Enlightened Nightscapes: Critical Essays on the Long Eighteenth-Century Night 9780367529673, 9780367529697, 9781003079965

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Enlightened Nightscapes

This volume brings together eleven case studies that address how the night became visible in the long and global eighteenth century through different mediums and in different geographical contexts. Situated on the eve of the introduction of artificial lighting, the long eighteenth century has much to say about night’s darkness and brilliance. The eighteenth century has been bound up epistemologically with images of light, reason, and order. Night and day, light and darkness, reason and mystery, however, are not necessarily at odds in the eighteenth century. In their analysis of narratives, poetry, urban spaces, music, the visual arts, and geological phenomena, the essays provide various frameworks to examine the representation, treatment, and meaning of the enlightened night. The transnational and multidisciplinary nature of the volume presents a survey of the research currently being done in the field of the long eighteenth-century night. This collection contributes to an ongoing exercise that questions the accepted definitions of the Enlightenment, and by bringing Eighteenth-Century Studies into dialogue with Night Studies, it enriches the critical conversation between these lines of research. Pamela F. Phillips is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies Series Editors: Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton The long eighteenth century sits as a pivotal point between the earlymodern and modern worlds. By actively encouraging an international focus for the series over all, both in terms of wide-ranging geographical topics and authorial locations, the series aims to feature cutting-edge research from established and recent scholars, and capitalize on the breadth of themes and topics that new approaches to research in the period reveal. This series provides a forum for recent and established historians to present new research and explore fresh approaches to culture and society in the long eighteenth century. As a crucial period of transition, the period saw developments that shaped perceptions of the place of the individual and the collective in the construction of the modern world. Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies is a series that is globally ambitious in scope and broad in its desire to publish cuttingedge research that takes an innovative, multi-vocal and increasingly holistic approach to the period. The series will be particularly sensitive to questions of gender and class, but aims to embrace and explore a variety of fresh approaches and methodologies. Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing Scandalous Lessons Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland Cultural Histories of Law, Media and Emotion Public Histories Edited by Katie Barclay and Amy Milka Enlightened Nightscapes Critical Essays on the Long Eighteenth-Century Night Edited by Pamela F. Phillips Gender, Mediation and Popular Education in Venice (1760–1830) Susan Dalton Letters and the Body, 1700–1830 Writing and Embodiment Edited by Sarah Goldsmith, Sheryllynne Haggerty and Karen Harvey For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Studies-in-Eighteenth-Century-Cultures-and-Societies/ book-series/RSECCS

Enlightened Nightscapes Critical Essays on the Long Eighteenth-Century Night Edited by Pamela F. Phillips

Cover Image: Alexander Lauréus: A Woman with A Lantern, sign. 1818, Nationalmuseum (Photograph: Hans Thorwid), Stockholm, Sweden, public domain. First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Pamela F. Phillips; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Pamela F. Phillips to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-0-367-52967-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-52969-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-07996-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction

vii x xiii 1

PAMELA F. PHILLIPS

PART I

Nighttime Experiments 2 Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened Night

25 27

MARINE GANOFSKY

3 Abysms on Open View: Terrestrial Expressions of Preternatural Darkness and Heavenly Night

48

KEVIN L. COPE

4 “One Thousand Divine Truths”: Night, Darkness and the Sublime in the Poetry of Juan Meléndez Valdés

73

MATTHIEU P. RAILLARD

5 Shadowed Celebration: Goethe’s Klassische Walpurgisnacht and Creative Profusion JEFFREY BELLOMI

89

vi Contents PART II

Nocturnal Visions107 6 Francisco de Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence in the Caprichos

109

ANA RUEDA

7 The Other Side of Night: Enlightened Dreaming in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740)

131

VALENTINE BALGUERIE

8 Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)

150

FLORENCE FESNEAU

PART III

Nocturnal Sights and Sounds175 9 Early to Bed: Sleep, Artificial Light, and Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul

177

AVNER WISHNITZER

10 The Uncertainty of Evening in Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic

199

SARAH CULLEN

11 “Like a Night Without Darkness”: Music and Nightscape in the Early Piano Nocturne (1810–1830)

218

KATELYN CLARK

12 The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape: Factories, Mills, and Ironworks at Night

234

BRIDGET M. MARSHALL

Selected Bibliography252 Index 258

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

William Hogarth, Night (The Four Times of Day), 1738 5 Joshua Reynolds, Cupid as Link Boy, 1774 6 Antoine Jean Duclos, Le Bal Paré, 1774 7 Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, comte de Caylus, Lantern Seller, 1737 12 Jean-Baptiste-Blaise Simonet, after Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, La Soirée des Thuileries, 1774 31 Benoît Louis Prévost, after Charles Cochin, Frontispiece of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (detail), 1764 (pinx), 1772 (sculpt) 37 William Westall, Entrance to Yordas Cave, 1818 52 William Westall, Yordas Cave, Looking Towards the Entrance, (1818) 53 Pierre-Jacques Volaire, Eruption of Vesuvius in 1717 with view of Portici, 1777 62 Joseph Wright of Derby, Eruption of Vesuvius (also known as Vesuvius from Portici and Vesuvius in Eruption) (circa 1774–1776) 63 Anonymous, 18th century. Fan Design with Eruption of Vesuvius and Three Views64 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Imitator. Las lavanderas (The Washerwomen), late 19th or early 20th century 111 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Mujer dormida (Sleeping Woman). 1790–1793 112 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), El Sueño, c.1800 113 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, A woman attacking a sleeping man; page 87 from the ‘Images of Spain’ album (F), ca.1812–1820114

viii Illustrations 6.5 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), Plate 43 from Caprichos, 1797–1799 116 6.6 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Despacha, que dispiertan (Be Quick, They Are Waking Up), Plate 78 from Caprichos, 1799 118 6.7 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Duendecitos (Hobgoblins), Plate 49 from Caprichos, 1799 118 6.8 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Las rinde el Sueño (Sleep Overcomes Them), Plate 34 from Caprichos, 1799120 6.9 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Ya es hora (It’s time), Plate 80 from Caprichos, 1799 121   6.10 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Dispierta dando patadas (He Wakes up Kicking: A Man on the Floor Kicking His Legs after Waking From a Nightmare), folio 13 from the Witches and Old Women Album ‘D’, ca.1819–1823122   6.11 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Preparatory sketches for El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) (c. 1799): Idioma universal. El Autor soñando (Universal Language. The Author Dreaming), 1797 124   6.12 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Preparatory sketches for El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) (c. 1799): El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), 1796–1797 124   6.13 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Dónde vá mama? (Where Is Mommy Going?), Plate 65 from Caprichos, 1797–1799127 7.1 Henry Justice Ford, “The Beast Scaring Beauty’s Father” 135 7.2 Jacques François Blondel, View of The Fireworks on August 29th, 1739: The Final Blaze, 18th century 137 7.3 Henry Justice Ford, “Beauty Dreaming”, in The Blue Fairy Book143 8.1 Simon Thomassin after Jean-François Huguet, Partie de l’incendie de la Ville de Rennes vue de la place du Palais (Part of the Fire in the City of Rennes Seen from the Place du Palais), 1721 153 8.2 Claude-Joseph Vernet, Incendie Nocturne (Night Fire), 1748155 8.3 Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Le feu aux poudres (Match to Powderkeg), 1763–1764 157

Illustrations  ix 8.4 Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!), 1788 8.5 Augustin-Claude-Simon Le Grand after Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!), 1789 8.6 Michel-Honoré Bounieu, Avis aux lecteurs (Notice to Readers), c.1785 8.7 Jean-Marie Mixelle after L. F. Labrousse, Un enfant de neuf ans sauve, au milieu des flammes, sa sæur encore au berceau (A Nine-year-old Child saves his Baby-Sister from the Midst of the Flames), 1796 8.8 L. F. Labrousse, Courage et humanité du Capitaine Soyer (Captain Soyer’s Courage and Humanity), 1798 8.9 L. F. Labrousse, Dévouement des Cnd Nélié, Beckers, &c, &c. Le péril n’est rien quand il faut sauver ses semblables (Devotion of CO Nélié, Beckers, etc. Danger is nothing when you must save your fellow men), circa 1800   8.10 Louis Philibert Debucourt, L’Incendie (The Fire), 1804 9.1 An Iftar meal at the grand vizier’s palace, late eighteenth century. Huge candles illuminate the hall, and additional candles are placed on the tables 1790 9.2 Armenians playing cards in candlelight, Istanbul, 1730s 9.3 A glimpse of tavern life. The poet ͑Aṭāʾı̄, himself not a drinker, is shown conversing with a dervish on the left 11.1 John Field, Premier Nocturne, H. 24, mm. 1–4 11.2 John Field, Second Nocturne, H. 25, mm. 81–92 11.3 Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 9, no. 1, mm. 1–4 11.4 Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 9, no. 2, mm. 1–4 12.1 Arkwright’s Cotton Mills, 1790s (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97) 12.2 Coalbrookdale by Night, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, 1801

159 160 161

163 165

166 167 182 184 186 223 223 224 225 242 245

Table 9.1 A Comparison of Candle Costs Between Istanbul and London181

Contributors

Valentine Balguerie is Assistant Professor of French at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Her main interests include counter-discourses in early modern France, especially in historical novellas and fairy tales authored by women. She has published articles in Early Modern French Studies and Women in French. Jeffrey Bellomi currently works as a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a PhD in Comparative Literature in 2019. His research concerns depictions of night and darkness in both the literary world and contemporary media discourses. He holds a special passion for teaching, creating courses that touch on a wide range of topics, such as the depictions of pandemics in art and literature from Antiquity to the present, ideological and political narratives concerning the Chernobyl disaster, and concerns of sovereignty and statecraft in Renaissance/Enlightenment literature and philosophy, amongst others. Katelyn Clark is a historical keyboard specialist and works as a scholarperformer on harpsichord and pianoforte. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, supervised by Alex Fisher. Her research focuses on historical soundscape and early pianoforte development in Germany and London, funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture. Katelyn’s writing appears in Early Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, and Women and Music. Kevin L. Cope is the Adams Professor of English and a Member of the Faculty of Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University. The author of Criteria of Certainty, John Locke Revisited, and In and After the Beginning, he is also the editor of the annual journal, 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era. Cope has edited multitudinous volumes on topics such as the scientific imagination, textual studies and informational profusion, intercultural adaptation, and Enlightenment representations of distance while also publishing several dozen essays addressing such diverse matters as

Contributors  xi George Washington, religious fundamentalism, satire, and aphorisms. Presently, Cope is hard at work on a study of subterranean exploration during the Enlightenment. Widely recognized as a faculty activist, Cope frequently appears on local, regional, and national radio and television outlets. Sarah Cullen received an Irish Research Council-funded PhD in American Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Her primary area of research is Night Studies in American Literature. She has worked as an occasional lecturer at University College Dublin and is currently Research Assistant in the Office of the Dean of Research in Trinity College Dublin. She was previously a research fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies and has work published in the Irish Journal of American Studies, Gothic Nature, and the Palgrave collection Surveillance, Race, Culture. Florence Fesneau earned her PhD in Modern Art History at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Her research focuses on sleep representations during the eighteenth century. She published “At the origins of The artist’s inspiration by Fragonard” (Histo.Art, 2020, n°12), “Camouflet: From Prank to Affront: The Representation of a Practical Joke in the 17th and 18th centuries” (Revue de l’Art, 2019, no. 205) and “The Secret Pleasures of the Female Peeper during the Age of Enlightenment” (LUMEN, 2018, no. 37). She is a founding member of the GRHAM (Group of Research of Modern Art History). Marine Ganofsky is a Lecturer in French Literature at the University of St Andrews (UK). Her research focuses on the eighteenth century and its pleasure-seekers, from libertines to philosophers, from artists to bons vivants. This has led her to write on topics such as materialism, Casanova, rococo aesthetics, and erotic novels. After exploring the voluptuous nights of the Age of Enlightenment (Night in French Libertine Fiction, 2018; Petits soupers libertins, 2016), she is now studying this period’s complex relationship with wonders by preparing a book on enchantment in libertine arts. Bridget M. Marshall is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where she teaches courses on Gothic novels, disability in literature, witchcraft trials, and American literature. Her most recent book is Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature (University of Wales Press, 2021). In it she explores how nineteenthcentury British and American literature reflects anxieties about the Industrial Revolution and how authors used Gothic stock characters and imagery—vampires, ghosts, and haunted buildings—to explore some of the real-life terrors of the world’s industrial transformation.

xii Contributors Pamela F. Phillips is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her publications and teaching focus on eighteenth-century Spanish literature, travel literature from and about Spain in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, and Hispanic Ecocriticism. Matthieu P. Raillard is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Lewis and Clark College and has a PhD from the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the Spanish eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and has appeared in journals such as Dieciocho, Revista de estudios hispánicos, L’érudit franco-espagnol, Decimonónica, and others. Ana Rueda is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature and William T. Bryan Endowed Chair at the University of Kentucky. Her research reflects interests that span various periods and critical traditions. She focuses on narrative (short fiction, novel, epistolarity, war literature, travel writing, and life writing), cultural and intellectual history, Hispano-Moroccan Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies, women’s writing, and interdisciplinary studies at the crossroads of literature, music, and the visual arts. She has authored Relatos desde el vacío: Un nuevo espacio crítico para el cuento contemporáneo; Pigmalión y Galatea. Refracciones modernas de un mito; Cartas in lacrar: La novela epistolar y la España ilustrada, 1789–1840. Her critical editions recover works by early nineteenth-century writers, offer studies of Hispano-Moroccan literature on the topic of migration, and contextualize essays considering current theories of microfiction. Avner Wishnitzer is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. His work focuses on the social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire. He is the author of Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark. Among his latest articles are “Kerosene Nights: Light and Enlightenment in Late Ottoman Jerusalem” (Past & Present, 2020) and “Yawn: Boredom and Powerlessness in the Late Ottoman Empire” (Journal of Social History, 2021).

Acknowledgments

The initial idea for this project was the session “Enlightening the Night” at the 2019 Annual Conference of the American Society of EighteenthCentury Studies. I thank the presenters and the audience for their stimulating papers and follow-up discussion. Special thanks are due to the Routledge team of Max Novick, Jennifer Morrow, and Louise Ingham for their expert support throughout the publication process. I am indebted to Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton, model Series Editors, for their invaluable guidance and accessibility. The starting point for the assembly of this volume coincided with the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Its completion owes itself to the contributors’ dedication to carry on with their commitment amidst extremely complicated circumstances. I dedicate this book to Manuel Hierro Gutiérrez, nocturnal flâneur, whose encouragement and illumination make everything possible.

