Elizabeth as Dido; see 213-6. McLane has argued the case more fully, however. His reasons include the appellation of Dido as "The Sonne of all the world", and the fact that the names "Dido" and "Elizabeth" were practically interchangeable to educated people at the time; see pp. 52-6. H e also cites many parallels between the two lays: nymphs and muses celebrate Elisa and Dido alike; Elisa is hailed as a goddess and it is predicted that she will "reigne . . . in heaven" while Dido "raignes a godesse now emong the saintes." See pp. 58-9.

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the established metrical norm found in the couplet eclogues, all of which seem to portend or illustrate something evil. In this context it seems relevant, too, that Spenser's brief but deliberate disruption of the order of his poem in 'August', another of this group of eclogues, also appears to be connected with Alenfon (see my paragraph relating to note 34 above). The 'Aprill' lay of Elisa and the 'November' dirge for Dido are the most frequently quoted and reprinted parts of the Calender, so it is worth noting that both are fully consistent, as regards construction, with the general principles of design of the rest of the poem. Many years of discussion by scholars of these inset songs have served to bear this out, and some demonstration seems necessary here. Both songs rather look as though numerology has affected the design: although it is not essential to my present case to insist that it has in fact done so. But the central accent in the lay of Elisa, for example, ("she is my goddesse plaine") falls in the seventh line of the seventh of the lay's thirteen stanzas — and "seven"had strong associations with the concepts both of perfection and of virginity. (Similarly, a shift of refrain from negative to positive in the dirge for Dido divides its 15 stanzas into 1 1 + 4 — which suggests, first, mourning — '11' — and then ascension — '15' — for the song ends with Dido as "the honor now of highest gods". Much more in both songs seems to have been worked out along these lines.51) The climactic hailing of Elisa as a goddess in stanza 7 builds up from stanza 3 — "see where she sits upon the grassie greene" — via increasingly ambitious comparisons involving various heavenly bodies; with a subsequent descent — from Muses, to Graces, to Nymphs, to shepherds' daughters that dwell on the greene — then extending to stanza 11. And verbal and conceptual echoes and pairings, extending throughout the lay, back up this fundamental centering of the stanzas: Elisa is the flower of Virgins in stanza 2 and flowers deck the Virgin Queen in stanza 12 — and so on. Yet it is remarkable that the possible or apparent double-structuring of the Calender also recurs again much more unequivocally here. As was pointed out early in this essay, the centering of the whole Calender around the midsummer month of June, via the 2 :1 'diapason' pairings of the other months, is as it were shadowed by an alternative possibility of seeing the Calender's eclogues arranged — in this case, in a Christian and Syncretistic context — around June and July.52 The following figure demonstrates 51 52

Rastvig, "The Sbepheardes Calender,"69-72. Rastvig, "The Sbepheardes Calender," 57.

Davies, 43-4.

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a similar possible alternative schématisation of the lay, based on strong verbal and thematic links between the first two and the last stanza, the third and the second from the end, and so on. Alternative structure of the lay of Elisa stanza Ye dayntye Nymphs . . .

1

' 13

Ye daintie Damsells . . .

Elisa . . . song / long

2

13

Elisa . . . longe / song

Daffadillies

3

12

Daffadowndillies

her princely grace

4

11

her grace

belowe/ showe/ overthrowe

5

10

rowe/ goe

7+ 8 my goddesse my goddesse

The thematic difference between this scheme and that centered on stanza 7 lies in the inclusion of the theme of poetry in the centre: in stanza 8 the Muses headed by Calliope enter the scene with their sweet music and singing, Elisa is given bay branches, and is thus hailed as a poet herself. Here again however the second of the two configurations I have described does seem to me to be, in fact, the secondary one. For the middle of the (after all, numerically central) seventh stanza of the Lay is concerned with the presentation of "a milkwhite Lamb"to the goddess; and I suspect that the weightiness of this lamb may have been underestimated by the commentators. On the one hand, it is true, a white lamb is the emblem of St Catherine of Alexandria, patron of scholars and students (and thus a lamb is an aptly emblematic 'gift' from Spenser to his Queen). But on the other hand a white lamb is also the emblem of several tutelary saints of virgins — including, perhaps significantly, the French Ste. Reine, or Regina. In short, bearing in mind the contemporary worries about the Alengon marriage expressed elsewhere in the poem, it is surely difficult not to feel that the lamb represents for Spenser a symbol fit for a Maiden Queen whom the poet wished to continue in that state. And the

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Lay's two substructures, which as it were 'bracket* the seventh stanza (see Diagrams 12 A and B) seem further to bear out the supposition that this was in Spenser's mind the hinge, so to say, of the composition. (As for smaller-scale structuring, the 'Aprill' lay offers some nice instances of the way in which key words or ideas tend to generate around them their own microstructures. The middle line of stanza 4, for example, invokes that symbol of national unity, the Tudor rose — and around it the stanza dutifully tidies itself into appropriately circular form, lightly emblematising the unified kingdom.)

'October' It will be recalled that 'October' was not treated with the other moral eclogues in an earlier section of this essay because, unlike the others, it is stanzaic in form and concerned with the Shepherd, not as a Pastor, but as a Poet. But there are other differences too. The language moves further away from the shepherds' situation than anywhere else in the Calender, and their talk becomes more theoretical, too, taking up such high matters as the power of music to elevate the mind. Perhaps for this reason, there is also a marked reduction in 'October', compared with the other eclogues, in frequency of patterning via verbal echoes, or through echoes in the rhyme-scheme. As a result, although Spenser's mind does appear to be operating in essentially the same way as in the other eclogues — that is to say, effectively in terms of overall, sub-, and microstructures — the actual tracing of the pattern becomes in places somewhat less a matter of demonstration here, and rather more one of critical judgement. In the very nature of the case, pairings of rhymes, or of specific phrases, can at times be indisputable where pairings only of ideas or themes (or of a theme or idea with its own inversion) may seem much more open to possible alternative permutations. Let us confine ourselves here, therefore, to a glance at the two main substructures of 'October', since together they offer the most unequivocal demonstration of this eclogue's structural kinship with the rest of the Calender (see Diagram 13). The two substructures in this eclogue have been very exactly placed, so that their centres come at the one quarter and three quarter points. The two central stanzas (10 and 11) enshrine the suitably sovereign figures of Virgil, Maecenas and Augustus — first of poets, first of patrons, and first of emperors.

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The central passages in both substructures are spoken by Piers who, idealistically, sees the power of music and of love to raise the mind towards higher things. Orpheus is chosen as an example to prove the exalting power of music, or poetry, in the fifth stanza, and in the sixteenth (fifth from the end) the analogous power of love is shown by the use of four verbs relating to the notion of elevation. Thus the high-low contrasts, both for love and for poetry, are pointed up by these substructures. In the second, the "vaunting Poets" are contrasted with Cuddie's "slender pipes", and the "rymes of rybaudrye" contrast with how the "ryme should rage". Likewise with love: Piers's "lofty love" in stanza 16 is framed by references to Colin's love, which prevents him from performing the "famous flight", and to "lordly love" which leaves no power for "vaunted verse". But the reader's attention is also directed to the left side of this diagram. Since we have mainly been concerned in this essay with various reflections of the concept of 'circularity' in the Calender, too little notice has perhaps been taken here of the further device — not in itself 'circular' or symmetrical, though of course reinforcing such symmetries — by which Spenser is apt to link Beginning with Middle and/or (separately) Middle with End. It seems good, therefore, that the path we have followed to-and-fro through Spenser's Calender year chances to end with a reminder of this further element in the orchestration of the music of Spenser's verse. SUMMING-UP: SOME PROBLEMS A N D DISTINCTIONS The three types of circular structure that have been considered here — overall structures, substructures and microstructures — differ only in scale and in the way Spenser has employed them in the various eclogues. Basically, they follow a simple pattern, where the end matches or repeats the beginning ( a - B - a ) ; or as we have just seen, where the middle matches/repeats the beginning and/or the ending (a - AB - ab); or where the pattern may be a chiastic one ( a - b - c - D - c - b - a ) : which is of course only an extension of the first alternative. To anyone familiar with Renaissance rhetoric these patterns inevitably call to mind specific rhetorical figures, namely epanalepsis, epanados and antimetabole — as I am not the only one to have observed. 53 (If it be objected that it seems cumbersome to 53

Rastvig, "Canto Structure," and Eriksen.

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employ such terms to identify perfectly simple phenomena, the answer must be that these are nevertheless terms that have been in use for centuries, and that they do possess the convenient merit of precision.) This is not to say that the Calender's circular structures simply represent expanded rhetorical figures. If the principle of verbal organization is the same in both cases, their functions of course differ noticeably (though not entirely: both, for instance, can serve ironic purposes). The main difference perhaps lies in their emotive force. N o matter to what end they are actually put in any given context, the figures of rhetoric are essentially forensic weapons, aimed at producing a particular reaction in the hearer's mind. They are meant to clarify intellectually, yes, but also to excite and move, to sweep away potential objections for a sudden conviction that something which falls so effortlessly into so clearcut a pattern must be true. 54 The structures with which I have been concerned here, however, are clearly not of this sort. Their aim is rather wholly intellectual, and where the 'configuration' (as George Herbert might say 55 ) points towards a certain symbolism, that symbolism is quite void of any personal or passionate connotations, taking the form only of a muted obeisance to a theological and cosmological tradition which saw the universe as profoundly cyclic in every aspect. It is true that this world-view does itself carry a certain emotional aura; but if the structuring of the poem helps to mediate this aura to the reader (which, if often subliminally, it surely does) then it does so at one remove, in a manner totally different from the direct assault upon the reader/auditor made by rhetoric proper. Yet to assert this necessary distinction between circular structure and rhetorical figure is not to deny their essential harmony and, in a sense, continuity. As to epanalepsis, for instance, Hermogenes observed that "the intellectual reach needed to keep the parts in relationship is the same as that which relates the strophe and antistrophe in an ode." 5 6 This is a comment which by itself would give adequate warrant, if one be thought necessary, for the investigation undertaken in this paper.

54

55 56

The obvious example of modern advertising shows the limitations of this argument: no-one believes in advertising slogans. But add a touch of patriotism, or a moral challenge, as in the appeal " A s k not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country" — and the effect is considerable. Herbert, p. 58. Patterson, p. 74.

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However, this in turn raises the problem of intention, as the figures of rhetoric must always be seen as being consciously employed. And I am well aware — more so than the need for clarity of exposition has allowed me to indicate — that I am moving, to some extent, on the borderline between two somewhat different territories. It has been a procedural necessity to write as if all the configurations I have been tracing were consciously calculated and intended by their author. And so I believe a great majority of them were. But where is one to set the boundary of consciousness, and intention? Wherever one places it, it will be an arbitrary choice. I am perfectly willing to allow that some of the structures I identify are in fact likely to have been the fruits of ¿«¿conscious calculation and choice — of a fundamental artistic intuition and sense of craftsmanship, that Spenser did not need to bring to the top of his mind for it to achieve its results. But this is not all. For I suspect (though I will leave to the reader the tricky task of picking the examples) that some of the structures I identify may not be authorial at all. Instead of being manifestations of one particular poet's planning or intuition, they may sometimes (but, I would stress, only sometimes) rather be symptoms of things fundamental to the nature of language in all literary discourse. This is a fascinating border area, with important discoveries yet to be made in linguistics and related sciences — an area which is, however, as much beyond the scope of this paper as beyond my own competence. All one can do, is to recognize its existence. 57 Leaving aside such doubts and border issues then (I do not equate border with trivial) what further comments might be made on the analyses offered here? As to that readers must decide for themselves; but I would strongly rebut any suggestion that we have merely been accumulating endless examples of Spenserian verbal legerdemain. As Winifred Nowottny remarks about the use of certain rhetorical figures, "what, however, is mere legerdemain at the technical level . . . has a different

J a k o b s o n discusses whether the designs disclosed by linguistic analysis are intentional and premeditated in the creative w o r k of the poet. B o o t h notes that new w o r k in neur o l o g y correlates the design and functioning of the human brain with the spatial/sequential aspects of verbal utterances. It appears that s o n g and music are connected with the spatial aspect of time, while prose language relates to the sequential aspect. T h i s article implies fascinating new w o r k to be done in literary studies as well as in neurology and psychology.

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value when it is related to the structure of the whole poem." 58 And few would deny that the overall structures which link beginning to end in a more-or-less observable circular pattern serve an aesthetic function. These structures may, at times, have a religious significance, in that they may symbolize man's return to his origin in God; at other times, they may simply express a preference for a pleasing 'roundnesse'. The structures which serve to stress a particular theme, however, as when Elisa's parentage occurs both in the beginning and the middle of the 'AprilP ode, are obviously more directly functional. Then again, structuring of the kind with which I have been concerned contributes to the organization of long poems, as for instance in the substructures of 'December'. On the other hand, the microstructures are admittedly closer to rhetorical figures, not only in scale, but also in purpose: sometimes helping to manipulate the reader's feelings towards certain ends (as in the 'Nouember' elegy) or reinforcing the various shepherds' arguments in their debates (as for example in 'Februarie' and 'Maye'). Indeed I would not feel that my broad distinction between rhetorical figure and circular structure was fundamentally threatened, if the reader wishes at some points to dissolve the line drawn between rhetorical figure and microstructure. Nevertheless, I would suggest that even at such points my original distinction between rhetorical figures and textual structures (even microstructures) still tends eventually to resurface. Broadly speaking, it is a safe generalization that — to a markedly greater degree than is the case with rhetorical figures — the full significance of the microstructures tends not to be apparent until they are seen in the context of the entire poem. Conversely, the overall structures gain strength from their buttressing sub- and microstructures, as the latter often serve to give added significance to the larger themes. (See, for instance, diagrams 11 and 13.) Such correlation may indeed be used as a check against the pitfall of the kind of distorted analysis which can easily result if the critic is not sufficiently aware of the different levels of verbal repetition in the text, so that all and any repetition to him seems equally significant. Interesting pictures-inthe-fire may then result, but remote even at best from authorial intent. If, however, there is clear thematic agreement between the various overall, sub- and microstructures, the critic's reading will retain that 'organic'

58

Nowottny, p. 134.

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quality which was the sine qua non of the New Criticism.59 Yet still a tool is no better than its user: a judicious sense of proportion still remains essential, if the critic is to avoid intermittent self-deception — a fault from which this present study is itself doubtless not exempt. Another natural objection is evoked by the image of the poet assiduously counting his lines — computing rather than composing his poems. This objection can seldom apply to the stanzaic eclogues of the Calender; however, none of which are so long that the textual centre cannot be found at a glance. In the far longer couplet eclogues, it is true, the exact centre can only be found by counting. But here I would suggest that the author has followed a rule-of-thumb rather than exact measuring and counting of lines. In 'Maye', for instance, the thematically central paragraph in lines 152-171 is framed by 151 and 146 lines; and there is a similar lack of absolute precision in the other couplet eclogues. On the other hand, one is sometimes struck by an exactness which must mean that if the poet did not count his lines, he must have had an extremely accurate sense of the size of blocks of text. This, however, seems a perfectly reasonable assumption to make about most aesthetically conscious poets in relation to their own work, not least in the Renaissance.

In his Epilogue to Triumphal Forms, Fowler offers some valuable comments on the critical procedure involved in a numerological reading, as well as practical advice to the critic.

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The Diagrams: Explanatory Note It is hoped that the diagrams — both the shorter ones inserted in the text, and the longer ones collected at the end — will mostly prove self-explanatory. However, a few words seem necessary to explain the use of italics and spaced-out type. — Italics have been used to indicate words repeated in the poem at the end of a verse line (rhyme-words). Note however that Spenser's own occasional italicisation of proper names has also been left intact. — Spaced-out type indicates that a word is repeated within a verse line. Repetitions, either verbal or thematic, are linked by vertical lines. These lines may be of varying thickness: a heavy line marks a particularly obvious link. A textual centre is identified by a horizontal line cutting across the vertical ones.

Diagram 1: Linear progression of the three strains, shepherd as: 1) Lover 'Januarye' (Unhappy lover, poor shepherd) 'March' (Adolescent love)

2) Pastor

3) Poet

'Februarie' (youthful arrogance) 'Aprili' (Harmony) 'Maye' (Youthful vanity)

'June' (False love)

'August' (natural love)

'Iulye' (The Fall, pride and ambition)

'August' (Contest and judgement)

'September' (Climax of pastoral corruption)

FRIENDSHIP 'December' (Reconciliation and death)

'October' (Dualism) 'Nouember' (Death and mourning)

ASCENT TO HEAVEN

COLIN AS THE GOOD SHEPHERD Note the upward turn at the end of each of the three strains.

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Diagram 2: Verbal linking of successive eclogues (The total number of lines in each eclogue is added in brackets.) 'Januarye' (78)

(31-3)

You naked trees, whose . . . leaves are lost, / . . . clothd with mosse

'Februarie' (246)

(101-11) an aged T r e e / . . . of . . . leaves . . . disarayde;/ . . . the gray mosse (71) Seest howe brag yond Bullocke beares (115) a bragging brere

'March' (117)

(13-4) (98)

S e e s t . . . same Hawthorne studde,/ H o w bragly I little smart did feele

'Aprill' (161)

(27) (88-9)

So nowe fayre Rosalind hath bredde hys smart Now she is a stone,/ And makes dayly mone

'Maye' (317)

(301) (17-8)

Shee weeped, and wayled, and made great mone For Younkers Palinode such follies fitte,/ But we tway bene men of elder witt.

'June' (120)

(36-7)

'Iulye' (232)

(6, 13) come vp the hyll . . . In humble dales is footing fast (145-6) thilk s h e p h e a r d e . . . / whom Ida hyll dyd beare

'August' (195)

(138) (31)

'September' (259)

(184-5) a wicked Wolfe,/ That with many a Lambe had glutted his gulfe (203) (For Roffy is wise and as Argus eyed)

'October'

(31-2)

babes . . . wondren at bright Argus blazing

(120)

eye Cuddie shall have a Kidde to store his farme

But ryper age such pleasures doth reproue,/ My fancy eke from former follies (19-21) Leaue me those hilles . . . and to the dales resort

(120)

T h e shepheard of Ida a Lambe in the W o l u e s iawes [the mazer]

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'Nouember' (208)

(206) (3-4)

Thyne be the cossette, well hast thow it gotte Thy Muse . . . I Lulled a sleepe (119, 123) bitter blast . . . dreerie death

'December' (156)

(71)

birds luld me a sleepe (143-4) bitter blaste,/ . . . dreerie death

Diagram3:

Verbal linking between 'January e'and'December\

by stanzas

'Januarye' (13 st.)

'December' (26 st.)

St. 2

Well couth he tune his pipe, and frame his stile

St. 1

Colin . . . which wel could pype and singe

St. 3

And Pan thou shepheards God

St. 2

O soveraigne Pan thou God of shepherds all

St. 4

Whilome thy fresh spring flowrd

St. 4

Whilome in youth when flowrd my ioyfull spring

St. 5

such rage as winters . . . As if my yeare were wast, and woxen old.

St. 5

wintrye ages waste

St. 6

You naked trees [The tree image]

St. 6

the craggie Oke . . . The stately Walnut tree

St. 9

loue should breede both ioy and payne [Antithesis]

St. 9

Loue . . . better mought they have behote him Hate.

St. 12

thou vnlucky Muse . . . broke his oaten pype

St. 24

My Muse is hoarse . . . I hang my pype upon this tree

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There are also striking similarities between the following two stanzas, and the 'December' stanza is fifth from the end. Both stanzas employ the figure anaphora in the closing couplet (my italics).

St. 5

Such rage as winters, reigneth in my heart, Such life bloud friesing with vnkindly cold: Such stormy stoures do breede my balefull smart, As if my yeare were wast, and woxen old. And yet alas, but now my spring begonne, And yet alas, yt is already donne.

St. 22

So nowe my yeare drawes to his latter terme, My spring is spent, my sommer burnt vp quite: My harveste hasts to stirre vp winter sterne, And bids him clayme with rigorous rage hys right. So nowe he stormes with many a sturdy stoure, So now his blustering blast eche coste doth scoure.

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Diagram 4: The calendar cycle, with

chronographia

'December' Year's end — 'timely death' 'Winter . . . the bitter blaste' Colin reconciled

'September' Autumnal equinox, 'dirke night does hast' 'the Westerne wind . . . the blustering blast' (equinoctial storm?) Metaphor of sleep concluded: how can shepherds guard against danger?

'March' Vernal equinox. Time past, present and future, 'this bitter blast' 'wexe light'"1" Metaphor of sleep introduced: accident to sheep while Thomalin slept.

'June' Medio Annorum 'Paradise . . . Adam'(type of Christ)* 'Gentle, warbling wynde' 'no night Ravens . . . nor gastly owles' (no signs of death) Colin alienated.

+ Equinox falls on or about March 20th. It is probably no more than a happy accident that this phrase occurs in the twentieth line.

* The observation that Christ comes 'in medio Annorum' is made by Professor Rastvig in "The Shepheardes Calender — A Structural Analysis", 57.

Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes Diagram

Overall

5 A:

Calender

105

Circular structure of The Shepheardes Calender, plaintive, moral and recreative eclogues, using the ratio 1:2 (the diapason) Substructures

structure Plaintive 'Januarye' Moral

Rec.

'Februarie

Poet's arrogance

,

Youthful pride vs. old-age stoicism

'March'

natural love and idealized virgin

'Aprili' Moral

Plaintive

Moral

Rec.

'Maye'

Youthful vanity vs. old-age warning

'June'

Poet's humility

'Iulye'

The Fall natural love and the 'spotted Lambe'

'August'

'September'

'October'

Resulting corruption and dualism

'Nouember'

Poet's achievement

'December'

Poet's resignation

Moral

Plaintive

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Diagram 5 B: Confirmation

of the above scheme

A diagram of the above type may be assumed to have some objective value if it proves to be of use for more than one purpose. Dr. H. N. Davies has used 5 A to demonstrate the symmetrical placing of Colin's performances and his inset songs:

R

M

P. .

.

.

.

. .

Jan Feb

M a r c h

Pnl . . May June P July . . • Aug Sept . Oct Nov p Dec A

M I R

M . M

*

«

181 192

iollitee

1

193-4

payne/ twaine J

207

Tho marking him with melting eyes [Mother looks at Kid]

219

the foxe, maister of collusion 1

234

the dore [Kid locks it]

239-40

bells, and babes, and glasses

245

the dore [Fox puts down his pack] 1

255

good young maister

274-5

Tho . . . a glasse . . . Wherein . . .

J

J

kiddie vnwares did looke 280-1

twayne/ trayne 1

282

glee

299

her sonne

302 306-17

[Conclusion 6 couplets]

J l

Such end had the Kidde J Piers, Foxes, shepheards, falshode

including

the

Spenserian Technique: The Shepbeardes

Diagram 11: The three parts of 'Maye\ with

line

1st part 7 2 11.

Calender

substructures

Character

1 33-4

there/ beare Nymphs . . . Maybush — Palinode

72 73

2nd part

117-9

TRIPLET

Piers

91 11.

140-1

beare/ heare

Palinode

Excess begins

J63 164

3rd part 154 11.

182-4

TRIPLET

221-4

'True' centre

Goat

247-8

Charitee/ mee

Fox

261-3 266-7

TRIPLET donne/sonne

"1

286-7 317

— — | - Fox

Mother's warning

114

Marianne Brown

Diagram 12 A: First substructure in the lay of Elisa line

stanza

46

2

your siluer song

55-6

3

See . . . (O seemely sight)

57

3

mayden Queene

60

3

Damaske roses

63

3

sweete

64

4

her angelick face

65

4

fayre

68

4

The Redde rose medled with the White

70-1

4

Her modest eye,/ Her Maiestie

72

4

haue you seene

82

6

thy siluer rayes

—

—

Diagram 12 B: Second substructure in the Lay of Elisa line

stanza

100

8

to the place

105

8

bay branches for Elisa

115-7

9

She shalbe a grace, To fyll the fourth place, And reigne with the rest in heauen.

126

10

oliue branches for a Princesse

130-2

11

. . . her grace./ . . . whereas shee is in place/ . . . disgrace

Spenserian Technique: The Shepheardes Calender Diagram

13: 'October'

115

substructures

Linking to the middle thou wont the shepheards laddes to leade

1 Cuddie . . . hold vp thy . . . head 2my poore Muse 3 flocking fry 4 p r a y s e is better gayne/ restraine/ vaine

rurali routes to thee doe cleaue — thy notes

[P]

|~5|musicks might [Orpheus] 6traine/ graine/ vayne p r a y s e is smoke 7viler clowne 8thy Muse

thy string

9 Cuddies name to Heauen sownde

[P]

[To] loftie verse

(Tj]But ah Mecaenas 12 mighty manhode vaunting Poets

[is dead]

[C]

[is d e a d ] _

13rymes of ?ybaudrye

[C]

14 15with loue so ill bedight

l o f t y loue caytiue corage to aspire

[C]

n |T6|climbe . . . lyftes . . . rayse . . . aspire [the power of love] [C] 17with crabbed care

—

18

[C]

19ryme should /age _ my c o r a g e 20But ah my corage [is dead] ^ cooles humble shade . . . slender pipes

[P]

116

Marianne Brown

BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Primary sources 1 Augustinus, Aurelius, s. Expositions on the Book of Psalms, vol. VI. Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church. Vol. 39. Oxford, 1857. 2 Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier from the Italian of Count Baldassare Castiglione: Done into English by Sir Thomas Hohy. Ed. Walter Raleigh. London: David Nutt, 1900. 3 Herbert, George. "The H . Scriptures II." In The Works of George Herbert. Ed. F. E. Hutchinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941; rpt. 1945. 4 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Heptaplus. Trans. Douglas Carmichael. New York: The Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. 5 Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie, 1589. Ed. Edward Arber. Birmingham: English Reprints, 1869. 6 Spenser, Edmund. The Shepheardes Calender. A Scolar Press Facsimile. Menston, England: The Scolar Press Limited, 1968. 7 . . . The Works: A Variorum Edition. The Minor Poems. Vols. 1 and 2. Ed. C. G. Osgood and H. G. Lotspeich. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1943; rpt. 1958. 8 Stubbs, John. The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf Whereinto England is Like to be Swallowed by an other French Mariage. (London, 1579). English Books 1475-1640, Reel 357. Ann Arbor, Xerox University Microfilms. 9 Webbe, William. A Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586. Ed. Edward Arber. London: English Reprints, 1870.

B. Secondary sources 10 Booth, Mark W. "The Ballad and the Brain." The Georgia Review, 32 (1978), 371-86. 11 Bristol, Michael D. "Structural Patterns in Two Elizabethan Pastorals." Studies in English Literature, 10 (1970), 33-48. 12 Brown, Marianne. "Finely framed, and strongly trussed up together: A Structural Approach to Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender." Thesis University of Oslo, 1978. 13 Cornelius, Patsy Scherer. E.K.'s Commentary on 'The Shepheardes Calender'. Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies, 31. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1974. 14 Curtius, E. R. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. W. R. Trask. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953. 15 Dixon, Michael F. "Rhetorical Patterns and Methods of Advocacy in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender." English Literary Renaissance, 7 (1977), 131-54. 16 Durr, Robert Allen. "Spenser's Calendar of Christian Time." English Literary History, 24 (1957), 269-95. 17 Fowler, Alastair. Conceitful Thought: The Interpretation of English Renaissance Poems. Edinburgh: The University Press, 1975.

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18 . . . ed. Silent Poetry: Essays in Numerological Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. 19 . . . Spenser and the Numbers of Time. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. 20 . . . Triumphal Forms: Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1970. 21 Greg, Walter W. Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama. London: A. H. Bullen, 1906. 22 Hamilton, A.C. "The Argument of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender." English Literary History, 23 (1956), 171-82. 23 Heninger, S.K., Jr. "The Implications of Form for The Shepheardes Calender." Studies in the Renaissance, 9 (1962), 309-21. 24 Hieatt, A. Kent. Short Time's Endless Monument: The Symbolism of the Numbers in Edmund Spenser's 'Epithalamion'. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. 25 Hoffman, Nancy Jo. Spenser's Pastorals: 'The Shepheardes Calender' and 'Colin Clout'. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. 26 Hopper, Vincent F. Medieval Number Symbolism. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1969. 27 Jakobson, Roman. "Subliminal Verbal Patterning in Poetry." In Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics. Ed. Roman Jakobson and Shigeo Kawamoto. Tokyo: T. E. C. Company, 1970, pp. 302-8. 28 Lee, R. W. "Castiglione's Influence on Spenser's Early Hymns." Philological Quarterly, 7 (1928), 65-77. 29 MacCaffrey, Isabel G. "Allegory and Pastoral in The Shepheardes Calender." English Literary History, 36 (1969), 68-109. 30 McLane, Paul E. Spenser's Shepheardes Calender: A Study in Elizabethan Allegory. Notre Dame: University Press, 1961. 31 Maclean, Hugh. "Editor's Note." In Edmund Spenser's Poetry. Ed. Hugh Maclean. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1968. 32 MacLure, Millar. "Spenser." In English Poetry and Prose, 1540-1674. Ed. Christopher Ricks. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970, pp. 60-81. 33 Meyer, Sam. An Interpretation of Edmund Spenser's 'Colin Clout'. Notre Dame: University Press, 1969. 34 Nowottny, Winifred. The Language Poets Use. London: Athlone Press, 1962. 35 Parmenter, Mary. "Spenser's 'Twelue Aeglogues Proportionable to the Twelue Monethes."' English Literary History, 3 (1936), 190-217. 36 Patterson, Annabel M. Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style. Princeton University Press, 1970. 37 Qvarnstram, Gunnar. The Enchanted Palace: Some Structural Aspects of 'Paradise Lost'. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967. 38 Rastvig, Maren-Sofie. "Ars Aeterna: Renaissance Poetics and Theories of Divine Creation." Mosaic, 3 (1970), 40-61. 39 . . . "A Frame of Words: On the Craftsmanship of Samuel Daniel." English Studies, 60 (1979), 122-37. 40 . . . , ed. Fair Forms: Essays in English Literature from Spenser to Jane Austen. Cambridge: D. Brewer, 1975. 41 . . . "Images of Perfection." In Seventeenth-Century Imagery. Ed. Earl Miner. University of California Press, 1971, pp. 1-24.

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42 . . . "Structure as Prophecy: The Influence of Biblical Exegesis upon Theories of Literary Structure." In Silent Poetry: Essays in Numerological Analysis. Ed. Alastair Fowler. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, pp. 32-72. 43 . . . "The Shepheardes Calender: A Structural Analysis." Renaissance and Modem Studies, 13 (1969), 49-75. 44 Smith, Hallett. Elizabethan Poetry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952. 45 Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Academy Editions, 1973. 46 Yates, Frances A. Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.

C. Supplementary Works 47 Bernard, John D. " ' J u n e ' and the Structure of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender." Philological Quarterly then two victims of Marius (IV.i and ii) and again, one of Sulla (V.i.). 8.1.3 It is important here to remind the reader of these actions in the context of the five sequences of the play (each of which, with the mention of the presence of the consuls in power, contains a reference to historical time). 1) (I.i.ii.) Place: Rome. Historical time: Year 88. Marius and Sulla both present. T h e ratio of forces leaves their destiny undecided. Outrageous action: Sulla enters the Senate armed. (Missing in Appian and Plutarch). 2) (Il.i.) Place: Rome. Historical time: Year 88. Sulla in power. Marius absent. Outrageous action: Sulla publicly insults the old Granius (follower of Marius) and orders his execution; the severed head is brought onto the scene in the sight of all. (In Appian and Plutarch, Granius is exiled). 3) (II.ii.iii., Ill.i.ii.iii.iv.) Places: Minturnum (Il.ii.); Libya (Il.iii.); Rome (Ill.i.); Minturnum (IILii.); Greece (Ill.iii.); Numidia (IILiv.). Historical time: Years 88-87. Marius and Sulla present individually in some scenes (Marius in Il.ii., IILii., IILiv; Sulla in Ill.iii.). This block, comprising episodes on such varied temporal and spatial scales, has however a certain homogeneity in meaning. Far away from Rome, the two protagonists (one in exile but then invited by the Consul Cinna to return once he had seen that things might turn out in his favour; the other, victor of one phase of the war against Mithridates, urged to return to his country to impede the threatened prevalence of Marius) both have before them an uncertain prospect as they prepare to set sail for Italy. T h e clash which has in the meantime taken place in Rome between the two Consuls Cinna and Octavius (Ill.i.) excludes neither of the opposing expectations of the two sides. In this relatively equal ratio of forces, the outrageous action is substituted by three spectacular moments, indications of three different situations, presented in consecutive scenes: a) in Ill.i. the challenge with drawn swords of the Consuls Cinna and Octavius, supported respectively by the " y o u n g " and the "old citizens" (variation on Appian) ; b) in IILii. the unsuccessful murder of Marius at Minturnum (referred to in both sources); c) in IILiv. the pageant of Sulla's triumph in the Orient, with the enemy princes yoked to his chariot (missing in Appian and Plutarch).

158

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4) (IV.i.ii.) Place: Rome. Historical time: Year 87 and January, 86. Marius in power. Sulla absent. Two outrageous actions: one at the beginning of the sequence and one near the end (the first marks almost exactly the middle of the play): a) Marius and the others are present when the Consul Octavius is killed on the orders of Cinna while he is sitting on his "throne", "in his robes of state" (words almost identical to the English translation of Appian; details given by Plutarch are different) ; b) the venerable head of the orator Mark Anthony falls, severed on the order of Marius (Appian's and Plutarch's versions similar). 5) (V.i.ii.iii.iv.v.) Places: Rome (V.i.); Praeneste (V.ii.iii.iv.); Rome (V.v.). Historical time: Year 82; Years 81-78 (compressed in the final scene, with no breach of continuity). The sequence is divided into two parts which illustrate the beginning and the end of Sulla's dominion. The outrageous action sets off the first part: Sulla places his foot on the neck of Papirius Carbo, Consul at the time together with Young Marius, and orders his decapitation. (In the sources, Carbo escaped and was later killed or ordered to be killed by Pompey.) 8.1.4 This paradigm of the outrageous brings about the compression of historical time, and the spatial dislocation of the event (see Sulla's entry into the Senate-I.i.). But, more importantly, it brings about the substitution of the endless massacres referred to in the sources with exemplary transgressions which do not correspond to the testimonies but are rather created ad hoc in symmetry to those singled out from the sources. Thus, two outrageous actions — both by Marius' men — chosen from those documented for the beginning and end of the fourth sequence, are paralleled by two invented analogues, attributed to Sulla, and placed in the second and fifth sequence respectively. The decapitation of the venerable Granius (II.i.) is the mirror image of that of Mark Anthony (IV.ii.). The order to cut off Consul Carbo's head, preceded by Sulla's offensive gesture of prevarication (V.i.), is the counterbalance of the 'sacrilegious' assassination of the Consul Octavius (IV.i.). 8.2.1 The invented actions which complete the paradigm of the outrageous manipulate historical figures taken from the sources (Granius and Carbo) providing them with an ultimate destiny which is very different from the original. In other types of situations, characters such as the wife and daughter of Sulla, who are assigned a name, an age and a status with no historical evidence whatsoever (IV.i. 243-430; V.v. 331-403), are introduced, or totally made up like the "burghers" Poppey and Curtail (V.v. 171-262).

Thomas Lodge's Wounds of Civil War

159

In the first case, the characters are obviously inserted for pathetic effect, just like many other female roles in contemporary tragedies. The matron Cornelia and the virgin Fulvia, arrested while trying to flee from Rome, are taken as prisoners to Marius. Stately and severe, they reveal that they were certain of his decision to send them to their deaths, and ask him to be left alone in a private cell for a day or two to meditate, telling him that if, after these two days he finds them still alive, he can then have them killed. Marius pretends to agree to this implicit announcement of their noble suicide, but orders chains to be brought and places them as ornaments around their necks, declaring them free to join Sulla wherever he is: "And tell him Marius holds within his hands/ Honor for ladies, for ladies rich reward." (IV.i. 410-1) This feminine couple, which in many ways anticipates the model in Coriolanus (e. g. the inflexible mother scolding any hint of fear in her daughter, as Volumnia does with Virgilia) will be summoned again in the last scene, for Sulla's death. 8.2.2 Appian writes that Sulla, after his abdication, used to descend into the Forum without an escort, as a private citizen. Once, a young man insulted him, and followed him to his house railing against him all the way. H e "that before was so furious against the greatest men and Cities, could now patiently suffer this young man: only thus hee said, entring his house, either by natural reason, or by a divination of things to come: This young man will be the let that an other man having such authoritie will not so give it over." 75 Sulla, in The Wounds, uses this passage of the source as follows: With what impatience hear I these upbraids, That whilom plagu'd the least offense with death. O Scilla, these are stales of destiny, By some upbraids to try thy constancy. My friends, these scorns of yours perhaps will move The next dictator shun to yield his state, For fear he find as much as Scilla doth. (V.v.245-51)

His words are not directed towards the young man in Appian, but towards Poppey and Curtail, a comic pair who switch from nonsense rhymes to aphorisms to prose passages, incorporating all the malapro-

75

Romanes Warns, p. 62. The translation of Sulla's words is particularly awkward; their sense is, in White's translation, "this young man will prevent any future holder of such power from laying it down." (I.xii, 104; in Appian'i Roman History, III, 193, 195).

160

V a n n a Gentili

pisms and anachronisms of clown language (forms which had already been introduced in IV.ii. 1-78 by Mark Anthony's servant). The pair ask Sulla to put a wrong right for Curtail, whose daughter had been dishonoured by a soldier. But Sulla declares that he is no longer the man to turn to: "My powers do cease, my titles are resigned." (V.v.223) Here the scene adopts a typically Elizabethan motif: criticism of abdication, expressed by the lower echelons as a parodic transcription (but just how serious it is, is shown by the fool in King Lear) of the blame the Tudor political ideology places on abdication, a blame illustrated in many a work, from Sidney's Arcadia to Gorboduc and King Lear itself. The burghers' reproof ("Have you sign'd your titles? O base mind, that being in the Paul's steeple of honor hast cast thyself into the sink of simplicity"-224-6) concludes, further on, with the acknowledgement of the reversal of status which is usually made by the fool: [ . . . ] ergo, say

I, 'tis better be a king than a clown. Faith, master Scilla, I

hope a man may now call ye knave by authority. ( 2 4 2 - 4 )

8.2.3 The three scenes here recalled show Lodge's anthologizing tendency, which not only puts together what is almost a survey of tested poetical genres, but also tries to combine dramatic registers: in these particular examples obviously the pathetic and the comic. But two of these scenes seem, furthermore, to obey certain rules of internal symmetry (this is not true of Sulla's final farewell to Cornelia and Fulvia), if one relates them to two other passages of Lodge's own creation: firstly, the lyrical development of Marius' state of mind (the dialogue with his prison warden in Ill.ii. 1-58) and secondly, the spectacular presentation of Sulla's victories in the Mithridatic war (Ill.iii. 1-100). Through this correlation one can detect a 'parallelogram' which is less significant than the one which links the outrageous killings, but is likewise built up on analogies and oppositions. The scene of Marius receiving Cornelia and Fulvia is a parallel and antinomy of Sulla's triumph. Both are victors and both have their enemies at their disposal: Sulla yoking Mithridates' son and the tyrant of Athens to his chariot; Marius freeing the wife and daughter of his opponent. But when they speak, both affirm their power, make sarcastic comments or take unexpected turns. And the oriental aura of the previous scene in Greece reverberates on the scene in Rome, with Cornelia's reminder of Alexander the Great's behaviour towards the mother, wife and daughters of Darius ("The Macedonian monarch was more kind, / [ . . . ] But you

Thomas Lodge's Wounds of Civil War

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unkind to Roman ladies now, / Perhaps as constant as the Asian queens"IV.i.247, 250-2). Marius' language, in proclaiming the liberation of his two prisoners, shifts from his more usual elegiac or meditative tone to the resonant hyperboles of a Marlovian conqueror: The private cells where you shall end your lives Is Italy, is Europe, nay the world; Th'Euxinian Sea, and fierce Sicilian Gulf, The river Ganges and Hydaspis stream Shall level lie, and smooth as crystal ice, Whilst Fulvia and Cornelia pass thereon; The soldiers that should guard you to your deaths Shall be five thousand gallant youths of Rome, In purple robes cross-barr'd with pales of gold, Mounted on warlike coursers for the field, Fet from the mountaintops of Cortia Or bred in hills of bright Sardinia, Who shall conduct and bring you to your lord. (IV.i. 393-407)

The words of the prison warden at Minturnum, when Marius asks him if he would accept death in his place, are a foretaste of the motif the "burghers" play when speaking to Sulla; the absence of power is the worst thing that can happen to a man of power: The high estate your lordship once did wield, The many friends that fawn'd when fortune smil'd, Your great promotions, and your mighty wealth, These, were I Marius, would amate me so As loss of them would vex me more than death. (III.ii.11-5)

The idea is then restated in the answer to Marius' next question ("Is lordship then, so great a bliss, my friend?"): ' N o title may compare with princely rule.' (17)

T o sum up, four situations have been described, each in its own way recreated to represent, for both adversaries, the glorious moment of the exploitation of power and the humiliating moment of losing it (note, for example, that both Marius and Sulla call their occasional humble interlocutors "myfriend(s)"). This 'parallelogram' also performs a function in balancing the economy of the play; it does in fact compensate — with a further distribution of significant moments between Marius and Sulla — for the reduced pres-

162

Vanna Gentili

ence of Marius on stage, who has in all 424 lines to speak as opposed to 649 spoken by Sulla, who outlives Marius for the whole of the Vth Act. However, these four situations make up a surreptitious paradigm which 'trespasses' on that of the outrageous. If the latter represents the 'political' lack of a sovereign through the constant alternation of bloody events with no possible pacific resolution, the former evokes a 'theatrical' presence of regality, by simulating the double ritual of investiture and deposition. The setting in 'Republican' Rome — with an "inside" which is the urbs and its institutions, and an "outside" which is the land of exile, the battle field, the enemy camp — gives the play rhythms, iconographies and rituals which are very different from those which go together with the spatial and temporal dislocation of kings, lords and courtiers in the English histories. The best example of an almost uncontaminated 'Roman quality" (and it is not the London anachronisms which impair it) is to be found in Coriolanus. From this point of view The Wounds of Civil War, despite its stiffness and schematic nature, is a forerunner which is not to be overlooked; but the greater vicinity to the chronicle play exposes its protagonists to a certain degree of contamination.

9 ANTICLIMAX History, as Sidney lamented, spared Marius and Sulla a violent death. Might this not be the ultimate reason for their scarce success on the tragic stage? Nevertheless, Plutarch provides a dramatic version for both of their deaths. Marius, elected, slaughter after slaughter, to his seventh Consulate, falls prey to nightmares, gets drunk to save himself from insomnia, fears Sulla's imminent return and feels disgust for the present. An attack of pleurisy brings him to his death in seven days, and in his delirium, convinced he is at the command of the Mithridatic war, he gesticulates orders, letting out shrill battle cries (45). Sulla, despite his abdication from power, continues to deal with public affairs. Partly due to his sexual dissolution, he suffers from an abscess in the intestines and an infestation of lice which slowly decompose his flesh. In this advanced phase of his illness, he calls for the magistrate Granius (homonymous to the Granius he had beheaded) who was awaiting his death so as not to pay a debt to the public treasury, and orders his

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guards to surround him and strangle him. With such exertion and agitation, his abscess bursts, and he dies a few hours later (36-37). Again in this example, Lodge takes no notice of Plutarch. But even Appian, to explain Sulla's retirement to the countryside, expresses the opinion that he was weary of war, weary of power, weary of Rome (I.xii. 104). And referring concisely to Marius' death in the first month of his seventh consulate, Appian shows him involved in hatching terrible plans against Sulla ("being bent to all extremitie against Sylla", as W. B. translates approximative^).76 Marius' death is, instead, described in The Wounds by Lectorius to the captain and soldiers who killed Anthony, as a serenely inevitable passing away, in the framework of a locus amoenus in which the seven eagles confirm the omen presaged during the future consul's infancy: Our Consul Marius, worthy soldiers, Of late within a pleasant plot of ground Sat down for pleasure near a crystal spring, Accompanied by many lords of Rome. 'Romans', said he, 'old Marius now must die. These seven fair eagles, birds of mighty Jove, That at my birthday on my cradle sat, Now at my last day arm me to my death, And lo, I feel the deadly pangs approach.' What should I more? In brief, with many prayers For Rome, his son, his goods and lands dispos'd, Our worthy Consul to our wonder died. (IV.ii. 175-8, 189-96)

To present the last phase of Sulla's life, Lodge compresses a historical period of about four years into a single 'state' scene of 403 lines (V.v.). Whatever capacity he has for dramatic organization of the fabula is lacking in this scene, and the chronological development is flattened into a simultaneity reminiscent of medieval painting. For example, the Consul Flaccus is present from the beginning to the end of the scene, whereas all the sources say he died before Sulla; likewise for Pompey, if he were to be identified — as Wilson and Houppert do in their editions — with the Consul Q. Pompeius, a character who appears in Acts I and II. In my opinion, however, the Pompey of Act V could well

76

Romanes Warns, p. 46.

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V a n n a Gentili

be the future Pompeius Magnus (whose relations with Sulla are amply recorded both by Appian and Plutarch) and should thus be counted as a separate character in the cast of the play. Surrounded by Flaccus, Pompey, Lepidus, guards and citizens, Sulla "in his robes of state" proclaims himself dictator for an indefinite period. But, at the news of Young Marius's suicide and the conquest of Praeneste, the Dictator unexpectedly announces and justifies his decision to retire to lead a private life, and sets down the ensigns of his command. H e is interrupted at this point by the protestations of the two "burghers", and as soon as they go off stage, he has the vision of the "Genius" and finally calls in Cornelia and Fulvia to whom he addresses a long farewell speech. The few words exchanged between Pompey and Lepidus on the funeral in no way reflect the disputes which raged in Rome on the subject of Sulla's obsequies giving way to further uprisings. On the empty stage, Lodge orders the solemn funeral procession. With these absolutory deaths, the "true tragedies" (and "most lamentable", as the head-title adds) conclude in a minor key, almost evading the punitive model of the rise and fall. The "wounds" are those suffered by Rome, and the parable Mark Anthony had foretold from the very beginning is reserved to her: For Fortune makes our Rome a bandying ball Toss'd from her hand to take the greater fall.

(I.i.305-6)

LUMINITSA NICULESCU

Shakespeare and Alchemy: Let us not Admit Impediments

1 T H E ALCHEMIST AND T H E P O E T IN T H E RENAISSANCE Alchemy, the arcana artis, fascinated Renaissance writers by the multifacetedness of its purpose as well as by its elaborate linguistic expression. Endeavors to transmute base metals into gold — the king of all metals — were only preliminary stages in the complex process that the opus alchymicum labored to consummate. The alchemist's goals were far-reaching: mastery of cosmogonical powers, the unraveling of the mysteries of creation, the discovery of nature's secrets, and the perfection of man's imperfections. Since the transmutation of metals presupposes a transformation in the nature of man (refining human nature is a sine qua non in the alchemical process), we can speak about a basic similarity between the perfect metal and the perfect man; both radiate a beautiful light in their crucibles — gold in the alchemical cauldron, man in his "verum mens infinitarum distinctarumque inventrix." 1 In order to reach the pure gold of refined essences, man strives to effect a distillation of the impure elements of his nature; Geber (the Westernized name of Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan) firmly believes that the alchemist's task is first to purify his own nature and only then attempt the transmutation of the "Imperfect Bodies of Minerals" into perfect gold. 2 Furthermore, Geber introduces the concept of "artifice" and the notion of alchemist-artificer 3 as integral parts of the alchemical opus which attempts to recreate the work of the Divine Artifex.

1

2

3

Marsile Ficin, Théologie platonicienne de l'immortalité des âmes, trans, and ed. Raymond Marcel, Les Classiques de l'humanisme (Paris: Société d'édition 'Les Belles lettres,' 1964), II, 228-9; liber X X X , caput iii: "Man's mind, discoverer of the true, the infinite and the diversified." Unless otherwise specified, all translations are mine. Geber, Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan, Of the Investigation or Search for Perfection, trans. Richard Russell (London: Dent, 1928), pp. 3-4. Geber, pp. 17-8: "Therefore, we consider by the work of Nature and discern that Copper may be changed into Gold by Artifice . . . But not without very great ingenuity, which comes not to an Artificer of a stiff neck."

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Geber's followers (Albertus Magnus, Vincent de Beauvais, Raymond Lull, Arnauld de Villanova, and, of course, Paracelsus) see man as a magnum miraculum4 who can perfect the imperfections of Nature. It seems that Paracelsus' zeal to demonstrate that, just as G o d created the perfect being (man), the alchemist-artificer could, by imitating the Great Artifex, create the perfect metal (gold) exceeds by far the enthusiasm of his predecessors; Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von H o henheim, alias Paracelsus, shaped the alchemical doctrine into sui generis molds in the spirit of fervent creativity, inquisitiveness and unlimited vision that have, for so long, been associated with the Renaissance wit. Alchemy, Paracelsus predicates, is an art that completes nature : A l c h e m y is a necessary, indispensable art . . . It is an art a n d V u l c a n is its artist. H e w h o is a V u l c a n has mastered this art; he w h o is n o t a V u l c a n can m a k e no h e a d w a y in it. But to understand this art, one must a b o v e all k n o w that G o d has created all things; and that H e has created s o m e t h i n g o u t of nothing. T h i s something is a seed, in which the p u r p o s e of its use and f u n c tion is inherent f r o m the beginning. A n d since all things have been created in an unfinished state, nothing is finished, but V u l c a n the alchemist must bring all things to their completion. 5

H o w does the Paracelsian notion that the alchemist-artificer brings the prima materia to perfection by transmuting it into "the final substance and the ultimate essence" 6 relate to the Neoplatonic contention that Natura naturans is superior to Natura naturata? In the Renaissance, Natura naturata is a "generic label for that which is not made by man and is free of his contriving, together with the collateral assumption that Nature is a divine or semidivine power that invariably 'does things' better than m a n . " 7 As such, Natura naturata stands in op4

5

6 7

Giovanni Pico délia Mirandola, De Dignitate Hominis (Berlin: Gehlen, 1968), p. 26. At the beginning of his De Dignitate Hominis, Pico refers to Hermes Trismegistus's " O Asclepi, magnum miraculum est homo." Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, Selected Writings, trans. Norbert Guterman, ed. Jolande Jacobi, Bollingen Series, 28 (New York: Pantheon, 1951), pp. 218-9. All quotations from Paracelsus are taken from this edition. Paracelsus, pp. 216-7. Edward William Tayler, Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 42. For an enlightening discussion of Natura naturans vs. Natura naturata, see Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 184, and Albert-Marie Schmidt, La Poésie scientifique en France au XVI' siècle (Paris : Éditions Rencontre, 1970), p. 414.

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position to Art which, to Renaissance poets, means "the art of making", nay, the art of "counterfeyting". 8 On the other hand, Natura naturans (which points to man's re-creation of Nature in the act of giving it "a local habitation and a name" 9 ) is habitually associated with Art as "perfecter and improver of Nature." 10 Is this not precisely what Paracelsus and his Renaissance adepts maintained? Therefore, the alchemist and the poet are both artificers whose Natura naturans perfects the imperfections of Natura naturata, Vulcan, the alchemist, effectuates the work of bringing to "completion" "all things" that "have been created in an unfinished state", 11 while the poet perfects "Nature's Flaws" by means of his Art: Againe, the arte helpeth well to dispose and order matters of our owne invention, the which wee may followe as well in speaking as in writing, f o r though many by nature without art, have proved worthy men, yet is arte a surer guide than nature, considering w e see as liuely by arte what w e do, as though w e read a thing in writing, where as Natures doings are not so open to all men. 12

In The Arte of English Poesie, Puttenham explains that poetic "arte" does not only "aide" nature, but also "surmounts" it: In another respect arte is not only an aide and coadiutor to nature in all her actions, but an alterer of them, and in some sort a surmounter of her skill . . . And the Gardiner by his arte will not onely make an herbe, or f l o w r , or fruite . . . but also, will embellish the same in vertue, shape, odour and taste, that nature of her self woulde neuer haue d o n e : . . . any of which things nature could not doe without mans help and arte. 13

Since the 'Gardiner's' art is the poet's art to re-create Creation, it looks as if Natura naturans is, once more, challenging Natura naturata.

8

'

10

11 12

13

George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Edward Arber (Westminster: Constable, 1895), p. 310. All subsequent references to Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie are taken from this edition. William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander (London: Collins, 1971), A Midsummer's Night's Dream, V.i.12-3. All quotations from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are taken from this edition. F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Arno Press, 1974), p. 34. See also Tayler, pp. 31-42. Paracelsus, pp. 218-9. Thomas Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique, ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), p. 5. Puttenham, p. 309.

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Puttenham emphasizes the fact that the poet is, first and foremost, a Maker whose "inward conceits" (the "metall of his mind") will bring the poetic "arte" to perfection; 14 all in all, the poet, just like the Paracelsian alchemist (who must distill the impurities of his nature before attempting to transmute base metals into gold), has to perfect the imperfections of his "arte" before "embellishing" language (the "herbe, or flowr, or fruite The poet qua Maker is a concept that prevails in Renaissance poetics; as we know, Sperone Speroni, Joachim du Bellay, and Sir Philip Sidney (to name only a few) centered their Defenses of poetry on the role of the poet as Artificer. In his attempt to propound the use of the vernacular as equal (if not somewhat superior) to Greek and Latin, Joachim du Bellay seems aware of the fact that he has to proceed with great caution in order to give his La Défense et illustration de la langue Française a firm footing in the Renaissance.15 One of the advocates of the use of French in the domain of letters and, at the same time, an authoritative representative of the Renaissance (the re-birth of Greek and Latin belles lettres), Du Bellay tries very hard to revolutionize the status quo without sharing the tragical fate of an Etienne Dolet, for example.16 How does he do it? Just like most of his fellow Pléiade members, Joachim du Bellay uses the classical sources with the purpose of introducing new concepts; in this particular case, he resorts to the famous Horatian passage regarding the mutual embrace of Nature and Art 17 in order to prepare the ground for a confrontation between them: N a t u r a fieret laudabile c a r m e n , an arte, Q u a e s i t u m est. E g o n e c studium sine divite vena, N e c rude quid possit v i d e o i n g e n i u m : alterius sic Altera poscit o p e m res, et conjurât amice.

14 15

16

17

Puttenham, p. 161. Joachim du Bellay, La Défense et illustration de la langue Française, ed. Louis Humbert (Paris: Gamier). Étienne Dolet (1509-1546) was hanged and burned in the Place Maubert in Paris. H e had been one of the most active humanists of the Pléiade, and a very good friend of Clement Marot and François Rabelais. Du Bellay refers to Dolet at the end of the first book of his Défense, when he discusses the Art of the poet to "enrich our language", p. 76. Q. Horatius Flaccus, Epistola ad Pisones: De Arte Poetica, trans, and ed. George Colman (London: Cadell, 1783), p. 34.

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Whether good verse of Nature is the Fruit, Or form'd by Art, has long been in dispute. But what can Labour in a barren foil, Or what rude Genius profit without toil? The wants of one the other must supply; Each finds in each a friend and firm ally.

First, Du Bellay establishes the classical background for a possible reconciliation between Nature and Art; 18 then, he tackles on the difficult matter of the "Artifice" involved in poetical "making" (or, as he calls it, "adorning" 1 9 ): "car il n'y a point de doute, que la plus grand'part de l'artifice ne soit contenue en l'imitation" ("for there is no doubt that the great part of the artifice is contained in the imitation"). 20 From here to the claim that the artifice of the poet-rhetorician embellishes 21 "toutes les choses que le nature a crées" ("all the things which Nature has created") is just one step, and Du Bellay does not hesitate to take it.22 Just like Puttenham, Joachim du Bellay sees the poet-rhetorician as a "Gardiner" who strives, by means of artifice, to bring the French language (the "plante sauvage" 2 3 ) to the perfection it needs 24 in order to replace Greek and Latin (the "plantes cultivées" 25 ). This is also, as we have seen, the goal that the alchemist strives to achieve in the process of transmuting coarse metals into gold; the endeavor to embellish the vernacular and perfect it by means of "métaphores, allégories, comparisons, similitudes" 2 6 is similar to the alchemical endeavor to perfect the imperfections of Nature. Ergo, Hermeticism and Renaissance poetics share similar conceptual grounds: the poet's art of turning "the forms of things" into "shapes" and the art of giving " t o airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name" 2 7 conjoin with the alchemist's skill "to obtain the lead from the ore and to transform it into what it is made for." 2 8 Du Bellay, p. 52. •» Du Bellay, p. 29. 20 Du Bellay, p. 58. 21 Du Bellay makes it very clear that the poet is a rhetorician, too. See p. 59: poets and rhetoricians alike "sustain the edifice of language." 22 Du Bellay, p. 62. 23 Du Bellay, p. 47. 24 Du Bellay, p. 53. » Du Bellay, p. 27. 26 Du Bellay, p. 52. 27 See note 9. 28 Paracelsus, pp. 166-7. 18

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The analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, as well as the confrontation between Artifex and Artificer, must have existed ever since the beginning of the world, if we are to think of the conceptual intimation behind the claim that "God created man in the image of himself" (Genesis 1, 27); yet, in the Renaissance, the search for correspondences between Hermeticism and humanism results in an exclusive preoccupation with the microcosmic magnum miraculum. Hermes Trismegistus (the pseudonym of the ancient philosopher, astrologer and alchemist of Hellenized Egypt) had already planted the seed for Renaissance encomia of man with his " O Asclepi, magnum miraculum est homo." 29 Pico della Mirandola makes the magnum miraculum the center of his philosophical musings; to him, man is "sensuum perspicacia, rationis indagine, intelligentiae lumine, naturae interpretem" 30 ("nature's interpreter by the sharpsightedness of [his] senses, by the power of [his] reason, and by the light of [his] intelligence"). The magnum miraculum may very well be the paradigm for Shakespeare's "piece of work": H o w noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, h o w like a god! the beauty of the world! (Hamlet, Il.ii. 301-4)

In Renaissance poetics, the poet's goal is similar to the alchemist's telos; the former strives to "range freely" "only within the zodiac of his own wit" 31 (or in the alchemical "metall of his minde" 32 ) in order to deliver a "golden" world 33 by means of his poetic "invention" (not "enclosed within the narrow warrant of . . . Nature's gifts", but prompted by his Art); the latter attempts to perfect the imperfect metals found in Nature and to bring "all things to their completion", since "all things have been created in an unfinished state":

29

30 31

32 33

Hermes Trismégiste, Corpus Hermeticum, trans. A. J. Festugière, ed. A. D. Nock (Paris: Société d'édition 'Les Belles lettres,' 1945), II, 301. Pico, p. 26. Sir Philip Sidney, "Apology for Poetry," in P. S.: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. David Kaltone (London: Signet, 1970), p. 221. All quotations from Sidney's Apology are taken from this edition. Puttenham, p. 161. Sidney, p. 221.

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Man must bring everything to perfection. This work of bringing things to their perfection is called 'alchemy'. And he is an alchemist who carries what Nature grows for the use of man to its destined end.34

In similar fashion, the poet creates "forms such as never were in Nature: the Heros, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like": Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers poets have done, neither with as pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers: Nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. 35

2 T H E SUN-KING ANALOGY R udenesse it selfe she doth refine, E uen like an Alychymist diuine; G rosse times of yron turning I nto the purest forme of gold; N ot to corrupt, till heauen waxe old, A nd be refined with burning.36

In the Renaissance, the Hermetic emphasis on the infinite powers of man (who rivals the Creator) challenges the medieval subservience of man to the universe and brings about a change in the world picture, an "immense net of correspondences" ;37 these intricate sets of analogies (between macrocosm and microcosm, sun and gold, macrocosm and body politic, body politic and microcosm, sun and king) lead to a new understanding of man's role in the universe. As we know, the sun-gold analogy and the sun-king concept are commonplace topoi in Renaissance literature; let us review a few of the passages that deal with the correspondences between the planet Sol, the monarch of the state, and gold (the king of all metals) in order fully to comprehend the change brought about by Hermeticism in the Renaissance world-view.

34 35 36

37

Paracelsus, pp. 166-7. Sidney, p. 221. Sir John Davies of Hereford, Hymnes to Astraea, in Frances Amelia Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 66. E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 83.

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The Copernican heliocentric system and the Hermetic "sun-centred 'spiritus' magic", 38 organically wedded, engender the Renaissance concept of the sun as supreme monarch: In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe; Hermes Trismegistus names him the visible God . . . So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle around him.39

As much a proponent of the primacy of the Sun as any Renaissance Neoplatonist, 40 Robert Fludd speaks about the royalty of the planet Sol in terms which recall Copernicus' eulogy of the Royal Sun: N o w the Macrocosmicall Sun's dignity and perfection is easily discerned, in that this Royal Phoebus doth sit in his chariot, even in the center or middle of the heavens, flittering with his golden hair, as the sole visible Emperour, holding the royall Scepter and government of the world, in whom all the vertue of the celestiall bodies do c o n s i s t . . . 4 1

Whereas in Renaissance poetry the king acquires the attributes of the sun, in Fludd's "Mosaicall Philosophy" (as well as in Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri IV" 42 ) the sun is invested with kingly qualities. In medieval and Renaissance alchemical treatises, the analogy between sun and king is closely connected to the correspondence between gold and sun; in effect, both share the same emblematic representation: O . In her Paracelsian study, J. S. Jacobi lists this common emblem as "the simplest, most ancient symbol for gold and the sun as the supreme

38

F. A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic

Tradition (London: Routledge & Ke-

gan Paul, 1964), p. 152. 39

40

41 42

Allen G. Debus, Robert Fludd and His Philosophicall Key, Being a Transcription of the Manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge (New York: Science History Publications, 1969), p. 55, note 59. See also Tillyard, pp. 88-9, and Yates, Astraea, pp. 163-4. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. M. Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 272. Debus, p. 13. Fludd (1574-1637) and Copernicus (1473-1543) constitute the central focus of Debus's discussion of sixteenth-century philosophical thought.

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light".43 She also mentions that aurum — — is a "symbol of the sun, suggesting a rotary movement, a symbol for the cyclical nature of the [alchemical] process".44 References to the sun as gold and to gold as the sun abound in alchemical writings: in "The Practise of Chymicall & Hermeticall Physicke, for the Preservation of Health", 45 Joseph DuChesne equates the circular motion of the sun with the circularity involved in alchemical transmutations. (Kurt Seligmann46 believes that the basis for the analogy between sun and gold lies in the fact that both are embodiments of perfection: "The most perfect thing on earth is gold . . . the most perfect thing in the sky is the sun.") Geber refers constantly to gold as the Sol47 and so does Paracelsus.48 Moreover, C. G. Jung says,49 Rex always signifies "sun" in Geber5s "Turba", as well as in Arnauld de Villanova's "Thesaurus Thesaurorum" and in "De ratione conficiendi lapidis philosophici" (a well-known alchemical treatise by Laurentius Ventura, a Venetian physicist of the sixteenth century). The sun-king analogy — one of the most frequent analogies in Shakespeare's history plays — has elicited a plethora of interpretations from a host of critics who stress the correspondence between "the sun, the ruler of the heavens, and the king, the ruler of the state".50 For example, S. K. Heninger, Jr. suggests that Shakespeare employed cosmological imagery in order to delineate the conceptual dichotomy between the ideal and the actual in the thematic structure of the history plays,51 while, in her impressionistic study, Caroline Spurgeon argues that the sun-king image is a "rhetorical assertion" of the idea of kingship52 and enumerates 43

44 45

46

47 48 49

50 51

52

Jolande Shekacs Jacobi, Paracelsus: Selected Writings, ed. J. S. Jacobi (New York: Pantheon, 1951), pp. 37-8. Jacobi, p. 39. Joseph DuChesne, The Practise of Chymicall and Hermetical Physicke, (London, 1605; rpt. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1975), ch. 13. Kurt Seligmann, Magic, Supematuralism, and Religion, University Library ( N e w York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968), p. 140. Geber, ch. 9, p. 15. Paracelsus, pp. 168-9. Carl Gustav Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series, 20 ( N e w York: Pantheon, 1956), p. 151. Tillyard, p. 89. S. K. Heninger, Jr., "The Sun-King Analogy in 'Richard II,'" Shakespeare Quarterl y , 11 (1960), 319. Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Boston: Beacon Press, I960), p. 235.

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methodically the instances in which this image appears in the historyplay sequence. Although Miss Spurgeon concludes her investigations by simply asserting that "this conception of the king as sun is fairly constant with Shakespeare", 53 a casual remark actually indicates that she saw more than just a rhetorical device in "this conception": So that there is deep and poignant meaning in what are his [Richard II's] real words of abdication, when the actual power and kingship have passed to Bolingbroke, and he transfers to his successor also the royal qualities of the sun, crying in his bitterness and anguish, 'O that I were a mockery king of s n o w , / Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,/ T o melt myself away in water drops!' 54

The intimation that Richard II is transferring "the royal qualities of the sun" to Bolingbroke and is investing him with the attributes of kingship by dint of metaphorical language (see Richard II, TV. i. 201-22, 260-2) calls our attention to the transmutational potentialities of Shakespeare's imagery; granted that, operating on a subliminal level, alchemical terminology is woven into the Renaissance linguistic texture, the analysis of alchemical tropes in Shakespeare's work may throw a new and fascinating light on the peculiarities of his habit of language. An interesting approach to the analogy between the king and the sun is that of Wolfgang Clemen who suggests that the Shakespearean king compares himself frequently with the sun "in full consciousness of his kingly dignity". 55 (In The Breath of Clowns and Kings, Theodore Weiss also comments on the fact that the king, who has a "sun-like look" and self-esteem, "is generally identified with the sun". 56 ) Furthermore, Mr. Clemen adds, the sun-king's words have a symbolic significance that is intimately related to the Elizabethans' belief in the magic of language. 57 It seems that, after all, the arbitrariness of language propounded by Socrates in Cratylus had not yet tainted the Elizabethan faith in the substantive entity of words; in Shakespeare's Wordplay, M. M. Mahood writes:

53 54 55

56

57

Spurgeon, p. 235. Spurgeon, p. 235. Wolfgang H. Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 59. Theodore Weiss, The Breath of Clowns and Kings: Shakespeare's Early Comedies and Histories (New York: Atheneum, 1974), p. 230. Clemen, p. 58.

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Given this belief in the truth of names, a belief in the power of words through sympathetic magic followed. Where there was a name there was a thing; therefore names could conjure up things . . . Verbal authority passed to the king at his coronation, so that just as Christ had dubbed the apostles, the king could create knights. In their turn, nobility and knighthood gave their holders the power to make their words good in challenge or vow. 58

This belief in the power of language to contain and express the essence of divinity, the attributes of kingship, and the hypostatic bond between words and concepts does not mean that Elizabethans deemed language perfect; in effect, they predicate, the imperfections of language originate in the postlapsarian state of the speaker: Since his sin, [man] had ignorance in his understanding, and perversity in his affections, the which have made both his discourse and that of his posterity ever since defective, unapt, confused, and oftentimes false . . . 5 9

Just like the alchemist who has to refine the impurities of his nature before he undertakes the difficult task of transmuting base metals into gold, the Renaissance man must purify his moral standards in order to restore the infallibility of language. By the same token, prior to becoming a symbol of the sun and an equivalent of alchemical gold, the Shakespearean king has to free his nature from the "dross of sin and corruption" 60 and sublimate the substance of kingship itself if he wants to refine the imperfections of his corrupt and vicious subjects (molded out of "coarse metal" 61 ), as well as to acquire the power of recreating the world verbally3 T H E GLITTERING REFORMATION Knowing that he must reform his nature in order to shine "like a bright metal on a sullen ground" (Henry IV, Part One, I. ii. 205), Prince Hal be-

58

59

Molly Maureen Mahood, Shakespeare's Wordplay (London: Methuen, 1957), pp. 170-1. Excerpt from Thomas Lodge's translation of Simon Goulart's A Learned Summarie:

Upon the Famous Poem of Du Bartas, as quoted by Margreta de Grazia, "Shakespeare's 60

61

View of Language: An Historical Perspective," Shakespeare Quarterly, 29 (1978), 375. Harold Fisch, "Alchemy and English Literature," Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophi-

cal and Literary Society, 7 (1953), 123. Henry VIII, III.ii.239.

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gins by reforming his attitude toward kingship; words of wisdom, distilled from former (and, alas! present and future) deeds of folly herald the oncoming glittering reformation of the Prince of Wales: So, when this loose behaviour I throw off And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes, Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

{Part One, I. ii. 201-8) Henry IV's son "will imitate the sun/ Who doth permit the base contagious clouds/[Falstaff and his wayward friends] T o smother up his beauty from the world/ That, when he please again to be himself/ Being wanted, he may be more wond'red at/ By breaking through the foul and ugly mists/ Of vapours that did seem to strangle him" (I.ii. 190-6); it seems that Prince Hal (the coarse metal) and king Henry V ( the refined gold and the glorious sun of England) are "two dishes, but to one table" {Hamlet, IV.iii. 25). What may redeem the False Staff is his constant preoccupation with the interrelationships between words and concepts; perhaps, after all, "Falstaff does have golden words and an inexhaustible vitality in using them", as well as the magical power of "reordering the world verbally". 62 In an attempt to assume the glitter of kingship, the False Staff plays the part of the True Staff (Henry IV) ; 63 what is the basic tenet in Falstaff's "royal" address? The pun sun-son: If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? A question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses? A question to be ask'd.

{Part One, II. iv. 390-4)

Later in the same scene, Falstaff equates genuine gold with truth and being, and counterfeit gold with falseness and seeming: 62

63

C. L. Barber, "Saturnalia in the Henriad," in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. L. F. Dean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 169-91; p. 181. Henry IV, Part One, II.iv.347-417.

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Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit. T h o u art essentially made, without seeming so. (475-6)

For him, things are projected into existence by means of verbal incantations: the False Staff seems to believe that, by avoiding words of woes, he will manage to stay away from a world of woes (405). By the same token, Falstaff presumes that the incantational power of words will shield him from evil fate: N o , my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but, for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff — and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff — banish not him thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's company: Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world. (455-63)

Unfortunately, Falstaff's faith in language does not withstand grave pressures; face to face with the imminent risk of losing his life, he begins to question the essence of concepts as well as the efficiency of words: "What is honour? A word. What is in that word? Honour. What is that honour? Air." (Part One, V.i. 135-7) Unlike Prince Hal, Falstaff cannot be better than his word (I.ii.203) because he does not actually believe that there is much essence in words. In Henry IV, Part Two, Prince Hal (still a base metal) undergoes a "low transformation": From a god to a bull? A heavy descensión! It was Jove's case! From a prince to a prentice? A low transformation! That shall be mine; for in everything the purpose must weigh with the folly. (Il.ii. 167-70)

Hal's "transformation" is a "low" one because it mocks and reverses the alchemical process: the change is from gold to coarse metal, "from a prince to a prentice." But, as soon as the prince throws off the "loose behaviour of the prentice", he shines "like bright metal on a sullen ground"; Henry V's sun-like rising to the throne proves a blessing to the country (Henry V, I.i.37) and dazzles "all the eyes of France" (I.ii.278-9). At Agincourt, king Henry V (now "crown'd with the golden sun", II.iv.58) claims from France the crown that "by the gift of heaven,/ By law of nature and of nations, "longs/ T o him and to his heirs . . . " (II.iv.79-81). The reformed wayward prince knows that "there is some soul of goodness in things evil,/ Would men observingly distil it out" (IV.i.4-5), and England knows it too:

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A largess universal, like the sun, His liberal eye doth give to every one, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. (4. Prologue, 43-7)

4 DISINTEGRATION

OF KINGSHIP — COLLAPSE LANGUAGE 6 4

OF

The golden crown that Henry V has consolidated sits rather heavily on his son's "feeble . . . head" (Henry VI, Part Two, V.i.2); besides, so many heads dream of being "circled" (Part Two, I.ii.10) with "the golden mark" (Li.238), so many hands "reach at the glorious gold" (I.ii.l 1) that, eventually, Henry VI will lose England in 1461 to his Plantagenet cousin Edward of York. One of the contenders to the throne, Richard Plantagenet, reminds everyone that Henry VI's grandfather (Henry IV) had usurped the crown by deposing the anointed king (Richard II): I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell; And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams, D o calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. {Henry VI, Part Two, III.i.349-54)

The Duke of York also reminds us of the power of investiture and divestiture attributed to language in the sixteenth century; by refusing to call Henry VI "king", York literally plucks "the crown from feeble Henry's head" {Part Two, V.i.2): King did I call thee? N o , thou art not king; That head of thine doth not become a crown; Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer's staff, 64

It should be obvious by now that I am not observing the historical sequence of the realms, nor the order in which Shakespeare wrote the history plays. Mine is a sui generis order . . .

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And not to grace an awful princely sceptre. That gold must round engirt these brows of mine.

(Part Two, V.i.93, 96-9)

He sounds very much like his son, the future king Richard III, who, twenty-two years later, will torment himself to "catch the English crown": I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And whiles I live t'account this world but hell, Until my misshap'd trunk that bears this head Be round impaled with a glorious crown.

(Part Three, III.ii.179, 168-71)

King Henry VI's imperfections do not make him "fit to govern and rule multitudes" (Part Two, V.i.94); the "base" king (Part Three, I.i.178) injures himself and his faithful followers (179) and debases the function of kingship by disinheriting his son (193). Once the sun-king's "tough commixture melts" (Part Three, II.vi.6), his enemies will shine (II.vi.10), and the entire country will "misthink" him (II.v.108). The negative prefixes "un-", "mis-", "dis-" in Part Three, I.i.193, 232, 253, and II.v.108 point to a gradual marring, debasing, and, eventually, annihilation of speech brought about by the disintegration of the royal power: K. Hen. Clif.

I prithee give no limits to my tongue: I am a king, and privileg'd to speak. My liege, the wound that bred this meeting here Cannot be cur'd by words; therefore be still.

{Part Three, Il.ii. 119-22) K. Hen. Q. Marg.

Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak. Thou hast spoke too much already; get thee gone.

{Part Three, I.i.257-8)

After being deposed and shortly before being killed, Henry VI claims that, after all, he still possesses a crown: K. Hen.

My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not deck'd with diamonds and Indian stones, N o r to be seen. My crown is call'd content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

2 Keep.

Well, if you be a king crown'd with content, Your crown content and you must be contented T o go along with us; . . .