1 Introduction Pamela F. Phillips

The daily rotation of the Earth produces a solar cycle defined by periods of light and darkness. Circadian rhythms organize human and nonhuman activity and its suspension in synchrony with external changes. The presence or absence of light is a determining factor in the design of everyday existence, leaving, in theory, the dark hours as a period of pause and rest. Dictionaries define “night” as “the time from dusk to dawn when no sunlight is visible,” and they expand on this temporal meaning by adding metaphorical values that entrench the night in negative connotations.1 Immense, dark, and unknown are adjectives used to describe this domain, conjuring up an image of a territory beyond our reach and a hideout for perils and sinister deeds. For different cultures and faiths, darkness and gloom precede the creation of day and light, setting up a relationship of opposition and positive succession. According to Genesis, night and darkness symbolize a world without God’s presence. In the Greek origin story, contained in Hesiod’s Theogony, Chaos engendered Nyx, the primordial Goddess of Night, and her brother Erebus, the God of Darkness and the Underworld, and the siblings brought into the world Day and Aether, the personification of Brightness. Ratri, Nyx’s equivalent in the Hindu tradition, is chased away by her sister Ushas, the Goddess of Dawn. Although she is associated with rest, Ratri is also depicted as the bearer of gloom and barrenness.2 As constructed in these narratives, day and light, providers of order, knowledge, and safety, are enhanced by their opposition to the nighttime hours that harbor danger, mystery, ignorance, and transgression. This dichotomy lies at the foundation of human culture by organizing a code of “correct” human behavior and “proper” spaces. The closing of the medieval city gates, locked home doors, night watchmen on patrol, and curfews, for example, were among the measures taken to “protect” against the nocturnal demons, witches, and transgressions thought to roam the dark labyrinth of the unknown. The literal and symbolic distinction between day and night and light and darkness reaches a point of inflection in the eighteenth century, brought on by two phenomena that become inextricably entangled: illumination and enlightenment. Part of its name, light is a primary metaphor DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-1

2  Pamela F. Phillips of the Age of Enlightenment. Thinkers of the period embodied the philosophical transition they were living in this image, in both singular and plural, and contemporary reference works privilege the metaphor of light in their definition of “enlightenment.”3 Occurring parallel with this epistemological transformation was a technological revolution. Starting in the sixteenth century, European cities began to require residents to keep street-facing windows illuminated and to set a lantern outside their house to make the street visible.4 Over the next century, these lanterns would be relocated into the street, thereby initiating the artificial illumination of public spaces for security and safety reasons. Exterior illumination took priority in eighteenth-century improvement plans partly because it was easier to implement than sewage systems and other urban innovations. Furthermore, by “lifting the darkness,” streetlights addressed crime and were seen to correct moral shortcomings. Lighting contributed to a spatial make-over that projected signs of progress, and no city wanted to be left behind in the dark. The equation was simple: “a lighted city was an enlightened city, thoroughly European, thoroughly modern.”5 In this way, the illuminated night advanced the Age of Enlightenment: it was a literal and metaphorical vehicle through which the coveted victory over darkness and ignorance was waged and declared. Yet day and night, and the corresponding connotations, operate within a complex system of relations such that the arbitrary values limit the appreciation of both domains. Even before artificial illumination, the night was an impetus for vibrant human activity, ranging from evening conversation and solitary reflection to the work of the bread maker and the prostitute, among others. In the religious context, too, the early Christian identification of night with spiritual illumination and truth reconstructs the traditional nocturnal landscape. Both then and now, night and darkness prove to be sources and sites of knowledge and sensorially-charged atmospheres as much as day and light.6 It may be an adjustment to think of the night as sensual rather than scary, as rational rather than mysterious, but such ambivalences are precisely what makes this natural phenomenon and its unfolding in the eighteenth century so fascinating and its continued study imperative. Rather than opposites, night, day, darkness, and light are “essential and interdependent,” thus opening them to a critical analysis that contributes, in turn, to recalibrate the nocturnal experience in the eighteenth century and recognize the period as a witness to the night as visible and a maker of visibility.7 Drawing on this conceptual framework, Enlightened Nightscapes presents eleven essays that analyze the long eighteenth-century night from a broad geographical and multidisciplinary perspective in real and imagined spaces. This volume contends that the “dark side” shaped the eighteenth-century human experience in culturally specific ways. As the book’s title itself invites, the study of the eighteenth-century night raises pertinent questions that the chapters consider: what did eighteenth-century society

Introduction  3 do at night? What did the night and darkness do to people in the eighteenth century? How do different cultures react to the night? How did the gradual introduction of artificial illumination change daily life? If electricity disenchanted the night, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch maintains, in what way was the eighteenth-century night enchanted, and for whom, how, and where? What happens to the ability of language to represent the world and knowledge when darkness stands between them? Although this collaboration is not the first publication to propose answers to these queries, it lifts the geographical anchor to produce a transnational portrait of this natural phenomenon, interrogating the night in America, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire during the long eighteenth century. The contributors find the night in various places: fairy tales, seduction novels, libertine fictions, English, French, and Spanish artwork, Goethe’s Faust, the piano nocturne, natural calamities and geographical formations, the streets of Istanbul, and the emerging industrial landscape. Their exploration of the nocturnal territory constructs a thematic constellation that includes sleep and dreams, experience and knowledge, concealment and revelation, sounds and spaces, and order and disorder. This portrait of the eighteenth-century night challenges the idea of a single nocturnal enlightened experience. In its place, and in keeping with the plurality announced in the title, the volume celebrates the nocturnal mosaic the local examples construct. Ultimately, these essays illustrate how the eighteenth-century context affords the night a way to break free of stereotypes and negative connotations. In turn, viewing the Age of Enlightenment through the nocturnal lens yields valuable insight to move beyond its long-established day and light-centered tradition and grant empirical agency to night and darkness.

A Nocturnal Timeline The chapters that follow examine the night in the long eighteenth century, which will be considered as extending from 1700 to 1840. Shaping this chronology are technical milestones that define and characterize the eighteenth-century nightscape. In 1700 street lighting illuminated several European cities, thereby adding an essential resource to already enacted security measures and setting into place the conditions for modern life.8 The installation of illumination technologies in public spaces and the domestic sphere reconfigured human activity and relations. Paris and Amsterdam were the principal reference points, marking the progress and expansion of the public illumination network. A significant development came mid-century with the invention of the réverbère, or the reflecting mirror lamp, which had the illuminating capacity of five or six candle lanterns.9 In the 1770s, the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier advanced the theories of combustion and oxygenation, paving the way for the presentation of the Argand lamp in 1783, named after its inventor

4  Pamela F. Phillips François Ami Argand.10 Finally, the transition to gas lighting in European and American cities was more than apparent by 1840. Birmingham was the first city to enjoy gas street lighting, followed by Pall Mall (1807), Baltimore (1816), Paris (1819), Berlin (1826), Dublin (1831), and Madrid (1832).11 The evidence of the diurnal and nocturnal transformation brought on by industrialization and capitalism was visible in urban and rural spaces, work practices, consumption habits, and leisure activities. Soon after, electrification announced the advent of a new period in the history of the night and humanity.12 This technical timeline provides the material to single out the long eighteenth-century nightscape, better illuminated than before but still dark, as a complex enlightened and illuminated environment full of its own activities and agents that varied by geography, class, and gender.13 In this way, David E. Nye’s appreciation of the rhythm of contemporary technological change is equally valid for the eighteenth century: “these transitions are not automatic. They occur at different rates and have different outcomes in different societies.”14

The Nocturnal Eighteenth Century Illumination and enlightenment share the common goal of revealing the unknown. Paradoxically, illumination created the conditions for an ­eighteenth-century nightscape full of activity, not all of which was necessarily negative. The nocturnal darkness, too, was welcomed and occupied as an alternate space equally fertile for knowledge, creation, and lived experiences. In between, in the shadows, a third space emerged that sheltered a sense of privacy and concealment for practices not necessarily accepted during the daytime.15 Moreover, Enlightenment thinking recognized the link between shadow and knowledge, as Michael Baxandall indicates: “The conviction common to all Enlightenment parties—­nativist, empiricist, sensationalist, materialist, associationist—that shadow must somehow be quite central to our perception of the world…is so firm and compelling that effort is needed to disengage.”16 Illumination, darkness, and shadows construct and overlap in the eighteenth-century night, transforming it into a “new landscape of modernity” that ultimately challenged the stereotypical conception of this domain as “antithetical to enlightenment and reason.”17 In the Age of Enlightenment, night becomes a critical tool that questions light and vision’s ability to ‘clearly’ generate knowledge. The eighteenth-century world, both urban and rural, rich and poor, male and female, was nocturnal, thereby making its interrogation justified and necessary. Assisting further this line of inquiry is the coincidence of recent revisions of the history of the Enlightenment in their questioning of the label “Age of Reason” as a precise reflection of the movement and moment.18 If, as John V. Fleming asserts, “one of the principal ­achievements of the European Enlightenment was to encourage thinking about things in radically new ways,” the study of the eighteenth-century nightscape invites

Introduction  5 critical scrutiny of the generative capacity of night and darkness to insert them alongside reason and light in the Age of Enlightenment.19 A few examples from the period’s nocturnal archive confirm the ­eighteenthcentury night as a stage for human activity and a subject and context for creativity. Francisco de Goya, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and William Hogarth stand out among the artists who immortalized the horror, the pleasure, and the chaos of the night in their paintings (Figure 1.1). Sir Joshua Reynold’s Cupid as Link Boy (1774) pays tribute to the young torchbearers who illuminated the streets of eighteenth-century England (Figure 1.2). Likewise, Claude-Joseph Vernet’s pictorial nightscapes enriched the landscape genre of the period. The firework displays that delighted elite social festivities since the seventeenth century inspired Jacques François Blondel and Joseph Wright of Derby to transfer the stunning lighting effect to the canvas, while George Frederic Handel composed the “Music for the Royal Fireworks” (1749) at the request of King George II. Other musicians, including Johann Christian Bach, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Frédéric Chopin, and Joseph Haydn, filled the

Figure 1.1 William Hogarth, Night (The Four Times of Day), 1738. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Sarah Lazarus, 1891, Accession Number 91.1.94. Public Domain.

6  Pamela F. Phillips

Figure 1.2 Joshua Reynolds (British, 1723–1792). Cupid as Link Boy, 1774. Oil on canvas, 30 × 25 inches (76.2 × 63.5 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Seymour H. Knox Fund, through special gifts to the fund by Mrs. Marjorie Knox Campbell, Mrs. Dorothy Knox Rogers and Mr. Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1945 (1945:2.2). Photo: Brenda Bieger for Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

nightscape with the melody of notturni, or the genre of the nocturne. Viewing Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (1791), based on the libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, as a moral story enriches its invocation of traditional Enlightenment symbolism that associates night with ignorance and light with wisdom.20 Finally, night entered the eighteenth-century theoretical dialogue on the principal aesthetic categories of the period, including the sublime, the picturesque, the pastoral, and chiaroscuro.21 Artificial illumination’s tempering of the fear of the dark created new forms of sociability that, in turn, drew urban life out of the home and transformed indoor activities. Cafés and taverns extended operating hours, and promenades and pleasure gardens captured the public’s attention as enchanted spaces that were both social and sensual.22 Candles, rushlights, and oil lamps turned private residences into meeting places for learned gatherings and polite conversation. A notable predecessor was

Introduction  7

Figure 1.3 Antoine Jean Duclos, Le Bal Paré, 1774. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933 Accession Number 33.56.33. Public Domain.

the Academia de nocturnos, the late sixteenth-century Spanish society of writers based in the Mediterranean city of Valencia. Between 1591 and 1594, the group held eighty-eight meetings on Wednesday evenings in which they shared their prose and verse writings and discussed current topics. Fear, Silence, Sleep, and Darkness were just some of the pseudonyms the members assumed to enhance their reunions’ atmosphere.23 Continuing the learned tradition in the eighteenth century, the Lunar Society of Birmingham united a group of freethinking inventors and scientists on the Monday closest to the full moon so its members could return home guided by the natural illumination.24 The naturally lit sky facilitated movement in general, especially in rural areas, to different sites of nocturnal interaction, such as assemblies and evening parties.25 Under the glimmer of candlelight and elegant decoration, elite sociability and cicisbeo, or the codes of gallantry, found cover and stimulus (Figure 1.3). In this space, as Mimi Hellman concludes, “night was enchanted not because it was personal and simple, but because it was performative and complex.”26 Completing this portrait of nocturnal sociability was the consumption of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, stimulating drinks synonymous with conversation in taverns and coffeehouses. The presence and influence of the night in the century’s literature also renders its attraction and complexity visible. Poets, for example, contemplated the night, conveyed its spectacle through the aesthetic categories of the pastoral and the sublime, and invoked it to wrestle with their innermost emotions.27 For many in this international roster, the English lyrical

8  Pamela F. Phillips tradition and Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1745) were essential points of reference. The melancholic meditations contained in Night Thoughts turned the cemetery into a dark setting for the eighteenth-­ century nocturnal imaginary and an ideal bridge to the romantic nightscape, as exemplified in Lugubrious Nights (1789), by José de Cadalso. The relation between night and travel took on greater meaning in the eighteenth century as artificial illumination facilitated terrestrial and maritime movement in safer conditions, making travel literature another primary source for the nocturnal experience and technological progress. Visiting London in 1782, the German Karl Philip Moritz recorded the sense of enchantment the illuminated street scene afforded: As it was quite dark when I came back the first evening, I was astonished at the admirable manner in which the streets are lighted up; compared to which our streets in Berlin make a most miserable show. The lamps are lighted whilst it is still day-light, and are so near each other, that even on the most ordinary and common nights, the city has the appearance of a festive illumination.28 Vienna produced a similar impression on Johannes Neiner: “these beautiful night lights are laid out so prettily that if one looks down a straight lane…it is like seeing a splendid theater or a most gracefully illuminated stage.”29 Lieutenant General Andrew Blayney, in his account of his experience in southern Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, observed in 1810 how the residents of the Andalusian city of Jaén “were obliged by order to keep a candle burning in every window throughout the night, by which the streets are lighted in a cheap and easy manner.”30 The spectacle of the urban night attracted the nocturnal streetwalker and added the night scene to the topics of literary journalism.31 Changes in mealtimes and bedtime hours were evident early on in the century, as recorded in the December 14, 1710 entry of Richard Steele’s The Tatler: An old friend of mine being lately come to Town, I went to see him on Tuesday last about Eight a Clock in the Evening, with a Design to sit with him an Hour or two, and talk over old Stories, but upon enquiring after him, his Servant told me he was just gone to bed…In short, I found that my old-fashioned Friend religiously adhered to the Example of his Fore-fathers, and observed the same Hours that had been in the Family ever since the Conquest. This experience leads the writer to conclude that “[i]t is very plain that the Night was much longer formerly in this Island than it is at present,” a statement loaded with meaning as the century’s evolving relationship between day and night would confirm.32

Introduction  9

Enlightening Night Studies These examples signal that the Enlightenment/night alliance liberates night from the binary constraints and identifies it as a fitting and necessary vehicle to access eighteenth-century daily existence and inspect social and intellectual concerns. Narrowing the gap between the Enlightenment and night finds critical support in Night Studies, a burgeoning, deeply interdisciplinary, and transnational field that studies the night and the multiple topics of its thematic constellation. The roots of this intellectual inquiry lie in the discipline of Geography, motivated in part by the spatial turn in the social sciences and humanities. This investigation expanded night from its restrictive temporal definition to a time space occupied differently over the centuries and by human decisions. A significant concern is how each culture reacts to, constructs, and represents its nocturnal experience because, as Robert Williams affirms, “although night is part of the natural world, its social uses and meanings are not, arising as they do from social practices. In short, the darkness of the night is socially mediated.”33 From there, research on night as a critical concept has invigorated the fields of Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology, History, and Literature.34 The accumulation of recent nocturnal scholarship—academic meetings, monographs, edited volumes, articles, electronic listserves, and research groups—attests to the interdisciplinary nature of thinking on the night and its internationalization.35 If it once struggled to be accepted as a topic worthy of academic attention, victim of a disciplinary “night blindness,” a consensus has emerged in favor of acknowledging Night Studies as a formal area of study.36 In their effort to map its contours, Will Straw, Luc Gwiazdzinski, and Marco Maggioli assert that Night Studies is not a “methodological orientation” but rather an interdisciplinary project taking shape around a central idea closely tied to related objects of study.37 This research covers many topics that are not exclusive to the night but rotate around and whose central axis is the night. Inquiry into sleep, leisure and work, public illumination ordinances, interior illumination, and the gendering of nocturnal activity, both in everyday life and as represented in different artistic mediums, organize the study of the contemporary night and establish a bridge to incorporate eighteenth-century studies.38 Nocturnal research produces a “vision of the night as a world onto itself”; it is at once a time space and a generator of the activity carried out in this domain.39 This valorization of the night reinforces its equation with an atmosphere distinct from the daytime, as Robert Shaw contends: “it is a vibrating, pulsating atmosphere. It differs from day as a variety of affects and practices gain traction within a particular space-time and generate this atmosphere.”40 Closely related is the consideration that the nocturnal atmosphere eludes the human capacity to touch or see or be captured and contained, despite contemporary attempts to measure the darkness of the

10  Pamela F. Phillips evening sky.41 The night poses a unique sensory experience, as Michel Serres maintains: “Night does not anaesthetize the skin, but makes it more subtly aware.”42 Hence, it becomes apparent that “reading the night” requires its own method: “at night one sees nothing! Night, then, calls for the cooperation of our other senses and imagination, so as to mitigate what we lack.”43 Apprehending the night from this perspective brings out its ambivalence: the effort to tame and control the night nourishes its allure as a site open to liberties not found or allowed in the day. Recognizing the night as an essential component and influence in human history turns it into an object of historical study. Many of the chapters in this volume, and Night Studies overall, reference the historical research by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Murray Melbin, A. Roger Ekirch, Craig Koslofsky, Bryan D. Palmer, and Alain Cabantous.44 These investigations document the evolution of night from “a terra incognita of peripheral concern, the forgotten half of the human experience” to a complex time space that has the potential to do things differently and therefore merits analysis on its own terms.45 Their assembly of a much more complex history of night than is acknowledged confirms that it presents the world differently. Tellingly, the titles of these histories and their content convey keywords to think and speak about night: dis/ enchanted, colonization, frontier, and nocturnalization. Disenchanted Nights: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, published by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in German in 1983 and translated into English in 1988, is often identified as the starting point for the historical inquiry into the night. To trace the cultural change brought about by the intersection between artificial lighting and modern life, especially in Paris, Schivelbusch takes the analysis of modern nightlife back to the seventeenth century and the Baroque culture’s simultaneous “lighting of order” and “lighting of festivity.”46 Schivelbusch contends that the technical progress only moderately illuminated seventeenth- and eighteenth-­ century streets, but it did make visible social distinctions.47 Illumination quickly became a luxury item that drew attention to the inequalities between the city and the country, men and women, and rich and poor. Schivelbusch’s query, “[I]f public lighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not really light up the street, then what was the point of it?,” stimulated researchers to continue along this trajectory to uncover what did go on in this time space.48 Murray Melbin wagered a contemporary response in The Night as Frontier (1987), a study of nocturnal activity west of the Mississippi during the middle of the nineteenth century and in Boston during the 1980s. Borrowing the model of the territorial frontier, Melbin postulated that human exploitation of nighttime hours for work and pleasure “colonized” the night, as if the conquest of a temporal frontier created a new territory to be occupied.49 Schivelbusch and Melbin’s proposals spurred further review of the history of the night that has assembled a broad narrative of its content and

Introduction  11 evolution, including scrutiny of specific aspects pertinent to the eighteenthcentury context.50 Sleep patterns and later mealtimes, topics studied by A. Richard Ekirch in At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (2005), joined streetlights and interior illumination to stimulate this “revolution” that granted a sense of autonomy to the urban elite and lower classes, albeit in an inverse way: “if darkness rendered members of the mighty more plebeian, it made legions of the weak more powerful.”51 The notion of a nocturnal revolution that defeats darkness informs Alain Cabantous’ Histoire de la nuit: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (2009) and Craig Koslofsky’s Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (2011). Both historians study how the long medieval night gave way to a modern night in which illumination combined with the lingering of darkness to recast or, echoing Melbin, “colonize” the night. At the core of their research is the perception of the night as an indicator of the transition to the modern age. Focusing on northwest and southern Europe, Cabantous documents the emergence of nocturnal life and consciousness from the tension between order and disorder. Similarly, Koslofsky examines the gradual unfolding of “nocturnalization” of northern European life from the seventeenth century on.52 Nocturnal activity existed before the introduction of artificial illumination, such that this technology facilitated its continuity, created the conditions for new practices, and gave rise to new attitudes toward the night (Figure 1.4). Koslofsky’s analysis of “the ongoing expansion of the legitimate social and symbolic uses of the night” underscores how “the turn to the night” refashioned all aspects of daily life, from work and leisure to the spiritual and intellectual realm.53 Without denying the importance of illumination, the histories of the night concur that technical progress gives only a partial view of the eighteenth-century night. At the other end of the spectrum is the resistance to its presence, symbolized by the smashing of lanterns, transgression, and the consolidation of oppositional culture, a topic that organizes Bryan D. Palmer’s Cultures of Darkness (2000). The link between night and danger pushed illumination plans, making street lighting ideal to secure order. In its early stage, public illumination was a government-sponsored reform financed and serviced by the individual citizens through taxes and community maintenance plans. With streetlights came increased nocturnal activity and the official regulation of public space. The curfew gradually disappeared, and streetlights were glorified as a valuable response to the sense of insecurity, both physical and intellectual. Michel Foucault points to this context when he affirms that “a fear haunted the latter half of the eighteenth century: the fear of darkened spaces, of the pall of gloom which prevents the full visibility of things, men and truths.”54 To that end, public ordinances were approved to criminalize the vandalization of lanterns.55 Still, their upkeep was economically onerous, and their increasing brilliance quickly acquired a meaning of constant surveillance that stimulated social opposition. The accumulated discontent found in the lantern

12  Pamela F. Phillips

Figure 1.4 Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, comte de Caylus, Lantern Seller, 1737. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number 53.600.588(19). Public Domain.

a symbol of state power and imposition, and citizen resentment, many times intensified by the consumption of alcohol, made itself heard and seen by smashing lanterns. This gesture was as global as the literal and symbolic effort to enlighten, which it precisely questioned.56 The lighting that distinguished Baroque regal celebrations now guided class and national protests and confirmed the night “as an actual place and space in which the ubiquitous contestations of everyday life were fought out.”57 Examining the evolution of the streetlamp from a sign of security to an instrument of rebellion whose destruction reinstated darkness contributes a significant line of inquiry to night’s rewriting of the official Enlightenment narrative. Edited volumes, single monographs, and scholarly articles that engage the eighteenth-century night from different disciplines and geographies draw on and complement this historical scholarship. The Enlightenment by Dark: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century (2010), edited by Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, brings together twenty-two case studies that converge on the “busy” and

Introduction  13 “populous” British and Irish night from diverse fields of research and mediums, including literature, painting, fireworks, pornography, scientific writing, among others.58 The topics of the physical night, the nocturnal aesthetic, and the mystic night organize Suzy Halimi’s edited volume La Nuit dans l’Angleterre des Lumières (2009), a collection of twelve essays by French scholars on the eighteenth-century English night. This research details how the interplay between night and light takes the analysis of spaces like clubs, the sea, and gardens, and musical, literary, and philosophical works by George Frederic Handel, Jane Austen, Daniel Defoe, Edward Young, and William Blake to a new level. Single monographs, too, anchor their study of the eighteenth-century night geographically. Marine Ganofsky and Avner Wishnitzer, contributors to this volume along with Kevin L. Cope, approach the night from and in French libertine literature and the temporal culture in the Ottoman Empire, respectively. In Night in French Libertine Fiction, Ganofsky argues that this literary production privileges the night for its ability to conceal amorous encounters that, in turn, and thanks to their dark setting, exercise a function of revelation and liberty. In addition, the critical scrutiny of libertine literature published throughout the 1700s registers the intersection of eroticism and nocturnalization, liberating night from the symbolic association with fear and danger and signaling it as a space for pleasure. In his monograph, As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark, Wishnitzer explains the role of the nighttime hours as a key protagonist in the construction of early modern Middle Eastern cities, thereby broadening the scope of the dialogue between eighteenth-century Ottoman studies and Night Studies. Similarly, studies by Rosa Maria Fina, Mario Martínez Gomís, Samuel J. Martland, Lilian Briseño, and Daniel Pérez Zapico establish the Iberian and South American nocturnal experience in this growing scholarship.59

The Chapters Enlightened Nightscapes seeks to continue this scholarly engagement by privileging night’s dynamism and distinction across national and disciplinary borders. Rather than gauge the eighteenth-century night by geography, specialty, or theoretical orientation, the chapters are divided into three parts that showcase the diverse intersection of night and the eighteenth century: Nighttime Experiments, Nocturnal Visions, and Nocturnal Spaces and Sounds. This arrangement provides insight into how critical aspects of the nocturnal constellation flourish, influence, and evolve during the eighteenth century and in different cultural representations and daily human activities. Part I, “Nighttime Experiments,” engages the night as a setting and source for the human pursuit of knowledge, pleasure, and spiritual mediation. “Libertine Nocturnes; or the Many Marvels of the Enlightened

14  Pamela F. Phillips Night,” by Marine Ganofsky, identifies the trope of the “marvel,” or the wonderful, as a point of intersection between eighteenth-century French libertine fiction and writings penned by the philosophes. A common thread running through libertine works, from Claude Crébillon’s Les Egarements du cœur et de l’esprit (1735–1738) to Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), is the association of the nighttime with liberty and pleasure. Following scholarship on the eighteenth-century night, including her own research and studies on the “marvel,” Ganofsky argues that the nocturnal spectacle on display in libertine fiction makes the Enlightenment quest for knowledge visible. By way of example, her close reading of Dominique Vivant Denon’s Point de lendemain (1777) addresses how the nocturnal darkness that shelters and ignites the erotic encounter mirrors the journey of thinkers like Voltaire through the shadows to uncover scientific and psychological mysteries. Reading libertine fiction alongside the philosophes’ writing confirms that Enlightenment and enchantment are by no means mutually exclusive, but rather they dynamically intersect precisely in the delight and bewilderment of the night. In “Abysms on Open View: Terrestrial Expressions of Preternatural Darkness and Heavenly Night,” Kevin L. Cope delves into the geologically active nocturnal eighteenth century as a site that produced knowledge and experience. Natural calamities, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides, struck different parts of the planet during the 1700s, and many occurred at night or submerged the day into darkness. Dark places became tourist destinations as affluent adventurers included caves in their itinerary and recorded their subterranean experiences in verse, prose, and artwork. Combing a broad scope of primary sources, including narrative, travel writing, and theatrical works, together with pictorial representations of caves and volcanic eruptions, Cope analyzes how the prism of the subterranean calls into question the privileged position sight and light occupy in the history of the Enlightenment. These written and visual texts expose darkness and nocturnal conditions as equally valuable sites of experience and vehicles to knowledge. For example, William Westall’s illustrations of the Youdas Cave from outside and inside the entrance highlight Enlightenment’s simultaneous grounding in the visible order and the attraction of the unknown lying in the dark. The allure of dark spaces attracted established scientists like Antonio de Ulloa, who mingled with aristocratic thrill-seekers, hermits, and eccentrics. This variety of personalities further exposes the plurality of Enlightenment and its nightscape. Discussions of Juan Meléndez Valdés’ poetry tend to focus on two tendencies: his playful Rococo poems and the philosophical turn in his later verses. Matthieu P. Raillard, in “‘One Thousand Divine Truths’: Night, Darkness and the Sublime in the Poetry of Juan Meléndez Valdés,” reshapes the traditional scholarly perception by showcasing the night and

Introduction  15 darkness as thematic threads running throughout the Spanish poet’s production. The frequency and richness with which nocturnal imagery appear in Meléndez Valdés’s poems lead Raillard to classify the representation of night and darkness in three positive motifs: the literary sublime, the natural world, and deist meditation. This essay incorporates the verses of the Spanish poet into the enlightened poetic nocturne, a literary genre that contributes to the revaluation of the nocturnal experience. In Meléndez Valdés’s poems, night and darkness transcend the conventional labels to create the ideal conditions to experience and contemplate truth, peace, and beauty. The first part concludes with “Shadowed Celebration: Goethe’s Klassische Walpurgisnacht and Creative Profusion,” in which Jeffrey Bellomi gains insight into Faust through Night Studies’ inquiry into the nocturnal domain’s agency in artistic creativity. The legendary character’s search for knowledge and power constructs a plot that contains traditional nocturnal motifs, including the pact with the Devil, real and metaphorical light and darkness, and the moon. Bellomi argues that the twin “Walpurgis Night” scenes stand out in Faust precisely because they push the boundaries of the meaning of night, thereby confirming it as a site of creativity and the desired knowledge. Part I’s “Walpurgis Night” scene confronts Faust with the mysteries and disorder of the nocturnal world on the magical night in honor of Saint Walpurgis. The negative associations of night and darkness that reinforce the Enlightenment narrative structure the episode and seduce Faust far more than his erudite library. In contrast, the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” its companion scene in Part II, narrates Faust’s venture into the world of Greek mythology in search of his imagined Helen. The luminosity of the Classical World recalibrates the magical night into one of creativity. Written in the transition between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Goethe’s Faust and its “Walpurgis Nights” demonstrate the complexity and malleability of the enlightened night. Part II, “Night Visions,” focuses on sleep and its lack, and dreams. Although these activities or conditions are not exclusive to the night, their connection to the “dark side” grants valuable insight into human habits, fears, and identity. The following three case studies enrich Night Studies’ theorization of sleep, sleeplessness, and insomnia. In the opening chapter of Part II, “Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence in the Caprichos,” Ana Rueda scrutinizes the depiction of sleeping figures in different periods of Francisco de Goya’s extensive painting career. This comparative analysis surveys the sleeping subjects in oil paintings and tapestry cartoons, mediums that exemplify Goya’s artistic service to the royal circle, and the Caprichos, the satirical collection of eighty etchings published in 1799. While the female sleepers in The Laundress (1779– 1780), The Sleeping Woman (1790–1793), or The Dream (1800) transmit sensations of peaceful slumber, some with erotic overtones, the dark

16  Pamela F. Phillips and somewhat monstrous figures depicted in distinct stages of sleep in the Caprichos awaken the viewer to social evils. The association between sleep and dreams comes to a fore in Capricho 43, titled El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), leading the viewer to wonder if monsters appear when reason sleeps or if reason is a dream that produces monsters. Applying the principles of hypnagogia and phantasmata and the concept of duermevela, the state of being half-asleep and half-awake simultaneously, Rueda proposes that Goya’s art questions the traditional “reasoned” narrative of Enlightenment through its representation of sleep and dreams. The blurring of the boundary between sleep and wakefulness that delights the viewer of the paintings of female slumber turns disturbing in the Caprichos, arousing him out of his own sleeping state to “imagine intelligently,” which, in the case of eighteenth-century Spain, would prove to be decisive for its Enlightenment. Nighttime, sleep, and dreams are nocturnal topics that overlap with the fairy tale. Critical appraisal of this genre in the eighteenth century singles out the significance of female authorship and the appeal of the marvelous and the moral to the Enlightenment’s didactic project. Valentine Balguerie, in “The Other Side of Night: Enlightened Dreaming in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740),” examines how the fairy-tale genre, the night, and dreams converge to create a narrative scaffolding that secures female agency and contributes to rewrite the traditional Enlightenment narrative. In Villeneuve’s version of the tale, the eponymous heroine’s nightly dreams create a “dreamscape, a distorted double of the ‘real’ world” where she enjoys the freedom to act and desire without fear of the period’s social conventions. Drawing on fairy-tale scholarship and historical data to situate Villeneuve’s tale in the context of the eighteenth-century French night, Balguerie shows how the multi-layered “dreamscape” not only marvels, enchants, and empowers Beauty to a degree unimagined in her mundane reality but also advances a blueprint of a “female-driven” Enlightenment. This reading underscores the power of the fairy tale to “deconstruct traditional and folkloric perceptions of the night” and reinvent it and the Enlightenment through the lens of femininity. Florence Fesneau’s essay, “Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830),” considers the artistic representation of nocturnal fires as a site for the production and dissemination of individual desires and national discourse in eighteenth-century France. Geographical dictionaries record the incidence of nocturnal fires with varying degrees of documentation regarding the causes and casualties. This real-life situation found its way into painting and engravings in the second half of the century. Fesneau examines how this artwork reflects French attitudes towards the night. Jean-François Huguet’s engraving of the 1720 Rennes’ fire captures the chaos the calamity provoked and the solidarity

Introduction  17 it generated in the hierarchical society. L. F. Labrousse’s engravings for Les Fastes du Peuple Français (The Splendor of French People), published in 1794, exemplify the political appropriation of the nocturnal fire to exalt the heroism of the First Republic. In contrast, paintings like ClaudeJoseph Vernet’s Incendie Nocturne (Night Fire) capitalize on the nocturnal fire as a “dramatic luminous phenomenon.” The portrayal of the dangers and pleasures of candles in the domestic setting takes on erotic overtones in Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Le feu aux poudres (Match to Powderkeg) and Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!). Fesneau argues that the representation of the nocturnal fire culminates in Philibert-Louis Debucourt’s 1804 engraving L’Incendie (The Fire). Here the depiction of a mother fleeing a housefire with her child in her arms announces the onset of a new nightscape imbued with the Romantic sensibility. The unfolding of human activity during the eighteenth-century night is not uniform. There is a marked social and geographical difference in access to artificial illumination, nocturnal leisure, and nighttime activity in general. The essays in Part III, “Night Sights and Sounds,” examine official documents and artistic and literary sources to evaluate the intersection of night and place in different geographical spaces and mediums. Avner Wishnitzer, in “Early to Bed: Sleep, Artificial Light, and Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,” studies and compares the sleeping and entertainment patterns of Ottoman elites and commoners and their European counterparts. The “nocturnalization” of the Ottoman Empire did not keep up with the European chronology that Koslofsky studies in his monograph. In fact, street lighting arrived in the Middle East during the second half of the nineteenth century. Together with the calls to morning and evening prayer, sunrise and sunset established daily schedules and sleeping patterns in the Ottoman Empire. Easy access to candles and oil lamps was beyond the economic reach of most, thereby attaching this new technology to the exercise of political and economic power. Through the analysis of narrative and poetic accounts and official records, Wishnitzer locates the great majority of the population after sunset indoors, which was also dark given the cost of candles. In contrast, wealthy households and the ruling elite enjoyed illuminated nighttime hours and entertainment. Court poetry celebrates the lamp parties and the luminous tulip beds as demonstrations of the royal glory and power. Despite their access to artificial illumination and nocturnal social life, Istanbul’s affluent retired to bed earlier than its European counterpart. The conquest of the Ottoman darkness through illumination infrastructure elucidates the economic and class issues wrapped up in this improvement plan. While the Ottoman elite glowed in light, others were kept in the dark, literally and metaphorically. Both illumination and enlightenment were out of their reach. In “The Uncertainty of Evening in Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic,” Sarah Cullen brings into the nocturnal dialogue the intersection