(Part Three, III.i.62-8)

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Similarly, king Richard II — who is too "unking'd" (Richard II, V.v.37) — states that he is in possession of an invisible crown; just as Henry VI is contented with the crown in his heart, Richard II finds content in a metaphorical kingdom of griefs: "You may my glories and my state depose,/ But not my griefs; still am I king of those." (IV.i. 192-3). Richard II's thoughts tend to content him too (V.v.23); but, because they are "thoughts tending to ambition" (V.v.18), they deceive the imprisoned monarch with false dreams and "unlikely wonders" (V.v.19). In the Pomfret dungeon, the "blushing discontented sun" (III.iii.63) lives in the "little world" of his "still-breeding thoughts" (V.v.8-9), hoping to recreate his royal identity by setting "the word itself/Against the word" (V.v. 13-4); language becomes a substitute for kingship. Although the "unking'd" king knows that his kingdom is lost and that — just as Henry VI — he can no longer enjoy "an earthly throne" (Henry VI, Part Two, IV.ix.l), he tries to restore the attributes of kingship through language; Richard's "still-breeding thoughts", playing the part of his former courtiers (the "thousand flatterers", Richard II, II.i.100), "people" his "little world" (V.v.9) only to mislead him basely (II.i.100, 241-2): Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls; And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune's slaves Nor shall not be the last; . . . (V.v.18-25)

The king who has denied his "sacred state" with his "own tongue" (IV.i.209) — the "golden tongue" 65 that had formerly consecrated him as almighty sun rising in his throne (III.ii.50) — strives now desperately to preserve the royal identity which contains and expresses his personal identity: "My crown I am." (IV.i.191) Alas, both have disintegrated and nothingness reigns in the kingdom of griefs: . . . Sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am. Then crushing penury

65

Weiss, p. 205 (See Richard II, IV.i.209).

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Persuades me I was better w h e n a king; T h e n am I king'd again; and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing. But whate'er I be, N o r I, nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleas'd till he be eas'd With being nothing. (V.v.32-41)

The dissolution of royal power and the deposal of the anointed king lead to disruptions in the linguistic process; if the king is divested of his royal prerogatives and if he makes "glory base" (IV.i.251), his words lose the power to recreate the world verbally; the reality for which they stand no longer substantiates them.

5 RESURRECTION OF KINGSHIP AND OF LANGUAGE Edw. Rich.

D a z z l e mine eyes, or d o I see three suns? Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun N o t separated with the racking clouds, But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky.

Edw.

I think it cites us, brother, to the field, That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet, Each one already blazing by our meeds, Should notwithstanding join our lights together And overshine the earth, as this the world. {Henry VI, Part Three, II.i.25-8,34-8)

Although King Edward IV is "grac'd with wreaths of victory" (Henry VI, Part Three, V.iii.2) and "thus far" his "fortune keeps an upward course" (V.iii.l), in the "midst" of his "bright-shining day" (V.iii.3), "a black, suspicious, threat'ning cloud . . . will encounter with" the "glorious sun" of England (V.iii. 4-5): the Duke of Gloucester. "Deform'd, unfinish'd", sent before his time "into this breathing world scarce half made up" (Richard III, I.i.20-l),the Duke of Gloucester does not seem too thrilled to watch his brother, King Edward IV — "this sun of York" — transform the winter of discontent into a glorious summer (I.i. 1-2); the truth is that he himself dreams "on sovereignty" (just like his father) and envisages "the golden time" when his "misshap'd trunk",

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which bears the head of a Machiavel, "be round impaled with a glorious crown" (Henry VI, Part Three, III.ii.127,134,170-1,193). Gloucester's candid self-evaluation is quite accurate; he may look to the "golden time" of kingship, but he is not capable of distilling the impure elements of his nature and remains "a base foul stone" {Richard III, V.iii.250). He genuinely wonders at the fact that lady Anne, the "divine perfection of a woman", has "abase[d] her eyes on" the man who "cropp'd the golden prime" of her former husband, "sweet prince" Edward (I.ii.246-7). Once he is king, Richard III makes a feeble attempt to enter the alchemical realm; almost "like an Alychymist diuine", he plays "the touch to try" if his subjects "be current gold indeed" (IV.ii.8-9). H e knows that "corrupting gold" tempts people "unto a close exploit of death" (IV.ii.34-5);66 what he does not know is that his base and corrupt nature will prevent him from performing successful transmutations in the alchemical alembic of kingship: tears will not be "transform'd to orient pearl" (IV.iv.322) and "th'aspiring flame/ Of golden sovereignty" (328-9) will not redeem "corrupting gold". Richard III "usurp'd" the crown and "disgrac'd . . . kingly glory" (371). He also had grave trouble devising a suitable claim to the crown, 67 "misus'd" "the dignity and height of Fortune,/ The high imperial type of this earth's glory", and, finally, went down in history as "a base foul stone, made precious by the foil/ Of England's chair, where he is falsely set." (IV.iv.396, 243-4; V.iii.250-1) Indeed, one may say about Richard III what Buckingham will say about the Cardinal of York thirty years later: . . . I wonder T h a t such a k e e c h can w i t h his v e r y bulk T a k e up the rays o'th'beneficial sun A n d k e e p it f r o m the earth. {Henry

VIII, I.i.54-7)

Henry VIII is Shakespeare's last history play, and the only one in which he slightly distorts historical facts in order to please his queen. Elizabeth I's father, King Henry VIII, is portrayed as the epitome of "princely graces/ That mould up such a mighty piece [of gold] as this [Eli-

66

67

Whereas in IV.ii.8-9 "gold" has alchemical connotations, in IV.ii.34-5 it refers to financial greed. Peter Saccio, Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama ( N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 175.

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zabeth] is." (V.v.25-6) She is "a pattern to all princes living with her,/ And all that shall succeed . . . ": "She shall be, to the happiness of England/ An aged princess; many days shall see her,/ And yet no day without a deed to crown it." (V.v.22-3, 56-8) In Henry VIII, language and alchemical gold are implicitly related; when noble minds become corrupt, speech itself is debased: The gentleman is learn'd and a most rare speaker; To nature none more bound; his training such That he may furnish and instruct great teachers And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see, When these so noble benefits shall prove Not well dispos'd, the mind growing once corrupt, They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly Than ever they were fair . . .

{Henry VIII, I.ii.111-8) In the conflict between Cardinal Wolsey, the Dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Earl of Surrey, we are reminded of alchemists who cannot achieve gold unless they have first distilled the coarse impurities of their nature; the "officious lords", who have not refined their imperfections (after all, they "are moulded" out of "coarse metal" — III.ii.239), cannot distill their discourse so that their words carry a weighty authority (III.ii.233-4). By contrast, Queen Elizabeth lightens "all this isle" (II.iii.78-9) and is, in fact, the only "gem" (78), the only "mighty piece" (V.v.27) of gold which "doth refine" "rudenesse it selfe".

6 REFINING T H E BASE METAL It would be rather awkward to propound alchemical interpretations of the Shakespearean text and to intimate that language itself participates in the alchemical process of transmutation without reviewing C. G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. Although Jung was "primarily interested in the symbolical significance of alchemy for modern psychology", 68 his analysis of the king as alchemical figure is a landmark in alchemical hermeneutics. According to him, the king "radiates power and transforms

68

C. G. Jung, Editorial Note, p. V.

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the perishable into imperishable and the impure into pure." (p.539) In alchemical language, the king is equated with gold and with the sun on account of conceptual similarities between them: the apotheosis of the king, the concoction of gold, and the renewed rising of the sun: For as the sun is the blossom of fire, and the heavenly sun is the right eye of the world, so also the copper, when purification makes it to blossom, is an earthly sun, a king upon earth, like the sun in heaven. 69 It is clear from this . . . that the symbol of the chymic art, the king, is none other than gold, the king of all metals.70

The idea of kingship involves "a change in the individual which may, under certain conditions, affect society 'when the time is fulfilled'" (p.308); moreover, since the magic power of the king decreases with age (p.274), the king's son becomes a Sol redivivus (p.141). Jung thinks that language plays a crucial role in alchemical transmutations, nay, that it is the causa efficiens in obtaining gold (p.263) : language is the alembic in which "the divine spirit hidden in the flesh . . . clothes itself in the noblest of all bodies, royal gold." One of Shakespeare's favorite puns — "metal-mettle" — seems to humor the theory that alchemy and language share the same conceptual basis: transmutation. In All's Well That Ends Well, Ill.vi., Bertram's friends ask him to put Parolles to the test in order to find out if he is truly loyal, if he has real mettle. Otherwise, Bertram will not be able to find out "to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore [Parolles] will be melted." (32-3) "Being fool'd" (IV.iii.315) by nonsensical language (Act 4, Scenes 1 and 2), Parolles — the "manifold linguist" (IV.iii.220) — fails the test on account of his misuse of language (IV.iii.207-20). In Measure For Measure, Duke Vincentio is willing to invest Angelo with "all the organs" of [his] "own power" (I.i.21-2); Angelo protests and asks that he be put to the test so that he may be found worthy of the investiture : N o w , good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamp'd upon it. (48-51)

69 70

Marcellin Berthelot, Alchimistes Grecs, III, xlii., in Jung, p. 262. Heinrich Khunrath, Von hylealischen Chaos, in Jung, p. 262.

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(Richard III would not hesitate to "play the touch, to try" if his subject "be current gold indeed" — Richard III, IV.ii.8-9.) But, since the Duke believes that "matters of needful value" should be left "unquestion'd" {Measure for Measure, I.i.55-6), Angelo is given the noble commission without "more test made of" his "metal". Alas! Angelo's "metal" will prove unworthy of the investiture; his qualities (his mettle) do not make him the perfect coin on which "so noble and so great a figure/ Be stamp'd". . . In As You Like It, Jaques, who is master of "a thousand similes" (II.i.45), asks to be clothed in the motley of a fool in order to speak his mind and "cleanse the foul body of th'infected world" (Il.vii.58-60). Anatomizing folly like another Erasmus (56), Jaques proves his mettle by the quality of his discourse: What woman in the city do I name When that I say the city-woman bears The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders? W h o can come in and say that I mean her, When such a one as she such is her neighbour? Or what is he of basest function That says his bravery is not on my cost, Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits His folly to the mettle of my speech? (II.vii.74-82)

If, as D.S. Savage claims,71 Shakespeare discloses his knowledge of alchemy in Hamlet, it is primarily because the thematic context of the play requires alchemical imagery; the difficult task to purify and refine the dross of the kingdom of Denmark is identical to the endeavor to distill pure gold from impure metals. (In similar fashion, the king's discourse has to undergo alchemical changes in order to "gild" his subjects' "guilt" with the happiest terms he has — Henry IV, Part One, V.iv.157; unless the monarch refines the dross of ordinary discourse, he cannot sublimate "rudenesse it selfe" like an "Alychymist diuine".) According to D. S. Savage, the controversial "eale" in Hamlet, I.iv.36, means "eisel" "which is employed in the technical processes, or in certain descriptions of the technical processes of alchemy, sometimes for the purpose of extinguishing, or 'douting'" (p. 15 8); the "dram of eale" implies that man's charac71

D. S. Savage, "An Alchemical Metaphor in Hamlet," (1952), 160.

Notes and Queries, 197

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ter "might have been pure gold but for the touch of evil or weakness which brings him to ruin." (p.158) In Concerning the Nature of Things, as well as in The Turba Philosophorutn, Paracelsus tells us that eisel-vinegar takes an active part in the alchemical process of distillation. The "dram of eale", if conjoined with the "noble substance" distilled from the nature of "particular men" (I.iv.23), leads us to gold, "the 'noble substance' par excellence to the 'chemists' of that age". 72 D. S. Savage concludes his alchemical analysis of Hamlet by stating that there is "a pronounced alchemical train of thought manifesting itself intermittently throughout the play." It is interesting to note that madness itself is described in alchemical terms; speaking about Hamlet's repentance for the accidental killing of Polonius, Gertrude says: O'er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure; 'a weeps for what is done. (IV.i.25-7)

Hamlet's madness performs the alchemical task of extracting and purifying the "something . . . rotten in the state of Denmark" (I.iv.90); moreover, his "transformation" (II.ii.5) reenacts the alchemical transmutation of base metals into gold. In order to devote himself to finding the "dram of eale" which has sullied the "noble substance", Hamlet has to turn his back on "base matter": Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter. (I.v.98-104)

After all, as we know, an alchemist whose soul is impure will never succeed to refine base metals and should certainly refrain from aspiring to golden ideals — such as transmuting base metals (drams of eale) into pieces of w o r k . . . infinite in faculties. . . express and admirable in form and moving. . . angel-like in action and godlike in apprehension. . . 72

J. Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1937), p. 208, note 1.

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7 GILDING REFINED GOLD: T H E KING, T H E C R O W N A N D LANGUAGE We have seen that, in the history plays, the function of language is arbitrated exclusively by the monarch. Richard II, for example, holds speech in his royal power; he grants it to those he deems worthy of the honor, and denies it to those who have fallen in disgrace: N o w by my sceptre's awe I make a vow, Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood Should nothing privilege him nor partialize The unstooping firmness of my upright soul. H e is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou: Free speech and fearless I to thee allow. The hopeless word of 'never to return' Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life. Boling. Your will be done. This must my comfort be — That sun that warms you here shall shine on me, And those his golden beams to you here lent Shall point on me and gild my banishment. Boling. H o w long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is the breath of kings. (Richard II, I.i. 118-23; I.iii. 152-3; I.iii. 144-7; I.iii.213-5)

Shakespeare's kings possess "a fine sense of the significance, the sacredness, the grace, and the splendour of kingship"; 73 one of the most cherished assets of a king — to "talk in similes and make use of metaphors" 74 — makes the monarch fully conscious of his use of language. The king knows that he is not an ordinary human being; he also knows that he is king not only by birth, but also "by the dignity of his behaviour and stature" 75 and by the "tenour" of his words (Henry IV, Part Two, V.iv.72).

73 74 75

Clemen, p. 55. Clemen, p. 54. Clemen, p. 55.

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It has been pointed out that, in the history plays, Shakespeare's chief aim was to give expression to his attitude toward kingship — a corollary of "the Elizabethan belief in the sanctity of kingship"; 76 depose the anointed king, Shakespeare seems to say in Richard II, and language itself will disintegrate: words will be set against words (V.v.13-4), whereas the royal identity and the royal discourse will both collapse into nothingness (V.v.32-41). When the time comes to hear the deposed king's word ("sterling yet in England" — IV.i.264), what we do hear is a message "bankrupt" (267) of majesty: . . . Was this the face That like the sun did make beholders wink? Is this the face which fac'd so many follies That was at last out-fac'd by Bolingbroke? A brittle glory shineth in this face; As brittle as the glory is the face. (IV.i.283-8)

Actually, if the king's glory falls "to the base earth from the firmament" (Il.iv. 19-20) and if he resigns both his crown and his selfness (IV.i.200-1), language itself fails him: . . . Alack the heavy day, That I have worn so many winters out, And know not now what name to call myself! O that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke To melt myself away in water drops! (IV.i.257-62)

In order to be acknowledged king, the prince has to outgrow the "prentice" and to turn "past evils to advantages" (Henry IV, Part Two, II.ii.168; IV.iv.78); as a result, he will be able to "gild" guilt with "the happiest terms" he has (Part One, V.iv.157). Actually, there is an indivisible bond between the king, his crown, and language; the crown, in and by itself, does not prove the king (my italics) and neither can "twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed" (King John, II.i.275), since swords do no longer guarantee the possession of the kingdom. (The citizens will prove loyal only "to him . . . that proves the King" — II.i.270-1; it is time to "compound whose right is the worthiest" — II.i.281.) 76

Mahood, p. 88. See also Clemen, pp. 54-5, and G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1951), pp. 6-7.

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Just as alchemical gold has the power to multiply itself in the crucible, the king may be "king'd" several times. Does King John's "double coronation" (IV.ii.40) serve any purpose? Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. (IV.ii.9-16)

After all, how can "the beauteous eye of heaven" — that "Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,/ Turning with splendour of his precious eye/ The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold" (III.i.77-80) — be garnished? King John's "double coronation" does indeed defy its purpose, which is to consolidate the royal power; accused of having "outfaced infant state" and of having "done a rape/ Upon the maiden virtue of the crown" (II.i.97-8), rejected by his subjects who prefer to be "king'd" of their fears (II.i.371), King John indulges in "wasteful and ridiculous excess". In spite of occasional alchemical failures ("You have beguil'd me with a counterfeit/ Resembling majesty, which, being touch'd and tried,/ Proves valueless", III.i.99-101), Shakespeare's kings bring to mind, once more, Sir John Davies' eulogy to Queen Elizabeth I, the "Alychymist diuine". Just like an alchemist, the king turns "grosse times of yron" into the "purest forme of gold"; in effect, in the history plays, the concept of kingship is intertwined with alchemical notions: in order to "conjure up things" and "create knights", the king has to distill the impurities of his own nature and of the "grosse times of yron", while his discourse turns the arbitrariness of the language of ordinary discourse into substantiveness.

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8 T H E ALCHEMICAL PROCESS O F WRITING A METALINGUISTIC APPROACH In Renaissance literature, the idea that the poet — insofar as he creates a world of his own —77 can be compared with God (the Artifex-Creator of the world) occurred for the first time in the writings of the Florentine Neoplatonist Christoforo Landino. 78 Landino's source, Marsilio Ficino, exalts man as " 'a sort of God', God's emulator in arts and government, and a semi-creator". 79 We have already seen that encomia of man's godlike nature abound in Renaissance philosophical writings :80 Pico della Mirandola's magnum miraculum, taken from Hermes Trismegistus's Asclepius, is a representative example of the theory that man (the artificer) rivals God (the great Artifex). As E. N. Tigerstedt states in The Poet as Creator: Origins of a Metaphor, "to describe the transition from man as species to the poet as genus is to write the history of human thought." 81 Suffice it to stress that, in Renaissance poetics, the poet as artificer is both an abstract concept and a "cherished" metaphor. Philo Judaeus was the first to call God poietei82 (the notion was subsequently borrowed by Plotinus and by Christian hermeneutic writers). 83 Moreover, in the Acts 17,28, poietes means "poet", "while in all other passages it means 'maker'." 84 In a famous passage from Plotinus' Enneads, the Divinity "expressis verbis" is called a poet and the world its poem; 85 the comparison between God and the poet works both ways: God is a poietes and the poet is a Creator. The etymology of the word "poet" explains why Renaissance poets found the analogy between Artifex and artificer so appealing; Landino, Scaliger, Sidney, and Du Bellay centered their poetics around the claim that the Greeks called the poet "poietes" from the verb "poiein": 77 78

79 80 81 82

83 84 85

This notion prevails in Renaissance poetical treatises. E. N. Tigerstedt, "The Poet as Creator: Origins of a Metaphor," Comparative Literature Studies, 5 (1968), 455. Tigerstedt, 455. See notes 1 and 4. Tigerstedt, 456. Tigerstedt, 464. See also Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), II, 138. Tigerstedt, 457. Tigerstedt, 465. Plotinus, The Enneads (London: Faber, 1969), p. 171.

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. . . which means, 'now to make something out of something, now to create out of nothing', as it is said of God in the Scripture: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' In this way, the linguistic ambiguity of poiein becomes an argument for elevating the poet to a middle station between God and man.86

The concept that God is the Artifex and Opifex Mundi (the Artisan or Artist of the World 87 ) was a commonplace among the "Fathers of the Church": 88 St Augustine himself compared the world to a poem (carmen) and a discourse (sermo, o ratio).m This is a major concept in Renaissance thinking, taking into consideration the immense influence that St Augustine's doctrine had on the Florentine Neoplatonists; but while St Augustine considered it a blasphemy to call God a poet (or the poet a Creator), Renaissance poets and philosophers bridged the chasm between God (the Artifex and divine poietes) and the poet-maker. Side by side with the thesis that the poet is a maker (embraced by Scaliger, Du Bellay, Puttenham, and Sidney), we find the claim that the poet is a vates too (seer-prophet) — espoused by Maurice Sceve and Pontus de Tyard, as well as by Giordano Bruno, Leone Ebreo, and Pierre de Ronsard; inspired by divine madness (the Platonic furor poeticus), the poet -vates sets out to imitate the celestial harmony. 90 In his metapoetic analysis of the nature and function of poetic creation, as well as of the role of the poet in his twofold hypostasis of vates and poietes,91 Shakespeare speaks about the "frenzy" which seizes "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet", who are "of imagination all compact": One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. 86

87 88 89 90 91

Tigerstedt, 459. See also S. K. Heninger, Jr., Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974), p. 357. Wolfson, p. 51. Tigerstedt, 465. St. Augustine, De Musica, in Tigerstedt, 465-7. Tigerstedt, 469. See also Heninger, Touches, pp. 285-90, 304-62. Shakespeare's metapoetic system is unraveled in the Sonnets as well as in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labour's Lost. For an illuminating analysis of Shakespeare's metapoetics, see Murray Krieger, A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modem Poetics (Princeton University Press, 1964), and Poetic Presence and Illusion: Essays in Critical History and Theory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), especially pp. 18-27, 39-55.

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The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (A Midsummer Night's Dream, V.i.9-17)

As maker-artificer, the poet transmutes the "airy nothing" to substantive essences contained in words by turning "the forms of things unknown" [ideas] "to shapes" [signs]. By a masterful metapoetic twist, fantasy shapes reality and is itself turned "to shapes" in the act of acquiring "a local habitation and a name", while the incorporeal essence of the "forms unknown" is materialized (given poetic body and substance) by means of an alchemical-like transmutation: poetic language transforms the imperfect, "brazen" world into a "golden", perfect world. 92 The Renaissance poet is, first and foremost, a magician whose art is "to enchant" (The Tempest, Epilogue, 14) and "to produce a substantive presence in the word" 9 3 by means of "poetic alchemy". 94 H o w does the poet-maker transform the language of ordinary discourse into poetic language? By means of the alchemy of love, the art of "creating every bad a perfect best" (Sonnet 114.4, 7) and of making "cherubins" out of "monsters and things indigest" (114, 5-6). To borrow Stephen Booth's words, 95 "alchemical implications are present throughout" the sonnet-sequence; in sonnet 33, for example, the poet compares his beloved with the sun which flatters "the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,/ Kissing with golden face the meadows green,/ Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy" (2-4); the poet-lover is a sun-king who has the power to gild reality with the sovereignty of his "eye" (or is it his "I"?). In Sonnet 119, the poet-alchemist drinks potions "distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within" (1-2); actually, as Mr. Booth suggests, Sonnet 119 "is largely constructed of metaphors and analogies from alchemy and medicine" :96

92 93 94 95

96

Krieger, Poetic Presence, pp. 9-12. Krieger, Poetic Presence, p. 24. Krieger, Poetic Presence, p. 24. Stephen Booth, ed. Shakespeare's Sonnets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 398. Booth, ed., p. 398.

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Lines 4-6 suggest the inevitable last minute failures of alchemists and the traditional explanations for failures: errors of execution and the alchemist's lack of moral purity (an alchemist whose soul was impure could not succeed in purifying matter; God's grace was necessary for that; . . . ) . . . Lines 11 and 12 are particularly suggestive of alchemy, in which the essential operation was to break down matter and then reconstitute it in altered and superior form. Line 13 may allude to the proverb 'Content is the Philosopher's stone, that turns all it touches into gold', although Tilley (C625) records no example before 1642. 97

Line 13 may very well allude to the famous alchemical lapis, but it also contains a reference to the "content" of the poet-maker, namely the satisfaction to lay "great bases for eternity" (125.3) for the "powerful rhyme", which will outlive marble and "the gilded monuments of princes" (55.1-2); the poet's "content" lies, therefore, in the "contents" (55.3) of his verse, as well as in the art of recreating love and poetics (by "creating every bad a perfect best" — 114.7, and by "dressing old words new" — 76.11). Love's alchemy, which can "make of monsters and things indigest/ Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble" (114.4-6), is consubstantial with the alchemy inherent in the poetic art of distilling truth "by verse" (54.14). Of all alchemical processes, distillation seems to have fascinated Shakespeare the most; in addition to the passages we have already discussed (from Sonnets 33, 54 and 119), there are numerous other instances in which the word "still" carries the connotation of both the alchemical still — alembic, cauldron, or crucible — and the process of distillation itself: O benefit of ill! N o w I find true That better is by evil still made better. (Sonnet 119.9-10)

As Booth comments: The reference is simultaneously to the process of distilling medicinal substances and to the alchemists' practice of getting an increasingly refined substance by repeating the distilling process several times so that each 'better' substance will become better still.9*

97 98

Booth, ed., pp. 398-400. Booth, ed., p. 403.

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While the "polish'd form of well-refined" pens (85.8) is not properly equipped to distill truth or the essence of poetics itself (Sonnets 82, 83), Shakespeare's limbeck does manage to create "every bad a perfect best" in the process of giving "the forms of things unknown" "a local habitation and a name" and of gilding "pale streams with heavenly alchemy". Sonnet 5 revolves around the process of distillation, too: Then, were not summer's distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was; But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Lease but their show: their substance still lives sweet. (9-14)

"Summer's distillation" is an obvious reference to the essence of summer as specified in lines 10 and 13, as well as to perfumes distilled from flowers," while "still" in line 14 means "always, forever" and is, at the same time, a play on "distill'd" in line 13 (just like "still" in sonnet 119, 2-4 and 9-10). Furthermore, the use of "liquid" in line 10 reinforces the allusion to the alchemical change from solid to liquid inherent in the process of distilling pure gold from impure metals, the fair from the unfair (line 4), and beauty from barrenness (line 8). A similar reference occurs in Hamlet, I.ii.129, and is almost thoroughly analyzed by Robert F. Fleissner: In the "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt" soliloquy, Shakespeare uses the alchemical connotations of distillation in order to account for the state of things in Denmark, as well as for Hamlet's "melancholy disposition": O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! H o w weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! (I.ii. 129-34)

R. F. Fleissner claims that the terms "melt", "dew", and "resolue" imply the alchemical "effort to effect a transmutation". 100 He also maintains » Booth, ed., p. 141. Robert F. Fleissner, "Hamlet's Flesh Alchemically Considered," English Studies, 59 (1978), 509.

100

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that "resolve" points to a conjoining of two alchemical processes, solution and distillation: both denote a purification of matter, and both are conceptually related to "melting" base metals into "golden ideals". Fleissner's argumentation 101 is extremely illuminating: Some of the terms in the immediate context of the soliloquy (especially 'melt') suggest this association since the major task of the alchemists was, of course, to melt base metals down into gold. Analogously, Hamlet speaks of melting something base (in the sense of dirtied, that is 'sullied') down into something ideal (thus golden), namely into 'dew', which is distilled water or water purified of anything that has 'sullied' it. Should it be argued that the ordinary process of melting, thawing, and becoming dew would not involve cleansing, and that from such a point of view the 'solid' reading would seem better, the answer can be given that Hamlet is concerned with golden ideals, with what 'would' be, as he puts it, not with just the ordinary or real. From that point of view, the alchemical allusion works.

Shakespeare makes language function as an alembic in which love, truth, and poetics itself are being distilled in verse (54.13-4); the poet's "pow'rful rhyme" shines in the "contents" of this alembic brighter "than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time", and outlives "marble" and "the gilded monuments/ Of princes" (55.1-4). Love teaches the poet "this alchemy/ T o make of monsters and things indigest" (114.4-5) a recreated self, a golden image which will shape the world according to its features (113.12); this process of metamorphosis recalls Sidney's claim that the poet creates "a world of golden presence". 102 Through the alchemical powers of love,103 the poet-lover distills truth "by verse" (54.14), nay, he distills the "particulars" of the world "in one general best" (91.7-8). The idea of distilling the essence of the beloved and of love itself also lies at the core of the first 17 sonnets in which Shakespeare urges the fair youth to marry and breed in his "golden time" (3.12). How else could the "winter's ragged hand" be prevented from defacing the youth's "summer" "ere" it "be distill'd"? (6.1-2) Immersed in the contemplation of the fair youth's beauty, which is "the world's fresh ornament" (1.9), the poet-lover becomes aware of the role that he himself has: his art will engraft his beloved new (15.14), while his "pupil pen" (16.10) will "write the beauty" of the beloved "in fresh numbers" (17.5-6). The poet's 101 102 103

Fleissner, 508. Krieger, Poetic Presence, p. 10. Krieger, Poetic Presence, p. 23. See also Krieger, Window, pp. 131, 135.

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"rhyme" (17.14) will become the center of the lover's preoccupations, and from sonnet 18 on, he will probe the nature of poetry as well as his role as poet-lover: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair some time declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou oVst; Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (Sonnet 18, 5-14) The poet claims immortality for his verse which distills — in true Horatian spirit — both beauty and truth, while the alembic of poetic language (the "eternal lines", the "pow'rful rhyme") outlives the "gilded monuments/ Of princes" (55.1-2), by ultimately defying both Time and Death (sonnets 15, 19, 60, 63, 65 and 107); in this alembic, the poet-lover's tears ("Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within") will be purified, and the "basest weeds" (94.12) will turn into "summer's flow'r" (94.9). While writing about his beloved, the poet-lover identifies with the object of his contemplation : O! how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is't but mine own, when I praise thee? (39.1-4) Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument. (76.5-10) Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,

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Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. (107.9-14)

By identifying with his beloved and with love itself, the poet contemplates himself mirrored in his verse; through "the eternal lines", the eyes of the beloved (as well as the poet's own eyes) are looking on "the wide world dreaming on things to come" (107.2). In the process of writing about love, the poet-lover turns to the poem (which, Murray Krieger tells us, is a mirror of the beloved and a window to the poet's soul104) and begins to explore his "poor rhyme"; thus, language becomes metalanguage and poetics is transformed into metapoetics: 105 Let not my love be call'd idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be T o one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse, to constancy confin'd, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument, 'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often liv*d alone, Which three, till now, never kept seat in one. (Sonnet 105)

Since he knows that poetic language "is a medium before he starts to fashion it", 106 the poet needs to refine the impurities of the language of ordinary discourse (or, to borrow Sigurd Burckhardt's words once more, the poet has to purify language of its "purely referential role" 107 )

IM 105 106

107

Krieger, Window, pp. 80-2. See Sonnets 17, 18, 19, 21, 54, 55, 60, 63, 74, 76, 78, 81, 82, 103, 107. Sigurd Burckhardt, Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 23. Burckhardt, p. 24.

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in order to transform it into the miraculous 108 "golden cadence of poesy".109 In fact, what the poet's "great mind most kingly drinks up" (114.10) is the "heavenly alchemy" of love and poetics, at the same time: "Thou art all my art." (78.13) In his Prologue to Pantagruel, François Rabelais invites the reader to regard his book as a panacea and describes the function of the writer as follows : J'en parle c o m m e un gaillard o n o c r o t a l e , v o y r e dy-je, c r o t é n o t a i r e des m a r tyrs amans et c r o c q u é n o t a i r e d e amours. 1 1 0

If my endeavors to explore the Shakespearean text in the light of the arcana artis and to unravel the bond between the poet and the alchemist in the Renaissance do not rise above the critical accomplishments of diverse onocrotaries-crotonotaries-crocquenotaries, woe is me! After all, if the king has the power to "gild" reality with "the happiest terms" he has (Henry IV, Part One, V.iv.157), and if the sun can gild "pale streams with heavenly alchemy" (33.4), why should we deny the poet the privilege to gild "the object whereupon" he "gazeth" (20.6) — language itself? "Come, lame me with reasons" 111 . . .

108

109 110

111

See Sonnet 65. 13-4. See also Krieger, Poetic Presence, pp. 19, 49, and Krieger, Window, pp. 172-3. Love 's Labour's Lost, IV.ii. 116. François Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Jacques Bouleriger, rev. ed. Lucien Scheler (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 169; Pantagruel, Prologue de l'auteur. As You Like It, I.iii.6.

GIORGIO MELCHIORI

Sir John Umfrevile in Henry IV, Part 2, Li. 161—79 1

One of the major problems in the Shakespeare canon is represented by the attribution, in the first edition of Henry IV, Part 2, the Quarto of 1600, of a speech to a non-existing character. It occurs in the very first scene of the play. Northumberland has just received confirmation from Morton of the death of his son Hotspur and of the defeat of the rebels at the battle of Shrewsbury. In his anger and grief, the earl invokes the perdition of mankind in everlasting darkness. The 1600 Quarto text goes on (Li. 161-5): Vmfr. This strained passion doth you wrong my lord. Bard. Sweet earle, diuorce not wisedom from your honor, Mour. The Hues of all your louing complices, Leaue on you health, the which if you giue ore, To stormy passion must perforce decay.2 Northumberland's outburst had been witnessed by three characters: Lord Bardolph (Bard.), Morton (Mour.) and the servant Travers. There is no trace of an Vmfr., that is to say Sir John Umfrevile, mentioned in passing only once in the play, at Li. 34. This was immediately realised by whoever provided the copy for the Folio text of 1623: he solved the problem by simply omitting 1.161, tidying up the next four lines by substituting a full stop for the anomalous comma at the end of 1.162, and making sense of 1.164 by substituting "Leaue on you health" with "Leane-on your health"; here is the Folio lay-out: 1

2

The present paper is the result of research conducted in view of a new edition of 2 Henry IVfor the N e w Cambridge Shakespeare, under the general editorship of Professor Philip Brockbank, and was discussed at the N e w Cambridge Editors' meeting held in Stratford-upon-Avon on August 9th, 1981. The Second part of Henry the fourth, etc. London . . . 1600 (Q); sig. B l , 11.9-13. A collation of all extant copies of Q shows no press corrections in these lines. There is now a fairly general consensus on the fact that the copy for Q was essentially Shakespeare's own foul papers, 'edited', at times erroneously, by the printer. My act, scene and line references are to The Complete Works, ed. P. Alexander (London: Collins, 1951).

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(Honor. L. Bar. Sweet Earle, diuorce not wisedom from your Mor. The liues of all your louing Complices Leane-on your health, the which if you giue o're To stormy Passion, must perforce decay.3

This was too easy a way out for modern editors. They looked for a speaker present on stage to replace the ghost-character Umfrevile, and the only one available, definitely present but with no other speeches till the end of the scene, seemed to be Travers. So Capell and a number of other editors (the latest being A. G. Chester in 1957)4 gave him the line. But, upon a suggestion from P. A. Daniel in 18 79,5 most of the recent editions of 2 Henry /^redistribute the speeches as follows: Lord Bardolph This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord. Morton Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour: The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health, the which, if you give o'er To stormy passion, must perforce decay.6

The substantial agreement on this redistribution is based on three assumptions, which at first sight seem quite strong: a) The comma at the end of 1.162 shows that the speaker does not change at the end of that line, and the prefix Morn. at 1.163 should actually designate the line before; it is thought that in Shakespeare's foul papers used as copy for Q Bard, was written in the margin to replace Vmfr. at 1.161 without the latter being deleted, so that, in Dover Wilson's words, "the Q compositor was presented with three prefixes, which he distributed as best he could", 7 the implication being Shakespeare's intention of substituting Lord Bardolph for Umfrevile. This leads to assumption b): Umfrevile was the name originally attributed by Shakespeare to the character now known as Lord Bardolph. Assumption c), which is rather in the nature of a deduction: 11.161 and 162 cannot be said by the same speaker (it would have been an easy solution, exempting from the need to move up a speech

3 4

5 6 7

First Folio, 1623: Histories p. 76, sig. g l v , first column, 11.4-7. Included in W. Shakespeare, The Complete Works, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (London: Allen Lane, 1969). New Shakespeare Society's Transactions 1877-9 (1879), p. 353. The spelling is modernized as in the volumes of the N e w Penguin Shakespeare. Henry IVpart II, ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge University Press, 1946), p. 131.

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prefix) because they contain two separate forms of address to the same person — "my lord" at 1.161 and "Sweet earle" at 1.162. Let us consider these points taking them in reverse order: c) The deduction is quite sound; but it should be added that the two different forms of address imply not only different speakers, but also different relationships between the speakers and the addressee. "Sweet earle" at 1.162 is at the same time the more familiar and the more class-conscious: only another nobleman could address Northumberland as "sweet". Lord Bardolph is the only one that fulfils this requirement, and besides he has addressed Northumberland as "earl" once before (I.i.l 1), while Travers and Morton had used the form "my lord" or "my noble lord". 8 This reopens the problem: if 1.162, as Q indicates, is actually spoken by Lord Bardolph, who speaks the line assigned to Vmfr.} Capell's suggestion is untenable: Travers is described by Northumberland as "my servant" (I.i.28), and, as most recently Eleanor Prosser has remarked, 9 his comment on his master's behaviour would have appeared insolent. The only character left is Morton. The question is: who is Morton? The name is not mentioned by Holinshed or by the other historians, where instead Lord Bardolph appears with a leading role in the Northern rebellion. Morton is a Shakespearean invention: what the dramatist needed in this scene was a second messenger after Travers to summarize for the audience the events at Shrewsbury they had already witnessed in Part One of the play, and to anticipate future developments leading up to the Gaultree trap. A gentleman should confirm the servant Travers' words and add inside information — so Shakespeare chose a good Scottish name that would make his siding with the rebels likely, and sent him forth onto the stage.10 Morton's report of the end of the battle of Shrewsbury (Li. 125-32) is a close paraphrase of Holinshed: 8

9

10

Of course, also Lord Bardolph repeatedly addresses Northumberland as "my lord"; my point is that none of the other characters address him as "earl", or use the adjective "sweet". E. Prosser, Shakespeare's Anonymous Editors: Scribe and Compositor in the Folio Text of 2 Henry IV (Stanford University Press, 1981), p. 36; also Karl Hagena (New Shakespeare Society's Transactions 1877-9 (1879), p. 349) had found improper that 1.161 "should have been spoken by a servant, and that Lord Bardolph should only repeat [in the next line] what the servant has said"; this prompted Daniel's suggestion to assign 1.161 to Lord Bardolph himself, giving the next line to Morton. Alice-Lyle Scoufos, w h o sees in the two parts of Henry IV topical allusions to events much nearer Shakespeare's time, accounts for the choice of the name of Morton by referring to Dr. Nicholas Morton, a Yorkshire born catholic who was considered

202

Giorgio Melchiori T h e earle D o w g l a s strake him [the king] d o w n e , & at that instant slue Sir W a l t e r Blunt, and three other, apparelled in the kings sute of clothing, s a i e n g : I marvell to see so m a n y kings thus suddenlie arise o n e in the necke of an other [cf lines 127-8] . . . T o conclude, the kings enimies w e r e vanquished, a n d put to flight, . . . the earle of D o w g l a s , f o r hast, falling f r o m the c r a g of an hie mounteine, b r a k e one of his cullions, a n d w a s t a k e n [cf lines 129-32] . . . T h e r e w a s also taken the earle of W o r c e s t e r , the p r o c u r o r and setter f o r t h of all this mischeefe [cf lines 1 2 5 - 6 ] . "

T o this gentleman-messenger, whose report has caused Northumberland's outburst of "strained p a s s i o n " (11.136-60) should belong by right the first reply. There is therefore no doubt in my mind that 1.161 is spoken by Morton and 1.162 (as indicated by Q ) by Lord Bardolph. This leaves two questions open: on the one hand the comma at the end of 1.162 that would suggest a continuation of the speech to the same character, that is to say Lord Bardolph; I shall come back to this when dealing with assumption a). O n the other the reason for the introduction of the speech prefix Vmfr. — which leads directly face to face with assumption b). Only very recently some misgivings have been expressed on this assumption that Shakespeare had originally given the name of U m frevile to Lord Bardolph, and changed it only later when he turned Oldcastle into Falstaff and Rossill (or Russel) into Bardolph or Peto. Prosser, referring to the present passage, writes: " T o me, the rhythm suggests that three speakers urgently warn Northumberland in turn, but I face the same problem faced by the scribe [who provided the copy for F]. W h o is the first?" and she concludes rather hopelessly: " I n short, something is certainly wrong, but the solution is open to question." 1 2 P. H . Davison, in his edition of 2 Henry IV,13 counters the established belief with a very in genious suggestion: "Perhaps Shakespeare started by giving Lord Bardolph his proper name, toyed with changing the name, chose Umfrevile, then, realizing that it was the name of one of Bardolph's opponents,

11

12

13

"the most earnest mover" of the Rising of the North in 1569, for which Thomas, the seventh earl of Northumberland, was executed in 1572. See A.-L. Scoufos, Shakespeare's Typological Satire: A Study of the Falstaff-Oldcastle Problem (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1979), pp. 120-5. Reproduced by Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, IV (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 191, in the section devoted to the sources of Henry IV, part I. Prosser, p. 36. Henry IV, part 2, ed. P. H. Davison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 167-8.

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made do with the original and historically correct name." In fact not Sir John Umfrevile (of whom there is no trace in the chronicles) but Lord Robert Umfrevile was among the king's (not the rebels'!) supporters at Gaultree. This means that Shakespeare was not referring to a historical character, but had picked a name at random from the pages of Holinshed in the same way as in his classical plays and romances he frequently used names found in Plutarch, giving them roles completely independent and at times in contrast with their historical counterparts. There is also the fact that whenever the name of Lord Bardolph appears in verse speeches in the play (I.i.3, l.i.7,1.iii.25,1.iii.69, IV.iv.97) it fits the metre perfectly, which would not be true if it had been replacing Umfrevile. It is necessary at this point to put assumption b) to the test by enquiring in the first place into its origin. T h e assumption is founded on the one mention of the name of Sir John Umfrevile in Li.34, when Travers, the servant sent by Northumberland to 'listen after news' of the battle of Shrewsbury, reports that he never even got to the spot: Trauers My lord, sir Iohn Vmfreuile turnd me backe With ioyfull tidings, and being better horst, Outrode me . . .

(I.i.34-6)

Since Lord Bardolph, at the mention of Travers by Northumberland, had just been saying (I.i.30-2): My lord, I ouer-rode him on the way, And he is furnisht with no certainties, More than he haply may retale from me,

it has been assumed that Lord Bardolph and the 'Sir John Umfrevile' w h o had turned back and outridden Travers are one and the same person. T h e verbal affinities of the two statements seem to imply as much, and Dover Wilson clinched the matter with a peremptory comment to line 30: over-rode out-rode (not 'over-take' as O.E.D. glosses). Bardolph-Umfrevile met Travers, turned him back (1.34), and out-rode him (1.36).14

Wilson does not give any reason for denying the authority of O.E.D., and I find significant the very fact that Wilson is trying to obscure: Shakespeare used two different verbs because he wanted to convey different meanings. Lord Bardolph does not suggest that he had 'turned back' 14

New Cambridge Shakespeare, cit. p. 129.

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Travers, but simply overtaken ('over-rode') and passed him when the servant was already on his way to his master. In this case the Umfrevile mentioned by Travers would be the same "gentleman well-bred, and of good name" that had given Lord Bardolph his good tidings of the battle (11.257, quoted below). In other words, Travers on his way to Shrewsbury meets Umfrevile and is turned back by him with good news. H e doesn't know that not long before Umfrevile had given the same good news to Lord Bardolph; Bardolph decides to bring the news to the earl and on his way to Northumberland's castle overtakes Travers and repeats to him the false information that they both had heard from the same source, after which he precedes Travers at Northumberland's gate. Meanwhile Travers, as we learn from 11.36-48, receives other information flatly contradicting that provided by Umfrevile and Bardolph. When he reaches Northumberland and finds Bardolph already there with his good news, the servant is greatly embarrassed, having to give the lie to such a powerful lord. We should pay great attention to the placing of Travers' entrance in this scene. F puts it after 1. 29, but in Q, reflecting — as I think — Shakespeare's foul papers and therefore his real intentions, the entrance is marked in the margin against 11.25-6: Bar. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence, enter Trauers A gentleman well bred, and of good name, That freely rendred me these newes for true.

That means that Travers is just in time to overhear Lord Bardolph telling Northumberland that he too got the false reports from "a gentleman well-bred, and of good name". For a time he does not dare to speak his bad news, while Northumberland explains who he is and Bardolph boasts that he himself is the source of Travers' as yet unspoken information. By this time Travers has thought of a way of avoiding giving the lie direct to Bardolph: thanks to what he has overheard, he tells Northumberland that the false good news comes not from Bardolph himself, but from the same person mentioned by Bardolph as his informant, and produces the name of the deceiver: the "well-bred gentleman, and of good name" is Sir John Umfrevile. H e tactfully omits the fact that also Bardolph had confirmed to him the false report before he got the correct information from the unnamed gentleman on his way to Chester. All this seems to me psychologically and dramatically correct, and it disposes of the notion that Shakespeare ever meant to give the name of

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Umfrevile to the historical character of Lord Bardolph: on the contrary, he dug that name out of Holinshed with the precise aim of showing that Bardolph was prone to accept the word of casual informers, was actually an instrument of Rumour, who appears in the play as the Prologue, intent on deception and the spreading of false reports. 15 One mystery remains: why the prefix Vmfr. at 1.161? Umfrevile is neither a ghost character like Fauconbridge in the opening stage direction of I.iii or Kent'm that of IV.iv, nor is he a fossil of names that Shakespeare changed later, like Old. at I.ii.120 or Sir Iohn Russel'm the opening stage direction of Il.ii. A tentative explanation may emerge from a consideration of the little evidence we have of Shakespeare's habits in the matter of speech prefixes in foul papers. As far back as 1935 McKerrow showed that the designations of the characters "depend on the progress of the story", 16 and inconsistencies in speech prefixes are evidence of printed texts set directly from authorial foul papers. The confusions between Peter and Balthasar in Q2 of Romeo and Juliet are well known, and the incredible number of different designations of the Countess and the two French Lords in All's Well that Ends Well show his casualness; at times even the real names of the actors are used, as exemplified in this very play, where in V.iv Enter Sincklo and three of foure officers. More striking are the three pages in hand D in The Book of Sir Thomas More, where many speech prefixes are incoherent, and in many cases they are merely other or oth, meaning 'another speaker' — a reviser had to go over those pages to introduce or correct the appropriate prefixes. 17 In view of this it is quite

15

16

17

It has been noticed that the Lord Bardolph bringing the false news of the rebels' victory in I.i. appears very different from the statesman and warrior who provides sober advice in I.iii. To account for this inconsistency in the presentation of a historical character Gabriele Baldini ("Lord Bardolph e Sir John Umfrevile nell' 'Henry IV' di Shakespeare," Belfagor, 7(1952), 573-81) made the ingenious but hardly defensible suggestion that Shakespeare in Li. meant to call him Umfrevile but used the prefix Bard, because he intended that the part should be taken by the same actor who was to appear in later scenes as Fallstaff's follower, "that arrant malmsie-nose knaue Bardolfe". If we must think in terms of the common practice of doubling, it is much more likely that the same actor would have impersonated Rumour in the prologue and then changed into the costume of Lord Bardolph, so that the audience should be warned that the noble lord was a bringer of false news. R. B. McKerrow, "A Suggestion Regarding Shakespeare's Manuscripts," R.E.S., 11 (1935), 459-65. See The Book of Sir Thomas More, ed. W. W. Greg (Oxford: Malone Society, 1911), Addition II, pp. 73-9.

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possible that Shakespeare had left blank the speaker of 1.161, though marking it as a separate speech, and a hasty reviser (the harassed compositor himself?) looking back in the manuscript in search of a name different from either Bardolph or Morton, was struck by the mention of Umfrevile near the beginning of the scene and thought he was present on stage. Mere guesswork, of course, but, as Sherlock Holmes would say: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' 18 The consideration of Shakespeare's habits in his foul papers and of the state in which he left them links up with assumption a), according to which the comma at the end of 1.162 indicates that the speech continues in spite of the new prefix at the beginning of the next line: hence the deduction by modern editors that Mour. at 1.163 should be ignored, or rather should be moved up to replace Bard, before the previous line. I incline to agree with the assumption of continuity of the speech but not with the editors' further deduction. Let us consider the state of the copy at this point: it is obvious that the compositor of Q had some difficulty in deciphering it. We already noticed the corruption of 1.164, where he misread Leaue for Leane and you for your. But there is something worse: immediately after the next line there is the first major omission in the text, amounting to no less than fourteen lines, which are instead restored in the Folio text. The reasons for the omission (censorship, cutting in order to save time, change of actor) are hardly relevant to the present inquiry. It is generally agreed that the eight extended passages appearing in F and missing in Q are not later additions to the text of the play, but were part of it from the beginning, excised before the publication of Q. If, as seems practically certain, Q is based on Shakespeare's foul papers, those passages must have been in them, though marked for deletion or crossed over. From the evidence of existing manuscripts, such as that of Sir Thomas More, it appears that such deletions were very roughly and imprecisely marked, so that they frequently affected the lines immediately preceding and following them. This would account for the already noticed unclear state of 11.164-5, which immediately precede the deleted passage. We should now turn to this passage, as it is preserved in Folio, a text that seems based on a scribal transcript of the play. The argument is still rife about the type of manuscript available to the scribe, alongside the 18

A. Conan Doyle, "The Beryl Coronet," in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London: Murray, 1894).

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Quarto to which he certainly had access. Whatever the purpose for which the transcript was made, the most puzzling part is the nature of the copy for it: the two most recent theories are those of P. H. Davison, 1 9 who suggests that is was assembled from actors' parts with the guidance of the Quarto, and of Eleanor Prosser, 20 who maintains that it was based on the very same foul papers used for the setting of Q and retrieved from the printers. The objection to the second theory is that it implies an unwarranted amount of scribal intervention, while that to the first is that actors' parts did not even carry speech prefixes and their assemblage would be an impossibly laborious task. Neither theory can be rejected off-hand, unless we postulate the existence of an intermediate manuscript, not a promptbook but a fair copy of the original foul papers, that the scribe took as his main text. At all events in F the fourteen additional lines begin a new period after the full stop at the end of 1.165, and are assigned to the same speaker: You cast th'euent of Warre (my Noble Lord) And summ'd the accompt of Chance, before you said Let vs make head: It was your presurmize, That in the dole of blowes, your Son might drop. You knew he walk'd o're perils, on an edge More likely to fall in, then to get o're: You were aduis'd his flesh was capeable Of Wounds, and Scarres; and that his forward Spirit Would lift him, where most trade of danger rang'd, Yet did you say go forth: and none of this (Though strongly apprehended) could restraine The stiff-borne Action: What hath then befalne? Or what hath this bold enterprize bring forth, More then that Being, which was like to be?

These fourteen lines develop a complete and self-contained argument, with a beginning, a middle and an end: whoever undertakes a war knows that he may lose it, and if one sends one's son to fight one knows that he may be killed; the event is no other than what would have been expected. The argument reinforces but is somewhat different from the one contained in the four previous lines (162-5); there Northumberland was told that if he gave way to passion he was renouncing the responsibili19 20

New Penguin Shakespeare, cit. pp. 287-96. Prosser, passim.

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ty he had taken towards his supporters, a behaviour contrary to his honour. We are confronted then with two separate self-contained speeches, one in 11.162-5 and one in 11.166-79. That the latter was meant as a separate speech is confirmed by the presence in its first line of the vocative "my noble lord", which would have been supererogatory if the speaker were the same who had begun four lines earlier by addressing Northumberland as "sweet earl". As for 1.161, attributed by Q to Vmfr. and omitted by F, it is simply, as we have noticed before, in the nature of an admonition, a first reaction by the bringer of the bad news to the effect his message has had on the earl. The second speaker enlarges the point adducing the argument of honour and responsibility. The third (probably the same as the first) appeals to reason with a sedate and well argued speech. After that Lord Bardolph (11.180-6) resumes his previous argument about individual responsibility, extending it to all the followers of Northumberland and taking advantage of Morton's speech on the chances of war to confirm their determination to go on with the fight. When, for whatever reason, Morton's speech was deleted from the foul papers, an awkward situation arose: there remained two consecutive speeches, one of four lines (162-5) and another, undoubtedly separate, of seven lines (180-6), both by the same speaker and carrying the prefix Bar. A simple solution was found: noticing that the last three lines of the speech of Lord Bardolph could be taken as a complete sentence, they were separated from the previous line and assigned to Morton. The reviser added the prefix Mour. before 1.163 but forgot to change the comma to a full stop at the end of 1.162. In his turn the scribe preparing the transcript that went into F, whether he was working from actors' parts, the same foul papers, or an intermediate fair copy, found the whole passage rather confused and probably consulted his copy of Quarto. Confronted there with the nonsensical prefix Vmfr., he decided to eliminate the whole line and speech, but finding two lines later the prefix Mour. he did not see any reason for altering it: even if the speech comprising 11.166-79, which he had only in manuscript, began with the same prefix, he thought to dispense with this useless repetition rather than go back and cancel it three lines earlier. Here is the whole passage as, I think, Shakespeare meant it: MORTON This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord. LORD BARDOLPH Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour,

Sir John Umfrevile in Henry IV, Part. 2, I. i. 169—79 The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health, the which, if you give o'er T o stormy passion, must perforce decay.

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MORTON You cast th'event of war, my noble lord, And summed the account of chance before you said 'Let us make head'. It was your presurmise That in the dole of blows your son might drop. You knew he walked o'er perils, on an edge, More likely to fall in than to get o'er; You were advised his flesh was capable Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged, Yet did you say 'Go forth'; and none of this, Though strongly apprehended, could restrain The stiff-borne action. What hath then befallen, Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth, More than that being which was like to be? [In the penultimate line I adopt F2's 'brought' for F's 'bring']

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T h i s r e c o n s t r u c t i o n entails o n l y t w o e m e n d a t i o n s t o the t e x t o f 2 Henry

IV I . i . 1 6 1 - 7 9 : the substitution o f Morton

1.161, a n d t h e r e m o v a l o f the p r e f i x Morton

f o r Vmfr. as a p r e f i x t o

f r o m 1.163 t o 1.166. A t the

s a m e t i m e the t w o s p e e c h e s o f L o r d B a r d o l p h , the f o u r lines 1 6 2 - 6 5 a n d the s e v e n lines 1 8 0 - 8 6 , 2 1 p u t t i n g f o r w a r d the a r g u m e n t s o f h o n o u r , responsibility and the n e c e s s i t y t o carry o n the f i g h t , m a r k the transition o f this character f r o m R u m o u r ' s i n s t r u m e n t at the b e g i n n i n g o f Li t o the s h r e w d a n d realistic c o u n s e l l o r o f I.iii. 21

The last speech of Lord Bardolph, which appears both in the Quarto and in the Folio, must be quoted in full: We all that are engaged to this loss 180 Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas That if we wrought out life 'twas ten to one; And yet we ventured for the gain proposed, Choked the respect of likely peril feared, And since we are o'erset, venture again. 185 Come, we will all put forth, body and goods. It is followed by another speech of Morton of which Quarto prints only the first two lines while in Folio it extends over twenty-two lines. There is no doubt that the excision is due to political reasons since Morton announces the intervention of the archbishop of York on the side of the rebels to vindicate "The blood of fair King Richard"; Scoufos argues that in giving Morton this speech Shakespeare had in mind the Nicholas Morton who had promoted the Northern rebellion of 1569 on behalf of the Roman Church (see note 10 above).

J A M E S L. H I L L

The Marriage of True Bodies: Myth and Metamorphosis in Antony and Cleopatra

Man, as described by Pico, is unique in his power to change, and to become whatever he wills: " O great and wonderful happiness of man! It is given him to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills . . . Who does not wonder at this chameleon which we are?" 1 Pico's exclamation is meant to support the dignity of man, and to exalt free will as a special human capacity, but choice is an ambivalent blessing. Choice implies error, and erroneous choice is as powerful as correct choice in transmuting our humanity. One of its erroneous forms, the yielding of judgment to appetite, is Circe, the transformer. Fulgentius understands Circe as the sense of touch, one of the daughters of Apollo who was led astray by Venus in revenge for Apollo's revelation of her dalliance with Mars. 2 And it is by calling our attention to change, myth, and appetite that Shakespeare opens Antony and Cleopatra. In none of his other tragedies is change so much subject and dramatic impulse. Announced in Philo's opening speech, where Antony is described as changed from "plated Mars" into a "strumpet's fool", it threads its way through the play, and is brought to its resolution by Cleopatra's final, supralunar "marble" constancy (a constancy composed, oddly enough, of "fire and air") that "bolts up change" in death and optative transfiguration. In this essay, my concern will be to trace the path of change in Antony and Cleopatra, giving particular attention to the mythological resonances with which Shakespeare surrounds his tragic figures. Because the play

1

2

Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man: On Being and the One: Heptaplus, trans. C. G. Wallis, Douglas Carmichael and P. J. W. Miller (Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 5. Fulgentius, Fulgentius the Mythographer, trans. Leslie George Whitbread (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971), p. 73.

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both begins and ends with transformations, and places them within mythic contexts, it invites us to consider it in those terms. 3 T h e play opens, not as in the case of many of the tragedies, with action in progress, but with the creation of an image or emblem. Philo is apparently in the midst of correcting a misconception of Antony's behavior: " N a y , but this dotage of our general's/O'erflows the measure." 4 (I.i. 1-2) "Dotage" of course suggests, as the speech goes on to develop, Antony's excessive affection for Cleopatra, to a point where his former self, a Mars, a man of action, has turned into a voluptuary. It also suggests another, related transformation that will be developed in the play, "dotage" as the return to childishness in old age. Antony and Cleopatra are both at that age when, as Hamlet tells his doting mother, "passion should wait upon the judgment." Not only do they call attention to their own ages, but Octavius also sees Antony as a mature man who has reverted to the behavior of a green boy. Indeed, Antony himself picks up the word in the second scene; he is aware that the powerful attraction of Egypt may cause him to "lose [himself] in dotage." (I.ii.l 14) Philo's opening speech gives us an immediate iconic frame of reference in which to observe Antony and Cleopatra in action. His only motive is to correct a mistaken view of Antony, to hold up a correcting mirror. What that mirror reflects is Antony transformed from Mars to fool,

3

4

There is a considerable body of scholarship dealing with the function of mythological imagery in the play. Most of this work is listed and discussed by Janet Adelman, The Common Liar:An Essay on "Antony and Cleopatra"(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), and Philip J. Traci, The Love Play of "Antony and Cleopatra"(The Hague: Mouton, 1970). See also in reference to time and change, Charles A. Hallet, "Change, Fortune and Time: Aspects of the Sublunar World in Antony and Cleopatra," JEGP, 75 (1976), 75-89, and James Edward Siemon, "'The Strong Necessity of Time': Dilemma in Antony and Cleopatra," ES, 54 (1973), 316-25. Harold Fisch's essay, "Antony and Cleopatra: The Limits of Mythology," ShakS, 23 (1970), argues that mythology plays a different role in Antony and Cleopatra than it does in a tragedy such as King Lear, which has the structural pattern of a fertility myth. In Antony and Cleopatra, myth is not structure, but subject, and Fisch stresses the limitations inherent in the myths that prevent fully realized apotheosis for Antony and Cleopatra. While his conclusions are somewhat similar to mine, the course of his argument is different, as is his approach to, and treatment of, the play's mythological references. Maurice Charney, in Shakespeare's Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), treats mythological references in passing, but he is concerned with them as one aspect of the total imagistic pattern in the play. All citations are from the Arden edition: act, scene, and line will be indicated in parentheses at the end of the citation.

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slave, and instrument of love. The speech ends by bidding us witness in action Philo's idea or image of Antony and Cleopatra, "Behold and see", and the entrance of the two principals enacts the verbal image we have just been given.5 Their relationship is that of a mistress/teacher to her ardent ephebe, whom she both teases and instructs. Cleopatra is an old hand, a practicer in the world and game of love, just as Antony is an ancient practicer in the game and rites of war, and she teases him with the wit that one who knows the territory uses on the amateur. She is aware, we know, of both the worlds of war (or politics) and love, and has used the arts of the one in order to survive in the other. Her question, "Why did he marry Fulvia and not love her", is the question of the supposed innocent, and her following remark suggests that while she is an adept in the science of love and politics, Antony is still a rustic, a "fool", in her world: "Antony will be himself." Cleopatra here appears to be in complete command, calling Antony to task for not attending to his own sphere, while controlling his responses in her own. Antony, however, is not quite the rustic she assumes him to be. He knows that his identity is not quite what it was; to "Antony will be himself", he responds, "But stirred by Cleopatra." The scene closes with a somewhat similar comment by Philo: "Sir, sometimes, when he is not Antony,/ He comes too short of that great property/Which still should go with Antony." (I.i,58-9) We could say, then, that at this point everyone knows what is happening. Antony is not his usual self, but the insights into his change vary from character to character. For Philo, the transformation is from general to fool, for Cleopatra it is the same, but

5

In "The Structure of Antony and Cleopatra" ShakQ, 15, N o . 2 (1964), 289-98, Thomas B. Stroup points out the emblematic character of Philo's opening speech, although he does not explore its implications: "Like the Medieval devices it furnishes a framework for the whole . . . We look at a little tableau vivant of the whole play." (297) In Shakespeare's Pagan World: The Roman Tragedies (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973), J. L. Simmons also points out the emblematic character of the speech, and asserts that Philo's emblem expresses "the commonly accepted point of view; . . . following the Neoplatonic theories that valued love according to the value of the object beloved, they [Philo and Demetrius] judge Antony a 'fool' ". (p. 132) It is clear from the text, however, that Philo and Demetrius are not in agreement; on the contrary, Philo is correcting Demetrius's evaluation of Antony"s behavior. And it is Antony and Cleopatra's first exchange, rather than Philo's emblem, that suggests the exalted language of Neoplatonism.

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her reading is amused rather than moral, while for Antony it seems to be a momentary lapse about which he is not yet particularly worried. In this opening scene, Philo establishes a moral framework, an abstract and brief chronicle of the times. Against that abstract we see Antony and Cleopatra. Their individual actions both confirm and qualify Philo's framework, so that we, as audience, are immediately confronted with a judgment, and with reflections on that judgment, which force it from the abstract into the web of human activities, where no judgment can be perfect, or can totally account for the identity of things in a state of flux. Shakespeare's initial dramatic focus is on Antony's metamorphosis, and as that metamorphosis is traced throughout the rest of the play, it, like Circe, will touch and change everything around it, until it reaches its final, fixed form in the suicides and apotheoses of the two tragic principals. The dramatic conflict is not so much in what happens to Antony because of what confrontations — that aspect of the drama at least seems clear — but is rather among those conflicting assessments of what Antony's change signifies. 6 That the play opens with a judgment expressed as a mythological and moral commonplace, the enslavement of the god of war by the goddess of love, does not mean that it is presented in commonplace terms, nor that it is to be dismissed as a moral tag. 7 Although Philo likens Antony to Mars, he does not compare Cleopatra to Venus. Instead, Cleopatra is described as "tawny" and as a "gypsy" (Egyptian), terms that are scarcely Paphian. And while Cleopatra and Enobarbus will either call Antony a Mars or link him to Mars, Antony himself never calls Cleopatra Venus, but rather will repeat Philo's "gypsy" among other opprobrious or complimentary epithets. The initial emblem invokes only half the Ovidian couple in traditional terms, and thus it twists the commonplace interpretation at the very outset.

6

7

I do not mean to assert that the play is only Antony's tragedy, but that the dramatic impulse leading to the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra comes from Antony. The point is made by Stroup, 295. The necessity of judgment as a part of audience response is treated by Adelman, pp. 24-39, and Simmons, p. 111. For a discussion of the prevalence and significance of the myth of Venus and Mars for the Renaissance, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New York: Norton, 1968), "Virtue Reconciled to Pleasure", pp. 81-96, and Adelman, pp. 82-96. For the function of the myth in the play, see Raymond B. Waddington, "What Venus Did With Mars," ShakS, 2 (1967 for 1966), 210-27.

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Shakespeare's version substitutes Egypt for the realm of Venus, and links the mythical Mars to the human world. The original conceptual equation of the myth is retained, the subjection of bellicose power and authority to love or lust, but the activity takes place within a temporal context. This sense of shifting and displacement continues in the dynamics of the scene itself, as the dialogue between Antony and Cleopatra veers quickly from Egypt to Rome to Egypt, and from Antony's place in the power structure of Rome to his place in the Egyptian world of pleasure. Notably, it is Cleopatra who moves the subject back and forth between these worlds, while Antony insists on remaining in the "space" of Egypt: "Here is my space, Kingdoms are clay." (I.i.34-5) The rapid shifts in the dialogue transform Philo's static image into action, so that the whole of this first scene becomes a kind of utpicturapoesis. In her remarkable study of the play, The Common Liar, Janet Adelman, after an extended analysis of its mythological references, concludes that "mythic and iconographic meaning can participate in the significance of the play only if the play itself first invites their participation; if the work itself does not provide a fertile seedbed, then no amount of mythic analogy will flourish." 8 Certainly, Philo's opening emblem, particularly as it is vivified in the scene that follows, invites such participation. When other mythological allusions appear in Antony and Cleopatra, they tend to function along the lines we have seen with Philo's emblem, setting up resonances between the mythic and temporal worlds. Enobarbus's Venus-Cleopatra, Octavius's irritation at Cleopatra's pretensions to deity when she appears in public "in the habiliments of . . . Isis" (III.iv.17), the invocation to Bacchus on Pompey's ship, the various references to Antony's mythical ancestor, Hercules, and to the goddess Fortune, particularly in relation to Octavius and Antony — these are thematic, and have to do with change, mutability, and metamorphosis, both in the context of these myths, and in the ways in which the myths themselves are transmuted in the action of the play. If we look at Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra both as icon and in dramatic relation to the scene in which it appears, we see once again a modification of the icon, and its application as the dynamic motive of the scene. It is clear that the power of Cleopatra, as Enobarbus describes her, lies in her ability to make herself a work of art, to bring a painting to life. And it is also clear that Cleopatra, appearing as Venus, appears 8

Adelman, p. 102

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as Voluptas, since her appeal is made manifest to all five of the senses, and it is on the Cydnus that Antony becomes her subject. But, as is well known, the description is not point for point the same as in North's Plutarch. Shakespeare omits the reference to Antony as Bacchus with which Plutarch ends his great picture. 9 Since North's prose at this point is as grand and hyperbolical as in the rest of the description, it might well have tempted Shakespeare. Instead, he leaves a quite human Antony alone in the marketplace, "Whistling to th' air" (II.ii.216) while Cleopatra's magic is strong enough to tempt the air itself to leave, except that it would create "a gap in nature". If Antony had been named as Bacchus, the icon would move completely onto the level of myth. But as a reading of Plutarch makes clear, Shakespeare is suppressing throughout the play much of Plutarch's Antony, who is explicitly Bacchic as well as Herculean. Here, once again, mythic and temporal intersect. Now, however, the first deity-human equation, Mars-Cleopatra, is reversed in Venus-Antony. This second transmuted icon redistributes the balance of Philo's opening emblem; and, while it may not be within an audience's capacity to bring these two images consciously together, it is not actually necessary for it to do so, given the dramatic development of both images. With each, we begin with the deity and end with the mortal, Mars-Cleopatra, VenusAntony. Antony's response to the charm of Cleopatra-Venus forms the subject of Enobarbus's next speech in the scene, bringing us more firmly from the mythical to the temporal. Agrippa, in turn, brings us further into the "workyday", even crude, human sphere: "Royal wench!/She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed;/He plough'd her, and she cropp'd." (II.ii.26-8) Here, if anywhere in the play, is the reduction of the mythical to the commonplace, but infolded in Agrippa's coarse and succinct phrase is a complex series of associations. It begins with an oxymoron, "Royal wench", and whether we read "wench" as "servant girl" or "prostitute", neither meaning is appropriate for the adjective. When she makes Caesar "lay his sword to bed", she functions once again as Ve9

Bacchus had, in fact, a ship much like that which Plutarch gives to Cleopatra. Cartari, following Philostratus, describes it at length in Le Imagini Degli Dei Antichi (Padua, 1608), p. 339. While Shakespeare gives us Cleopatra on the Cydnus as a verbal picture, the ship of Bacchus is actually dramatized on stage, in the revels on Pompey's ship. The dramatization is richly ironic, in that Pompey has earlier invoked Cleopatra's aid as the Epicurean seductress of Antony, only to fall into the toils of a Bacchic Antony himself in this scene.

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nus with Mars, while "He plough'd her, and she cropp'd" is a vulgar rendering of Isaiah 2, 4 " . . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares." From all this, Cleopatra emerges, somewhat soiled, as Venus the peacemaker and Venus Genetrix, with faintly Biblical overtones. In his next response, Enobarbus begins on the earthly level of Cleopatra as "wench", describing her now, however, not as a courtesan, but playing children's games in the "public street". But from this level we ascend once more, and quickly, toward the magical and mythic, with Cleopatra, made breathless by her exercise, turning once more into the goddess: "That she did make defect perfection,/And powerless, power breathe forth." (II.ii.230-1) Agrippa's response suggests that he has not yet realized the true extent of her magic: "Now Antony must leave her utterly." Finally, therefore, Enobarbus seals her divinity by giving her an immortality that belongs to a goddess, not to a mortal: "Age cannot wither her." The scene begins with an icon in which Cleopatra enacts Venus, a carefully arranged imitation. Then it swerves into the beds and public streets of Alexandria, only to return at the end to something more than a mere representation of Voluptas, since the mimetic similitude has been transformed into metaphoric identification, by which Cleopatra now has the attributes of Voluptas within herself: "other women cloy/The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry/Where she most satisfies." (II.ii.236-8) Here, once again, are the qualities Cleopatra displayed in the opening scene — her power over Antony, her playfulness, her infinite variety. Coming, however, from the skeptical Enobarbus, this equation of Cleopatra with something both magical and mythical is powerful in suggesting that the Cleopatra we have witnessed to this point may be more than she seems. There is one significant difference between the emblems of Philo and Enobarbus. Philo explicitly presents his as a moral emblem, and his terms are those of the traditional reading of Ovid descending through the mythographers from Fulgentius to the Renaissance.10 On the other hand,

The descent of the Fulgentian tradition is traced by Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), pp. 163-99, 210-32, and by Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), "The Moral Tradition", pp. 84-121.

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Enobarbus's ekphrasis is not moralized in the least, even though Cleopatra's golden allure and infinite variety seem far closer to an Acrasia than to Philo's "gypsy" — far more voluptuous, more mesmerizing, and therefore more dangerous. It may be that Enobarbus does not moralize his picture because he is incapable of doing so, although he is quick to put his finger on moral issues elsewhere in the play. It may be also that he is merely trying to dazzle Agrippa with the marvellous luxury of Egypt as an exotic contrast to the severity of Rome. Whatever his reasons, he refrains from moral comment, and is content merely to report what he has seen for Agrippa's delectation. It has been left to Shakespeare's commentators to gloss Cleopatra's appearance as Venus. In her discussion of the Venus-Mars imagery, Adelman, after reviewing various medieval and Renaissance explications of the myth, remarks, "Mars and Venus can mean all things to all men." 11 The problem, apparently, is that the two dominant interpretations are irreconcilable. Either the myth is read in the light of Fulgentius, as an exemplum of adulterous love, or it is read cosmically, astrologically, or Neoplatonically, as the union of the watery and fiery planets, from which life is born. It does not seem to me that either reading is appropriate for, or adequate to, these emblems, in spite of the number of details that suggests them. If we follow the cosmological reading, Cleopatra is fruitful, and the Nile appears again and again in the play as a symbol of the generative power of nature, the cycle of birth, decay, death, and rebirth. If we follow the moralizing of Fulgentius, Antony is certainly an adulterer, and one could see his fate as the punishment for his philandering. Both of these readings are brutally reductive; Antony and Cleopatra is not merely a cosmology nor a morality play. Perhaps, instead of beginning with Venus and Mars, we should begin with Cleopatra as Venus- Voluptas. Antony is Mars only on other people's lips. Cleopatra, however, presents herself twice as Venus (and once as Isis), and it is evidently in such terms that she likes to think of herself. In the mythographers, Venus is treated as Voluptas in discussions of the judgment of Paris, where the three goddesses represent the contemplative, the active, and the voluptuous life. In Fulgentius, only the contemplative life is given sanction. The active life gets short shrift: " . . . it has no stability because it does not go about things honorably." The life of the voluptuary 11

Adelman, p. 90.

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. . . entirely given up to lust, is the sinful kind which considers nothing honorable to be worthwhile, but seeking only the corrupt ways o f living is either made effeminate by lust or bloodied by murder or burnt up by theft or soured by envy. This life o f an Epicurean or pleasure-lover according to the ancients, what among us seems the natural way of life, is not a punishable offense: since no one pursues the good, no good can be produced. 1 2 In his c o m m e n t a r y o n t h e individual g o d d e s s e s , F u l g e n t i u s e l a b o r a t e s on the Epicurean and Stoic interpretations o f V e n u s -

Voluptas:

T h e y have taken Venus as the symbol of the life of pleasure. Venus they explained either as the good things of life according to the Epicureans, or as the empty things o f life according to the Stoics, for the Epicureans praise pleasure but the Stoics condemn it; the first cultivate license, the others want no part o f it. 13 O f P a r i s , w h o s e c h o i c e indicates m a n ' s G o d - g i v e n f r e e will t o c h o o s e his w a y o f life, F u l g e n t i u s a n d t h e m y t h o g r a p h e r s w h o f o l l o w him h a v e n o t h i n g g o o d t o say. T h o m a s W a l s i n g h a m , f o l l o w i n g F u l g e n t i u s closely, j u d g e s Paris's c h o i c e s e v e r e l y : . . . sed ille brutum quiddam desipiens more ferarum ac pecudum, non Minerve virtutem, non Iunonis divitias respiciens, ad libidinem visus intorsit, vitamque philargicam preelegit, sicut postea rei exitus indicavit. 14 It w o u l d be t e m p t i n g a f t e r this t o e q u a t e A n t o n y with P a r i s ( a n e q u a t i o n m a d e b y P l u t a r c h ) , since he t o o appears t o h a v e c h o s e n t h e voluptuosa,

vita

t o have m a d e , as E n o b a r b u s says, "his w i l l / L o r d o f his r e a s o n " .

A n d if w e f o l l o w t h e F u l g e n t i a n p o i n t o f v i e w c o n c e r n i n g t h e E p i c u r e a n s , w e see e n o u g h feasting a n d sensual i n d u l g e n c e in E g y p t t o s u p p o r t such a view. P o m p e y , i n d e e d , m a k e s it explicit: . . . But all the charm of love, Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wan'd lip! Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both, T i e up the libertine in a field of feasts,

12 13 14

Fulgentius, p. 64. Fulgentius, p. 66. . . . but that stupid one, foolishly in the fashion of beasts or sheep, neither regarding the virtue of Minerva, nor the riches of Juno, turned his face to wantonness, and pre-elected the easy life, as the end of the business afterward demonstrated, (my translation) Thomas Walsingham, De Arcana Deorum, ed. Robert A. van Kloyve (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1968), p. 171.

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Keep his brain fuming; Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite, That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour Even to a Lethe'd dulness— (II.i.20-7) 1 5

Enobarbus echoes Pompey's language as he speaks of Cleopatra: "other women cloy/The appetites they feed", and Octavius's final command to Cleopatra will echo Pompey once again: "Feed and sleep." The whole of the Epicurean semi-narcotized good life is evoked in the play: food, sleep, play, music, drugs, sex, Lethe, oblivion. Against this Epicurean world one might be quick to put Rome, or at least the Rome of Octavius, a stronghold of Stoic sobriety as a foil for the sensuality of Egypt. Certainly Octavius's reluctance to stay on Pompey's ship as events "ripen" toward an "Alexandrian feast", as well as his flinty apothegm to Octavia, " . . . let determined things to destiny/Hold unbewailed their way" (III.vi.84-5), have a Stoic aloofness and severity about them. 16 But the strongest examples of Stoic doctrine in the play come from Antony and Cleopatra, rather than Octavius. They seem to become Stoics in the "high Roman fashion" in their suicides, and the most explicit and lengthy note is sounded by Cleopatra herself: . . . 'tis paltry to be Caesar: N o t being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave, A minister of her will: and it is great T o do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung, The beggar's nurse, and Caesar's. (V.ii.2-8)

Cleopatra pointedly distinguishes her own Stoicism from Octavius's subservience to Fortune. As Fortune's "knave" he is no Stoic philosopher capable of rising above the flux of mutability. If he is incapable of allowing himself to be a "child o' the time" at Pompey's Epicurean revels, he is

15

16

Pompey articulates a "popular" conception of Epicurus, by no means the only interpretation of Epicureanism in the Renaissance. See Wind's discussion of Voluptas in Pagan Mysteries, pp. 53-80. For the rehabilitation of Epicurus, see Don Cameron Allen, "The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and His Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance," SP, 41 (1944), 1-5. Renaissance treatments of the character of Octavius are surveyed by J. Leeds Barroll, "The Characterization of Octavius," ShakS, 6 (1972 for 1970), 231-88.

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equally incapable of being indifferent to time. H e wishes, instead, to be its master, and in his considered swiftness of action in destroying the triumvirate, he is exactly that. If Octavius uses time to control the world, he is not, in any strict sense, a Stoic. What, then, is he? One way of answering this question is suggested by the changing function of Fortune itself within the play's comic and tragic counterpoint. 17 In no other tragedy, with perhaps the exception of King Lear, do tragic and comic movement so play against each other, thanatos and eros changing into each other constantly, and assuming each other's characteristics. A few illustrations must suffice. Fortune, when it enters the play, enters in the guise of comedy, in the soothsayer's first scene. Fortune is comic here in that the prophesying depends upon the notion that probability is no guide to the future. What will happen may be what we wish, but the conviction that we get what we want because we wish it is not logical; ergo, we must be told the future by a seer. Fortune next appears in Rome with Antony, who is being advised by the same soothsayer. Here, however, Fortune distinctly takes on the coloring of Fate, and is moving from the magical toward the inevitable. When Antony is placed next to Caesar, his star must wane. The scene comes directly from Plutarch's Lives, but he makes the point even more sharply in Of the Romans Fortune, quoted here from Holland's translation of 1603: . . . f o r I r e c k o n Cleopatra a m o n g the favors that Fortune did to Augustus, against w h o m , as against s o m e r o c k , Antonius . . . should runne himselfe, be split, a n d sinke; to the end that Caesar Augustus might survive and remaine a l o n e . . . one of his familiar friends, (a man well seene in the art of divination) w o u l d manie times f r a n k l y say unto him by w a y of r e m o n s t r a n c e a n d a d m o n i t i o n : Sir, what m e a n e y o u to meddle o r have any dealing with this y o o n g gentleman, ( m e a n i n g Augustus) Fly and avoid his c o m p a n y , . . . y o u r G e n i u s o r familiar spirit is a f r a i d of his, y o u r F o r t u n e , which by it selfe a p a r t is g r e a t , flattereth a n d courteth his, and unlesse y o u r e m o o v e y o u r selfe f a r r e f r o m him, it will f o r s a k e y o u quite and g o e u n t o him. 1 8

17

18

Adelman discusses the strong comedic elements in the play, pp. 50-52. See also J. L. Simmons, " T h e Comic Pattern and Vision in Antony and Cleopatra," ELH, 36 (1969), 493-510. Plutarch, The Philosophie Commonly Called The Morals, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1603), p. 632. Cited hereafter as The Philosophie.

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Augustus himself, in Plutarch's account, says that his accomplishments are the result of Fortune: "ascribing the making of himselfe, as great as he was, unto Fortune." 19 Plutarch, then, as well as Cleopatra, sees Augustus as Fortune's knave. Both these scenes of Fortune are ironically undercut. In the first, Charmion's response to the prediction that she will outlive her lady is " O excellent, I love long life better than figs." (I.ii.32). She will outlive Cleopatra by seconds, and the humor, against the basket of figs hiding the "pretty worm of Nilus", is chilling. The undercutting of Antony's scene is ironic, but without humor. Antony takes the soothsayer's advice, puts distance between himself and Octavius, and falls nevertheless. The daimon of Caesar ranges the Empire, and there is no escape from the turning of Fortune's wheel. Octavius's "But let determined things to destiny/ Hold unbewailed their way", is not Ciceronian Stoicism that insists on man's free will, but deterministic fatality.20 As Fortune assumes first the guise of comedy, then of tragedy, so there is a peculiar reversal of roles common to comic and tragic characters. If the play were pure comedy, Antony and Cleopatra on the one hand, and Octavius on the other, would exchange places. As it stands, Octavius, wearing the "rose of youth", and "scarce bearded", acts as the blocking senex figure of new comedy, creating complications that keep the older lovers from perfectly achieving their desired union. Moreover, Antony and Cleopatra frequently act as if they were younger than Octavius. Both are whimsical, passionate, imaginative, demonstrative, and have, in spite of their comparatively advanced years, that air of potentialities as yet unfulfilled that we expect in comedy. It is possible to see them, up to and including their death scenes, as a Romeo and Juliet who have grown old without growing up. If Octavius is a senex in terms of comic structure, he is also puer in point of fact, and we are never allowed to forget his youth, despite his controlled sobriety.21 The aphorism attributed to the historical Octavius, Festina lente, became one of the most commonplace of all Renaissance emblems, and while the motto itself is never mentioned in the play, Octa-

19 20

21

Plutarch, The Philosophie, p. 631. For a discussion of the roles of free will and fate in Stoic philosophy, see J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 112-32. Some references to the youth of Octavius: III.ix.62; III.xiii.17, 22-3; IV.i.l; IV. xii.14, 18.

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vius's behavior, his careful consideration, followed by his speed in execution, demonstrates that aphorism as practiced by a master.22 He who masters the art of making haste carefully earns the title puer senex, "hoary youth". One of his emblems would have been the sail of Fortune attached to the serpent of Prudentia, and Shakespeare stresses both characteristics in Octavius's character. Just as Antony has come precociously into a kind of passionate senility, so Octavius is precociously prudent. Moreover, his prudence has behind it, as we find from the soothsayer's scene with Antony onwards, the support of Fortune. 23 That "scarce bearded Caesar", with his lack of practical experience, could defeat Antony, a far more accomplished and seasoned veteran whose capacities as a leader are impressive even to Octavius, requires some explaining, and at least part of that explanation may lie in the metamorphosis and exchange of roles, foolishness normally associated with youth now associated with maturity, and prudence normally a possession of maturity now the possession of youth. But Antony's metamorphosis, while underway in the first scene of the play, is not yet complete at that point. 24 When he returns to Rome, he is still able to assume his former self, and to act as a figure of power almost on a level with Octavius. The Roman scenes reinforce Philo's remark at the end of the first scene; while Antony will metamorphose, and perhaps even "transmigrate" like the crocodile by the end of the fourth act, there are occasions when he can still "be himself", and show "that great property/Which still should go with Antony." Octavius will pay what may only be lip service to the public Antony when he is informed of his death,

The motto occurs in Suetonius's life of Augustus, where it is connected specifically with military conduct. J. Leeds Barroll notes that Shakespeare gives speedy execution as a characteristic of Octavius, but goes on to say that "it was not a recognized Octavian quality". It is, however, in those treatments of "festina lente" derived from Suetonius. Emblems of "festina lente" occur in both Withers and Whitney, and Shakespeare's early familiarity with it is evidenced in Love's Labours Lost, III.i.5-65. Plutarch's essay on Fortune, since it describes the arrival of the goddess Fortuna in Rome to take up her permanent abode, the fortunate Augustus, and the unfortunate Antony, furnishes a context in which to see Shakespeare's extended emphasis on Fortune in Antony and Cleopatra as a traditional element in the conflict between Octavius and Antony: see "Of The Romans Fortune," The Philosophie, pp. 629-31. Siemon notes Antony's capacity to change: "The play seems carefully designed to present Antony as changing rather than as changed." (322-3) His emphasis on Antony's protean nature is centered on the random nature of his changes. In the early Roman scenes, however, Antony still appears to have some control over them, and to be able to assert "that great property/Which still should go with Antony".

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but his response indicates his sense of the immediate relationship of a powerful ruler to his world: T h e breaking o f so g r e a t a thing should make A greater c r a c k . T h e r o u n d world Should have s h o o k lions into civil streets And citizens t o their dens. T h e name o f A n t o n y Is n o t a single d o o m , in the name lay A moiety o f the w o r l d . ( V . i . 1 4 - 9 ) 2 5

Against that world of public responsibility, with its tragic, and even apocalyptic reverberations, is placed the comic world, taken up with the private wishes, and private wish fulfilments, of its central figures. That these two worlds, as Shakespeare presents them, are mutually exclusive, is fully apparent. There is no room in Octavius's world, centered in power and policy, for a man such as Antony, whose need for power is complicated by his equally strong need for pleasure. The difference between the two men is brought forcefully before us in the drunken scene on Pompey's ship. For one moment in the play, we see the two leaders in a reversed order of control. Antony is the master, but not of time. He is the magister ludi, and Octavius is completely out of his element. While he makes what seems to be the Stoic's complaint about the effect of wine on the clarity of his mind, the Epicurean Antony calls for the hymn to Bacchus. Between them there is no third. Lepidus, flatterer of both, has no identity of his own, and he praises them both as sui generis, according to Enobarbus and Agrippa. Caesar is nonpareil, Antony the Phoenix. 26 The other possible threat is Pompey, but he is not

25

26

According to Octavius, the effect of Antony's death should have been catastrophic enough to cause a Circean reversal of the roles of man and beast. From his point of view, Antony's death is more than a mere breaking of order; it should indicate a radical revision of the natural hierarchy. In this, perhaps, it is a parody of the effect of the Crucifixion on the worlds of man and nature. For a discussion of other parodic elements in the play, see Roy W . Battenhouse, Shakespearean Tragedy: Its Art and Its Christian Premises (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1969), pp. 161-83, esp. pp. 173-4. Antony himself first articulates his, and Cleopatra's uniqueness (1.1.40). Agrippa's association of Antony and the phoenix gives his uniqueness a special quality, however, because the phoenix is not only one of a kind, it is also immortal, and is a traditional Christian symbol for the Resurrection. As the phoenix, Antony would be unique, selfimmolating, and eternally reborn. According to Valerian, the phoenix dies in Egypt; opening its stomach with its beak, it forms a worm from its own blood, and the worm grows into the next phoenix (Hieroglyphes [Lyons, 1615, Garland facsimile, New York,

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capable of mastering the time. His fortune waxes and wanes in this one scene, while Antony and Octavius appear to have leave to divide the world between them. If Octavius, as "Fortune's knave", is not a proper Stoic, he is no proper hero either. What heroism there is in the play is Antony's, in the facts of his military career, in his largesse, and in the grandiose image of him evoked by Cleopatra in the last act. It has become a commonplace to treat his heroism in Herculean terms. He claims Hercules as ancestor, Cleopatra echoes this when she calls him an "Herculean Roman", Hercules as his tutelary god departs from him in the fourth act, and Antony, on the point of suicide and mad with rage, invokes his great ancestor. To this we may add Cleopatra's reminiscence of their relationship couched in images that suggest Hercules and Omphale. These references have been explored at some length, so I shall rehearse the possibilities only briefly.27 The Hercules-Omphale story, like that of Mars and Venus, is commonly glossed as the seduction of fortitude by luxury. Adelman carries this interpretation one step further, on the basis of Cleopatra's girding herself with Antony's "sword Phillipan", and sees in Cleopatra a possible Venus Armata or Venus Victrix,28 The final Hercules image in the play is not concerned with seduction, however, but with betrayal. Antony calls on his ancestor as he appears in the Hercules Oeteus of Seneca, and in the end of Ovid's account in the Metamorphoses, when, maddened by the poisoned Nessus-shirt, he commits suicide by self-immolation on a burning pyre. While this part of the myth is not so central to Renaissance treatments of Hercules as are his twelve labors, or Hercules at the crossroads, it is not at all an obscure part of Renaissance Hercules lore. It is glossed in the commentaries on the Metamorphoses in a variety of ways, and this episode completed the pa-

17

28

1976], p. 247). Antony's falling on his sword, and Cleopatra's dying phrase, "the curled Antony", with its suggestion both of infant and snake, as well as her death by the "worm of Nilus", might carry echoes of the manner of the phoenix's death. Adelman's discussion of Hercules and Omphale is the most complete: see p. 81, pp. 90-6. Adelman, pp. 90-6. T o this confusing, and often amusing, welter of hermaphroditic allegory, we may add a third Venus, the Venus barbata, who has Cleopatra herself as an exemplar. Valerian cites Horace for an alternate and more masculine version of Cleopatra's suicide: "Et Horace s'estonne du courage viril de Cleopatra, laquelle cherchant le moyen de mourir vertueusement, n'a redoute, contre la facon des femmes, l'espee." (Hieroglyphes, p. 438).

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rallel for those humanists who wished to see Hercules as a pagan Samson, and thus as a type of Christ.29 But however the death of Hercules is explicated, neither the death itself, nor its allegorical or moral meaning in the commentaries, apply to Antony's suicide. By the time he decides on suicide, Hercules has abandoned him. In his description of his passionate madness, he also manages to garble the details of the myth. Lichas, whom he would lodge "on the horns o' the moon", is, in Ovid, thrown into the sea, where he is turned into a rock. 30 Moreover, Antony dies by the sword, rather than by poison and fire, and in dying, is instructed both by Cleopatra and Eros. And he manages to botch the job. Although in his great death scene with Cleopatra he envisions possible transcendence in the image of Dido and Aeneas (again a garbled version of a myth), 31 and of "souls that do couch on flowers", these twists away from two heroic figures, Hercules and Aeneas, should make us question to what degree Shakespeare has apotheosis in mind for Antony. One more set of mythological references tends to throw a somewhat different light on Antony's suicide. After Cleopatra has seen and heard Antony in his final rage, she leaves, crying, "Help me, my woman! O, he's more mad/Than Telamon for his shield." (IV.xiii.1-2) As he disarms for

29

30

31

Horologgi's commentary in Andrea dell'Anguillara's Italian translation of Ovid (Venice, 1584, p. 352), is an example of the Neoplatonizing apotheistic interpretation of the myth. Abraham Fraunce's reading of Hercules's death is also explicitly apotheistic: "At length having passed through so many perils, . . . he burnt himself on the Mount Oeta: that is to say his terrestrial body being purged and purified, himselfe was afterwards deified and crowned with immortality." (The Third Part of the Countesse of Pemhrokes Yvychurch, Entituled Amintas Dale [London, 1952], 47r) Ronsard, in Hercule Chrestien (Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier [Paris: Hachette, 1963], 11. 207-23), makes the parallel between the Crucifixion and the death of Hercules explicit. For an extended study of Hercules as a préfiguration of Christ, see Marcel Simon, Hercule et le Christianisme, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, 2 ser., no. 19 (Paris, en depot à la Société d'éditions Les Belles Lettres, 1955). See also Jane Apteker's discussion of Hercules in Icons ofJustice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 171. Hercules and Lichas also appear in Morocco's speech in The Merchant of Venice (II.i.32-5). Morocco, like Antony, is sure of his abilities in single combat; like Cleopatra, his complexion is "the shadowed livery of the burnished sun", like both, he is engaged in the game of fortune. Aeneas is apotheosized, but Dido, a suicide, ends in Hades. Simmons also notes Antony's error (Shakespeare's Pagan World, p. 148).

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the last time, Antony uses the same image: " . . . Off, pluck o f f / T h e seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep/The battery from my heart." (IV. xiv.37-9) This reference, in effect, begins the suicide scene. Hercules has departed, and these two references, coming so quickly in contiguous scenes, together with the actual manner of Antony's suicide, invite us to think here of the death of Ajax, rather than of Hercules. Ajax's death comes from his madness, provoked by the crafty rhetoric of Ulysses in their contention for the armor of Achilles. Ajax goes mad with rage when the armor is awarded to Ulysses, and kills himself by falling on his sword. 32 Nothing concerning apotheosis appears in the myth, and when we see the dead Ajax in the Odyssey, he is a sullen ghost in Hades who will not speak to his rival. In Sandy's Ovid, his death is treated harshly: H e , w h o m n o f o r c e c o u l d subdue, is v a n q u i s h e d b y sorrow. A n act that d e serves n o t the n a m e of valour, but rather p r o c e e d i n g f r o m a faintnesse o f spirit, and disability t o suffer. 3 3

The intrusion of Ajax into the suicide of Antony keeps us from making anything like a firm equation of Antony and Hercules, and prevents identification of his suicide with Herculean virtue or transcendence. Antony's reference to the death of Hercules ends with another peculiar twisting of mythical material: "And with those hands that grasped the heaviest club/Subdue my worthiest self." (IV.xiii.46-7) His "worthiest self" is that part of him that must be suppressed if his desire to kill Cleopatra is to be fulfilled. The "heaviest club" of Hercules is frequently glossed as prudence and wisdom: "La mazza nella destra, che mostra desiderio de prudenza e di sapere." 34 The desire for these virtues is lost in Antony's rage, which then passes into melancholy at Cleopatra's supposed suicide, and finally leads to his own death. Even Antony's description of his death, phrased in apparent Stoic dignity, "A Roman, by a Roman,/Valiantly vanquished" (IV.xv.57-8), recalls Ovid's description of Ajax's death, "Ne quisquam Aiacem possit superare nisi Ajax", rendered by San-

The story is told at length in Ovid, Metamorphoses, XIII. George Sandys, Ovid's Metamorphoses Englished, Mythologiz'd, and Represented in Figures (Oxford, 1632), p. 446. "The club in the right [hand] that shows desire for prudence and wisdom." (my translation) Cartari, p. 322.

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dys, "That none but Ajax, Ajax may subdue", by Golding, "That none may Ajax overcome save Ajax." 35 The pattern for Antony's melancholy death has already been set by Enobarbus. His death, while not quite a suicide, comes as a stricken conscience looks back on a choice made between reason and will, or more appropriately, between prudence and love. Prudence wins, but it is obvious that Enobarbus's prudence is calculating self-preservation without moral dimension, and the broken faith of amicitia leads him to despondency and death, illuminated by the moon, "sovereign mistress of true melancholy." (IV.ix.12) The moon, "mistress of true melancholy", is also, as the "horned moon", a symbol of Isis, and would be part of the regalia worn by Cleopatra in those public appearances so disgusting to Octavius. As Cleopatra prepares for her own suicide, she separates herself from that symbol: "the fleeting m o o n / N o planet is of mine." (V.ii.238-9) Just as the Venus and Hercules myths undergo transmutation in the play, so does the myth of Isis, and once again, this transmutation comes from a grafting of the myth onto the world of time. The first references to Isis come in the first scene with the soothsayer, and she appears in this comic and erotic scene in her traditional role as goddess of fecundity, an Egyptian Venus Genetrix. All the references to the generative powers of the Nile belong to her, and this generative function is underlined in Octavius's description of Cleopatra as Isis, enthroned with Antony, their children at their feet. The final reference to her begins that manipulation of the relationship between myth and world which we have seen in most of the mythological references in the play. If, as has been suggested, the description of Cleopatra fleeing the battle, "The breeze upon her, like a cow in June", (III.x.14) evokes the legend of Io, then the myth is wrenched in its application.36 In Plutarch's De Iside, the source, along with Apuleius, of much of the Isis material for the Renaissance, Io, pursued by Juno, is turned into a cow, swims to Egypt, regains her form, changes her name to Isis, marries Osiris (himself identified with Apollo, Hercules, and Bacchus), becomes a queen, and upon her death, along with Osiris, is deified. T o celebrate her safe arrival from over the seas, she carries in one hand a ship, and be-

35

36

It is Hercules, rather than Ajax, whose suicide is seen as virtuous by the Stoics. See Simon, p. 129. The possibility that the cow suggests Io is explored by Robert Grams Hunter, "Cleopatra and the 'Oestre Junonicque,' " ShakS, 5 (1970 for 1969), 236-9.

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comes the patroness of safe voyages.37 But if Cleopatra goes to battle as Isis and the Venus Armata, she does not return as the Venus Victrix, nor, as the priestess of Isis, has she been successful in invoking the goddess as the protectress of voyages. To emphasize Cleopatra's failure at sea, Shakespeare uses one more detail, taken once again from Plutarch, but shortened in an interesting way: " . . . Swallows have built/In Cleopatra's sails their nests." (IV.xii. 3-4) In Plutarch, as in Shakespeare, the incident of the swallows is an inauspicious omen, but it is recounted differently. Swallows build their nests in Cleopatra's galley, but other swallows come, attack them, and drive them away. It would seem, for the point of the augury, that the full account should have been given, and that Shakespeare's version is more than a little enigmatic. There is, however, another augury connected with swallows building nests without being molested, and it occurs in Plutarch's life of Pyrrhus. Valerian glosses that augury as follows: "Ainsi l'Arondelle que fit son nid dedans la tente de Pyrrhus fit cognoistre que le voyage qu'il avoit dosseigne seroit de nul effect." 38 Whether or not Shakespeare was thinking of Pyrrhus's fateful swallow, its behavior is appropriate for this context — and it is, moreover, a bird linked with Isis. But if we are meant to associate Cleopatra with Isis, we are also meant to see a sharp differentiation between her and the goddess, just as we are meant to see elements in her that connect her with, and separate her from, Venus or Voluptas. Too much in Shakespeare's manipulation of mythical references in the play acts against the realization of the full significance of these myths for us to assume anything like an easy identification of Antony with Bacchus, Mars, Hercules, Jove, Osiris (by extension), Ajax, or Aeneas, just as too much weighs against identifying Cleopatra with Isis, Dido, Io, Venus, or Voluptas. However near Antony and Cleopatra are brought to such identification, some point in the presentation refuses to allow the human and the mythical to coalesce, or twists the myth itself into something "new and strange". Even apparently small details have a way of troubling the waters, as in Cleopatra's seemingly laudatory description of Antony, "Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,/The other way's a Mars." (II.v.17-8) 37

38

Cartari gives the essentials of the myth, p. 114. It is also recounted by Stephen Bateman, The Golden Book of the Leaden Goddes (London, 1577), 16r v. Valerian, p. 282.

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This echoes the description of H e c t o r in the Iliad, " T h e eyes of G o r g o n burnt in him and warre's vermilion G o d . " (Chapman's translation) 3 9 O n e might well w o n d e r which face of such a Janus would be better to avoid. Chapman's translation combines the fearful aspect of bloody Mars with the stony and serpentine h o r r o r of the Medusa. After Antony's defeat and suicide, Cleopatra, influenced by his example, decides on suicide herself. N o t only is her death to be by the serpent, but she also says, as her resolution grows, " I am marble constant; now the fleeting m o o n / N o planet is of mine." It is perhaps too much to say that, as a G o r g o n , A n t o n y has affected her metamorphosis f r o m the "infinite variety" of Isis of the fleeting moon to the marble queen of the concluding scene, but Cleopatra resigns both the m o o n of Isis, and, in announcing that she is "fire and air", properties of Mars, she resigns also the element of water which is a principal attribute both of Venus and Isis as goddesses of generation. H e r final transmutation, however, is not complete, f o r while she frees herself verbally f r o m a part of the Isis symbolism, she retains part of it as well. W h e n Plutarch describes Isis in De hide, he equates her not only with Venus, but also with Tethys: . . . That water is the element and principle that engendereth all things: for they say that Osiris is the Ocean, and Isis, Tethys, as one would say, the nourse that suckleth and feedeth the whole world. 40

Cleopatra presents herself in similar terms in her dying speech: " D o s t thou not see my baby at my b r e a s t , / T h a t sucks the nurse asleep?" (V.ii.308-9) and then, ambiguously, " O Antony! N a y , I will take thee t o o . " (V.ii.311) If we are permitted to see a meaningful ambiguity in the confusion of Eros and Cleopatra in Act IV, when Antony arms f o r the final battle, I would suggest that we may also see here a confusion between the asp and Antony. While the asp is the efficient cause of her death, Antony is also, in his role as model and example, responsible f o r this final scene. Failing as Mars, he succeeds as Gorgon. Cleopatra's capture of Antony begins on Cydnus, in the bringing of a picture to life; it ends on an imagined Cydnus with Antony's transformation of Cleopatra f r o m life to art. Art, like death, "shackles accidents, and bolts up change."

39 40

Book VIII, 302-3. Plutarch, The Philosophie, p. 301.

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Antony's and Cleopatra's deaths are the last transmutations of the lovers we see on stage. From Cleopatra's point of view, this transmutation is transcendence, and it is usually upon the assessment of the transcendental import of the last two acts that critical treatments tend both to focus and divide. The range of these responses is enormous, from the baroque splendor of Knight to the damned pagans of Battenhouse — on this cosmic ladder no rung is left unfooted. But it should not be that the only critical act left, in the face of so many contradictory interpretations, is to submit merely to "Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder." If the play presses on us from the first both the necessity and the responsibility to judge its great figures, then it must present us with some means, however difficult or ambiguous, for making such a judgment. Part of our difficulty in judging Antony and Cleopatra is the result of our having to assume a multiple perspective toward them. We must be able to see them as they see themselves, as others in the play see them, and finally from a vantage point that incorporates these necessarily partial perceptions into a larger framework. The problem is dramatized in the various interpretations of the lovers in the first scene of the play, but it becomes acute in the last two acts. After Fortune and Octavius have handed them their overwhelming defeat, both Antony and Cleopatra move through a rapid series of self-reassessments before they make their choices for suicide. Throughout these extreme changes, however, they never quite lose their sense of their magnificence, and their deaths are self-dramatized and ritualized. Certainly, at least from their points of view, although what we see are "black Vesper's pageants", that they are pageants keeps them from being entirely negative. Their deaths are conducted as ceremonies, and ceremony, for Antony and Cleopatra, gives them significance. We may press interpretation too far to see in Cleopatra's actions in the last two acts the pattern of Christian repentance. 41 I think, on the other hand, that it is impossible not to see in the attitudes of Antony and Cleopatra a growing sense of renovatio, reaching its climax in Cleopatra's vision of Antony, and in the transcendental language of her final speeches. While Caesar may command Cleopatra to "feed and sleep", she

41

Christian repentance is suggested by Dolora S. Cunningham, "The Characterization of Shakespeare's Cleopatra," SbakQ, 6 (1955), 9-17: "Cleopatra's actions in the final act are in their main outlines comparable to those of the penitent Christian." (14) Cunningham insists, however, that Cleopatra remains a pagan, however noble her death.

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now thinks instead in terms of dreams, and ultimately, of immortality with Antony. She aims for that immortality through the bite of the serpent, the "aspic on the lips". It is Antony's kiss which she expects to receive as an immortal, and it was with the last of many thousands of her kisses that he died. In his essay on "Amor as God of Death", Edgar Wind takes up a figure drawn initially from Roman funerary monuments, in which Eros and Amor are linked with thanatos, and traces it up through Renaissance Neoplatonism, where it appears in one form as the mors osculi.*1 The linking of love and death by a kiss becomes, for the Neoplatonists, a way of describing the liberation of the soul through love. Lorenzo de' Medici, in the preface to his sonnets, defines this process of liberation through death: . . . chi e s a m i n a più sottilmente, troverrà il principio dell' a m o r o s a vita p r o c e d e r dalla m o r t e , p e r c h é chi vive ad a m o r e , m u o r e prima all' altre c o s e . E, se l o a m o r e h a in sé quella p e r f e z i o n e c h e già abbiamo detto, è impossibile venire a tale p e r f e z i o n e se prima n o n si m u o r e , q u a n t o alle c o s e più i m perfette. 4 3

Cleopatra's dream vision of Antony after his suicide is of just such a "perfected" lover, transcending, in his godlike and cosmic perfection, all sublunar creations. Cleopatra's own claim to be "fire and air" and her abandonment of "baser elements" also suggests that she identifies herself with godlike love to be perfected through death. Pico, in his commentary on the canzone of Benivieni, takes up the kiss itself in a similarly Neoplatonic context: . . . e nota c h e la più perfetta e intima u n i o n e c h e possa l'amante havere della celesta amata, si d e n o t a per la u n i o n e del bascio, p e r c h e o g n i altro c o n g r e s s o , o c o p u l a più oltre usata n e l l o a m o r e c o r p o r a l e n o n è licita per a l c u n o m o d o , ... 42

43

44

44

Wind, Pagan Mysteries, pp. 152-79, esp. pp. 152-6. The relationship of the kiss to some kind of immortality is discussed by Katherine Vance MacMullen, "Death Imagery in Antony and Cleopatra," SbakQ, 14 (1963), 399-410. " . . . he who examines more subtly will find that the principle of the amorous life proceeds from death, because he who lives for love dies in regard to other things. And, if love has in itself that perfection which we have already stated, it is impossible to come to such perfection if one does not die first, at least in regard to more imperfect things." (my translation) Lorenzo de' Medici, Opere, ed. Attilio Simione (Bari: Laterza, 1939), I, 24. " . . . and note that the most perfect and intimate union the lover may have with the divine beloved, we call the union of the kiss, because every other coming together

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In Pico, as one would expect, as the terms become more explicit and intense, they also become spiritualized. Finally, in Valerian, the motif of the transcendental kiss of death brings together Hercules, Paul and Solomon : . . . quand ceux qui ont bien vescu et desia sont morts de ceste maniéré de mort cy-dessus mentionee quand nous avon parle d'Hercule suffoquant Anthee, c'est a dire ayans vaincu toutes mauvaises affections, et desirans estre délivrez de la prison corporelle, pour estre joincts et unis à Dieu, passent de ceste vie a l'autre: ainsi que S. Paul a désiré mourir disant, Je voudrais estre dissoult et estre avec Jesus-Christ. Les symboliques Theologiens ont nommé ceste maniéré de mort, baiser: duquel il Salomon ait parlé au Cantique, disant Q u 'il me baise du baiser de sa bouche,45

In Antony and Cleopatra, the lovers do not see themselves in the moral and spiritual terms of Valerian's mors osculi, but rather in a light that seems nearer to the views of Lorenzo and Pico, although even here, Pico and Lorenzo insist that the excellence of transcendental love is moral. It goes without saying that syncretistic Neoplatonic interpretations of the mors osculi will be moral, but, drawn as they are from treatments of love derived from the Symposium, their morality is expressed in erotic terms, and has strong aesthetic and mystical implications as well. It is primarily in erotic, aesthetic, and mystical language that Antony and Cleopatra verbalize the transcendental character of their love, and project their visions of apotheosis. Antony's suicide, performed under the guidance of Eros and Cleopatra, leads to literal, rather than figurative death. But his death scene, in which he is elevated by Cleopatra and her servants to the monument to receive her last kiss, verges on the iconic. The force of love and death is combined in Cleopatra's desire to breathe forth that power which Enobarbus had described as one of her attributes : "Die when thou hast liv'd/ Quicken with kissing: had my lips that power,/Thus would I wear them out." (IV.xv.38-40) Her previous wish, for "great Juno's power", is also directed at apotheosis, for, if fulfilled, Mercury, as Psychopompus, would deliver the deified Antony, like his "great ancestor" Hercules, to sit at Jove's side on Olympus.

45

or joining further used in physical love is not legitimate in any manner." (my translation). Pico délia Mirandola, Commente, in Girolamo Benivieni, Opere (Venice, 1522), 58r. Valerian, p. 786.

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Acting against these images of wished-for transcendence are equally powerful images in which Antony's death is simply the final change that ends his metamorphosis: "The miserable change now at my end/Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts/In feeding them with those my former fortunes." (IV.xv.51-3) In this, his final speech, there is no more talk of rushing like a bridegroom into the house of death, nor of couching on flowers in Elysium, but a reversion to a Stoic moral position. From his own point of view, he has restored his honor, and he describes his death as a Roman ars moriendi: " . . . and do not basely die,/Not cowardly put off my helmet to/My countryman: a Roman, by a Roman,/Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going,/I can no more." (IV.xv.55-9) Antony's death begins in melancholy, rises to a vision of Elysium, and sinks finally back into melancholic accidia. He is the victim both of Fortune and of love, and it is thus appropriate that he die in the East, where these two, as quintessences of mutability, were, according to Valerian, worshipped in the same temple: "Mais cecy n'est point a oublier, que les citidins d'Aegre auyent accoustume, a cause de ceste mutabilite, de venerer en un mesme temple l'Amour & la Fortune." 46 Cleopatra's response to Antony's death, and the motives for her own suicide, are at once more complex and more puzzling than Antony's. While Antony ends his life on a Stoic note, she begins to articulate her own death first in Stoic terms. While he moves from an Epicurean position through transcendental mysticism to resignation, she moves from the Stoic in the direction of the transcendental. Although she takes what appears to be a Stoic's attitude regarding suicide and its justification, and in her announcement that she will renounce food and drink, her method of suicide, in marked contrast to the "courage viril" which astonished Horace, 47 is Epicurean in its painlessness, and her stage management of her death has a voluptuousness at odds with her renunciation of the "baser elements" of water and earth, and of "Egypt's grape". Moreover, the dream vision of Antony which she had recounted to Dolabella, in which Antony is virtually a demigod with cosmic and Edenic implications, is contradicted by the "curled Antony", who, as husband and even baby, awaits her after death. And while she has renounced the "fleeting moon" of Isis, she has evidently not renounced the Venus- Voluptas of the Cydnus, for it is thus that she dresses herself once again to meet Antony. 46 47

Valerian, p. 515. See note 28 above.

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If there is a suggestion of Neoplatonic transcendentalism, dying through love by means of a kiss into a higher world, it too is compromised by the physicality of Cleopatra's language, and by the adumbration of man's fallen nature in the bite of the serpent, and the Nile-beslimed fig leaves that are left as the evidence of the manner of her death. The three great Pagan philosophies, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Neoplatonism, each of them slightly out of focus, skewed, compromised, and vulgarized, hover in these last scenes, and, like the myths used to suggest them, refuse to coalesce into a clear and measured account of the mutable world. The glamor and magnificence of the events, Antony's Protean splendor and Cleopatra's infinite variety, are, like Cleopatra's crown, "awry", and the end of these high events is only that " N o grave upon the earth shall clip in it/A pair so famous." The last scenes of the play make it clear that Cleopatra not only expects apotheosis with Antony, but also thinks she deserves it. But it should also be clear that the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra and the mythical models of apotheosis are so strained, distorted, and confused that it is impossible for her "immortal longings" to be satisfied. On the other hand, it appears equally clear that we are not intended to see Antony and Cleopatra as models of vice and corruption. If we see them merely as pagans damned for their vices, we will have to see the play as something other than tragedy, for tragedy, at least in Shakespeare, insists on the mixed nature of its protagonists, and on the internal struggles caused by that nature. In Antony and Cleopatra mixed nature manifests itself largely in terms of extremes, but these extremes do not meet. The magniloquence of the principals and the vastness of empire create a sense of magnificence, but it is a magnificence of parts rather than wholes, of chaos rather than cosmos. In this most mutable of worlds, mutability itself appears as extreme and contradictory, the results of gaps in time and nature rather than the orderly continuity of natural change, from the first unlikely union of Mars and a gypsy to the final paradoxical image of Cleopatra as simultaneously "marble constant" and "fire and air". In this world, death, rather than redemption, "bolts up accident and shackles change." Neither pagan philosophy nor pagan myth can provide transcendence for "a pair so famous". While Shakespeare's tragedy is enacted through the figures of Octavius, Antony, and Cleopatra, they, as microcosms, reflect the irreconcilable discord at the center of their world, whose exhausted values are ex-

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pressed through them. 48 In Ficino's Christianized Neoplatonism, the adultery of Mars and Venus gives rise to divine laughter, and to a daughter, Harmonia. It is one of the great expressions of discordia concors, the reconciliation of opposites leading to cosmic harmony. Whether Ficino's Venus is considered on the metaphysical level, as the intellect's love for the beauty of the intelligible, leading toward God, or on the physical level, as the love of beauty in the particularities of the material world, she is a figure leading toward concord. So much cannot be said, however, of the desire binding Antony and Cleopatra together. It is composed of jealousy, frustration, rage, fear, lust, and misapprehension, and, however it is transformed by the exalted language of the two lovers, it is continually reduced to the flesh, and finally, to the earth itself. Their fleshly dilemma is expressed most succinctly by Antony himself in the opening scene, "Here is my space,/ Kingdoms are clay", and, in opposition to Cleopatra's visions of transcendence, by those powerful images of her own corpse rotting in the slime of the Nile, the final resting place of a queen already "wrinkled deep in time". The difficult act of judging the metamorphoses of Antony and Cleopatra as they are subjected to the forces of love and Fortune of such excessive mutability still remains. Since they are at least motivated by love, they may gain our sympathy, while Octavius's calculating prudence does not. But the garbled mythological and philosophic contexts of the play are not sufficient to transform their love into something beyond the flesh, and their necessarily imperfect conception of love is pitiable. "Black Vesper's pageants" in the last two acts measure their declension even from their pagan prototypes, as Antony sinks from Hercules to Ajax, and Cleopatra seeks transcendence in the robes of Voluptas. The physical lifting of Antony's almost dead weight in a sling to Cleopatra's monument to receive his mors osculi is a pathetic parody of the ascent of the soul from earthly to divine love, while Cleopatra's conception of immortality, in her final scene, remains locked within the flesh, and suggests only a repetition of the life of this world in some other sphere beyond death. 49 48

49

Paul Cantor's study of the play in Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), also stresses the sense of collapsing values in the tragedy. Cantor's focus is on Shakespeare's response to the historical shift from Republican to Imperial values, and he does not deal extensively with the play's mythological or philosophical implications. In Shakespeare's Pagan World, Simmons notes the limitations placed on Antony's and Cleopatra's transcendental urges by the play's historical and cultural environment, pp. 111-4.

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At least one significant aspect of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra is that nothing in their world provides them with the means to fulfil their "immortal longings". The deaths of Antony and Cleopatra will inaugurate "the time of universal peace" under Augustus, but the true Phoenix, Christ, the nonpareil, is not yet born.

ALFRED BEHRMANN

Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon-. Anatomy of a 'European' Comic Play

In London, at the Queen's Theatre, there appeared in 1687 The Emperor of the Moon: A Farce. It was printed the same year and again, slightly revised, in 16881 and held the stage for more than sixty years. 2 The interest the twentieth century has taken in its author, Aphra Behn, has focused on her person, her career as the first woman in England to live by her pen, and on Oroonoko, her novel on the noble-savage theme of a 'princely' slave in Surinam. The Emperor of the Moon has been reprinted and edited, 3 but where it is discussed it is damned with faint praise. What recommends it for critical inspection is, first of all, its merit as a play which has been misjudged and invites revaluation. It is also, however, its quality as an 'English commedia dell'arte', more precisely as a play, ultimately Italian, modified in France, repristinated in England, with all its dialogue set down in English. As such it is unique, and its analysis appears rewarding at least in two respects. For one thing it reveals the plot of a Restoration favourite as one of ancient origin and noble lineage; for another it affords an opportunity of adumbrating the essence of modest but honourable 'medium' comedy, the "comedy of situation" (A. Nicoli). This may claim some interest since the notion of comedy lesser than the greatest but better than the generality of comic plays is strangely 1

2

3

The Emperor of the Moon: A Farce. As it is Acted by Their Majesties Servants, at the Queens Theatre. Written by Mrs. A. Behn. London [ . . . ] , 1687 (A). The same, as "The second Edition", London [ . . . ] , 1688 (B). So Leo Hughes and A. H. Scouten, ed., Ten English Farces (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1948), p. 42. For the piece's theatrical history see also Montague Summers, ed., The Works of Aphra Behn (London: Heinemann, 1915), III, 387-9. Cf. Hughes/Scouten, pp. 46-84; Summers, III, 390-463. A reliable text, and the one here quoted (based on B [cf. note 1] with occasional emendations from A), appeared in Alfred Behrmann, ed., Zwei englische Farcen: Aphra Behn:The Emperor of the Moon/ Der Kaiser vom Mond. Henry Fielding: The Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great/Die Tragödie der Tragödien oder Leben und Tod Tom Däumlings des Großen (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1973), pp. 1-128. The editorial principles are stated pp. 129-31.

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vague. Proof of this is found even in an expert like Allardyce Nicoll who discerns in the best of commedia dell'arte "a vision which may at least be related to Shakespeare's" 4 and denies The Emperor of the Moon a title better than that of farce because of its lack of "intrinsic value". 5 In reading his excellent book, The World of Harlequin, I have failed to grasp a quality ascribed to commedia dell'arte, whose absence might justify the exclusion of The Emperor of the Moon from the province of that dramatic art. I propose, therefore, to evince this play as comedy by relating it to its Italian background and to define its rank by discussing its matter, techniques, and spirit in terms of Comic Universals employed to their best advantage. What is it about?

I T H E ARGUMENT Doctor Baliardo, a rich physician (and alchemist) in Naples, tries to keep his daughter Elaria and his niece Bellemante away from the company of men. Cinthio and Charmante, nephews to the viceroy and in love with these young ladies, take advantage of the doctor's 'lunacy'. H e believes the moon is inhabited and intercourse with lunar beings possible. So Charmante, disguised as a Cabalist, persuades him that the Emperor of the Moon has fallen in love with his daughter and the Prince of Thunderland with his niece and that both these ladies are singled out for celestial marriage. Scaramouch and Harlequin, two rivals for the love of Mopsophil (the ladies' companion), Mopsophil, and her two charges assist the intrigue. Their lunar majesties appear in a magnificent pageant, and the nuptials are solemnised forthwith. At last two Knights of the Sun engage in a duel for the hand of Mopsophil. The victor reveals himself as Scaramouch, and the doctor is undeceived. Cured of his spleen, he forgives the imposture and invites the company to his house to celebrate the happy conclusion.

4

5

Allardyce Nicoll, l'Arte (Cambridge Allardyce Nicoll, Drama 1660-1900,

The World of Harlequin: A Critical Study of the Commedia delUniversity Press, 1963), p. 155. Restoration Drama 1660-1700. Vol. I of A History of English 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 262.

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Written dialogue and the extravaganza apart, this answers precisely the description of commedia dell'arte. The examination here suggested requires a closer look at both the matter of the piece and its structure.

SYNOPSIS l.i a) Elaria opens the plot with a song lamenting the submission of nature to custom, which has rendered courting and dallying a male prerogative, leaving the female sex to Prudent Art. Mopsophil is told what caused Elaria's close confinement. She was caught by her father, entertaining a man, Cinthio, at her window the night before. b) Scaramouch brings news from him. With his friend Charmante Cinthio has devised a farce to be called The World in the Moon, by which the doctor's belief in a moon world shall be exploited to make him agree to the lovers' union. Scaramouch, who wants to bring the young people together by a trick of his own that night, has instructions to prepare the enactment of the farce at the doctor's own house. Bellemante, back from church where she has ogled the beaux, receives through Scaramouch a letter from her lover Charmante and learns of the business at hand. 1.2 a) In his garden the doctor prepares to spy into the Emperor of the Moon's affairs through his telescope. Charmante arrives, dressed as a Rosicrucian, to pay the doctor the Cabala of Eutopia's respects for his learning and piety. In the course of a dialogue on matters cabalistical the doctor is permitted to see the emperor through his telescope and to share a secret, namely that his majesty has fallen in love with a fair mortal whose identity the Cabalists are busy ascertaining. b) When Charmante has left, Scaramouch, admonished to double the diligent care of his charges, requests the hand of Mopsophil as a reward for his faithful service. The doctor, who feeds him with better hopes, refuses; he has promised Mopsophil to a farmer. c) When they are gone, Harlequin, who has been eavesdropping, comes out of his hidingplace. His love for Mopsophil crossed, he decides to die in a memorable fashion and tickles himself to death. Scaramouch returns and brings him back to life. Together they bemoan their misfortune. Harlequin, before renewing his attempt at suicide, wants to hear his sentence from the Trollops own mouth. 1.3 a) Scaramouch and Harlequin have stolen into Bellemante's room in hope of meeting Mopsophil. Not recognising each other in the darkness they arouse their mutual fear by

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fooling around, assuming the posture of a grotesque Church Spout, etc. Scaramouch sneaks out leaving Harlequin hidden under a table. b) Bellemante comes in and starts to write some verses. Every time she puts her book down to think of the next line, Harlequin, unseen, supplies it. Charmante comes in, reads the poem, finds another's hand in it and suspects a rival lover. c) The doctor shouts for Bellemante. Scaramouch comes rushing in and puts Charmante into Bellemante's closet. The doctor arrives and sends Bellemante off on an errand. H e has to go and see his brother who is said to be dying in his house three leagues away. When all have gone Mopsophil comes in praising her suitor, the farmer, for his calash. Harlequin comes out from under his table, falls at her feet and frightens her away. d) Scaramouch returns and challenges his rival to a duel. After some ridiculous fighting he suggests a dance. When it is finished Elaria enters. Scaramouch, who just had time to slip his comrade behind the door, informs her of her father's journey and that Cinthio is outside waiting to come in. e) Cinthio enters and finds Elaria stiff with fear. The doctor is heard coming back for a key. Elaria hides her suitor in Bellemante's closet, puts the candle out and steals away as the doctor advances. Cinthio and Charmante do not recognise each other. The doctor shouts for a light. Scaramouch brings it, sees the lovers, who have pulled each other out of the closet, puts the candle out and falls over the doctor. Charmante slips back into the closet. Mopsophil and Elaria enter with a light. Cinthio, finding himself discovered, starts acting a madman brought for the doctor's attention. His fear allayed, the doctor departs on his journey. Charmante comes out of his hiding-place and starts for Cinthio's home to fetch him. Cinthio comes back, searching for his 'rival'. Elaria enters to release Charmante from the closet and is perplexed at finding Cinthio, who mistakes her confusion for embarrassment and rushes off in a rage. 2.1

After an Antick Dance as interlude Elaria and Bellemante, joined by Scaramouch, discuss the lovers' jealousy as a result of wrong conclusions. Scaramouch promises to put the matter to rights. 2.2

In a street, Scaramouch meets Cinthio, who abuses him for conniving at Elaria's understanding with a rival. Charmante appears with Harlequin, defends Elaria and accuses Bellemante. Harlequin dispels Charmante's jealousy by confessing his share in Bellemante's poem. Scaramouch reveals the closet secret and foretells the crestfallen offenders an easy pardon. 2.3 The ladies, dressed in fantastic costumes, are joined by their lovers, and peace is quickly restored. All engage in an entertainment with music and dancing. Suddenly the doctor is heard. Scaramouch puts the company in front of a hanging in which they represent the figures. The doctor storms in and thrashes Scaramouch for not

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guarding the house and for telling a lie about the doctor's brother, who is well as his valet affirmed when the doctor met him by chance, not far from town. Scaramouch explains the music which the doctor insists he has heard as a serenade from the inhabitants of the moon and diverts his master's attention to the tapestry, a present, he says, from the Cabala. As the doctor inspects it Harlequin hits him. The doctor rushes out to fetch his household militia. When he returns, armed with pistols, all have left but Scaramouch, who claims to have been awakened from a dream in which the Emperor of the Moon and the Prince of Thunderland were in the house, courting the ladies until, surprised by the doctor, they assumed the shape of an arras and, when the doctor grew angry at something, fled back to heaven. The doctor finds a certain correspondence with the Cabalist's prediction in this; he decides to question his daughter and niece about it. 2.4

Instructed by Mopsophil, the ladies act a dream-talk scene in which they commune with their celestial lovers, for the doctor's overhearing. He is ravished at this new corroboration of the ladies' prospects.

2.5

a) Scaramouch comes into the garden with a ladder and a lute and sings a song at Mopsophil's window, urging her to love whilst young and still fit for its pleasures. She appears, and just as Scaramouch is about to climb in, Harlequin enters, dressed as a woman, with letters for the young ladies from their lovers and a billet-doux of his own for Mopsophil. He rails at Scaramouch with all the rancour of a deserted wife expecting a child. Mopsophil, outraged, is determined to marry the next day — either the Apothecary or the Farmer — to be revenged on Scaramouch. b) The doctor comes in, attracted by the noise. Harlequin pretends to be a fille de chambre come to offer her services to the ladies. The doctor takes him for a she-Pimp and, after some interrogation, has him searched. Scaramouch knows his man when he finds the letters, which he keeps, and the billet-doux, which he produces, presenting him as a Mungrel Dancing-Master and a rival for Mopsophil's love. Harlequin is allowed to buy his pardon with a dance. c) Charmante appears in his role of Cabalist to inform the doctor that his daughter and his niece are indeed the happy brides and that his house should be prepared to receive their lunar majesties that very night. 3.1

Harlequin arrives at the town gate, dressed as a gentleman farmer, in a calash. He refuses to pay the toll for his coach, insisting he is a baker with his cart. The officer goes to fetch the clerk. Whilst he is gone, Harlequin converts his calash into a cart and his dress into a baker's, then complains to the clerk about the officer's stupidity. This repeats itself. Eventually Harlequin drives off with no toll paid and an extra crown in his pocket as satisfaction from the puzzled officer.

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a) Scaramouch, dressed as a travelling apothecary, is seen in his master's hall, with a portable shop. He has letters from the lovers for the young ladies, and hopes to conquer Mopsophil by fraud. The doctor comes in and Scaramouch presents himself as an admirer of Doctor Baliardo's, that great physician's, and a suitor for Mopsophil. H e then enlarges on matters of the moon, displaying detailed if second-hand knowledge. During the discourse the letters are surreptitiously passed from Scaramouch to Bellemante, who twice comes in to call the doctor to dinner, the second time with a written reply for Scaramouch to deliver. b) When the doctor has left, Harlequin appears in his farmer's disguise. Mopsophil is called and finds herself accosted by a pair of suitors instead of one. Longing to be married, tho' but in revenge of Harlequin and Scaramouch, she listens to their ridiculous protestations of love and their complacent bragging, then finds them out and fits them with a torrent of fanciful gibe. c) When she has left, the rivals start a duel. The doctor comes in and stops them. Neither impostor dares to reveal the other. Scaramouch complains of ill treatment from Harlequin, whom the doctor chastises by having him tossed in a blanket. When Harlequin threatens to disclose the intrigue, Scaramouch denounces him as a liar who claims to be no less than an ambassador from the Emperor of the Moon. The doctor humbly apologises to Harlequin, sends his servants away and satiates his curiosity on lunar affairs, Harlequin's business in the moon and the emperor's love for his, the doctor's, daughter. A strange noise is heard, which Harlequin explains as ushering in his majesty's descent. The doctor pays him richly, and Harlequin takes his leave. Scaramouch, back as himself, reports the appearance of splendid glories in the air, and the doctor, overjoyed, acquaints his daughter and his niece with their blessed fortunes. 3.3

a) The doctor, Elaria, Bellemante and Mopsophil have come to a gallery at the far end of the garden. The doctor tries to suppress his amazement at its magnificence. A scene opens and shows the hill of Parnassus. Kepler and Galilei, interpreters to great Iredonozar, Emperor of the Moon, proclaim his majesty's arrival. The Zodiac appears, sign by sign, with changing music and elaborate pageantry. At last the globe of the moon descends, from which the emperor and the prince alight amid their entourage. More music and dancing ensue. The scene then changes to a temple with a bridal altar. The emperor, speaking through a stentorphone, addresses the doctor and asks for Elaria's hand. The doctor complies, transported with joy, and the wedding ceremony is duly performed. b) Scaramouch and Harlequin, in the role of Knights of the Sun, appeal to the emperor to arbitrate their contest for a beauteous mortal, Mopsophil. The emperor agrees. They fight a duel in the lists. Scaramouch wins and receives his prize from the doctor's hand. c) Removing his helmet, Scaramouch thanks the doctor who, seeing his illusion destroyed, is quite undone. 'Kepler' acquaints him with the motive for the imposture, presents the lovers as nephews of the viceroy's, and all obtain the doctor's forgiveness. He renounces the follies of cabalistic speculation and invites the party to celebrate the happy alliance at his house.

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T H E PLAY A N D ITS SOURCE: A H I N T FROM T H E ITALIAN In her Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Marquess of Worcester Aphra Behn remarks : A very barren and thin hint of the Plot I had from the Italian, and which, as it was, was acted in France eighty odd times without intermission.6

even

This Italian, Arlequin empereur dans la lune, was a comedy first acted on March 5, 1684, at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris by the King's Italian Players. It had scenes written in French by Nol(l)ant (properly Anne Mauduit) de Fatouville, and others acted all'improwiso in Italian. The play was an outstanding success; it had a long run, and more and more of its written scenes were incorporated in the successive editions of Evaristo Gherardi's Théâtre italien.7 Arlequin was played by Giuseppe Biancolelli, the leading member of the troupe, and later, after his death in 1688, by Gherardi. The greatest number of scenes from the play included in Le théâtre italien is eight, all of which were used, in varying degrees, for The Emperor of the Moon. They are : 6 7

Emperor, p. 5. Le Théâtre Italien de Gherardi, ou Receiiil de toutes les Comédies & Scenes Françoises jouées par les Comediens Italiens du Roy, pendant tout le temps qu'ils ont été au Service. [ . . . ] Londres: Jacob Tonson [ . . . ] M.DCCXIV. T. I-VIII; I, 137-204 [quot. Arlequin (empereur dans la lune)]. There are other editions, both earlier (1694) and later (1721), but none that contains more than the eight scenes included in the London edition of 1714 here quoted, the only one readily available to me. A detailed description of both the business and the dialogue of Arlequin is given by Henry Carrington Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), Part IV, II, 615 f. Lancaster opens his paragraphs on Arlequinby stating as its chief characteristics "variety and absence of unity". — What knowledge Aphra Behn could have of her source is a difficult question to answer. Summers speaks of an edition of Arlequin "published in its entirety" in 1684, and adds, "Mrs Behn of course used [that] edition." (p. 387) Hughes/Scouten refute this statement, and with good reasons. "There could be no 'entire' play", they object, "for only the French scenes were written down; the Italian ones were still played al[l'] improv[v]iso." One has to subscribe to their conclusion that "it seems safest at present to accept the view that the material taken from the commedia dell'arte scenes came from observing the play, not from reading a printed text." (p. 41) For biographical reasons 'observing' should be taken to imply observation by a person or persons who saw the play performed and related its content to Aphra Behn. Since the first edition of Gherardi's Théâtre italien appeared in 1694, seven years after the Emperor, Mrs Behn cannot even be imagined as having access to those parts of Arlequin which did appear in print, the French scenes.

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The doctor is at pains to convince his servant Pierrot that the moon is inhabited. He complains about his daughter Isabelle8 and his niece Eularia who surround themselves, the one with poets, the other with fops, and of their servants Olivette and Colombine who have turned as silly. He is resolved to marry them all to have his peace. Of Colombine's three suitors, an apothecary, a smith and a baker, he prefers the smith. Arlequin, also in love with Colombine, turns up, unseen, in time to overhear the last remark. 2 Scène du désespoir ( The garden) Arlequin, despairing of his love for Colombine, decides to kill himself: the lazzo d'ammazarsi taken over for the Emperor (i.2.c). Arlequin is found, brought to and consoled by Pasquariel. 3 Scène de la fille de chambre Arlequin, disguised as a fille de chambre, offers his services to Pierrot disguised as the doctor's wife. After some enquiry into 'her' previous service the applicant is taken on. The doctor joins them and, learning what has happened, abuses Arlequin as a roaming trollop. Pierrot, enraged at being thus deceived, becomes embroiled with Arlequin. 4 Scène d'Isabelle et Colombine Isabelle tells Colombine the story of her versifying adventure as it is acted out in the Emperor (1.3.b). Then they discourse on Isabelle's infatuation with poetry and poets, and on marriage, Isabelle preferring a wit, Colombine a rich man for a husband. Colombine describes the à-lamode procedure of obtaining a divorce by which the wife secures her ease and comfort. 5 Scène du fermier de Donfront Arlequin performs the quick-change trick at the customs office adopted for the Emperor (3.1). Then, after some fooling — he is looking for a "Traiteur en lard" (Docteur Balouard) — he presents himself to the doctor as Colombine's suitor, the son of Colin, the smith of Donfront. The fraud is discovered when a messenger arrives with a letter from the smith to say that his son is ill and cannot set out on the journey. Arlequin is threatened and abused. Left alone in his distress, he is consoled by Pasquariel, who instructs him to act an ambassador from the moon when next he sees the doctor. 6 Scène de l'ambassade, et du voyage d'Arlequin dans l'empire de la lune Arlequin approaches the doctor as an ambassador from the Emperor of the Moon, come to ask for the hand of Isabelle. 8

Fatouville is very careless about his characters' relationships. Here and in the final scene Isabelle is Doctor Balouard's daughter; in between (scene 4) she is called, and calls herself, his niece.

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He reveals the celestial prospects thus opened to the doctor and discourses at great length and in ridiculous detail on how he came to enter the world of the moon and how the emperor dines and has his music performed. Then he extracts a sum of money and a ring from the doctor as a reward supposedly decreed by the emperor. 7 Scène de l'apotiquaire Arlequin, dressed as an apothecary, requests the hand of Colombine from the doctor. Then he holds forth on a threat arising to both apothecaries and physicians from the impertinence of perfumers who claim the female face, that object of greatest lucre among the parts of the body, as their monopoly. Colombine appears, and Arlequin pays lavish and eloquent attentions to her. 8 Scène dernière. Arlequin en empereur de la lune Arlequin as Emperor of the Moon receives Isabelle in marriage from the doctor. The emperor's sarcastic account of life in the moon, given at the doctor's request, provokes the repeated "C'est tout comme ici" of those present.9 Three Knights of the Sun appear and challenge Arlequin to a fight. He recruits the doctor and Scaramouche as allies but his party is defeated. The victors take Isabelle and Eularia as prizes, leaving Colombine to Arlequin.

Mrs Behn continues in her Epistle Dedicatory: '7is now much alter'd and adapted to our English Theatre and Genius,who cannot find an Entertainment at so cheap a Rate as the French will, who are content with almost any Incoherences, howsoever shuffled together under the Name of a Farce; which I have endeavour'd as much as the thing wou'd bear, to bring within the compass of Possibility and Nature, that I might as little impose upon the Audience as Icou'd all the Words are wholly new, without one from the originali • • • ]-10

This claim is borne out by a comparison of almost any corresponding matter in the texts. The impression is one of pruning, shaping and clearing-up of 'raw' material in a rigorous dramatic transformation. Where Arlequin is loose, vague and rambling, the Emperor is tight, neat and succinct. It cuts the 'serve' down from two (Olivette, Colombine) to one, the zanni from four (Arlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel, Scaramouche) to two, which creates a tidy subplot pattern of a serva with the classical zanni 9

10

Cf. Doctor Baliardo's just as 'tis here in 3.2.c,107. Mrs Behn's statement in her Epistle Dedicatory (Emperor, p. 5), all the words are wholly new, without one from the Original, is also disproved by other textual identities though these are neither copious nor important. Emperor, p. 5. For the last sentence cf. note 9.

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pair as rivals for her love; it translates narration into action, 11 telling into showing, 12 lops off irrelevant detail and renders indifferent matter functional. As illustration three examples may suffice. (1) The ambassador motif. In Arlequin it fills a whole scene (6), in the Emperor an episode (3.2.c). The elements are identical: (a) message, (b) account of journey to the moon, (c) digression on life in the moon, (d) messenger's reward. (In the Emperor [b] and [c] are reversed.) Apart from (a) — two sentences in either play — the matter in Arlequin exceeds by far the corresponding matter in the Emperor. Journey to the moon 362:168 words, life in the moon 1052:408, reward 404:31. The dramaturgic difference. Arlequin, instructed to do so by Pasquariel in the previous scene, appears, looks for the doctor, delivers his message, enlarges on the moon, extorts his reward and exits. It is a stagnant scene whose lengthy central parts (b, c) consist entirely of narrative neither conducive nor material to the plot. — Harlequin enters the long scene 3.2 for its second phase, disguised as a farmer, passes through various episodes (wooing, sword-fighting, being tossed in a blanket), his situation steadily worsening, before, in an unexpected turn, his rival, who trapped him, lets him off by 'revealing' him to the doctor as an ambassador from the moon. Flung into this rôle, Harlequin, puzzled, extemporizes, then masters the part and is at last released from it, as unexpectedly as he had it thrown upon him, by the emperor's arrival. This differs from Arlequin by the vivid resourcefulness with which the quick succession of theatrical business is used to expedite, rather than being allowed to impede, the plot. As in craftsmanship the Emperor outdoes Arlequin in matters of taste. The life-in-the-moon sujet will do as an example. Arlequin talks at length about the emperor's eating habits and the practice of music in his court. His food is catapulted, as his drink is syringed, into his mouth. An inept catapultier once hit his eye with "des Œufs fricassez au beurre noir", which explains their name, "Œufs pochez", poached eggs. The jest on music is as sorry. "Les g e n s d e ce Païs-là o n t le n e z e x t r ê m e m e n t l o n g , ils attachent u n e c o r d e à b o y a u d'un b o u t du n e z à l'autre, p o s e n t la m a i n g a u c h e sur le petit b o u t

"

12

Cf. Isabelle's report of the poetry episode (scene 4) and the corresponding action in the Emperor (1.3.b) — unless one assumes that the event reported was previously performed in one of the improvised scenes. Doctor Balouard d e s c r i b e s his daughter as a précieuse ridicule (scene 1); in the Emperor Bellemante d i s p l a y s herself as an élégante.

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du nez, & avec un Archel qu'ils tiennent de la main droite, ils vous jouent du nez, tout comme nous autres joiions du Violon. [ . . . ] Cela fait un nazonement enchanté. Ovide en joiioit en perfection. C'est de-là qu'on l'a appelé Ovide Nazon." 1 3

This kind of farce is cut out and replaced for the Emperor by an account which echoes in the follies of lunar life the perversities of life on earth : As for the young fellows that have money, they have no Mercy upon their own Persons, hut wearing Nature off as fast as they can, Swear, Whore, and Drink, and Borrow as long as any Rooking Citizen will lend, till having dearly purchased the Heroick Title of a Bully or a Sharper, they live pity'd of their friends, and despis'd by their Whores, and depart this Transitory World, diverse and sundry ways. (3.2.c; 105, 107)

In (d) the reward extorted is replaced for the Emperor by a reward spontaneously and joyfully given. This eliminates 'farce', speeds up the action and renders the doctor more quixotic. (2) The apothecary motif. Again a scene/episode correspondence and identical business : (a) apothecary as suitor for serva, (b) conversation with doctor, (c) compliments to serva. The difference: in the Emperor the doctor's interlocutor is Scaramouch, his servant, not Harlequin, an outsider. To wheedle an alchemist it takes an alchemical adept. As in the ambassador scene, Arlequin, in (b), is lording it over the doctor without the least effort, and the matter — the apothecaries' tug of war with the perfumers — is fatuous in itself and immaterial to the plot (unless the professional solidarity, aimed at as a means of prepossessing the doctor, is considered enough of a link).— Scaramouch as apothecary is a specialist on lunar philosophy, which relates his burla to the prevailing theme. His suit is coupled with an errand: he has to smuggle instructions from the lovers into the doctor's house. From the start Scaramouch is seen as not engaging lightly on a discourse where his knowledge may be severely taxed. Hum, the doctor here first, he says at the outset, adding: but I'm prepar'd with Impudence for all Encounters. Later, pressed for details by an inquisitive doctor, he mutters, Pox upon him> what questions he asks — but I must on. And later again, having embarked on the sutyect of the miraculous smith,14 I shall be trapt and, the Devil's in my Tongue (3.2.a). While seeming to indulge in a rollicking hoax, carried away by his initial 13 14

Arlequin, p. 182. See below, p. 258.

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success, what he does is, in fact, continue an uncomfortable conversation until Bellemante has had a chance to return with her note. In (c) the texture is doubly enriched by Harlequin's rival suit and Mopsophil's discovering the fraud, with a rapid succession of events as a consequence. (3) The end of the play. 'Emperor' Arlequin, defeated by the Knights of the Sun, "[r]inunzia agli amori d'Eularia, Isabella e Colombina". The play then closes, nonchalantly, a knight saying to him: "Cavalier Codardo, prendi pur Colombina, ch'a me basta sol l'averti vinto." 15 — Scaramouch's winning of Mopsophil is built into the final pageant as a catalyst episode. He emerges victorious from the duel with Harlequin, has Mopsophil bestowed upon him by general consent, and reveals his identity, which brings about the catastrophe. At this point the subplot, now resolved, recedes into the resolution of the play as a whole, Scaramouch being included in the general pardon and the celebration of the several weddings.

II T H E ELEMENTS OF T H E PLAY As will be seen, the critics make much of the Emperor's being, merely, a farce. Unfortunately the qualities securing a higher rank for commedia dell'arte defy substantiation: there is no dialogue as written proof. Where there is some, as in Arlequin, it is inferior to a farce's, the Emperor's. What the scenes played all'improwiso may have added to make Arlequin a better play than it appears is a matter of conjecture. The skill (arte) claimed for the best of Italian comedy is said to have shown in tasteful execution and a happy balance of the burlesque and the refined. Here, we have the rare example of a play fully 'scored'. We may inspect in it as concrete substance what with commedia dell'arte remains an object of surmise, an ascription. The characters The business of the play is derived from a standard plot, the gulling of a vecchio; here, a vecchio of a special kind, the old man with a spleen. 15

Arlequin, p. 203s.

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Inasmuch as the action hinges on the crack in his brain, he is the central, if not the principal, figure. The dottore In Arlequin he appears as "le Docteur Grazian [or Gratian] Balouard", in the Emperor simply as Doctor Baliardo. Tradition knows il dottor Graziano as one of a pair of vecchi, both masks, his partner being Pantalone, a Venetian merchant. The dottore usually professes law, but he may also be a physician, in which instance his speech is not by rule Bolognese.16 Here, we find him in Naples, a Neapolitan. 17 Baliardo — in Italian Baloardo — is a telling name: balordo = tardo di mente, tonto (Palazzi) jbalourd = grossier et stupide (Larousse). Is he stupid? H e is not; he is literally lunatic. Where the moon does not becloud him he is normal, even astute. This is exactly how Professor Nicoll describes the doctor's partner, Pantalone, namely as characterised by "the contrast between, on the one hand, a keen intelligence applied to the conduct of his business affairs, a normally dignified bearing and worthy sentiments, and, on the other hand, actions which might be easily condoned in one of lesser rank but which from him appear unfitting." 18 Scaramouch, in the Emperor, sums him up neatly: This Madness is a pretty sort of pleasant Disease, when it tickles but in one Vein — Why here's my Master now, as great a Scholar, as grave and wise a Man, in all Argument and Discourse, as can be met with, yet name but the Moon, and he runs into Ridicule, and grows as mad as the Wind (2.3,67).

Good-natured and credulous but also distrustful and irascible, Doctor Baliardo embodies to perfection the vecchio da don Chisciotte. Deferential before his betters, real or seeming, and now and then a bit of the Grand Mogul to those of lower rank, he is not impervious to flattery, whether it come from above or below. His being styled a very handsome gentleman — indeed at once allays his acerbity in talking to the supposed bawd (2.5.b,77). And Scaramouch, asking him for Mopsophil's hand, is

16

17

18

Cf. A.K. Dshiwelegow, Commedia dell'arte: Die italienische Volkskomodie (Italianskaja Narodnaja Komedija), trans. Ruth-Elisabeth Riedt (Berlin: Henschel, 1958), p. 141. Cf. 3.2.c,107, Harl. [...] I am a Neapolitan, Sir. Doct. [ . . . ] good luck, my Countryman. World, p. 50.

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admonished not to set his heart on Transitories mortal for there are better things in store, of which the doctor will freely dispose (1.2.b,33). A dupe thanks to his spleen and led by the nose in compliance with plot demands, he still remains enough of a definite human character to keep him distinct from mere grotesque. Apart from being a physician he is an alchemist and philosopher. 19 This redeems to some extent his willingness to believe the incredible. The philosophers' stone and the elixier of life are hardly less chimerical than a visit from the Emperor of the Moon. [A]s much as the thing wou'd bear the psychology of Doctor Baliardo has been brought within the compass of Possibility and Nature.10 The limits of course are narrow but realism is not an aim commedia del-l'arte has ever been known to pursue. 21

The innamorati The lovers come in two pairs, and pains have been taken to keep them distinct. Like the men, the ladies are cousins but Elaria is treated differently from Bellemante, Cinthio from Charmante, the first pair from the second. The a m o r o s e . The ladies are more distinctly set off from each other than the men although, sharing a function, they still remain within the scope of a common type. In puncto pecuniae they are as down to earth as any Restoration heiress who knows the way of the world. They will be married only with the old man's consent, not out of filial respect but "

20 21

Since ancient philosophy included cosmogonie and related studies, scientists and (speculative) physicians could be described in pre-nineteenth-century language as philosophers. Cf. Emperor; Epistle Dedicatory, p. 5. Cf. e.g. Nicoli who speaks of "an almost complete rejection of any formal clinging to reality" ( World, p. 138). "In their plots", he says about the comici dell'arte, "they make no effort to keep to the easily credible." (World, p. 151); or Constant Mie (i.e. Konstantin Miklashevski), La Commedia dell'arte ou le théâtre des comédiens italiens des XVI', XVII' & XVIII' siècles (Paris: J. Schiffrin, aux éditions de la Pléiade, 1927), p. 74 : "L'auteur du scénario, n'ayant en vue que des buts purement scéniques, choississait librement les moyens qui lui semblaient les plus propres à les atteindre, sans nullement se préoccuper de leurs invraisemblances et de leur naïveté [ • • • ] " ; "Les invraisemblances de ces spectacles sautent aux yeux [. . .]";orMarioApollonio, Storia della commedia dell'arte (Roma. -. Augustea, 1930), p. 534, who describes the zanni as "tipi che hanno bensì nella commedia il senso di un personaggio attuai, ma fuor del suo quadro riprendono, almeno in parte, la suggestione che accompagna e ingigantisce le figure del mito

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because their fortunes depend on him, and these are too considerable to lose (2.3,59). The plot must speed, no matter how ill the old man is used. His daughter's suggestion that he may not be mad prompts his niece to exclaim: Marry Heaven forbid, thou art always creating Fears to startle one (3.2.c,lll). In her opening song Elaria, the less audacious of the two, deplores the lost equality of women in the love of the sexes. Still, when Cinthio suddenly appears in her room, she is confused and disheartened (1.3.e,45). As a source for Cinthio's jealousy this is, of course, a plot necessity; yet it is she, not the more forward Bellemante, who has the part of the timid one assigned to her. Conversely, Bellemante, not Elaria, is the actress in the dream show put on to wheedle the doctor (2.4;69,71). Bellemante, who smartens up her speech with French embellishments, who is ravished by the beaux she ogles at church, who loves the beginning of an Amour (l.l.b,23), can sigh to a Lover but will never sigh after him (l.l.b,21) and who, in the words of her own suitor, by Nature's light and wavering (2.2,53), has all the trimmings of an a-la-mode coquette of which Elaria is free. In terms of Cost fan tutte Bellemante is Dorabella, Elaria Fiordiligi. The a m o r o s i . Here, the differentiation is not so marked. Cinthio is enough of a buffo to act the madman when suddenly trapped (1.3.e,47). The elaborate charlatanry of the Rosicrucian, however, is assigned to Charmante, who plays the part most exquisitely, as Scaramouch, an expert, attests (1.2.b,33). It's the pairing with Bellemante, the actress, which commends Charmante for the role of farceur. This reserves for Cinthio a degree of distinction: he plays the loftier if less rewarding part of the emperor. The servi The s e r v a . The Colombine of Arlequin appears as Mopsophil. 22 She is as lissom of tongue and as adroit in keeping her admirers at bay as Maria in Twelfth Night. Maria's coupling with Sir Toby is echoed in Mopsophil's half-frivolous and half-resigned capitulation: well, I had better take up

11

Mopsus (M6\|/oa) is known as a shepherd's name in the bucolic tradition (Virgil has it, Eel. V and VIII). In a commedia-dell'-arte context Mopsophil, 'Dear to Mopsus* — a fitting name for a shepherd's lass —, recalls the rural origin shared by serva and zanni. In English the association of mops, a "term of endearment for a young girl" (Shorter OED), imparts a familiar, and humorous, flavour.

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with one of them [Harlequin or Scaramouch], than lie alone to Night (3.3.b,123). Her position between the plot and subplot spheres, too, is reminiscent of Maria's, albeit she marries a zanni, not a knight. The z a n n i . Beyond their usual qualities — nimbleness, waggery and cunning — Harlequin and Scaramouch display amazing signs of erudition. 23 They can read and write. Harlequin, once a country bumpkin, extemporizes verses (1.3.b,39), speaks glibly of ancient and modern authors and claims a knowledge of the history of dying heroes (1.2.c;33,35). Scaramouch has read The Book of Sir John Mandivel (l.l.b,19) and as his master's laboratory assistant knows enough about philosophy, both lunar and terrestrial, to fool the doctor in the apothecary scene, where Scaramouch appears particularly eloquent and knowledgeable. H e says Phaenomena's, it is true, but the Latin of his learned fragments is passable (3.2.a,91-95) and his Veneration for the Mathematics unshakeable (2.3,67). These achievements apart, the zanni are exactly the knaves so admirably fashioned by the old Italian school: barnstormers whether complaining they are us'd like Pimps and Scoundrels or protesting they spend their Lives and Fortunes in their masters' service (2.2,53); poltroons and braggarts, always pursued by ill luck, eternally thwarted, forever threatened and often treated with blows but inexhaustible in their inventiveness and of indefatigable vitality. As a pair they are conceived in accordance with tradition: rivals and comrades at once, Harlequin nimbler of leg, Scaramouch nimbler of wit and tongue. There are deviations from this pattern, and they too are sanctioned by tradition. After some faltering, Harlequin gets a grip on the situation when suddenly urged to play an ambassador. Here for once he shows himself his rival's equal in sophistication and rhetoric. Duelling for Mopsophil, on the other hand, Scaramouch defeats his comrade for all that Dancing Masters suppleness.24

23

24

Although it was in Paris that the zanni underwent a process of astonishing refinement, for which Domenico Biancolelli, a Bolognese, (Arlequin) and Tiberio Fiorelli, a Neapolitan, (Scaramouch) were responsible, Arlequin 'en Empereur', in the last of Fatouville's scenes, enquires of the doctor, "sfavez-vous lire?" and when the doctor has answered, "Oiii, Monseigneur", goes on: "Lisez done cela, car nous autres Empereurs, nous ne nous amusons point a lire, cela est trop Bourgeois pour nous." (Arlequin, p. 200s.) K[athleen] Mfarguerite] Lea, Italian Popular Comedy: A Study in the Commedia delI'arte, 1560-1620: With Special Reference to the English Stage (1934; rpt. N e w York: Russel & Russel, 1962), 1,64, writes on the zanni pair: "The Zanni trained as a Plautine

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The language The idiom is one of a play conceived on the basis of plot and incident. Considering this it is amazingly supple and rich in facets. It ranges from the formal cliché of courtly decorum in the pageant to the abuse of the zanni in their ridiculous feuds, from the cryptic intricacies of learned jargon to the relaxed conversational style of elegant people. It is satiated with historical, biblical, literary, mythological and topical allusions,25 and in the operatic parts it accommodates the lyric formulae of pastoral. It is variously coloured by Scaramouch's Latin, Bellemante's French, the zanni's rodomontades, the apothecary's euphuism, Mopsophil's exhilarating suada in /¿¿ting her suitors. The latter may stand here to illustrate the exuberance so prominent in this play. Scar. Mop.