18  Pamela F. Phillips of the evening and coverture in the early American seduction novel. Cullen maintains that this popular literary production uses these hours to expose the shortcomings of coverture, the legal doctrine that absorbed a woman’s identity into that of a male relative, thereby depriving her of her rights. In contrast to the late night, the traditional site of moral deviance and social disorder, the evening hours were considered a respectable period for recreation and female sociability, free of the concern of social judgment. However, the seduction plot turns the evening into an accomplice to a dishonest man’s deception of an innocent young woman. Evening courtships carried out under the expectation of marriage turn into illicit sexual encounters that leave the young woman raped, pregnant, and abandoned by her seducer and, by extension, her family and society. Through the analysis of Susannah Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1794) and Lucy Temple (1828), William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789), and Rebecca Rush’s Kelroy (1812), this chapter demonstrates that wrapped up in the portrayal of the evening’s failure to protect the heroines from male predators is a political and moral cue to the developing nation and its need to equip its female population with the necessary knowledge to navigate safely through the night. In this way, the study of the seduction novel offers further understanding of the gendered experience of nighttime. The final chapters offer the volume a point of chronological and thematic closure through the study of the piano nocturne and the emergence of the industrial nightscape in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Katelyn Clark opens her chapter, “‘Like a Night Without Darkness’: Music and Nightscape in the Early Piano Nocturne (1810–1830),” with a confession by Frédéric Chopin on how night vitalized him much more than day. Clark reads this admission as essential to appreciate more fully the Polish composer and pianist’s contribution to the music of the night at the turn of the century. This essay locates Chopin among the circle of Paris-based musicians who contributed to the ongoing improvement of the piano, a process that generated and complemented the popularity of the nocturne genre. The influence of John Field, Irish-born and Moscow resident, was central to this musical generation, and in the case of Chopin, the relationship went beyond the technical similarities of their compositions. The biographical information on Field and Chopin reveals that both composers designed and maintained their apartment-studios to recreate and intensify the nocturnal atmosphere. The descriptions of these spaces offer details about their method of creation and night’s representation in their musical pieces. Enriching this inquiry into the intersection of place, music, and night is the Enlightenment reflection on the senses and their role in the listener’s perception of the musical work. In “The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape: Factories, Mills, and Ironworks at Night”, Bridget Marshall documents how advances in

Introduction  19 illumination technology flourished in the industrial workspace, bringing about an irreversible change. Factories transformed the landscape, and their round-the-clock factory operation seriously affected people’s lives and public health. The risk of work accidents increased at night, and the conditions were denounced as inhuman. If the contamination from the mills and iron forges affected the greater public, night workers bore the brunt of these new industrial practices. As this chapter demonstrates, the fascination and concern for nighttime labor inform British and American written and visual texts during the late eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century. Marshall examines primary literary sources that register a growing public opinion opposed to night work due to these hazards and negative consequences. Complementing these texts are dramatic visual portraits of the early Industrial Revolution, including Joseph Wright’s Arkwright’s Cotton Mills by Night (c. 1782) and Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Coalbrookdale by Night (1801), that capture the industrial activity’s transformation of the nocturnal atmosphere and the ushering in of a new nightscape. Taken together, these essays affirm the centrality of night to the field of eighteenth-century studies and reinforce the eighteenth century as a critical reference point for Night Studies. Enlightened Nightscapes serves as testimony to the long eighteenth-century night’s attraction from various disciplines and scholars in different countries and stages in their academic careers. Finally, the implications of nocturnal thinking for eighteenth-century studies are manifold. It is hoped that this research will inspire future contributions from other fields and national perspectives.

Notes 1 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “night,” accessed July 20, 2021, https:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/night. 2 Hesiod, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia, ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 13, l.123; Michael Jordan, ed., Dictionary of God and Goddesses, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ratri,” (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2004), 264. 3 Michel Delon’s entry “Enlightenment, Representations of” in the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment that he edits traces the appearance of the metaphor of light in eighteenth-century texts. Michel Delon, ed., Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, s.v. “Enlightenment, Representations of” (New York: Routledge, 2001), 458–462. Harvey Chisick’s definition of “Enlightenment” in his Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment, too, privileges the light metaphor: “Identifying true knowledge and proper understanding with light, the Enlightenment portrayed itself as a movement that would extend knowledge and understanding within specific societies and among mankind as progressively and non-violently as light dispels darkness.” Harvey Chisick, “Enlightenment,” in Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2005), 157. Hans Blumenberg draws on the

20  Pamela F. Phillips metaphor of light in his identification of the Enlightenment as the moment of transition from divine revelation to the lighting up of truth and knowledge by human force. Hans Blumenberg, “Light as a Metaphor for Truth,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 31, 52. 4 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1988), 82. Mark J. Bouman cites attempts to illuminate streets in Paris and London as early as the thirteenth century; see Mark J. Bouman, “Luxury and Control: The Urbanity of Street Lighting in Nineteenth-Century Cities,” Journal of Urban History 14, no. 1 (November 1987): 10. 5 Darrin M. McMahon, “Illuminating the Enlightenment: Public Lighting Practices in the Siècle des Lumières,” Past and Present 240 (August 2018): 136. 6 Carolyn Purnell, The Sensational Past. How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017). 7 Nina Edwards, Darkness: A Cultural History (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), 252. Tim Edensor argues in favor of the “relationality of light and dark”. Tim Edensor, “The Gloomy City,” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (February 2015): 430–432. See Mikkel Bille and Tim Flohr Sørensen, “An Anthropology of Luminosity. The Agency of Light,” Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3 (2007): 263–284. 8 Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 130–131. 9 McMahon, “Illuminating the Enlightenment,” 129. See also Jonathan Conlin, “Big City, Bright Lights? Night Spaces in Paris and London, 1660–1820,” in La Sociabilité en France et en Grande-Bretagne au Siècle des Lumières L’émergence d’un nouveau modèle de société, vol. 3, Les espaces de sociabilité, eds. Valérie Capdeville and Éric Francalanza (Paris: Manuscrit, 2014), 101–138. 10 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 9–14. 11 For a general overview of the transition to gas, see Peter C. Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 13, 15–16; David Nye, American Illuminations: Urban Lighting, 1800–1920 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018), 11–34; Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 14–50, and Joaquim Schlör, Nights in the Big City: Berlin, Paris, London 1840–1930 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 32, 66–67. On the advancement of public illumination, see the individual urban case studies presented in Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination, eds. Sandy Isenstadt, Margaret Maile Petty, and Dietrich Neumann (New York: Routledge, 2015). On England, see Jonathan Taylor, “Georgian and Victorian Street Lighting.” www.buildingconservation.com. Accessed December 6, 2021. https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/ street-lighting/street-lighting.htm. On Baltimore, see “Competition to Edison’s Lamp,” Lighting a Revolution. Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Accessed January 15, 2022. https://americanhistory.si.edu/ lighting/19thcent/comp19.htm. On Spain, see Alberto Guerrero Fernández, “Primeras luces de Madrid,” Manual formativo de ACTA 52 (2009): 21–27. 12 On electricity in the eighteenth century, see Paola Bertucci, “Sparks in the Dark: The Attraction of Electricity in the Eighteenth Century,” Endeavour 31 (2007): 88–93; Mary Fairclough, Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740– 1840 (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017). 13 Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night, 13. 14 Nye, American Illuminations, 3.

Introduction  21 15 The gendering of violence in Bologna in different times of day and spaces, for example, evidences the new reality in the shadows. See Sanne Muurling and Marion Pluskota, “The Gendered Geography of Violence in Bologna, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries,” in The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, ed. Deborah Simonton (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 153–163. 16 Michael Baxandall, Shadows and Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 32. 17 Edensor, “The Gloomy City,” 425, 428. 18 Recent histories that revise the Enlightenment include John V. Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013); Carolyn Purnell, The Sensational Past. How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017); Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 (United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 2020). 19 Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, 11. 20 Elisabeth Bronfen takes The Magic Flute and its protagonist the Queen of the Night as key points of reference to explain in her study Night Passages how “our modern idea of the night was in fact constructed by an Enlightenment that sought to deplore it by exiling it from the realm of reason.” Elisabeth Bronfen, Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature and Film, trans. Elisabeth Bronfen and David Brenner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 2. 21 On the sublime, see Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 4th ed. (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1764); Suzy Halimi, “La nuit dans l’esthétique des Lumières: réflexions sur A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) d’Edmund Burke,” in La nuit dans l'Angleterre des Lumières, ed. Suzy Halimi (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009), 79–94. On the concept of chiaroscuro, see Mark Darlow and Marion Lafouge, “Introduction,” in “Clair-obscur,” eds. Mark Darlow and Marion Lafouge, special issue, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 4 (2014): 427–441. 22 On eighteenth-century nocturnal sociability, see Conlin, “Big City, Bright Lights?” 23 Irene Rodríguez Cachón, “Temas y motivos de los discursos en prosa de la Academia de Nocturnos de Valencia (1591–1594),” Edad de Oro 39 (2020): 161, n.7. 24 See Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Inventors of the Modern World, 1730–1810 (London: Faber and Faber, 2010). 25 “Traveling at Night in the 18th Century,” Jane Austen’s World Blog, April 12, 2008, accessed December 6, 2021, https://janeaustensworld.com/2008/04/12/ lighting-the-roads-at-night-in-the-18th-centur/. 26 Mimi Helman, “Enchanted Night: Decoration, Sociability, and Visuality after Dark,” in Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Charissa Bremer-David (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 111. On cicisbeo, see Carmen Martín Gaite, Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España (Madrid: Anagrama, 1987) and Roberto Bizzocchi, Cicisbei: Morale privata e identità nazionale in Italia (Venice: Editorial Latterza, 2008). 27 On the night in eighteenth-century poetry, see Charles Peake, Poetry of the Landscape and the Night (London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 1967); Chris Fitter, “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre,” Early Modern Literary Studies 3, no. 2 (September 1997): 2.1–61, accessed July 9, 2021, https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/03-2/fittnoct.html; Christopher R. Miller,

22  Pamela F. Phillips The Invention of Evening: Perception and Time in Romantic Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Irene Gómez Castellanos, “De lo diurno a lo nocturno: la poesía de Meléndez Valdés,” eHumanista 22 (2012): 252–271; Cynthia Williams, “Napoleon, An English Poet, and the Gas Lighting of London,” The 18th-Century Common, April 9, 2018, accessed July 9, 2021, www.18thcenturycommon.org/williams. 28 C. P. Moritz, Travels in England in 1782 (London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1886), 28. 29 Quoted in Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 133. 30 Andrew Blayney, Narrative of a Forced Journey through Spain and France as a Prisoner of War in the Years 1810 to 1814 (London: E. Kerby, Bookseller and Stationer, 1814), I:151. 31 See Matthew Beaumont, Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London (London: Verso Books, 2015). Standing out among the works of nocturnal spectatorship is Nicolas-Anne-Edmé Rétif de La Bretonne’s Les nuits de Paris (1788–1794), a documentary novel of Parisian life on the eve of the Revolution. On the emergence of the nocturnal flâneur, see Jonathan Conlin, “‘This Publick Sort of Obscurity’: The Origins of the Flâneur in London and Paris, 1660–1780,” in The Flâneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives, ed. Richard Wrigley (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 23–26. 32 Richard Steele, The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3:330–331. 33 Robert Williams, “Night Spaces. Darkness, Deterritorialization, and Social Control,” Space and Culture 11, no. 4 (November 2008): 514. 34 On Anthropology and the night, see Burkhard Schnepel and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Introduction: ‘When Darkness Comes…’: Steps toward an Anthropology of the Night,” Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 51 (2005): 153–163; Jacques Galinier, et al., “Anthropology of the Night: Cross-Disciplinary Investigations,” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (December 2010): 819–847. On Archaeology and the night, see Maureen Dowd and Robert Hensey, eds., The Archaeology of Darkness (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016); Nancy Gonlin and April Nowell, eds., Archaeology of the Night: Life after Dark in the Ancient World (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018). 35 The International Night Studies Network maintains the listserv NIGHT STUDIES ([email protected]) and the blog by the same name (https://nightologists.hypotheses.org/), and organizes an International Conference on Night Studies. 36 Brigitte Steger and Lodewijk Brunt, “Introduction: Into the Night and the World of Sleep,” in Night-Time and Sleep in Asia and the West: Exploring the Dark Side of Life, eds. Brigitte Steger and Lodewijk Brunt (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 3. On the call to formalize Night Studies, see Christopher C. M. Kyba, et al., “Night Matters—Why the Interdisciplinary Field of ‘Night Studies’ Is Needed,” Multidisciplinary Scientific Journal 3  (2020): 1–6. This manifesto proposes naming this field of study “nyctology,” or the “study of night matters” (Kyba, et al., 4). 37 Will Straw, Luc Gwiazdzinski, and Marco Maggioli, “The Emerging Field of ‘Night Studies’: Steps toward a Genealogy,” in Night Studies: Regards croisés sur les nouveaux visages de la nuit, eds. Luc Gwiazdzinski, Marco Maggioli, and Will Straw (Grenoble: Editions Elya, 2020), 2, 3–4. 38 Ibid., 7. 39 Ibid., 9.

Introduction  23 40 Robert Shaw, “Beyond Night-Time Economy: Affective Atmospheres of the Urban Night,” Geoforum 51, no. 1 (2014): 93. See Edensor, “The Gloomy City,” 431. 41 See Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013). Bogard numbers the chapters of his book in accordance with the Bortle scale, a tool designed by John E. Bortle to measure the darkness of the night sky. 42 Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (I), trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (London and New York: Continuum Books, 2008), 68. 43 Marc Armengaud, Mattias Armengaud, and Alessandra Cianchetta, Nightscapes, Paisajes nocturnos (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2009), 16. 44 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night; Murray Melbin, Night as Frontier: Colonizing the World after Dark (New York: Free Press, 1987); Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire; A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York: Norton, 2005); Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the History of Transgression (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000); Alain Cabantous, Histoire de la nuit: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 2009). 45 Ekirch, At Day’s Close, xxv. 46 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 137–139. On the scheduling of royal celebrations in the nighttime hours, see Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 97. 47 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 7–8. 48 Ibid., 96. 49 Melbin, Night as Frontier. 50 David Nye references limitations in Schivelbusch’s research as a starting point for his study American Illuminations; see Nye, American Illuminations, 2–4. 51 See Ekirch, At Day’s Close, 227. 52 Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 2. 53 Ibid., 2–3. 54 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Writings and Other Interviews 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 153. 55 Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 165. 56 See Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 81–114; Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 162–166. On the French context, see Benjamin Bothereau, “Illuminated Publics: Representations of Street Lamps in Revolutionary France,” Technology and Culture 61, no. 4 (October 2020): 1045–1075; Darrin M. McMahon, “Illuminating the Enlightenment: Public Lighting Practices in the Siècle des Lumières,” 146–48; Sophie Reculin, “‘Le règne de la nuit désormais va finir’. L’invention et la diffusion de l’éclairage public dans le royaume de France (1697–1789)” (PhD diss., Université Charles de Gaulle–Lille III, 2017). On the Spanish context, see Valérie Molero, “Crisis y orden público en el Madrid de Carlos III: la figura del alcalde de barrio,” in Actes choisis du colloque de Strasbourg “Crise(s) dans le monde ibérique et ibéro-américain”, eds. Erich Fisbach and Philippe Rabaté (June 2013), HispanismeS, no. 4 (June 2014). https://www.hispanistes.fr/index.php/publications/revue-hispanismes?id=554. 57 Palmer, Cultures of Darkness, 454. 58 See Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, eds., The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century (Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2010), xiv. 59 On Spain, see Mario Martínez Gomis, “La noche y los noctámbulos en el siglo XVIII español,” in Fiesta, juego y ocio en la historia: XIV Jornadas de

24  Pamela F. Phillips Estudios Históricos, ed. Angel Vaca Lorenzo (Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2003), 147–171. On the first steps towards illuminating South America, see Samuel J. Martland, “Progress Illuminating the World: Street Lighting in Santiago, Valparaiso and La Plata, 1840–90,” Urban History 29, no. 2 (2002): 223–238; Lillian Briseño and Daniel Pérez Zapico, “La invención de lo nocturno. Por una historia social y cultural de la noche en el mundo iberoamericano, siglos XVIII–XIX,” in Estudos em torno da Noite, ed. Rosa Maria Fina (Lisbon: CLEPUL, 2018), 101–121.