Scar. Mop.

Har. Scar. Mop. Har. Mop.

25

Bowing and Smiling. Well, Madam, how does my person propagate. Faith, Seignior, now I look better on you, I do not like your Phisnomy so well as your Intellects; you discovering some Circumstantial Symptoms that ever denote a Villainous Inconstancy. Ah, you are pleas'd, Madam.— You are mistaken, Seignior, I am displeas'd at your Grey Eyes, and Black Eye-brows and Beard, I never knew a man with those Signs, true to his Mistriss or his Friend. And I wou'd sooner wed that Scoundrel Scaramouch, that very civil Pimp, that mere pair of Chymical Bellows that blow the Doctors projecting Fires, that Deputy-Urinal Shaker, that very Guzman of Salamanca, than a Fellow of your infallible Signum Mallis. Ha, ha, ha, — you have your Answer, Seignior Friskin — and may shut up your Shop and be gone. — Ha, ha, ha.— Aside. Hum, sure the Jade knows me — And as for you, Seignior. Bowing and smiling. Ha, Madam — Those Lanthom Jaws of yours, with that most villainous Sneer and Grin, and a certain fierce Air of your Eyes looks altogether most Fanatically

slave undertakes the intrigue, and his fellow with a genius for practical jokes and a vein of droll stupidity manages the intervals with his fooling [. . . ] but the parts are not thus stably related. The fool has flashes of ingenuity, the knave his blind side. In practice the Zanni are to each other as the two parts of an hour-glass; there is just so much wit, or sand, between them, and as time and place shall serve it is variously distributed [ . . . ]." Nicoll remarks, "we should [ . . . ] regard these characters as akin to Laurel and Hardy, concerning whom it is difficult to determine which partner is less foolish, which more astute." (World, p. 67) They are listed, with comments, in Behrmann, Farcen, pp. 132-8.

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Har. Mop.

— which with your notorious Whey Beard, are certain Signs of Knavery and Cowardice; therefore I'd rather wed that Spider Harlequin, that Sceleton Buffoon, that Ape of a Man, that Jack of Lent, that very Top, that's of no use, hut when 'tis whipt and lasht, that pitious Property I'd rather wed than thee. A very fair declaration. You understand me — and so adieu sweet Glister-pipe and Seignior dirty Boots, Ha, ha, ha.— (3.2.b,99/101)

More variety is furnished by the inclusion of musical and literary forms such as song, recitative, arioso, aria, chorus, letter, poem (a poem shown in the making), improvised verses, rhymed couplets at the end of a scene (chiusette), blank verse, heroics, rhythmical prose (imperceptibly turning into verse), 26 or parody — on the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, in verses quoting the lark: Mop.

Scar. Mop.

What woful Ditty-making Mortal's this? That ere the Lark her early Note has sung, Does doleful Love beneath my Casement thrum.— —Ah, Senior Scaramouch, is it you? Who should it be, that takes such pains to sue? Ah, Lover most true Blew! (2.5.a,73)

— or on Don Quijote's renunciation of the books that benumbed his reason: Doct.

leaps up. Burn all my Books, and let my Study Blaze, Burn all to Ashes, and be sure the Wind Scatter the vile Contageous Monstrous Lyes. (3.3.c, 125)

The prose is elastic and precise as a character or, rather, type delineating tool. In the officer's speech it adopts the accent of officialdom which sounds the more ridiculous for being sported by an underling (3.1 ;85,87). Scaramouch's idiom is more polished than the cruder Harlequin's. Mopsophil talks politely to her charges and with scathing sarcasm when dressing down the zanni. The doctor runs through all the stages of emotion from timid hope to rapturous delight and then despair, wrath and forgiving resignation, always with the right inflexion.

26

On this phenomenon see Alfred Behrmann, "Translating Plays; or, Philology and the Theatre: A Germanicist's Experience of Rendering English Farces," Arcadia, 15 (1980), 121.

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Everything is conducted in the stereotyped language common to the educated, not in the language of great dramatic poetry. But the characters who speak it are likewise stereotyped. Their idiom is appropriate; it has its own solid beauty resulting from congruity. Compared with the simple language of Goldoni it is A la Gothic and Uncommune (2.3,57) — the language of the Restoration, which was dominated by aristocratic habits. To sum up, The Emperor of the Moon's is, and is by rights, a stage and, in part, a libretto idiom of a strong mimic and gestic bent. It looks towards the action and is intended to come alive in a combination of word, motion, music, and colour. The theme of deep philosophy The vecchio cozened and the vecchio cozened by taking advantage of a crack in his brain are common in farce and commedia alike. What amazes in this play is an exploitation of the victim's madness pointing in the opposite direction from knock-about farce. The doctor is learned in all kinds of lore, medical, alchemical, cabalistic. Whoever wants to fool him has to meet him on the premises of secret science, managing at least as aptly as he the abstruse and fantastic language and symbolism of gnostic speculation. There are several scenes, nicely staggered, where the literary and philosophical assumptions of selenology, Rosicrucianism and alchemy are unfolded. In the opening scene Scaramouch discusses briefly the doctor's Don Quick-sottish twist as a vehicle of his intended deception. In reply to Scaramouch's question, How came he thus infected first? Elaria says: With reading foolish Books, Lucian's Dialogue of Icaromenippus, who flew up to the Moon, and thence to Heaven; an Heroick business called, The Man in the Moon, if you '11 believe a Spaniard, who was carried thither, upon an Engine drawn by wild Geese; with another Philosophical Piece, A Discourse of the World in the Moon; with a thousand other ridiculous Volumes too hard to name. To Scaramouch the explanation sounds convincing; he says: Ay, this reading of Books is a pernicious thing. I was like to have run Mad once, reading Sir John Mandivel (l.l.b,19). The works quoted were all familiar to an educated public in 1687. The Greek and French ones had appeared in English translations and were widely discussed.27 Some of the books, especially The Man in the 27

They are listed, with comments, in Behrmann, Farcen, pp. 132f.

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Moon by Domingo Gonsales, i.e. Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford, London 1638, supplied the Emperor with material for the constitution of its lunar world. Thus the emperor's name, Iredonozar, is borrowed from Gonsales where he appears as Irdonozur. In 2.5(c,81) the cabalist, having quoted from The Man in the Moon, assures the doctor of a happiness like that of the happy great Gonzales. And in 3.2(a,91) this famous writer's Cosmographia of the Lunar Mundus is respectfully mentioned by the writing apothecary. In his first encounter with Charmante (1.2.a,27) the doctor is shown as acquainted with the Count of Gabalis on demons though in need of more profound initiation into the doctrines of that egregious work. Charmante instructs him on the Paracelsian elemental spirits and the strict conditions to be observed for their perception and the favour of their presence. He goes on to enumerate the famous examples of supernaturally begotten heroes and divinely inspired savants from Alexander the Great and Numa Pompilius to Merlin and Albertus Magnus, all strictly according to the books. In 3.2(a,91) the apothecary impresses the doctor deeply by showing him a map of the moon, the compleatest [one] in Christendom, and not contained in that thesaurus, Gonsales' Cosmographia of the Lunar Mundus. The doctor's keen curiosity obliges Scaramouch to expound at great length and in quizzical detail on the virtue of a certain excellent Scaturigo, that has lately made an Ebulation in the moon. In doing so he shows himself a seasoned 'worker', quoting authorities like that Ingenious Chymist Lysidono and parading with gusto the bizarre cant of the glorious operation: the Tincture of this Water upon Stagnation, Ceruherates, and the Crocus upon the Stones Flavesces [. . .], if [the three Regions] be bright, without doubt Mars is powerful; if the middle Region or Camera be pallid, Filia Solis is breeding [ . . . ] , if the Faeces be volatil, the Birth will soon come in Balneo. [ . . . ] For, Sir, upon the Infusion, the Crows Head immediately procures the Seal of Hermes, and had not Lac Virginis been too soon suck'd up, I believe we might have seen the Consummation o/Amalgena (3.2.a,93).

Albeit tongue in cheek, here speaks an alchemist. The galimatias is just sufficiently ordered to make sense in some of its fragments. An expert may feel enticed to work it out. It is only when Scaramouch goes on to talk about a smith in the moon who, rather than buy it, hammers his iron out of Stercus Proprius conditioned by drinking Urinam Vulcani, a ferruginous water, that comedy yields to farce (3.2.a;93,95).

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The bandying about of learned matter, however insouciant, presupposes an audience knowledgeable enough to understand and enjoy the innuendo. Alchemy had been an object of great fascination to the reading and theatre-going public form the Middle Ages to the Restoration as witness The Cannon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer or Jonson's Alchemist.1* When Aphra Behn wrote her play it was still a reality, as were the secret societies which, like alchemy, lived on, and even expanded, through the whole of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries. Le Comte de Gabalis ou les entretiens sur les sciences secrètes by the learned and enlightened Abbé Montfaucon de Villars, Paris 1670, had been written to explode the pseudo-philosophical and -religious teachings of Rosicrucians, cabalists and alchemists.29 Ironically, it served as an enchiridion to anyone desirous of instruction on their doctrines, as it became the oracle for poets, novelists and playwrights wherever they required such mysteries as a background. 30 The use made of them in The Emperor of the Moon is remarkable as evidence to what extent intelligent diversion was possible in 1687 in a play that went by the title of farce. Part acting and pageantry The Emperor is a play in which impersonation is going forward all the time so that the number of rôles undertaken in it exceeds by far the number of characters. Bellemante plays the somnambulist, Charmante the Rosicrucian, later the Prince of Thunderland. Cinthio plays the madman, later the Emperor of the Moon. A whole company performs as figures in a tapestry, later as the emperor's attendants. Scaramouch plays the gargoyle, the innocent sleeper untimely awakened, the apothecary, the traveller in the moon by speculation, the Knight of the Sun. Harlequin plays the suicide, the deserted wife, the fille de chambre, the dancing master, the baker, the farmer, the ambassador from the moon, the other Knight of the Sun. Some of this, like the gargoyle trick or Harlequin's attempt at suicide, is just the normal fare supplied for the ready lazzista; some, like Harlequin's puzzle game with the toll collector, is a show piece of technical skill. In judging this horseplay three things should be considered. First, 28

29 30

Cf. Behrmann, Farcen, pp. 136f. See also Edgar Hill Duncan, "Jonson's 'Alchemist' and the Literature of Alchemy," PMLA, 61 (1946), 699-710. On English translations, published in 1680, see Behrmann, Farcen, p. 133. A famous example is Schiller's fragmentary novel, Der Geisterseher, 1787-89.

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that nothing has been thrown in without a degree of motivation. Each lazzo, each burla, however much of a set piece, is plot-supported or plotcompatible. Second, that most of the masquerading — the cabalist's, the apothecary's, the ambassador's, anything connected with the pageant — is theme-related; some, like the Cabalist's, strictly. (It should be noted, too, that the examples here adduced are not the sort of affair one might expect in a farce; they are elegant rather than crude.) Third, that in assessing the legitimacy of farcical matter, its kind and scope, the ultimate criterion is not the critic's discretion but the actor's skill. The delicacy and sense of proportion that make the truly accomplished player will save the comedy from deteriorating into a fair-booth show. To judge the buffoonery in a play like The Emperor of the Moon one should follow an imaginary performance, free from excessive hubbub, fast, in a light, graceful vein, by players like the Harlequin Visentini, who when baffled turned a backward somersault without spilling a drop from the glass of wine in his hand, or Cecchini, who was out not for the mirth of "a hundred boobies in the audience" but for the acclaim of the ten connoisseurs. 31 All the arguments advanced to defend commedia dell'arte by pointing out its aesthetic merits stress the ideal of harmony. Whatever the play takes unto it, farce, music, dancing, is legitimate so long as it does not impair the balance of the whole, for instance by disrupting the coherence of the plot or by distorting the play's proportions. This applies to the extravaganza with its scope for lavish scenes, for song and dance, as it does to the more conventional traits. The scenic cantata was a French addition, introduced at the Théâtre italien under the influence of such theatricals as the little comédies-ballets supplied for Louis XIV by Molière and Lully. It gives more work to the costume maker and the scene painter than earlier Italian comedy ever required. 32 Here too the necessary balance depends upon the tact with which this business is handled. As the buffoonery must not be allowed to coarsen, so the operatic parts must not be suffered to thicken the play. Kept 'slim' and sprightly, committed to a style which conjures up the graceful and ironic from the score of the text, it should have the charm so irresistible to the devotees of commedia dell'arte. 31 32

Cf. Nicoli, World, p. 18. A similar development had taken place in England where Sir William Davenant had "borrowed the use of elaborate scenery from the court masques, and further increased variety in his plays by adding music." John I. McCollum, ed., The Restoration Stage, Houghton Mifflin Research Series, 8 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), p. vii.

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T H E STRUCTURE T h e basic design Like the act division the basic structure of the play is ternary. T h e Cabalist's two visits, the lovers' two reunions, the zanni's two duels are preliminaries, adroitly spaced, to the threefold resolution in the final scene : the emperor's appearance, the lovers' union, the settling of the zanni's contest by the third, decisive duel. All these developments are climactic. T h e Cabalist's communications rise from nebulous rumour to certainty; the lovers' rendezvous are in growing danger of being discovered; the zanni's duels develop f r o m a tussle quickly settled to a conflict with unpleasant and precarious consequences. T h e acts are binary. Their capability of being described in the terms of ancient technical nomenclature reveals the five-act pattern underlying this three-act play. Act 1 contains the protasis or exposition (scenes 1 and 2 [ = first act]) and the dynamic (or initial phase of the) epitasis (scene 3 [ = second and third acts]) where*the action rises; Act 2 and the first half of Act 3 the static (or second phase of the) epitasis ( = fourth act) where the action is kept on its course without surprising new events; the second half of Act 3 the resolution brought about by the catastrophe or dénouement ( = fifth act). 33 In detail: 1. The protasis exposes first the plot (1), then the subplot (2.b), introducing, in the opening scene, the amorose (successively) and the household servi (successively); their conversation introduces the vecchio and the amorosi (successively), all of whom appear in person within the next two scenes. T h e Farce, its aim, foundation and enactment, are outlined (1), and it starts immediately in the following scene (2). Here, too, the subplot commences, introducing the second zanni so that by the end of

33

The proximity or near-identity of ternary and quinary forms in comedy, caused by the absorption of the first act into the second, and the last into the last but one, is pointed out by Apollonio, p. 575: "Tre eran gli atti, ché un ritmo ternario (quello di certe farse e delle 'frottole') aveva sostituito svettandolo, pur senza alternarle la sostanza, il ritmo quinario della commedia letteraria, nella quale il primo atto era un prologo un pò più diffuso e il quinto era un epilogo svolto in una cadenza più ampia: restava sempre il secondo atto ad avviar la vicenda, il terzo a lasciarla sospesa, introducendovi un giuoco più serrato di scene sovrapposte, il quarto a determinar la soluzione; ora il primo e il quinto si riassumevano nel secondo che diventava a sua volta il primo, e nel quarto, che diventava il terzo."

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the second scene all the principal characters have appeared and their constellation — vecchio, two innamorati pairs, a serva-zanni trio — has been set out. The second half of the act gets the plot and subplot under way, intertwining them. The zanni compete and duel (3.a and d), and the innamorati, disturbed by the vecchio, become entangled in confusion and ungrounded jealousies. 2. The second act resumes and expands the business of the first. It composes the lovers' quarrel (1-3) and unites them, in its middle scene (3) — the centre of the play — for a second rendezvous, which is conceived as both an iteration of the first and anticipation of the last: a dress rehearsal and general preparation for its masquerades with dance and music. Repeated, too, is the doctor's intervention and the revellers' narrow escape. The second half resumes the zanni's business by another contest episode and closes with the repetition of Charmante's visit so that the alternating plot-and-subplot pattern of the previous act is here replaced by an A-B-A design. 3. The last act is again constructed differently. The first half (scenes 1 and 2) — devoted to the lovers in the previous act — is given over to the final build-up of the zanni's feud culminating in their second duel but left without decision until the dénouement. The second half, tripartite on the A-B-A design of plot and subplot matter in the second act, contains the extravaganza, the dénouement, and happy ending with the zanni's final duel as centre piece and catalyst. Plot and subplot management As can be seen, the relation of plot and subplot business is flexible and varied. It appears as alternation, phase by phase (e.g. 1.3.a,b,c) or sequence by sequence (e.g.l.l-1.2.a, 1.2.b-1.3.a); as coupling, e.g. 1.3.a, where the subplot — servi in serva's room — anticipates the plot — amorosi in amorosa's room — or, conversely, 3.3.b, where subplot — zanni and serva united — echoes plot — innamorati united —; as simple contact, e.g.2.5.b, where the doctor's interference resolves a subplot complication so that the plot may go ahead; as interlocking, e.g.l .3.b, where Harlequin, come to conquer the serva, tags an amorosa's verses; or as overlapping, e.g. 3.2.c, where Harlequin releases himself from a subplot quandary by assuming the main-plot part of an ambassador from the moon, or 3.2.a, where Scaramouch, pursuing the subplot business of courting the

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serva, promotes the plot by smuggling letters and beclouding the doctor with lunar chimeras. Characteristically, Harlequin's tricking at the town gate is the only scene where a principal character appears detached from others, combined exclusively with marginal and athematic personnel. Everything else is tightly interwoven, without a blind motif, loose strands or clumsy intrusions. One turn sparks off the other, and every squib, however erratic on the surface, has its calculated place and function in the plot. The same precision is operative in the arrangement of music and dancing. The 'inlaid work' of dance and music The action opens with a song sung and accompanied on a lute by Elaria (plot event). The only other music in this act, occupied essentially by exposition and so with little room for other things, occurs when Harlequin puts in a dance instead of further fighting, with music from his rival friend's recorder (subplot event [1.3.d]). These two forms, song and dance, introduced as basic types of musical entertainment, recur throughout the second act. Here their design is richer and more complex. Of six insertions the flanking two (1 and 6) are dances, the first a main-plot interlude (2.1), the last another jig of Harlequin's (2.5.b), which repeats the plot-andsubplot pattern of Act 1. Between these items there is stretched a sequence of a dance (2), a song (3), a second dance (4), a second song (5). The dances are contrasted as one produced for, and watched by, a revelling party, and one in which they join (both in 2.3); the songs as a duet, elaborate and formal, with Fleut Deux and Harpsicals (2.3), and a comical subplot counterpart with Scaramouch as lutanist and singer (2.5.a). In the third act the first part (a subplot part) is kept devoid of song and dance, which dominate the pageant of the final scene. Ushered in by a strange Noise [. . . ] of Brass Kettles, and Pans, and Bells, and many tinkling things, at the end of scene 2 (still part of the subplot section), the opera starts with Soft Music. It continues through most of the pageant, changing its character and interrupted by other musical events. These are arranged in three divisions of three, four and one events respectively. The first division — a song, a dance, a scenic cantata — prepare and celebrate the emperor's arrival; the second — a song, two dances, another song — prepare and celebrate the wedding (3.3.a); the third — a choreo-

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graphic fighting scene — forms a comical subplot coda to the courtly divertimento (3.3.b). The variety observed in the placing of these items is also noticeable in their differing structure. The dancing episodes are grouped into a Negroei['] Dance in section 1, repeated (exactly?) by the same performers in section 2, and a very Arttick Dance. The songs are different in metre, length and required execution. The first, a Song for the Zodiack, is anapaestic, short (one stanza) and sung by the twelve [. . . ] Persons of the Zodiack; the second is iambic, longer (three stanzas) and probably sung by a soloist; the third, a Hymeneal Song, is unspecified and not supplied with words. The cantata is conceived as an arioso and a recitative, preceded, divided and concluded by a ritornello chorus ( a b a c a ) . The play is as good an example as any of the "mathematical and musical patterning" ascribed to commedia dell'arte by Allardyce Nicoll. 34

Ill FARCE O R COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE? Definitions Assuming that commedia dell'arte is not by definition a lesser form of entertainment, inferior to regular comedy, viz. farce, an attempt to classify The Emperor of the Moon has to start with these terms, comedy, commedia, farce. Since comedy, as Dr Johnson observed, "has been particularly unpropitious to definers", 35 "[t]he dictionaries do not [ . . . ] provide much help." 36 What can be culled from the Oxford English Dictionary or Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Oxford Companion to the Theatre or the Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics amounts to something like this. Farce relies on a "rough physical framework" (A. Nicoll) of ridiculous situations and incidents, stereotyped and grossly exaggerated characters, crude behaviour, and impro-

34 35 36

World; p. 149. Rambler, No. 125 (May 28, 1751). Leo Hughes, A Century of English Farce (Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 13.

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bable or impossible actions and sentiments ; comedy, by contrast, on "the delineation of the play of character upon character" (EB, 11th ed.). It so designs and treats its elements that a spiritual quality results, an appeal to the reflective and emotional faculties of the audience. Wit and the presentation of états de l'âme secure for comedy a preponderance of the verbal and literary artifice over the appeal of physical action. As a result, the laughter excited by farce and the laughter excited by comedy may serve as an indicator of their differing nature. Where farce provokes "the uncomplicated response of simple enjoyment" (Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics), comedy elicits laughter of a more serene, delicate and reflective kind. Now Niccolò Barbieri, an authority on commedia dell'arte, and a practitioner, writes in La supplica (Venice 1634): "L'oro e il piombo sono ambo metalli, ma nel peso uguale hanno inegual valore [ . . . ] . E il riso della commedia e quello della buffonaggine tutto riso, ma l'uno nasce dall'equivoco o motto grazioso, e l'altro dalla trabocchevole prontezza [ . . . ] ; il comico pone il riso per condimento de' bei discorsi, e lo sciocco buffone per fondamento della sua operazione . . . [ . . . ]." 37 With this distinction in mind one has to acceed to Allardyce Nicoli who claims for commedia dell'arte the dignity of comedy, at least for its more accomplished examples.38 Mrs Behn called the Emperor a farce because of its humble Actions and trivialness of Business. At the same time she was confident that people of refin'd Sence and Delicacy of Judgment would, for all that, find Nature there, and that Diversion which was not meant for the Numbers, who comprehend nothing beyond the Show and Buffoonry,39 It is clear from her words that farce as a denominator of her play is not to be taken as implying an inferior quality to that of commedia dell'arte. On the contrary. It is evident that the farce called The Emperor of the Moon is commedia dell'arte as, by comparison, the 'commedia dell'arte' called Arlequin empereur dans la lune is farce.

37

3«

39

Quoted from Apollonio, p. 535. H e writes in World, p. 15: " [ . . . ] it has to be emphasised firmly that, although clownish tricks played a considerable part in the commedia dell'arte and although certainly such clownish tricks appeared in more blatantly extended forms among the poorer troupes, the typical dramatic works with which we are at present concerned were indeed comedies and not, as some puritanically minded contemporaries declared, merely collections of buffooneries." Emperor, Epistle Dedicatory, p. 5.

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Now if, as Professor Nicoli and other historians of the drama suggest, classification as commedia dell'arte does not exclude a play from the sphere of higher comic graces, its judgment must be based on individual merit.40 This is not what happens in the critical discussion of The Emperor of the Moon, where the opposite procedure, assessment by subsumption, prevails, the argument being that since the piece is a farce its rank must be low. It is strange that, as far as the Emperor is concerned, Allardyce Nicoli should be found among the 'judge-by-label' fraction in the guild of critics : his assumptions in The Theory of Drama should have guarded him from such alliance. In this book he is fully aware that a differentiation of farce and comedy based on a pattern of "incident" versus "character" or "the merely physical" versus " a [ . . . ] sense of psychological analysis" 41 would, for instance, entail the classification of Plautine and Terentian comedy as farce : "In the Roman piece most of the stress of the comic spirit was laid upon incident with occasional characterization." 42 He sees, too, that in The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor "character is deliberately sacrificed to situation, nearly always of a rough-and-tumble type." 43 What prevents him from classing these productions as farces is his notion of farce as characterised by "depending not on clever plot-construction, but upon the coarsest and rudest of improbable incongruities".44 This should give him a soft spot for The Emperor of the Moon. Indeed he speaks approvingly of Mrs Behn's more regular comedies, pointing out their "skilful manipulation of a series of situations delicately conceived and leading to innumerable mistakes and amusing dénouement?',45 To him they are examples of a "comedy of situation" with " a distinct value

40

41

42 43 44

«

" [ • • • ] l'etiquette n'y fait rien: regardons la pièce." Gustave Lanson, "Molière et la farce," La Revue de Paris, 3 (1901), 139. This maxim seems reasonable enough to be more generally followed. Walther Ludwig notes "daß die Komödie gewissermaßen aus Topoi besteht und daß es auf deren Gestaltung im einzelnen Fall ankommt." W.L., ed., Antike Komödien: Plautus/Terenz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), II, 1440. Allardyce Nicoli, tte Theory of Drama (London, 1931; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), pp. 91, 89. Nicoli, Theory, p. 91. Nicoli, Theory, p. 214. Nicoli, Theory, p. 214. Nicoli, Theory, p. 228.

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of its own", which "must be accorded an honourable place in the styles at the disposal of the comic dramatist." 46 If the presence, indeed the prominence of "rough-and-tumble" business in a play like The Taming of the Shrew or a good commedia dell'arte is not a threat to their quality as comedies, what excludes The Emperor of the Moon with its "skilful manipulation of a series of situations delicately conceived and leading to [ . . . ] amusing dénouementi' from this distinction? The critics' verdict Leo Hughes and A.H. Scouten, editors of Ten English Farces, among them the Emperor, make it clear from the start that they "have no illusions about the intrinsic merit of these little pieces". 47 And Allardyce Nicoli declares that "as a farcical experiment, [ The Emperor of the Moori\ is exceedingly interesting, especially when considered with other similar dramas of the time ; but of intrinsic value it has none." 48 What "intrinsic value" in a farce should be, none of these critics suggests. Of the many farces discussed and mentioned in their books, it is granted to none, and indeed they would, I presume, agree that "intrinsic value", however defined, could hardly be fixed as a criterion for the merit of farces. It's in the balance between the trivial and the graceful that The Emperor of the Moon has been pronounced deficient. Of grace, traditionally displayed in the lovers' parts, it is judged to be all but devoid, with a preponderance of 'farce' as a deplorable result. "Not only has the romantic plot been reduced to the merest thread", write Hughes and Scouten, "what is left is treated with no sign of seriousness." 49 46 47 48

49

Nicoli, Theory, p. 228. Hughes/Scouten, p. vii. Cf. Nicoli, Restoration Drama, p. 262. This statement, vaguely commendatory, is immediately revised when, on the same page, the author declares that the play "may be classed alongside of Ravenscroft's [ . . . ] pieces" and elsewhere in his book says of Ravenscroft, a "third-rate dramatist" (p. 256), that his "forces [ . . . ] were working towards the reduction of the Molière comedy to mere farce, the weakening of Molière's humour and the running together of two or three of his comedies so as to increase the incident at the expense of the characterisation and of the wit" (p. 254). A comparison of the Emperor with any of Ravenscroft's farces will immediately reveal the superiority of Aphra Behn's dramatic talent. Hughes/Scouten, pp. 43 f. Cf. Hughes, Century, p. 239: "[The Emperor's] fantastic plot is obviously designed only to provide a number of scenes of pageantry and scenic display on the one hand and a series of extraneous lazzi on the other." As has been

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D o they deplore that the doctor's gullibility precludes the kind of situation in which the lovers, frustrated and despairing, pour forth the florilegium sentiment, the tears, sighs and vows traditionally used to convey the exquisite? 50 It is doubtful whether its inclusion would have ennobled the play. Very likely it would have damaged it by making it more conventional. In fact it can easily do without this condiment. It has something to countervail the trivial, far better suited for the maintenance of a poetic spirit than the languishing of lovers, and it's strange that the critics should not have seen it: the 'romance' of the Cabala, the fantastic rumours of the moon. True, this again is Farce, and its performers call it so (1.1.b, 19) but its theme and idiom are precisely the opposite of slapstick. The sentiment of cabalism is lofty and dignified, and for all its ironical refraction the mystery is strong enough to pervade the play with its splendid intimations, the promise of extraordinary, supernatural events: that last night there was some Sally from the Moon, — About what hour, Sir? — The Meridian of the Night, Sir, about the hours of twelve or one (2.5.c,81). Played with delicacy, this has all the charm, grace and 'music' of decorous comedy.

COMIC UNIVERSALS, OR ÜBER DEN GRUND DES VERGNÜGENS AN KOMISCHEN GEGENSTÄNDEN The tradition: Comic patterns The contention is that The Emperor of the Moon, affording such pleasure as a well wrought play can give, may be compared with the average output of Plautus and Terence 51 and its Italian and English imitations or adpointed out (v.s., p. 263), the only "extraneous" lazzo in this play is Harlequin's act of trickery at the town gate (3.1.). It would be a summary charge levelled at the southern (Neapolitan) type of commedia dell'arte, in which, as Dshiwelegow, p. 131, points out, the romantic plot is generally less developed than in the northern type. The Emperor shows all the characteristic signs of belonging to the southern tradition: Naples as scene, the dottore a Neapolitan, inclusion of Scaramouch, a Neapolitan mask, among the servi, the whirligig of lazzi and burle. Egon Menz quotes the example of a young man who cannot refrain from sympathetic tears when listening to the story of a deserted girl. " V o n solcher Art", he adds, "sind 'die seelischen Feinheiten und die komplizierte menschliche Problematic [of At-

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aptations including numerous commedie erudite and some of Shakespeare's or Jonson's minor comedies. The nature of their basic elements is of a piece with that of The Emperor of the Moon's. Reduced to a core, the Emperor's plot reveals itself as the essential pattern of a family of European comic plays — a large, widely ramified and very ancient family. An old(er) man — father, head of a household, in control of the family fortune — opposes the match of his child(ren) for whom he seeks, or has at hand, (a) better—richer—partner(s). Despite his resistance the union of lovers is brought about by some intrigue. As a rule, in Latin comedy it is conceived and carried out by a clever slave, in modern comedy by a servant or by the young people themselves with or without a servant's co-operation. Here, the servant may pursue a love affair of his own, doubling the happy conclusion with a parallel (subplot) marriage. In the end the union so bitterly opposed by the father turns out to be the better match compared with his own original plan, which makes it easy for him to accept the fraud and forgive the impostors. In the crowning event of the marriage(s) the play partakes most visibly of the archaic nature of the genre, which is ritual. In the triumph of youth it celebrates the life-perpetuating force of Fertility. Less archaically, though in keeping with ancient tradition (since the v6a), it manifests, too, the continuity of an ordered and well-established domestic life where the interests of the young and the old are reconciled so that the house, fortified by suitable marriage, may prosper. 52 The obstacles to be surmounted and the vicissitudes of those who struggle to surmount them supply the fun. Disguises, mistaken identities, part acting, comical brawls, blows etc. are the usual fare. Music and dancing abound. "Die Stücke des Plautus hat man [ . . . ] unter Zuhilfenahme moderner Begriffe direkt als Operetten und Musicals be-

52

tic comedy and its Roman adaptations] wie die erste Erhebung über bloß natürliches, egoistisches Reagieren; ihre Naivität vielmehr als ihre Kompliziertheit wird heute erfreuen." "Kontur der neuen Komödie". In Abhandlungen aus der Pädagogischen Hochschule Berlin (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1980), VII, p. 244. The quotation from Ludwig, II, 1442. In opposition to Hans Oppermann, who claims for the v i a a 'tiefere menschliche Problematik', Menz insists "daß Intrige und happy end, die Oberfläche, auch das Wesen sind. Von ihnen lehrt die Komödie, auch hier seien Götter." (p. 246) The reference is to Oppermann's essay "Zur 'Andria' des Terenz," Hermes, 69 (1934), 262-85; rpt. in Die römische Komödie:Plautus und Terenz, ed. E. Lefevre, Wege der Forschung, 136 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), pp. 312-44; 338. Cf. Egon Menz's essay.

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zeichnet" 53 — as one has a number of Shakespeare's early comedies: "diese Operettentexte". 54 Type predominates over character. The exploration of inwardness, psychological refinement, depth, any great emphasis on moral issues or situations of ethical consequence are seldom. T o this a play like The Comedy of Errors forms no exception. Of Much Ado about Nothing Allardyce Nicoll says, "Neither Claudio nor Hero has any great character interest, so that, when we call Much Ado to mind, we think immediately not of them but of the whole action of the play, its atmosphere and quality, and of persons such as Dogberry and Verges. So is it with the commedia dell'arte [ . . . ]." 55 And, one may add, with The Emperor of the Moon. The distinguishing mark of great dramatic art such as Shakespeare's is "a vision which carries us beyond the theatre."56 In a play like Twelfth Night it may show in a detail if situation, sentiment and words combine to cast a spell, as when Cesario-Viola tells the duke a history purporting to be her sister's, but really her own: A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? W e men may say more, swear more; but indeed Our shows are more than will, for still w e prove Much in our vows, but little in our love. (2.4)

53

Ludwig, II, 1430. Ludwig describes the Plautine cantica as "Soloarien, Duette und Terzette, die auf markante Stellen des Spiels verteilt sind" (II, 1430). 54 Fritz Güttinger, Die romantische Komödie und das deutsche Lustspiel, Wege zur Dichtung, 34 (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1939), p. 37. Güttinger writes: "In der Tat sind diese Schäferstücke [von der Art von "Wie es euch gefällt'] nur in einem bedingten Sinn Lustspiele zu nennen. Wenn man ihre besonderen Merkmale — dekorative Wortmusik und Wortkulissen, grobe Unwirklichkeit der Handlung, bloße Markierung der Gefühlswelt, Zwischenmusik und Gesangseinlagen, usw. — [ • • • ] mit einer bestehenden Gattung vergleichen will, dann wird man diese Schäferspiele überhaupt nicht als Komödien, sondern als auf halbem Wege stehen gebliebene Operettenlibretti verstehen. [ . . . ]. In einem Goethe zugeschriebenen Aufsatz der 'Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen' 1772 werden sie als 'Pastoral- und Operastücke' bezeichnet [ed. B. Seuffert: Deutsche Literaturdenkmale des 18. Jahrhunderts. Nr. 7/8, S. 143]." ss World, p. 107. " Nicoll, World, p. 155.

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This, of course, is not what a play like The Emperor of the Moon can achieve. If we ask what it does achieve, we shall find it is an intratheatrical quality, the charm arising from a surface of seeming improvisation, swift, brisk, spontaneous, yet shaped by the planning hand of a skilled technician. "Zweckmäßigkeit", according to Schiller, is a source of delight — even in tragedy. 57 A world of fancy As soon as a person(a) by the name of Harlequin or Scaramouch, clad in his traditional costume, wearing his traditional mask, deporting himself in his characteristic traditional manner, appears on the stage the audience is tuned for a world the laws and rules of which are different, though not altogether different, from those of real life. This difference, common to many, in fact to most varieties of theatre, is stressed in commedia dell'arte by a number of specific conventions. Certain characters, but never any others, the vecchi and the zanni, wear masks or half-masks. This division cuts across the social barriers (vecchi : masters, zanni : servants) and is not indicative of any corresponding rapport to reality. At one moment a mask may act more 'realistically' than his unmasked partner, at the next moment this may be reversed. If one of the zanni or vecchi disguises himself the disguise need not conceal his mask. By this badge the audience will know him for what he is, as his partners on the stage will not. 58 Masks and stereotypes are signals suggesting the willing suspension of disbelief and predisposing the audience, not for a radical turning away from real life but for a freedom in the blending of the real with the unlikely, fantastic or impossible. Romance, fairy-tale and opera are similarly aloof from self-imposed or traditional requirements of realistic portraiture. At the same time there is room in commedia dell'arte for the reflection of ordinary life in sharp mimetic detail. It may be used for critical gibes, for the satirising of social or moral aberrations, but only briefly and accidentally. Everything remains subservient to the supreme design, which is that of giving pleasure: sheer, undiluted, exquisite delight. Moralists, clergymen, schoolmasters, censorious critics and literary law-givers have been reluctant or found it impossible to sanction plays with nothing better — more dignified or more substantial — than delight 57

58

Cf. "Über den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen," in Schillers Werke: Nationalausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 1962), X X , 133-47. Cf. Mic, p. 74.

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to justify their being. This put the champions of commedia dell'arte in some predicament. Social usefulness being an impossible claim to make for these plays, they had to enlarge on their innocuousness. The only positive argument put forward by candid advocates was an aesthetic one. Like a good piece of music, which also fails to inculcate a moral or convey a useful lesson, a good play will strengthen the spectator's awareness of beauty by exposing him to the operation of order and harmony in a work of fancy. Not much more could be said in defence of a play like A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Emperor's world of fancy, more limited and less poetic than that of A Midsummer Night's Dream, relies on virtues available to mere dramatic skill. One of these is motivational resourcefulness, a casual elegance displayed in the concatenation of episodes by light, rapid and fanciful transition. The tapestry scene (2.3) is a fine example of such dexterity. Thanks to Scaramouch's scheming the party has escaped but he is left to bear the brunt. How is he going to cope with the infuriated doctor? He comes in, rubbing his eyes as though awakened from a dream, wearing a night-shirt and holding a candle to see what all the hullaballoo is about. His story is a little stroke of genius. He pretends to have dreamt of a heavenly visit paid to the ladies, which was suddenly interrupted by the doctor's arrival so that the lunar guests transformed themselves into a suit of hangings and, when the doctor grew annoyed at something, returned to heaven. This conforms to, indeed it corroborates, the Rosicrucian's prophecy, explains convincingly the sound of fiddles which the doctor insists he has heard, and incorporates an event of which he has been an eye-witness. It is so watertight it would even furnish an explanation for the lie about the doctor's dying brother. In telling it, Scaramouch might argue, he was obeying some heavenly intuition by which their lunar majesties intended to get the doctor out of the way for the night. The playwright's ease in handling plot and incident provides the actors with ample opportunity for showing equal ease in exercising their ability. They play players and act acting. The content of this piece is theatre, its medium histrionics. Theatre as theatre Quite literally, in the Emperor the theatre presents itself as theatre. In the opening scene Scaramouch informs Elaria (and the audience) of the Plot by which and in which the girls shall be united with their lovers; plot: a "conspiracy" and the "plan of a play" (OED). The plot consists in, and

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is that of, a Farce; it has a proper title, the World in the Moon, and shall be Acted [ . . . ] in this very House. Theatre in a concrete and technical sense: Scaramouch has been instructed to order the Decoration, adorn a Stage, and place Scenes proper. In 2.2 the young ladies are supplied with suitable Habits-, in 2.3 we see them, wearing these costumes, and their lovers, likewise apparelled, in a kind of dress rehearsal. We hear that the Scenes and Properties are ready, and the music and dancing, albeit enjoyed for their own sake, serve as preparation for the enactment of the play. This play or opera has its necessary overture in the Visits of our new Cabbalist Charmante, which are effectually seconded by Scaramouch's, the ladies' and Harlequin's theatrical endeavours, and throughout, the audience is reminded that it is watching a play in progress. Towards the end the show put on for the doctor and the show put on for the audience coincide, and only for the final episode following the dénouement are they again divorced. The theatre — supernumerary actors, settings, properties — are still around when the plot is resolved, and the resolution absorbs the theatre into its comedy or fairy-tale reality: the 'supers' are relations of the bridegrooms' and their costumes seem appropriate enough for the celebration at the doctor's house. — By the time commedia dell'arte had established itself permanently in Paris its possibilities as an Italian improvised play had been pretty well exhausted. They were being modified, stretched and transcended in a process of experiment and change which led to its decline. Part of this process was a concentration on theatrical and histrionic technique, which resulted in an excess of théâtre pour le théâtre. The unity of the cast was broken up by virtuoso performances of individual actors; the unity of the plot receded behind the exhibition of isolated bravura feats. Even the unity of language had been lost; the diversity of Italian dialects had given way to the dichotomy of French fixed dialogue and improvised Italian. This fragmentation was healed by Aphra Behn. She reintegrated everything into a unified structure without renouncing the spirit of jaunty and turbulent exuberance in which commedia dell'arte abounds. In a double act of repristination and consummation she shows what a theatre may achieve which takes 'theatre' for its sujet. Two hundred and ten years later Ludwig Tieck resumed the theme in his early play, Die verkehrte Welt, in which "the theatre represents a theatre" and Apollo in the closing scene reminds the spectators who have occupied the stage and are about to interfere with the ending of the plot, "But gentlemen, in your enthusi-

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asm you forget completely that we all are merely actors and that this whole affair is nothing but a play." 59

s« "Aber meine Herren, Sie vergessen in Ihrem Enthusiasmus ganz, daß wir alle nur Schauspieler sind, und daß das Ganze nichts als ein Spiel ist." Ludwig Tieck, Die verkehrte Welt: Ein historisches Schauspiel in fünf Aufzügen [1797], ed. Karl Pestalozzi, Komedia, 7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964), pp. 93f.

KURT T E T 2 E L I V O N ROSADOR

Gems and Jewellery in Victorian Fiction

Ever since the publication in the early fifties of Margaret Flower's excellent, pioneering work, Victorian Jewellerya steady flow of books on essentially the same subject has covered, has now indeed almost swamped, what long had been barren, untilled ground. The fashions of jewellery, its material, techniques and various kinds, the influences on it, its designers, its makers, and its market — all have found students, and from the results of these studies an illuminating chapter in the larger volume of the history of Victorian art and taste has been furnished.2 Most of these studies have, besides using the more obvious sources, such as the superb jewellery collection housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum or the hardly less superb riches of antique dealers,3 also incidentally and, in recent monographs, somewhat repetitively drawn on nineteenth-century literature and the pictorial arts for contemporary descriptions and interpretations of gems and jewellery. Nineteenth-century literature provides indeed a rich storehouse for such documentation. Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds and Browning's The Ring and the Book, its semi-titular ring made "By Castellani's imitative craft", are but two of the many works whose very titles demonstrate the Victorian interest in gem-lore and reflect jewellery's immense importance in social life and contemporary art. Consequently, it seems somewhat strange that only little work has been For help kindly given in finding the material, widely dispersed and often hidden in not too well-known Victorian triple-deckers, I would like to thank my research assistants since 1978. 1 2

3

Margaret Flower, Victorian Jewellery (London: Cassell, 1951). [2nd ed. 1967]. Only some of the more important surveys since 1951 can be listed here: Ernie Bradford, English Victorian Jewellery (Feltham: Spring Books, 1967). [1959]; Charlotte Gere, Victorian Jewellery Design (London: William Kimber, 1972); Charles Oman, British Rings 800-1914 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1974); Charlotte Gere, European and American Jewellery 1830-1914 (London: Heinemann, 1975); Nancy Armstrong, Victorian Jewelry (London: Studio Vista, 1976). Contemporary portraits and jewellery designs are the other two main sources for art historians, literature being the underrated fourth. C/. Joan Evans, A History of Jewellery 1100-1870, 2nd ed. (London: Faber & Faber, 1970), pp. 9-10.

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undertaken to describe and analyse the use of gems and jewellery in Victorian literature first and foremost from a literary, not an art-historian's, point of view. A brief discussion of two such attempts may throw light on some of the reasons for this neglect. In his lengthy paper discussing the fortunate fall of Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda, Albert R. Cirillo also touches on two of her necklaces, the poisoned diamonds and the pawned or sold turquoises. 4 According to Cirillo, both belong to "a set of symbols", the one, the diamonds, being "simultaneously the symbol of Gwendolen's elevation — of her supposed mastery — and of her guilt", the other, the turquoise necklace, functioning as Gwendolen's "symbol of communication" with Deronda. N o doubt, the necklaces carry symbolic overtones and function symbolically within the literary framework of the novel. But is that all? Is it their main raison d'etre} And why are turquoises preferred by George Eliot for such crucial purposes? Similar but also more far-reaching questions are raised by Bonnie S. Zimmerman's more recent paper on George Eliot's use of jewellery. There the basic theses are thus summed up: The consistent use of jewelry from Adam Bede to Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda is in one respect a remarkable example of George Eliot's control of imagery; in another, it demonstrates how thoroughly her art served her ideas. The gems and ornaments strewn through her pages are trivial in themselves, but, through the medium of George Eliot's art they become emblems of a central theme . . . 5

What was implicit in Cirillo's essay with its limitation of jewellery to symbolic functions is here carried to a somewhat radical conclusion. First, objects, that is the gems and jewels in George Eliot's novels, are reduced to unimportance as objects: they become "trivial in themselves" — a description which, even from a purely materialistic point of view, seems somewhat odd for costly emeralds and diamonds "worth some thousands" (Daniel Deronda, ch. 30). Then the objects, trivialised and emptied of their inherent significance, are reduced further. They become emblems of a theme, thereby losing any referential function beyond the text's

"Salvation in Daniel Deronda: The Fortunate Overthrow of Gwendolen Harleth," Literary Monographs, 1 (1967), 211-6. " 'Radiant as a Diamond': George Eliot, Jewelry and the Female Role," Criticism, 19 (1977), 222.

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literary boundaries. They become threads in a web of imagery, parts of a purely verbal structure to which the novelist can, at will, impart new meaning which, in turn, it is the literary critic's pleasant office to expound. Against this view, with its implicit reliance on new critical orthodoxy, it must be insisted that the world in George Eliot's novels and, by extension, in all the great Victorian novels is more than a verbal structure with tentative antennae reaching out into the world of things. It is a world of human beings and solid, concrete things verbalised; it is a world in which sign and object are linked by the strong and — in Victorian times — neverdoubted referential power of words. Therefore, in this world, words refer to external objects and external objects influence, circumscribe, limit, may even totally determine the meaning of words. T o expound the significances belonging to the object-world of Victorian reality thus becomes a task of some importance, as by this analysis the range of historically possible meanings, the aura of potential associations can be narrowed down. Still, even if objects are treated as objects first, if their interpretation demands its fair share of attention in the concrete and concretely realised world the Victorian novel so insistently portrays, this does not preclude them from acquiring metaphoric or symbolical meanings and functions. But it is to be recognised that no individual author is entirely free in choosing, in attaching such meanings and functions, because objects are never totally without a priori, without traditional, significances when handled by him. Their meaning provides a semantic framework, of which the novelist may make little or much use — and the Victorian novel on the whole avails itself of the opportunity to no small degree —, which he may transcend, but which he can only with difficulty totally bypass or ignore. These significances of objects, the qualities inherent in or ascribed to them, are largely determined by their history and environment, their colour and shape, their possessor, the society to which their owner belongs. It is a commonplace that a rose or a jewel is more likely to be used symbolically, to be imbued with metaphoric meaning than, say, a pebble. History, literary and otherwise, has provided thus. Therefore, the process and problem of passing significance onto any given object, to which Barbara Hardy has recently so persuasively drawn attention,6 cannot be fully understood without the attempt to understand also the significances both latent in the object and injected into it by history. 6

"Objects in Novels," Genre, 10 (1977), 485-500.

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This essay, consequently, aims at elucidating some of the potential of meanings jewellery possesses and of the range of functions it is put to in the Victorian novel. As both the Bible and ancient mythology, both folklore and heraldry, both lapidaries and ladies' fashion journals, both literature and the pictorial arts contributed to the meaning of gems and jewels, as this meaning possesses psychological, sociological, moral and aesthetic dimensions, it is obvious that no comprehensive analysis can be attempted here. The scope of this essay is, therefore, shamelessly eclectic, its structure as shamelessly additive, ranging through a variety of literary works and through different aspects. Starting from my basic premise I shall first attempt to illustrate the object-ness of jewellery, its quidditas, independent of any further signification. Then I shall survey other levels of meaning, especially social ones, as well as functions, especially those of characterisation. An analysis of the morality of wearing jewellery in Victorian times is followed by a brief survey of the emblematic or allegorical interpretation of gems and its consequences for Victorian literature. Two striking pieces of jewellery in Middlemarcb and Daniel Deronda may serve to summarize the discussion, as in both these novels a fair and rich proportion of the meanings and functions jewellery has acquired is gathered through George Eliot's conscious and consummate artistry. Thus, although the various novels and aspects discussed are treated for their own sake and definitely not for purposes of source-hunting, they, at the same time, are intended to provide a foil, an informing background, for the understanding of Dorothea's emeralds and Gwendolen's attractive turquoises.

To demonstrate the object-ive use of gems and jewellery in Victorian novels must be my first aim. On this representational level, jewellery ranks with furniture and dress, with paintings and books, with food and houses — all of which can, of course, also function symbolically — as an item in that vast repository of things which novelists plunder to create their fiction's version of Victorian reality. Let me, therefore, draw up a short, highly selective inventory, the mere drawing up of which will, I hope, illustrate the frequency and variety with which contemporary jewellery is represented in the Victorian novel. (With a couple of exceptions I omit the ornaments worn by men, their jewellery deserving closer and separate analysis.) While in Disraeli's novels the descriptions of jewellery seldom go beyond the naming of "costly bracelets", "a diamond

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necklace of great value", and "a brilliant tiara" 7 — thus contributing to the rather unearthly atmosphere of rarefied discussion or thesis-demonstration so often pervading his works — no other novelist of renown has similarly restrained himself. Even Wilkie Collins, who for reasons of plot-construction frequently loosens or loses his grip on concrete reality, visualises the "garnet brooch" of the housekeeper in The Dead Secret (bk. Ill, ch. 2)8 or the hair posy-ring in The Woman in White, Mr. Fairlie's wedding present to Laura, in concrete detail as "a shabby ring, with her affectionate uncle's hair for an ornament, instead of a precious stone, and with a heartless inscription inside, about congenial sentiments and eternal Friendship" (vol. I, p. 290). Molly Gibson in Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is told to wear red flowers for a charity ball to "match your coral necklace and bracelets" (ch. 25), while Miss Phoebe graces the same occasion with "a large miniature set round with pearls, which served as a shield" (ch. 26). The Cranford ladies insist on "any number of brooches, up and down and everywhere (some with dogs' eyes painted in them; some that were like small picture frames with mausoleums and weeping willows neatly executed in hair inside; some, again, with miniatures of ladies and gentlemen sweetly smiling out of a nest of stiff muslin)" (ch. 8). And to select from Trollope but two examples: In Phineas Finn Madame Max Goesler's beauty is colourfully set off by "a short chain of Roman gold with a ruby pendant. And she had rubies in her ears, and a ruby brooch, and rubies in the bracelets on her arms" (ch. 40), while Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, wife of a shady financier in The Last Chronicle of Barset, has to be satisfied with "dresses and jewels, which latter, if not quite real, should be manufactured of the best sham substitute known." (ch. 51) The smaller fry of novelists, too, touch up their pictures of Victorian reality with more or less detailed descriptions of gems and jewels. In Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain, for instance, the Scottish influence on Victorian jewellery promoted by Queen Victoria's love of the Highlands emerges in "one of the round Bruce brooches, of dark pebble, with a silver fern-leaf lying across it, the dots of small Cairngorm stones" (pt. II, ch. 12), and in her The Heir of Redclyffe "a bracelet of his mother's

7

8

All these descriptions, and there are hardly any other in this novel, are taken from Coningsby. All quotations are taken from The Works of Wilkie Collins, 30 vols. ( N e w York: Peter Fenilon Collier, 1900).

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hair" is a sentiment-laden wedding-present (ch. 29). Miss Smith and Miss Robinson, two eligible, rich young ladies in Mrs. Oliphant's Phoebe, Junior, are decorated for a ball "as fine as their milliners could make them. The first of these ladies had an emerald locket almost as big as a warming-pan, and Miss Robinson's pearls were a little fortune in themselves." (bk. I, ch. 3) As the comparison inflating the emerald locket seems too good to be wasted for a single occasion, the titular heroine is also offered a brooch by her grandmother which "was a kind of small warming pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large pink topazes, and enclosing little wavy curls of hair." (bk. II, ch. 2) Finally, towards the end of the Victorian age William H. Mallock sticks to what then has become convention, appropriate decorum, and bedecks, in The Heart of Life, his figures with jewellery, one with "three mourning rings", making of another " a perfect Golconda of jet beads", and showering on the rest "cameo brooches", a "spray of diamonds" and even a "large Apostolic ring". Extensive and precise as the presentation of jewellery in all these novels may be, it hardly bears comparison with that in the works of the two great realists of the mid-Victorian era, Thackeray and Dickens (the special case of George Eliot will be dealt with separately.) From Vanity Fair alone samples of a fair collection of early nineteenth-century fashions, of different kinds and shapes of gems and jewellery, could be culled. There are "the white cornelian and the turquoise rings" Amelia presents Becky with right in the beginning (ch. 2); there are Miss Swartz's "ear-rings like chandeliers" (ch. 20) , 9 her "turquoise-bracelets, countless rings" (ch. 21), Mrs. O'Dowd's "set of Irish diamonds and Cairngorms" (ch. 29), the "tickers", to use Rawdon Crawley's slangy style, Becky is given by her admirers (ch. 30), Lady Bareacres's diamonds (ch. 32), the "pretty pearls" which Sir Pitt kept from "the ironmonger's daughter" (ch. 39), the brooch with the King's portrait Becky in high loyal spirit has painted immediately after being presented at Court, Miss Poly's "large pebble brooch", and, to shorten an already overlong list, Becky's or rather Lord Steyne's important diamonds. Though other of Thackeray's

Large drop earrings were certainly worn at the beginning of the nineteenth century, many of classical design. Cf. H. Vever, La Bijouterie française au XIXe siècle (Paris : H . Floury, 1906), I, 14 (plate). Thackeray's description also seems somewhat prophetic as in the late fifties jewellery and especially earrings suddenly and coarsely expanded into rather large sizes and extravagant shapes, such as stirrups and saddles, candlesticks and beetles, windmills and watering-cans. Cf. Gere, Victorian Jewellery Design, p. 97.

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novels are less bejewelled, the variety depicted is still not negligible, as demonstrated by the outfit of the literary Mrs. Newcome, Clive's aunt: " . . . an oval portrait of a gentleman reposed on her voluminous bosom. She wore another picture of two darling heads, with pink cheeks and golden hair, on one of her wrists, with many more chains, bracelets, bangles, and knicknacks." (ch. 7) Miss Honeyman's "great brooch, representing the Taj of Agra" from The Newcomes (ch. 15) figures again as Mrs. Major MacWhirter's wedding gift in The Adventures of Philip, namely, as "an Indian brooch, representing the Taj Mahal at Agra" (ch. 32). Though Dickens's use of gems and jewellery in any of his novels is certainly less plenteous than Thackeray's in Vanity Fair, his range is hardly less wide, his eye for the significant detail probably even sharper. In Dombey and Son, Miss Tox wears "round her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing a fishey old eye, with no approach to speculation in it" (ch. 1; see plate 1), and Captain Cuttle rather unexpectedly is "so particular in the arrangement of his cravat, as to twist the pendant ends into a sort of pigtail, and pass them through a massive gold ring with a picture of a tomb upon it, and a neat iron railing, and a tree, in memory of some deceased friend." (ch. 15; see plate 2) Volumnia's main and recurring supports for embellishment, their insistent use quite understandably annoying Sir Leicester Dedlock, are "her rouge-pot and pearl necklace" (Bleak House, ch. 28), whilst to Mr. Meagles's "infinite variety of lumber" belong "Tuscan hair-pins,. . . Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery" (Little Dorrit, ch. 16).10 Flora Finching associates Italy in one of her interminable outpourings "with the grapes and figs growing everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with burning mountains" (bk. II, ch. 9), Miss Skiffins, Wemmick's lady-love, sports "a classic brooch . . . representing the profile of an undesirable female with a very straight nose and a very new moon" (Great Expectations, ch. 37), while Miss Murdstone adorns herself with "numerous little steel fetters and rivets" {David Copperfield, ch. 4). This bare catalogue, by no means complete and deliberately skipping for further discussion some of the more famous specimens, such as Mrs.

10

Dickens's sure touch is displayed even in such a detail as this catalogue of jewellery: provenance, material, and typicality as tourist souvenirs correspond exactly with Victorian reality. C/. Gere, Victorian Jewellery Design, pp. 109f. The Geneva jewellery in Mr. Meagles's collection most probably consists of enamels, trivial pastorals in the main, which were turned out wholesale by the Swiss.

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Merdle's jewel-bedecked bosom in Little Dorrit, describes an objectworld, solid, rich, and varied. It imitates Victorian reality quite closely — a little search in museums could produce objects matching the descriptions quoted. An exact correspondence between the world of fiction and the world outside can in this way be established. This seems to be the more striking as these descriptions of jewellery objects, if not quite "florid little squiggle(s) on the edge of the page", still belong in their majority to that class of "unnecessary detail" which George Orwell has so stimulatingly analysed in his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens. 11 Their main function is to evoke a reality, concrete, detailed and in not a few cases almost as cluttered with objects as a Victorian withdrawing-room. They provide the nice touches which complete the large panorama of Victorian reality in the novels, so that not only a bird's-eye view is available to the reader, but a close-up revealing minute details, exactly realised, is demanded of him — just as in those large canvasses of William Powell Frith's, such as "Derby Day" or "Ramsgate Sands", where the focus of vision, being continuously narrowed down, sweeps perforce from large structural arrangements to the tiniest detail.12

Yet the mimetic function of gems and jewellery in Victorian fiction is not confined to the creation of reality en detail. By various methods the significant detail may become precisely circumscribed environment, which affects or determines character and behaviour. 13 Sheer quantity is

11

12

13

The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. S. Orwell and I. Angus (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1968), I, 450f. This technique of the close-up, of the final focusing on jewellery, is splendidly illustrated by Dickens's description of Lady Dedlock's portrait in the "Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty", "in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm" (Bleak House, ch. 32). From the socio-economic point of view this was analysed as early as 1899 by Thorstein Veblen in his frequently reprinted The Theory of the Leisure Class (revised 1912), most notably in chapter 7, "Dress as ah Expression of the Pecuniary Culture." Barbara Hardy has analogously discussed Thackeray's novels in The Exposure of Luxury: KadicalThemesin Thackeray (London: Peter Owen, 1972), esp. ch. 4.

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one of the methods. It may be seen at work in R. S. Surtees's Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities where Mrs. Jorrocks is depicted in all her sartorial glory: She was dressed in a flaming scarlet satin gown, with swan's-down round the top, and also at the arms, and two flounces of the same material round the bottom. Her turban was of green velvet, with a gold fringe terminating in a bunch over the left side, while a bird of paradise inclined towards the right. Across her forehead she wore a gold band, with a many-coloured glass butterfly . . . , and her neck, arms, waist (at least what ought to have been her waist), were hung round and studded with mosaic gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, & c., looking for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop . . . In the right side of a gold band round her middle was an immense gold watch, with a bunch of mosaic seals, appended to a massive chain of the same material; and a large miniature of Mr. Jorrocks when he was a young man, with his hair stiffly curled, occupied a place on her left side. (ch. 12)

The satire here is undoubtedly heavy. It exposes Mrs. Jorrocks's utter lack of taste through her choice of an outrageously wrong colour, "flaming scarlet", her unbecoming headgear, 14 her armoury of jewellery. It puts Mr. and Mrs. Jorrocks firmly and irretrievably into the ranks of the vulgar nouveaux riches. All this is quite obvious. Yet beyond this satire something subtler and more sinister is conveyed. Piece after piece of jewellery is listed, and piece after piece the wearer is increasingly lost sight of, becomes unimportant, is finally dehumanized and reified into " a portable pawnbroker's shop". Significant and concrete detail has been transformed into determining, confining environment. For using jewellery as the main vehicle of this transformation, the reification of Mrs. Jorrocks, Surtees can claim historical justification. For when in the course of the early nineteenth century the male portion of the population slowly but steadily desists from adorning itself with jewellery, restricting itself to a few pieces of obvious utility like studs, watches and seals, the task of compensation falls to the lot of the female: purse-proud burghers now exhibit their wealth by indirection, using their wives and daughters as showcases. Dresses begin to widen, spreading into room-filling crinolines in

14

Turbans are only "becoming to females of a lofty stature", as A. Walker in her Female Beauty (London: Thomas Hurst, 1837), p. 359, magisterially lays down the law, while poor Mrs. Jorrocks's "stature was of the middle height, and she was of one breadth from the shoulders to the heels." (ch. 12)

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the fifties, and bosoms are bared — the available exhibition space is thus dramatically and attractively enlarged. 15 But it is the exhibit, the jewel, which attracts all attention to itself as a conspicuous sign of wealth and social station. It is clearly intended to do so. But at the same time it determines the character of the wearer, emptying her of her individuality, her humanity, by turning her into something to hang jewels on, a mere showcase for the display of magnificent, plentiful jewellery. This is a loss of individuality, a subordination of the human being to outward trappings and objects, of which Surtees is quite aware and which he explicates to the reader: "To describe her [Mrs. Jorrocks] accurately is more than we can pretend to, for she looked so different in different dresses,- that Mr. Jorrocks himself sometimes did not recognise her" — to which comment, by way of example, Mrs. Jorrocks's description quoted above is then appended. This swallowing up, this annihilation of individuality by the object world, is explicitly stated again and again in Victorian fiction. "You belong to your belongings", Ethel Newcome is categorically told by her grandmother Lady Kew {The Newcomes, ch. 32), and Mme. Merle, later in the century, tells Isabel Archer: "What shall we call our 'self? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us — and then it flows back again." (The Portrait of a Lady, ch. 19)16 Surely, in the century of Karl Marx the statements seem hardly surprising. And the same message emerges, indeed is harped upon, in that long series of guides to etiquette and the art of dress which were published throughout the Victorian age. These guides, by nature and intention, necessarily emphasise the importance of dress and ornament both as social indicators and as an expression of the inward being. They tend to regard the relation between character and accoutrements as "founded deeply in nature", posit "certain laws of nature" which determine this relationship or claim that "colours have human affinities and harmonize with our ideas, but especially with our feelings 15

16

This development is most impressively to be studied by leafing through the fashionplates in the Victoria and Albert Museum's catalogue arranged by C. H. Gibbs-Smith, The Fashionable Lady in the 19th Century (London, 1960). Cf. also C. Willett Cunnington, English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (London: Faber & Faber, 1937); for brief analyses see Flower, pp. 4f.; Barbara Rees, The Victorian Lady (London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1977), p. 139. After her interpretation of Lady Kew's and Madame Merle's position in The Exposure of Luxury, p. 97, Barbara Hardy takes up the matter again in Particularities: Readings in George Eliot (London: Peter Owen, 1982), p. 147.

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and passions." 17 And Mrs. H. R. Haweis, despite her Pre-Raphaelite leanings and tastes, sticks to orthodoxy in agreeing with Lady Kew and Mme. Merle when professing that "one's own apparel is not without an influence on one's own mind: a new colour seems to bring a new atmosphere with it, and changes, oddly enough, the level of thought." 18 From here it is but a small step to that dominance of ornament and object world which metamorphoses Mrs. Jorrocks into " a portable pawnbroker's shop". And to this dominance Victorian fiction frequently bears witness. All those jewel-bespangled ladies from Lady Clavering in Pendennis (ch. 22) to Mrs. Sherrick in The Newcomes (ch. 23), even to the pathetically bedecked Miss Pole in Cranford with her seven brooches all worn on one occasion (ch. 8), are nothing but Mrs. Jorrocks's close relations, exemplars of a materialist society, where costly jewels define and confine their wearer and make their human individuality fade to vanishing point. All these ladies wear, to quote Thackeray's heavy irony, " a prison dress of diamonds and Chantilly lace". 19 What is implicit in their delineations, Dickens makes explicit. Mrs. Merdle, wife of the fraudulent financial genius in Little Dorrit, does not exist as an entire human being. She is first reified, like Mrs. Jorrocks, and then fragmented into those parts best adapted to the wearing of jewellery. She consists, by and large, of nothing but "beautiful-formed arms, and the very thing for bracelets" (ch. 33) and of her "capital" — capital in any possible sense of the word — bosom: It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr. Merdle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation. Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels showed to the richest advantage. The bosom moving in Society with the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society approving, Mr. Merdle was satisfied, (ch. 21)

Jewellery, having assumed determining environmental force, both by sheer quantity and the power ascribed to ornament and dress, here beWalker, p. 392; Mrs. Merrifield, Dress as a Fine Art (London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1854), p. 2; Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress (London: Frederick Warner, 1877), p. 61. 1« The Art of Dress (London: Chatto & Windus, 1879), p. 10. 19 The Adventures of Philip, ch. 9.

17

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comes the emblem of a society characterised by outward show and — Carlyle's word — the cash-gospel. In such a society a woman's function, like Mrs. Merdle's, is reduced to that of a "show-window of Mr. Merdle", to a "jewel-stand" (ch. 33), or, like Mrs. Veneering's in Our Mutual Friend, to that of being an "absolute jeweller's window" (ch. 10).20 This of course is only the most consequential effect jewellery, considered as part or epitome of environment, produces in the Victorian novel. Subtle and slight changes of behaviour or character are to be expected if the postulated correspondence between inward essence and outward dress and ornament is to be credited. For brevity's sake but one example must suffice. In Wilkie Collins's The Evil Genius the poor governess Sydney Westerfield is given a "plain gold bracelet" as a birthday present by her employers, an event which "marked an epoch in Sydney"s life". With demoniac quickness the piece of jewellery changes her character and behaviour. Narcissistic self-indulgence is the first step towards evil: "Sydney locked her door, and exhibited herself to herself — in the front view, the side view, and the back view . . . with eyes that sparkled and cheeks that glowed in a delicious confusion of pride and astonishment." Then she starts acting — and once again the piece of jewellery absorbs all attention to itself, the wearer tending to become the bracelet's appendage: "She practiced bowing to strangers in her new dress; she practiced shaking hands gracefully, with her bracelet well in view." (ch. 7) Small wonder that only little further stimulus is needed to transform the shy, modest governess on the same night into the passionately, illicitly loving woman. Object, jewellery, has become destiny.

In most of the cases just treated there lurks, if only residually, the question whether it is really environment in the form of jewellery which moulds and determines character or whether it is character which is expressed by, is objectively correlated to, environment. N o matter to which

20

A similar fate is in store for Estella in Great Expectations. Having been consistently valued by Miss Havisham as a jewel-bedecked means of revenge, she is finally unable to see herself as essentially different from the jewellery she wears: "I am to write to her constantly", she tells Pip, "and see her regularly, and report how I go on — I and the jewels." (ch. 33).

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side one may incline, and, among Victorian novelists, George Eliot favours an environmentalist answer, while the later Dickens, for instance in Great Expectations, plants suggestions either way, there can be little doubt that, like that of other objects such as dress, furniture, paintings, houses, one of the primary functions of jewellery in Victorian fiction is that of characterisation: human essence, feelings, thoughts, passions are externalised and 'objectified'. Dickens explains this process to his readers when, in David Copperfield, Miss Murdstone reappears as Dora's companion: . . . she w a l k e d a w a y , arranging the little fetters o n her wrists and r o u n d her n e c k : w h i c h s e e m e d t o be the same set, in e x a c t l y the s a m e state, as w h e n I had s e e n her last. T h e s e r e m i n d e d m e , in r e f e r e n c e t o Miss M u r d s t o n e ' s nature, of the fetters o v e r a j a i l - d o o r ; s u g g e s t i n g o n the o u t s i d e , t o all b e holders, w h a t w a s t o b e e x p e c t e d within, (ch. 2 6 )

Obviously this is a technique not restricted to the use of gems and jewellery. But in this as in other instances Dickens cleverly utilises the properties inherent in gems and jewellery. That rings, bracelets, bangles, necklaces have a restricting, a fettering quality about them is something that almost all ages, but certainly the Victorian, 21 were aware of. The characterisation of Miss Murdstone profits from these connotations. It is further enriched by the fact that it is cut or polished steel jewellery (see plate 3), "steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself" and which turn her into a "metallic lady" (ch. 4). They also stress, by aligning steel bracelets with hand-cuffs, her function as a prison-wardress, first as David's, then as Dora's. That from the time when David Copperfield was written jewellery increasingly became more ponderous till in 1861 Félix Duval actually produced bangles in the shape of shackles;22 that, as the Art-Journal in 1851 complains, "the most beautiful bracelets feel like manacles" 23 , completes the associations Miss

21

22

23

Cf. Mme. de Barrera, Gems and Jewels-. Their History, Geography, Chemistry, and Ana (London: Richard Bentley, 1860), who remarks that among the Romans a bracelet could be considered "a token of slavery" (p. 316). Walker, p. 394, quotes approvingly, and applies to jewellery, the dictum that everything belonging to women "bears the mark of slavery imposed by a conqueror." Cf. Vever, II, 267-9; for a general account of steel jewellery see A. Clifford, CutSteel and Berlin Iron Jewellery (Bath: Adams & Dart, 1971). S. A., "Wandering in the Crystal Palace," 197. This tendency is briefly analysed by P. Hinks, Nineteenth Century Jewellery (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), p. 63.

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Murdstone's pieces of personal adornment would evoke in the Victorian reader. These are associations Dickens actualises by the simple description of a particular kind and a particular design of jewellery. Thus two things, central to this essay, can be demonstrated: first, that Dickens's art of characterisation, extravagant as it may appear in Miss Murdstone's case to the modern reader, is based on fact; then, that it uses and needs the reader's knowledge to achieve its full effect. And nothing but historical spade-work can supply our later age with this knowledge. Other examples can illustrate the importance of this archeological task for understanding and evaluating character (besides implicitly illuminating how concrete and varied is the world Victorian fiction creates). In Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers the Signora Neroni, the crippled offspring of the morally lax Stanhope family, dresses up for Mrs. Proudie's reception at the Bishop's palace: And very becoming her dress was. It was white velvet, without any other garniture than rich white lace worked with pearls across her bosom, and the same round the armlets of her dress. Across her brow she wore a band of red velvet, on the centre of which shone a magnificent Cupid in mosaic, the tints of whose wings were of the most lovely azure, and the colour of his chubby cheeks the clearest pink. On the one arm which her position required her to expose she wore three magnificent bracelets, each of different stones, (ch. 10)

Of course, the novel itself provides not a little with which to place this passage and the Signora. There is — and this is hardly surprising in an episcopal setting — an almost total absence of any kind of jewellery among the Barchester ladies and gentlemen, 24 only the Stanhope children, one and all, wear it: their different style of life and worldly hierarchy of values are thus clearly marked. That the Signora lives, as it were, by the sign of Cupid, that she is of a frivolous, flirtatious nature Trollope stresses repeatedly by authorial comments, and he extends the emblematic nature of the jewel even further when he compares her to Venus (ch. 27). The description is then ironically taken up by the maltreated Mr. Slope, whom the Signora first playfully attracts only to repulse and expose publicly: "Whenever he again thought of her in his dreams, it was not as of an

The exceptions being a reference to Mrs. Bold's rings (ch. 41) and the Archdeacon's showering presents of jewellery on every one after his double victory at the end of the novel (ch. 53).

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angel with azure wings." (ch. 46) And, finally, the Cupid on the Signora's forehead foreshadows her one movement of goodness in the novel when she acts as love's messenger and helps to bring Eleanor Bold and Mr. Arabin together. All this is revealed by a close reading. Yet some subtle strokes of characterisation can only be clarified by a historical analysis. What is important is not merely what is depicted on the Signora's jewel: this marks her as an addict to love-making. Of no less importance is the jewel's design and fashion. It is a ferronniere which adorns her brow, a piece of jewellery inspired by Renaissance taste in general and Leonardo's painting of the blacksmith's wife in particular, whence its name. Mrs. Walker, once again, lays down clear rules about its wearability: "Ferronnieres on a high, smooth, white, and polished forehead, have a fine effect." 2 5 As Trollope is very careful to describe in detail that part of the Signora's anatomy as well — " H e r forehead, though rather low, was very beautiful from its perfect contour and pearly whiteness" (ch. 9) — some discrepancy between the ideal of fashion and its realisation creeps in. This discrepancy widens when one takes into account that the ferronniere was en vogue from the late twenties to the early forties — to quote The World of Fashion for July 1831: "In whatever way the hair is dressed, the forehead is always encircled with a ferroniere, which is either simply or splendidly ornamented, according to the style of the rest of the dress." But Barchester Towers commences, with its introductory sentence, "in the latter days of July in the year 185-". This is a time when the fashion of wearing ferronnieres had become totally extinct, when, indeed, it was beginning to be ridiculed. 26 T o sum up: the Signora wears a jewel which associates her with Renaissance Italy and its dubious (moral) values; she wears it on a "rather low" forehead, although only a high one is, according to the very rigid rules of Victorian fashion, a fit place for it; and she wears it at a time when, by a decade, it had completely gone out of fashion. With hardly any exaggeration one might claim that in this piece of jewellery Trollope epitomizes the Signora's character and guides the reader's attitude to her — an attitude in which irony, moral judgment and pity are mingled. The unfashionable ferronniere is the appropriate emblem for the crippled

" 26

p. 420. Later Blanc, pp. 100f., will state apodictically that " t h e ferroniere

is an a w k w a r d line

which intersects the f o r e h e a d harshly, and the fashion of wearing it, if it were to return, would be condemned by g o o d taste."

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love-goddess, out of place and time in the moral earnestness of mid-Victorian provincial England. Although much could be written on other kinds, styles, and fashions of jewellery — such as memorial or mourning jewellery, which, very common in Victorian times, in Dickens transcends the functions of characterisation and assumes thematic interest — I will restrict myself, as a cautionary envoy to this section, to one other design. It is a design highly popular with goldsmiths and their clientele ever since ancient times: the serpent (see plate 4). The serpent's symbolic meanings are well-known and, despite the wide range of historically realised possibilities, but two are prominent both in jewellery and literature, the one represented by the serpent in Eden, the other by the ouroboros, Egypt's primordial snake. Thus the novelist is offered a choice between iconographically fixed traditions, and of both the Victorians have availed themselves. When in the scene of Rawdon Crawley's discovery of his wife's infidelity with Lord Steyne, Becky's hands are "all covered with serpents" (ch. 53), when in Pendennis Blanche Amory is given by the love-lorn Henry Foker "curled round the white satin cushion . . . such a magnificent serpentine bracelet, with such a blazing ruby head and diamond tail" (ch. 73), the messages seem too plain for further comment: 27 Thackeray externalises the sensual, siren-like nature of his two ladies and their functions as temptresses by beautifying them with serpent-jewellery a la CleopatreP Yet when Traddles in David Copperfield, while window-shopping, feeds his beloved Sophy on air, promise-crammed, and shows her "which of the diamondeyed serpents, coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could afford it" (ch. 61), when Queen Victoria's betrothal ring shows a serpent studded with emeralds, a different, almost diametrically opposed meaning is conveyed. It is based on the ancient topos of the serpent swallowing its tail, the symbol of eternity. Both pieces of jewellery, Queen Victoria's as well as the one intended for Sophy, are thus tokens of a time-

27

28

Especially as in Pendennis the serpent bracelet is contrasted with another piece of jewellery of obvious meaning, the diamond cross Laura inherits from Helen Pendennis. C/. also "the great emerald brooch . . . , a studded serpent with diamond eyes" worn by Bertha Grant, the evil "water-nixie" in George Eliot's "The Lifted Veil" (Cabinet Edition, p. 304). This is an attribute in the catalogue of jewellery stolen from Mile. Mars, the actress, in 1828. This catalogue is frequently quoted in Victorian and modern works to illustrate the wide range of design, gems and various kinds of jewellery in the early 19th century. C/. e.g., de Barrera, pp. 112f.

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less constancy in love29 and quite appropriate for Prince Albert and Traddles. No misgivings whatsoever need to be felt about Albert's and Traddles's queens. But Gwendolen Harleth's is a different case and George Eliot fuses, as will be shown later, both traditions in Daniel Deronda. Here, in this section, my main purpose has been to draw attention to the importance of fashion, design and variety of jewellery for purposes of characterisation. Historically feasible associations have been provided both to demonstrate the richness of Victorian character-portrayal by means of jewellery and its basis in contemporary reality. Serpent-jewellery adds the warning that nearly identical descriptions, like those of the pieces admired by Blanche Amory and Sophy, do not carry the same thematic burden, may indeed belong to different traditions. It is a warning against a too facile view of the qualities inherent in or attributed to Victorian jewellery. Its properties, symbolic or otherwise, may appear to be rather obvious, but may have been quite arbitrarily attached. The comprehensive and fairly rigid Victorian language of flowers can serve to exemplify this. Then the ring of forget-me-nots which David Copperfield orders for Dora (ch. 33) is, if interpreted according to Victorian floral semiotics, not, as might be expected, intended to remind the wearer of the giver. Forget-me-nots, in this artificial system, mean true love — which, in any case, is a sentiment fitting the occasion of a secret engagement quite well.30 Obviously, this conventional and arbitrary significance does not cancel the gift's meaning expressed by the flower's name. A further level of significance, however, is added by it. What is conveyed by the artificial language of flowers is a half-secret message; it functions to describe

29

30

The same constancy is expressed by the use of the snake-symbol in mourning jewellery, recurring again and again in Victorian times; cf. Gisela Zick, Gedenke mein: Freundschafts- und Memorialschmuck 1770-1870 (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1980), p. 150. A third kind of symbolism seems to be intended by the serpent bracelet Queen Victoria is reported to have worn at her first council meeting: the wisdom of the serpent. As an emblem of royal wisdom the serpent, in the stately rainbow portrait of Elizabeth I, is richly embroidered on the left sleeve. Emblematic tradition is thus royally carried on. This language, it may be assumed, was well-known to Victorian ladies. "The Book of Flowers, and the Language of Flowers, are elegant trifles, suited to a lady"s boudoir", recommends the anonymous Etiquette for Ladies (Philadelphia: Carey, Lear & Blanchard, 1838), p. 191. More than 700 flowers are listed in Anna C. Burke, Illustrated Language of Flowers (London: G. Routledge, 1856). Kate Greenaway's sweetly charming Language of Flowers (London: G. Routledge, 1884) is a later example of a rich tradition. The problem has been briefly discussed by Charlotte Gere in her introduction to The Jeweller's Art (London: British Museum Publications, 1978), p. 14.

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and evaluate the quality of David's love. Yet both message and function can only be discerned by the initiated, to which, it can be safely assumed, in this particular case the majority of Victorian middle-class readers belonged. And, again, nothing but historical investigation can enlighten their modern descendants. Moreover, this conventional, arbitrary element within the semantics of jewellery is frequently rooted in history. The qualities of gems, even more than those of the various kinds and fashions of jewellery, are largely determined by such traditional connotations. This is a question to which I shall return. Another problem demands prior attention, namely the problem of the moral propriety of wearing jewellery.

Blanche Amory, Mrs. Merdle, the Signora Neroni: moral disapproval is plainly and plentifully bestowed upon all these ladies by their authors, readers, fictional fellows. The burden of this moral disapproval is in no small measure carried by their personal ornament, dress and jewellery. In choosing jewellery to convey this moral judgment the Victorian novelist could rely on two attitudes which for centuries had been part and parcel of Western thought. One of them is the Christian contempt for worldly goods, for earthly treasures which moth and rust corrupt. The other, its secular version, criticises society from within and castigates the perversion and substitution of the simple natural values and of human fellowship by those of outward show and by the "Gospel of Mammonism" (Carlyle). The first attitude can be traced back to the early fathers of the Church. 31 It finds expression in medieval sartorial satire, is part of the vanitas-lamentations which reverberate through the Middle Ages and the English Renaissance, and acquires new importance with the rise of Elizabethan Puritanism and its dualist divorce of heaven and earth, soul and body. Methodism, the Evangelical movement, and other forms of Dissent then carry the attitude with renewed strength into Victorian times. Of the other attitude the locus classicus is to be found in Thomas More's Utopia, where gold and silver are melted into chamber-pots, into chains and fet31

Of which Bulwer Lytton makes historically correct use, when, in The Last Days of Pompeii, he has a Pompeian jeweller grumble that Christians "wear no jewels" (bk. Ill, ch. 1).

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ters for slaves, and into ornaments to stigmatise criminals, while precious stones are given to the smallest children to play with. In Victorian times it is Thomas Carlyle, who, in Sartor Resartus, most forcefully preaches on the same theme. 32 By necessity, both Victorian fiction and the guides to good dress and ornament take up this discussion. They lay down strict laws about the who, the when, and the what of wearing jewellery.33 Transgressions against these laws are regarded and condemned not only as lapses of taste or as social misdemeanours but as outright moral blemishes. T o quote but one example, a rule for young ladies from the beginning of the Victorian age: C o s t l y c a s h m e r e s , v e r y rich f u r s a n d d i a m o n d s , as well as m a n y o t h e r brilliant o r n a m e n t s , are t o be f o r b i d d e n a y o u n g l a d y ; a n d t h o s e w h o act in d e f i a n c e of these rational m a r k s o f p r o p r i e t y , m a k e us believe that they a r e p o s s e s s e d o f a n u n r e s t r a i n e d love of l u x u r y . . .

34

In an age of general restraint and the corset, no young lady, if lady she be, would therefore endanger her moral character by too showy a display of ornaments. But Puritan attacks as well as social criticism demand more basic and more spirited answers than a mere pruning of excess with the help of rules of behaviour founded on taste. And hardly any Victorian guide to dress and behaviour or work on jewellery shirks the task. While most of these justifications are somewhat apologetic in tone and argumentation, proving thus the strength of the attack, a quite comprehensive defence introduces Mme. de Barrera's treatise. In order to lend more weight to this defence an authority from outside, Monsieur Babinet "de LTnstitut", as the title-page proudly proclaims, is engaged for the purpose. Anticipating Shavian precept he does not argue, but repeats his assertions. Providence and the Deity itself are mustered in support of the wearing of gems and jewellery because 32

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Carlyle's heavily satirical program for the production of fashionable novels contains the following article of faith: " T h e good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings." (bk. Ill, ch. 10) From the early anonymous Etiquettes for Ladies (1837 and 1838) to the Misses Walker, Merrifield and Haweis, these rules hardly vary. Beautifully detailed regulations are quoted by Vever, I, 134ff.: there, pearls are allowed to young, diamonds to old and married ladies, emeralds and amethysts to ladies of well-to-do society, steel for concerts, jet for dinner parties, paste to actresses, and amber to grisettes. This account is also dealt with by Evans, p. 172. Etiquette for Ladies, 1838, p. 64.

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Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador Providence, having bestowed on us the exquisite appreciation of the beautiful in all things . . . , has invited us to participate in all the delightful sensations that refined and delicate natures are susceptible of feeling, in the possession or at the sight of the treasures of nature and art. Among these treasures, precious stones take the first place. N o n e of the gifts of the Deity should be repudiated. 3 5

Being in the council of Providence Monsieur Babinet has no difficulty in disposing of the other arguments. Against the view of the uselessness of gems and jewellery, of their exemplifying the reduction of human values to materialist ones, Babinet poses his claim "that competence and luxury are but the interpretation of the divine precept — work." Having skilfully appealed to one of the highest of Victorian ideals, he then clinches his argument by extending this premise so that luxury in the form of gems and jewellery becomes the most conspicuous sign of "the superiority of modern civilization", of progress. 36 And who is there to gainsay this triad, Providence, work, and progress, in Victorian times? More modest in its scope and claims, but equally well adapted to Victorian moral thinking, is Mrs. Merrifield's defence of jewellery. She makes use of the ubiquitous utilitarian strain in Victorian aesthetics and morality. " T h e great principle", she remarks, to be observed with regard to ornament is, that it should be appropriate, and designed to answer some useful purpose. A brooch, or a bow of ribbon, for instance, should fasten some part of the dress; a gold chain should support a watch or eye-glass, or other object. 37

This certainly curbs any tendencies towards display for display's sake, but does not put too stringent a restriction on the wearing of jewellery, utility being an ideal which can easily accommodate a wide range of practices. In contrast to these guides, Victorian fiction deals more equitably with both sides of the question, the Puritanic or socially motivated abstinence and the conventional love of beautification and display, embodies them in different speakers and acts out their (moral) consequences in its plots. That the wearing of jewellery is subject to moral judgment and, possibly, to condemnation, is exemplified by Major Pendennis when he gives short shrift to one of his nephew's university companions: " D i d you

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36 37

p. XI. Ibid., pp. X , XV. pp. 85 f.

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remark the quantity of rings and jewellery he wore? That person has Scamp written on his countenance, if any man ever had." (ch. 19) This is a sentiment which echoes throughout Victorian literature with its long line of jewel-bedizened dandies and fops, and in Pendennis itself the eponymous hero's moral progress is marked by his attitude towards and use of jewellery. Lavishness of jewellery not only imprisons the wearer in his or her environment but objectifies the moral character as superficial, materialist, sensual. By contrast, absence of jewellery may betoken simple natural femininity and modesty. In Charlotte Bronte's Vtllette Lucy Snowe who has "no flower, no jewel" (ch. 14), 38 is thus contrasted with Ginevra Fanshawe and her parure, her "peacock's eyes", to use Lucy's revealing comparison (ch. 9). Lavish display of jewellery may still be more effectively undercut, not by a total absence of all ornament but by the presence of the one ornament which best adorns Victorian womanhood and which inspired even a dryasdust Victorian antiquarian to poeticise it as "a gift far more precious than the most costly tiara of diamonds could possibly be"39 — the wedding-ring. But as Victorian married ladies were entitled and expected to wear a modicum of jewellery, a "wedding ring for sole ornament" indicates that the wearer for some reason of her own does not participate in conventional social life. The sentiment-laden na-

3« Later on, Charlotte Bronte seems to have forgotten this detail and equips Lucy with one "sole necklace" (ch. 29) of which the clasp is then detached for Paul Emanuel's chatelaine. 39 T. Crofton Croker, Catalogue of a Collection of Ancient and Medixval Kings and Personal Ornaments Formed for Lady Londesborough (London: privately printed, 1853), p. VII. A further contrast is implied in Croker's eulogium, the contrast between wedding-ring and diamonds. One of the functions and properties the diamond possesses in Victorian fiction is to epitomise the age's materialist values and its revulsion from them. T o quote from William Drennan's encomium of the wedding-ring, written early in the century: "Connubial life disdains a fragile toy,/ Which rust can tarnish, or a touch destroy,/ Nor much admires, what courts the gen'ral gaze,/ The dazzling diamond's meretricious blaze,/ That hides, with glare, the anguish of a heart/ By nature hard, tho' polish'd bright — by art." The poem, printed in Fugitive Pieces, in Verse and Prose (Belfast: F. D. Finlay, 1815), p. 117, proves its Victorian popularity by being — with slight alterations — reprinted both by Charles Edwards, The History and Poetry of Finger-Rings (New York: Redfield, 1855), pp. 232 f., and William Jones, Finger-Ring-Lore (London: Charto & Windus), 1877, p. 277, the latter resigning it to anonymity. Edith Dombey with her fettering real diamonds and Laura Bell, who has "such a sparkling and brilliant Koh-i-noor in her bosom, as is even more precious than that famous jewel" (Pendennis, ch. 66), may be taken as the personifications of this contrast in the Victorian novel.

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ture of the ornament itself conveys, by mere description, dignity and pathos. It is, therefore, especially suited to suffering woman- or widowhood and evokes pity and reverence, whether applied to Mrs. Osborne Hamley in Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, whence the quotation above is taken (ch. 53), to Dorothea Casaubon, who welcomes Will Ladislaw dressed in "some thin woollen-white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring" (ch. 37), or to Gwendolen Grandcourt, whose hands were "now unladen of all rings except her weddingring" (ch. 65). The sympathy of the reader is raised and, at the same time, the moral status of the wearer is expressed by the emblematic nature of the object. Still, if even the wedding-ring was not exempt from Puritan attacks,40 other articles of beautification could not expect to fare better. In Thackeray's The Great Hoggarty Diamond objections are raised against a single diamond-pin. Mr. Brough, director of the air-born and air-supported West Diddlesex Assurance Office, expects a Quaker and Dissenter party and cautions the possessor of the titular piece of jewellery "to leave your diamond-pin upstairs; our friends to-day don't like such gewgaws; and though, for my part, I am no enemy to harmless ornaments, yet I would not shock the feelings of those who have sterner opinions." (ch. 7) In two other novels, this moral and social problem is accorded more extensive treatment. In Mrs. Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks "a beautiful set of emeralds"41 sparks off the discussion. It is a wedding-present from someone who has done serious wrong to the bride in the past and wants to atone. Yet it is not only pique which is expressed by the reaction of the bridegroom, an Archdeacon, but something more basic: He put them away from him severely, and did not condescend to throw a second glance at their deceitful splendour. 'Women are curiously constituted,' said Mr. Beverley . . . 'I suppose those sort of things give them pleasure — things which neither satisfy the body nor delight the soul.'

And, egged on by a piece of impertinence on the part of the heroine, he continues his polemics:

They were certainly directed more against the Popish connotations than the ornamental function. The seventeenth-century Puritan attacks on the wedding-ring, still smouldering in Victorian times, do not seem to have left any traces in Victorian fiction.

Cf. Oman, pp. 35-7. All the following quotations from Mrs. Oliphant's novel are taken from chapter 34.

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I p r e f e r the w e l f a r e of m y fellow-creatures to a f e w glittering stones . . . J e w e l l e r y is a r o b b e r y in a g r e a t town where there is always s o much t o be d o n e , and s o little means of doing it, to secure health to the people, and education —

The Archdeacon has put the Puritan's and the utilitarian's view against jewellery in a nut-shell. The splendour of the emerald is deceitful because it directs the thought towards earthly things instead of heavenwards. It also diverts the mind from the misery of one's fellows in rating luxury and pleasure much higher than utility and improvement. That the Archdeacon, in the context of the novel, is easily set at nought by Lucilla Marjoribanks — he himself wears a ring with a "beautiful diamond" and does not practise what he preaches — does not invalidate his argument. One side of the case is forcefully put by him, but the other side finds no able exponent in Mrs. Oliphant's novel. The discrediting of the Archdeacon with the help of the discrepancy between theory and practice appears to be much too glib and easy. We shall have to wait till the opening scene of George Eliot's Middlemarch to find a truly multi-faceted treatment of the problem. 42 But as early as her first full-length novel George Eliot deals with the moral problem of the wearing of jewellery. 43 Even if the time depicted in Adam Bede precedes the Victorian era by some four decades, the novel's matter undoubtedly mirrors its contemporary situation. The attitudes towards jewellery, prevalent throughout early and mid-Victorian times, are here divided among three characters: the love of earthly vanities, the egoistic, narcissistic self-indulgence belong to Hetty Sorrel (and are ironically underlined by Bess Cranage's behaviour); the utilitarian view is

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The opening scene in Middlemarch, the dividing up of their mother's jewels by the sisters, looks like a direct answer to Mrs. Oliphant, and indeed both novels have much in common: the prominence given to emerald; the disdain which does not appear to care for such trinkets; a religious, Puritanic attitude; the awareness of the existence of much misery beside or even as the basis of such luxury; the conflict between a theoretic and a pragmatic attitude; the overthrow of the theoretic, Puritan side. Whether George Eliot knew Mrs. Oliphant's novel cannot be ascertained. But she read and liked The Rector, the first of the novels in the series of the Chronicles of Carlingford, to which Miss Marjoribanks also belongs. Cf. The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight, VIII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 292. Without referring to the historical context, an illuminating, if one-sided discussion of the thematic and symbolic functions of jewellery in Adam Bede can be found in Zimmerman, 213-5.

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stoutly championed by Mrs. Poyser, who is of nothing "less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility" (ch. 6); the religious aversion to precious trifles is represented by Dinah Morris's Methodism and, in her preaching, rises to outright denunciation, Bess Cranage being the victim: Y o u think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never think of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. . . . Ah! tear off those follies! cast them away from you, as if they were stinging adders. T h e y are stinging you — they are poisoning your soul — they are dragging you down into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for ever, and for ever, and for ever, further away from light and God. (ch. 2)

For this denunciation George Eliot has prepared the ground by withholding from both Bess Cranage and Hetty Sorrel any moral, social or aesthetic justification for adorning themselves. Moral approval becomes impossible as both possess, in the Eden-like natural environment of Hayslope, the one piece of jewellery which can only be worn by violating natural man (or rather woman). Quite appropriately, therefore, Hetty is vehemently scolded by Mrs. Poyser " f o r having her ears bored" (ch. 15). 44 Moreover, both transgress against social etiquette, as this is also the one piece of jewellery which neither middle-class propriety nor aristocratic elegance would ever use singly without at least a matching brooch or bracelet. 45 Finally, aesthetic misdemeanour is added to the moral and social as both Bess's and Hetty's ear-rings are rather large and of very cheap material, the one " a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets in them" (ch. 2), the other being "but coloured glass and gilding" (ch. 15): unnaturalness, vulgarity, and vain pretension are equally stressed. Even so Dinah's denunciation of Bess appears to be rather stri-

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This is a traditional complaint, occurring, for instance, in Philip Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1584). In his chapter on the abuses of female apparel, Stubbes condemns jewellery wholesale, but singles out those "dissolute minions" who "are not ashamed to make holes in their eares, wherat they hang rings, and other Iewels of gold and precious stones." Even the "factory girls" in Disraeli's Sybil wear, if somewhat ill-matched, "coralnecklaces and ear-rings of gold" (bk. II, ch. 9). Also, the rather young girl in David Wilkie's painting of 1834, "The First Earrings", who has her ears bored, is already adorned with a quite heavy gold bracelet. Yet all these transgress against a precept formulated by Mrs. Walker who pontificates that ear-rings "should never be worn by the young" (p. 393).

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dent. The reason for this seems to be that all three attitudes towards jewellery represented in Adam Bede, Hetty's, Mrs. Poyser's, and Dinah's, although each limiting the others and appearing, therefore, as limited itself, are one and all quite clear-cut and one-dimensional. No qualm, not the slightest inner stirring, troubles any of the three in regard to the Tightness of her position. For author and reader, jewellery in Adam Bede, especially the ear-rings, serves as a touchstone of moral status. And moral status is unequivocally made clear by it.46 Complexity, richness, the diffuseness of life are sacrificed to clarity, to the economy of art, to the straightforward expression of the main Victorian moral attitudes towards the wearing of jewellery.

Jewellery's considerable potential for characterisation by way of design, fashion, kind, for moral evaluation, and for creating further layers of meaning is augmented if the traditional properties of precious stones, with which jewellery in Victorian times is so richly set, are taken into account. Of course, superstitions have clung to gems in all ages, the Victorian being no exception. These superstitions may be commonplace. Thus when in Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain Alan Ernescliffe presents a "hoop of pearls" to his fiancée as an engagement ring (pt. I, ch. 28), he courts disaster. Sure enough, the pearls turn into tears, and Alan does not return from his sea-voyage. Or, in Wildean fashion, life may imitate art: in the wake of their treatment in Scott's Anne of Geierstein opals were widely believed to be unlucky. Or, as in Lalla Rookh, a recondite meaning may be imposed upon a gem. In his popular verse-romance Moore tells of serpents blinded "when they gaze / Upon the emerald's virgin blaze!" and, in a note, names an Arabian lapidary as his source and authority. Indeed, since antiquity lapidaries have been one of the most important means of collecting and passing on the knowledge of, and lore about, precious stones. This is certainly not the place to outline the his-

S o f a r as jewellery in Adam Bede is concerned, character and object are subordinated to the thematic web and to the clarification of moral laws and values, while the main function of Hetty's locket, and other lockets in Victorian fiction, f o r instance in Wilkie Collins's Basil {pt. II, ch. 5), obviously consists in the furtherance of plot.

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tory of lapidaries up to the Victorian age and, fortunately, there is little need for such a history either, as the editorial and critical work of Joan Evans and others has provided a most solid basis to build upon.47 For our purposes it is, however, important to stress that the tradition of the lapidary did not, as is widely assumed, peter out slowly in the course of the eighteenth century. That in 1860 The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, one of the numerous fashion journals for the middle-classes, can carry an article about French gem-cutters and refer in it to de Boot's famous work, Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia of 1609; that in other fashion journals useful knowledge, historical, scientific, and anecdotal, about precious stones is frequently expounded, 48 surely does not betoken ignorance or disinterest. Had Thomas Moore written a few decades later he need not have gone to an Arabian source. For from the middle of the century onwards a steady stream of books on gems and jewels appears. Commercial advertisement, antiquarian and scientific interest, anecdotal and informative entertainment — all have their part in producing these Victorian versions of lapidaries. 49 A rich mine of information to be delved into is here opened, especially since a number of these works quotes extensively from classical, medieval or Renaissance texts. Marbode's De lapidihus, for instance, most influential of medieval lapidaries,

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C f . especially Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Particularly in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), the title of which is somewhat of a misnomer as the time dealt with includes the 18th century. A concise outline of the essence and development of lapidaries is provided by the introduction to Joan Evans and Paul Studer, Anglo-Norman Lapidaries (Paris: Librarie Ancienne Edouard Champion, 1924), pp. I X - X X . C. Russell, "The Lapidaries of Septmoncel," The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, 17 (1860), 20-4; c f . also F. W. Francis, "Flowers of the Crystal World," The Ladies' Treasury, n. s. 4 (1868), 149-50; B. I., "About Some Rare Jewels," The Ladies' Treasury, n. s. 7 (1869), 14-22. Among the more important studies are Archibald Billing, The Science of Gems, Jewels, Coins, and Medals, Ancient and Modem (London: Bell & Daldy, 1857); de Barrera; C. W. King, Antique Gems: Their Origin, Uses, and Value as Interpreters of Ancient History (London: John Murray, 1860); C. W. King, The Natural History, Ancient and Modem, of Precious Stones and Gems (London: Bell & Daldy, 1865); Edwin W. Streeter, Precious Stones and Gems: Their History and Distinguishing Characteristics (London: Chapman & Hall, 1877); William Jones, History and Mystery of Precious Stones (London: Richard Bentley, 1880).

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is translated in 1860 by C. W. King into rhymed couplets, 50 and extracts from the Pseudo-Orphic Lithica or de Boot's treatise are printed by King, de Barrera and others and are in this way made available to the Victorian writer and reader. From these lapidaries a plethora of facts about the historically ascribed virtues of precious stones could be drawn. Still, an air of erudition veils these bits of factual knowledge, appealing foremost to the archeological or antiquarian interests of Victorian readers and novelists. That, as will be seen in more detail later, it is George Eliot, most intellectual and learned of all Victorian novelists, who makes extensive use of this information from Romola onwards, best illustrates the situation. 51 But it is not in the transmission of such factual details that the main importance of these Victorian versions of lapidaries seems to have lain. Of more importance for the history of ideas and for the novelists' usage of precious stones is the mode of thinking which informs lapidaries. It is a mode which is analogical or allegorical in structure and relies on a world of correspondences or on a universe in which all phenomena are but traces, hieroglyphs of a higher meaning, a meaning which subtle exegesis can decipher. To the lapidarian tradition Jewish symbolism and Christian allegory, besides ancient medicine and magic, have all equally made their contribution, the two descriptions of Aaron the High-Priest's breast plate in Exodus (28, 15-21) with its twelve gems corresponding to the tribes of Israel and of the foundations of the Heavenly City in Revelation (21, 18-20) built, again, of twelve precious stones, being the loci classici to be expounded in specific Christian lapidaries. As befits analogical thinking the whole cosmos can be arranged in correspondences: to each of the precious stones a planet, a sign of the zodiac, an order of angels, an Apostle, a month, a metal, a herb, is then related. As befits allegorical ingenuity an edifice of further meanings can be erected on each gem. Moreover, allegorical thinking about precious stones is derived from the prophet Malachi's much quoted metaphor of man as God's jewel (3, 17). This is

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John M. Riddle in his modern edition of Marbode reprints King's translation: Sudhoffs Archiv: Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 20 (1977). This does not mean that nobody else drew on lapidaries. A poem like L. E. Landon's "The Emerald Ring: A Superstition" — "It is a gem which hath the power to show / If plighted lovers keep their faith or no: / If faithful, it is like the leaves of spring; / If faithless, like those leaves when withering." — is surely based on gem-lore, transmitted by lapidaries.

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the unquestionable Biblical authority for relating man to gem, for characterising man with the help of gems, and for considering his (moral) value in terms of jewellery. In brief: those versions of gem-lore published from the fifties onwards contributed not inconsiderably to that typological and allegorical mode of thought and expression which, as recent research begins to show ever more clearly,52 pervaded the Victorian age and counterbalanced and qualified the age's tendency towards realism. Other factors lent weight to this allegorising habit: the precisely defined colour-scheme the Victorian lady had to pay strict attention to when choosing the dress appropriate for the occasion also acquired moral and symbolic value and necessarily attached itself as well to the jewellery worn. Under these circumstances, indeed, "it is easy to imagine the sapphire's celestial blue an emblem of purity and love, and the ruby's crimson an expression of triumphant valour and pride." 53 How widespread this typological, symbolical, allegorical modification of realistic tendencies had become, and how important Biblical modes of thought and expression had been to achieve this modification, can be seen in the two lectures John Ruskin gave in 1876 under the revealing title "And the Gold of that Land is Good: There is Bdellium and the Onyx Stones." 54 In them Ruskin analyses the symbolical values of colours, especially in heraldry, and of precious stones. For our present purpose, the details of this analysis are of less importance than the fact of symbolisation itself. Finally, it can be added that jewellery itself betrays tendencies towards allegorisation early in the Victorian age.55 Fede-rings, consisting of clasped hands, rose once again in popularity as did rings with hands holding a heart, or those of intertwined or crowned hearts. Ornaments decorated with cross, anchor, and heart, the emblems of faith, hope, and charity, abound. Moreover, an alphabet of precious stones was invented to convey messages, such as 'love', 'regard', or 'dearest'. 'Regard', probably the best-known example of this harlequin jewellery, is spelt iiuby, .Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, i?uby, Diamond.

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Cf. as one of the most recent studies G. P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). 53 Blanc, p. 233. 5« Reprinted in The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, XXVI (London: George Allen, 1906), 165-96. ss Cf. Hinks, p. 37.

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Whether emblem, allegory or symbol — deciphering becomes an activity necessary for the right understanding of gems and jewellery early in Victorian times. And yet the lapidaries' influence on Victorian literature can only rarely be identified by chapter and verse. It seems rather to have worked by indirection, by permeating the general climate of ideas. After the foregoing, the reasons for this ought to be obvious: on the one hand, the use of factual detail might smack, like Thomas Moore's reference, of nothing but erudition and may therefore be neither easily available nor acceptable to writer or reader; on the other, the possibility of allegorical interpretation belongs, in the Victorian novel at least, more often than not to the tone, to the atmosphere of the work, rather than to its readily surveyed surface. Here as elsewhere the potential of explicability inherent in an allegorical mode of thought and writing does not ensure that the individual work can for certain be explicated according to formula. A brief interpretation of three works may illustrate both this problem and Victorian ways of coping with it, both the kind of influence lapidaries exerted and the range of typological thought pervading the nineteenth century. Least easily expounded are descriptions of the type represented by that of Madame Max Goesler's jewellery. As Trollope describes her in chapter 40 of Phineas Finn, Madame Max Goesler, in addition to a dress which "was unlike the dress of other women", is richly adorned with " a short chain of Roman gold with a ruby pendant. And she had rubies in her ears, and a ruby brooch, and rubies in the bracelets on her arms." Within a couple of lines Trollope tells his reader four times that Madame's parure consists of rubies. The insistent repetition demands the reader's attention. By it something more seems to be implied than the characterisation of Madame Goesler as a very wealthy woman. Yet it is difficult to say exactly of what the something more consists. The striking contrast between the red of the rubies and Madame's "dark complexion" emphasises the colour of the gem still further as carrying hidden meaning, and Charles Blanc's description, though later in date, making of "the ruby's crimson an expression of triumphant valour and pride" would not badly suit Madame Max Goesler's character and behaviour in this Palliser novel of Trollope's. But no certainty as to the exact meaning of the rubies can be attained, no definite clue is provided. Allegorising tendencies are more clearly at work in Dickens's Dombey.and Son. In chapter 47, headed " T h e Thunderbolt", the latent tension between Mr. Dombey and his wife, Edith, becomes manifest and re-

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suits in Edith Dombey's open defiance of her husband. Her jewellery foreshadows the consequences: She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled. There are fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer being in danger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light would have taken flight that moment, and they would have been as dull as lead.

And Dickens intensifies his meaning by repetition: The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair, flashed and glittered like a starry bridge. There was no warning in them, or they would have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honour.

It is undoubtedly traditional gem-lore which Dickens here actualises. To portend evil by discolouring or even to attract the threatening evil to itself is a virtue which is, in lapidaries, ascribed to not a few precious stones. Thus Edith's diamonds function as the omens of her future lot. But this is not the only function diamonds possess in Dickens's novel, the description here, as well as the context of the whole novel, helps to unfold further meanings. First, the trembling of the diamonds provides a clue to the design of Edith's piece of jewellery. It is a tiara which is assembled with the help of springs, of 'tremblers', one of the most costly designs and therefore fit for the wife of Mr. Dombey. Then, quite appropriately, diamonds represent the materialist values of Mr. Dombey's society, values which, like the jewellery itself, fetter Edith in the accepted Victorian fashion.56 Moreover, they are emblems of artificiality and unnaturalness when worn by Edith's mother, Mrs. Skewton (ch. 21, 37). And finally, jewellery and precious stones are contrasted with the simple, natural young love of Florence and Walter Gay (ch. 57). All this adds up to a morality-like allegory with diamonds cast as the villains of the piece. In this way, the context of the whole novel makes plain their thematic values and the possibility of allegorising them. Yet Dickens's explicit reference — "There are fables of precious stones" — and his implied meaning — " . . . dim as tarnished honour" — prove that he did not completely trust the reader to grasp the allegorical intention without some unmistakable hint.

"The very diamonds — a marriage gift — that rose and fell impatiently upon her bosom, seemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round her neck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them." (ch. 40)

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That Dombey and Son was written at the same time as the first Victorian books on gem-lore probably explains Dickens's reluctance to leave the whole task of allegorical explanation to his reader. And, of course, this allegory is but a minor strand in the poetic realism of Dombey and Son. How far Victorian allegory of gems can be carried is demonstrated in a religious tract written by the prolific Charlotte Tucker and published pseudonymously (A.L.O.E.) in 1868. The title is programmatic: Living Jewels. Diversities of Christian Character Suggested by Precious Stones, With Biographical Examples. Malachi and his metaphor of man as God's jewel is the basis on which the allegory is built. Twelve gems, the number of the precious stones in Aaron's breastplate, are one by one typologically interpreted. Though her examples are taken "from the Scriptures and from biography" (p. 9) no authorities, Biblical, Christian, lapidarían or otherwise, are used by Charlotte Tucker for connecting gem and man. What guides her choice is the endeavour, first, to enumerate "types of different kinds of Christians" (p. 16), and then, to "awaken your sympathy and interest in regard to others", be it the lowliest of sinners "of mean origin, humble position, or wretched appearance" (p. 5). The latter intent is of the utmost importance as even the most wretched "may enclose a priceless gem." (p. 5) The arbitrariness, inherent in any allegory not grounded on an entire universe of correspondences, can be illustrated by outlining one of her examples. With regard to George Eliot's Middlemarch,571 choose Charlotte Tucker's exegesis of the emerald. The quality of the emerald, according to the authoress's choice, is the emblem of its "active usefulness"; the Biblical type of this virtue is Persis (Ro. 16, 12), its contemporary embodiment Amalie Sieveking and every nameless worker who does "the work appointed for you to do" (p. 42.) More allegorico, one can, without much difficulty, construct resemblances between the qualities of the gem and of those of whom it is the emblem. The one stressed in the tract is that the emerald is "a fit emblem of those whose As in the case of Mrs. Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks no source-hunting is here intended and no direct indebtedness of George Eliot's can be definitely ascertained. But much in the tract might have appealed to her: the necessity of sympathy and regard for all "fellow-mortals", even the most wretched (p. 5); the emphasis on everyday virtues; the high esteem in which Amalie Sieveking or Mme. Guyon are held, with whose lives George Eliot was well acquainted; the Victorian gospel of work. Then, there is, of course, the allegorical interpretation of the emerald. And, in case allegory has to be applied to Middlemarch, could there be a better name for Dorothea than "Active Usefulness"?

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lives are especially devoted to labours of love for others, as it wears the soft verdant hue of the earth which they bless." (p. 35) Whether one considers this far-fetched or not, and there are certainly lapidarían traditions justifying such an ascription, Charlotte Tucker's work is an instance of the Victorian tendency towards the allegorising of precious stones, and of the freedom with which allegorical meanings could be selected and imposed. The didactic nature of her work excludes any ambiguities within her allegory. In the world of Victorian fiction, however, the allegory of gems must needs be less direct, less wilfully imposed.

It is in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda that mid-Victorian attitudes towards gems and jewellery are most richly and subtly mirrored. Quantitatively occupying only a minor place within George Eliot's concretely realised world of things, jewellery nevertheless acquires functions of central importance for plot, theme, characterisation, and moral evaluation. The process by which such significance is imposed, the problems this imposition involves, are highly characteristic of George Eliot's artistic methods. A wide range of background information, comprising mythological, Biblical, historical, sociological and aesthetic details, is amassed first, then carefully filtered and thoroughly adapted to "the flow of real and ordinary life" 58 the novels portray. Erudition is worked by allusion into a thematic web; the reader, for once, is asked to respond to the text's connotations, not to a commentator's guidance. Only a full study of both novels, tracing in detail and at length all the nice nuances of George Eliot's use of gems and jewellery, could do justice to this complexity. T o illustrate it at least in part, concentration is inevitable. The division scene and Dorothea's emeralds in Middlemarch and Gwendolen's turquoise necklace in Daniel Deronda are chosen here for closer analysis, tentative hints being thrown out to suggest the wider significances beyond. With the discussion between the two sisters about how to divide their mother's jewels George Eliot returns to the problem already treated in 58

Barbara Hardy's apt phrase for the scene in which the jewellery is divided up (ch. 1); The Novels of George Eliot:A Study in Form (London: Athlone Press, 1959), p. 186.

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Adam Bede, the problem of the moral propriety of wearing jewellery, the problem of the social justification of luxury in a world of misery and poverty. In Dorothea, Dinah Morris's vehement denunciation and asceticism have given place to — an almost oxymoronic — "Puritanic toleration", a phrase which ironically undercuts the heroine's professed moral revulsion and prepares the way for the sensuous attraction to follow. That it is " a pearl cross with five brilliants in it" which produces Dorothea's moral shudders — " 'A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket.' Dorothea shuddered slightly." — explains her revulsion as religiously motivated at the same time as it defines hers as a special case socially. For crosses, especially those of pearls, were ubiquitous at the end of the eighteen-twenties and the beginning of the thirties; moreover, they were highly fashionable, the one piece of jewellery almost de rigueur for young, unmarried ladies. 59 But as with Quaker-like dress and ardent behaviour, so with jewellery: social convention does not fit the complexion of Dorothea's soul. Yet religious objections are not the only ones raised by Dorothea; Celia's pragmatic argument, aiming at social conformity, thus partly misses its target. Necklaces, Celia somewhat petulantly argues, "are quite usual now; and Madame Poinçon, who was stricter in some things even than you are, used to wear ornaments. And Christians generally — surely there are women in heaven now who wore jewels." Celia's appeal to authority and convention provides no answer to Dorothea's social qualms, her deep-seated unease about the existence of "miserable men" who produce such luxuries as gems and jewellery. As Dorothea takes up the Archdeacon's argument from Mrs. Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks, no easy answer is possible; for Dorothea lives what she professes, being "bent on finishing a plan for some buildings" for her uncle's poor tenants, when Celia interrupts, wishing to divide the jewels. Moreover, Dorothea's objections possess nothing of the stridency of Dinah Morris's, nothing of the simple-mindedness or one-dimensionality of Mrs. Poyser's or the Archdeacon's. She recognises the individual case, even if, in the beginning of her development, this toleration smacks of moral arrogance, is "Puritanic" as her stance has neither been tested nor belongs ineradicably to her inner experience. Her experience of Rome and, above all, Will Ladislaw's aesthetic teaching will help her later to strike a

59

Cf. C. Willett and Phyllis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century, 3rd ed. (London: Faber & Faber, 1970), pp. 399, 419; cf. also "the gentle widow's little cross" which passes to and characterises Laura Bell in Pendennis (ch. 66).

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balance between "this immense expense of art" (ch. 22) and social necessity.60 George Eliot's method of presentation blurs the conventional distinctions between moral or social right and wrong further. In stark contrast to Adam Bede or Miss Marjoribanks there exist no simple, clear-cut attitudes in Middlemarch, those of Celia being redeemed from utter flatness by her similarities with, and partial understanding of, her sister. In the absence of simple attitudes neither the personification of theses nor their unmediated exchange through dialogue is aesthetically possible. Instead, both Dorothea's and Celia's attitudes are embedded in ordinary life, allusions and hints are taken up and dropped, configuration and gesture finally taking the place of verbal argument. With the help of the emeralds, 61 the pieces Dorothea decides to keep against her sister's and the reader's superficial expectations, George Eliot not only complicates these perplexities of Dorothea's character and of moral evaluation, but also uses (Victorian) gem-lore in a characteristically subtle way. Much in this little episode in chapter 1 can be traced back to George Eliot's reading and to gem-lore in general, 62 yet the whole assemblage has other effects and functions than those Romolan ones of learnedly authenticating a past world. The light passing over the gems and making them gleam brightly may owe something to those miraculous emeralds the lapidaries tell of, which illuminate even the darkest night, 63 and Dorothea's longing "to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure colour" is very likely indebt-

60

"

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63

Cf. Joseph Wiesenfarth, "Middlemarch: The Language of Art," PMLA, 97 (1982), 363-77, who also touches on the opening scene and the jewels' thematic significance. The diamonds, used for setting the emerald-ring which catches Dorothea's attention, seem to acquire no further significance and are not alluded to again. But in using diamonds as a setting for emerald jewellery George Eliot is historically quite correct (if that which is so common with her needs annotation). In the introduction to his edition of the Notebooks, Joseph Wiesenfarth has pointed out two instances of George Eliot's indebtedness to C. W. King's lapidary: Dorothea's need for religious justification and her shortsightedness can both be related to the emerald; cf. George Eliot: A Writer's Notebook 1854-1879 and Uncollected Writing (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981), p. X X X V . This is again dealt with in Wiesenfarth's essay "Antique Gems from Romola to Daniel Deronda," in: George Eliot: A Centenary Tribute, ed. G. S. Haight and Rosemary T. VanArsdel (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 59f. Cf. King, Natural History, pp. 318-20.

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ed to the well-attested medicinal powers of this precious stone.64 But learning sits lightly on these passages, adding a historic dimension for the initiated. Of more importance is the integration of the emerald's medicinal power into a thematic pattern relating it to Dorothea's physical and spiritual myopia. For this emblematic use the appropriate context is very carefully, if briefly, defined by George Eliot. If, on the one hand, Dorothea's rationalising her sudden sensuous attraction by reference to Scripture demonstrates the unresolved tensions within her character and proves her earlier moral rebuke of her sister both premature and immature, it, on the other, opens vistas of typological or allegorical interpretation, such as, in Christian lapidaries, traditionally belonged to the gems of Revelation. Twice Dorothea lays the ground for such exegesis. First, there is her explicit reference to Revelation and its gems as "spiritual emblems", which, then, her description of them as "fragments of heaven" endorses. This description implies a world of correspondences; it views earthly things as ciphers or hieroglyphs, imbued with divine meaning (a view John Ruskin will take up a few years later in his London Institution lectures of 187665), and stimulates the reader to look for hidden, allegorical significances. Moreover, that Dorothea straightway associates the emerald with Revelation may perhaps be considered as a reference to this elaborate system of correspondences, the emerald being traditionally the mineral attributed to St. John, 66 the author of Revelation. But if an emblematic, an allegorical interpretation is suggested, if the emerald is Dorothea's gem, what then does it signify emblematically, allegorically? A wide range of traditional meanings was available to George Eliot through gem-lore. These meanings include the interpretation of the emerald in the ring Pope Innocence sent to King John in which "the green colour of the emerald denotes faith" 67 , as well as that of

64

« 66

67

Cf. note 62 above. Yet a residue of doubt remains, as the power to refresh wearied or weak eyes is, according to ancient or medieval lapidaries, the one almost any gem possesses; cf. F. de Mély, "Les Cachets d'oculistes & les lapidaires de l'antiquité et du haut moyen âge," Revue de Philologie, 16 (1892), 81-95. Works, X X V I , 193. A Victorian list relating the Apostles to their corresponding precious stones is printed by E. W. Streeter, pp. 19f. The Pope's letter has been reported by Matthew Paris. The incident is, among other Victorian lapidaries, quoted in de Barrera, p. 351.

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the one in Napoleon's coronation ring, intended as an "emblème de la révélation divine" 68 . Other lapidaries interpret the emerald as an "emblem of hope" 69 , and John Ruskin relates vert, the heraldic colour, to that of the gem as "the colour of the green rod in budding spring; the noble life of youth, born in the spirit."70 The considerable range of historical interpretations makes plain the arbitrariness of allegorical modes of thinking. But the one interpretation George Eliot most certainly knew and which best fits Dorothea's character and behaviour is that from Marbode's eleventh-century lapidary, reprinted by King in 1860, from which George Eliot copiously extracted. Marbode's lapidary is exclusively dedicated to the gems of Revelation, another link with Dorothea's associations. In rather mediocre verse Marbode sets forth the emerald's meaning: S m a r a g d u s virens n i m i u m D a t lumen oleaginum; Est fides integerrima, A d o m n e b o n u m patula, Q u a e n u n q u a m scit d e f i c e r e A pietatis opere.

This seems, as far as content is concerned, not a bad abstraction of the essence of Dorothea's character. Purest, if myopically misled, faith in Casaubon, in Lydgate, in Will Ladislaw, belongs to her; she is ever ready to do opera pietatis, to help the wretched, be they her uncle's tenants or the despairing Lydgate. Marbode's emerald fits Dorothea and adds to her the dimensions of an allegorical figure, the figure of Active Usefulness, to use the moral quality Charlotte Tucker had ascribed to the emerald in 1868, only a short time before George Eliot thought and wrote of Miss Brooke. Of course, this does not transform Middlemarch into a full-fledged allegory, 71 nor has my analysis in any way exhausted the meanings and

68

Quoted in Anne Ward et al., The Ring from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), p. 96. 69 This is an ascription from a seventeenth-century lapidary quoted in Jones, History and Mystery, p. 98. ™ Works, X X V I , 184. 71 As could be seen by applying the same methods to Celia's or Rosamond's amethysts. Even if the best known medicinal power of the gem, that of preventing inebriation, could possibly be used to characterise those two models of sober propriety, neith-

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functions of jewellery in the novel: Celia's and Rosamond's amethysts, Harriet Bulstrode stripping herself of all ornament in silent forgiving solidarity, women's ornamental role in society, the discussion about the nature and utility of art — these are but a few of the problems which a comprehensive analysis would have to consider. My more modest purpose has been to demonstrate the plurality of meanings and functions seemingly minor objects possess in Middlemarch and, moreover, to indicate how George Eliot's realism is qualified, indeed widened, to include typological or allegorical layers of meaning. Obviously, such allegorical significances become but intermittently visible in the novel and even then they are never fully or extensively explicated. Here, as elsewhere, George Eliot works by indirection and by implication, embedding her complexity in scenes of ordinary life, refracting a prismatic richness of meaning through a single object, say, a gem.72

Gwendolen's turquoise necklace provides another instance of this allusive art. With it, even more so than in the case of Dorothea's emeralds, this allusiveness tends to elude the critic's attempt at precision, at attaching concise meaning. Still, I shall argue that an aura of further meaning — beyond the fairly obvious symbolic significance and function — hovers over Gwendolen's turquoises whenever they are used. The informed Victorian reader could have brought these associations to his understanding of the novel by his knowledge of the superstitions, fashions, and styles of gems and jewellery. If actualised, these associations throw light both on the kind of world George Eliot portrays and on her methods of portraying it. Yet such associations are like cobwebs in structure and effect, clinging tenaciously to their source if once conjured up, but vanishing gossamerlike into thin air if neither prior knowledge nor historically based information substantiates them. I shall here attempt to supply the

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er Marbode's typological interpretation of the amethyst ("praetendit cor humilium") nor that of Charlotte Tucker ("Uprightness") could, even by the most strained ingenuity, be made plausible as fitting either Celia or Rosamond. For further examples and a fuller discussion see chapter 8 of Barbara Hardy's Particularities.

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latter, namely the knowledge of gems and jewellery at the informed Victorian reader's or, indeed, George Eliot's command. This is knowledge which functions as a reservoir of potential meanings. It is the novel itself which sets the reader on the path to look for such background knowledge now lost. Like Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda provokes a legitimate search for latent meaning and potential connotation through explicit pointers. "That streak of superstition" of Gwendolen's in chapter 24 and her "superstitious dread" five chapters later are both closely related to the turquoise necklace and to Deronda, its redeemer. Gwendolen's superstitions direct the reader to inquire after the superstitions traditionally clinging to the turquoise. Other matter, too, incites the reader's curiosity and speculation. Thus, Grandcourt is not the only one to view the curious fashion with which Gwendolen turns her necklace into a bracelet as "telegraphing" (ch. 36). What kind of associations did such adaptation evoke? Finally, there are the alterations which were worked into the Cabinet Edition by George Eliot, making Gwendolen in chapter 2, in contrast to the manuscript and to the earlier editions, not 'pawn' but 'part with' the necklace, Deronda not 'redeem' but 'repurchase' it.73 They demonstrate G'eorge Eliot's conscious artistry and ask the reason why. Which are the superstitions, what is telegraphed, why are turquoises the means of conveyance, why is the text revised? These are questions for the answering of which I shall draw on the Victorian connotations belonging to turquoises and the fashion of the necklace. In his edition of the Notebooks, Joseph Wiesenfarth has drawn attention to one quality the turquoise had been widely credited with in medieval lapidaries, and about which George Eliot knew from her reading of C. W. King's works: its utility for riders.74 This is a quality which connects with Gwendolen's love of riding and with the novel's persistent equestrian imagery. It is used throughout to express the relationship between Grandcourt and Gwendolen and the brutal 'maystrye' Grandcourt achieves and exerts. Yet this equestrian usefulness comprises only a small part of the turquoise's traditional significance in and outside the novel.

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Hardy, Particularities, p. 160, n. 4, draws attention to the fact without much further comment on it. Cf. George Eliot: A Writer's Notebook, p. X X X V I . Again King is the likeliest source. "Turquoisé', as he transcribes medieval lapidarían tradition, "is useful for riders. As long as one wears it his horse will not tire, nor throw him." (Antique Gems, p. 427)

Plate 1

Two eye-miniatures (English, about 1800) (By courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Plate 2

Mourning-ring (English, 1782) (Privately owned; photograph by Bärbel Arldt, Cologne)

Cut-steel jewellery (English, mid-Victorian) (Privately owned)

Plate 4

Serpent jewellery (English, Victorian) (By courtesy of Cameo Corner)

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The turquoise's talismanic power, evident here, extends much further. It is, in John Donne's words from "An Anatomy of the World", "a compassionate Turcoyse which doth tell / By looking pale, the wearer is not well" and attracts to itself or wards off evil. This protective, talismanic force surely is one of the main reasons for the high esteem turquoise jewellery enjoyed throughout the Victorian age and its plentiful production: pavé settings were preferred, since, by increasing the numbers, they multiplied the gem's virtues. 75 It seems unlikely that such associations of protective, talismanic power do not hover over the scene in which Gwendolen decides to offer all her few pieces of jewellery except the necklace for sale to supplement her mother's slender income (ch. 24). It becomes more unlikely when one takes into account that the turquoise's talismanic power asserts itself most intensely in love relations. "Thou giv'st th'assurance dear that love is true", an unnamed contemporary poet apostrophises the gem. 76 Furthermore, King in all his works describes the turquoise as the German gage d'amour,77 and Leubronn, where Gwendolen receives the turquoises from Deronda, is a German spa. The reasons why George Eliot chose turquoises as emblems of the relationship between Gwendolen and Deronda ought now to become clearer. For this relationship, right from the beginning, is tinged with an erotic element. Deronda is conscious that "in the movement which had led him to repurchase Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at work in him still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervour — something due to the fascination of her womanhood." (ch. 28) Gwendolen's speculations — " H e must have felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my necklace. I wonder what he thinks of my marriage?" (ch. 29) — combine significantly Deronda's attitude towards herself with necklace and marriage. And for Sir H u g o there exists no doubt whatsoever about the "passionate attachment" linking Gwendolen with Deronda (ch. 64). Of course, Sir Hugo's view is superficial. So would be an interpretation of the relation between both protagonists merely in terms of smouldering passion. But it seems as one-sided to emphasise nothing but the educative, the spiritual process, as so much recent criticism has done. Thanks

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76 77

A fine selection of Victorian turquoise jewellery is shown on the frontispiece of the catalogue Juwelen, ed. H. Rothmuller (Munich: Battenberg, 1978). Quoted in Jones, Finger-Ring Lore, p. 160. Cf. Antique Gems, p. 59; The Natural History of Gems or Decorative Stones (London: Bell & Daldy, 1867), p. 67.

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to their traditional properties the turquoises in Daniel Deronda express and emblematise the lurking element of love, passionate and spiritual, in the relationship of Gwendolen and Deronda. Again, George Eliot achieves much by implication, by evoking associations traditionally belonging to a gem. George Eliot's textual revision of the necklace's fate supports this view. The original version of manuscript and earlier editions in which Gwendolen, after her gambling in Leubronn, pawns the necklace and Deronda redeems it suits Deronda the saviour, the Deronda who is later brilliantly set and seen against a golden sky so well that the effect of the textual changes seems to tend towards the prosaic and produces an anticlimax. Why is 'pawn' replaced by 'part with', 'redeem' by 'repurchase'?78 To tone down Deronda's redemptory function? In view of Mordecai's idealising visions of Deronda such reluctance seems alien to George Eliot's general intention. In view of her intimate knowledge of lapidarían lore another explanation can be suggested. For the talismanic power of the turquoise, its character as a love-token, does not, according to the Victorian exegists of gem-lore, belong to each and every gem. "The turkois", writes Madame de Barrera, "protects, by drawing upon itself the evil that threatens its wearer; but this property belongs only to the turkois that has been given, not to a purchased one." 79 And E. Streeter in 1877 elaborates the point claiming for the turquoise that few stones had such wonderful gifts and virtues attributed to them as this had. But to realise these advantages, it was a necessary condition that the stone should have been received as a gift. Even to this day, in the north-east, there is a proverb, 'That a Turquoise given by a loving hand carries with it happiness and good fortune.'80

Here, I suggest, is a plausible reason for George Eliot's textual revision. The gift, in the form of a repurchase of the turquoise necklace, carries overtones of being both a talismanic charm and a love-token. Traditional — lapidarían and folkloristic — thinking justifies this interpreta78

"

This happens in chapters 2 and 28. But revising chapter 15 George Eliot nodded and, in the Cabinet Edition, left the "necklace which she had pawned and some one else had redeemed". In chapter 29 Gwendolen thinks of Deronda as "the person who redeemed her necklace", and chapter 65 also speaks of the "monitory redemption of the necklace". p. 248. p. 170.

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tion. The erotic element within Gwendolen's and Deronda's mutual attraction is thus emblematised — and also textually sublimated in the necessary Victorian fashion — by the turquoise. Gwendolen clings to the gem as she realises the talismanic power which belongs to it as a gift. In addition to qualifying this aspect of Gwendolen's relationship to Deronda George Eliot's sure command of gem-lore and her exact knowledge of jewellery fashions enable her to raise associations which make the turquoise necklace also a vehicle of the moral and erotic ambiguities characterising the meetings of her protagonists, especially their first one after the Leubronn incident. 81 The associations contribute to clarifying and cristallising one of the functions of Gwendolen, long recognised by critics, her acting as temptress in Deronda's moral and spiritual education. It is not — as with the Signora Neroni — the style of Gwendolen's necklace which carries this meaning. For having the turquoises which "had belonged to a chain once her father's" (ch. 2) reset in Etruscan style in the sixties Gwendolen is but aesthetically placed as a fashionconscious young lady with 'progressive', artistic tastes. 82 It is Gwendolen's wearing the necklace in obtrusively bracelet-fashion which combines opposite traditions and which Grandcourt quite correctly recognises as "telegraphing". For I suggest that in this incident George Eliot, slightly anachronistically, backdates a fashion of the late seventies, the time of writing Daniel Deronda, to the mid-sixties, the time when the events depicted occur. The fashion of wearing necklaces as bracelets is chronicled for the year 1878. "Ladies", the report runs, "who wear long gloves wear, in addition to the gloves, a bracelet of plain gold, twisted round and round the arm, in serpent fashion, up the elbow. I have counted as many as nine of these serpent coils round an arm." 83 T o adapt a necklace to the wrists is therefore, pace the fashion-writer, a "serpent fashion",

81

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"But she had no sooner spoken than she blushed over face and neck; and Deronda blushed too, conscious that in the little affair of the necklace he had taken a questionable freedom." (ch. 29) In the N e w York society of the seventies that Edith Wharton depicts in The Age of Innocence, it "was usual for ladies who received in the evening . . . to show an Etruscan gold bracelet." (ch. 12) For a firsthand account of the revival of Etruscan style jewellery and problems accompanying this revival see the little booklet by the son of the great jeweller who was most responsible for its promotion: A. Castellani, Antique Jewellery and Its Revival (London : privately printed, 1862). All books listed in note 2 deal more or less extensively with Etruscan jewellery. Quoted in Flower, p. 138.

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"serpent coils" encircling the arm. That serpent necklaces or bracelets in Victorian times quite often were studded with turquoises, 84 the gems Gwendolen's necklace consists of, may perhaps further strengthen the serpentine associations connected with the necklace-bracelet. In any case, such associations fit Gwendolen. They take up and reinforce the impressions she had quite insistently left on the people watching her gambling, right in the novel's first scene. She had been described by them "as a sort of serpent" in an "ensemble du serpent", as the embodiment of "the serpent idea". In both cases, society's commentary and the expressive object, George Eliot's characterisation works by indirection: the task of recognising and evaluating the significance of the "serpent idea", of its appropriateness for describing Gwendolen's character, is left entirely to the reader. However slight or fanciful these serpentine associations may appear to the modern eye, the Victorian reader's alertness to finding hidden messages conveyed by pieces of jewellery must be taken into account. A widespread consciousness of the significances latent in gems and jewellery, of an often hidden semiotic value, existed and was carried on both outside fiction and through it. Beyond the associations evoked by turquoise and serpentine fashion, the very clumsiness and conspicuousness of Gwendolen's necklace-bracelet is bound to activate such a consciousness, to incite the fancy, as it does Grandcourt's. What is it Gwendolen is "telegraphing"? The novel itself supplies a straight answer. The necklace-bracelet is first and foremost, as Deronda rightly infers, Gwendolen's desperate signal "that she had submitted her mind to rebuke" (ch. 36), his rebuke, now as in Leubronn. But to this meaning, made plain by commentary, other associations are added. As I have attempted to show, moral and erotic ambivalences had accrued to the turquoise in Daniel Deronda, both in its function as talismanic charm and love-token. And as analysed earlier, similar ambivalences traditionally belong to serpent-jewellery. Both its diametrically opposed meanings, I suggest, inform, however faintly, the scene. Gwendolen, before talking to Deronda, is "filled with the sense of silent confidence" in him — a version of that constancy the serpent is the symbol of. But what they talk about is "temptations" — and again the serpentine idea is evoked. Signalling her constancy, Gwendolen is, simultaneously, tempting Deronda. What the temptation consists 84

Cf. the description of Mile. Mars's serpent jewellery in de Barrera, pp. 112f., or the colour-plate of the magnificent serpent necklace in Armstrong, p. 97.

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in, Sir Hugo rather crudely suggests at the end of the chapter: " I hope you are not playing with fire, Dan — you understand me." If the scene is viewed within the complex scheme of the whole novel, however, this is, less crudely, a temptation to draw Deronda within Gwendolen's narrow compass, towards individual soul-saving and English society, away from the yet unknown, grand Jewish mission. Admittedly, this is a freight of meaning almost too heavy for such a slight, delicate object as an Etruscan style turquoise necklace. And, certainly, the aura of associations grows increasingly fainter, the nexus between object and significance evoked becomes less and less tangible: the turquoise's utility for riders, its general talismanic power seem well documented, its character as a love-token, if received as a gift, only slightly less so. The serpentine tradition, however, is much more indirectly and briefly realised. But it must be recognised that the ponderousness of explication is, in this case, not George Eliot's; it is almost entirely due to the necessities of critical discourse, its obligation to spell out with circumstantial detail what exists, within the novel's world, but by implication. The novel itself suggests the serpentine meaning but briefly and momentarily. More importantly, all the associations cohere. They all centre on Gwendolen's character and her relation to Deronda. They all speak of moral and erotic ambivalences. They objectify the ambivalences of Gwendolen's own moral education and her function as temptress within Deronda's. And they evoke these rich ambivalences by indirection without the narrator's interference, avoiding the certainty of the plain statement. Again, as with Middlemarch, it is an object, a piece of jewellery, by which this is achieved. And, of course, this piece, the turquoise necklace, is itself part and parcel of a much larger context of gems and jewellery in Daniel Deronda-. the "poisoned" diamonds, the missal clasps to be subverted into a bracelet for Lady Mallinger, Deronda's diamond ring, inherited from his father, Mirah's poor ornaments, the vulgar pieces of the Cohen family — these all complement and modify the meanings and functions of the turquoise necklace and contribute to the infinitely evocative variety of George Eliot's realistic and symbolic world. Jewellery is eminently fitted to evoke it by the wide range of traditional meanings and functions which has grown around it over the centuries.

CARLA

COPENHAVEN

Mastering the Images: Yeats's Byzantium Poems

T h e f o l l o w i n g e p i g r a p h s — w h i c h will eventually g u i d e m e t h r o u g h a disc u s s i o n o f the a r c h i t e c t u r a l principles o f Y e a t s ' s B y z a n t i u m p o e m s — a r e initially i n t e n d e d t o establish the m e t a p h o r i c t e r m i n o l o g i e s a n d e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l t r a d i t i o n f r o m w h i c h m y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n p r o c e e d s . A s shall b e c o m e c l e a r , the views h e r e cited h a v e n o t b e e n a p p r o p r i a t e d at r a n d o m f o r m y o w n p u r p o s e s , b u t r e p r e s e n t a n d e x p l i c a t e the s a m e m e t a p h y s i c a l p e r s p e c tive f r o m w h i c h Y e a t s d e r i v e s his spiritual a n d p o e t i c " s y s t e m " . Plato: As regards the supreme form of soul in us, we must conceive that the g o d has conferred it upon each man as a guiding genius—that which we say dwells in the highest point of our body and lifts us from earth towards our celestial affinity, like a plant whose roots are not in earth, but in the heavens . . . for it is to the heavens, whence the soul first came to birth, that the divine part attaches the head or root of us and thereby keeps the whole body erect. 1 Otto Demus: Byzantine architecture is essentially a 'hanging' architecture; its vaults depend from above without any weight of their own. T h e columns are conceived aesthetically, not as supporting elements, but as descending tentacles or hanging roots . . . This impression is not confined to the modern beholder: it is quite clearly formulated in contemporary Byzantine ekphraseis [descriptions]. T h e architectonic conception of a building developing downwards is in complete accord with the hierarchical way of thought manifested in every sphere of Byzantine life, from the political to the religious, as it is to be met with in the hierarchic conception of the series of images descending from this supreme archetype. 2 Procopius of Caesarea (A.D. 560): T h e upper part of this structure ends in the fourth part of a sphere (sphaira), and above it another crescent-shaped (menoeides) structure rises, fitted to the

1 2

Timaeus [90a], trans, and ed. John Warrington (London: Dent, 1965), pp. 131-2. Byzantine Mosaic Decoration (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948), p. 12.

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adjoining parts of the building, marvelous in its grace, but by reason of the seeming insecurity of its composition altogether terrifying. For it seems somehow to float in the air on no firm basis, but to be poised aloft to the peril of those inside i t . . . seems not to rest upon solid masonry, but to cover the space with its golden dome (sphaira) suspended from Heaven. All these details, fitted together with incredible skill in mid-air and floating off from each other and resting only on the parts next to them, produce a single and most extraordinary harmony in the work. 3

I CRITICAL RECEPTION OF YEATS'S "SYSTEM" This conjunction by analogy of Plato, Demus, and Procopius primarily serves to suggest that critical precedents set in response to the publication in 1925 of A Vision have tended to cut Yeats loose from the "guiding genius" of his "head or root", for although Yeats's poems—like the columns Demus describes—are conceived aesthetically, by Yeats's own admission they are made possible only because of his "system", which I here liken to the dome, sphaira or celestial root from which they wish to "hang"; that is, just as the Byzantine columns cannot be perceived as functioning aesthetic components except as they hang from the cupola, so a reading of—as Hutchings so nicely phrases it—"the meaning of the meaning" 4 of the Byzantium poems will be incomplete if conducted in spite of Yeats's "system". This is not to propose that the poems are mimetic signifiers for prepoetic signifieds in the "system" (any more than the columns "represent" the dome), but only that Yeats strove toward a poetic metaphysic which mere discrete, formal readings of each poem as personal vision would deny him. As an attempt to fight free of the profanity (using Eliade's sense of that word) of the conventional cosmos of his day, Yeats's "system" circumscribes "a sacramental totality, with the whole world being

3

4

Buildings, trans. H. B. Dewing (London: Heinemann, 1940), VII, 17 and 21, respectively. Patrick Hutchings, "Meaning and Simultaneity in Poetry," in Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association: Proceedings and Papers of the Tenth Congress, 2-9Feb. 1966 (Auckland: Univ. of Auckland, 1966), pp. 294-300 ("The Meaning of the Meaning," p. 299).

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enfolded within it, without residue". 5 And this lack of residue—the inclusion of historical personage and prophecy—is what seems critically problematic, for critics have tended to freely pick and choose those formalized relationships in the "system" which are amenable to formal approaches to the poems, just as deftly dismissing the rest of the "system" as being overdetermined. Thus Ellmann can reduce A Vision to "the four faculties, twenty-eight phases, and two gyres in the foreground, and the sphere looming mightily behind them", adding that "there is no need to explore the ramifications of the scheme in greater detail." Yet Ellmann later notes that T h e best p a r t of the b o o k is not the explanation of the symbols, but their application to p s y c h o l o g y and history, where the 'animation of experience' d o m i n a t e s abstract definition. 6

I would suggest, perhaps prematurely, that history can be seen to be in need of "animation" only where it is assumed to be " d e a d " (inanimate) — that is, only in light of a world view (in the Judeo-Christian tradition) which conceives of time as a linear progression with birth as origin and death as end. I focus on Ellmann's diction not to disparage his treatment of A Vision, which is both sympathetic and complex, but merely to provide myself an opening into a thorny discussion of poem as form (emblem) versus poem as "content". I would recall, rather playfully, the etymological relationship between the words "emblem" (en-ballein) and "devil" (dia-ballein). That to "throw in" describes inlaid work (in this case the Byzantium poems as mosaics), whereas to "throw across" describes slander, might lead to pretty speculations about metaphor versus allegory or about the critical tendency to read poems across to like poems—to read, for example, the Yeatsian critic in the Yeatsian poem across to the Keatsian critic in the Keatsian poem. While the assumption of likeness across poems and poets is one way of ordering literary history, of elucidating the unknown by means of the known, it always involves an element of slander. Yeats has been thrown in with the symbolistes, read across to Keats—although other

5

6

Concept taken from a discussion of primitive myth by Murray Krieger, "The Aesthetic as the Anthropological," in his Theory of Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), p. 190. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York: Oxford UP, 1954), pp. 161 and 163-4, respectively.

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readings argue that he is closer to Shelley—and has been largely at times subsumed by the Blakean identity. Such readings "across" can only be maintained by denying Yeats his belief in the reality of blood-begotten spirits and his complex notions of reincarnation as an historical phenomenon. For certain key turn-of-the-century critics seemed to assume that the only text left that had ontological sanction was something called "empirical reality", a kind of reality that quantum physics, as we shall see, might lay to rest as the last human illusion. Put another way, where the end goal or product is to characterize the poem as emblem, each emblem becomes synecdochic for all emblems, making a genre of emblematization (metapoetry). While this paper will endeavor to discover some of the formal principles by which Yeats makes emblems of his Byzantium poems, it does so only with the understanding that such formal observations would not be enough for Yeats, for the polemic between spatiality and temporality is not Yeats's polemic, except as an incidental concomitant to more pressing statements of "content" or "meanings of the meaning". My contention is that "emblem" belies its common root with "devil" only to the extent that the poem is read in the context of its unique cosmos—a cosmos, unlike ours, which Yeats took great pains to illustrate for us in A Vision. Otherwise, we examine mere artifact—the magic lost, the ritual potency profaned. Sad irony, should the poem as object become just another dead Coleridgean object, functioning as mere shabby universal. It may be that all I mean by "content" is what E. H. Gombrich has delineated as the iconographic level of the poem (as distinct from the poem on the page). 7 Yet, where iconography is assumed to be generic, such a distinction does not hold us close enough to Yeats's "system", for Yeats's iconography in the Byzantium poems cannot be assumed to be conventionally (universally) pre-agreed upon as an arbitrary code; Yeats forsook traditional Christian iconography, and, by virtue of A Vision,

See E. H. Gombrich's "Icones Symbolicae," in his Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon, 1972), pp. 123-91. In his paragraph of summation, Gombrich notes: I have argued here in connection with the theory of the emblem that the Aristotelian conception of metaphor which only sees the 'transfer' of existing categories across a pre-existent network of concepts obscures the central importance of this resource [ 'subjective' symbolism] which allows the speaker to re-structure reality in a passing image or a more permanent coinage.

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modified into a complex metaphysic the iconography of his earlier poems which was drawn from universally apprehensible Rosicrucian doctrine, the Tarot, and the Hebraic and Christian cabbala. The point is that Yeats's A Vision signalled a turning point in his poetry which has still to be fully addressed. For one supposes that were Yeats's "system" valuable, as it has often been read, merely to the personal end of allowing him to "free his imagination", he would have had little need to publish it. In " T h e Aesthetic as the Anthropological", Murray Krieger coins the term "metonymic metaphor" as a way of bringing fiction back to "reality as 'given' " ; that is, Krieger places (or finds) himself in the position of defending fiction "on more than escapist grounds" as a "form-making powe r " which, by providing an alternative to empirical reality, helps us "sustain reality". With only a mention of the tradition from Plotinus through Vico (as well as Swedenborg, Blake, and Yeats) which holds that fiction creates reality, I would grasp the vitality of the phrase "metonymic metaphor" 8 as a way of giving back to Yeats's poems their own generational principle, leaving us with "images that yet fresh images beget", and keeping in mind Pound's redefinition of the word "image" 9 as it reflects Yeats's belief, as Melchiori expresses it, that "the sensuousness of poetry lies not in its descriptiveness but in the thought". 10 For those who would read Yeats as a Romantic organicist or a Greek balancer of static opposites, I extend my analogy of poem as edifice. Demus informs the layman who might assume that all domes (emblems?) embody the same architectural principles, that . . . a Byzantine building does not embody the structural energies of growth, as Gothic Architecture does, or those of massive weight, as so often in Romanesque buildings, or yet the idea of perfect equilibrium of forces, like the Greek temple."

8

9

10 11

In his Theory ("sustain reality", p. 179; "metonymic metaphor" coined, p. 203, and discussed through p. 206). As quoted by Joseph Frank in his The Widening Gyre (Bloomington: Indiana U P , 1963), p. 9: "An image", Pound wrote, "is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Frank adds : The implications of this definition should be noted : an image is defined not as a pictorial reproduction but as a unification of disparate ideas and emotions into a complex presented spatially in an instant of time. Giorgio Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 203. Demus, p. 12.

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T o confuse Shelley's Athens or Blake's Los with Yeats's Byzantium, for instance, will not do. The historical imperative in Yeats's "system" distinguishes his conception of time from Blake's, for example—a fact many Blakean glosses on Yeats's Byzantium poems neglect. For Blake the only thing that mattered was the breaking of the circle and the return to 'Great Eternity' . . . Yeats was less preoccupied with release from the wheel than with the States themselves, as perhaps was Dante, whose 'States of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise' are, like Yeats's phases of the moon, peopled with many souls, with human individuals incomparably richer than are Blake's and Swedenborg's abstract Patriarchs . . . For Yeats release from the wheel was a remote possibility, while the States were charged with attraction and full of interest. H e himself had no immediate wish for freedom from the eternal circle. 12

If this distinction seems minor, let me pose the obvious question: What difference to any reading of the poems does Yeats's "system" make? That is, assuming that we are not espousing a Romantic notion that the poems should be read back to a pre-poetic vision, what does it matter whether or not Yeats gave ontological status to his "system"? There seem to be too many answers to this question to handle here, but I would point at some of them in passing. Worringer's distinction between naturalistic and non-naturalistic art styles poses as the crucial determining factor whether or not the artist feels himself to be in equilibrium with his cosmos, 13 where by "cosmos", it seems to me, Worringer means "the natural world". But Yeats finds equilibrium with neither end of Worringer's spectrum, for on the one hand, he eschewed the principles of mere natural organicism, and on the other, that abstract impulse which would lead to linear, geometric forms. Of Phase 14 (1380 to 1450) Yeats observes: There are no miracles to stare at, for man descends the hill he once climbed with so great toil, and all grows but natural again. 14

In a similar mood he characterizes the defects of his father's painting techniques.

12 13 14

Kathleen Raine, From Blake to "A Vision"(Dublin: Dolman Press, 1979), p. 35. As explicated by Frank, pp. 53-4. A Vision (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1925), p. 201.

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My father began life as a pre-Raphaelite painter; when past thirty he fell under the influence of contemporary French painting. Instead of finishing a picture one square inch at a time, he kept all fluid, every detail dependent upon every other . . . the more anxious he was to succeed, the more did his pictures sink through innumerable sittings into final confusion. 15 T h e s e are not the sentiments of a man w h o w o u l d take as his f o r m a l principle that of organic growth. As w e see in J o n Stallworthy's presentation of the drafts of both Byzantium poems, 1 6 Yeats rather w o r k e d on " o n e square inch at a t i m e " ; that is, each stanza is seen as a separate " f r a m e " and the thematic progression is discontinuous, particularly in the second, m o r e complex " B y z a n t i u m " . T h e f o r m a l unity depends on the " t r a d i t i o n a l " elements of meter, rhyme, and stanza shape. Y e t pure f o r m (for f o r m ' s sake) never takes precedence over the development of the main experience (idea) through a series of hierarchies. Yeats laments his own historical period (Phase 22, 1875 to 1927) f o r being " a period of abstraction . . . preceded and followed by abstraction" ( V i s i o n , p. 209). As f o r the merely technical, he says of certain writers, poets, and sculptors w h o are already into the 23rd Phase: It is with them a matter of conscience to live in their own exact instant of time, and they defend their conscience like theologians. They are all absorbed in some technical research to the entire exclusion of the personal dream. (Vision, pp. 210-1) A f t e r finding in E z r a P o u n d , T . S. Eliot, J a m e s J o y c e , and Pirandello that . . . the intellect turns upon itself . . . eliminating from metaphor the poet's phantasy . . . [breaking] up the logical processes of thought by flooding them with associated ideas or words that seem to drift into the mind by chance . . . (Vision, p. 211) Yeats prophesies: It is as though myth and fact, united until the exhaustion of the Renaissance, have now fallen so far apart that man understands for the first time the rigidity of fact, and calls up, by that very recognition, myth—the Mask—which now but gropes its way out of the mind's dark but will shortly pursue and terrify. ( Vision, p. 212)

15

16

Dramatis Personae, 1936, p. 54, as quoted by T. R. Henn in The Lonely Tower (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1952), p. 229. Between the Lines (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), pp. 87-136.