Part I

Nighttime Experiments

2 Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened Night Marine Ganofsky

Introduction The history of night in Europe took a drastic turn during the course of the eighteenth century. In that relatively short period of time, for an increasing number of people, night became enlightened, both literally and metaphorically so. While more and more streets and homes were illuminated, more and more minds were touched by the light of Reason and knowledge. Thanks to this twofold enlightenment, the experience and the idea of night were undergoing a transformation. Roaming the streets at night was becoming safer, staying up indoors more pleasant, and the nocturnal dreads of yore less menacing. Just as ghouls and witches were vanquished by the spirit of the Lumières, so were street-robbers scared away by lanterns. Night was beginning to shake off its menacing reputation. This evolution was, of course, neither a sudden nor a complete metamorphosis. Even our own twenty-first century is not yet completely immune to nocturnal fears, be they imaginary (what is that noise in the dark?) or substantiated by actual dangers (is it safe to be out at this late hour?). Nevertheless, the Age of Enlightenment did bring the first momentous twist to the age-old representation of night as a time of dread: it was reconfiguring it as a time for pleasures. This chapter argues that nowhere is this shift better captured than in French libertine fiction. France, occupying then a central position in Europe both geographically, at the crossroads of Northern and Southern influences, and intellectually, offers an interesting vantage point from which to peruse the transformation of the idea of night in the eighteenth century.1 As for libertine literature, it is exceptionally apt at encapsulating the contemporary enlightenment of nightscapes. This erotic fiction of the Ancien Régime is indeed at once necessarily nocturnal since it revolves around clandestine liaisons bound to seek the cover of darkness, and essentially enlightened since it relies on its authors, readers, and characters being emancipated from prejudices which, for libertines, would-be godliness, chastity, matrimonial fidelity and so forth. So not only does French libertine fiction give us an unparalleled insight into the experience DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-3

28  Marine Ganofsky of nighttime for eighteenth-century men and women, but it also channels the period’s most cutting-edge ideas that were allowing night to be enjoyed as a playground free from old superstitious fears. Furthermore, we will see that libertine fiction acts as a magnifying glass for the way in which enlightened thinkers such as Voltaire related to the unknown. Both libertines and philosophes shared an attraction for what looms in the dark. While the former valued the excitement of a chiaroscuro in their pleasures as in the double entendre of their language, the latter likewise longed to see the naked Truth but conceded that “she” (in French, “la Vérité” is feminine and highly feminized as a desirable “elle”) shall forever remain a tease clad in mysteries. Libertine fiction thus invites us to realize that, when it comes to the historiographical construction of the eighteenth century, even though the concept of darkness has been eclipsed by the luminary symbolism of the “Lumières”/“Enlightenment”/“Illumin ismo”/“Aufklärung”, it was, in fact, a crucial and potentially positive element of the Enlightenment’s imagery. A careful look at the Lumières’ writings and the libertine literature that echoes them reveals that night is not just symbolizing the negative obstacles the light of Reason must obliterate. Rather, a wise thinker would embrace it as a stimulus to future discoveries. Thus, at once literally and symbolically, nightscapes mesmerized the Lumières through all the questions that darkness may incite. Because of this blend of appreciation and uncertainty, the concept of “marvel” is remarkably expedient here to understand what was truly at stake in the transformation of the idea and experience of night in the Age of Enlightenment. In its most common meaning, a “marvel” is indeed something eliciting admiration; it is the superlative beauty we encounter in fairy tales. Yet the marvelous in a text also serves the essential purpose of challenging the limits of knowledge: is the object causing me to marvel supernatural? Or is it natural but beyond my understanding of the rules of physics? The full impact of the Enlightenment on the eighteenth-­ century’s perception of the nocturnal begins to surface when we bring together the scholarship of historians of the night, such as Alain Cabantous, Roger Ekirch, or Craig Koslofsky, who demonstrate how much night changed in but a few decades, and literary studies on the “merveilleux” or the “wonderful” in the eighteenth century.2 These show that because the marvel bemuses its beholders and makes them question what they think they know, it is fully integrated with—rather than rejected by—the Enlightenment’s search for truths that are beyond the easy and the familiar. Examining these matters through the lens of libertine fiction will show that night in eighteenth-century France was a true marvel in and of itself for enlightened minds. We are indeed dealing with night at a moment of profound transition in its history: the moment when it was subjected to both old fears and new illuminations, when it was experienced simultaneously as an object of pleasurable, superlative admiration and as a source

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  29 of endless questions. The Lumières’ and libertines’ shared outlook on the nocturnal resurfaces with a particular clarity when their works are read again together, when Voltaire’s astronomic meditations from Micromégas (1752) and L’Ingénu (1767) are studied alongside Dominique Vivant Denon’s voluptuous nocturne Point de lendemain (No Tomorrow; 1777). Libertine nights play on the dual essence of the marvel: they are as much objects of fascination as they are of hesitation—which is exactly what makes libertine nights “enlightened.” To highlight this duality, the chapter first surveys the nocturnal revels that make up the essence of the eighteenth-century urban nightscape and make it as marvelous as the enchanted land from a fairy tale. Masked balls, illuminated parties, vespertine strolls, moonlight encounters, and midnight suppers feature prominently in the nocturnes of libertine fiction and contribute to the characterization of its sleepless protagonists as emancipated from debilitating fears. After having established the new eighteenth-century nocturnal paradigm, the rest of the chapter will be devoted to the other facet of the marvel, that is, the marvel as an intellectual wonder through its ability to surprise and raise questions. Bringing together the Lumières’ philosophical reflections on the night sky and the libertine take on nocturnal darkness will raise the issue of the temptation posed by obscurity for curious minds. Yet this chapter will also argue that the night that made eighteenth-century thinkers wonder the most may not have been astronomical but, rather, psychological, and that the greatest nocturnal mystery for philosophes and libertines alike was perhaps “the dark night of the soul.”3 The nocturnes of libertine fiction, like the eighteenth century’s enlightened nightscapes, will therefore appear as both wonderful and full of wonder, while the Enlightenment itself will emerge from these nocturnes as both buoyant and full of doubts.

Nocturnal Marvels, Nocturnal Revels Learning to play in the dark is one of the basic lessons given to JeanJacques Rousseau’s imaginary pupil Émile: “we don’t see anyone used to darkness being afraid of it. Here’s another advantage of our night games… Don’t lock your child in a closet. He should laugh as he enters darkness.”4 Once the child realizes that darkness does not harbor monsters, he or she will be able to enjoy the night without any fear. Rousseau’s practical recommendation to tutors and parents can be read as a parable of the whole Enlightenment project, in particular with regard to nighttime during the eighteenth century. Freedom is at stake; so is happiness. The conquest of the night deserves to be regarded as a century’s vindication of the universal and natural right to be happy.5 Two enemies had to be vanquished for men and women to be free to enjoy nighttime: the first was night’s natural darkness; the second was its supernatural demons. Against the latter, enlightened nations would depend on the education of their

30  Marine Ganofsky people. Against the former, progress brought eighteenth-century Europe more efficient and more affordable lighting technologies as well as governments increasingly keen on securing the streets in hours of darkness. As lighting techniques developed in city streets and within average houses, night came alive.6 It turned into the playground of all the century’s merry goers who could afford its pleasures, and staying/waking up late, across Europe. The two-volume book Nocturnal Revels (1779) perfectly sums up the buzzing atmosphere of the “hot” district of Covent Garden in London.7 Pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall were devised to transport their visitors into a nocturnal wonderland where only fear, and perhaps virtue, could not trespass. Likewise in Venice, the carnival tradition made the enlightened nights of locals and grand tourists in search of excitement all the more bustling.8 Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs bring back to life these joyful, noisy Venetian nights when masked lovers rushed through streets and canals.9 As for the French court, it had fully adopted a Southern tradition brought in the sixteenth century by Catherine de Medici from her native Italy where summer nights were balmy.10 Sunset gave way to carousing, not just indoors but outdoors too, in gardens and on boulevards. All that was needed was illuminations—and the more the merrier. On festive evenings, the road from Paris to Versailles was lit with torches that made it not only safe but also quite wonderful to travel to the Palace at night.11 In their palaces, a happy few would display their power by making the night “brighter than the day.”12 Their exploits are by no means anecdotal. The pyrotechnic marvels they summon epitomize the “nocturnalization” of existence across Europe in the early modern period, as Craig Koslofsky explains: In the seventeenth century princes and urban oligarchs alike projected their glory onto the night with illuminations and fireworks displays, while purpose-built baroque theatres could be fully darkened, day or night, to enable the complex “special effects” and illusions of baroque opera or theatre. These practices reveal a new willingness to deploy and manipulate darkness and the night.13 Even when lit up on a superlative level, night retained its illusory, enchantingly confusing atmosphere. Outdoors, spaces were lit by illuminations and fireworks; indoors, crystals, mirrors, silks, velvets, gilding, and pastel hues were used to reflect the tiniest flicker of candlelight.14 Even more modest households were increasingly benefitting from advancement in lighting technologies that allowed people to stay up later, convene more safely, and better reap the many “bounties of the night.”15 This recently acquired liberty to enjoy nighttime is particularly palpable in the libertine literature that dares paint nocturnal pleasures with little to no filter. Prostitution narratives such as those from Thérèse philosophe (1748) or Margot la ravaudeuse (“Margot the Sock Mender”; 1748)—aka

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  31 the French Fanny Hill—bear witness to the fact that busy Parisian nights were turning the French city into the European capital for pleasures.16 At night, the Palais Royal and its Opéra (where the Comédie Française now stands) became the nexus of libertinage, as documented by police records, Parisian chronicles like Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Tableau de Paris (1788) and Nicolas Rétif’s Nuits de Paris (1788–1794), and collections of libertine stories such as Claude Capperonnier’s La Soirée du labyrinthe, débauche d’esprit, suivi du portefeuille galant, par Monsieur*** (1732) or the anonymous Les Soirées du Palais-Royal, ou Les Veillées d’une jolie femme (1762).17 Laughs under the garden’s chestnut trees have replaced fears from a superstitious past. Ladies of the night selling their favors in the shadows are the new witches roaming the streets at night, and with lustful fops eager for fun, they are now the only threats to Christian virtue after sunset (Figure 2.1). A merry text like Le Souper des petits-maîtres (c.1770) brings to life the “petits soupers” (that is, “intimate suppers”) taking place across cities and suburbs around midnight.18 Hedonist youths would invite some

Figure 2.1  Jean-Baptiste-Blaise Simonet, after Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, La Soirée des Thuileries, 1774. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, Transferred from the Library, 1923. Accession Number 23.60.25. Public domain.

32  Marine Ganofsky merry dancer they had met earlier at the Opéra, a flower girl pinched in the street, or high-class prostitutes, to join them for a night of pleasures in a luxurious—but discreet—petite maison. Well-lit boulevards became the place to be seen for a vespertine carriage stroll. The well-to-do could now travel in relative safety from the Left Bank of their hôtels particuliers to the Right Bank where the Opéra was throwing spectacles and public balls. Crowds of hedonists would set out from an Italian play at the fair to a party in a brothel, from a game of cards by candlelight to a tête-à-tête by the moonlight, as we read in Claude Crébillon’s Les Egarements du cœur et de l’esprit (1735–1738) or in its imitator Confessions du comte de*** (1741) by Charles Pinot Duclos.19 Such texts evoke that, for France’s pleasure-seeking elite, night was not characterized by darkness anymore but instead by a marvelous chiaroscuro. Les Soupers de Daphné (1747) celebrates the dazzling splendor of nocturnal garden parties thrown by wealthy financiers in the suburbs, while Jacques Rochette de La Morlière’s Angola (1746) marvels at the brilliance of the fashionable set in their opera houses, palaces, and boudoirs.20 Such nocturnal revels allow libertine authors to point to the fact that night was experienced as a moment of rare freedom at a time in history when sexuality still had to play with strict moral codes. Daytime appears as the realm of public scrutiny, duties, and thereby of frustrations, whereas night features as the relief valve for repressed desires.21 Even an elegant novel like Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) is a testimony to this new nocturnal liberty.22 In his letters, its hero, the Vicomte de Valmont, describes midnight suppers in licentious company, while his female counterpart, the Marquise de Merteuil, recounts in hers how she can at long last live her true libertine life when others sleep. Then, under cover of darkness and of a male disguise sometimes too, she is free to travel across Paris to her suburban petite maison for a night of pleasure with one of her lovers. Thanks to the protection of night, the Marquise can enjoy both public respectability during the day and private gratification in hours of darkness. Yet the happy nights of Laclos’s freethinking rakes also highlight that to enjoy such nocturnal pleasures one needs more than lanterns and candlelight—and therefore money; one also needs an intellectual enlightenment, as does Rousseau’s Émile, to emancipate the mind from all superstitious fears. While public and indoor lighting developed, the light of Reason was also spreading with unprecedented speed in the eighteenth century. Scientists and philosophers were teaching their audience to break free from the shackles of tradition and prejudice by examining every idea afresh. Amongst such prejudice, superstitions were a philosophe’s bête noire. For centuries, these had kept the population in a childlike state, helpless, and at the mercy of imaginary fears.23 They were also responsible for the bad reputation of night, since nocturnal anxieties have

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  33 been—partly—the sad result of Western culture’s “biblical devaluation of darkness” (“dévalorisation biblique de la ténèbre”).24 Nighttime had been made into the realm of witches, vampires, demons, and unfriendly ghosts. For a government and its church, nocturnal terrors had their advantages. They kept the masses quietly at home while scared believers would be dependent on ecclesiastical powers for protection against the nightly menace of demons.25 But for an individual, such terrors could be crippling. Early modern sleeping practices are telling in this respect. Common bedsides were protected from real intruders by a gun and from imaginary ones by a crucifix and/or a Bible. The faithful had been told to watch themselves and fall asleep in fear, as the Devil might sneak into their mind at night through dreams.26 Still, although Reason was spreading its light over Europe, nocturnal fears did not recede everywhere (rural areas remained more superstitious than cities) nor for everyone. Voltaire still marveled in the 1770s: “What! There have been vampires in our own eighteenth century!”27 Neither science nor philosophy had yet explained and rationalized everything. It was work in progress, as the popularity of nocturnal supernatural themes in literature suggests: “The survival in literature of forms that belong to popular culture, the elite’s fondness for magic, the popular craze for religious irrationality, all rather neatly contravene the hypothesis of a definitive mutation.”28 Fearless nights in the early modern period can therefore be interpreted as a direct signal of one’s emancipation from popular superstitions, be it through a philosopher’s wise skepticism or through a libertine’s rejection of the Church’s dogma. The pornographic best seller Dom Bougre, Portier des Chartreux (Dom Bugger, Porter of the Charterhouse; 1741) illustrates this on a magnified level.29 For the enlightened fellows of Dom Bougre’s monastery, night is a time neither for prayers to God nor for fears of the Devil; it is instead a time for freedom and pleasure. Monks and nuns meet nightly for orgies in the chapel. Likewise, at the other end of the eighteenth century, Sadean characters, staunchly atheists and on a nihilistic mission, would prove to their victims that they are the only monsters left haunting their nights. On top of vampires and other evil spirits, night’s astronomic spectacle had for too long been feared rather than admired by the masses. Comets and eclipses were dreaded as heralds of the world’s impending doom until science revealed them to be mere clues to the clockwork of the cosmos. The late seventeenth century paved the way for the popularization of a more rational, less fearful appreciation of the astronomic phenomena that night renders visible, as epitomized by Pierre Bayle’s Pensées sur la comète (Thoughts on the Comet; 1682).30 Far from disenchanting the universe, the light of Reason was enabling men and women to appreciate how marvelous Nature truly is without resorting to metaphysical explanations for these marvels. The enlightened mind’s ability to see such marvels, as if a blindfold had been lifted, is symbolized by a passage from

34  Marine Ganofsky Voltaire’s L’Ingénu (1767) in which his protagonist is amazed by what he is learning about astronomy, albeit from his prison cell: How hard it is, said he, to begin knowing the sky only now that I have been robbed of the right to look at it! Jupiter and Saturn are rolling in these immense spaces; millions of suns are lighting billions of worlds; and in the corner of earth where I have been thrown, there exist beings who deprive me, a seeing and thinking being, of all these worlds that my sight could reach and of the world where God had me born! The light made for all the universe is lost for me.31 The ingénu’s lament over his literal imprisonment by an abusive power has obvious metaphorical undertones—as always with Voltaire. Supported by the Church, the absolutist power in place is depriving individuals of the chance to appreciate the marvels of Nature. Science is celebrated here as a liberation that enables individuals to look up at the stars without fear anymore but, rather, with admiration.