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One must understand the "system" to comprehend the kind of hierarchic thinker Yeats becomes; to characterize his poetry as a winning of the synchronic from the diachronic, for example, necessitates reading in Yeats a separation of the vertical from the linear, the historical from the present and future, and mythos from logos which simply is not there. Following Swedenborg and Blake, Yeats did not believe that the human faculties operated according to the laws of natural causality. On the other hand, this disequilibrium between himself and the conventional cosmos of his day put Yeats in the position of being a private visionary, who, as Krieger articulates, . . . can [never] know whether he is saint or demon, once he has forsaken the safe mediation of rational universals. For in forsaking universals he is forsaking all that can be known, all that can be appealed to outside himself, all that holds for any besides himself. What he is rejecting is mediation . . . 1 7

We know from Yeats's discussion of symbols in "Ideas of Good and Evil" that he had no interest in mere personal "emotional" symbols, but wished to tap into the universal body of "inherent" symbols which would make his poetry accessible to the anima mundi in us all. Having rejected traditional Christian symbology and "empirical reality", the two "conventional cosmoses" of his day, Yeats experienced a crisis in his poetry. H e [wrote] to his father just before his marriage in 1917 that he was working out a religious system which was helping his verse by giving him a 'framework of patterns'. And the profound intellectual therapy of this effort— 'getting the disorder of one's mind in order'—Yeats put as co-evalent with 'the real impulse to create'. 18

Without dwelling on Koch's choice of the word "therapy" here, I would suggest that A Vision represents the private visionary's attempt to uncover a new and larger universal "rationale", a mediation which circumscribes the fundamental symbols and formal relationships that inform man's spiritual "reality", a cosmos within which Yeats can find his equilibrium. While for some poets their body of poetry might function as an alternative cosmos, Yeats could not be content with a "personal alternative". The extra-poetic "system" in A Vision is "co-evalent" (contempo-

17 18

Poetic Presence and Illusion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979), p. 253. Vivienne Koch, "The Gyres," in Critics on Yeats, ed. Raymond Cowell (Coral Gables: Univ. of Miami Press, 1971), p. 80.

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raneous) with the "real impulse to create" precisely because Yeats's reality as an individual in profane time was not for him sufficiently profound in itself as a basis for poetry that would become "the garment of religion". 19 Yeats would be a visionary, but not a private one. Feeling creative impotence in the face of a demythified cosmos, it is not enough for Yeats merely to mythify art, unless that art open the beholder to the possible remythification of the cosmos, a possibility which depends on granting Yeats the historical imperative in his "system". 20 But Yeats's insistence on the literal, historical level of his "system" is where all but a handful of critics have drawn the line. Perhaps a closer look should be taken at the much-quoted passage with which A Vision is dedicated. I wished for a system of thought that would leave my imagination free to create as it chose and yet make all that it created, or could create, part of the one history, and that the soul's. The Greeks certainly had such a system, and Dante—though Boccaccio thought him a bitter partisan and therefore a modern abstract man—and I think no man since. Then when I had ceased all active search, yet had not ceased from desire, the documents upon which this book is founded were put into my hands, and I had what I needed, though it may be too late. What I have found indeed is nothing new, for I will show presently that Swedenborg and Blake and many before them knew that all things had their gyres; but Swedenborg and Blake preferred to explain them figuratively, and so I am the first to substitute for Biblical or mythological figures, historical movements and actual men and women, (pp. xi-xii; emphasis added)

The various forms that critical "terror" has taken in the face of this "construction in mid-air" (to borrow Procopius' diction) range from Edmund Wilson's "scientific" patronization to Allen Tate's anxiety; Tate mollifies his sense of apprehension by banishing the "system" from the realms of either philosophy or mythology, preferring to call it "an ex-

19

20

W. B. Yeats, "The Symbolism of Poetry," in his Essays and Introductions (New York: Collier Books, 1961), pp. 162-3. How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call the progress of the world, and lay their hands upon men's heartstrings again, without becoming the garment of religion as in old times? The relationship between "demythified cosmos" and the "mythification of art" is discussed by Krieger, Theory, p. 189.

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tended metaphor", 2 1 which certainly runs counter to Yeats's own assertions. T h e commonest attitude toward w h a t Yeats calls his "system of t h o u g h t " has been to read " t h e whole thing" (Wilson's cavalier phrase) as a fictional device or rhetorical figure. A f t e r convincing himself, by slightly misconstruing a quote, that Yeats knows " t h e whole t h i n g " to be "invented mythology", Wilson asks: " W h a t right has he to b o r e us with it?" 2 2 Yeats's concern that he may have f o u n d his documents " t o o late" may reflect not only his sorrow in finding poetic f r e e d o m at a relatively advanced age, but also a premonition that critics w h o thought they had a grasp on his poetics would be p r o f o u n d l y disoriented at this turn to his thought. Surely any "dismissing" critics have allowed themselves on a n o tion of the "system" as mere figure should be re-examined. In the rarely-quoted paragraph preceding the one cited above, Yeats clarifies w h a t this "system of t h o u g h t " means to him. That phantasy [that has been handed down for generations, and is n o w an interpretation] did not explain the world to our intellects which were after all very modern, but it recalled certain forgotten methods of meditation and chiefly h o w so to suspend the will that the mind became automatic, a possible

vehicle for spiritual beings, (p. xi; emphasis added) Such spiritual beings, " b l o o d - b e g o t t e n " in Yeats's description, had spoken through the automatic writing of Yeats's wife. N o one goes so f a r as to call Yeats a liar on this latter point; indulgences are made. Wilson creates a "skeptical Yeats" w h o , it is implied, undermines his "system" by likening it to a painted picture. In The Lonely Tower, T . R. H e n n , w h o appears to extend a sympathetic treatment to the "system", notes that . . . in the first edition . . . it looks as if Yeats designed, with h o w much seriousness w e do not know, to give the whole credit to the mysterious 'Instructors' and to excuse some of the obscurities and inconsistencies by the work of the equally mysterious 'Frustrators'. Later [in the second edition] he refers to the complex and recondite sources that he has used. 23

21

22

23

"Yeats's Romanticism: Notes and Suggestions," The Southern Review, 7, No. 3 (Winter, 1942), 591-600. Rpt. in The Permanence of Yeats, eds. James Hall & Martin Steinmann (1950; rpt. New York: Collier Books, 1961), pp. 97-105; p. 102. "W. B. Yeats," in his Axel's Castle (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), pp. 26-64. Rpt. in The Permanence of Yeats, pp. 14-37; p. 32. P. 184.

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This imputation of his own uncertainty (not knowing how much seriousness to extend) to the poet later seems to confound Henn's lucidity when he puzzles that "one of the strangest features of A Vision was its justification, in Yeats' view, after its composition." 24 For if we believe Yeats's account of the "system's" original source, then it is not at all strange that he would rejoice in the discovery of "factual" sources that seemed to verify it. It should be noted that Henn cannibalizes the "system" quite openly. Any attempt at a detailed analysis of A Vision is likely to be unprofitable. But it is possible to extract from the book what appear to be Yeats' central poetic beliefs, isolating them from any attempts to consider them as components of a system . . . 25

It does not seem to occur to Henn that the entire "system" constitutes Yeats's "poetic" belief, that Yeats does not separate poetic belief from spiritual, political, or historical belief. But then, Henn is of course searching for what he considers to be central to his own poetic belief, and he seems to have intimations of this methodological weakness near the end of his chapter. But once the excrescences can be cut away to show the simple pattern of A Vision the work takes on a new complexion.26

Indeed! But then, In these rejections I am aware that there may be some loss in detailed explanation of at least two poems.27

At least! It perhaps comes as no surprise that Henn, then, remains dissatisfied with his readings of the Byzantium poems. I think it is likely that this line [ 'That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea'] merely explains the nature of the images that haunt him perpetually, love and religion. But because of this very obscurity I feel that the resolution, both from the meaning and rhythm, is incomplete, and the poem the less thereby. For a work of this kind defies a final analysis. The complexity of the overtones grows steadily on each new reading. But in the last resort I am doubt-

24 25 26 27

Henn, Henn, Henn, Henn,

p. p. p. p.

201. 186. 207. 206.

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ful whether Byzantium itself was an entirely satisfactory symbol. The reference to it in A Vision suggests that the conception is more brain-conceived, more literary, than was usual in Yeats' practice, and what we know of its redrafting gives us reason to suppose that the transition from Ireland to Byzantium was a little forced. Other myths seemed to be orientated, almost involuntarily, towards his own story. For this the connection had to be, as it were, forged out. The difficult second stanza, unless there is a connecting link so far unperceived, seems dovetailed into the poem, but not of its substance. Perhaps Mr. James Stephens is right when he suggests that one day Yeats might have written his third and last Byzantium . . . 2 8 The problematic (for Henn) rhythm of that last line is indeed "forged out" (as are other elements), for throughout "Byzantium" Yeats is hammering inlays into his own mosaic, and the spondees of the last line achieve the successful breaking of the "bitter furies of complexity". As for the "difficult second stanza", Henn would need to reread A Vision with less skepticism. Yeats was a poseur and believed in Masks, but that is not to say that he was an impostor. W e might recall that a contemporary of Yeats, Carl Jung, who at least found semi-protection under the pseudo-scientific umbrella of psycho-analysis, also believed in daimons. As for the pejorative connotation in Henn's charge that "the conception is [too] brain-conceived [sic]", as well as noting the critic's resistance to poetic evolution, Yeats might answer: Why should a man cease to be a scholar, a believer, a ritualist before he begin to paint or rhyme or to compose music, or why if he have a strong head should he put away any means of power?29 In 1938, Cleanth Brooks credits Edmund Wilson with being "the only critic thus far to deal with A Vision in any detail", a fact Brooks tactfully finds admirable "in view of [Wilson's] general interpretation of the significance of Yeats's system". For Wilson . . . considers the symbolist movement as a retreat from science and reality; and Yeats's system, with its unscientific paraphernalia, its gyres and cones, its strange psychology described in terms of Masks and Bodies of

28 29

Henn, p. 223. "Art and Ideas," in his Essays and Introductions p. 353.

(New York: Collier Books, 1961),

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Fate, and most of all its frank acceptance of the supernatural, is enough to try the patience of any scientific modernist.30 Perhaps B r o o k s ' own open-minded treatment of Yeats's " s y s t e m " is guided by an understanding that what constitutes "scientific m o d e r n i s m " is as vulnerable to the caprice of changing fashion as are tastes in art. F o r in light of J u n g i a n psychology, the problems of time and space presently being c o n f r o n t e d by modern physicists, the discovery that the principal building block of human life is the double helix of the D N A molecule, and the m o r e recent discovery that the structure of quasars is not, as w a s thought, a cigar shape, but seems instead to describe a spiral, Y e a t s m a y yet turn out to have been m o r e scientifically m o d e r n than Wilson himself. Y e t even m o d e r n critics seem to hold Yeats apart as an eccentric dabbler, bothered perhaps by his indifference to being a self-admitted " i n d i f f e r e n t scholar". In an innocent m o m e n t F r a n k K e r m o d e warns us of " S a i l i n g to Byz a n t i u m " that We can harm the poem by too exclusive an attention to its eschatology, and it is salutary to read it simply as a marvelously contrived emblem of what Yeats took the work of art to be. There is no essential contradiction between the readings. 31 If there is no essential contradiction between the readings, one w o n d e r s w h y attending to the p o e m ' s eschatology w o u l d be " h a r m f u l " , whereas " s i m p l y " reading it as an emblem is " s a l u t a r y " . N o t to dwell on the goodwill of K e r m o d e ' s phrasing, the w o r d " s a l u t a r y " strikes one as o d d . Is the p o e m in need of a curative or remedial r e a d i n g ; that is, would It be if w e g a v e " t o o exclusive an attention to its e s c h a t o l o g y ? " K e r m o d e ' s less than total view of w h a t constitutes an e m b l e m — a view that leads him to separate structure f r o m meaning—exemplifies the danger (addressed at the beginning of this paper) which seems inherently to lurk in the w o r d " e m b l e m " . C o m i n g f r o m the pictorial arts, where it primarily seems to describe a spatial, or f o r m a l , quality, the w o r d " e m b l e m " wishes to mislead us, and w e are constantly called upon to remind ourselves that it must include " c o n t e n t " , and that it can never be read " s i m p l y " .

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31

"Yeats: The Poet as Myth-Maker," The Southern Review, No. 1 (Summer, 1938), 116-42. Rpt. in The Permanence of Yeats, pp. 60-84; p. 60. "Poetry as Image: 'Sailing to Byzantium' and 'Among School Children,' " in Critics on Yeats, p. 45.

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While it is certainly true that the Byzantium poems can be read and understood apart from Yeats's "system", the notion that such a criterion should constitute the critical test seems to originate in the positivistic assumption that the success of art can be measured by its accessibility to a so-called "ordinary reader". Allen Tate, for example, can say of "Byzantium" : T h e presence of the system at its m o s t f o r m i d a b l e c a n n o t be denied to this p o e m . I should like t o see, nevertheless, an analysis of it in which n o special k n o w l e d g e is u s e d ; I should like to see it e x a m i n e d with the o r d i n a r y critical equipment of the e d u c a t e d critic. 3 2

Tate's concern is for us to see that the symbols are "made g o o d " by the poem; but the impulse to deny Yeats his system in favor of "the ordinary critical equipment" of "the educated critic" presumes a kind of critic who has "an innocent eye", that mythical faculty Gombrich so nicely puts to rest for us. 33 Tate issues a strange prediction: Y e a t s ' s special qualities will instigate special studies of g r e a t ingenuity, but the m o s t direct and m o r e difficult p r o b l e m of the p o e t r y itself will p r o b a b l y be delayed. T h i s is only to say that Y e a t s ' s romanticism will be c r e a t e d by his critics. 3 4

Kermode's reading seems to provide an ironic demonstration of Tate's prophecy, for Kermode's implication that Yeasts's use of "organic symbols" (specifically The Tree) places him within traditional Romanticism is possible primarily because Romanticism constitutes Kermode's "ordinary critical equipment". That a real tree is organic does not necessarily mean that the use of its image is a symbol of organicism, which seems in some sense to be implied in Kermode's notion of an "organic symbol". That the symbols can be "made g o o d " by the poem should not give the critic license to "make them g o o d " however he sees fit. We know from Yeats's autobiography that The Tree was much more (and other) than the organic image of traditional Romanticism.

32 33

34

Tate, pp. 104-5. See Gombrich's discussion of "seeing" versus "knowing" in the Introduction to his Art and Illusion (Princeton Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 3-30, and especially p. 12, where he quotes Jonathan Richardson: " . . . n o man sees what things are, that knows not what they ought to be . . . both see the same life, but with different eyes." Tate, p. 105.

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I was full of excitement, for n o w at last I began to understand. T h e 'Tree of Life' is a geometrical figure made up of ten circles or spheres called Sephiroth joined by straight lines. Once men must have thought of it as like some great tree covered with its fruit and its foliage, but at some period, in the thirteenth century perhaps, touched by the mathematical genius of Arabia in all likelihood, it lost its natural form. 35

Tate might better have speculated that the difficult problem of the poetry is directly related to the difficult problem of the "system", which itself has been delayed. My obvious bias is that there should be a difference between what the "lay-reader" can expect of the poem and what the poem can expect of the critic. For if the critic need not elucidate through "special knowledge" the unique cosmos offered by the poem (as opposed to the cosmos the critic brings with him, subliminally desiring its affirmation), then who will provide Yeats the expression, as Tate puts it, of his special qualities? The notion that any need for explanation on the part of the poem necessarily imparts a negative evaluation may very well point to a negative evaluation of something called the critic's "ordinary equipment". We would not ignore or deny an accounting of a theorist's ontological premises in a discussion of his conclusions; yet, certain critical approaches (and notions about poets as theorists) seem to have operated to deny Yeats his premise. For example, Yeats's doubts about the working out of specific historical details have been taken as tantamount to an admission that he really does not mean for his system to subsume history in a literal sense at all. Likewise, for Edmund Wilson to presume that Yeats's analogy between the essentials of his "vision" and "a painted scene" constitutes an admission that "the whole thing" is only make-believe, merely shows, to use Brooks' phrase, "in what respect our age holds the imagination". Discrete readings of the poems which cut them free from the ontological metaphysic of the "system" have set precedents which, in turn, have led to "straw" controversies, the two main ones being: 1) whether the Byzantium poems declare absolutely for the religion of art (art for art's sake) over religious (divine) spiritualism; and 2) whether Yeats is a symboliste or a (Blakean) Symbolist. 35

The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York, 1953), pp. 223-5. As quoted by James Allen, Jr., "The Golden Bird on The Golden Bough: An Archetypal Image in Yeats's Byzantium Poems," Diliman Review, 11 (April 1963), 179.

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Two most persuasive responses to the view that the Byzantium poems declare for the aesthetic over the religious have been provided by Harry Modean Campbell in "Yeats's 'Sailing to Byzantium' " 3 6 and James Allen, Jr., in "The Golden Bird on The Golden Bough-. An Archetypal Image in Yeats's Byzantium Poems". Unfortunately, insufficient space here precludes examination of this controversy in full, except to exemplify the kind of "root cutting" Allen finds objectionable in response to a particular critic's approach. In addition to explicit mention of existential thinkers and thought in the twentieth century, he consistently talks of spirit versus body in Yeats as though spirit had no connotations of the supernatural; similarly he discusses the dichotomy of eternal versus temporal as though the eternal had no connotations of the divine. Here [he] commits the all-too-common critical error of attributing to his subject views that are his own . . . he is quite wrong to take the words soul and eternal... in an existential and non-theistic sense when Yeats's art and his other writings, to the moment of his death, show so potently that he was an ardent theist. 37

I would add that the mere subject matter of the poems makes the same point. The entire thematic premise of "Sailing to Byzantium" rests on Yeats's insistence that he is in "a holy city". The sages are called from "God's holy fire". One might say that we are dealing with the sanctification of art, but the aestheticization of religion seems nearer the truth. On the most literal level, the "drowsy emperor" reflects the mosaic of Justinian at Ravenna, where the emperor is described as having "great hooded eyes". If we allow the symbol to exfoliate to the Platonic unity Yeats aspires to in A Vision (and elsewhere), we know that the emperor, as the

36

37

Modem Language Notes, 70 (1955), 585-9. Campbell notes that Yeats's belief in art for art's sake in the 1890's was shortlived. Campbell's argument rests to some extent on pointing up those similes which have often been read as literal metaphors ("O sages standing in God's holy fire/As in the gold mosaic of a wall" and "Once out of nature I shall never take/My bodily form from any natural thing/But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make"). While this strictly grammatical argument seems weak and unnecessary to Campbell's point, there may be a need to reconsider the possible meanings of the golden form, which has too often been assumed not only to be a bird, but to be identifiable as to kind of bird. For an exhaustive treatment of this subject, see James Allen, Jr.'s "From Traditional to Personal Myth: Yeats's Prototypes and Analogues for the Golden Bird of Byzantium," Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 5, No. 2 (1979), 1-30. "Golden Bird," 171-2.

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highest human link to divinity in an hierarchically ordered universe, is himself half-divine. Furthermore, an artificial bird on an artificial limb is in itself no more "out of nature" than "a tattered coat upon a stick"; that is, unless "Soul clap its hands and sing", having for its "singing-masters" the "sages standing in God's holy fire". Rather than emphasizing the golden form's artificiality (for "an aged man is [already] but a paltry thing"), it should be noted that the prevalent root linking all stanzas is the theme of song and singing. Rather than being "caught" im mere "sensual music" (mere art for art's sake), the poet longs to be "gathered" by the holy "singing-masters" into the "artifice of eternity", a particular kind of artifice which Yeats uses to foreshadow the meaning of "such a form . . . out of nature" as he shall take; that is, an artifice not only "out of nature" (for the concept of eternity has no object of imitation in nature), but also, as Allen suggests, an artifice with undeniable connotations of divinity. In "Byzantium" the stanzas literally unfold on the page beneath the dome, whose "great cathedral gong" banishes the "unpurged images of day", those images which become hierarchically analogous to the flood of spirits in the last stanza. The religious nature of the reincarnation images in the second and third stanzas ("For Hades' bobbin bound" and "cocks of Hades crow") preclude any easy reading of the poem as declaration for eternal life through art, except as that art is a vehicle for spiritual incarnation. Taken as metonymic metaphors, the poems are the vehicles for the tenor of superhuman, as distinct from supernatural, reincarnation. While the main theme is the breaking of unpurged images into art, such transmutation occurs only in conjunction with spiritual purification; both the poetic and spiritual transmutation require the presence of a spirit-guide (the "shade" in the second stanza), and both must be won through the agony of the ritual fire on the half-divine emperor's dancing floor. It seems clear that for Yeats, poetical contemplation is contemporaneous with religious meditation, but that is not to say that the one is the same as the other. As C. M. Bowra observes: Yeats does not regard poetry as complete in itself, with its own ritual and meaning. H e sees it as part of a larger experience, as a means of communication with the spiritual world which lies behind the viable. For him the poet is almost a medium, an interpreter of the unseen, and his poetry is the record of the revelations given to him. 38 The Heritage of Symbolism (London, 1943), p. 185. As quoted by Campbell, 586.

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In "The Nature of Yeats's Symbols", Edward Engelberg arrives at definitive distinctions between Yeats and the symboliste poets, noting that Yeats was originally confounded with the symboliste poets by Edmund Wilson. (My intention is not to characterize Wilson as either scoundrel or scapegoat, but merely to emphasize the power of precedent and the ongoing need to re-question it.) After exploring the concept of the symbol operating in the poetry of Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, as well as of Yeats, Engelberg concludes: O n e might g o on making comparisons; for instance, one could take Yeats's symbol of the swan in 'The Wild Swans at Coole', and set it against Baudelaire's use of the swan in 'Le Cygne' and arrive at a similar distinction . . . while symbolisme moved toward a coalescing symbol, Yeats moved away from an exfoliating one. 3 9

It seems clear that when the end product of a poem is the coalescence of a symbol, that poem can be said to lead into itself, wishing to be read as a self-inscribed universe, but when the symbol serves as a point of origin from which a poem exfoliates, that poem intends to lead out from itself, to serve as a vehicle for remythification of cosmos. This not so subtle difference can be highlighted by comparing Mallarmé's belief that "tout au monde existe pour aboutir à un livre"40 with the historical thrust of Yeats's declaration that "the world exists to be a tale in the ears of coming generations." 41

II T H E "MEANING OF T H E MEANING' Kathleen Raine and James Olney are among the handful of critics who have stepped back from the original critical assessment of Yeats's "system" in order to discover the proper grounds upon which to consider the Yeatsian metaphysic. I mention Olney to call attention to his book-length study of the points of correspondence between the doctrines, beliefs, and writings of Jung and Yeats, among which are the following: 1) their belief in the collective unconscious (anima mundi); 2) their concept of the archetype as

39 40 41

In Critics on Yeats, p. 97. As quoted by Koch, p. 91. "The Tables of the Law," as quoted by Allen, Jr., "Myth," 11.

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psychological, symbolical and magical "reality" (Jung notes with interest that thoughts of the archetype are registered/stimulated not in the cortex of the brain but in the old brain stem); 3) Jung's theories of "synchronicity" and Yeats's of minds flowing into one another; 4) their belief that both time and space may be relative when psychic phenomena are in question; 5) their joint belief in prevision, precognition, and extrasensory perception; 6) their notions that all energy and all creativity arise from a conflict of opposites and that human history itself moves in perpetual cycles that oppose, reverse, and complement one another; 7) Jung's theory of shadow figures and of anima and animus and Yeats's theory of masks and images; 8) their belief about the relation of the living to the dead; 9) a belief in what both of them called the "daimon"; 10) their schematic representations (drawings of antinomies, circles, and quarternities in Jung's "Red Book" and in Yeats's A Vision) of psychological and cultural processes.42 Olney attempts throughout his book to trace both Yeats and Jung back through the Platonic tradition; however, George Bornstein points out a crucial distinction between Yeats and Plato, noting that rather than Athenian achievements, Yeats instead admired Oedipus, whom he associated with the concrete and earthly, and saw him 'altogether separated from Plato's Athens, from all that talk of the Good and the One, from all that cabinet of perfection.'

Bornstein adds that Yeats's impatience with an intellectual vision that excluded the evil and the many indicates that Justinian's closing of the Academy . . . assumes more than its apparently casual significance in Yeats's description of Byzantium. H e stood ready to admire the abstract discipline of Greek civilization but not its morality and Platonic vision of perfection. 43

Kathleen Raine is particularly articulate about the finer details of Swedenborg's, Blake's, and Yeats's understanding that "the visible world is itself a creation of 'omnipresent eternal mind' ". After clarifying Swedenborg's basic premise

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The Rhizome and The Flower: The Perennial Philosophy—Yeats and Jung (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1980), pp. 6-7. Yeats and Shelley (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 183 and 184, respectively.

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that the interior faculties of man cannot be described in terms of the natural order: they possess an order of their own not limited by space and time and what science regards as natural causality (emphasis added) Raine notes: So unfamiliar is this mode of thought within our modern Western culture that it is not surprising that those who seek to understand 'reality' in terms of mind not 'matter' should be at a loss for terms, for a common language and agreed symbols in which to express such thought.44 One of the common terms we do have to indicate a reality of mind rather than matter is the word "idealist", yet to call Yeats an "idealist" is to neglect that for Yeats "idea" was not abstraction—spirits could be "blood-begotten". Raine is right; the terminology breaks down. But Herbert Read makes a distinction which clarifies the terms by which we can discuss the kinds of "space consciousness" operating in Yeats's Byzantium poems (if we may approach them as edifices). After noting that "even a temple can be built as an imposing mass and express no awareness of a contained space", Read defines the limitations of Greek sensibility thus: The Greek was incapable of transcendentalism, but invented idealism, that very different range of consciousness. . . transcendentalism . . . had quite a separate development, associated with the invention of the dome and the vault.45 (emphasis added) In confirmation of Demus's observations, Read goes on to elucidate the different "attitudes to space" which uniquely come together in Byzantine art and architecture at its culmination: Professor Rowley points out that the sense of infinitude in Chinese landscape painting is achieved only by sacrificing the visible tangibility of space, by which I think he means what I have called representational space. Our Western notion of perspective depends on the representation of a continuous receding ground plane on which all the vertical elements rest, diminishing in size according to their distance from the spectator. The sensibility of the Chinese painter, however, was satisfied with three discontinuous planes, foreground, middle distance, and far distance, each parallel to the picture plane.

44 45

Pp. 6 and 56, respectively. Icon and Idea (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), p. 61.

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T h e eye of the spectator is required to leap f r o m one plane to the next, through a void. Each place is a place of rest—of arrest. 4 6

Although there are drastic differences in narrative structure and stanza dynamics between the two Byzantium poems, both operate on this principle of "discrete" or discontinuous space. Each stanza is a frame or discontinuous plane, thematically integral to itself, before the eye must leap to the next plane through a void; yet, in order to comprehend the whole in continuous space (growing total meaning), the eye must wind back and forth through the stanzas, endeavoring to discover those phonemic, thematic, and rhythmic echoes by which the poem as a whole builds formal integrity. The experience of the beholder of the poems seems consistent with Demus's description of that of the beholder inside a Byzantine cathedral. In the passage cited below, Demus discusses new ideas that emerged in the Justinian period, ideas not fully realized in the Baptistry degli Ortodossi at Ravenna—which, according to Melchiori, inspired the earlier poem 4 7 —but which reached their culmination in the Haghia Sophia (which inspired the later poem). (See figure 1 for a summary of Melchiori's reconstruction of Yeats's objects of ekphrasis for the Byzantium poems.) T h e simple sequence of historical scenes began to give place to a new and more complicated conception . . . the two rows of pictures on the opposite walls of the nave are now connected not only along their length, f r o m left to right, in the direction of the unfolding of the story, but also across the nave in accordance with their relation as types and anti-types. T h e beholder has to look from one wall to the other; his glance has to traverse the nave, shifting from left to right and, at the same time, progressing from west to east. Thus he is made aware of the space of the nave . . . panels, frames, and filling patterns are judiciously balanced so as to build up a formal organism dependent on the functional character of the several architectonic parts . . . the beholder's eye is led f r o m figure to figure by a subtle movement or rhythm. 48

The earlier poem, "Sailing to Byzantium", corresponds to the less complex "historical" sequence to the extent that the cumulative meaning within each stanza depends on narrative sequence; and in spite of the cre-

46 47 48

Read, p. 62. See Melchiori, p. 221. Demus, p. 46.

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Fig. 1:

Record of Yeats's Interest in and Knowledge of Byzantine Mosaics and Domes 1896

The story, "Rosa Alchemica" published in Savoy. From photographs of the dome mosaics at the Baptistry of the Orthodox in Ravenna, as well as Arthur Symons's description of these, Yeats's likens the experience of these mosaics to the occult rituals of the Golden Dawn during the trance of "spiritual" alchemy.

1907

Visited Ravenna.

1920

In early 1920's studied books of Byzantine art, culture, history; was fascinated by the contemporary ekphrasis of St. Sophia, which pictured ecstasy. Also saw a psychic connection between the name Sophia, "Divine Wisdom", and "the strange equation made by Madame Blavatsky, who wrote that Simon Magus 'took about with him a woman whom he introduced as Helen of Troy who had passed through a hundred reincarnations, and who, still earlier, in the beginning of the aeons, was Sophia. . . ' " (H. P. Blavatsky as quoted in Melchiori, p. 223).

1923

On trip to Stockholm was taken with the Stadshus, where the decoration was deliberately reminiscent of Byzantine art as it embodied the conception of an ideal state, where the religious, political, and practical life were all one.

1924-5

Visited mosaics at Sicily and Rome.

1925

Writes of Byzantium at length in A Vision.

1926

Writes "Sailing to Byzantium".

1927

Studies anew photographs of Byzantine mosaics and culture.

1930

Writes "Byzantium".

Summary gleaned from Melchiori's reconstruction (pp. 200-34 in The Whole Mystery of Art).

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dence in Melchiori's idea that both poems take place beneath the concavity of a dome (an early draft of "Sailing to Byzantium" includes the line, " I long for St. Sophia's sacred dome"), the final version of the first poem presents us instead with a wall, so that the "lords and ladies of Byzantium" seem intended to recall the holy virgins and martyrs on the frieze of San Apollinare Nuovo. In either case, as Demus reveals, even the mosaics in the dome of the Baptistry at Ravenna do not require the complex spiralling motion on the part of the beholder that the later Haghia Sophia does. Furthermore, in the first poem we move through a linear narrative time, from the past memory of the first stanza ( " That is no country", " Those dying generations") to the already-accomplished, static "action" at the end of the second stanza ("And therefore I have sailed the seas and come"); although the third stanza is outside chronological time and unplaceable in terms of implied tense, it falls spatially between the past of the first two stanzas and the future hypothesis of the final stanza ("Once out of nature I shall never take"). The sense of stasis is emphasized by this fixing in linear time in conjunction with the hypothetical nature of the invocation of the sages which results from the conditional"unless" upon which the preceding stanza turns. In contrast to the more three-dimensional helices describing each stanza in "Byzantium", which we will examine shortly, the final result in "Sailing to Byzantium" of the frquent caesuras and the progression through linear time is that the meaning seems to trace a flat (two-dimensional) "winding path" down the page. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come T o the holy city of Byzantium, (emphasis added)

While the second line renames the first, circling through it again, the remainder of the stanza involves the semantic or syntactic completion, extension, or conditionalization of each line by the next. Another clue to the stasis of the first poem is that there the bird is "set" upon " a " golden bough, while in the second, the bird is "planted" upon "the" golden bough; that is, the first focuses on spatiality where the second focuses on artistic process; superior to nature, art can "plant" something normally

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incapable of "taking root". In "Byzantium" the sense of linear time and syntax is replaced with frequent appositives and modifying phrases that rename or rewind ideas. The most obvious examples of lines that "rew r a p " or rewind through preceding ones include: Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, N o r storm disturbs, flames begotten of flames, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

But less obvious lines proceed according to the same principle. Thus, the second line in the first stanza, " T h e Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed", circles back through, but on a more particularized level, the general observation of the first line that "the unpurged images of day recede"; and this recircling is emphasized in the third line by the repetition of the key verb ("Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song"). This line as well rewinds through the idea of the first. "After great cathedral g o n g " slows the spiral down to a narrower circumference which tightens in on the terse spondees of All that man is, before the partial unwind or loosening out of the lines All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.

In the midst of this unwinding we then jump through empty space to the next plane (stanza) where a new gyre proceeds to funnel down. Each stanza presents a renewed attempt, always at an ascendant level, to wind the gyre in before the anti-thetical wind loosens out and we move to the next plane. The second stanza varies in that the spiral movement succeeds in stilling itself to give us the line: " I hail the superhuman", followed by the ouroboros (iconographic emblem of the snake that eats its tail): "deathin-life and life-in-death".

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While a more prosaic interpretation of what I here call "rewinding" might be that Yeats is simply using in the second poem a more explicit rhetorical structure, with its parallelisms and repetitions, I feel my description offers some insight into why he would choose to do so. Furthermore, Yeats's scorn for mere rhetoric is well-known. The final stanza of "Byzantium" varies the pattern most drastically, the spiral tightening three times in quick succession. After the first wind of "spirit after spirit" we halt for the exclamatory lines (also a re-circling), The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor!

The second break is on "bitter furies of complexity", and the final spiral finally succeeds in breaking both the images and the whirling to give us the one line mosaic: "That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea". A simple comparison of the normal stanza shape in each poem demonstrates this difference as well. In the first poem the stanzas approximate blocks with both sides more or less flush. In the second, each stanza slants in at the sixth and seventh lines, which are usually no longer than three or four words each, before the last line unfurls to normal length. N o r does "Byzantium" fix us to linear time. Although Yeats places us in the first stanza, giving both setting and time (night), thereafter the action seems to float in space; that is, it is midnight throughout five complex "scenes". The cathedral gong in the first stanza, as we know from the "system", symbolizes that point between night and day, life and death, humanity and divinity. Furthermore, as Brooks informs us, the moonlit and starlit dome represent Phases 1 and 15, the two pure Phases where man does not exist because there is no mixture of the elements. The second stanza occurs outside profane or sequential time, for we float with the shade beyond the Veil, where psychic reality collapses spatio-temporal distinctions. Stanza three is also timeless, but in a more static sense, perhaps because this stanza represents Yeats's attempt to develop in greater detail the static emblem of the golden bird from the first poem. Yet, here also we seem to hang at midnight, for we are at that moment preceding dawn when "the cocks of Hades crow" to announce the rebirth of the dead spirits. Stanza four begins at—midnight. Stanza five describes a vision beyond profane time, for we have passed through the alchemical transmutation of the fire and ritual dance. The flood of spirits being ferried to paradise is now visible, and because they are being purified (prior to reincar-

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nation?), it would seem possible that we are on the other side of the Veil where the smithies of the Emperor, because they are breaking spirits (as Yeats is breaking images), are actually serving in some divine capacity hierarchically analogous to the poetic (artistic) process. Lest my remarks about a three-dimensional winding in "Byzantium" seem too fanciful, I would admit, of course, that the page is flat and nothing moves as I read but my eyes and my sense of how the lines mean in relation to each other. And I would call to my aid the effect produced by the dome as beheld inside the Haghia Sophia as described by Photius in his Encomium of the N e a : The sanctuary seems to revolve round the beholder; the multiplicity of the view forces him to turn round and round, and this turning of his is imputed by his imagination to the building itself.49

As for the effect of the discontinuous planes perceived at progressively ascendant levels through "empty" (rather than continuous) space, Demus captures the magic which Yeats tries to approximate on the two-dimensional page. In Byzantium the beholder was not kept at a distance from the image; he entered within its aura of sanctity, and the image, in turn, partook of the space in which he moved. H e was not so much a 'beholder' as a 'participant'. While it does not aim at illusion, Byzantine religious art abolishes all clear distinction between the world of reality and the world of appearance.

More to the point, The beholder of Byzantine decorations, who sees the image undistorted in spite of the great height at which it appears, feels lifted up to its level, high above the ground, to which the beholder of Western decorations is firmly fixed—pressed down, as it were, by the 'frog-perspective' . . . H e was not fixed to one point like the beholder of Western decoration, whose illusionistic and perspective constructions seem to 'stand up' from one particular viewpoint only; as he moved along the liturgical axes of the church the rhythm of the cupolas and vaults moved with him, and the icons came to life without losing their iconic character. 50

If indeed the two Byzantium poems are as different as I have indicated, what do we make of that difference? "Sailing . . . " is often taken as 49 50

As quoted by Demus, p. 34. Demus, pp. 4 and 34, respectively.

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the prototype of "Byzantium", yet it seems more likely that the two poems taken together somehow complete each other, and in their juxtaposition, represent antithetical attempts on Yeats's part to find a way of uniting himself with the historical Byzantium as he apprehends it. In the first poem he makes the journey (sailing to Byzantium as the Greeks did), but only to hypothesize the manner of becoming part of the mosaics. T h e second poem begins where the first leaves off, for he is now in Byzantium (as the Eastern element of that civilization would have been when the Greeks arrived); rather than a contemplation, "Byzantium" witnesses and, through the process of making itself a poem, participates in the actual making of the mosaics in the presence of the spiritual unity enjoyed at that particular time in history by the Byzantine culture. W e can see that the second poem completes the contemplative fantasy of the first by comparing the two lines that circumscribe both poems into one: thus, " T h e salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas" (Line 3, Stanza 1 of "Sailing . . . " ) , those images most mimetic of Yeats's Ireland, are finally hammered into the history of Byzantine art in the artistically transmuted form of the line, " T h a t dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea". T h e two poems are antithetical approaches to the same search. "Sailing to Byzantium" can be described as a solar poem, for the natural images are taken from summertime (daylight), and the objects of contemplation are monuments of intellect; the linear progression describes an Apollonian kind of order, a rational semantic through time. T h e artificial golden bird becomes an emblem of the poem contained by the poem, just as the boy-god in the myth of Balder in Fraser's account of tree mythology becomes, as a spirit in the tree, the spirit of the tree. Most important, the golden bird is an emblem of stasis which is remembered as a visual image. "Sailing to Byzantium", then, celebrates the Greek or Western aspect of Byzantium, for there the poet would take "such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make". In "Byzantium", which embodies the Eastern aspect of Byzantine culture, the word " E m p e r o r " is now capitalized, for only in the hierarchic achievement of the two aspects (East and West) conjoined does the Emperor become half-divine. The rest of the comparison seems obvious. W e are in a Dionysian whirl replete with magical fires and spirit (mummy) guides. T h e object of desire (rather than of contemplation) is (rather than monuments of unaging intellect or Apollonian soul) the successful, violent breaking of the unpurged images (and the flood of spirits) through the agony of fire, ritual dance, and poetic process. T h e poem sim-

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ulates a state of trance, for we are "hung" at a magical moment where space moves but time stands still. The crucial difference, however, is that unlike "Sailing to Byzantium", the second poem leaves us with no emblem of stasis, for the last line is not really picturable. Instead it exists as an aural reverberation; we remember it by its meter, by its strange objectification of action, by the spondees breaking on the double demonstrative adjectives, by the visual impossibility of nouns modifying past participles which in turn describe an image unenclosed by spatial boundaries—the sea. What does a gongtormented sea look like? How draw the tears in a dolphin-torn sea? The music of the words as sequence (both in the mind's eye and ear) creates an illusion of visuality which refuses, nevertheless, to resolve into plastic shapes. Nor does that last line seem to encompass the entire "subject matter" of the poem; and yet, because we re-experience the struggle won by the poem when we re-hear that last line, it somehow becomes an emblem of the poem, an emblem of its poetic process. Whereas "Sailing to Byzantium" gives us emblem as object, "Byzantium" gives us emblem as mantra, chant, or musical instrumentality.

Ill O B J E C T S OF EKPHRASIS While there is no way to "prove" that Yeats consciously strove to structure his Byzantium poems according to the architectural principles unique to the cathedrals, cupola mosaics, and processional walls that inspired them, it has been my intention to suggest that he must have experienced an instinctual artistic grasp of formal principles during his visits to Ravenna, Sicily and Rome; we know that he examined photographs of the Haghia Sophia and that he was entranced by the contemporary ekphraseis he studied. In fact, Yeats tells us in "Sailing to Byzantium" that his primary reason for making the journey is "to study monuments" of "unaging intellect", for "an aged man is but a paltry thing" unless his singing (poetry) be inspired by such study. It seems apparent that the poem instructs the critic as well in this regard, characterizing "all neglect" of such monuments (the domes and mosaics themselves, as well as Yeats's apprehension of them in his "system") as mere "sensual music" in which we're caught, a "sensual music" which the first stanza of the poem finds insufficient in itself as a context for discovering "unaging intellect".

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We might speculate, then, that critical approaches based not on special study but on "ordinary critical equipment" will ultimately be limited by the critic's notion of universal givens—that such "pure" readings actually approach the poem as a discrete entity free-floating in an uninterpretable mimetic context, a way of reading reality that rests on no theory of reading it. Thus, "that country" becomes autobiography, being "read back" to Yeats's Ireland, and just as quickly, Byzantium becomes, to borrow Blackmur's phrase, "the heaven of man's imagination". 51 As Yeats seems to predict, such readings do not age well; that is, they are not "unaging". Furthermore, this so-called "pure" approach actually mis-skews the poem's emphasis, for the poem never mentions Ireland, but rather insists on historical Byzantium. In spite of being able to understand how "ordinary" readings produce such mis-skewing, one wonders what prompts the desire to do so. Perhaps we wish to exclude ourselves from "that country" (the generational principle of natural causality) in order to escape the poet's scorn (unless we live in Ireland?). Conversely, wishing to be included in Yeats's "heaven of the imagination", Byzantium, we quickly open that symbol out to the realm of imaginative abstraction, the better to include ourselves within it. Yet the truth is that we can never know (study) Yeats's Ireland (as personal history) in the same way that we can know the monuments of Byzantium, which are accessible to us in the same way that they were to him. Certainly without any extra-poetic prompting, the poem itself instructs us to grant Byzantium and Yeats the historicity of the symbol. To see the whole business as "imaginative" is to miss what Yeats truly manages.

IV A D E T O U R T H R O U G H T H E SPECULATIONS OF A M O D E R N PHYSICIST: MASTERING T H E IMAGES Prompted by Edmund Wilson's generally unchallenged notion that serious consideration of Yeats's "system" is in some sense precluded by its scientific naivete, I wish briefly to consider Yeats's poetic procedures in the context of modern physics, with a special focus on the concept of the spatialization of time. This comparison is to be carried out indirectly, i.e. via a comparison of Yeats's metaphysic with the scientific concepts

51

As quoted by Brooks, p. 82.

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brought into play imaginatively in Gregory Benford's novel, Timescape. As both a writer and a physicist, Benford notes in his Acknowledgements that the aim of his fiction "has been to illuminate some outstanding philosophical difficulties in physics", adding that "if the reader emerges with the conviction that time represents a fundamental riddle in modern physics, this book [ Timescape] will have served its purpose." 52 Unfortunately, it is neither appropriate nor orthodox to run out several pages of quotable passages from Timescape, the cumulative impact of which would be likely to fill any student of critical theory with awe. For Benford's premise would hold that what is achieved in poetic "discourse", the stilling of time, the subverting of sequential temporality, constitutes a spatio-temporal break-through in "reality", a rending of the Veil. According to Benford, modern physics considers the myth of cause and effect and temporal flow to represent the last human illusion. T o the extent that a poem achieves a spatio-temporal form that subverts "meaning by sequentially", that poem breaks the illusion and becomes mimetic of "reality". This paradox between what appears to be "real" (existential "time") and the greater discovery of modern physicists (that we move through space but not time) represents the "fundamental riddle" that both Benford and his protagonist, Markham, grapple with in Timescape,53 Although language must nevertheless deal with experiential reality — the illusion of sequential time as it seems to be operating in the words on the page — Benford's speculations provide a happy analogue to those of Yeats. For what Yeats describes as psychic phenomena (the collapsing of spatio-temporal distinctions), Benford's account externalizes as the probable state of the universe as modern physicists now know it. From the first chapter of Timescape, the reader is confronted with insights about the physical universe which are, quite literally, unpicturable. And Benford repeatedly acknowledges the problem this causes in modern research, insisting that human comprehension has always depended upon "picturability"; but how does one picture the universe as a causal loop?

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Gregory Benford, Timescape (New York: Pocket Books, 1980). In a recent conversation, Benford explained that there is actually a dimension somewhere between space and time, but it is "more spatial" than temporal in the sense that all is causal—there are no "effects".

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Logic rules in physics, not the myth of cause and effect . . . H o w can time move? The rate is one second of spatial movement per second. There's no conceivable coordinate system in physics from which w e can measure time passing. So there isn't any. Time is frozen, as far as the universe is concerned, (p. 75)

Markham (the theorist and " h e r o " in the book) finally hits upon the emblem of the ouroborus as the only picturable likeness of the causal loop, although it is a crude and unsatisfactory picture, rather flat like T. S. Eliot's wheel, which won't do if one considers the movement of the outer rim to describe sequential "time". T h e experience of beholding through deep space the figures of the apostles seeming to turn around the sun in the center of the cupola might be more accurate, for it is the seemingness of time which joins the "as if" world of poetic "discourse" with the "probability" of quantum physics. Quite simply, if time is frozen, then the past (and each of our "pasts") still exists somewhere in space, and we could communicate with that "past" if we had some means of transcending the speed of light (the optical dimensions of this problem are always crucial). If the universe was a wholly linked system with no mythical classical observer to collapse the wave function, then the wave function did not have to collapse at all. . . Markham thought of a universe with one wave function, scattering into the new states of being as a paradox formed inside it like the kernel of an idea. —If the wave function did not collapse . . . Worlds lay ahead of him, and worlds lay behind. ( Timescape, p. 274)

As it happens, the tachyon, an ion-nuclei reaction that transcends the speed of light, is discovered in time for scientists confronted with global catastrophe to try desperately to send a message to the past (1963) in order to prompt the research which will divert the disaster they are facing. (And the message is received, but due to departmental politics, lack of funding, and extreme skepticism on the part of the scientific community, is dismissed as the fictional delusion of the hapless scientist w h o happens to receive it.) In a moment of imaginative brilliance, Benford puts the final twist on the plot (and the polemic), for Markham, by virtue of mastering the essential images in the moment of his death, is transported (by the strength of those images?) to 1963, where he will (in the past) institute the necessary research to divert the future he has already lived. This development reminds one of Yeats's fascination with

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Carla Copenhaven [the] Brahmin [who] once told Florence Farr that he disliked acting because if a man died playing Hamlet he would be Hamlet in the life to come. (Vision, p. 239)

However, the Markham transmuted to 1963 is not the same Markham who witnessed the future catastrophe; that is, he is the same person, but with a different past, the point being that he is younger not because he has moved "back through time", but because he has moved back through space. 54 Benford assures me that he purposely left mysterious Markham's sudden appearance in this " n e w " past, perhaps in order to strain the normal limits of our ability to picture paradox. Nor can Markham's "journey" be described as reincarnation, for it seems that we are figures frozen in space, with the landscape actually moving through us. Time and space were themselves players, vast lands engulfing the figures, a weave of future and past. There was no riverrun of years. T h e abiding loops of causality ran both forward and back . . . H e saw the crowd and thought of the waves moving through them, breaking into white, swallowing foam. The small figures dimly sensed the eddies of the waves as paradox, as riddle, and heard the tick of time without knowing what they sensed, and clung to their linear illusions of past and future, of progression, of their opening births and yawning deaths to come . . . and he t h o u g h t . . . of all these uncountable people, never loosening their grip on their hopes, and their strange human sense, their last illusion, that no matter how the days moved through them, there always remained the pulse of things coming, the sense that even now there was yet still time. (Timescape, p. 366; emphasis added)

V A F I N A L L O O K A T E K P H R A S I S IN T H E BYZANTIUM POEMS H o w does quantum physics relate to Yeats? Benford's speculations suggest that Yeats may be considered "unscientific" only in comparison with Nineteenth-Century notions of "natural causality" and "escapist" only to those who themselves are entrapped by mere "sensual music". Furthermore, Yeats's attempt to become incarnate in Byzantium art

54

To paraphrase an analogy Benford drew for me in order to clarify this phenomena, we think we are moving through time because we believe the car we back out of the driveway is the same car we drive to the university.

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through his Byzantium poems is more than an "imaginative" success, for Yeats is not hampered by a belief in irreversible historical "time", nor the myth of cause and effect. Because the visible world is the sum of the Bodies of Fate of all living things, or the sum of the Creative Minds of all Daimons whether of the living or the dead, what we call Fate is, as much as our most voluntary acts, a part of a single logical stream; and the Fixed Stars being the least changing things are the acts of whatever in that stream changes least, and therefore of all souls that have found an almost ceaseless rest. Berkeley thought if his study table remained when he closed his eyes it could only be because it was the thought of a more powerful spirit which he named God, but the mathematician Poincaré considers time and space the work of our ancestors. With the system in my bones I must declare that those ancestors still live and that time and space would vanish if they closed their eyes. ( Vision, p. 158; emphasis added) Immediately prior to his transmutation, Markham puzzles over the paradox that would occur if the past could be changed in such a way as to eliminate the future he has already lived. Then the essential image comes to him, the possibility of forking universes, an idea which seems to echo Yeats's primary and antithetical gyres and his belief in daimons. Paradoxes did no true damage, after all. It was like having a dusky twin beyond the looking glass, identical but for his lefthandedness. (Timespace, p. 363) Also, if time is like a standing wave, the future can seem to precede the past, for in reality there is no future or past. Origin and end are one in a causal loop. Those messages fled backward in time from some unfathomable future . . . But as they ran backward, what was to men an expanding universe appeared to the tachyons as a contracting one. Galaxies drew together, packing into an ever-shrinking volume. This thicker matter absorbed tachyons better. As they flowed back into what was, to them, an imploding universe, increasing numbers of the tachyons were absorbed. Finally, at the last instant before it compressed to a point, the universe absorbed all tachyons from each point in its own future. Gordon's measurements of the tachyon flux, integrated back in time, showed that the energy absorbed from the tachyons was enough to heat the compressed mass. This energy fueled the universal expansion. So to the eyes of man, the universe exploded from a single point because of what would happen, not what had. Origin and destiny intertwined. The snake ate its tail. ( Timescape, p. 362)

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Benford's descriptions seem to clarify the ontological premise informing Yeats's belief that history was (is) alive—alive not only "imaginatively" but still peopled with men and women who exist somewhere in space. Given this context, we can see that the Byzantium poems are messages not only to the future, but to a very real past, where those ancestors who created time and space refuse to "close their eyes". For instance, after expressing his desire, "if . . . given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where [he] chose", to go to Byzantium, Yeats added the following lines, one particular part of which seems to have gone little noticed: I think that in early Byzantium, and maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, and that architect and artificers—though not, it may be, poets, for language had been the instrument of controversy and must have grown abstract—spoke to the multitude and the few alike. (Vision, p. 191)

Byzantium had everything but a poet. Melchiori supposes that because the original mosaics in the cupola of St. Sophia had been covered or removed by Moslems, Yeats, in a moment of double poetic and historical vision, transposed the rose of apostles from the Baptistry at Ravenna, thus subsuming five hundred years of Byzantium art into a single poetic moment. Whether or not this is so, Yeats does recreate Byzantium in his poems and then brings "his" city to life in order to insinuate his presence within it. For every act of ekphrasis seems to reciprocate the favor. Thus, in "Sailing to Byzantium", no sooner do the sages seem to spiral down from the dome ("perne in a gyre") than they gather Yeats up into their eternity as well; in "Byzantium" Yeats makes the light move across the dome, and bodies forth the cathedral gong; in return the poem (through the medium of the poet) becomes a vehicle for the spiritual being that appears to reveal the superhuman; likewise, for making the golden birds of Byzantium outsing nature and become like the supernatural cocks of Hades, and for bringing to life the flames of image on the Emperor's pavement, Yeats himself is guided by the smithies, who show him how they break the spirits in order that he might break free his final image, his own mosaic. What the goldsmiths in the first poem would do for him—turn him into a golden bird—he in turn does for them in the second poem, where they become "the golden smithies". As well, the drowsy emperor, the mosaic of Justinian at Ravenna, no longer represents for us mere historical record in the cubes of a wall, but becomes caught in Yeats's poem in that timeless moment between waking and dream which

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signifies the mixture of the human and the divine; in return, the Emperor's smithies become Yeats's smithies as well. The poems quite literally unite Yeats with historical Byzantium, as well as subsuming that history in his recreation of it. As far as I know, Yeats is Byzantium's only real poet. And through this act of double ekphrasis, we seem to experience the Hagia Sophia herself, with the same wonder and perplexity recorded by Procopius: Yet is seems not to rest upon solid masonry, but to cover the space with its golden dome suspended from Heaven. All these details, fitted together with incredible skill in mid-air and floating off from each other and resting only on the parts next to them, produce a single and most extraordinary harmony in the work, and yet do not permit the spectator to linger much over the study of any one of them, but each detail, attracts the eye and draws it on irresistibly to itself. So the vision constantly shifts suddenly, for the beholder is utterly unable to select which particular detail he should admire more than all the others. But even so, though they turn their attention to every side and look with contracted brows upon every detail, observers are still unable to understand the skilful craftsmanship, but they always depart from there overwhelmed by the bewildering sight. So much, then, for this.55

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Procopius, p. 23.

LOTHAR HÖNNIGHAUSEN

Faulkner's Poetry

The first book by the novelist William Faulkner is a volume of poetry, The Marble Faun (1924). 1 The publication of this lyric cycle on the tension between art and life, whose mood and style are inspired by a late romantic version of the Arcadian tradition, marks the conclusion of a distinctive phase in Faulkner's early period. A Green Bough (1933), a collection of literary experiments with such diverse models as Eliot and Housman, Cummings and Rossetti, Swinburne, Pound, and the Imagists, was assembled by Faulkner as a form of retrospective after his period of lyric production (1918-26). 2 With the Random House publication in 1965 of both poetry collections, The Marble Faun and A Green Bough, Faulkner's lyrics became known to a wider circle of readers.3 Previously, in 1962, Carvel Collins had published the important volume William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry, which includes review articles, the first short story and drawings by the young Faulkner as well as early poems.4 In addition to the poetry edited by Carvel Collins, other early lyrics appear in the Massey exhibition catalogue, compiled by Joan St. C. Crane and Anne E. H. Freudenberg in 1975-76. 5 These sources are supplemented by the description of manuscripts and facsimiles from the Brodsky Collection.6 1

2 3 4 5

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Boston, 1924. The present article was written in conjunction with a larger study of Faulkner's early work; this study will soon be completed and has received the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I would also like to thank the American libraries I have visited for their gracious assistance. In particular, I want to acknowledge the help of Miss Joan St. C. Crane from the University of Virginia Library, Mrs. Ellen Dunlap from the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and Mr. Thomas M. Verich, from the John Davis Williams Library at the University of Mississippi. New York, 1933. New York and Toronto, 1965. Boston and Toronto, 1962. Man Collecting. Manuscripts and Printed Works of William Faulkner in the University of Virginia Library. Robert W. Hamblin and Louis Daniel Brodsky, ed., Selections from the William Faulkner Collection of Louis Daniel Brodsky: A Descriptive Catalogue (Charlottesville,

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When considering Faulkner's lyrics, it must be remembered that a sizeable amount of material is still unpublished, not available, or known only to a few. The individual poems of the Lilacs volume, for instance, may of course be found in Carvel Collins's Early Prose and Poetry, but in order to envision the overall arrangement of the Lilacs, a volume dedicated to Phil Stone, it is necessary to consult the description of the manuscript in the catalogue of the Brodsky Collection. 7 And to this day, the large cycle Vision in Spring itself is only known to many serious Faulkner researchers through the descriptions and extensive quotations in the secondary literature. Consisting of fourteen poems, some of considerable length, the cycle includes as number three a smaller cycle of eight poems on the "Pierrot" figure. Some poems, such as numbers one and fourteen, have already been published: number one as "Visions [sic!] in Spring" in Contempo 1,17 (1932), 1, and number fourteen, the concluding poem entitled "April", on page two of the same issue. Versions of numbers eleven and twelve are known to Faulknerians as Green Bough II and XX, respectively, and number five ("Portrait") is included in Early Prose and Poetry, which also contains an illustrated section of the "Pierrot" group. Taken together, the cycle Vision in Spring shows Faulkner's extensive and serious attempts to come to terms with both the late romantic and modernist forms of poetry (Aiken, Eliot). The cycle precedes the two betterknown volumes of poetry, The Marble Faun and A Green Bough, and throws an entirely new light on Faulkner's development. Fortunately, the publication of the cycle has in the meantime been announced for 1984, when it will appear as William Faulkner's Vision in Spring with notes and afterword by Judith L. Sensibar (Austin: University of Texas Press). 8 In view of the somewhat hesitant publication of Faulkner's poetry since The Marble Faun, it is gratifying to be able to mention that Carvel Collins and Joseph Blotner, to whom Faulkner scholarship already owes so much, have collaborated for the benefit and pleasure of the reading public to publish the two early cycles, Helen: A Courtship and Mississippi

7 8

1979), pp. 15-46: "The Early Years: Artist and Poet." Also see, by the same authors: "Faulkner's 'L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune': The Evolution of a Poem," Studies in Bibliography, 33 (1980), 254-63; and by Louis Daniel Brodsky, "Additional Manuscripts of Faulkner's *A Dead Dancer,' " Studies in Bibliography, 34(1981), 267-70. Hamblin and Brodsky, Selections, pp. 31-5. Mrs. Faulkner Summers holds the copyright to Vision in Spring, and the University of Texas Press, as publisher, has the right to grant permission to publish.

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Poems, in one volume. The release of this volume is quite significant in the recent publication history of Faulkner's poetry, not only for the poems themselves, but also because of the helpful introductions, which include a substantial amount of new information. The book's physical appearance is very attractive as well, with the photographic material, printed by Tulane University and Yoknapatawpha Press.9 Judging by the material that has appeared to date, readers should expect some surprises, if not unknown poems of genius, as long as the bibliographical and textual process of gathering the poems is not completed. 10 Consequently, with the limits of what is available in mind, the student of Faulkner's poetry cannot be satisfied that The Marble Faun and A Green Bough represent the essential works. Through analysis of the poetry drafts and unpublished fragments, as for example in the rich collection at the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas, Austin, a new image of both Faulkner's literary and working methods can be formed. It should be of special interest for any critic who wants to work seriously with the artistic development of the most prominent American prose author of the 1920s that Faulkner's early poems are not at all "poems of youth and a simple heart", or "natural products of his native Mississippi", as Phil Stone claims in his stylizing foreword to the first book published by his young friend and protégé. 11 Faulkner's complete lyrics must not be seen in isolation from hisother early works. Many aspects of the poems become clear in connection with his review articles for the student journal The Mississippian, for instance, in which he discusses works by W. A. Percy, Conrad Aiken, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Joseph Hergesheimer and Eugene O'Neill, but also refers to Swinburne, Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, Kreymborg, Carl Sandburg and John Synge, partly to emphasize his own connoisseurship. In addition, the poems also connect artistically and intellectually with the symbolist one-act play The Marionettes, and some texts associated with

9

0

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'Helen: A Courtship' and 'Mississippi Poems' (Oxford, Miss, and N e w Orleans, 1981). Before this situation is finally resolved, Keen Butterworth's essay will remain the most important bibliographical aid. See his "A Census of Manuscripts and Typescripts of William Faulkner's Poetry," Mississippi Quarterly, 26 (1973), 333-60. In Faulkner, Marble Faun, p. 6: the poems "are drenched in the sunlight and color as is the land in which they were written, the land which gave birth and sustenance to their author. H e has roots in this soil as surely and inevitably as has a tree."

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the prose poem genre: "The Hill", and the later expanded version of that text, "Nympholepsy", published in 1973 by James B. Meriwether. 12 These works all contain similar themes and motifs, and in this context Ilse Dusoir Lind has noted: "The symbolist dream play (The Marionettes) and the symbolist poem (The Marble Faun) clearly possess strong affinities." 13 But connections between the poetic drama of the "Pierrot" and the 'dramatic monologue' of the "marble faun" can also be demonstrated by textual evidence and bibliographical commentary, as shown in the fragments published by Noel Polk in his edition of The Marionettes, and in a recent Mississippi Quarterly article by Judith Sensibar. 14 Fairly early, the first more comprehensive essays on Faulkner's poetry observed the numerous influences on his writing (Eliot, Housman, Cummings, Rossetti, and Swinburne). 15 In the meantime, although the surveys by Runyan and Garrett have been refined by later interpretations, some of Garrett's insights have been of lasting value. H e did not simply criticize the lack of authenticity in Faulkner's poetry, but he also recognized — in contrast to many of his successors — the importance of these experiments for the future prose master: A Green Bough shows a poet, not always successful or equally skillful, who knows the value of words, rhythm, image, texture, and above all, structure; and it shows us a writer who, contrary to popular myth, was a meticulous craftsman, aware of the tradition of letters and the best contemporary work.16

12

13

14

15

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Mississippi Quarterly, 26 (1973), 404-9. On "The Hill" and "Nympholepsy", see Michel Gresset's subtle approach in "Faulkner's 'The Hill,' " Southern Literary Journal, 6 (1974), 3-18; and the detailed interpretation by Philip Momberger, "A Reading of Faulkner's 'The Hill,' " Southern Literary Journal, 9 (Spring, 1977), 16-29. "The Hill" appears in Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry, ed. Collins, pp. 90-2, and "Nympholepsy" is also available in Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner, ed. Joseph Blotner ( N e w York, 1979), pp. 331-7. Ilse Dusoir Lind, "Faulkner's Uses of Poetic Drama," in Faulkner, Modernism, and Film: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1978, ed. Evans Harrington and Ann J. Abadie (Jackson, 1979) pp. 66-87; 72. See Noel Polk, ed.„ The Marionettes: A Play in One Act (Charlottesville, 1977), pp. xxviii-xxix; and Judith L. Sensibar, "Pierrot and the Marble Faun: Another Fragment," Mississippi Quarterly, 32 (1979), 473-6. See for example Harry Runyan, "Faulkner's Poetry," Faulkner Studies, 3, N o . 2-3 (1954), 23-9; George P. Garrett, Jr., "An Examination of the Poetry of William Faulkner," Princeton University Library Chronicle, 8, No. 3 (1957), 124-35. Garrett, 134.

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The influence problem has been investigated much more thoroughly by Richard Adams in an extensive study, but he speaks somewhat vaguely of Faulkner's "rejection of modern methods and techniques in verse", and the discussion of influences does not lead him to an assessment of Faulkner's position in American and world literary history.17 Carvel Collins has created a more coherent picture and effectively utilized his painstaking research to develop a clear idea of Faulkner's biographical situation, in several introductions to editions of the early works. 18 Together, Carvel Collins's editions and introductions constitute the most significant contribution to research on the early Faulkner. H. Edward Richardson's book deserves mention as the first booklength study of Faulkner's literary development. 19 Richardson deals briefly with The Marble Faun and A Green Bough, and also comments on a few poems from Early Prose and Poetry.10 For more detailed descriptions of the poems' contents, however, as well as biographical information relevant to them, Joseph Blotner's comprehensive William Faulkner remains indispensable.21 The numerous quotations in this book create a distinct impression of the poems still unpublished from Vision in Spring as well.22 More recently, the poetry has received extended treatment in Cleanth Brooks's first chapter to his second Faulkner book. 23 Understandably, the second-rate poems did not inspire the great critic as much as the major works, and yet this book also contributes to making his work a landmark in Faulkner criticism. Brooks effectively displays his philological acumen in the poetry chapter with regard to the intricate problems of Eliot's early influence. 24 The brief discussions of several poems in the text, as well as the influence charts in the appendix, provide useful information for students of Faulkner's poetry. But various claims in the chap-

17

18

" 20 21 22 23 24

Richard P. Adams, "The Apprenticeship of William Faulkner," Tulane Studies in English, 12 (1962), 113-56, see especially 114-20. In addition to Early Prose and Poetry and 'Helen: A Courtship' and 'Mississippi Poems,' there are the editions and introductions of New Orleans Sketches (1958; rpt. N e w York, 1968), and Mayday (Notre Dame, 1977). William Faulkner: The Journey to Self-Discovery (Columbia, 1969). See Richardson, pp. 47, 104, and 63, respectively. London, 1974; see especially Book Three, pp. 199-382. Blotner, Faulkner, pp. 307-12. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond (New Haven, 1978). Brooks, p. 11.

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ter cannot remain uncontested, such as the idea that Swinburne's influence concerns "general rather than specific borrowings", or that Faulkner's "L'Après-Midi d'un Faune" is a "reworking of Stéphane Mallarmé's" poem. 25 Although Brooks touches on some of the more subtle methodological problems, such as why the influences of two very different authors like Eliot and Housman did not neutralize each other, 26 it is clear that the question of what attracted Faulkner to these authors is not as important to Brooks as his disappointment that "Housman's influence, then, did not send Faulkner back to his native land." 27 Few critics today would disagree with Brooks's idea that Faulkner "needed to call his muse home", 28 but it has become more important to ask how this muse really looked as she returned to northern Mississippi : must she resemble Lena Grove? This is the question a number of scholars are beginning to ask: why did Faulkner's muse neglect her roots in the native soil, and wander through English late romanticism, French fin de siècle, and early modernism? And why did she continue these wanderings for such an extended period, and — as the manuscripts of the early poems clearly show — with such dedication? I think the conclusion of Sanctuary reveals what the international experience meant to Faulkner's Mississippi muse: it supplied a specific, artistic perspective and aesthetic to the indigenous material. Temple Drake, who is unchanged after the tragedy, banal and without catharsis, finds herself in the Luxembourg Gardens. The world of Jefferson and Frenchman's Bend, where the victim and real heroine Ruby Lamar has stayed behind, seems far from the Parisian setting. But this distance itself provides the aesthetic focus for the deeper appreciation of the event, for the Yoknapatawpha tragedy first acquires its ultimate dignity and universal significance from the stylized scenery of the park in Paris, with its touch of autumn melancholy reminiscent of Verlaine : "where at sombre intervals the tranquil queens in stained marble mused." 29 In his comprehensive and penetrating review of Brooks's Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond, Thomas L. McHaney suggests the larger context which could lead to a new Faulkner image :

25 26 27 28 29

Brooks, Brooks, Brooks, Brooks, William

pp. 2-3. p. 15: "why Housman and Eliot did not cancel each other out." p. 17. p. 20. Faulkner, Sanctuary (New York, 1981), p. 222.

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I a m not sure h o w Faulkner c a m e to balance his sense of place with his artistic ambitions, his k n o w l e d g e of northern Mississippi with his sophisticated aesthetic, o r his native and circumambient l a n g u a g e with the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century p o e t r y a n d p r o s e he had been reading. It w a s clearly m o r e than stumbling into possession of his ' p o s t a g e stamp of native soil.' 3 0

If the implications of McHaney's statement are taken seriously, Faulkner's poetry and other early works become far more important than if they are judged from Brooks's perspective. Although the second-rate poems do not appear better, they certainly demand more detailed attention from those scholarly critics who aim to develop a better understanding of Faulkner's artistic evolution. By contrast, if Brooks's approach is consistently followed to its logical conclusion, the result is a critical attitude which can hardly be adequate : since Faulkner's poetry remained indebted to the heritage of late romanticism and early modernism, it was therefore essentially 'foreign' to him, and should be regarded as an unfortunate false start. 31 Furthermore, the poetry should be passed over quickly in order to reach his real beginnings, marked by the homecoming of his muse to northern Mississippi. Of course, Brooks appreciates the better poems in A Green Bough (e. g. number II, which he praises as "contemporary and soundly Americ a n " ) , 3 2 but most of these poems, which are indeed minor, do not call forth his full critical power. T h e most convincing section in Brooks's poetry chapter is not his discussion of the early poems, but his comments on the poetic prose in The Hamlet: . . . a p o e t r y of a special kind. N o t that of moonlight, but a p o e t r y which will everywhere a c k n o w l e d g e the unpoetic, the realistic, and even the ugly, and absorb and digest these into itself. 3 3

Critics are likely to agree with this judgment of Faulkner's great lyrical prose and epigonal poetry; but without a careful analysis of the early

30

31

32 33

Thomas L. McHaney, "Brooks on Faulkner: The End of the Long View," Review (Charlottesville), 1 (1979), 29-45; 40. See Brooks, p. 18, where he describes the "English" landscape elements in The Marble Faun as "outlandish". Brooks, p. 27. Brooks, p. 25.

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phase of lyric experimentation, the later prose remains an unexplained phenomenon. That Faulkner's genius is equally visible in both his subtle narrative art and his manipulation of language is rarely considered by most critics. And this is not surprising if one of the most perceptive of these, in the light of his revered Faulkner image, sees the particular literary, manneristic tendency as regrettable, and at best a forgiveable caprice of a great man : I do not mean to say that Faulkner ever gave up completely a certain hankering for extravagantly literary words and highfalutin' allusions. T o the end of his life he flirted from time to time with the exotically 'literary.'34

The quality that Brooks dismisses as "extravagantly . . . exotically 'literary' ", and "highfalutin' allusions", can be studied as it developed in the early lyrics. My impression, after analyzing the relevant poetry in detail, is that Faulkner devoted himself in an almost obsessive manner to a specific process of learning stylistics during this period. 35 Precise description of the phases in this process will not reverse the current image of Faulkner. But it should add a new dimension, through which the manneristic prose poetry in the major works will appear as an integral part of Faulkner's overall artistic development. François Pitavy emphasized before Brooks that the muse could only be artistically activated by a 'homecoming'. 36 In contrast to Brooks, however, Pitavy's conception of "l'intégrité profonde de Faulkner" also led him to consider the connections between the early poems, which were heavily indebted to literary models, and Faulkner's uniquely poetic prose : Faulkner, qui savait dire des vérités pour lui essentielles tout en leur donnant l'apparence d'attitudes 'littéraires', attendues au cours de tels exercises — qu'au fond il méprisait trop pour ne pas savoir en user, avec un secret plaisir. Au vrai, en vers ou en prose, Faulkner n'a jamais cessé d'être poète . . . Certes, on pourra remarquer que son sens très sur des rhythmes et des sonor-

* 35

36

Brooks, p. 26. Respective analyses of single works will be appearing in the form of essays in the journal Amerikastudien and the Festschrift for Hans Hinterhäuser (Vienna). François L. Pitavy, "Faulkner poète," Etudes Anglaises, 29 (1976), 456-67: "C'est seulement lorsqu'il rappellera sa muse loin des jardins de la poésie anglaise ou des clairières, fontaines et statues d'une imprécise et bien littéraire antiquité pour l'installer dans le comté de Yoknapatawapha, que Faulkner pourra créer l'œuvre en prose qui lui vaudra en 1950 le prix Nobel de littérature. . ."(456).

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ités, ses extraordinaires r é s e a u x d ' i m a g e s génératrices d'un e s p a c e p u r e m e n t imaginaire manifestent ne s a u r a pas toujours se d é f a i r e d'un a m o u r de j e u n e h o m m e p o u r l'image extravagante, voir l'affeterie langagière. 3 7

Like Brooks, Pitavy sees the mannerism in the mature prose as a disturbing relic of adolescence, and not as an essential characteristic of Faulkner's style. At the same time, he does notice the consistency of the 'lyrical' Faulkner, as his sensitive examination of " C a r c a s s o n n e " suggests : U n e sorte de p o è m e en p r o s e qui . . . m a r q u e précisément ce p a s s a g e d'un moyen d'expression à un autre, de la poésie à la fiction, dont rétrospectivement F a u l k n e r a souvent, fait, on l'a vu, le m o m e n t important de son evolution. 3 8

By following the development of the 'poet' persona from The Marble Faun through the protagonists of " C a r c a s s o n n e " and H o r a c e Benbow to figures like Darl Bundren, Quentin, and Ike McCaslin, Pitavy has done important groundwork for establishing the links between the early poems and the novels. His discussion focuses on the symbolic leitmotif of the vase, which J o a n S. Korenman analyses in an intelligent essay and Hilayne Cavanaugh examines in detail in her dissertation. 3 9 Pitavy's fellow countryman, André Bleikasten, has effectively phrased the question of artistic continuity: C o m m e n t un petit p o è t e a n a c h r o n i q u e des années vingt a-t-il pu devenir l'un des g r a n d s romanciers de ce temps? O n n ' é c h a p p e p a s à cette question, futelle naive et dut-elle rester sans réponse. 4 0

T h e light tone of his phrasing belies the seriousness of the question, but he does address the issue with remarkable clarity, and suggests, in addition, a method of solution. H e shows that research to date has been limited almost exclusively to finding the various influences. 4 1 In reality,

37 38 39

40

41

Pitavy, 457. Pitavy, 460. See Joan S. Kovenman, "Faulkner's Grecian Urn," Southern Literary Journal, 7 (1974), 3-23, and Hilayne Cavanaugh, "Faulkner, Stasis, and Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' " Diss. The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1977; Microfilm 77-23, 129. André Bleikasten, "Pan et Pierrot, ou les premiers masques de Faulkner," Revue de Littérature Comparée, 53 (1979), 299-310; 299. Bleikasten, 300: " O n a peu écrit sur la poésie du jeune Faulkner et le plus souvent l'on s'est borné à dresser le catalogue des influences subies."

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however, we are not faced with a sum of individual influences, but a complex network which cannot be understood "en termes de relations interindividuelles". For a methodological basis, he refers to Barthes's idea that "tout texte est un tissu nouveau de citations révolues." Perhaps one of his doctoral candidates will investigate the problem of influence in Faulkner's early work using Barthes's approach. 42 Bleikasten himself treats the young Faulkner within the framework of role theory ("à la recherche d'un personnage et qui hésite entre plusieurs rôles"), 43 and he discusses the masks of the faun and Pierrot, which are central to the early work. Consequently, the protagonist of The Marble Faun receives greater attention : "Double de 1'artist en mal de réalité, le faune statufié serait alors aussi un premier modèle de l'œuvre d'art,"44 Behind the two masks, Bleikasten detects "la figure générique du héros malade". 45 What should also be emphasized is the fact that Faulkner, by assuming the two roles, was seeking access to the same late romantic and early modernist tradition that inspired the fauns of Mallarmé, Debussy, and Donald Davidson, as well as the Pierrots of Verlaine, Laforgue, Picasso, and Schônberg. Obviously, Faulkner was not primarily concerned with finding his own 'native' authenticity in his early phase. Contrary to what most of his critics would say, he was clearly more interested in doing literary exercises with forms of stylized representation. The apparent effortlessness with which he found his own voice, almost as a matter of course, should alert the critic to the complex nature of Faulkner's literary evolution. The metamorphosis of the fin de siècle, modernist dandy into the realistic 'chronicler of the American South' can no longer be interpreted as an unforeseen miracle. Instead, after experience with the early works, one gets the feeling that Faulkner knew, with the instinctiveness of the genius, that he would need such intensive, out-of-the-way exercises in these highly stylized modes of poetic expression. Work in progress mentioned by several scholars and conversations with experts at various conferences give the impression that a new image

42

« « «

Bleikasten, 304: "Or, pour en revenir au débuts de Faulkner, ce qui se donne à lui dans ses premières tentatives littéraires, c'est un intertexte en quelque sorte à nu, un intertexte sous texte." Bleikasten, 300. Bleikasten, 306. Bleikasten, 307.