Curiouser and Curiouser: The Nocturnal Wonderland The ingénu’s praise of the scientific enlightenment of the night sky elucidates why the term “wonder” came to take precedence over that of “marvel” in the course of the eighteenth century. It is a subtle shift rather than a U-turn, one for which Voltaire’s French had no real equivalent: “la merveille” remained “la merveille.” Yet the ingénu does signal that the admiration of Nature’s phenomena is now accompanied by an inquisitive stance: that witnessing a wonder, no longer a passive act, now means actively to wonder or, as Sarah Tindal Kareem puts it, “wonder at” now goes with “wonder about.”32 It also hints at the fact that a further step has been taken in severing Nature’s mind-boggling spectacle from the marvel’s etymological kinship with the religious “miracle.” “Marvel” (mirabilia) and “miracle” (miracula) shared the same Latin root in the adjective “mirus” (wonderful). Remarkably enough, it is not a philosophical essay but rather a French libertine story that best encapsulates the Enlightenment’s increasingly dual stance, both admirative and astonished, towards the marvels of the night: Denon’s Point de lendemain (1777).33 In this short narrative, a man recounts a summer night spent with the beautiful Mme de T***. That impromptu adventure is openly labelled as a “wonderful night” (“nuit merveilleuse”) in its 1790s pornographic rewriting, and indeed many elements in the original version of the story contribute to making this one-night affair seem quite fabulous to the young man who remembers it.34 The evening had started normally enough at the Opéra where he was waiting for his mistress the Comtesse de ***

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  35 to arrive, when Mme de T*** quickly and unexpectedly shoved him into her carriage without a word as to where or why she was abducting him: “I was far from expecting how romanesque and extraordinary this encounter would be.”35 It all starts in astonishing, “extraordinary” circumstances. Once arrived at her husband’s domain a few miles from Paris, our narrator and protagonist Damon discovers a splendid palace adorned with superb gardens. He recalls being bewildered by so much architectural beauty which adds to the impression that he has journeyed into a wonderland: “the doors opened: admiration intercepted my answer. I was astonished, ravished; I no longer know what became of me, and I started in good faith to believe in an enchantment.”36 Time and again, his narration is reminiscent of the topos of a young knight erring in a fairy’s castle, like Prince Ahmed in the palace of the fairy Peri-Banou in the Arabian Nights (1704–1717 for the first translation in French), Rinaldo’s enchanted captivity in the magician Armida’s palace in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), or Lanval being led in the dreamlike tent of a mysterious lady in Marie de France’s courtly Lais (late twelfth century). Due attention has also been paid to the role of Mme de T*** in the transformation of what could have been a mere mundane sexcapade into an “enchanting” adventure.37 The lady’s expert manipulation of the situation, her artful and ever decent seduction of the young man, make him feel like everything happens as if by magic rather than by premeditation. The illusion that it is all due to chance (“un hasard”) or to a “divine hand” (“une main divine”) is quasi-perfect—or, at least, good enough to prompt him to suspend his disbelief and abandon himself to the delectable illusion that neither he nor she is fully responsible for their loss of control, and that they are both under an erotic spell that rids the moment of any stain of guilt or premeditation.38 However, besides the fairy-like architecture of the domain and the magic-like charms of Mme de T***, night itself is instrumental in Damon’s feeling that he has been enchanted. This adventure might not have had any marvelous overtone had it taken place during the day. At night, there often is a sense that we are stepping into another dimension, a space-time remote from the realities of daily life. While the rest of the world sleeps, night hawks find themselves in a realm where different laws seem to apply. Public scrutiny is temporarily abolished. Daytime values, duties, and identities all vanish at the threshold of darkness.39 Semi-invisibility encourages behaviors forbidden under the sun, hence night’s reputed leniency towards criminals as towards clandestine lovers: “The moon was setting, and the last of its rays soon took away the veil of a modesty that was becoming, I think, frustrating.”40 Still, it is principally through darkness itself that night “de-realizes” a moment. Shadows summon up the characters’ fantasies to replace the reality they can no longer see: “The night was superb; it allowed things to be half-seen, and it seemed to veil them only the better to let imagination soar.”41 Thanks

36  Marine Ganofsky to night’s semi-darkness, Damon is no longer just strolling with a lady in a mundane garden; they are undertaking a pilgrimage to Cythera: Through the veil of a beautiful summer night, our imagination was turning an island that was in front of our pavilion into an enchanted place…Never have the forests of Gnide been filled with as many lovers as we filled the other bank.42 Michel Baridon has noted that, by conceptualizing night as freeing up imagination from both Reason and reality, Point de lendemain was surfing an eighteenth-century trend: “Vivant Denon’s contemporaries were often enchanted by nocturnal fairy-like magic that would free their imagination.”43 Denon also stresses that night’s shadows provide an erotic supplement to the pleasures they shelter: “The only thing missing was daylight. But darkness could also lend it several charms.”44 Night itself wraps the moment in a seductive aura: “The mysterious torch of night was lighting a pure sky with a very voluptuous chiaroscuro.”45 Denon’s nocturne thus epitomizes the reliance of the libertine art of love on an aesthetics of the tease that perplexingly blurs the frontier between reality and fantasies. Interestingly, the libertine configuration of shadows as irresistibly seductive and as exciting sources of wonders matches the Lumières’ discourse on the unknown. The Enlightenment’s quest for knowledge is often expressed in erotic terms. The frontispiece of Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie shows the advent of a beautiful woman, Truth, clad in semi-transparent veils which Reason and Philosophy are trying to remove (Figure 2.2). After all, the unseen is the very essence of seduction for lovers as for truth-seekers: “what is hidden fascinates.”46 As Jean Baudrillard noted: “the attraction by the void is the essence of seduction, hence the seduction exerted by systems closed upon themselves, impenetrable, opaque.”47 It is not hard to see, then, the attraction that shadows (literal or metaphorical ones) must have exerted on such minds. Although the Enlightenment metaphor adapts to new ends the traditional, Christian, dichotomy of light and darkness to express the urgency of crushing the evil of obscurantism with the light of Reason, the image of night (or darkness) is not always, or not completely, a negative element.48 Rather, it is constitutive of a true philosophe’s quest that evolves by acknowledging the presence of “shadows” in the journey towards “enlightenment.”49 The unseen or the unknown is an incentive rather than an obstacle. As Voltaire puts it, the wisest thinker is a “philosophe ignorant,” that is, a skeptic who knows that he or she does not know everything and is spurred in his or her quest for knowledge precisely by this ignorance.50

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  37

Figure 2.2 Benoît Louis Prévost, after Charles Cochin, Frontispiece of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (detail), 1764 (pinx), 1772 (sculpt). Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE QB-201 (105)-FOL. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.

38  Marine Ganofsky The notion of wonder plays a crucial part in that process: enlightened wisdom requires a readiness to be surprised, unsettled, shocked even, both by how much is left in the dark and by the many marvels that scientific observations or philosophical reflections may unravel. As Baldine Saint Girons explains, it is the very essence of philosophy: “This state (pathos) which consists in marveling at something belongs to a philosopher; philosophy does not begin any differently…Indeed, then like today, it was astonishment (to thaumazein) that shoved the first thinkers towards philosophical speculations.”51 Hence stargazing represents a paradigmatic experience of a philosophe des Lumières’ intellectual journey: the cosmos, which had long been believed to be a measurable enclosure set over the Earth, has now been revealed to be unlimited, infinite, just like the many secrets of Nature itself.52 It is an unsettling experience, yet one which prompts further explorations and teases the eye to see further and the mind to open itself to new—and at times unfathomable—ideas. To a philosophe des Lumières, the night sky mirrors the fact that no matter how much science may progress, or human knowledge expand, there shall always remain dark areas to be explored, pondered at, invisible and incomprehensible. In his philosophical tale Micromégas (1752), Voltaire resorts to the image of the cosmos to express the humility of scientists and philosophers alike when confronted with the wonders of the universe.53 After his journey across stars and planets, Micromégas’s only epiphany is a skeptic one voiced by a follower of John Locke: “I don’t affirm anything, I only believe that there are more possible things than we think.”54 As in a painting’s chiaroscuro where lights and shadows contrast with each other all the better to surprise, and thereby attract, the viewer’s attention, the light of Reason that illuminates certain elements of the night sky also emphasizes just how dark and deep the rest still is.55 It is telling that in Micromégas, Voltaire should present astronomers as the era’s new sorcerers (“des sorciers”): their science itself is a source of wonder.56 Gods and magi, prophets and witches are no longer needed for the world to seem full of marvels. The Age of Enlightenment can therefore rightly be recast as an “age of wonder,” as did Richard Holmes and Sarah Tindal Kareem to correct the unjustified reputation of the eighteenth century as the moment when the West disenchanted the world: “the period did not conceive of enchantment and enlightenment as either/or states of mind, but rather as mental states one might inhabit simultaneously.”57 The Enlightenment’s idiosyncratic perception of science or philosophy as a “wonder” stems from the unique position of the eighteenth century in the intellectual history of the Western world.58 It was a moment of deep transitions: “it is the simultaneous pull, in the Enlightenment, of both a waning lore of magic and superstition and new revelatory systems of modernity, which makes it a period so conducive to wonder.”59 Emmanuelle Sempère likewise explains

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  39 that the period was shifting from one way of thinking about the world to another that never stopped being fascinated by the marvelous. She talks of “a tension, which is often simplified as a conflict, between rationalist progress on the one hand and fondness for beliefs and magical representations on the other.”60 That “tension” or “simultaneous pull” between science/Reason and enchantment/magic is best illustrated by the philosophes’ stance toward the night sky. On the one hand, the darkness confronts them with how much they have to discover, thereby forcing them to wonder about what evades their understanding; on the other hand, this darkness induces suppositions, thereby generating another sort of wonders: those of one’s imagination. The dark spaces of the cosmic night seduce the Lumières not only by teasing their curiosity to discover more but also by inviting them to fill in the blanks of obscurity with their own ideas. This is exactly the same mechanism of seduction attributed to night’s shadows in Point de lendemain: it teases the desire to see more while inviting fantasies to replace invisible realities. Filling in the blanks of a nightscape seems to be a rather universal and eternal instinct, from the ancient mythologies who personified the Night, the Moon, the constellations, through to the Christian imagery that situates Heaven in the highest sphere of the cosmos. This temptation does not vanish with science; quite the contrary, in fact. In the seventeenth century, when the Enlightenment was already dawning over Europe, stargazing philosophers like Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac or Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle had been tempted to fill the night sky with inhabited moons and a “plurality of worlds”: “I can’t get it out of my head that each star could very well be a world. I would not swear that this is true, but I will hold it as true, because it pleases me to believe so.”61 A century later, Micromégas’ astronomic meditations about the wonders of the night sky, just like Point de lendemain’s reflections on the marvels looming in the garden’s shadows, would reprise this central feature of the Enlightened nightscape: while nocturnal obscurity stimulates Reason via curiosity, it also invites Imagination to support Reason’s efforts in making sense of the inexplicable. This is a key issue for the representation and experience of night in the eighteenth century. For educated minds like that of Denon’s lovers, Voltaire’s ingénu, Micromégas or Fontenelle’s stargazers, the night sky has been emptied from its demons as well as from its gods. What used to be thought of as a suffocating yet somewhat reassuring enclosure has been revealed as an anguishing infinity. The nocturne of Point de lendemain evokes this angst when the two lovers notice and fear the silence of the night around them: “Silence came, we heard it, it scared us.”62 The natural instinct is to fill in the blank space of night: with many invisible worlds for the astronomers, or with whirlpools and vortices for Descartes, with noises, actions and imaginary figures for the lovers. Frivolous as it may seem, a libertine nocturne like Point de lendemain therefore exemplifies

40  Marine Ganofsky the French eighteenth century’s “rococo” answer to the unease connected to the discoveries of the Enlightenment: It was deemed rather civilized not to let one be caught in the trap of metaphysical terrors, and eventually to oppose lightness to the past’s gravity…The works of Fontenelle and Marivaux, so often regarded as merely worldly, graceful and frivolous entertainments, can certainly be regarded as emblematic of that series of (narcissistic or symbolic) shocks and ‘wounds’.63 Point de lendemain’s lovers’ instinct to fill up the shadows of nighttime with fancies belongs to what Emmanuelle Sempère calls the eighteenth century’s transition from “marvels” to “worry.”64 It evokes the fact that the Enlightenment’s “never-ending wonder,” its skeptic method, may generate a certain anxiety when nothing is certain anymore.65 Underneath the charms of the nocturnal marvel, the hero of Point de lendemain indeed detects the disquiet arising from a constant state of wonder. Could it all be just a midsummer night’s dream? Even though the morning air eventually brings some lucidity after the “enchantment” of last night—“Everything escapes me as quickly as waking up destroys a dream…The coolness and pure air of this moment gradually calmed my imagination and chased away the marvelous. Instead of an enchanted nature, I only saw a naïve nature”—, it remains unclear how we should interpret that “dream”: “I did try to find the morality of all this adventure and…I did not find any.”66 Damon’s dreamlike comparison is far from inadvertent for an enlightened text of the late eighteenth century. By then, dreams had been revealed as productions of the sleeper’s mind.67 No longer were they believed to be triggered by God or Satan; they were now thought to arise from the inscrutable depths of the self.68 In fact, the most perplexing marvel for thinkers of the Enlightenment is probably that inner night we all carry within. And the biggest wonder for the young hero of Point de lendemain is, in fact, his own self (his readiness to be seduced, his ability to leave love aside, his freedom to enjoy a moment knowing it would have no tomorrow, the magnitude of his pleasure etc.) during that marvelous night. Night is once again experienced as a repository of wonders, even when the attention shifts from the cosmos to the human psyche. It is at night, in the solitude of one’s bedroom or in the unconsciousness of a dream, when neither Reason nor virtue can hush all too human drives, that human mysteries can be partly revealed.69 While Diderot pays attention to what may be revealed by d’Alembert’s dreams, libertine fiction—daring by nature—taunts decorum, takes its readers beyond closed doors, and likewise allows us to eavesdrop the secrets to be heard by one’s bedside.70 In his first published story Le Sylphe (1730), Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon explores the nocturnal wonder that is a lady’s erotic dream.71

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  41 In a letter to her friend, Mme de *** recounts how a sylph visited her bedroom the previous night and seduced her despite her virtue, her reason, and her proclamations that she could only ever surrender to love rather than to lust. The events of that night, however, make her wonder not so much about whether the sylph’s apparition was real or imaginary, but rather, and more profoundly, about whether she may have longed for such a seduction: “It isn’t natural that I should have thought what you are about to hear, all the ideas you will find here have never been familiar to me.”72 Those nocturnal investigations into the dark mysteries of the human mind may start as a libertine trope meant to lay bare some erotic indiscretions, yet below their frivolous surfaces, they reprise the wondering stance of enlightened philosophers on what moves individuals and, thus, societies. Night not only provides occasions for the silenced voice of desire to speak through Goya’s “dreams of reason” or Fuseli’s “nightmares”; what nighttime reveals is, in itself, quite “nocturnal,” very dark, and mysterious indeed. The Marquis de Sade infamously undertook to look at the human machine without any filter by staging where desires lead those who do not care to frustrate themselves: “This has to do with the history of the human heart, and it is precisely the object of our work.”73 And what he discovers in that human heart is “very black and very evil.”74 At the same time as Sade, at the very end of the eighteenth century, Mozart and Schikaneder were also configuring the self’s irrational, unknowable “Shadow” (to reprise Carl Gustav Jung’s concept) as a nocturnal entity. Their Magic Flute’s Queen of the Night embodies that, for this new generation of thinkers and artists, for these children of the Enlightenment, the most puzzling wonders of the night would be those that lie underneath each individual’s civilized surfaces.75 Buried deep below a lifetime of frustrations, there lies a pit of passions as infinite, obscure, and “­wonder-full” as the enlightened night itself.