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of Faulkner is emerging from the study of the early works. Developments outside research on the poetry also show the beginnings of a new Faulkner image; the primary example is the lively interest generated by Polk's edition of The Marionettes. Gail Moore Morrison's convincing approach is characteristic of the shifting emphasis as well, as she discusses The Sound and the Fury with a full knowledge of the fascination the Arthurian romances had for the Pre-Raphaelites and other British and American late romanticists: for Beardsley, in his illustrations to Le Morte D'Arthur, but also for Edwin Arlington Robinson and Stark Young. By tracing the respective motives through the 'Arthurian parody" Mayday, which was inspired by Cabell's ironic prose romances, she is able to derive a new conception of The Sound and the Fury.*6 Jeffrey J. Folks, in emphasizing the inner connections between Faulkner's early poetry and prose, goes so far as to claim: " . . . the influence of poetry on the early fiction extends beyond the stylistic level to include narrative technique." 47 Although this statement oversteps what is successfully demonstrated in the essay, both the stylistic and the closely related thematic affinities are unmistakeable.48 Margaret Yonce locates these affinities in her subtle analysis of Faulkner's "Lilacs", which drew inspiration from Eliot's "Prufrock", in relation to Soldiers' Pay and Flags in the Dust.49 Her article considers the poem's themes and the contents of its motifs, such as "the death-in-life motif . . . the pursuit of an immortal woman by mortal men, metamorphosis and the fragmentation of personality." Perceptively focusing on this last motif, she develops an interpretation that is not concerned, as most critics have been to this point, with a speaker surrounded by his war comrades: "There is only one wounded

46

47

48

49

Gail Moore Morrison, '"Time, Tide, and Twilight': Mayday and Faulkner's Quest Toward The Sound and the Fury," Mississippi Quarterly, 31 (1978), 337-57. Jeffrey F. Folks, "The Influence of Poetry on the Narrative Technique of Faulkner's Early Fiction," The Journal of Narrative Technique, 9 (1979), 184-90; 184. Patrick Samway, S. J., "Faulkner's Poetic Vision," in Faulkner and the Southern Renaissance, ed. Doreen Fowler and Ann J. Abadie (Jackson, Miss., 1982), pp. 204-44, mentions on p. 206, note 3, Judith Sensibar's dissertation, whose theme is relevant to the relationship of Faulkner's prose and and poetry. According to Samway, Sensibar "discusses the relation of Faulkner's apprenticeship poetry, particularly Vision in Spring, to the emergence of his fictional voice." Margaret Yonce, " 'Shot Down Last Spring': The Wounded Aviators of Faulkner's Wasteland," Mississippi Quarterly, 31 (1978), 359-369.

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soldier present; the friends with whom he sits 'in silent amity' are manifestations of his own fragmented psyche." 5 0 In the past, the need to relate the early minor works to the later major ones has led to 'short circuits' in understanding, as when the stylized world of the poems or the one-act play The Marionettes is set next to the 'realistic' Yoknapatawpha world too abruptly. James E. Mulqueen avoids this danger, and links the protagonist of Faulkner's first poetry volume to Horace Benbow in Flags in the Dust, the first of the Yoknapatawpha novels. While other critics have been preoccupied with the marble faun's yearning for life, Mulqueen recognizes that the faun is really neither able nor willing to give up his art-existence: Ostensibly, the f a u n is sad b e c a u s e he can take no p a r t in the life a b o u t him, but he really prefers his d r e a m w o r l d of aesthetic contemplation a n d resents the intrusion of repellant reality in the persons of human dancers. 5 1

In this regard, he sees an affinity between the faun and Horace Benbow. Fully realizing the implications of "Narcissa" as the name of Horace's sister, Mulqueen takes the barren fascination between brother and sister as the decisive clue to the character problem: " T h a t very name, Narcissa, indicates that Horace sees in her, like Narcissus in the Greek myth, a reflection of his own nature." 5 2 Following this approach to the novel, Mulqueen concludes: " H o r a c e fails as a man of action because he is, like the faun, essentially a dreamer whose ideal is a timeless vision of abstract beauty." 5 3 Mulqueen's article is of special interest to the student of the poetry as it implies continuity in Faulkner's work, and helps to bridge the gap between the highly stylized method of the early poems and the more realistic treatment of the same complex of experiences and themes in the novels. In fact I think it is safe to proceed a step further along these lines, and relate the marble faun's attitude towards life and sex not only to Horace

50 51

52

53

Yonce, 359 and 365, respectively. James E. Mulqueen, "Horace Benbow: Avatar of Faulkner's Marble Faun," Notes on Mississippi Writers, 9 (1976), 88-96; 89-90. Mulqueen, 91. The 'decadent' relationship of the Benbow siblings seems to be prefigured in various motifs from the works of Thomas Mann; see for example the short story "Walsungenblut". Mulqueen, 94.

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Benbow's flirtation with the aestheticism of Keats's "Grecian U r n " , but also the idealism of Quentin Compson and Gavin Stevens. 54 The difference between the late romantic poetry of The Marble Faun and the realistic study of Horace as a representative of the tragic generation could not be greater. Again, there is a wide distance separating the tragedy of Quentin's juvenile obsession with his sister's virginity from the ironic portrayal of Gavin's worship of Eula, Linda, and the little girls. But it is a difference in treatment and style, not in kind. Whether we think of the futile yearning of the marble faun, or of the barren idealists in the novels, Faulkner's preoccupation seems to be with the fear of sterility and various attempts to escape into idealism. Particularly helpful in assessing the thematic continuity are, of course, works like Mayday, whose parodistic treatment of the idealist as a suicidal Arthurian quester proves Faulkner's stylistic flexibility in the treatment of this obsessive theme. Works marking transformation processes and intermediate stages, however, can only be successfully reinterpreted when the early poetry and poetic prose is much better understood than it is at present. Meanwhile, an article like Bruce Morton's, in which the publication of Faulkner's poem "Portrait" and Hemingway's poem "Ultimately" (1922) on the same page of the Double Dealer appears as a curiosity, should make us aware that until now we have too rarely seen Faulkner's lyrical production in its broader literary context. 55 Martin Kreiswirth has done important groundwork in regard to this question. From him we know that Faulkner's Verlaine translations are indebted to Arthur Symons, which in turn throws new light on Faulkner's relationship to the French Symbolists. 56 In addition, he has demonstrated in detailed analyses how several of the early poems published by Carvel Collins and from The Marble Faun cycle are influenced by Robert Nichols, the late romantic English poet. 57

54

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56

57

In the course of his use of Keats's poems as a leitmotif, Horace comes to identify not only his own amateurish glass work, but also his sister with Keats's "unravished bride of quietness". Bruce Morton, " T h e Irony and Significance of T w o Early Faulkner and Hemingway Poems Appearing in the Double Dealer," Zeitscbrift furAnglistik undAmerikanistik, 28 (1980), 254-8. Martin Kreiswirth, "Faulkner as Translator: His Versions of Verlaine," Mississippi Quarterly, 30 (1977), 429-32. Martin Kreiswirth, "Faulkner's The Marble Faun: Dependence and Independence," English Studies in Canada, 6 (1980), 333-44.

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In his survey "Faulkner in the Nineteen-Twenties", Michael Millgate has summarized Faulkner's lyrical production: In the early 1920s he imposed upon himself a systematic apprenticeship to the art of poetry, a sustained programme of imitating and recreating the works of admired poetic predecessors.

Elaborating this argument, he emphasizes the importance of the poetic experiments for Faulkner's artistic development: "When Faulkner turned from poetry to fiction at the beginning of 1925 he did not lose that intense ambition to become, before anything else, an artist." 58 Although Faulkner's poetry is indebted to very different sources of inspiration, it should not be overlooked that the poems all appeared in the relatively short period between 1918 and 1926. Consequently, an obvious step is to look for continuities within the poetry and to relate these findings in turn to Faulkner's prose. The first goal distinguishes the most recent longer essay on our theme, by Patrick Samway. H e finds a major thematic group in Faulkner's poetry to be "the returning soldier, the quest and subsequent loss of a woman, and the final acceptance of solitude and death", 59 though this formulaic synopsis neither does justice to Faulkner's differentiated workmanship nor to Samway's comprehensive analysis. What makes the essay particularly interesting from the outset is its focus on Vision in Spring, which marks the first time after Blotner's descriptions that the cycle has received a thematic investigation. In addition, the extensive quotations from the work are especially useful, since the poems are presently inaccessible. Samway discusses the first three poems from Vision in Spring, then sensibly proceeds from the third poem ("The World and Pierrot: A Nocturne") to its affinity with Faulkner's one-act play The Marionettes, in the figure of Pierrot. An excursus follows on the faun in The Marble Faun and in poems from Early Prose and Poetry. The second section of the essay deals with numbers four and fourteen from Vision in Spring, and shows the thematic connections to poems in A Green Bought By means of his remarkable method, whereby the other three poetry collections and The Marionettes are related to the focus on Vision in Spring, Samway is able to demonstrate a certain thematic continuity in Faulkner's poetry. 58

59 60

Michael Millgate, "Faulkner in the Nineteen-Twenties," Studies in American ure (Japan), 18 (1981), 1-16; both quotations, 4. Samway, p. 243. Samway, pp. 212-4, 217-31, and 230-9, respectively.

Literat-

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Following the thematic analysis, a reasonable next step would be to examine the ways Faulkner's 'poetic vision', in its several aspects, is structurally and stylistically realized. On the basis of recent research as well as my own investigations, it seems necessary to pay special attention to the complex relations between motifs and forms. Detailed study of The Marionettes and the paraphrases from Swinburne and Eliot shows that Faulkner was not indulging himself in aimless, juvenile imitations of fashionable motifs. The half-conscious goal of his use of esoteric imagery and its elaborate arrangements seems to have been to experiment with different modes of stylization. Faulkner's graphic works abound with parallel examples that illustrate this attempt very well. 61 In a book I am about to conclude on the early Faulkner, I try to give a more detailed picture of the stylizing tendencies in The Marionettes, the drawings, and the poems.

O n this question see my essay, " F a u l k n e r ' s Graphic W o r k in Its Historical C o n t e x t " , which will appear shortly in a collection of essays f r o m the University of Mississippi Press.

HELEN HAGENBUCHLE

Conrad Aiken's Aesthetic Theories: A Tandem of Methods

In "Poetry and the Mind of Modern Man" Conrad Aiken asserts that it is the prime function of poetry to be "the vanguard of man's consciousness" 1 in the evolutionary process of the human mind. To that end, he makes the nature of consciousness both the central theme and the structural principle of his work. What Aiken aims at is a comprehensive literary form flexible enough to embody the totality of modern experience. Ideally, the poet is both a sensitive antenna registering all human knowledge available at a given period, and a philosopher ordering this knowledge in a comprehensive theory: "Poetry . . . must embody the full consciousness of man at that given moment. It cannot afford to lag behind the explorations of knowledge, whether of the inner or outer worlds: these it is its business to absorb and transmute." 2 Poetry, Aiken claims, must create an integrated vision of man's changing position in the world. In rendering the spirit of the times "real" and palpable, the poet raises the level of collective awareness. Aiken's belief in a continuing evolution of consciousness, and in the vital function of poetry for this process, is basic to an understanding of his aesthetic theories. It is the aim of this paper to explore the interdependence between Aiken's concept of consciousness and his poetics. Throughout his life, Aiken was in quest of a theory of aesthetics capable of reconciling the antinomian structure of human existence: experience versus knowledge, life versus art, being versus becoming. These antinomies are clearly reflected in his views on language and on art. Although he achieved a synthesis of sorts in his mature work, he nonetheless remained, to the end, perplexed by the tension between knowledge, form, order and philosophic vision on the one hand, and experience, flux, and the sheer multiplicity of existence on the other.

1

2

Conrad Aiken, "Poetry and the Mind of Modern Man," in Poets on Poetry, Howard Nemerov (New Y o r k : Basic Books, 1966), p. 4. Ibid, p. 7.

ed.

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HISTORICAL C O N T E X T Aiken's evolutionary credo is his answer to the recent changes in man's relation to the world. In his preface to the 1966 edition of Preludes (1931) he discusses his search for a new meaning in life and for an adequate poetic form to give it expression: For where was one to go, or what stand upon, n o w that Freud, on the one hand, and Einstein on the other, with the shadows of Darwin and Nietzsche behind them, had suddenly turned our neat little religious or philosophical systems into something that looked rather alarmingly like pure mathematics?3

The seminal figures mentioned here represent important aspects of Aiken's own philosophy. The decisive years of his mental formation coincided with the general philosophical and cultural crisis around the turn of the century, whose repercussions were most acutely felt at a place like Harvard, where Aiken graduated in 1912. The break-down of old values may have been brought home to him earlier than to most others of his generation because he inherited a sort of liberalism and agnosticism from [his] grandfather, William James Potter, w h o was one of the great liberal Unitarians of the nineteenth century, had adapted himself by midcentury to The Origin of Species, studied with Humboldt, and was one of the founders, and then president, of the Free Religious Association. 4

As a result of his childhood trauma, Aiken was especially responsive to the new science of psychology, which began its triumphal entry into the American intellectual scene during his Harvard years. Freud's and Pavlov* s assumptions concerning the mind's dependence on unconscious biological drives seemed to strengthen current deterministic and behavioristic views of human nature as developed in the 19th century in connection with the various theories of evolution that had shaken the foundations of religion and idealist thought. The introduction of the element of process into practically every aspect of scientific and philosophical research radically changed man's experience of self and world, giving rise to a host of new puzzling problems.

3 4

Conrad Aiken, Preludes (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. V. Aiken, "Poetry," p. 5.

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In France, Bergson accorded priority to time and becoming over being. H e defined the élan vital as " a current of consciousness", which found expression in human intelligence as the result of a sudden leap from animal to man. It is a "teleology without design", which results in a continuous progress, indefinitely pursued, 5 with man as its spearhead. Bergson's evolutionism was especially attractive to those who were in revolt against mechanistic and materialistic ideas at the beginning of the 20th century. Many philosophers and writers, among them the grand old man of Harvard University, William James, were strongly influenced by Bergson's emphasis on creativity, freedom, novelty, and the flow of consciousness, and they all welcomed the important place he gave to mind in the evolutionary scale. Einstein's theory of relativity created further complications. Henceforth, no phenomenology of the mind could do without the concepts of process and interrelatedness. The ever-changing pluralistic mind was correlated with an equally evolving pluralistic universe.6 In Ushant as well as in his theoretical writings Aiken repeatedly asks: how can man generate meaning in the midst of this fluctuating complexity, and how can he find an Archimedian point d'appui for a clear understanding of the world? William James, whose psychology was an important influence on Aiken, strove to maintain the centrality of the self for human experience: T h e individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing p r o p e r l y called self, is a p a r t of the content of the w o r l d experienced. T h e w o r l d experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness,') c o m e s at all times with our b o d y as its centre, centre of vision, centre of action, centre of interest. W h e r e the b o d y is is 'here;' when the b o d y acts is ' n o w ; ' what the b o d y touches is 'this;' all other things are 'there' and 'then' a n d 'that.' 7

However, this self can win meaning only through an interchange with a larger "field of consciousness", thereby undergoing a constant change though nevertheless remaining an experiential unity. James found it hard to integrate discontinuity — a concept fundamental to change — into his

5

6

7

See Thomas A. Goudge, "Evolutionism," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, II (1973), 183. Cf. Conrad Aiken, Ushant: An Essay (1952; rpt. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 166-7. Hereafter cited parenthetically as U. William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, ed. Ralph Barton Perry (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1967), p. 170n.

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philosophy of continuity. He distinguished between the " I " or "pure ego" (the self as knower) and the "me" or "empirical ego" (the self as known); while the "me" (the sum of the material me or body, the social "me's", and the spiritual me) is quite unstable, the " I " seems at first sight to be a "permanent abiding principle of spiritual activity identical with itself wherever found". 8 However, James repudiated the notion of an "abiding principle" or "substantial identity in the thinker". Consciousness for him was not an autonomous realm but a function, the function of knowing. 9 Although, in his opinion, human knowledge was thus necessarily relative and fragmentary, his views were not pessimistic: "Pluralism . . . is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but melioristic, rather. The world . . . may be saved, on condition that its parts shall do their best." 10 This concept of a collective evolution to be brought about by the concerted efforts of all individuals comes close to Aiken's own views on the nature of consciousness. Since Aiken's aesthetic theories presuppose an understanding of this concept, we shall now examine it in some detail.

AIKEN'S C O N C E P T OF CONSCIOUSNESS In Aiken's work, the word "consciousness" usually carries a more comprehensive meaning than mere "rational knowledge". It includes both immediate experience and explicit awareness. Thus, his use of the term "consciousness" embraces the opposite poles of feeling and knowledge, being and understanding, necessity and liberty, a synthesis widely accepted during Aiken's Harvard years. T. S. Eliot's famous invective against the "dissociation of sensibility", the separation of thought and sensation, is part of this climate of opinion. Poetic consciousness, in particular, is defined by Aiken even more comprehensively. In a letter to John Gould

8

9

10

William James, Psychology: Briefer Course (1890; rpt. N e w York: The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 3rd ed., 1966), p. 214. See James, Psychology, p. 214: "Yesterday's and today's states of consciousness have no substantial identity, for when one is here the other is irrevocably dead and gone. But they have a functional identity, for both know the same objects, they react upon it in an identical way, greeting it and calling it mine, and opposing it to all the other things they know. This functional identity seems really the only sort of identity in the thinker which the facts require us to suppose." William James, Some Problems of Philosophy ( N e w York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), p. 142.

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Fletcher he sees the poet as "the advancing consciousness and conscience and genius of mankind, the forerunner, firebringer, orderer and releaser; the one who by finding the word for life makes life possible and coherent, and puts it within the reach of all. . . the poet was and is the one who invents language. Which is tantamount to inventing experience, or awareness."11 This unitary concept of consciousness was the fruit of a long and difficult thought process. Even as a young poet, Aiken was confronted by a perplexing dilemma. Observing that his creativity depended largely on an appetitive state of mind resulting from concrete sensual experience, he speculated that art like sexuality was a "compulsory — if infinitely elaborate — celebration of the will to live" (U 177). Yet, he could not accept such determinism in art, whose insights depend precisely on the free play of the imagination. In Ushant Aiken explains that this logical predicament left him with only two alternatives: Either the individual w a s a 'healthy' or true child o f nature . . . in w h i c h case h e w a s her u n c o n s c i o u s s p o k e s m a n and celebrant, her predetermined victim . . . o r he rebelled, and a s c e n d e d m a g n i f i c e n t l y into the e m p y r e a n , o u t of time and space, like Lucifer in starlight f o r a treasonable and i n d e p e n d e n t v i e w of the primurn

mobile,

in w h i c h case he w a s . . . ««healthy, and f r o m

nature's p o i n t o f v i e w defective. ( U 178)

As a result of these speculations, Aiken came to distinguish between two different modes of poetry: the orphic poet, the spokesman and celebrant of a natural order on the one hand, and the Luciferic rebel, the self-elected creator of an autonomous world on the other. The former, an Emersonian and Whitmanesque type, relies on nature as a hieroglyphic text; by sheer naming, the poet is able to decipher its hidden meaning. Being a "healthy child of nature", he is himself part of his own text. Through the celebrative act of compiling names, the poet achieves what Aiken calls an "onomasticon", 12 that is, a self-revealing presentation of the world

11

12

Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken, ed. Joseph Killorin ( N e w Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), p. 270-1. Subsequent references are cited parenthetically as SL. For Aiken's use of the term, see Ushant, pp. 48-49: " . . . one's personality was nothing whatever but an anthology of these mimicries and adaptations, one was oneself simply the compiler. The onomastic." See also Ushant, p. 315: "The onomastic making his onomasticon out of words and worlds, adding up the bright syllables and the dark to ever more hermetic meanings."

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through language. The latter, a poet of Emily Dickinson's type, 13 relies on the transforming power of language. Nature is either meaningless, or else man can no longer read her alphabet. The poet's will emancipates itself from all bondage to the world of phenomena. His "defective spirit" creates a new world and a new order in his own image. In his attempt to write both modes of poetry, Aiken tried to develop a "tandem of methods" 14 which will be the focus of the second part of this essay. After years of mental struggle he was able to achieve what he describes as "comprehensive vision of an evolving consciousness in an evolving world — a synthesis which could accommodate healthy and unhealthy alike, finding use in all." (U 178) This synthesis was for him no less a philosophical and psychological than a poetic necessity. The two types of poets not only reflect different concepts of consciousness, they also indicate different views concerning the possibility of communication. The unity of mind, language, and world — posited by the "healthy" Orphic poet — appears to guarantee the relationship between writer and reader, while the defective language of the "unhealthy", Luciferic poet rather undermines it, because his autonomous world is not rooted in a common human experience. Yet, Aiken never clearly commits himself. At times, he seems to favor a solipsistic position, but there are also passages where he leans towards a mystical view. Still, there is an overall development away from solipsism towards a more affirmative attitude that sees man as part of and free participant in a world of infinite variety. This optimism helps to strengthen Aiken's confidence in the possibility of human communication and in the social function of art. In a letter to John Gould Fletcher he wrote in 1946: "Beginning with the sonnets, I have been turning myself inside out, or is it outside in? anyway, moving over to an objective-subjective instead of the subjective-objective." (SL 276) This would indicate a shift of emphasis from the subjective to the objective mode; though still oscillating between the two poles, the poet, as he grew older, increasingly trusted in an "objective", intelligible world, demanding a poetry free from idiosyncratic obscurities. Aiken's style, one notes, develops parallel to the gradual unfolding of what he calls his "consistent view". A brief survey may highlight this

13

Aiken's edition of Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924) redeemed Emily Dickinson's poetry for the early 20th century. Conrad Aiken, Collected Criticism [formerly A Reviewer's ABC\ (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), p. 321. Hereafter cited parenthetically as CC.

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parallelism between style and philosophy. Despite his lifelong experimenting with forms and structures, we can observe a progress from the radical musicality of the Divine Pilgrim (presenting the fluctuating states of solipsistic minds through the flowing cadences and keys of musical poetic forms) to the extreme "thinginess" of The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones (using prosy enumerations and headlines mirroring a concept of man where he appears as a mere congeries of facts and thoughts without the unifying center of a "soul"), on to the masterful autobiography Ushant (tracing the organic growth of his life and work by means of a shimmering syntax and a complex use of leitmotifs), after which the late Aiken found his way to the wonderfully plastic free verse of Skylight One, A Letter from LiPo, and Sheepfold Hill, all of them perfect expressions of his final attainment: the comprehensive vision and conciliatory stance of the wise old man.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND T H E PROBLEM OF FORM With Coleridge, Aiken believed that the ideas one thinks of are altogether less important than the ideas one thinks with. That is also why Aiken always felt annoyed with critics bent on discovering the biographical "truth" behind his work. Poetry, in his eyes, though based on personal experience, tries to grasp the nature of consciousness as such. His attempt in the early work to mirror the structure of pure emotion by means of musical rhythms was part of this project. However, just because consciousness is broadly defined as "the way the human being experiences himself and the world", and understood by Aiken as the most universal and the most fundamental of human activities, the poet faced tremendous difficulties in trying to represent it in language. Aiken's concept of consciousness and his poetic strategies to give it verbal form betray the influence of William James's Psychology. For James, consciousness is an emphatically vague notion, first, because the mind is in a state of constant flux and, second, because mental images have no boundaries: Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows around it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that

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surrounds and escorts it.. . . Let us call the consciousness of this halo or relations around the image by the name of 'psychic overtone' or 'fringe.'15

Mental states — James implies — are not meaningful in themselves but rather because they point beyond themselves. As a result of their "fringe" character they are linked to a rich reservoir of associations, extending forward and backward in a seemingly infinite network of relations. What James does not discuss is the question whether the "psychic overtones" are linguistically conditioned or not. The following discussion of a passage from Ushant is meant to demonstrate Aiken's rhetorical strategies in his attempt to render the "fringe" character of mental processes. The creative state of mind here described is — as is often the case with Aiken — the result of a concrete love affair. However, as he points out himself, it is "seldom the merely factual elements — in the loves, the loves, the loves! —" but rather "the by-products of these" that compel him to write. The overall mood is one of vague, unfocussed desire: the nymph-cry in the forest, or in the forest of the bloodstream, the forest of the mind . . . daring the soul to run forward . . . in the forever renewed hope of finding . . . the something true, the something that would at last make speech truly speech, life truly life, as if at last the whole mystery might be reduced to a simple but multiple radiance that one could — for one instant — hold in the hollow of one's hand:. . . and in this the love was perhaps interchangeably identifiable with one's own consciousness, one's own being and becomingness: it was simply another disguise for the poetic and poietic psyche which is the very center of existence. (U 314-15)

One of Aiken's favorite devices to convey the paradoxical structure of consciousness is the use of word pairs, such as "simple but multiple", "being and becomingness", "poetic and poietic". Far from being merely opposites, these pairs reveal their fundamental interdependence on the level of language; through the syntactic method of parallelism, juxtaposition becomes superposition; in this way, the various pairs tend to define and explain each other. The correlation of "poetic" and "being", on the one hand, with "poietic" and "becomingness", on the other, characterizes the passive-contemplative and the dynamic-creative aspects of consciousness respectively. The very source of creativity seems to reside in the interplay of such complementaries striving for re-union. 15

James, Psychology, p. 179.

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Aiken himself defines the "fringe" character of the creative state of mind as one of "extraordinary residual and nostalgic ache" (U 314), as "haunting overtone", a diffuse but profound longing which manifests itself both in terms of erotic want and intellectual need — "the hope of finding . . . the something true". The personal erotic impulse is needed to energize an impersonal creative drive for the ideal. Poetic consciousness, being Janus-faced, depends on individual experience, but it eventually unites man with the collective mind, with tradition. The "forest of the bloodstream", the "forest of the mind", and the "nymph-cry in the forest" 1 6 become one single forest where being, thought, and myth intersect. The ideal the soul is hankering for remains, however, rather abstract. The "something true" appears as a radical reduction of the ungraspable complexity of reality ("the whole mystery") to " a simple but multiple radiance", i. e. to a work of art that both is and means. Ideally, poetic form creates a flash of insight "that one could — for one instant — hold in the hollow of one's hand" and through which life and art illuminate each other. Aiken clearly found himself caught in the modernist dilemma between the desire to break out of literature toward the reality of the moment and the urge to grasp the moment by re-presenting it, a dilemma that Aiken, like Hart Crane, Randall Jarrell and others, hoped to solve by creating an aesthetics of the moment, by inventing "the fiction of a moment possessed of a plenitude of being". 1 7 All epiphany, however, is elusive, or, if it can be repeated, it never yields the same meaning twice. N o stabilized form can ultimately hold the dynamics of the experiential moment. As a result, the poet remains an endless quester. There can be no finality, every work of art is provisional, preliminary. The long poem, the serial poem, the radically open form, are the logical stylistic consequences of such a poetics. For Aiken, however, the fragments and the transitory moments of awareness cumulatively contribute to the evolution of universal consciousness towards that Utopian state where being and meaning are one.

14

17

The "nymph-cry in the forest" may be related, for Aiken, with "nympholepsy", which he explains in the preface to "The Charnel Rose" as "that impulse which sends man from one dream, or ideal, to another, always disillusioned, always creating for adoration some new and subtler fiction." Collected Poems (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), p. 1017. Hereafter cited parenthetically as CP. Cf. Donald Pease, "Blake, Crane, Whitman, and Modernism: A Poetics of Pure Possibility," PMLA, 96 (1981), 80.

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Ushant is the record of this quest. Since re-presentation necessarily falsifies it into something fixed, something already lost, the poet continuously decreates the narrative by focussing on the process of writing itself. This self-reflective and self-enacting strategy betokens his desire to keep in touch with the ever-elusive, perpetually-changing present. The novel is thus poised between two modes: it is both a description of referential reality and a pure act of the mind. Although the constant flux of experience does not allow for a story or plot in the traditional sense, Aiken hopes that the reader will experience Ushant as essentially dramatic because it reflects the drama of consciousness as such: A drama, yes — but let us admit it, a drama without drama, a story without story, in any sense that the books would admit it to be; unless, as perhaps one should, one could agree that the pursuit of this particular sort of Moby Dick (or should one rather call it a Snark), this subliminal of subliminals in consciousness, the slipperiest of elementáis shaping itself again and again for a split second, and then lost, and never, when it thus reappeared (only to vanish) looking quite the same — unless one agreed that this pursuit was possibly the most essential of dramas, the very stuff itself of drama, since that pursuit is the central undeviating concern of every living individual human being; and thus, in aggregate, on the grand evolutionary scale, of all mankind. (U 323-324)

The passage reveals the basic paradox of Aiken's aesthetics. Only art is capable of giving form to "the very stuff itself of drama"; yet form per se appears irreconcilable with the multiplicity and the contingent nature of sheer experience. The artist's solution apparently lies in devising a "drama without drama, a story without story". It is clear that this paradoxical claim entails its own philosophical and formal problems.

T H E T W O LANGUAGES About halfway through Ushant we find a powerful passage where Aiken discusses the problematic relation between actual experience and "the language by which one [understands] life". Life is inexhaustibly extending and exfoliating in every direction. Dogs and horses in one world, indeed! But what about a world of symbols so geometrically and psychologically complex . . . that one's dazzled awareness . . . was on the run, on the gallop, merely to get a fleeting glimpse of them. (U 166)

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The modern poet must not only be aware of the biochemical, neurological, and psychological causes influencing human experience since "the straying of a single particle of neural matter might change, or create, or obliterate, a world", he must also find a language capable of conveying such experience. Aiken's concept of symbolic form reflects the post-Einsteinian sense of relativity. Language, in his eyes, should be both geometrically precise, psychologically true, and yet as complex and as fleeting as reality itself. Aiken then goes on to tell a "remarkable dream"; it is a poetic rendering of an actual dream first described to his children in a letter (July 22,1929). The dream in the novel is about t w o sages, the first of w h o m had discovered the m o s t astounding of all lang u a g e s , one in which, he said, m e a n i n g had been so f r a g m e n t e d into particles und surds that it w o u l d require a thousand years to assemble e n o u g h of them to constitute a single statement; only then to hear the other s a g e reply that this w a s nothing, f o r he had discovered a l a n g u a g e in which m e a n i n g w a s so concentrated that a single syllable, a single s o u n d , w a s itself the equivalent of a t h o u s a n d years. ( U 167)

The first language is radically particularized, it approaches the Laputian thing-language where word and thing, sign and signified are still one. However, an immense multitude of words is needed to create some definite meaning in much the same way as a seemingly infinite number of elements make up the incredible complexity of the world. N o wonder it takes " a thousand years to amass enough" words "to constitute a single statement". Literature composed of this thing-language would, ideally, be identical with the world; being and meaning would be one. Short of this, the dominant figure of speech would be juxtaposition, where elements are defined in relation to other elements — in "counterpoint". In such a language, then, the poet acts as namer of objects, and as compiler of these names into an onomasticon. Obviously, for a finite poet, meaning is bound to be utterly fragmented in this futile attempt to reproduce being through mere naming. The second language, by contrast, tends towards maximum concentration. Here, the meaning of a single sound equals the amount of information conveyed by using ordinary words for a thousand years. Literature written in this language would be radically symbolical, its dominant figure of speech being metaphor, and its rhetorical strategy implication. Since this second language ultimately conflates in one colossal cipher, meaning would collapse in total ambiguity.

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The most impressive illustration of this second language in Aiken's work is the letter "D.", which stands for the protagonist's name in Ushant. If a name can be taken as a totalised symbol for the person named, we may say that the abbreviation"D." contains in potentia all that is being told about D. on the 365 pages of the autobiography, and, indeed, on the thousands of pages of Aiken's whole oeuvre. "D." is short for "Demarest" (the one from the sea) which was the name of the protagonist of Aiken's earlier autobiographical novel Blue Voyage. This initial is something like a perfect hieroglyph or sacred symbol of the world. The letter "D." embodies the invariant meaning unfolding through the successive layers of evolution: . . . and in childhood, beyond, the still brighter anagrams, ever simpler and more mythic as they receded, always adding up to the same meaning, but deeper: the soul's landscape like an infinite series of overpaintings, a palimpsest in endless sequence, which, no matter how often one removed the successive surfaces, to reveal a new hieroglyph, forever came up with the same mystic equation: YOU. A private constant, in its way comparable to the animal's primordial memory of his inescapable mother, the sea, she who wells up in him forever, precisely as the water wells up in the little holes which the child digs near the ribboned margin of an outgoing wave. Yes, behind and beneath all this, the sea, the sea, the sea. (U 19)

"D.", then, is both the mythic origin and the principle of identity of a palimpsest-like consciousness that reaches back beyond the receding stages of the protagonist to man's evolutionary beginning which, according to Darwinian theory, was the sea. The single letter, implying the evolution of the world in toto, thus realizes the language of total concentration invented by the second sage. The dream of the two languages reveals two contrary drives in Aiken's personality. The first language reflects his restless curiosity about the sheer multiplicity of this world. R. P. Blackmur once noted: Any one who has dined often with Aiken must have been struck a livening blow by his restless percipience of the casual that was going on about him in the midst of no matter what genuine preoccupation — of money or marriage or career — concerned both of you. Whatever the roving eye or cocked ear could report was in its circumfusion sponged into the preoccupation.18 18

The Collected Novels of Conrad Aiken (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1964). Introduction by R. P. Blackmur, pp. 5-6.

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The second language, marked by abstraction and implication, is expressive of Aiken's need for an ideal realm of Platonic ideas of which the phenomenal world is but a transitory manifestation. The two features, obviously, are not unrelated: the urge for random experience is complemented by the desire for a meaningful order. The great appeal Darwinism held for Aiken lay partly in the fact that The Origin of Species explained evolution both in terms of accidental and of orderly events.19 Throughout his work, Aiken was trying to achieve a workable synthesis of the two languages. In "Counterpoint and Implication", appended to The Divine Pilgrim, he admits that in practice writers — though with different emphasis — are bound to use both strategies: . . . it is the aim of every work of art to evoke, or to suggest. There is no quarrel here. What artists will disagree on is as to how this shall be done. Some think it should be accomplished by methods mainly denotative — or realistic: they argue that the best way to imply is (in the correct degree) to state. Others believe the method should be mainly connotative: they argue that the best way to state is (in the correct degree) to imply. Both elements, of course, enter into every work of art, and the only real difference at the bottom is quantitative. (CP 1025-26)

The attempt to superimpose the two stylistic modes, however, turned out to be a difficult task for Aiken, as his discussion in Ushant demonstrates. Originally, the autobiography was planned as a comprehensive analysis of the world in the manner of the first language, " a breaking-down of reality into its so many and so deceptive levels, one under another, one behind another, as if one were peeling off the seven or eight layers of time, and language, and meaning, in a thousand-year-old palimpsest." (U 322) This project, he felt, would demand "mere strictness of awareness" (U 323), the resulting structure resembling " a loosely outspread radial fan of aspects and angles". Yet Aiken knew that an exhaustive representation in terms of art would be impossible. It might, at best, form the first step towards the work he had in mind. The second step would have to be an act of conscious selection, a reordering of the "loosely outspread" elements according to some aesthetic principle. "

See Thomas A. Goudge's explanation of Darwinian evolution in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, I, 181: "Natural selection is an order-generating process. The occurrence of variations, the survival and reproductive success of organisms, etc., are matters of accident or chance . . . [but] although adaptations are not the result of design, they are nevertheless purposive. They serve certain ends and must be so studied."

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What he urgently needed was a strategy capable of reconciling the rhetorical alternatives. Much of Aiken's criticism is concerned with this problem. In his 1940 essay on Delmore Schwartz and other contemporaries, for instance, Aiken attacks both Auden's and Miss Rukeyser's poetry as too prosaic and lacking in evocative power: In an extremely desiccated blankverse . . . proceeds the laborious style of flat explanatory statement: it is expatiative, it is analytic, it is rational — in fact, it is precisely the procedure of prose. And in both poets . . . we encounter the now familiar 'catalogue' technique, at the level (emotionally) of prose: the repetitive, appositional attack, whether by noun or adjective, idea or qualification of idea . . . Surely no poet can be so naive as to hope that a wholesale series of mere bald statements, a simple dumping of 'facts,' will somehow be evocative! (CC 357)

The language of these two poets — Aiken seems to argue — is that of the first sage only. What is missing is the language of implication: The evoctive . . . is precisely a substitution of the one for the many, the iridescent fraction for the whole: a knowledge of the conditioned reflexes of meaning which can be touched off by the affective values of language and prosody. This knowledge — based on a mere primitive gift of the gab — can and must be acquired, for without it no poetry can be. It is the gift of the gab — organized. (CC 357)

Basically, intuition must combine with conscious technique in exploiting the sonoric, prosodic, and associative potential of language. Aiken pleads for a synthesis of poetic impulse and control of form: Elaborate form — let us make no bones about it — is beautiful. It need not in the least be stereotyped, or deadening, or artificial. . . Form plus intensity — form formed intensely — it is this, above all, that the typical American poet misses, perhaps has always missed. (CC 356)

Form must take on the quality of the Paterian moment: "form formed intensely". Intensity, then, is the crucial feature of both experience, form, and of the poetic act of transformation. Through such form, the poet creates order out of myriads of experiential moments, but an order that inheres in form and experience alike: "what had been thus glimpsed, and accepted, for a moment" was to be " . . . architected, with its own intrinsic and natural spiral of form . . . " (U 323). Aiken works here in the Emersonian tradition of organic form. More precisely, the spiral symbolizes the process of fusion between the two languages, between the mode

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of unfolding and fragmenting on the one hand, and that of concentration and implication on the other. If Aiken repeatedly attacks certain contemporary poets or schools for their lack of poetic sensibility and tone, he censures others for being too "poetic". His essay on "The Future of Poetry" (1931), in which he lays down his poetics, begins with a criticism of symbolist poetry, the "yellow nineties", as well as of early twentieth-century poetry. Aiken scoffs in particular at the idea that poets regard themselves as picturesque outsiders, flouting all social conventions, a vice which has given us in recent poetry many ambiguous saffrons and doubtful mauves; it has helped to spread the notion that poetry should be outrageous, morbid, unintelligible, paranoid; that it should dispense with wisdom, knowledge, grammar, even with language; that it should become perhaps pure 'affect,' and regress through the primitive holophrase to the initial grunt. (CC 80)

The reference to the ur-syllable of the second language is obvious. It must be remembered, though, that the young Aiken himself flirted with "pure affect" in his symphonic poems of The Divine Pilgrim. In the appendix (1919) he described his method as follows: N o t content to present emotions or things or sensations for their own sakes — as is the case with most poetry — this method takes only the most delicately evocative aspects of them, makes of them a key-board, and plays upon them a music of which the chief characteristic is its elusiveness, its fleetingness, and its richness in the shimmering overtones of hint and suggestion. Such a poetry, in other words, will not so much present an idea as use its resonance. (CP 1028)

But the poet readily admitted that his "experiment in modulation of emotion-tone" was not particularly successful and that "a little more statement and a little less implication would have been a good thing." (CP 1029) And he concluded his self-critical remarks with the insight that "one must provide for one's symphony a sufficiently powerful and pervasive underlying idea — and, above all, make it sufficiently apparent." (CP 1029) His own experience confirmed what he had learnt as a student from Santayana: poetry "must embody the full consciousness of man at a given moment" and it "must think" (CC 80). Aiken is convinced that good poetry will always be characterized by a "wise balance of the emotional and the intellectual" (CC 82), by a synthesis of what he considers the two fundamental modes of language.

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T O W A R D S AN O B J E C T I V E M O D E The envisioned synthesis of the two languages has its counterpart in Aiken's attempt to find a middle way between a "subjective" and an "objective" mode of writing. All his life he was concerned with epistemolgy, in particular with the question, to what extent poetic language can render experience objectively. The early Aiken, following the conventions of that period, is eager to express his own moods and emotions. The mind is understood as a distorting mirror, all knowledge as fragmentary and subjective. In his mature work, however, he increasingly asserts that some degree of objectivity is not only desirable but actually possible. Aiken's criticism of MacLeish is illuminating in this context: If he could free himself — if he could get down to the Ding-an-sich, the thing which is himself — if he could make this discovery, which is the final discovery of any artist, and mine this material — one feels that the result might be dazzling. (CC 282)

The poet's subject, Aiken claims, is his own subjectivity — itself a thoroughly Romantic notion. At the same time, however, the writer must express his feelings dispassionately; he should remain neutral and assume a relatively objective stance towards his own subjectivity. The artificer, in the very act of deploying himself in the new shape of the artifact, must remain wholly neutral to that part of himself which is his subject — which is to say, his all. . . and in this sense it had been D.'s obligation . . . to distinguish at all times the 'narrating' D. from the 'subject' D., and to approach the latter with relentless and unsleeping objectivity. (U 305-306)

Despite his demand for objectivity, Aiken admits that the artist needs a "voracious egotism" (U 304), an almost ruthless drive for self-expression in order to write. In his essay on Rilke, he quotes from a letter which characterizes his own view no less than that of Rilke: " 'At bottom, one seeks in everything new (country or person or thing) only an expression, that helps some personal confession to greater power and maturity. In fact all things are there in order that they may in some sort become images for us.'" (CC 331) There is in both poets — and perhaps, up to a point, in every artist— a "voracious egotism" that eats the world to nourish a private confession. This egotism is justified in so far as it helps to bring private experience "to maturity", that is to a higher level of awareness, by embodying it in (objective) form. The reader, feeling the same need for self-expression but lacking the gift of form, may vicariously share in the

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writer's act of self-recognition. At the same time, the confessional drive functions as a generator that powers the writing and lends the style the required intensity. Aiken's call for objectivity and intensity culminates in his demand for "honesty" and "integrity". The writer should have the courage to "give the lowdown on himself". He must not let himself be swayed by "subjective" considerations or needs such as wishful thinking, decorum, or feelings of guilt: W e d o n o t w a n t [the p o e t ] a n y l o n g e r t o prettify, w h e t h e r it be a s u n s e t o r a f l o w e r o r a m a n ' s s e n s e o f evil. W h a t w e w a n t f r o m him is intensity, b o t h in the analytic a n d a/Fective p a r t s of the l a n g u a g e , a c o m p l e t e h o n e s t y in seeing life as a k a l e i d o s c o p i c series o f i n c a n d e s c e n t instants — s o m e t i m e s a p p a r ently m e a n i n g l e s s , s o m e t i m e s p r o f o u n d . . . ( C C 8 2 ) 2 0

Aiken here calls for an objective intensity, an impassioned objectivity that has the strength to doubt and question every moment anew. The artist is, by definition, a "divine pilgrim", a tireless quester into "life". Aiken's concept of courageous honesty is closely related to his notion of poetic form. To say that a sincere writer cannot hold fixed beliefs in a world of perpetual flux is putting it negatively. Aiken rather insists on the courage it takes to accept fully "life as a kaleidoscopic series of incandescent instants". For him, all knowledge is preliminary. This honesty is at the basis of his lifelong experimenting with language. It accounts for his use of the serial poem as the only adequate form (where no single poem makes a final statement but each successive piece develops the subject from yet another angle); it finds expression in his choice of what may be called the run-on autobiography (from Blue Voyage to Ushant); it is reflected in titles like "Preludes to Attitude and Definition" or "Ushant" (You shan't) with its subtitle "an essay", and, last but not least, it makes itself felt in the involved syntax of his writings. Honesty and integrity in both form and content are indispensable to a writer for whom truth and social function in literature are ultimately 20

This is the reason why Aiken was deeply disappointed when Eliot accepted the dogma of the Anglican Church. H e accused his friend of going the easier way, of avoiding the ever-renewed challenge of the abyss of doubt. Aiken seems not to have understood that Eliot's voluntary limitation of freedom may not have been all that easy; besides, it testified to a spiritual discipline that enabled Eliot to reach a level of formal precision which Aiken, precisely because of his intellectual freedom and bravery, was never to attain.

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identical. In comparing Chekhov's short stories to Katherine Mansfield's Garden Party, Aiken finds that one might call both types of stories "subjective" because of the comparable psychic compulsion under which they were written. Yet, this very similarity, he continues, compels us to see that the difference between the so-called subjective method in art, and the so-called objective method, is at bottom nothing whatever but a difference in range. Chekhov's range was enormous. H e was as tremendously 'rooted' in life, perhaps, as Shakespeare. His sensibilities, and therefore his curiosity, were not merely of one sort, but led him everywhere, gave him joy, pain, understanding everywhere, were both sensitive and tough . . . This is what leads us to think of Chekhov as a superlatively 'objective' artist, and it is the reverse of this that leads us to think of Miss Mansfield as — just as superlatively? — a 'subjective' artist. For Miss Mansfield's sensibilities, if clearly individual, are remarkably limited, and the language of associations which she speaks is, if brilliant, extremely small. (CC 294)

The larger a poet's range of experience and imaginative understanding, the slighter the danger of his distorting the world by observing it from too personal an angle. According to Aiken, the writer must choose "a lofty promontory from which to view the world of his experience" (CC 79); he should have a "philosopher's vision of the world" to make his work "supremely poetical" (CC 78). Much has been said about the divergent views held by Aiken and Eliot concerning the status of "philosophial poetry". With Bradley, Eliot maintained that poets and philosophers had different tasks, while Aiken claimed, with Santayana, that a good poet was a philosopher endowed with poetic imagination and power of expression. In reality, the two were not far apart in their aesthetic theories. In "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism" Eliot contends that "for a poet to be also a philosopher he would have to be virtually two men; I cannot think of any example of this thorough schizophrenia, nor can I see anything to be gained by it: the work is better performed inside two skulls than one." 21 Eliot, it is true, prefers Keats to Shelley because the former refrained from philosophizing on his artistic insights; still, he dislikes Shelley's poetry not so much

21

T . S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (1964; rpt. London: Faber & Faber, 1975), pp. 38-39.

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because it is philosophical but rather f o r the immaturity of his philosophic theories: When the doctrine, theory, belief or 'view of life' presented in a poem is one which the mind of the reader can accept as coherent, mature, and founded on the facts of experience, it interposes no obstacle to the reader's enjoyment, whether it be one that he accept or deny, approve or deprecate. When it is one which the reader rejects as childish or feeble, it may, for a reader of well-developed mind, set up an almost complete check.22 Aiken never insisted that a writer should have a philosophical system, 2 3 nor that such a system ought to be "strictly logical". 2 4 F o r him as f o r Eliot, a poet's philosophy must be mature, comprehensive, based on experience, and informed by an " e m o t i o n which has been suspended 'in a t h o u g h t " ' ( C C 81). " I am not so much s u g g e s t i n g " , he argued, " t h a t poets should be philosophers, as that — in the sense of being questioners and understanders — they should be philosophic." ( C C 81) In asking f o r a " b a l a n c e of the emotional and intellectual", f o r integrity and objectivity, he came, in fact, very close to Eliot's concept of impersonality. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.25 Eliot and Aiken both agree that poetry must be written with ideas and with emotions, but not on them. As early as 1924, in his essay on D . H . Lawrence, Aiken w a s concerned with the relationship between subjective and objective art: It is customary, in discussions of art, to use the terms objective and subjective. Strictly speaking, the distinction is indefensible, for no work of art, however 'objective' in appearance, can be anything but the artist's self-portrait. But the distinction can have a clear validity if we define it: and we must define it as meaning that the ideal 'objective' artist is one who, in the production of his self-portrait, employs affective terms — symbolisms of theme and form

22 23 24

25

Ibid., p. 96. Aiken, Collected Criticism, pp. 78-79. Aiken's Acceptance Speech for the National Book Award (Jan. 19, 1954). Typescript in the Huntington Library, p. 2. T . S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Selected Essays, 3rd ed. (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), p. 21.

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— which are universally significant and intelligible; whereas the ideal 'subjective' artist is one who in the production of his self-portrait employs affective terms (of theme and form) significant and intelligible only to himself. Of course, the ideal objective artist is an impossibility — the ideal subjective artist a lunatic. Or one may put it another way: that the objective artist's psychosis corresponds at a maximum number of points with the 'average* psychosis of mankind, whereas the subjective artist's psychosis is peculiar to himself. (CC 258) We are immediately reminded of the poet's dream of the two languages. Here again, Aiken pleads for a synthesis. Art must be traditional and universal enough to encourage the reader to relate to it through elements he can recognize and identify with; yet, at the same time, it should also be sufficiently original and subjective to be an enrichment and a challenge. Aiken's "affective terms" of universal significance refer, above all, to the associational potential of language. T h e y correspond to what Eliot in "The Music of Poetry" defines as "a musical pattern of secondary meanings", that vast store of literary, mythical, and folklore allusions residing in words and images. 26 Arguing that literature must be universal both in its explicit themes and its implicit associations in order to be "useful to society", Aiken launched many attacks against current literary fashions like Cubism, Vorticism, Expressionism, Dadaism. Imagism, too, was a target for his criticism, since the typical imagist poem would be too short and too concrete to support the philosophical and associational depth which, in his eyes, made poetry worth reading. Even Eliot did not escape his censure: . . . there is a distinct weakness consequent on the use of allusions which may have both intellectual and emotional value for Mr. Eliot, but (even with the notes) none for us. The 'Waste Land' of the Grail Legend might be a good symbol, if it were something with which we were sufficiently familiar. But it can never, even when explained, be a good symbol, simply because it has no immediate associations for us . . . Hyacinth fails in the same way. So does the Fisher King . . . But if the precise association is worth anything, it is worth putting into the poem; otherwise there can be no purpose in mentioning it. Why, again, Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata? . . . in none of these particular

26

Cf. Aiken, Collected Criticism, p. 294: " . . . the language of associations which he spoke, [was] not merely intensely individual (independent of the literary) but, by comparison with the language of associations of the average writer, infinitely various. This is what leads us to think of Chekhov as a superlatively 'objective' artist."

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cases does the reference, the allusion, justify itself intrinsically, make itself felt . . . F o r unless an allusion is made to live identifiably, to flower when transplanted, it is otiose. W e admit the beauty of the implicational or allusive method; but the key to an implication should be in the implication itself, not outside of it. ( C C 1 7 8 - 1 7 9 )

Aiken is skeptical about Eliot's method of association since the allusive range of his language seems insufficiently linked to the main theme of his work. The private experience remains private because the use of esoteric symbols precludes that objectivity which is alone capable of transforming experience into knowledge. Much as Aiken cherishes the value of tradition, he holds that in itself it remains deficient. It was precisely the relative freedom from an inhibiting past, the great plasticity of American language as compared to British English, and the sense of immediacy in American life, that eventually made him return to America. 27 In a letter to John Freeman he nonetheless deplores the "insatiable appetite for the tone of the 'acutal'" that characterizes his countrymen: Certainly it is hard enough, in poetry, to achieve the tone of the actual and at the same time obtain any of what the aestheticians term 'psychic distance': what is colloquial in fact must be also colloquial in tone if it is not to be false. T h e artist should find, I suppose, the maximum 'height' of tone which his particular 'actual' will stand, and there lies the difficulty. (SL 57)

The problem is how to combine the particular with the universal: " T h e poet must perceive and select what is universal in the local, using only this, and not merely drag in the local for its own sweet, or sour, sake." (CC 385) On the stylistic level, free verse must be balanced by calculated mnemonic sound values, regular rhythms, and traditional metres; slang words, colloquialisms, and bold new imagery should be counterpointed with a language rich in literary association. Although Aiken often used free verse himself, he was — like Frost — a champion of traditional metre and strictly controlled prosody. He would frequently advise young artists to practise all literary forms from the terza rima to the sonnet. In 1922 he exhorted the imagist F. S. Flint: In general, your argument against rhyme and metre seems to me extraordinarily flimsy — not because you are not ingenious, but simply . . . because

27

Cf. Aiken, Ushant, p. 137.

392

Helen Hagenbüchle there is no argument. Is there any getting away from the fact that even the slightest step in literature, from the less to the more 'poetic' is a step from the less to the more 'arranged?' 'Arranged' in the richest sense — embracing selection, order, emphasis. To 'arrange' at all is, if you like, artificial: but it is an essential of all art; and it is logically impossible to dismiss metre and rhyme . . . because they are artificial, without also dismissing cadences, metaphor, selection, and, in short, every conceivable aspect of the exaggerative process which we call style. I quite agree with you that the 'less arranged' has its own cool sort of charm, adapts itself admirably to certain moods more colloquial and less intense; but I think its range is, in comparison with that of the 'more arranged,' infinitely small. — Theoretically, one should seek in a work of art the utmost complexity, or arrangement, consistent with brevity — should one not? Or else give up art entirely and go back to the holophrase!(SL 67-68)

The argument is characteristic of Aiken's penchant for fusing the incompatible elements of freedom and form, but his predilection for the "more arranged" over the "less arranged" is unmistakable (the phrase "utmost . . . arrangement consistent with brevity" smacks of Edgar Allen Poe, w h o had been one of Aiken's teenage idols). Only traditional forms, Aiken feels, allow the poet to play on a sufficiently wide range of literary echoes to enrich his text and make it "objective". The use of conventional forms (paradoxically) helps the artist to define himself "against" tradition: "It is out of violent conflicts within the tradition that new forms, and new works of art arise." (CC 385) Only a poet acutely conscious of the literary past is able to achieve novelty and originality. The interdependence of tradition and originality in Aiken's aesthetics is comparable to Eliot's discussion of the same problem in "Tradition and the Individual Talent": No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not onesided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions,

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values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.28

What "tradition" is to Eliot, the "evolution of consciousness" is to Aiken. Each work of art as "vanguard of man's consciousness" modifies a given state of spiritual awareness. Both concepts are based on a secularized view of the Great Chain of Being. The — originally Platonic — belief in the idea of "plenitude", the belief that God created all conceivable forms in a gapless continuum, was qualified in the 18th and 19th centuries by the new concept of evolution. The introduction of the time dimension altered the idea of "plenitude" in the sense that the Chain of Being was now thought imperfect at every single point in history, reaching completion at the end of time. Only then would all possible manifestations have existed at one time or another. 29 For Aiken, the evolution of consciousness towards ever higher levels of selfknowledge was inseparable from the endless progression of art. The meaning of individual works would eventually add up to a kind of total, divine knowledge where being and meaning would coincide: "It is the self becoming word, the word becoming world. And with each part we play we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum." (CP 908) For Aiken the creative process is both the transformation of experience ("self") into art ("word"), and the transmutation of the "word" of art into the "world" of reality — at once the absorption of the writer's personal self-knowledge into the collective awareness of mankind and the integration of the individual work of art into the literary tradition. With this statement in "A Letter from Li Po" Aiken has come a long way from the solipsistic view he held in his early poems. Eliot had, from the start, opposed to solipsism the concept of "tradition" which, rather than the limited range of the individual talent, is the measure of things. Aiken, for his part — and working within a specifically American tradition — developed the concept of an evolving collective consciousness, out of which — and against which — the "individual talent" shapes itself, to be in turn added to the growing sum of tradition or — in Aiken's terminology — of collective consciousness. The terms "cosmic Sum" and "cosmic sum" may be understood as the ceaselessly accumulating sum total of

29 29

T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 15. Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 9th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970).

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individual and collective evolution respectively. The relative independence and "objectivity" of particular works of art, according to Aiken and Eliot, will ultimately merge with absolute truth at the end of time in the mind of the last master: God. Although, unlike Eliot, Aiken did not believe in a personal God, he nevertheless trusted in a "divine" power manifesting itself through the evolving consciousness of man and, most of all, of man as artist: In the evolution of man's consciousness, ever widening and deepening and subtilizing his awareness, and in his dedication of himself to this supreme task, man possesses all that he could possibly require in the way of a religious credo: when the half-gods go, the gods arrive: he can, if he only will, become divine. (CP 1021)

C O N C L U D I N G REMARKS Aiken's lifelong reflections on self and cosmos, his insight that infinity is contained in the finite human mind, though itself part of the endlessly evolving universal mind, have led him to a poetics whose main concern is the synthesis of incompatibles. His Emersonian trust in the interrelatedness of all things and in the "vascular" human consciousness, where opposites amalgamate, finds expression in his experiments with form, all aiming at the intensification of meaning. His "tandem of methods", after all, is but a strategy to achieve a "tandem of meaning": I think it can be said that poetry resembles the [structure of] the dream in at least one very important sense: the latent content, or meaning, is not necessarily identical with the manifest content, or meaning; and indeed one may question whether it is not precisely when the two kinds of meaning are most at variance that the poetry becomes most rewardingly alive . . . And it is at these moments, when the poet is unconsciously driving a tandem of meanings, in such a way that he is himself drawn to the right or left of his preconceived path, that poetry is most recognizably and beautifully itself. The poetry is precisely in that harmonization of two conflicting voices: it is in the shimmer between two values: the oracle is ambiguous, but in its very ambiguity we find a new kind of statement. (CC 361-62)

The counterpoint of meanings produces a dialectical process, which — in creating a "new kind of statement" — constitutes a step forward in the evolution of consciousness. This higher level of awareness, Aiken claims,

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is characterized by greater translucency and "vascularity", which allows for a simultaneous apprehension of all layers of meaning. Everything was to be presented — in this view of the work of art — as on one t i m e - l e v e l . . . In this sense, therefore, there would be no " p r o g r e s s , " . . . in a work of art: everything past would be hypothecated, everything future would be implied: the movement of these together would constitute a kind of static-dynamic, a stillness of motion round an invisible center. As action would have preceded any given moment in it, so action would follow: but the moment itself, every moment, was comprehension. ( U 328-9)

Elsewhere, the artist is compared to a general, who is "co-ordinating the multitude of conflicting or divergent reports from the fluctuating fortunes of a battlefront and marks them down on his outspread map." (U 329) Just as the general's computation of all facts, if sufficiently exact, foretells the outcome of the battle even before he has issued the order of the day, so the work of art, if "honest" and "objective" enough, implies all that has led up to it, and all that must follow: "It lies there, intensely still, as the all-embracing moment of comprehension, the invisible center of the circle." (U 329) The artist has replaced the source of all being and of all meaning: God. According to Aiken, it is only in art that modern man can hope to find the "comprehensive vision" which religion no longer offers him. Instead of looking for the Archimedian point d'appui, "the Great Why", the artist in his own creative act makes "the momentary or partial discovery of the Great H o w " (U 330). In redirecting the emphasis back towards the poetic process as the enactment of the divine, Aiken experiences himself as part of the evolving Spirit. Here is the crucial difference between his view and that of his grandfather Potter. Could one possibly, in this, have improved on grandfather's pretty explicit solution on the 'little acceptance' of his fideism? And if one must thus move forever towards — or around — some sort of mystic affirmation, or acceptance, could there be any that was better 'reasoned' than his — if to this one were to add the precious new element of evolutionary consciousness, as the final creative step in nature's evolutionary process, its forever unfolding finial of light — ? ' ( U 330)

By and large, Aiken remains a true descendant of American Transcendentalism.30 He shares Emerson's concern with "bipolar unity", he ac50

Through his grandfather, and indirectly through Emerson, Aiken was certainly influenced by Humboldt's speculations on language. Some of Aiken's ideas on the power

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cepts the Transcendentalist n o t i o n that the L o g o s o r internal law o f the h u m a n m i n d a n s w e r s t o t h e L o g o s in t h e e x t e r n a l w o r l d ; his u n i v e r s e is o n e o f p r e s t a b i l i z e d o r d e r . A late a n d s e c u l a r i z e d d i s c i p l e o f J o n a t h a n E d wards he claims immediate experiential k n o w l e d g e of the divine, t h o u g h n o l o n g e r in t e r m s o f a r e l i g i o u s c o n v e r s i o n b u t in t e r m s o f m a n ' s p a r t i c i p a t i o n in g o d ' s p e r p e t u a l a c t o f c r e a t i o n . It is this v i s i o n a r y p a r t i c i p a t i o n in t h e creative e v o l u t i o n t h a t m a k e s life — a n d art — w o r t h w h i l e : It would be for this Apollonian fountain of the forever unfolding; the forever-together, ourselves but a leaf on the fountain of tree, that w e would return : the crystal self-shaping, the godhead designing the god. For this moment of vision, w e would return. ( C P 951)

of language and of poetry point back to Humboldt: "The mutual interdependence of thought and word illuminates clearly the truth that languages are not really means for representing already known truths but are rather instruments for discovering previously unrecognized ones. . .". Or a g a i n : " . . . all language is so rich and fruitful in its eternal youthfulness, its eternal mobility, that the true sense, the sum total of all the connotations of such a word taken as a totality, could never be defined or completed, never could be designated in all its grandeur." Humanist without Portfolio: An Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt, ed. Marianne Cowan (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 246 and 247.

J. C. W H I T E H O U S E

The Human Person in the Novels of Graham Greene

INTRODUCTION This article forms part of a longer study of the novels of Georges Bernanos, Sigrid Undset and Graham Greene which, it is hoped, will ultimately appear as a book, the major theme of which is the human person in modern Catholic fiction, discussed both in relation to the traditional Catholic ways of reflecting on human beings and formulating ideas about them and to certain unsympathetic and occasionally superficial critical reactions to Catholic literature. The authors examined were chosen because their work represents a period in which Catholic literature was a recognisable and articulate phenomenon and in which certain Catholic writers seem to have accepted, expanded and illustrated a definite and consistent, although by no means easily-definable, view of human beings. This view can be seen as an existential equivalent of the more theoretical and abstract concept of man suggested by orthodox post-Tridentine Catholic theology and philosophy. During the middle years of the century, this traditional schematic formulation seemed increasingly unsatisfactory to a number of Catholic thinkers, who saw it as neglecting the dynamic and hence non-formulable dimension of individual human beings. This unease goes back at least as far as Newman, with his need to 'let man be man', and is arguably part of the current of thought that led up to the Second Vatican Council. The longer study attempts to show that this need could have been met by study of the Catholic literature of the time and that the literary sensibility and the philosophical analysis were complementary rather than contradictory aspects of Catholic reflection on human beings. This study of one aspect of Greene's work is part of that wider concern. It seems to the author that Greene has sometimes been misunderstood, most frequently in connection with this aspect of his work. Consequently, an attempt has been made to redress the balance and to suggest alternative ways of reflecting on what Greene has to say about human be-

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ings. T o that end, all his fiction which had appeared before this study was completed has received careful attention, and all of it in which there is some treatment of the theme in question (however fragmentary or incidental) has been discussed here. It is not coincidental that the most 'Catholic' of his novels are those which have most to say about 'human nature'. No principle of exclusion has operated, but rather one of self-selection. Nor is it surprising that the novels discussed tend to be those which have produced some of the least-favourable critical reaction. Any subsequent work of Greene's will be considered in the book.

Many readers, of varied religious persuasions and of none, professionally concerned with literary criticism or simply reading out of interest and curiosity or for enjoyment, have discerned, and have reacted in various ways to, the theological dimension in Greene's novels. There may be some justification for the point of view put forward by John Atkins that this element has been wrongly seized upon and examined to the detriment or neglect of others, and doubly so because it is "on the surface, planted there rather weightily in many cases by Greene himself, but it is a surface growth." 1 Fewer, if any, readers and critics have concerned themselves seriously with the more fundamental question of how Greene sees human beings and of the image of the human person which he presents to the reader. The sanctity or sinfulness of his characters, their possible salvation or damnation, the nature of their view of human society2 have been discussed, but not the basic data of humanity implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggested in the novels. It is possible to believe that certain critics have in fact seen Greene's work almost as a series of illustrations of problematic examples in moral theology.3 It is less easy to find any evidence that they have been read analytically in the light of the gen-

1

1

'

John Atkins, Graham Greene, 2nd. ed. (London, 1966) p. xi. Greene, on the other hand, maintains in his recently published memoirs that the only novel he has ever written to a thesis is The Power and the Glory-, see his Ways of Escape (London, 1980), p. 85. See, for example, Francis L. Kunkel, The Labyrinthine Ways of Graham Greene (New York, 1960); and Charles Moeller, "Graham Greene ou le martyre de l'espérance," in his Silence de Dieu, Vol. I of Littérature du XX' siècle et christianisme (Tournai, 1953), pp. 259-301. Moeller, pp. 291-8. The question of Scobie's salvation or damnation, as Greene recently suggested ("as though that could be an issue in a novel") is not one that need exercise the reader; see his Ways, p. 120.

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eral way of understanding and picturing the human person which they incorporate. Even Terry Eagleton's intelligent (if ultimately unsatisfying) study of them in Exiles and Emigrés does not in this respect go beyond pointing out the general contrast in them between the portrayed or presented unworthiness of human nature and the need which Greene's characters feel to find a way of accepting this, of relating in some meaningful way to it, and of transforming the existential mess in which they live.4

T H E U N E D I F Y I N G BUT U N I Q U E INDIVIDUAL It is clear, however, that even at the most obvious and striking level, that of the seediness so often detected in his characters by such critics, 5 there is a great deal of perhaps unsystematic but nevertheless quite wide-ranging reflection on human nature in all Greene's work. At this immediatelyvisible level, observations are often made through the words of a particular character who voices some weary and disillusioned truism about human weakness or the sameness of our basic nature. This is usually exemplified by reference to unedifying, and by implication more or less universal, patterns of behaviour or predictable series of reactions. O u r common humanity, stripped of pretence and protection, is, we learn, evident in the brothel, where all our superficial differences disappear. 6 Human faults are simple, predictable, universal: " 'A glass too much, a girl now and then ( . . . ) it's human nature. I am human.' " (It's a Battlefield [London, 1964], p. 97) In the squalor of the tropics, human nature is at its least-disguised, its shabbiest and seediest. 7 We all love and need our comforting and encouraging little illusions, and their very simplicity makes them all the more attractive, as is the case with the pencilled political slogans which the Mexican priest notices on the girlie calendar in The Power and the Glory ([London, 1959], p. 155). Seen at this immediately accessible level, human beings are not impressive or endearing creatures, and

4

5

6 7

Terry Eagleton, "Reluctant Heroes: The Novels of Graham Greene," in his Exiles and Emigrés (London, 1970), pp. 108-37. See, for example, Eagleton, pp. 108-9, 136-7, and Greene's own comment, "Human nature is not black and white, but black and grey." The Lost Childhood and other Essays (London, 1951), p. 16. The Heart of the Matter (London, 1951), pp. 208-9. Heart, pp. 33-4.

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Greene's fiction is liberally sprinkled with adulterers, weaklings, renegades, traitors, whores, cowards and failures of one kind or another. What is more important than this easily-recognizable and readily-assimilable comment, however, is the series of reflections on the basic questions which life makes human beings ask, and which are forced on one or more of the major characters in a given novel. Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, the Mexican priest in The Power and the Glory, Sarah, Bendrix and Henry in The End of the Affair, Fowler in The Quiet American arc all obliged, as a result of disturbing experiences in their lives, to wonder what men and women are, what their importance is, and how they do, or can, or should relate to each other. Bendrix, for example, in the face of the apparent pointlessness of Sarah's death and his loss of her, ironically expresses in his talk with Fr Crompton one of the basic premises of the latter's faith: You preach the importance of the individual. Our hairs are all numbered. (The End of the Affair[LonAon,

1959],p. 187)

The fact that he is ostensibly attacking and mocking such a view (although he has in fact moved some way towards accepting it) is not particularly important. It is the statement of it that matters, for it indicates a possible view of human beings which Greene, however obliquely, introduces into the novel at a point when Bendrix sees life at its bleakest and most desolate, a point at which meaning seems totally absent. Despite the bitterness of his remark, he knows that in his relationship with Sarah, in her diary, in his memories of her and his love for her, he has had glimpses of another person in her complexity and simplicity as a human being, and that this perception, heightened by his loss, will remain with him. And Sarah herself, in her diary, has reflected on just such odd and apparently remote matters. What, she wonders, is the essential nature of a human being? If one can rid a personality of its accidents, its external, visible characteristics, what is left? N o doubt she would never express the question in those terms to herself or to anyone, Bendrix included, with whom she might want to discuss it or feel able to do so. Nevertheless, that is clearly what she means and what she wants to know when she asks herself, using her own simple and direct language, in her diary, "What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?" (End, p. 121) The answer is concerned with what, in Brighton Rock, Greene calls "the deepest mind, the plane of memories, instincts, hopes" (Brighton Rock [London, 1970], p. 91), with Georges Bernanos's "tuf obscur" and Sigrid Undset's "house

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with room within room and an inmost chamber", 8 and it is not surprising that Sarah's conclusion about what is in that inmost chamber is the same as that of Undset's character Paul Selmer: it is God. There can ultimately perhaps only be two possible answers: nothing, or everything, and the convinced Catholic must necessarily be presumed to find, as these have found, the second mysterious and indescribable alternative. Just as Bendrix's love for Sarah grows as he finds out more about her as a human being (which means in effect, finding out more about that part of her which lies deeper than accidents and externals) so does his affection for and understanding of the pathetic and cuckolded Henry. 9 The same sort of process is also evident in The Quiet American, when Fowler, asking the kind of question which for Greene's characters often begins to lead to knowledge, both of a particular and of a general kind, of their fellow men and women, has this to say of his relationship with Pyle: I think it w a s t h e n , w o n d e r i n g w h a t is a m a n , that I felt m y first a f f e c t i o n f o r Pyle. ( T h e Quiet

American

[ L o n d o n , 1 9 5 6 ] , p. 39)

APPROACHES T O T H E PUZZLE Love of a human being and thought about his nature and that of the multitude of persons around us whose surface we never penetrate are always very closely interlinked. Man is devious, mysterious, complicated, full of hidden thoughts and ulterior motives even when apparently and superficially comprehensible, describable and predictable. Beyond a certain stage of insight, the first immediately recognizable and apparently valid series of general observations about a rather unsatisfactory humanity, which have already been mentioned above, appear misleading and distorting, clouding real knowledge by their specious credibility and apparent wisdom. It is impossible to decide whether this clash of perceptions is an element of a conscious technique. It is, however, there for those who care to reflect on it. Every man, woman and child has regions of his being which are infinitely more extensive and less amenable to notice and description than we can assume, and cannot be exhausted by any statement

8 9

Sigrid Undset, The Burning Bush (London, 1932), p. 376. See End, Book Five. It is also interesting to note, in connection with later sections of this essay, that conflict also disappears.

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we make about human beings in general or about him as an individual in particular. In the words of Leon Rivas, the revolutionary priest of The Honorary Consul: 'I have never met a simple man. Not even in the confessional though I used to sit there for hours on end. Man was not created simple. When I was a young priest, I used to try to unravel what motives a man or woman had, what temptations and self-delusions. But I soon learned to give all that up, because there was never a straight answer. N o one was simple enough for me to understand. In the end I would just say, "Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys. Go in peace.'" (The Honorary Consul [London, 1973], pp. 228-9)

It is only the love and, in many senses of the word, the understanding, of a Bendrix, a Fowler, a Sarah, a Scobie and even, despite his disclaimer, of a Leon Rivas that can make any sense, however incomplete or tentative, out of such ignorance and confusion. What strikes the reader very forcibly is that such characters, like Querry in A Burnt-Out Case, can only begin to see what in the novels seems to lie at the heart of every human being when they have both perceived their own selfhood and that of others and have also in some way and to some degree gone beyond selfishness. The break in the egocentricity of their own physical and psychic life, which is clear in all the novels and which for Greene seems to be a precondition of human growth, brings with it a deeper love of others and a fuller understanding of them. Human self-centredness, what Querry calls 'self-expression', is seen as corrosive and finally destructive of even the self which it seeks to express: 'Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express. I have no interest in anything any more, doctor. I don't want to sleep with a woman nor design a building.' ( A Burnt-Out Case [London, 1961], p. 52)

At the basis of this understanding of other selves, or at least of that perception of their elusiveness and irreducibility which is a preliminary to even the most superficial knowledge of them, lies a complex of emotions and attitudes which might be given any one of a number of possible names. Prominent amongst these are compassion and pity. The individual reader may react to their presence in a number of ways. Here, the reflections of the author on his characters may be seen as tired, shabby, mawkish little aphorisms, as expressions of acute perception and insight, as drab, tired and superficially worldly-wise observations or as exem-

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plary wisdom expressed with lapidary economy. In the first place, it is their existence rather than their validity which should be noted. The novels can be seen to some extent as a conscious and continuous exploration of the idea that awareness of another as a person inevitably and always brings with it a sense of the complexity of his being and a feeling of sympathy and shared humanity, and the disappearance of the simple schematic view produced by convention, prejudice, social political, religious and psychological differences. Received ideas crumble, and are replaced by a sense of another complex, different and yet not alien reality, and the suffering and pain of a different subjectivity become apparent and can be shared. In The Power and the Glory, for example, the priest, while in prison, both feels pity for the other inmates and can understand why the pious middle-class woman who speaks to him is appalled by her incarceration with the unlovely dregs of Mexican society, perceiving that both her upbringing and the shock of her experience prevent her from seeing them as her fellow human beings: When you visualised a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it ( . . . ) Hate was just a failure of imagination, (pp. 169-70)

Once the other is seen as a person, understanding and pity follow in Greene's novels. Without that necessary view of him, he is to a greater or lesser extent an object, and what is worse, frequently an awkward, embarrassing, squalid, inconvenient and possibly dangerous one. The 'failure of the imagination' entails in fact precisely an inability to see the reality and detail in another human being, whom Greene sees as the image of God. The Heart of the Matter is perhaps the novel in which Greene tries hardest to make this point and to drive it home at every stage of the story. Scobie's pity for both Louise, his wife, and Helen, the girl with whom he commits adultery, is constantly made obvious to the reader.10 This pity comes into being because he sees their pain, their suffering, and, to some extent, the aridity of their individual lives. In his relationship with Louise, Scobie sees that he is "bound by the pathos of her unattractiveness" (p. 23), he is aware of "the enormous breach pity had blasted through his integrity" (p. 130) and feels Helen's ugliness "like handcuffs on his wrists" (p. 188). He is forced to reflect on the compelling and, paradoxically, potentially unhelpful nature of such sentiments — 10

See, for example, Heart, pp. 15, 61, 130, 189, 211 and passim.

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This automatic terrible pity goes out to any human need and makes it worse? Any victim demands allegiance, (p. 247) —

and indeed to wonder what the limits to them could be: If one knew ( . . . ) would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter? (p. 141)

Nevertheless it is perhaps because pity in this novel is so suffocatingly pervasive, permeating all Scobie's thought and emotion, that the reader senses, even if only vaguely, a kind of distortion, a falsification or weakness in Scobie's insights. If this is so, it is ultimately because feeling is seen as more important than truth: The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being — it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths, (p. 6 4 ) u

Here as elsewhere it seems that Greene differentiates between love and pity, and this distinction is of importance when reflecting on the novels. Scobie's pity, for all its worth, lacks the astringency which is sometimes the only thing which can, however slowly and painfully, eventually bring healing. There are indications that he is occasionally and imperfectly aware of this, and in them it is possible to see the implication that Greene cannot see pity as a totally adequate response in human relationships.12 As well as seeing another person's weakness and vulnerability, we can often sense, perhaps in spite of that pity, his autonomy, his otherness and his separateness from ourselves. Thus when Scobie returns, exhausted and worried, from a trip up-country, and Louise stays up after he has gone to bed, attending to her own duties, he suddenly, briefly and unexpectedly sees her in a new light: She was someone of human stature with her own sense of responsibility, not simply the object of his care and kindness, (p. 108)

11

12

It is reassuring to note that Greene himself now appears to take this view and has recently written of Heart that "there was something corrupt there, for the book appealed too often to the weak element in its readers." ( W a y s , p. 252) Arthur Rowe, for example, in The Ministry of Fear (London, 1943) w h o has killed his diseased wife out of pity, presents some similar symptoms of what Greene lets his readers see as Scobie's sickness.

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HUMAN STATURE This perception illustrates the difference between love and pity and makes the latter seem in some sense and to some extent an egocentric and lesser response to the reality of another human being. It strengthens, momentarily at least, a certain suspicion on the part of the reader that there is something not entirely commendable about Scobie's concern for others and suggest the possibility that it can be seen as the product or manifestation of an exacerbated and slightly morbid sensitivity. What Scobie finds ultimately impossible to bear is perhaps not so much the suffering of others as the effect of that suffering on himself, and that is why his pity expresses itself in passivity and sadness. The truth — that element in human relationships which he sees as having no real value and which consequently to some extent eludes him here — is that the unhappiness of both Louise and Helen has its origin not so much in a lack of the kindness and lies which he sees as being so much more important, as in the inadequacy of their inner lives and their relationship with other people, notably himself. Louise's formal and rather sterile suburban piety and her acceptance of the protectiveness which ruins her marriage, Helen's ignorance and despair and her use of her affair with Scobie as a palliative for them are the causes of their dejection and bitterness.13 If Scobie had seen both women more as "of human stature ( . . . ) not simply [as] the object of his care and kindness", their situation and his would perhaps have developed differently. It is a failure to recognize truth fully, to see their human stature, which helps to prolong and confirm the wretchedness of the lives of the victims of his pity. After his death, one must presume, Louise will be as much the object of Webster's idealization as she was of her first husband's solicitude, and Helen's despair will continue into and beyond her affair with Bagster. One cannot help but wonder whether Greene was fully aware of the implications of giving Scobie even such a brief insight of this kind. Although it is a fleeting one and uncharacteristic of the general pattern of his attitudes towards the two women, or indeed towards anyone else, from Yusef and Wilson to the dying child, it has, while it lasts, much in common with those of other characters in other novels. The autonomy and independent importance of others are seen by Bendrix, for example,

13

Moeller, writing primarily from the point of view of the moral theologian, deals fully and intelligently with this point, pp. 279-98.

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in The End of the Affair, in his observation that "we are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves." (p. 175) The implication is that people are, like Sarah, persons whose being cannot simply be seen as equivalent to the ideas which others have about them, and whose inner life escapes the full knowledge of their fellows. What human beings think and feel has dimensions outside the perceptions of such activities that they themselves and others may achieve. What is striking is that the recognition of the full humanity of others, their importance in themselves, and the beginnings of any knowledge of them is closely linked to some kind of awareness of God. In Bendrix's case, for example, there is a suggestion that a view of the kind expressed above arises as a result of his reflections after his loss of Sarah and of what can be seen as his incipient and reluctant belief, expressed in a surface hostility which slowly gives way to a tired resignation, in some sort of remote and yet very personal power which has fundamentally affected his own life and that of Sarah and Henry. These ideas, which are major ones in Greene's fiction, are suggested very clearly (although not untypically in the form of a question) by Querry, in A BurntOut Case, when he suggests that the love of God and the love of one's fellow human being are in some sense inseparable: 'Perhaps it's true that you can't believe in a god without loving a human being or love a human being without believing in a god.' (pp. 143-4)

Although this statement is an explanation of his own disbelief, detachment and lack of feeling, concern or desire, it illustrates the conceptual possibility of an opposite situation, one in which the present negatives would be positives, even if imperfectly, confusedly and messily. In this sense, it calls to mind incidents in the novels which can be seen as moments of perception of the importance of each individual human being, those for example in The Power and the Glory in which the Mexican priest offers his own salvation for that of his child (pp. 103-4) or in The Heart of the Matter in which Scobie asks peace for the dying six-year-old survivor of the SS43 and offers his own in return, (p. 143) These are illustrations of the great importance which the religious view of man gives to even the most apparently insignificant of individuals, an importance which goes beyond the temporal and secular and includes a sense of the eternal value of each and every human person. The tiny speck of life for whom the priest prays, a child ancient before her time, doomed to a life of physical and moral squalor, violence and perhaps despair is, in his words, "more important than a whole continent" {Power, p. 103) and is seen in quite a dif-

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ferent way by him from that in which the politicians, the police, the anticlericals, who are all concerned with larger things, could ever see her. 14

T H E MYSTERY OF RELIGION AND T H E MYSTERY OF T H E HUMAN PERSON: G O D ' S IMAGE I N M A N Given the importance of the religious dimension in certain of Greene's novels, it might be tempting to assume that the criticisms made by, for example, Atkins of their theological content could be extended to cover the religious view of human beings portrayed in them. If it is possible to argue that Greene can be seen as having been able to 'plant a surface growth' of theological concepts in them, it is also possible to suggest that he might also be able to impose on them an equally extrinsic view of man. In this connection, it is worth noting that there is at least some indication that Greene was to some extent aware of this possible way of both seeing life and of reading his novels. Criticisms which are actually or potentially made in real life can readily be transposed to the plane of fiction, and it would not be surprizing to find a response of some kind in the novels. In A Burnt-Out Case, where Catholicism is criticized by an ex-Catholic, or at least by someone whose Catholicism is in a state of temporary or permanent suspension, 15 there is to some extent an answer to those who would claim that Greene simply sets out to christianize or catholicize feelings and reactions which do not necessarily have anything specially Christian or Catholic in them and which are merely attributes of human beings in general, whether they have a given religion or none. A charge similar to that brought by Atkins is made by Querry to the Superior of the mission where he has sought escape and anonymity:

It is interesting to note that in Scobie's case, as in that of Sarah in End the bargain proposed to God appears to have been accepted and kept. On the other hand, the reader learns nothing of the outcome of the priest's prayer, or at least nothing directly. The latter, which goes beyond the confines of this life and engages eternity, may be assumed to be improper. Querry's dying words are enigmatic: " 'Absurd', Querry said, 'this is absurd or else . . . ' but what alternative, philosophical or psychological, he had in mind they never knew." (Case, p. 252).

408

J. C. Whitehouse *You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, Father ( . . . ) Gentleness isn't Christian, self-sacrific'e isn't Christian, charity isn't, remorse isn't ( . . . ) Haven't you even seen a dog weep? In the last cooling of the world, when the emptiness of your belief is finally exposed, there'll always be some bemused fool who'll cover another's body with his own to give it warmth for an hour more of life.' (Burnt-Out Case, pp. 93-4)

It is not surprising to find that the Superior (or Greene through him?) attempts to make some kind of answer to this charge. He does so indirectly in his sermon preached in petit-nègre in the heat of the morning sun. The preaching is of the simplest kind, the examples chosen are banal and linked closely to the experience of his illiterate congregation, and yet the implications of what he has to say indicate a way of looking at the question which Querry has raised, of attempting to answer it, and of driving that answer home. The basis of his argument is that all the good that is in men (Klistian or otherwise) is Yezu in them, the bad when Yezu is not in them. This both implies that Christianity perfects rather than changes human nature, that Christ can be present in all men at all times, and that He is a God who exists from all eternity and who predates and may well postdate Christianity. It urges those hearing it (including both Querry and Loli) to see human nature in terms of eternity and in relation to an eternal God and eternal values. In this simplest of homilies, the whole nature of the general Catholic view of man is raised by implication and example, (p. 252) It is interesting to note that this reply is given by a man who is characterized by great practical intelligence and a robust commonsense, and not by one of the more subtle or theologically-minded members of the community such as Fr Thomas. Empirical knowledge of men and of human activities lies behind the answer, and its effects are probably twofold, in that the reader both assumes that it is an honest statement of a way of seeing man and that it is the one which coincides most closely with Greene's own. It is the answer which Catholic belief must give, and although belief is not knowledge, it is a willingness to accept the truth of a particular possible interpretation of human life and nature. This argupnent is expressed in simple terms, but it is an argument about complex things. Greene does not deny (and indeed tends to stress) the complexity of the human personality and of human relationships, but he does suggest, in the example given above and elsewhere, that we need a belief in God (although we may deny his existence) if we are ever to begin to understand our fellow men and women at anything other than a superficial level.

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The unavoidable links between the difficulty of understanding other persons and religious concepts is stressed in many of his novels. One unfathomable mystery suggests another, and the feeling that understanding escapes us suggests the need to posit the possibility of a perfect comprehension. Hardy's view that the tragedy of the universe is that there is no intelligence anywhere capable of understanding it fully16 and its possible alternative, belief in God, lies at the heart of the matter here. Those parts of the universe with which our daily lives are primarily concerned, human personality and human situations, need to be understood more fully than we can ever understand them. In this situation, we can either assume, with Hardy, that they are ultimately incomprehensible, or that there is a God who himself understands, and can perhaps help our own understanding. For the Catholic, St Anselm's summary of Augustine's work "credo ut intellegam" 17 is relevant here: belief can illuminate this area as well as others. For the non-believer, it implies an evasion of the absurdity of human life, an inability to live with what we know and with that only, a leap into the irrational of the kind condemned by Camus. 18 Whatever their underlying view, Greene's characters are often aware of the difficulty of knowing other people fully and of the ways in which this perception is linked with the need and the possibility or impossibility of considering the idea of God. Thus Fowler, in The Quiet American, suggests that it is precisely because we cannot understand each other that we have invented a Being capable of knowing and comprehending what eludes and mystifies us: . . . accepting the f a c t that no h u m a n being will ever understand another, not a w i f e a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a p a r e n t a child? P e r h a p s that's w h y men have invented G o d — a being capable of understanding, (p. 72)

Bendrix's statement of the same general notion is similar. He talks of "getting to the end of human beings", meaning presumably abandoning the attempt to understand them in simplistic terms or tiring of their general unsatisfactoriness and untidiness, and then moving on to a self-induced belief in God as the next tactical move in a strategy for coping with life: 16

17

18

Thomas Hardy, Preface to the Wessex (1912) edition of The Return of the Native. Anselm, Prosiogion, I, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, Florilegium Patristicum, Fasc. 29 (Bonn, 1931), p. 11. This is not, of course, a piece of anti-intellectualism, but simply a suggestion that there are limits to what reason can achieve. See Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris, 1942), especially pp. 47-72.

410

J. C. Whitehouse When we get to the end of human beings we have to delude ourselves into a belief in G o d , like a gourmet who demands more complex sauces with his food. {End, p. 176)

It is ironical of course that when he thinks this he is by no means 'at the end' of Sarah and does not want God, and that a more complete understanding of a human being and the first tentative movement towards perceiving God are later to be closely linked when he receives Sarah's letter and later reads her diary. The implications are that, even in his own terms, his rather sophisticated bit of human wisdom becomes meaningless as he sees more clearly that God and his image, man, are equally mysterious and indissolubly linked. This point is made again and again in the novels. The priest in The Power and the Glory can see, and tries to express in the terminology of his own theological training, what binds totally disparate people together. The unity, which is there because all men are alike in the sense that they are in some way like God, can be seen, but not fully explained by reason, although it is not irrational in itself, given his premises: But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery — that we were made in God's image. G o d was the parent, but H e was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac and the judge, (p. 129)

Human beings are alike and can see each other as persons because they are all "made in God's image". It is important to understand some of the implications of this expression. What it means is that man is like God and that there is a reflection of God in him. It does not mean that God is man, or that man is God, or that man is simply a passive vehicle through whom God operates (although man can make the choice of being that). It is the idea of likeness which is of great importance, for from it arises the notion that God can in some way be seen in man, and in some way be affected by what is done to his human creatures. What Greene is saying in the thoughts he gives the priest is in fact that however remote the likeness may seem, however difficult it may be to see in individual human beings a reflection of divinity or to perceive in them any trace of God's presence, faith tells the believer that he must see his fellow men and women in that light and that in certain crucial human situations, such as the one he depicts in this novel, that perception is more likely to occur and to be vivid. One of the problems in this particular case of course is that Greene's language is poetic, in that its meaning lies beyond but not totally separate from the literal denotation of the constituent words. T o

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say that God "was" any of the people he mentions is to speak figuratively and not literally. None could say of himself, nor of another, that he was God but each could say of himself or of another that he was in some sense like him. This must be the meaning of the priest's thoughts, it would seem, and it is important to realize this, for the expression "made in God's image" has been either unintentionally or deliberately misinterpreted by certain of Greene's critics, particularly by David Pryce-Jones, 19 who simply and wrongly takes the phrase to mean that each human individual is no more than a puppet carrying out the will of God, that human beings are unfree and simply pawns in a series of moves designed by God to accomplish his purposes, and in which they "cannot properly be distinguished by the individual moral consideration of their actions, for every action — even sex and killing — is in God's image." 20 This deterministic view of human nature and human actions, which are all seen as predestined and morally equivalent because they all work towards God's purpose, is in accordance with neither Catholic theology nor with internal evidence in the novel. In the former, the phrase simply cannot be understood in that way, for there man is seen as free to further or to hinder the working of grace and the movement towards salvation and is capable of knowledge, freedom and autonomous action, the very qualities which in fact make him like God. With regard to the latter, there are indications in the novel that the priest is aware of his own freedom, and indeed of being abandoned by God in the sense that he is left to make his own decisions and to act as he sees best. {Power, p. 179) In the general Catholic, and in Greene's own particular, view of man, to be made in God's image means that human beings are to some degree capable of knowledge, love, free will and autonomous action and are recognizable as human beings precisely because of these attributes. Such characteristics are the imperfect reflections of attributes which are perfect only in God, and are those qualities which move man towards God and his fellows in a movement which can be hindered by his own selfishness and blindness, but one which he can nevertheless recognize and seek to develop. This is the sense of what Fr Rivas in The Honorary Consul says when he describes in the shantytown in which he and his revolutionary companions are holding their kidnapped victim, the Church as being 'the world, this barrio, this room', (cf.

" 20

David Pryce-Jones, Graham Greene (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 57-8. Pryce-Jones, p. 58.

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p. 285) It is because as a man, a Catholic and a priest he can see God's image in all men, and consequently their human stature and dignity despite their degradation in the harsh conditions of Latin America, that he has decided, as a free human being (and not as God's puppet), to take extreme action in order to bring about conditions in which those qualities can flourish rather than atrophy. Although the circumstances are very different, it is the same perception which lies behind Sarah's wish to escape from selfishness and her desire to love others for themselves. She knows that if she loves God, she will love his creatures, those other selves who are both not him and like him: Let me think of the strawberry-mark on Richard's cheek. Let me see Henry's face with the tears falling. Let me forget me. Dear God, I've tried to love and I've made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I'd know how to love them. (End, pp. 143-4)

She approaches this state, kissing Smythe's birthmark, beginning to understand her separation from Bendrix and asking God to give him her peace, (pp. 146-8)

LOVE AND KNOWLEDGE Love and knowledge, as has been suggested above, or sometimes love and the desire for knowledge and understanding, are closely related in the novels. There is often a potential or actual link between the perception of another human being as a self and love for that other person. Carlyon, in The Man Within, sees this kind of love as being exemplified in a woman's love for a man. " 'Only a woman,' " he says, " 'can love a real person' " (as distinct from, presumably, an idealized or romanticized concept of one). (The Man Within [London, 1964] p. 66) It is worth noting, however, that his own relationship with Andrews shows something of the same insights and attitudes.21 Bendrix too is aware of the link between knowledge and love. He knows that Sarah has known him in many ways, and has loved him for what he is, without illusions and with total honesty, and is humbled and wondering when faced with the realization: It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love. (End, p. 104) 21

See, for example, pp. 65-70, 154, 237-40.

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Scobie, watching his wife, feels that love desires knowledge and without it cannot last, cannot in any profound sense, really be: When he was young, he had thought love had something to d o with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity. (Heart, p. 308)

This is perhaps not quite the declaration of the impossibility of love which he takes it to be. Total love and total understanding are both beyond the powers of human beings to achieve, but imperfect love can subsist, roughly and sporadically reappearing, along with imperfect knowledge and understanding. Only a relationship in which the total truth of another person was perceived and understood would satisfy Scobie, but his love for Louise, if imperfect, is nevertheless real. At times, at least, it goes beyond an agglomeration of the secondary feelings he mentions, although they are components of it. Like all absolutes, absolute love is impossible for human beings in their earthly life. Like all human desires and efforts, the desire and effort to love and understand is doomed to a greater or lesser extent to failure, and to realize this is part of any human experience in those matters. Also like all human efforts, however, it has its partial and temporary successes, and there are moments when, in Scobie's case, these are visible. T o feel the absence of a good is to value that good, and this is in effect what happens both here and in other situations in the novels. Even as the circumference of awareness expands, the surrounding area of ignorance becomes more clearly seen. Knowledge and understanding can never be complete, and the realization that there are areas — chronological, social, domestic, sexual — of the beloved's life which will always lie outside the lover's knowledge becomes sharper. Bendrix sums up such an awareness: T h e r e are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared. (End, p. 211)

The idea of the link between love and knowledge is even more apparent when a relationship is viewed from the outside. From an external viewpoint, the question is even more confused, the situation even more difficult of understanding, particularly when one or both of the partners is apparently unattractive and even unlikeable. In such cases, the love is incomprehensible to outsiders precisely because it is based on a knowledge

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which they do not share. Fowler, reflecting on Vigot, the Sûreté officer "who so strangely loved his wife" (American, p. 13), who ignored him, a flashy and false blonde, realizes that it is impossible to love without intuition, that is, without the direct knowledge, understanding and acceptance of the fact and nature of another self. For the onlooker, who does not share these insights, Vigot's love is inexplicable. Such knowledge of the reality of another person is also the essence of the perhaps slightly romantic but not unconvincing relationship between Elizabeth and Andrews in The Man Within. From the early pages of the novel, the girl emerges as a person. The young man is with her "as in the presence of a mystery" (p. 70). She, in her turn, senses something of the complexity of the young man which lies behind the misleading simplicity of the concept which he has of himself and sees him as someone who " 'forgot his own details ( . . . ) believed himself a coward and nothing else.' " (p. 66) Both of them are aware of the contrast which Greene points out, that between random superficial character and the hard, real inner self, and see that the former represents no more than a schematization, and hence a simplification of the latter, (pp. 39-40)

LOVE, SEXUALITY A N D LUST Parallel with this reflection on the interrelationship between love and knowledge there runs a constant stream of meditation on the nature of love itself. Here, one of Greene's major themes is an awareness of the exclusive and partial, and consequently falsifying, nature of almost any observation that can be made about it. Love, it is implied in the novels, may be this, or that or the other, but is not solely and exclusively any one of them. Sarah's reaction to Smythe's rationalist explanation of human and divine love can perhaps be taken as the essence of what Greene has to say here. When the proselytizing free-thinker has exhausted his catalogue of all the definitions of love (the desire to possess, to surrender, to shrug off responsibility, to be admired, to find a confessor, a father, a mother, to fulfil biological instincts), her response is to feel that all this is true, but that it does not go far enough. She has sensed all that in herself and Bendrix, but there is always something else; the spade has not yet touched rock. {End, p. 127) Love is more complex and lasting than many people can imagine. Its durability is constantly examined and evaluated by many different characters, and many interpretations of these reflections are

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possible. Bendrix's statement to Henry epitomizes one of the basic desires of the lovers in Greene's novels (" 'I wanted love to go on and on, never to get less' " — p. 78) is met by the latter's cautious, decent, moderate, commonsense reply, " 'It's not in human nature. One has to be satisfied.' " (p. 78) — which is the opposite of what Sarah is later to say (and which may well be Greene's considered view), namely, that " 'Love doesn't end.'" (p. 79) Its durability, however, may well be linked to its relationship with other factors, notably with a concept of human beings as in some way aware of God. For Sarah, love can continue, despite separation, in other ways and in other modes than those of the immediate sexual relationship or in the memory of the ghost of that relationship. She feels that if she loves God, she will love others more and not less. Bendrix and Scobie try to exclude an awareness of God from human love, the former towards the end of The End of the Affair, the latter at specific moments in The Heart of the Matter.21 Both of them see God as an impediment to love for a human being, as an external factor making demands which are incompatible with those of human love, whilst Sarah finally sees that meeting them is necessary if human love is not to fail. {End, pp. 146-8) In such cases, what Bendrix has earlier called "the winning cards — the cards of gentleness, humility and trust" (p. 26) have to be played in a different manner from the one he had envisaged if the end of love, where he has said that "there is never such a thing as victory: only a few minor tactical successes before the final defeat of death or indifference" {Heart, p. 262) or the situation in which "insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel ( . . . ) in a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor" {End, p. 62) are to be avoided. Love is so inextricably mixed up with so many other emotions and relationships in Greene's novels (pity, a sense of responsibility, understanding, belief in God) that it is easy to lose sight of the underlying factor common to all such feelings and ways of seeing things, which is a lived awareness of another person's own and separate humanity. Nowhere is this more clearly expressed than by Scobie, talking to Helen in one of their wearied, wearying encounters, where he sees the implications of their adulterous relationship clearly and she, uttering phrases "read in how many books" {Heart, p. 210) does not. There is only one real reason

See, for example, End, p. 237, and Heart, p. 223.

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why he is prepared to make great sacrifices (even that of his work, which means a great deal to him) for her sake, and it is a very simple and basic one: " 'I suppose because you are a human being.' " (p. 210) By virtue of her perceived selfhood, she has tremendous claims on his time, emotions and attention. Such relationships, as Sarah sees, are much more complicated than Smythe's explanations of human love, and infinitely more subtle than any exclusively sexual one. This idea is apparent as early as The Man Within, when Andrews compares the attraction of Lucy ("no love and no reverence ( . . . ) the added spice of reciprocated desire") with the feelings of "mystery" and "sanctity" which "blurred and obscured his desire with love" aroused in him by Elizabeth, (pp. 128-9) Although he himself is not mature, experienced, perceptive or articulate enough to analyze and understand such feelings fully, they are clearly akin to those of later and older lovers such as Bendrix or Scobie who can begin to do so. The former can say that his passion for Sarah had destroyed simple lust forever, and that he would never again be able to enjoy a woman without love {End, p. 66), the latter, urged by Helen not to bother about consequences and to abandon caution, recognizes in her bitter words ("the hard swearing of the netball team" — Heart, p. 212) the dependent, helpless and despairing child that she is. In all three cases, isolated sexuality is insufficient. Once a possible or actual relationship which includes other aspects of personality has been achieved or imagined as a potentiality, the exclusively sexual is relegated to a lesser place. However major a role fornication and adultery may appear to play in Greene's novels, they are no more than stages on the way to other kinds of relationships, which may include them but which in a real sense go beyond them, and their apparent importance decreases. There is in fact a constant diminishing of the human importance of purely sexual attraction in isolation. In some novels, its insignificance is stressed. In The Honorary Consul, for example, a meal shared, it is suggested, is more intimate than the sexual act {Consul, p. 112) and sexual attraction is often provoked by the insignificant and trivial. (p. 69) Where it is not insignificant, transient lust can be instantly and tragically destructive, as in The Power and the Glory, where "once for five minutes seven years ago" the priest had sinned and "a whole world had died." (p. 85) It is the isolation of sexuality from other aspects of the human psyche that creates lust, which is dehumanized desire. Because it is not fully human, it is in the novels at best second-rate and at worst repulsive. In Greene's fiction, those who have achieved a certain maturity and

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in some way, good or bad, come to terms with life or have begun to do so, recognize lust for what it is, have an idea of its nature, and can see it to some extent objectively and dispassionately. Others, who are more impressionable and vulnerable, are appalled by it. That is what lies behind Pinkie's extreme and destructive puritanism. The 'Saturday night gymnasties' of his parents and his own 'horrified virginity' (Rock, p. 108), the "prick of sexual desire" which "disturbed him like a sickness" (p. 112), his recollection of Annie Collis, pregnant twice before she was fifteen, his vow to be a priest to " 'keep away ( . . . ) from this' " (p. 204), his sudden articulateness when describing, with fascinated horror, sado-masochistic pornography and sentimental love stories (p. 205) are produced by a sensitivity which is doing no more than recoil, albeit violently, from incompletely human feelings and the distortion of the natural. His obsession drives him to destroy both Rose, who is good and human, and himself. What might have been a holy awe or a sense of compassion becomes a hatred — corruptio optimi pessima — and the blighting of natural reticence and modesty produces an impaired and incomplete human being. This partly external and partly internal distortion of a cluster of emotions and desires, in which the adolescent sensitivity to the powerful and apparently overwhelming and dehumanizing blindness of immediate physical desire dominates all other aspects of human sexuality, produces a serious imbalance in Pinkie. Its symptoms may be morbid, but the reaction itself, in Greene's eyes, is not basically unhealthy. The wounded psyche takes refuge in flight, and towards the end of the novel there are signs that some kind of healing process might be beginning, (pp. 289-304) At one level, the earlier, simple description of his relationship with Rose ("She was good ( . . . ) and he was damned: they were made for each other." — p. 155) is still apparently valid, but at another, that of their unity and love, where Rose can see the child in him and he himself has some perception that the world he has wanted to destroy is the world in which and for which God himself suffered, it is no longer accurate. But the child whose life has been blighted by too early, too close and too limited a view of sexuality is not the only, although he is the most powerful, Greenean archetype. Through the eyes of certain adult characters who, whatever their failings, have a certain sensitivity and intelligence, Greene shows the reader a brief glimpse of limited and limiting sexual relationships. Scobie and Fowler are clearly far from perfect human beings, but at least they have, to varying degrees, some understanding of the complexity of human life. They can see that only the emotional-

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ly crippled or psychologically hemitrophied (Bagster, for example, in The Heart of the Matter, or Granger in The Quiet American, whose deepest sexual experience was copulating with a Chinese woman and a Negress together in a Saigon brothel) can really live with lust as an isolated phenomenon. Even the smooth and disillusioned Eduardo Plarr, in The Honorary Consul, womanizer and connoisseur of whores, can see that, "in a real love affair ( . . . ) you are interested in a woman because she is someone distinct from yourself" (p. I l l ) , and his reflections on the code of etiquette used in the brothel indicate that this distinction between genuine and feigned sexual relationships is a generally recognised one. (p. 112) Fowler's need for fidelity, Scobies' pity, Bendrix's increase in love for Sarah as he finds out more about other aspects of her life than sexual ones stress a major theme in Greene's novels: if sexuality is restricted to the satisfaction of simple and immediate physiological excitement, to the epidermal and neural, it is not enough to satisfy a fuller humanity. It is only meaningful as part of a wider relationship in which two human beings learn to know, love and respect each other. This relationship may in particular cases be impossible to achieve, as it is to varying degrees and in different ways with Pinkie, Scobie and Bendrix, but it is, in human terms, potentially one in which human beings become more rather than less human. Pinkie is horrified by all sexuality because he sees it as inhuman; Scobie and Bendrix reject a restricted sexuality and need a more human kind.

PAIN AND SUFFERING In Greene's novels, the situation of the individual is part of the overall human situation, his experience part of that of mankind in general. More often than not in the novels, both of these are largely unsatisfactory, vitiated by original and actual sin. The description in The Power and the Glory of the prison cell which the priest shares with other outcasts and misfits offers an image, in its starkest form, of the world of Greene: This place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love: it stank to heaven; but he realised that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short (p. 161).

Even Fellows, who restricts his ambitions to a desire for a life of "ease, safety, toleration and complacency" (p. 41) is aware of the dangers

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which life holds for his daughter and of the anxiety inseparable from love for any other human being: You cannot control what you love — you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead (p. 41)

and knows that her present innocence and happiness are doomed: "Life hadn't got at her yet; she had a false air of impregnability." (p. 37) It is a world in which men, whatever their views, must at times accept the dreadful, the unthinkable. The priest in The Power and the Glory now no longer feels much as he consumes the body and blood of God in a state of mortal sin ("but then life bred its excuses" — p. 87). It is also one in which the human environment is so bleak and grey that indifferent or hostile nature, even in the tropics, is less drearily repellent than what human beings have created for themselves: The A.T.S. or the W.A.A.F., the blustering sergeant with the big bust, the cook-house and the potato peelings, the Lesbian officer with the thin lips and the tidy gold hair, and the men waiting on the Common outside the camp, among the gorse bushes. (Heart, p. 187)23

In it, happiness seems often to be either the result of ignorance or selfishness or is a second-best alternative to changelessness (a theme stated and developed by Greene on many occasions), 24 and apparent safety is no more than an illusion, "the camouflage of an enemy who works in terms of friendship, trust and pity." (Heart, p. 190) Pain, reflects Scobie, pain inflicted and pain suffered, is inevitable in any human relationship, (pp. 87-8) If one avoids it once, twice, it will be offered again a third time and will be inescapable ("to be a human being one had to drink the cup" — p. 142), in his case, to watch the child die and to be unable to bear her suffering. In the words of the Superior of the mission to Querry, the burntout case who maintains that he can no longer feel anything, " 'Suffering is something which will always be provided when it is required.' " (Case, p. 12) It will always, says Greene, be possible, in this world, for one's features to acquire "the lines that make a human being". (Heart, p. 26)

23 24

The supply of such vignettes is almost inexhaustible. See, for example, Heart, pp. I l l , 141, 197, and passim.

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INNOCENCE, SIN AND FREEDOM Three other major aspects of human experience which shape the material of Greene's novels and in so doing create an image of the human situation are those of innocence, sin and freedom. These come into play within a framework provided by certain Catholic ideas concerning the human person which are implicit, sometimes only indirectly or perhaps not at all perceived by the reader, and in some cases perhaps only unconsciously or semi-consciously incorporated by the author himself. The first of these, innocence, is seen, paradoxically enough, as both destructible and fragile, and in some ways dangerous if it persists. The innocence of children, as has been seen with Coral Fowler, with the Mexican priest's child, with Pinkie and with Helen, is transient and doomed to fade or be effaced. The child is after all, human, a " 'jungle of complications' " (American p. 230) and because he or she is an embryonic adult, there is, says Greene, "always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in" {Power, pp. 7-8), a moment which marks the journey towards the lostness typified by Sarah's girlhood. {End, pp. 211-2) Greene uses the word loosely and rather confusingly and seems in the novels to give it two senses which, although they overlap to some extent, do not quite coincide, and he does not distinguish with any clarity between them. The first is that of a childlike purity of motive and hence of candour, spontaneity and guiltlessness. In this sense, one could see Coral Fowler, Marie Rycker, the young boy who opens the door to the second priest at the end of The Power and the Glory and perhaps even the lieutenant of police in the same novel as being, in their varying ways and to varying degrees, innocent human beings. The second is that of a childish and immature unawareness of the implications and probable consequences of a given course of action. It may or may not include the gentleness of the dove, but it certainly does not include the wisdom of the serpent, both of which are counselled for the Christian.25 Pyle, the decent young American, is of course, the prime example here. There is little that can profitably be said about the first kind of innocence, except that it appears intermittently in the novels and that there is a perception of it and a certain nostalgia for it.26 It seems difficult to do

25 Matthew, 10, 16. 26 See, for example, the brief picture of Coral Fowler in Power, pp. 38-9.

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more than suggest it, and given the whole tone of Greene's writing and his apparent preference for writing from the point of view of the black square ( W h y Do I Write? An Exchange of Views with Elizabeth Bowen and V. S. Pritchett [London, 1948], p. 32), its role can only be that of an indicator of what we lose in life. The second kind, however, even when it might have the appearance of evil, is evident to Greene's major characters for what it really is, and attracts a certain amount of comment. The reaction of Scobie, for example, when after an arid discussion with Helen about their affair in relation to his religious beliefs, he is urged by her to go to communion and to assume that one more sin will not make any difference, is characteristic both of the character and of a certain kind of authorial stance adopted by Greene: H e thought: pious people, I suppose, would call this the devil speaking, but he knew that evil never spoke in these crude answerable terms: this was innocence. {Heart, p. 253)

This protective pity, the result of a confrontation between a certain experience of the world and the knowledge acquired from that experience in one person and a lack of sophistication and judgement in the other, is matched in other cases, notably in the attitude which Fowler instinctively adopts towards his new acquaintance, Pyle: That was my first instinct — to protect him ( . . . ) Innocence always calls mutely for protection when w e would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper w h o has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. (American, p. 40)

N o doubt a harder-hearted Scobie would also have echoed the wisdom of Fowler's hindsight. In the novels, the innocent adult of this kind may be guiltless, but he is not harmless. Pyle, because he is gentle but not wise, destroys those around him. Fowler's later comment on him, at the scene of the explosion in Saigon which Pyle has made possible, amid the mangled bodies of women and children, echoes and amplifies the earlier one: H e looked white and beaten and ready to faint, and I thought, 'What's the good? he'll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them, or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.' {American, p. 213)

This is also the way in which, at a totally different level, Bendrix sees Parkis, the incompetent private detective whom he has hired to spy on

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Sarah: he is another person who, with the best of intentions, will almost certainly do more harm than good. Proud of his son's natural brightness, he is training him inefficiently but conscientiously in his own rather dubious trade and, even worse, has named him Lance, confusing Galahad's quest for the Grail with Lancelot's adultery with Guinevere. The same pity and exasperation are evident as Bendrix wonders why one has the desire to tease the innocent. Is it perhaps from envy? {End, p. 90) Innocence may seem enviable, but it is in fact intensely dangerous. Pyle wants to encourage the Third Force and National Democracy, Parkis to encourage his son in the way of Truth and Virtue. One gets the blood of women and children on his shoes, the other sets the wrong example to his boy. The response in both cases is the same: " 'I didn't know' " (American, p. 213) and " 'I hadn't heard' ". (End, p. 90) Guiltlessness and harmlessness are not synonymous in the novels. The whole question of sin in Greene's work has been raised and discussed elsewhere, perhaps most successfully in Philip Stratford's comparative study of Greene and Mauriac, Faith and Fiction,27 and less successfully in many others. 28 Despite the angry puzzlement or indulgent condescension with which many critics approach this question, it must in the first place be accepted as a basic fact, a datum, of Greene's fiction. H u man beings are quite simply seen as capable of, to a quite remarkable degree, moral blindness, wrong desires and actions, and wrong attitudes towards themselves and others. This need not surprise anyone, but it does seem to surprise many readers to find such things in the work of a Catholic who presumably believes that the moral teachings of his faith are to be taken seriously. What Greene does of course is to take, like most writers, heightened situations which both illustrate and intensify those of human life and, by that raising of the demand for attention which such procedures induce, to provoke a meditation on both fictional and real-life situations. The isolation of a single thread or of a group of threads from the total texture of an individual life for aesthetic purpose (Scobie's and Bendrix's adultery, Sarah's move beyond ordinary human love, Querry's emptiness and final absurd end, Fowler's involvement with Pyle) must necessarily, because isolating one element means neglecting others, simplify and therefore to some extent distort the totality. Even the most realis-

Philip Stratford, Faith and Fiction: Creative Processes in Greene and Mauriac (Notre Dame, 1964), especially chapters 7 and 8. See especially Pryce-Jones, Chapter VI, "Dimensions of the Mind".

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tic fiction is art before it is documentary, and this is an idea which must be kept in mind when reflecting on Greene's work. It is probably failure to do so which has produced so much of the adverse comment on it. If Pinkie's despair and the Mexican priest's moral weakness are primarily and in the widest sense of the word artistic devices, they must be judged as such, and in the framework in which they are relevant (that of Catholic belief) rather than simply as moral problems or of illustrations of "frustrations that result from local, social or personal prejudice."29 Sin is ubiquitous in Greene's novels, pervasive, ancient, inevitable, dreary in its sameness, whether it is at the level of the Bagsters, the Parkinsons, the Grangers of this world, the level of surrender to a debased sexuality, or that of the Mexican priest, Scobie, Sarah, the level of a deeper infidelity, or that of Pinkie, Querry or Eduardo Plarr, the level of refusal and despair. The priest in The Power and the Glory has something to say about most kinds. In the hut with the mestizo, unable to avoid the latter's shambling and repellent confession, the "awful jumble of the gross, the trivial and the grotesque", he reflects on the sameness of sin, of whatever particular kind it may be, and the need for any love capable of including human sinfulness to be enormous and all-embracing: H o w often the priest had heard the same confession — Man was so limited; he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much ( . . . ) it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful ( . . . ) it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt, (pp. 123-4)

He also knows that the danger of sin is that it is a dehumanizing process, one which can finally cut off the personality from God and hence from the source of its own full humanity, can cause it to wither and die, and make man the unreflecting slave of random sensation and undirected impulse. Without the supernatural, the natural will disintegrate. This is the whole message of the doctrine of original sin and its continuing manifestation in actual sin, and it is implicit in the priest's reflection on the cumulative effects of human sins: One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace, (p. 74)

29

John Weightman, The Concept of the Avant-Garde: Explorations in Modernism (London, 1973), p. 275.

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It would be wrong to assume, he sees, that it is only the grosser and more readily-visible sins which can cause this. Faced with the lieutenant of police and his own portrait as a wanted criminal on the wall in the jefe's office, he thinks about his past, his narrrowness and self-righteousness as a young (and innocent) man and reflects that, surprisingly perhaps, it might well be the most venial sins which do the most harm: What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days — and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. T h a t was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins — impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity — cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. T h e n , in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone: now, in his corruption, he had learnt . . . (pp. 179-80)

This is not, as Pryce-Jones, for example, has suggested, simply Greene being personal and paradoxical and superimposing the symbols of Catholicism on a pre-existing vision. 30 In the Catholic tradition, pharisaism, coldness, a purely formal acquiescence to doctrine, lack of charity, the conviction of one's own rectitude, from which all the venial sins might arise, have been seen as significant and indicative of a whole attitude. The lost sheep, the pharisee who thanked G o d that he was not as other men, the tears of Mary Magdalene, the thief on the cross are also powerful symbols within that tradition. When Greene says that the greater the sin, the greater the scope for grace and forgiveness, he is not simply uttering a personal feeling, however important that feeling may be in both his personal and his artistic life. It is a conviction which is in accordance with age-old Catholic doctrine, and even if his novels are personal and imaginative interpretations of what he believes life has shown him, they are also in a sense reflections of what the Catholic sees as revealed truth. It is legitimate to reject both the personal vision and the doctrine, to find both equally unsatisfactory or illusory, but not to play one off against the other. T h e importance of these observations for this study is that in Greene's novels the perception by a character of his own weakness and sinfulness marks a shift both in his own way of seeing himself and of knowing and relating to others. Here, the almost perverse blindness of the blameless but foolish is in striking contrast to the insights achieved by the guilty but lucid. Foolishness cannot damn, but neither can it enlighten.

30

Pryce-Jones, p. 100.

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The gifts of lucidity are achieved at the price of suffering and loss. Suffering is not gratuitous in the novels, for it brings with it some kind of apparent or surmised perception. Bendrix sees and loves Sarah in a new and deeper way, the Mexican priest sees his life and that of others in a new light, and Querry, despite the emptiness of his life and the apparent absurdity of his death at Rycker's hands, is on the way to a new relationship with other human beings, Pinkie's last thoughts are full of love for Rose, Scobie's death is marked by charity. All have learnt something: that understanding is impossible without charity, which is a greater virtue than even hope and faith.31 It is perhaps not too much to suggest that what they do see in their own way at the end is their fellow human beings, through those few whom they have come to love more fully and to understand better, as persons, other selves, as important, as worthy, as of the same weight and dignity, as themselves, whether they are African lepers, Mexican half-castes, criminals, housewives or cuckolded husbands, and whose dignity and worth are great not because they are God's puppets but because they are images of him. What the Mexican priest learned during the course of The Power and the Glory, by seeing others as he saw himself and himself as he saw others, was the mutual responsibility which human beings have for each other, a responsibility "indistinguishable from love", (p. 81) In other times and in other circumstances, he might have quoted with a wry understanding Sartre's proclaimed view of himself as "tout un homme, fait de tous les hommes et qui les vaut tous et que vaut n'importe qui",32 seeing the different dimensions behind two irreconcilable views of human life which lead to the same conclusion, and also seeing that his sense of responsibility, like Sartre's, came from a perception that with his fellow human beings he shared an existential situation in which he would be left to get on with his task alone. For him, there would be few of the perhaps rather dubious-seeming 'consolations of religion'. God would remain a hidden God, abandoning him to the here and now, the world of innocence and guilt, sin and conscious responsibility: God had decided. H e had to go on with life, go on making decisions, acting on his own advice, making plans . . . {Power, p. 179)

" "

St Paul, I Corinthians, 13, 13. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots (Paris, 1963) p. 213.

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He sees that the existential world will be with him throughout his life, will in a sense be part of him, and that he must be part of it. Like him, Scobie also perceives the hereness of here and the nowness of now, 33 and knows that he must make what he can of them, relying on his own resources, knowing that they are vitiated and knowing too that he must bear the responsibility for the consequences of his acts: Was it the butterfly that died in the act of love? But human beings were condemned to consequences. The responsibility as well as the guilt was his.

{Heart, p. 192) Like both of them, Andrews in The Man Within, that early sketch for later Greenean heroes, is left by Elisabeth "as all the world seemed to leave him, to make his own decision" (p. 203), abandoned to a world in which all human beings face the same predicaments and the same dilemmas. In this respect, however, Greene's characters are treated with a little more indulgence than those of the existentialist writer as epitomized by Sartre. Acts may count, but human beings will always be too weak to be consistent existentialist heroes. The acts which they commit will be regretted, their will will fail, their determination weaken: Human beings couldn't be heroic all the time ( . . . ) (they) must be allowed sometimes in thought to take back their surrender. So many had never committed the heroic act, however rashly. It was the act that counted. {Heart, pp. 279-80)

A GLIMPSE OF A N O T H E R DIMENSION Parallel to this sense of the weakness, obtuseness and existential isolation of humanity, however, there is sometimes the certitude and more often the suspicion that outside our time, perhaps in the glimpses of the possibility of eternity which Sarah awakes in Bendrix, for example {End, p. 57), there are forces at work which we can only dimly sense in our moments of greatest lucidity. It is against this background that Greene's ideas of human nature should be seen. Passages such as that in which Bendrix reflects on the (for him still hypothetical) roles of God and the Devil in human life clearly suggests a second way of seeing things:

33

See, for example, Heart, pp. 12, 20, 35 and passim.

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I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil. I have known so intimately the way that demon works in my imagination. N o statement that Sarah ever made was proof against his cunning doubts, though he would usually wait till she had gone to utter them. H e would prompt our quarrels long before they occured: he was not Sarah's enemy so much as the enemy of love, and isn't that what the devil is supposed to be? I can imagine that if there existed a God who loved, the devil would be driven to destroy even the weakest, the most faulty imitation of that love. Wouldn't he be afraid that the habit of love might grow, and wouldn't he try to trap us all into being traitors, into helping him extinguish love? If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself, even poor Parkis, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it. (pp. 67-8)

It is perhaps because of this sense of parallel lives, or rather of one life which is lived simultaneously both in the here and now and beneath the gaze of eternity, that some critics have seen the theological dimension of the novels as imposed and extrinsic.34 The truth is perhaps rather that as well as being a teller of tales and a master of cinematic technique, Greene is also, like many novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a writer in whose fiction the discursive and reflective dimensions potentially present in the portrayal of contemporary human life play a large part. In some of his work, notably the 'entertainments', reflection, musing, pondering on the ultimate questions of human nature and human destiny is eschewed in favour of direct portrayal, whereas in others, notably the "four or five books" in which he "took characters with Catholic ideas for his material" {In Search of a Character: Two African Journals [London, 1961], p. 26), that reflection is woven inextricably into the thought-processes of the major characters. A stream of consciousness is notable for what it contains rather than for what it excludes, and it seems scarcely surprising that novels which have Catholic heroes and heroines of some intelligence and sensibility, or heroes and heroines with similar qualities who come into contact with such characters and react to them,

M

In the Anglo-Saxon world this criticism is readily and particularly made about Catholic authors by unsympathetic critics. Other writers who provide a ready-made frame of reference are less severely treated. Hardy would provide an obvious and useful example here. His particular philosophical stance dominates his fiction but attracts, in general, rather little in the way of adverse comment and is generally seen as legitimate.

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should be forced by the circumstances in which they find themselves to reflect on Catholic ideas, practices and beliefs. The inclusion of such material may in part be an attempt to heighten dramatic tension or impart a particular colour and flavour to fictional events, but those reflections are in a deeper sense part of the matter of the novels themselves in so far as they are a part of the mental world of the characters contained in that matter. Scobie without his tortured faith or Louise without her suburban religious conformity would not be themselves. Pinkie without his sexual and religious neuroses, Leon Rivas without his revolutionary extension of Catholic ideas, Bendrix without his waning hesitation, his irony and his imaginative understanding of Sarah's faith, would be different characters in different novels. Religion, religious ideas, images, concepts, their acceptance or rejection in many shapes and forms, and the ways in which they often affect human beings at times of aridity, stress, crisis, doubt and despair should not be seen as a superimposed, extrinsic element but rather as an integral and indeed fundamental part of the view of the human person which Greene presents to his readers. Questions and answers concerning the value of human life, its purposes, needs and ends and its nature, and posed in Catholic terms, are in a very real sense part of the fundamental and recurring features of his imaginative landscape. The cases in which such reflection is overt and more or less fully conscious, such as those examples given above, are easily discernible and more or less readily apparent to the reader. There are, however, times when even the seemingly purely visceral reactions of characters who might be seen, perhaps superficially, as rather stupid and by no means reflective also indicate the extent to which Greene's fiction is permeated at all levels by the portrayal of human desires and needs which, if not Catholic in the strictest sense, are precisely those desires and needs which Catholicism would claim to meet. Whether the reader sees Catholic doctrine as comforting illusions arising from a desire to rationalize these needs and to answer them, or as sober and objective truth is for critical purposes largely immaterial. What is important is that even in the case of characters who present all the symptoms of an apparently invincible ignorance, and in which Catholicism is never even named or apparently considered, there is a situation in which a reading of the text in the light of one's understanding of Catholic doctrine and belief is potentially enlightening. This can be seen by a brief examination of an incident in which an apparently radically different view of life is indicated, and one which both suggests its own incompleteness and, paradoxically, its funda-

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mental kinship to the cluster of emotions and ideas incorporated in Catholic belief. Desires are there — to have life and have it m o r e abundantly — which are, f o r the Catholic, d o o m e d to frustration outside Catholicism. Ida Arnold, in Brighton Rock, knows what she wants, and knows what is not satisfactory. 3 5 L o s t in thought at H a l e ' s cremation, she s u g g ests at the immediately perceivable level one w a y , which she sees as clearly incomplete and unsatisfactory, of looking at human existence and human nature, and at the same time, by unconscious implication and by stressing their absence, she suggests the m o r e satisfying beliefs of C a tholicism. T h e anodyne sermon comes to an end, the clergyman with the "cultured inexpressive heartless v o i c e " smiles gently, and I d a reflects as follows : It was all over. Ida squeezed out with difficulty a last tear into a handkerchief scented with Californian Poppy. She liked a funeral — but it was with horror — as other people like a ghost story. Death shocked her, life was so important. She wasn't religious. She didn't believe in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, ouija boards, tables which rapped and little inept voices speaking plaintively of flowers. Let Papists treat death with flippancy: life wasn't so important perhaps to them as what came after: but to her death was the end of everything. At one with the One — it didn't mean a thing beside a glass of Guinness on a sunny day. She believed in ghosts, but you couldn't call that thin transparent existence life eternal: the squeak of a board, a piece of ectoplasm in a glass cupboard at the psychical research headquarters, a voice she'd heard once at a séance saying, 'Everything is very beautiful on the upper plane. There are flowers everywhere.' Flowers, Ida thought scornfully; that wasn't life. Life was sunlight on brass bedposts, Ruby port, the leap of the heart when the outsider you have backed passes the post and the colours go bobbing up. Life was poor Fred's mouth pressed down on hers in the taxi, vibrating with the engine along the parade. What was the sense of dying if it made you babble of flowers? Fred didn't want flowers, he wanted — and the enjoyable distress she had felt in Hene-

The fact that she formulates these desires in what might be seen as blatantly pagan terms is not particularly important. She is expressing a deeply-felt human need — a desire for a response to the instinctive sense of the importance of all life, including that of the body — and in doing so is suggesting one of the fundamental dimensions of human nature. Pagan insights are not necessarily opposed to Catholic doctrine, and are often subsumed in it and seen in a new way. It could perhaps be said that universal needs are formulated and made articulate in such doctrine, and that the promise of some hopeful solution is provided for them.

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key's returned. She took life with a deadly seriousness: she was prepared to cause any amount of unhappiness to anyone in order to defend the only thing she believed in. T o lose your lover — 'broken hearts', she would say, 'always mend', to be maimed or blinded — 'lucky', she'd tell you, 'to be alive at all'. There was something dangerous and remorseless in her optimism, whether she was laughing in Henekey's or weeping at a funeral or a marriage. She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. People passing up the flowery suburban road looked up and noted the smoke; it had been a busy day at the furnaces. Fred dropped in indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept. (Rock, pp. 40-1)

Ida wept not because she was a mystic, a seer, a rare soul with special and privileged insights, not because she was a Catholic saint (or even a Catholic sinner), but because she was an ordinary woman, a human being with all the desires and needs of a human being. She needs a view of the importance of human life and of its continuation in a meaningful way; she needs something beyond the temporary resilience and optimism which is all that what she knows can give her; she needs a dimension which she can guess at but which she does not know or understand. In short, she needs all the sense of the importance and status of the human being which only the incarnation, the redemption and — at this particular time, in this particular place, in these particular circumstances — the resurrection of Christ and of the individual human body can give her. Religious aspirations and reflection need not, it would seem, be fully conscious or even moderately systematic in the novels. They are there, and part of the full, if often frustrated, humanity of the characters. They are present in all men and women and occur in all sorts of direct, indirect, or sometimes underground ways. Catholicism is less important as an ideological embellishment to the fiction than as the expression of the only view of man which can make man more fully aware of his humanity and show him how to accept it properly. It was no doubt such an idea, and one set of implications that can be drawn from it, that Martin Green had in mind when, in Yeats's Blessings on von Hugel, he attacked Catholic literature so wrathfully. The suspicion that there is in it a suggestion that Catholicism is a kind of exclusive club for those who know what life is all about and what people are really like is understandable if perhaps not fully justifiable. Opinion here will of course be based on personal reactions and interpretations and it is as difficult to refute such a view as it is

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to sustain it. T o offer Ida Arnold or Bendrix as examples of characters who are not Catholics and who are nevertheless treated with some sympathy and understanding is to invite the observation that it is only to the extent that they begin to perceive, however dimly, the desirability, necessity or rightness of such views that they are sympathetically presented. One could perhaps more convincingly offer the case of the lieutenant of police in The Power and the Glory who, although he is philosophically and ideologically fairly solidly opposed to all that the hunted priest, and presumably Greene, stand for, is still shown as a man of charity and compassion and intellectual honesty. 36 It is true that certain characters do sometimes recognize their shared Catholicism with a sense of ease and mutual comprehension, as happens, for example during the meeting of Scobie and the Portuguese captain of the Esperanga, when the latter reacts "like a man who meets a fellow countryman in a strange continent." {Heart, p. 54) T o share terms of reference with another does not, however, necessarily imply the exclusiveness of those terms. It simply means that they are shared. T o recognize that a certain human being understands one's language and shares one's basic ideas does not necessarily imply a view of the inferiority of other human beings, of other languages or of other attitudes, merely a realization that both those concerned understand each other better than others can understand them. For Greene, Catholicism is a club to which anyone can belong: Mexican Indians, British colonial officials, the wives of Whitehall civil servants, Vietnamese housewives, South American revolutionaries. It is for the poor and ignorant, the rich and sophisticated, the worldly and the naive. Men and women of any ideological persuasion can find comfort in the knowledge that their ideas and feelings are shared by others, and whatever part of vanity or superiority there might be in the recognition of a supposed superior truth or Tightness in those ideas and feelings may well be a tendency which is attributable to human beings in general. T o attribute it solely to Catholics perhaps says as much about the unsympathetic critic as about Greene. T o derive comfort from a shared metaphysical or religious view, if it is sincerely and honestly held, is not perhaps a very serious offence, but to see others as incapable of understanding or accepting that comfort perhaps is. In the last analysis, if one decides that Greene is guilty of suggesting a superior Catholic exclusiveness, one is

36

See, for example, Power, pp. 246-69.

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judging him not on the fact but on the quality of his Catholicism, for if that judgement is valid, it is a judgement on a heretical distortion of Catholicism and the ideas it contains. T H E PRIORITIES OF RELIGION The whole question of the comforting and consoling aspect of religious belief is often touched upon, but no more than touched upon, in Greene's novels. Sarah represents a more conscious version of Ida, and like her reflects on the resurrection of the body. She explores the twin desire to be rid of it and to perpetuate it, and concludes, with an almost certainly unconscious Thomist orthodoxy, that humanity disincarnate is a contradiction in terms. {End, pp. 130-4) Smythe and Bendrix argue about the last lingering effects of religious belief, with the latter saying that he believes in nothing at all, except now and then in moments of hope. (p. 98) What is more striking and more consistently present in Greene's fiction is an awareness of the difficulty of the implications of faith. It can, for example, easily remain at the level of mere religiosity, or lapse into it. The Power and the Glory has many scenes in which the doggedness of the faith of the hunted priest is contrasted with the piety of many of his fellow-countrymen who have still retained habits of practice during the systematic persecution existing around them.37 These pious practices are treated with some asperity by Greene, even if there is an element of pity in his treatment.38 For him, Catholicism is essentially a rather tough business. It is not, for example, the decorous little girls piously listening to their mother reading the account of the life of young Juan, sitting "with beady intense eyes, drinking in sweet piety" (Power, p. 27), absorbing the reading "intently, framing in their minds little pious sentences with which to surprise their parents" (p. 29), who will, the reader is left to assume, greatly further the work of the re-evangelization of their state. It is their brother, rubbing his head impatiently on the whitewashed wall, squashing beetles

37

38

Power, passim. In this connection it is interesting to compare Greene's picture with that given by John Bossy ( T h e English Catholic Community [London, 1975]) of a similar situation in England, when Catholic areas were still distinguished by the persistence of external habit after real belief in the case of the majority of the population had disappeared gradually as access to teaching and the sacraments became more and more infrequent and difficult. See, for example, Power, pp. 166-71.

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on the floor and longing for the last chapter in which young Juan will die against a wall shouting " 'Viva el Cristo Rey!' " (p. 27), who at the end of the novel lets into the house the tall, pale, thin man with the rather sour mouth, the priest who will be the next martyr, the next man to be hunted down by the lieutenant of police, (p. 288) In Greene's novels, holiness and faith are of greater importance than piety for human beings. The latter, where it is not grounded in more important virtues, can indeed be counter-productive in the sense that it can thrive to the detriment of charity and understanding. The piety of Rycker in A Burnt-Out Case and of Louise in The Heart of the Matter is, in fact, to some extent bogus, an affair of externals, and because it does not engage their deepest selves distorts and destroys rather than enhances their own lives and that of others. Indeed, Rycker causes Querry's death, and Louise forces Scobie to sacrilege. Rather than a set of external practices and forms of words which he can use as a protection against the harshness and complexity of his existence, the human being in these works needs a way of thinking and imagining which offers him cleansing and restoration to his full and responsible humanity if he is to make any sense of his life. Existentially, such holiness remains a dimly-perceived notion and is more often discernible by its absence than by its presence. Each individual life is unique, each individual experience intensely personal and incommunicable despite the circumstances which it has in common with other lives. Birth, childhood, love and death are the lot of all, but all are experienced differently. The individual, in Greene's view, is both one of many and totally unique. His ways of sensing the potential fulness of his own life are different from those of any other individual. In each case, however, holiness means being himself in the completeness of his being. This is what Bendrix sees when, thinking of those characters in his novels who are unspontaneous and dragging, and who will not come alive, he goes on to reflect on what Bernanos would call the saints and the médiocres: Always I find when I begin to write there is one character who obstinately will not come alive. There is nothing psychologically false about him, but he sticks, he has to be pushed around, words have to be found for him, all the technical skill I have acquired through the laborious years has to be employed in making him appear alive to my readers. Sometimes I get a sour satisfaction when a reviewer praises him as the best-drawn character in the story: if he has not been drawn he has certainly been dragged. He lies heavily on my mind whenever I start to work like an ill-digested meal on the stomach, robbing me of the pleasure of creation in any scene where he is present. He never

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does the unexpected thing, he never surprises me, he never takes charge. Every other character helps, he only hinders. And yet one cannot do without him. I can imagine a God feeling in just that way about some of us. The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word. They stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinacy of non-existence. We are inextricably bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his intention, characters without poetry, without free will, whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character moves and speaks, providing perhaps the saints with the opportunities for their free will. {End, p. 229)

It is interesting to note that in Bendrix's eyes, sanctity is a positive rather than a negative state, and is characterized by qualities which are indicative of an increased rather than a diminished humanity. What marks off the saints from the majority of men is the ability to choose freely, not to be conditioned by external events and pressures and to have a heightened quality of being. Such people are more fully themselves, more like what we instinctively feel a human being should be, fuller of freedom and poetry. What they feel, think and do may not be very different from what anyone might feel, think or do, but because their lives are lived more consciously and fully, they have in them a dimension which is often lacking in human life in general, a quality of Tightness, fittingness and integrity which in some way goes beyond and is greater than the probity which it clearly contains. The attraction of their lives lies in something deeper than the exercise of moral virtue in difficult and demanding situations. What might be called their 'poetry' lies in the fact that what they do or try to do is "something beautiful for God" 39 and in attempting this they begin to penetrate to what is, or what they feel ought to be, the heart of things. This is how Bendrix ultimately sees Sarah's actions, and in spite of his own loss and anguish he can begin to see the Tightness and beauty of what she has done. The reader too, because her actions, given her premises, are rationally justifiable, noble and not narrowly self-seeking, can at least accord her a tragic dignity, and perhaps even say, if he has no belief in God, that if holiness exists it must be something like this. Sarah's

Mother Teresa's words, used to explain the reasons for her work, and quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge as the title of his book about it, Something Beautiful for God (London, 1971).

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case, because it is the one which is most intimately presented (through her diary) and articulately analyzed (by Bendrix, the professional writer), is the fullest study of holiness in Greene's novels, but Rose's devotion to Pinkie, in whom she sees the lost and desperate child, is the most conscious and fully human choice of her young life, and the Mexican priest's decision to go on with his mission to his death, to become in another sense an alter Cbristus, are further examples of the same kind of human freedom and dignity. The Skinnerian echo is not inappropriate here. 40 If one cannot assume that Greene's characters have freedom, the whole aesthetic structure of the novels collapses. To see them as behaviourist paradigms would make them aesthetically meaningless. That would also be the effect of seeing in them pictures of a religious determinism in which God, so to speak, pulls the strings to such an extent that the characters' sole function is to think the thoughts he puts into their minds and knowingly or unknowingly complete the robot-like tasks he sets them. Apart from a traditionally Catholic approach, in which man is seen as free to chose good or evil and to be or to refuse to be an instrument of God's will, only an existentialist or perhaps a Marxist view of them would seem to be adequate here, by allowing them some measure of human freedom and dignity. To put the matter simply, seeing them as doomed to choice in a meaningless world or as free and human in the conscious realization of necessity would still leave them with a stature approaching that granted them by the Catholic view, whereas seeing them as conditioned operants or the representatives of the predestined Elect or the Masses would not. Indeed, it is freedom and consciousness, to whatever degree they may be perceived and accepted, which for Greene are the preconditions of holiness. Sarah is not holy because she has behaved in prescribed ways or thought prescribed thoughts, but because at some point in her life she has seen her true nature and has decided to live in what she sees as accordance with it. Predetermined ways of living and thinking, habit, established patterns of behaviour, the grooves in which human life often, and often without real freedom, tends to run may in fact, even if they are ostensibly virtuous, tend to exclude such freedom, or to provide a mere simulacrum of it. In the novels, the habits of religious practice and those of ecclesiastical and sacerdotal life41 are in fact seen as in some ways poten-

40 41

B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, 1971). See, for example, Power, pp. 166-71 and 117-9, and Case, p. 10.

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tially dangerous, as they can easily blind those who practice them to the truth of their existential situation. In that situation, the move towards holiness initiated by freedom and charity is achieved by suffering, which is not removed by faith, the act of the will which goes beyond reason, although reason can take it so far and encourage it. Religious belief, however, does give suffering a place and a potential meaning in human life. Through the eyes of faith, man can begin to see what could be a pattern in the apparent chaos of events, a pity in the cruelty of life, a love beyond separation which can, with a certain clarity, see faults and yet still increase in strength. Above all, it enables the individual to stand aside from himself and see himself in new and different ways. It is both the recognition of a previously unperceived ordering of reality and the foundation for a concept of self. Scobie, the Mexican priest, and characters like them see their whole lives in a certain way because of their faith. Querry's loss of faith is linked to his loss of other aspects of his full humanity, and his partial recovery of these might perhaps indicate the first steps towards regaining that belief.42 Sarah's letter to Bendrix indicates the same kind of perception: that the self is a creature for whom God is concerned, who will suffer, who will feel lost and abandoned, but whose life is no longer merely the experiencing of a series of random and inexplicable interior and exterior phenomena. {End, p. 177) Faith is not an easy matter for Greene's characters, and does not provide automatic answers or courses of action. Nor is it self-evident or coercive. Very often, indeed, it is only when it is confronted by unbelief that its implications are seen. The unbelief of others, such as that which Sarah finds in Henry, Smythe and Bendrix and Scobie finds in Helen, sometimes helps to clarify what the Catholic believes in and hopes for. Scobie, listening patiently to Helen's comments on what she calls the "hooey" she supposes he believes in, formulates more clearly, for her and for himself, what that "hooey" consists of and implies, and sees his own life and himself rather more sharply for doing so: H o w often, he thought, lack of faith helps one to see more clearly than faith. {Heart, p. 252)

An individual may meet another person whose disinclination, refusal or inability to believe not only throws light on his own faith but sharpens

42

This perhaps begins with the rescue of D e o Gratias, Case, pp. 63-6.

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it and to some extent supports it and encourages its growth within him. At the end of The Power and the Glory, when the hunted priest is finally captured and taken before the lieutenant for interrogation, he is both appalled by his own inability to communicate his faith to his captor and made more aware of what it means for him and of its consequences, (pp. 246-59) When the lieutenant later tries to persuade Padre José to hear his colleague's last confession and brings the condemned man a bottle of forbidden brandy, the reader is again reminded of what he has already learned about that apparently nihilistic and ruthless man: that his religious experience has been a powerfully negative one, and that his unbelief is as deep and strong, as immediately and intuitively felt and experienced as the priest's faith : It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state w h o believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics w h o are said to have experienced God directly. H e was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy — a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings w h o had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. (p. 25)

Such unbelief is a mirror-image of faith, and the charity he shows also a reflection of that virtue as enjoined by faith. H e loves his enemies and is not one of the lukewarm whom God will spit from his mouth. 43 It might be too much to suppose that he could, like Sartre's Goetz, 44 change the role he has chosen to play, but it is as well to remember that both the intensity of his vision and the strength of his urge to charity suggest that he is the kind of man to whom faith could conceivably come. He is the classic example in The Power and the Glory of what Greene means when he talks about hope as being "an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill" (p. 183), just as Scobie, in The Heart of the Matter, is the major illustration of the loss of hope for another reason. The author's aside on Scobie in that novel is interesting: Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. H e always has hope. ( . . . ) Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation, (p. 67)

43 44

Revelations, 3, 16. In Le Diable et le bon Dieu (Paris, 1951).

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Its interest lies firstly in the fact that it provides a key to the failure of these two intelligent, sensitive, generous, conscientious and hardworking men, who are both to some degree overwhelmed by the inescapable evil and suffering in life. Their loss of hope is a consequence of the perception of the nullity and aridity of a blighted human life and is all the more bitter because both of them have some sense of its potential fullness. Greene's comment is also interesting because it has a bearing on the whole question of human success, which can be called sanctity or the whole-hearted search for good, and of human failure, which can be called sin or the yielding to evil. This dual reflection is a major part of the matter of the novels. In Greene's work, sin is a negative quantity in the development of the human being. Yielding to evil is a hindrance to his full growth as a human being, and in extreme cases may destroy it completely. If a growth in real humanity means for Greene a growth towards God, the hell that Pinkie and Scobie fear may be in some way the permanent arrest of their still-incomplete humanity, a spiritual abortion of which they may, to some degree and in some sense, continue to be aware. Similarly, although in time rather than in eternity, Pinkie's horror of the world, Scobie's weakness, Querry's living death, Bendrix's initially egotistical and unreflecting adultery, Louise's spiritual blackmail in her attempt to use divine means to achieve secondary ends, the Mexican priest's cowardice and refuge in drunkenness illustrate the various ways in which the humanity of those characters is imperfect. Seeking its perfection means not merely the practice of noble virtue, but seeing ends and rightful relationships, and seeking, if never totally finding, the tranquillity that comes from due order, the peace that Aquinas described as opposed to conflict within oneself as well as to conflict with others. 45 In so far as these perceptions are achieved — and they are achieved to some extent by Greene's characters — sanctity has been won, and a human being has moved towards his true humanity. Such a movement is always difficult, and those who have advanced furthest along that path can see most clearly how limited the progress has been. The Mexican priest sees his own position and in the moments when he reflects on his life as he is about to be executed by the police firing-squad, reflects on what he could have done:

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a-2ae X X I X 3 ad 3.

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H e felt only an immense disappointment because he had to g o to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. H e felt like someone w h o has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. H e knew now that at the and there was only one thing that counted — to be a saint. (Power, p. 273)

That Bernanosian note is at least as typical of Greene as the romantic Catholicism of Brighton Rock. His work is essentially concerned with the growth of faith, hope and charity. This means, within his own terms of reference at least, a growth and deepening of the concept of the self, its nature and destiny and its relationship with other selves. For the Mexican priest, one Indian child is more important than a state or a revolution; for Sarah, Bendrix is more important than her earthly happiness or all the social work she can engage in; for Scobie, Louise and Helen and the little girl who dies of fever are more important than his own peace and safety. In the novels, the individual person, whether he be lost in the drab, harsh monotony of Mexican poverty, the tropical squalor of West Africa, the London blitz, the slaughter of Indo-China, the degradation of a Latin American urban barrio, is a world in himself. The central concern of the novelist is the development of that person as a human being, whether that growth is blighted or successful. This development implies an increase in his self-awareness and in his awareness of others as human beings, arising from his ideas and images concerning the ultimate reality of human life.

C O N C L U D I N G REMARKS Like Louis MacNeice's journalists, Greene's novels also "only deal with here and now / As circumstances may allow", 46 that is, with people immersed in a specific and concrete and highly individual human situation, where the extraordinary, such as the inexplicable disappearance of Smythe's disfiguring birthmark in The End of the Affair, is exceptional rather than usual. It is probably true to say that for Greene, the important task is not the scoring of ideological or metaphysical points, for in that sense he usually seems too tired to argue, but an exploration of certain modes of knowing the individual, of seeing man in a world in which cer-

46

Louis MacNeice, Bar-Room Matins.

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tain ideas and beliefs are taken both as a starting point and as a meaningful and enhancing final frame of reference. What is striking about Greene is not his triumphalism, but the insistent note of conviction in his novels and the feeling that they arouse in the reader that, at least in his own terms, he has told or tried to tell the truth. Part of this truth, and perhaps the major part of it, is the sense of the enormous importance of the individual human being, however degraded, hopeless, sinful or squalid his or her circumstances may be. The mestizo who betrays the hunted priest, the Portuguese captain, Coral and Andrews are, one feels, important not because of what they have or have not, but because of what they are, which is a human person at his own stage of development, each with a potential and a nature which is both common to all of them and yet essentially individual and unique. Although there are foreground and background figures, there are no Elect and no Masses in Greene's fiction. His characters, at whatever level of narrative or reflective importance they operate, participate in a fictional democracy. The differences between them are ones of degree, not of kind. The child, the adolescent, the immature young man and the older person who has seen the ways of the world and knows his own weaknesses all have the same potential and share in the same situation. None of them will perhaps cope with that situation very successfully, but all of them, at some time, and in some way, will have the opportunity to begin to see and partly to understand both it and the other human lives involved in it, and to learn that the only way in which they can develop is by becoming more human. What this means in effect in the novels, is that such characters begin to see themselves and others a human beings, begin to appreciate the nature and limits of their common humanity and begin to see human life in a wider and more unifying religious perspective. The seedy, weary, grey and rather predictable atmosphere of Greeneland notwithstanding, 47 the novels are potentially works in which a kind of acceptance is possible, if not always achieved. Circumstances and human weakness conspire to make what, in human terms, can only be called a mess of life, but there is often an attempt to take that life and live it and make what one can of it, however unsatisfactory the attempt may ultimately be. There are major casualties, such as Pinkie and Scobie, but even in their case there is some movement and growth and their collapse is due more 47

Greene disputes the total validity of this idea. See in particular his introduction to the 1970 edition of Rock, pp. x-xiii.

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to their sick or wounded sensibilities than the total hopelessness of their world. All Greene's major characters make some progress in the direction of accepting both themselves and others as equally and significantly human. Their final situation may illustrate degrees of failure, but it also illustrates degrees of success. Although Pinkie dies a frustrated and angry child, his attitude to Rose has changed and developed, and there is a similar growth of charity apparent in all the major characters. Whatever life has taught them, it is clear that it has given them, to varying degrees of fullness and consciousness, a view of the human person as a separate, distinct, individual and real being, who like them is in many ways unsatisfactory and flawed but is nevertheless of great value. Whatever one's views of Greene's religion may be, it is clear that for him our hairs are indeed numbered.

POSTSCRIPT: MISREADINGS A N D MISINTERPRETATIONS It will be clear that much of what has been said here reflects a personal reading of the novels, and one which to some extent conflicts with much of what has been written on Greene, particularly by English-speaking critics. It is possible to suspect that this is perhaps so because many of the latter take what may be seen as a kind of guilty pleasure in reading his novels, feeling perhaps that although they enjoy them at the imaginative level of spontaneous response, they are being to some extent manipulated by an inbuilt ideology which they neither fully understand nor fully trust but in which, for aesthetic purposes, they must unfortunately suspend their disbelief. At a later stage of more conscious and systematic analysis of their response to what they have read and of reflection on it, they exorcize the guilt by methodically exposing that ideology for the unsatisfactory and unconvincing thing it is, angry at having been even momentarily seduced by it. If this is true, it says a great deal about both Greene's power as a writer and the natural reactions of critics. The latter in particular deserve some brief consideration here. A critical reading of Greene's fiction requires not only an intelligent but also an informed response, particularly if the reader wishes, as is perhaps inevitable in an undertaking like the present one, to reflect on and understand the religious dimension and the view of human beings presented in it. Much, however, even of the most articulately formulated criticism of the novels, has been clever rather than intelligent, often using the

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same sort of rather contrived simplicities of which it accuses Greene, and has often been uninformed.48 Many critics seem eager to detect a sleightof-hand, a deliberate use of paradoxical aphorisms in his writing. Examples of this are Donat O'Donnel (Conor Cruise O'Brien) with his initially witty but ultimately over-clever and distorting image of the "quietistic three-card trick" of the false syllogisms allegedly implicit in the novels,49 Pryce-Jones's simplistically destructive interpretation of certain novels, especially The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glor^0 and Elizabeth Sewell's perhaps slightly more acceptable contention that Greene simply romanticizes Catholicism as a literary device.51 The main point of all these strictures, which is also echoed in Atkins,52 is that the religious element in his work is contrived, unconvincing, paradoxical and out of tune with an intelligent humanistic scepticism. This observation may or may not be valid, or may be valid to a greater or lesser extent, and is in any case not the essential concern of this study. What is important here, however, is the view of man which follows from the religious element in Greene's fiction, and it is here that the assertions of many critics seem both over-simple and wrong. It is insufficient simply to say that for Greene, in human life, 'success equals failure, failure equals success', 53 that "pity and responsibility and innocence become just so many deadly traps", 54 misleading to make him say that passion equals sexual love equals the suffering of Christ,55 wrong to state that in this novels there is "the equation of love and lust". 56 One must ask why the priest in The Power and the Glory is in a sense a success, what Greene means by pity and why it is in a sense condemned or at least found wanting, why love is in fact so often contrasted with lust and why the latter is seen as unsatisfactory and diminishing. It might be better, as has largely been the method here, to take Greene's work at its face value, to assume that he

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50 51 52 53 54 55 56

See, for example, the selection of critical judgments presented in Pryce-Jones, pp. 102-15. Maria Gross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modem Catholic Writers (New York, 1952), pp. 246-7. Pryce-Jones, pp. 112-3. "Graham Greene," Dublin Review, 108 (1954), 12-21. Atkins, p. xi. cf. Pryce-Jones, p. 112. Pryce-Jones, p. 111. O'Brien, p. 246. Pryce-Jones, p. 110.

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genuinely means what he says, and to attempt, on that basis, to produce as reasonably systematic, coherent and comprehensive an account of his views as possible. In exaggerating the importance of certain of Greene's stylistic idiosyncracies — the apparent paradox or play on words, the use of theological language — which are used to emphasize a point of view or to underline a perspective, certain critics have almost turned their writings into a parody of Greene's novels. It is perhaps interesting and not too difficult to do that, but the end product should not be confused with the fiction itself, which needs to be read with both intelligence and sympathy. If this is achieved, the paradoxes will be seen to be more apparent than real. It is quite true, for example, that success in one area, and that perhaps an unimportant or trivial one, is often paid for by failure in more profound ways. The satisfaction of ambition, for the Christian or indeed for anyone else, can entail a spiritual impoverishment. Failure in the satisfaction of those ambitions can bring humility, can correct a man's view of himself, can make him apply his gifts to new areas of his life. Virtue, recognized by the self and others, can lead to pharisaism, pride and blindness. Pity can be a self-protective emotion and hide the heart of the matter, the truth of the situation, and can exclude knowledge, understanding and real help. It is permissible to criticize or reject Greene's view of man and human life, but not to remain culpably ignorant about those views or to misrepresent them. It is permissible to see that Greene is by no means a spokesman for contemporary radical opinions in this area and to find fault with him for that, but not, on those grounds, to exaggerate or distort what he says. Greene's own considered view is that one can see that human nature, in the last analysis, is not despicable. An intelligent reading of his novels will support that opinion. It is hoped that this essay will have provided a way of seeing Greene's view of man as an acceptable alternative to the rather condescending and often inaccurate one contained in much of the existing criticism of his work.

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