Conclusion This chapter showed that France’s enlightened nightscapes can best be observed in libertine fiction. The erotic adventures of its characters take us through eighteenth-century nightlife, showcasing the concrete liberation from nocturnal fears and the lighting up of streets and homes, while also emphasizing all the questions that remain vivid at night for an enlightened mind: What lurks in the shadows? How do I know that I know? And—even—who am I? Because of all this, the representation of nighttime in libertine fiction mirrors the experience of night for the Lumières: it is as much a delightful marvel as it is a bewildering wonder. Yet, by highlighting that duality in the eighteenth-century experience and conceptualization of night, libertine authors also point to some of the deep-seated vulnerabilities of the Age Enlightenment. Far from the image

42  Marine Ganofsky often brandished even today of a bombastically confident new way of thinking, the Lumières appear haunted by doubts, still sometimes tempted by—or at least always acutely aware of—the comforting illusions of the past that used to fill darkness with easy explanations. Looking at the enlightened nightscape as an object of marvel reveals how much the scientists, philosophers, and artists of the times were conscious of their ignorance despite all their discoveries and all the progress achieved. This reflection on nocturnal marvels as seen by libertines has also shown just how instrumental this ignorance was for the Lumières. Darkness stopped being configured as an obstacle for them. They confronted it headfirst, ready to face whatever anguishing void there might be beyond the visible. They accepted that Nature, like the night sky, would keep most of its secrets. Their knowledge was teased, rather than daunted, by the unknown. Enlightened as they were, they never stopped to marvel. The pleasures reaped under cover of darkness in libertine fiction are perhaps the best illustration of the fact that the Age of Enlightenment was neither ready, nor willing to “disenchant” the world. Crucially, emblematically, the enlightened nightscape remained, for poets as for scientists, for libertine lovers as for astronomers, an object of enchantment.

Notes 1 Marc Fumaroli, Quand l’Europe parlait français (Paris: Fallois, 2001), 24; Friedrich Nietszche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 186. 2 See Alain Cabantous, Histoire de la nuit: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 2009); Roger A. Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005); Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Francis Dubost, La merveille médiévale (Paris: Champion, 2016); Aurélia Gaillard and Jean-René Valetten, ed., La Beauté du merveilleux (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2011); Emmanuelle Sempère, De la merveille à l’inquiétude: le registre du fantastique dans la fiction narrative du dix-huitième siècle (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009). As Sarah Tindal Kareem and Richard Holmes show very well in their respective studies, the use of the term “wonder” comes to dominate that of “marvel” in the eighteenth century. This chapter will nevertheless use the term “marvel,” which bears more openly its connection with the medieval “marvel” and therefore has a greater ambivalence than “wonder,” and since “marvel” connects directly to the fairy-like nature of enchantment. In this respect, “marvel” also has the advantage of offering the closest match to the French “merveille,” not just in terms of etymology but, more importantly, in terms of meaning. See Sarah Tindal Kareem, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (New York: Harper Press, 2009). 3 I reprise the expression from the text The Dark Night of the Soul (c.1578– 1579) by the mystic Saint John of the Cross.

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  43 4 “On ne voit plus avoir peur dans l’obscurité quiconque est accoutumé d’y être. Voilà donc pour nos jeux de nuit un autre avantage…N’allez pas enfermer votre enfant dans un cachot. Qu’il rie en entrant dans l’obscurité.” JeanJacques Rousseau, Émile, ou De l’éducation (1762), in Rousseau: Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–1995), 4:385; all translations are my own unless otherwise specified. 5 Robert Mauzi, L’Idée du bonheur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises au dix-huitième siècle (Geneva: Slatkine, 1990), 80–81. 6 Ekirch, At Day’s Close, 324. 7 Hallie Rubenhold, The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris’s List (London: Penguin, 2012). 8 See Gilles Bertrand, “Masque et séduction dans la Venise de Casanova,” Dixhuitième siècle 31 (1999): 407–408, and, by the same, Histoire du carnaval de Venise (Paris: Pygmalion, 2013), 10. 9 Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma vie (1789–1798), eds. Gérard Lahouati and Marie-Françoise Luna (Paris: Gallimard, 2015). 10 Jacqueline Boucher, “La nuit dans l’imagination des derniers Valois,” in Penser la nuit (XVe – XVIIe siècles), ed. Dominique Bertrand (Paris: Champion, 2003), 413. 11 François Bluche, La Vie quotidienne au temps de Louis XVI (Paris: Hachette, 1980), 85. 12 “Nuit plus brillante que le jour.” Pierre Floriot, Morale chrétienne, rapportée aux instructions que Jésus-Christ nous a données dans l'oraison dominicale (1674), quoted by Gérard Genette in “Le jour, la nuit,” Langages 12 (1968): 39. 13 Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 276. 14 Maureen Dillon, Artificial Sunshine: A Social History of Domestic Lighting (London: National Trust, 2002), 68–69. 15 William T. O’Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958). See also Stanley Wells, Period Lighting (London: Pelham, 1975); as per the title of Pierre Nicolas André-Murville’s collection of gallant poems Les Bienfaits de la nuit (Paris: Monory, 1774). 16 Jean-Baptiste de Boyer d’Argens, Thérèse philosophe, ou Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du P. Dirrag et de Mlle Éradice (1748), in Romanciers libertins du dix-huitième siècle, ed. Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), I:867–977; Louis Charles Fougeret de Monbron, Margot la ravaudeuse (1748), in Romanciers libertins du dix-huitième siècle, ed. Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), I:801–863. 17 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (1788), ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet (Paris: Mercure de France, 1998); Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne, Les Nuits de Paris, ou Le Spectateur nocturne (1788–1794), in Paris le jour, Paris la nuit: Louis Sébastien Mercier: Tableau de Paris, Le Nouveau Paris; Rétif de la Bretonne: Nuits de Paris, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Laffont, 1990), 617– 1239; Claude Capperonnier, La Soirée du labyrinthe, débauche d’esprit, suivi du portefeuille galant, par Monsieur *** (Paris: Charles Guillaume, 1732); Jullien Desboulmiers, Les Soirées du Palais-Royal, ou Les Veillées d’une jolie femme (Paris: Sous l’arbre de Cracovie, 1762). 18 Jean François Cailhava d’Estendoux, Le Souper des petits-maîtres, ouvrage moral (ca. 1770), in Petits soupers libertins, ed. Marine Ganofsky (Paris: Société française d’études du dix-huitième siècle, 2016), 109–235. 19 Claude Crébillon, Les Egarements du cœur et de l’esprit (1735–1738), in Crébillon: Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Sgard (Paris: Garnier, 1999-2002), II:67–247; Charles Pinot Duclos, Confessions du comte de *** (1741), in Romans libertins du dix-huitième siècle, ed. Raymond Trousson (Paris: Laffont, 1993), 181–264.

44  Marine Ganofsky 20 Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon, Les Soupers de Daphné (1747), in Petits soupers libertins, ed. Marine Ganofsky (Paris: Société française d’études du dix-huitième siècle, 2016), 41–76; Jacques Rochette de La Morlière, Angola, histoire indienne (1746), in Romanciers libertins du dix-huitième siècle, ed. Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), I:673–799. 21 Marine Ganofsky, Night in Eighteenth-Century French Libertine Fiction (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2018). 22 Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), in Laclos: Œuvres complètes, ed. Laurent Versini (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 1–386. 23 Lucette Pérol, “La notion de superstition de Furetière au Dictionnaire de Trévoux et à l’Encyclopédie,” in La Superstition à l’âge des Lumières, ed. Bernard Dompnier (Paris: Champion, 1998), 71. 24 Dominique Bertrand, “Introduction,” in Penser la nuit (XVe–XVIIe siècles), ed. Dominique Bertrand (Paris: Champion, 2003), 9. 25 Ekirch, At Day’s Close, 36. 26 Philippe Martin, “Corps en repos ou corps en danger? Le sommeil dans les livres de piété (seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle),” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuse 80, no. 2 (2000): 250. 27 “Quoi! C’est dans notre propre dix-huitième siècle qu’il y a eu des vampires!” Voltaire, Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (1766), eds. Nicholas Cronk and Christiane Mervaud, in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire 37, no. 43 (2018): 416. 28 “La survivance dans la littérature des formes propres à la culture populaire, le recours dans l’élite à des pratiques de magie, l’engouement populaire pur l’irrationnel religieux démentent assez nettement l’hypothèse d’une mutation définitive.” Jean-Marie Goulemot, “Démons, merveilles et philosophie à l’âge classique,” SVEC 161 (1980): 1014. 29 Jean-Charles Gervaise de Latouche, Histoire de dom B[ougre], portier des chartreux, écrite par lui-même (1741), in Romanciers libertins du dixhuitième siècle, ed. Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), I:333–496. 30 Pierre Bayle, Pensées diverses écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne à l’occasion de la Comète qui parut au mois de décembre 1680 (1682), in Libertins du dixseptième siècle, ed. Jacques Prévot (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), II:765–1182. 31 Qu’il est dur, disait-il, de ne commencer à connaître le ciel que lorsqu’on me ravit le droit de le contempler! Jupiter et Saturne roulent dans ces espaces immenses; des millions de soleils éclairent des milliards de mondes; et dans le coin de terre où je suis jeté, il se trouve des êtres qui me privent, moi être voyant et pensant, de tous ces mondes où ma vue pourrait atteindre, et de celui où Dieu m’a fait naître! La lumière faite pour tout l’univers est perdue pour moi. Voltaire, L’Ingénu (1767), in Voltaire: Romans et contes, ed. Frédéric Deloffre (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 268. 32 Kareem, The Reinvention of Wonder, 10. 33 Dominique Vivant Denon, Point de lendemain (1777), in Vivant Denon “Point de lendemain” suivi de Jean-François de Bastide “La Petite Maison”, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 71–104. 34 Anon., La Nuit merveilleuse, ou Le Nec plus ultra du plaisir (ca. 1790), in “Point de lendemain” suivi de “La Nuit merveilleuse,” ed. Paul Emmanuel Auguste Poulet-Malassis and Jean-Jacques Pauvert (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993), 61–113. 35 “J’étais loin de m’attendre à tout ce que cette rencontre allait avoir de romanesque et d’extraordinaire.” Denon, Point de lendemain, 74.

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  45 36 “Les portes s’ouvrirent: l’admiration intercepta ma réponse. Je fus étonné, ravi; je ne sais plus ce que je devins, et je commençai de bonne foi à croire à l’enchantement.” Ibid., 94. 37 Catherine Cusset, “A Lesson of Decency. Pleasure and Reality in Vivant Denon’s No Tomorrow,” in The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Michael Feher (Boston: MIT Press, 1997), 725. 38 Denon, Point de lendemain, 76, 77, 80 (“un hasard”) and 74 (“une main divine”). 39 Henri Lafon, “Nocturnes,” in Le Dix-huitième siècle, histoire, mémoire et rêve: mélanges offerts à Jean Goulemot, ed. Didier Masseau (Paris: Champion, 2006), 321. 40 “La lune se couchait, et le dernier de ses rayons emporta bientôt le voile d’une pudeur qui, je crois, devenait importune.” Denon, Point de lendemain, 86. 41 “La nuit était superbe; elle laissait entrevoir les objets, et semblait ne les voiler que pour donner plus d’essor à l’imagination.” Ibid., 78. 42 “à travers le crêpe transparent d’une belle nuit d’été, notre imagination faisait, d’une île qui était devant notre pavillon, un lieu enchanté…Jamais les forêts de Gnide n’ont été si peuplées d’amants, que nous en peuplions l’autre rive.” Ibid., 87. 43 “Les contemporains de Vivant Denon se sont souvent enchantés de fééries nocturnes qui libéraient leur imagination.” Michel Baridon, “L’amour et l’enchantement du paysage dans Point de lendemain ou La Nuit merveilleuse,” in Vivant Denon: Colloque de Chalon-sur-Saône (7–8 May 2001), eds. Francis Claudon and Bernard Bailly (Chalon: Comité Vivant Denon, 2001), 238. 44 “Il ne lui manquait plus que la clarté du jour. Mais l’obscurité pouvait aussi lui prêter quelques charmes.” Denon, Point de lendemain, 85. 45 “Le flambeau mystérieux de la nuit éclairait un ciel pur d’un demi-jour très voluptueux.” Ibid., 76. 46 “Le caché fascine.” Jean Starobinski, L’Œil vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 9. 47 “L’attraction par le vide est au fond de la séduction, d’où la séduction opérée par les systèmes fermés sur eux-mêmes, impénétrables, opaques.” Jean Baudrillard, De la séduction (Paris: Galilée, 1979), 108. 48 Roland Mortier, Clartés et ombres du siècle des Lumières: études sur le dixhuitième siècle littéraire (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 22. 49 Michel Delon, “Les Lumières: travail d’une métaphore,” SVEC 152 (1976): 527–541. Jean Sgard, “La métaphore nocturne,” in Éclectisme et cohérence des Lumières: mélanges offerts à Jean Ehrard, ed. Jean-Louis Jam (Paris: Nizet, 1992), 249–255. 50 Voltaire, Le Philosophe ignorant (1766), in Voltaire: Mélanges, ed. Jacques Van den Heuvel (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 859–912. 51 “Cet état (pathos) qui consiste à s’émerveiller est tout à fait d’un philosophe; la philosophie ne débute pas autrement…Ce fut, en effet, l’étonnement (to thaumazein) qui poussa, comme aujourd’hui, les premiers penseurs aux spéculations philosophiques.” Baldine Saint-Girons, “Le beau, le sublime et le merveilleux. La révolution burkienne,” in La Beauté du merveilleux, eds. Aurélie Gaillard and Jean-René Valette (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2011), 235. 52 Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976). 53 Voltaire, Micromégas (1752), in Voltaire: Romans et contes, ed. Frédéric Deloffre (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 19–37.

46  Marine Ganofsky 54 “Je n’affirme rien, je me contente de croire qu'il y a plus de choses possibles qu’on ne pense.” Ibid., 36. 55 Christian Biet, “Les impasses de la lumière: le clair-obscur,” in Le Siècle de la lumière, eds. Christian Biet and Vincent Jullien (Paris: Ophrys, 1997), 236. 56 Voltaire, Micromégas, 35. 57 Kareem, The Reinvention of Wonder, 18. 58 Holmes, The Age of Wonder. 59 Kareem, The Reinvention of Wonder, 15. 60 “une tension, qu’on simplifie souvent en un conflit entre progrès du rationalisme et attachement aux croyances et aux représentations magiques”. Sempère, De la merveille à l’inquiétude, 18. 61 See Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune—Les États et Empires du Soleil (c. 1650), ed. Jacques Prévot (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). “Je me suis mis dans la tête que chaque étoile pourrait bien être un monde. Je ne jurerais pourtant pas que cela fût vrai, mais je le tiens pour vrai, parce qu'il me fait plaisir à croire.” Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686–1687), in Libertins du dix-septième siècle, ed. Jacques Prévot (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), II:1196. 62 “Le silence vint, on l’entendit (car on entend quelquefois le silence): il effraya.” Denon, Point de lendemain, 80. 63 Il est d’un civilisé de ne pas se laisser prendre au piège des terreurs métaphysiques et d’opposer éventuellement le badinage aux graves postures du passé…De cette série d’ébranlements et de ‘blessures’ (narcissiques ou symboliques), les œuvres de Fontenelle et de Marivaux, si longtemps tenues pour des divertissements mondains, gracieux et frivoles, peuvent sans doute être tenues pour emblématiques. Violences du rococo, eds. Jacques Berchtold, René Demoris, and Christophe Martin (Bordeaux: Presses de l’Université de Bordeaux, 2012), 12–13. 64 Sempère, De la merveille à l’inquiétude. 65 Jacques Deprun, La Philosophie de l’inquiétude en France au dix-huitième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1979). 66 Tout m’échappe avec la même rapidité que le réveil détruit un songe…La fraîcheur et l’air pur de ce moment calmèrent par degrés mon imagination, et en chassèrent le merveilleux. Au lieu d’une nature enchantée, je ne vis qu’une nature naïve”; “Je cherchai bien la morale de toute cette aventure et…je n’en trouvai point. Ibid., 97, 104. 67 Robert Muchembled, Une Histoire du diable (XIIe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 197. 68 Ralph Dekoninck, “Du rêve visionnaire à la vision onirique,” in La Renaissance et le rêve. Bosch, Véronèse, Greco…, ed. Alessandro Cecchi et al. (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2013), 31; Irène Salas, “Visions cauchemardesques,” in La Renaissance et le rêve. Bosch, Véronèse, Greco…, 41. 69 Gerald Gillespie, “The Fine Art of Erotic Dreaming in Eighteenth-Century Literature,” in The Dream and the Enlightenment/Le Rêve et les Lumières, eds. Bernard Dieterle and Manfred Engelfsche (Paris: Champion, 2003), 289–307. 70 Denis Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert (written in 1769), in Diderot: Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 342–444. 71 Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, Le Sylphe (1730), in Crébillon: Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Sgard (Paris: Garnier, 1999–2002), I: 23–37. 72 “Il n’est pas naturel que j’aie pensé ce que vous allez entendre, toutes les idées que vous y trouverez ne m’ont jamais été familières. Oh, assurément! je n’ai pas rêvé.” Ibid., 24.

Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened  47 73 “Ceci tient à l’histoire du cœur humain, et c’est à cela particulièrement que nous travaillons.” Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Les Cent vingt journées de Sodome (written in 1785), in Sade: Œuvres, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), I:25. 74 “Un esprit très noir et très méchant.” Ibid., 21. 75 Elisabeth Bronfen, Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature and Film, trans. Elisabeth Bronfen and David Brenner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 15.

3 Abysms on Open View Terrestrial Expressions of Preternatural Darkness and Heavenly Night Kevin L. Cope

No discipline would seem less open to flashy surprises or calibration to conventional clocks than geology, a field in which epochs are the shortest significant intervals. The Earth, however, never hesitated to intrude on daily life in the Augustan age. The geologically active eighteenth-century Earth pummeled its denizens with earthquakes, eruptions, landslides, cave-ins, and assorted subterranean calamities, a preponderance of which occurred at night. Explorers turned up a plethora of darkness-enshrouded underground prodigies, whether gorgeous caves or teeming geysers or hidden hermits’ grottos. The colossal scale and unpredictable schedule of these discoveries and upheavals trivialized human chronology and overwhelmed fledgling modern science. They proclaimed the incongruence of human timing with planetary processes. Such prodigies insinuated that the big reforms bruited by the optimistic Enlightenment were occurring not only in books, galleries, streets, and salons but also underground, in a world where light never penetrates—where night never ends. The following pages will explore the dark but revelatory subterranean Enlightenment: an environment where evidence and experience are both more and less than they seem; where normal patterns and rhythms of day, night, light, and dark undergo revision; where literature and art express what cannot be seen or is not quite what it seems; and where the colloquial and the sublime come together to adapt the grandiose aspirations of Enlightenment intellectuals to the tea-table chatter of cottagers. This chapter will show how what explorers, scientists, writers, and artists of the period regarded as firmly empirical was also wondrously apparitional: how, in everything from field reports to panegyrical odes, experience appears, in the process revealing or communicating something surprising—and how revelatory experience was at its most intense when bursting through night or darkness.

The Surprising Entry into Night Geological turmoil can occur anywhere, albeit usually not where one happens to be. Earthquakes sometimes rattle big European cities like DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-4

Abysms on Open View  49 Lisbon, but more frequently they strike faraway Caribbean islands or arctic tundra or remote mountain ranges. The first lesson of long-­ eighteenth-century geology is the synonymy of “anywhere” with “everywhere”: the recognition that disasters like those besetting indigenous people living alongside distant Chimborazo could just as easily upend one’s grandmother in Oxford or one’s brother in Seville. This convergence of the exotic, the foreign, and the “other” with the nearby and familiar partly explains the popularity of scientific and anthropological writing about distant disasters, a genre that filled the eighteenth-century publishers’ lists despite the low probability that readers of the period would ever visit the relevant beleaguered locales. Drawing together the remote with the recognized brings us to the opening setting for this study of the mineral-enabled night: distant but nevertheless European Iceland, a burning basaltic island abounding in volcanos, earthquakes, geysers, and caves. Arctic adventurer Arthur Dillon recorded, in 1840, the sudden, simultaneous onset of darkness and disaster in this chilly land: The third and greatest calamity, was the unparalleled eruption of several volcanos in 1783. The waters of the river Skaptaa were suddenly dried up, and a torrent of liquid fire rolled in their stead. This was followed soon after by other streams of lava, that came down with such rapidity as to drive the inhabitants from their houses: frequent earthquakes were felt; and a phenomenon, not before witnessed in such cases, appeared in the form of a dense cloud, that covered the whole island, and involved it in total darkness.1 Material to Dillon’s account is his resonating use of the plural. Dillon invokes volcanos, waters, inhabitants, earthquakes, and assorted masses of lava, liquid fire, and cloud cover. No single pop-up event, the 1783 eruption headlines an expanding roster of dramatic geological experiences, including the quick enveloping of the island in a “dense cloud” yielding “total darkness.” These cascading events disclose the startling proximity of night: the possibility that darkness might come along at any moment owing to any of several causes or knock-on events. In the ultimate stress test for empiricism and the new science, Dillon suggests that experience might instantly darken or disappear. The unscheduled arrival of night was not restricted to the chilly north. In 1704, two volcanos tore out of the earth in Tenerife, kicking up so much debris that “the sun was totally obscured by clouds of smoke and flame, which continually increased, and augmented the consternation and terror of the scene.”2 A usually sunny island blurred into a bizarre mix of noon and night. By characterizing this chaotic environment as a “scene,” chronicler Juan de Galindo and his English translator George Glas point up the convergence of the visible and the invisible. Striking

50  Kevin L. Cope events calling for landscape and history paintings transpire as new volcanos rise apocalyptically from the ground, yet the obscured sun and pitchy sky dim the light and limit visibility. Evidence-rich yet relentlessly metamorphic, the scene pushes dark and light, experience and imagination into a common frame. These atypical entrances into night were more physical than temporal. Although planetary motion is a physical process, night and day normally seem to track the intangible progress of time. The unscheduled evenings in these distant venues resulted instead from gigantic material processes. Physical processes were something with which the empirically-minded eighteenth century could engage. Increasing travel and technological improvements during the period allowed underground tourism, especially the visiting of caves, to become fashionable among those with financial means and scientific curiosity. Access to the underground afforded the possibility of moving from day to night at any time through the physical action of descent. With improving access to a world beyond the reach of the sun came a new understanding of night as something that one enters rather than awaits. Entering spaces where dark and light eschew regular scheduling became a favorite literary and artistic trope. Charles Cotton, a pioneer in the forgotten genre of versified topographical comedy, awkwardly blends amazement with loathing while experiencing vacillating light levels during his entry into Poole’s Cavern. Thro’ a blind door (which some poor woman there Still keeps the key of, that it may keep her) Men bowing low, take leave of day’s fair light, To crowd themselves into the womb of night, Thro’ such a low and narrow pass, that it For badgers, wolves, and foxes seems more fit; Or for the yet less sorts of chases, than T’ admit the statures and the bulks of men, Could it to reason any way appear, That men could find out any business there. But having fifteen paces crept, or more, Thro’ pointed stones and dirt, upon all four, The gloomy grotto lets men upright rise, Altho’ they were six times Goliah’s size. There, looking upward, your astonish’d sight Beholds the glory of the sparkling light. Th’ enamel’d roof darts round about the place, With so subduing, but ingrateful rays, As to put out the lights, by which alone They receive lustre, that before had none, And must to darkness be resign’d when they are gone.3

Abysms on Open View  51 The otherwise detached Cotton works hard to slither through a brutally physical environment in order to enter dark subterranean realms. Cotton and company arrive at the cave, approach the door, wriggle through the passage, break out into an underground palace, and then find themselves in the line of fire from light beams shooting from glistening stone to shiny crystal and finally down the corridors of imagination. In minutes, Cotton passes from day to night and into a coruscating chamber where day and night co-exist. The last line in this passage predicts a fourth step, a return to night following the withdrawal of artificial light sources. Rapid alternation between night and day befits Cotton’s verse, which vacillates between scientific report, rough comedy, and occasional sublimity. Multi-level responses to mixed, day–night environments are common enough in the vast corpus of long eighteenth-century cave description. In describing the newly-discovered Spar cave on the Isle of Skye, Kenneth Macleay dilates into a gothic revery: A front more beautifully romantic and wild cannot be conceived, A superb rugged arch opens upon the right, and presents a dark and lonely chasm, which might well have been considered the meet receptacle of deadly fiends. This gloomy portal approaches to the gothic form, but is somewhat irregular, the point of the arch being a more acute angle, with the top reclining to the left.4 In contrast to Charles Cotton, Macleay’s hybrid rhetoric is not a mingling of satire with science and sublimity. Macleay appreciates the cave entrance as a physical icon of the transition from day to night, a stony portal that looks out to the fluid, brilliant imagination of the spectatorial poet while also leading the eye into a “dark and lonely chasm” evoking diverse sublimities such as Milton’s fallen angels or the gothic environments of Anne Radcliffe and Clara Reeve. Dramatizing the entry to the underworld while emphasizing evocative darkness is a specialty of book illustrator William Westall, who, before settling into a career illustrating travel books and gazetteers, had lived a picaresque life that included shipwrecks, run-ins with kangaroos, and forays into India. As part of a suite of illustrations of Yorkshire caves, “scars,” and holes, Westall executed two illustrations of the entrance to Yordas Cave, a small but enchanting cave in the Yorkshire Dales that, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hosted organized tours. Westall’s asymmetrical rendering of the Yordas entrance looks into the cave at a slight angle to deepen the perspective and the sense of motion toward the vanishing point, thereby creating the impression of vast depth (Figure 3.1). The image is composed as a series of receding, deepening, and darkening boxes: an implied open space where the artist seems to stand; an outer entrance area composed of more-or-less rectangular stone walls; what appears to be a first chamber inside the cave, where some visitors hold

52  Kevin L. Cope

Figure 3.1 William Westall, Entrance to Yordas Cave, 1818. Courtesy of The National Library of Scotland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

aloft a torch; and a deep, undefined, dark inner space, from which a batlike creature flies. Overall, the image gives the impression that the viewer is moving ever deeper into the dark cave while (somewhat paradoxically) continuing to enjoy a good view and adequate light. Inside the cave, the torch-bearing tourists and the reflective bat reiterate the alternation of dark and light; in the amalgam, the image celebrates the easy and frequent motion between day and night environments. Indeed, the artist stands in daylight while the tourists, with their torch, have entered the underground equivalent of night. Lest there be any doubt of his enthusiasm for the easy interplay of dark and light, Westall produces a second illustration of the Yordas Cave entrance, this time flipping the viewpoint and looking out from within the cave (Figure 3.2). Once again taking a slightly tilted angle of vision, Westall leads the eye on a torquing trajectory in two directions: toward the luminous, daytime world outside the cave and straight ahead into another deep and dark chamber within the cave. He increases the range of emotional and artistic responsiveness by invoking two contrasting clusters of ideas and images: those associated with light, reason, and day and those associated with dark, mystery, and night. Even if only inadvertently, this illustration sums up much of the idea of the Enlightenment, with its simultaneous emphasis on clearheaded, secular explanation and the exploration of the offbeat, the irregular, and the unknown.

Abysms on Open View  53

Figure 3.2 William Westall, Yordas Cave, Looking Towards the Entrance (1818). Courtesy of The National Library of Scotland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

More than the Sum of Parts: Pebbles of Information Darkness puzzles the empirically minded. The eyes can detect darkness; darkness is sense information. A viewer can see dark areas in the center of William Westall’s engravings; a mariner sailing into the Spar Cave can glimpse an obscured region behind the arch. Yet darkness is indefinite. A dark zone could extend an inch, a mile, or a parsec. A lightless recess could harbor hordes of demons or nothing at all. Provocative darkness encourages the curating of incompleteness and incoherence: the gathering, cataloguing, and discussion of those bits and pieces of information that emerge from dark settings. Some dark data support little more than superstition. In 1693, amateur seismologist Thomas Doolittle compiled page after page of purported, usually unseen earthquake predictors such as turbulent waters hidden in deep wells.5 Although forgotten by the history of science, Doolittle epitomized the habit of gathering and credentialing incremental evidence from the dark depths of the Earth. Detail collectors like Thomas Doolittle fixate on simple underground omens, but more sophisticated researchers such as French earthquake analyst “J. D. R.” prefer complex phenomena. J. D. R. reported, in 1694, that, prior to one earthquake, residents heard “noises and fragors [sic] issuing out of the Caverns of the Earth,” indicating “a certain discovery of the Spirits and Winds agitated in the Cavities

54  Kevin L. Cope of the Earth” that were “striving reciprocally” to produce “a bellowing” and then an earthquake.6 J. D. R. offers not just one predictive sound but a veritable symphony, a sort of petrified woodwind section down in the dark underground that plays for major geological events. Even more extraordinary are tales of concealed underground or underwater transport. An observer of the 1746 Peruvian earthquake reported that “The Earth, when it opened, swallowed up People, and they rose in other Streets; some in the Middle of the Harbour and yet they were saved.”7 In this tectonic version of the miraculous deliverance narrative, involuntary voyagers go completely underground, far beyond the shafts of sunshine, then, through unknown means, pop up blocks away or even mid-harbor. It would be easy enough for religious apologists to explain these strange events as examples of the mysteries of divine justice or of the capaciousness of divine mercy. Instead, the author of this story goes on hermeneutic hold, preferring to stick to partial evidence, to allow that we have no idea what happened underground or how these frightened people made their peculiar subway journeys. Voyages into the underground darkness can be counter-explanatory, leaving both the wayfarer and observers knowing ever less about partial information. Cave interpreter Thomas Rodd reports that, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester conducted an experiment in which he lowered a man into Eldon Hole to a depth of one-hundred ells (approximately 375 feet), after which the experimental subject “lost his senses, and died eight days after.”8 An inverse relationship develops between the signifying powers of illuminated and darkened facts. A sturdy yeoman descends beneath view, undergoes some unseen transformation, then returns to the surface completely out of his mind. Rodd gives us hard facts: we see a solid citizen sink into an abysm, and we see him return insane. The firmness of those facts stands in sharp contrast to the lack of information about what happened down there in the dark. The dark lets us know that the hard facts prized by Enlightenment thinkers cannot be naively taken at only face value, especially in broad daylight, and that there may be more to think about when facts pass through revelatory darkness.

Unseen Causes for Mammoth Effects Rodd’s story about a yeoman’s dip into the devastating dark raises questions about a core tenet of neoclassical aesthetics, the commitment to verisimilitude: to the notion that plays, paintings, and poems should represent something that could plausibly happen in lived experience and to the linking together of events in a story in credible cause-and-effect relationships. In credible works, events follow from one another. Verisimilitude depends on a clear articulation of causality. Even in the case of Thomas Rodd’s account of the mishap at Eldon Hole, we can postulate that something in the ditch caused the yeoman’s madness. Night and darkness

Abysms on Open View  55 complicate this seemingly straightforward expectation. The “similitude” in “verisimilitude” resists literal realization when darkness is a prominent attribute of a composition. Whatever we see in or of the dark requires at least a bit of light, per that reflective bat in William Westall’s engraving of Yordas Cave. Light, which allows for seeing a similitude, misrepresents darkness. The veracity within “verisimilitude,” associated as it is with the cause–effect relationship, also resists lightless representation. We cannot see what causes darkness because darkness occludes that cause and because darkness is a negation, an absence of light. The need to find some new sort of verisimilitude that functions in the absence of experience and evidence—that holds together the already mysterious doings in the dark underground—sets hardheaded scientists on a very artistic, literary, and imaginative path. The imagined connections between what happens underground, in the dark, with what happens in the light, observable world can reach staggering proportions. Late seventeenth-century Norwegian vulcanologist Michael Escholt linked the international spa culture, with its light tea cakes and airy pump rooms, with a roaring global “subterraneous fire” that blazes away in the otherwise lightless subsurface vaults, a fire that welds together in a common, credible story an astonishing range of surface, daylight phenomena that apparently rely on a burning beacon buried in blackness: Of this sort of hot springs, called in Latine Therma, and by us commonly called hot Baths; There are enough to be found in several countreys and kingdoms, but especially in Germany: as Leuker Bath in Wallisen Land by the Alpes of Pœninas, Therma, Badensis in Hegoja, the Wild Bath in the Land of Wittemberg, Wiss Bath in the Land of Hessen: one by Elbogen in Bohemia, and another at Achan in Brabant. And that there is a great and dreadful fire in the innermost parts of the earth, a man may apparently see and understand by these Mountains that do perpetually flame and burn without cessation.9 A huge wet sponge heated by a vast underground blaze, Escholt’s Earth bears little resemblance to the upscale health resorts running on its energy. Hot pools in European spas provide the thinnest of connections among the beau monde, colossal pools of geothermal energy, and roaring volcanos. Such connections are certainly of a different order than the causes that neoclassical critics seek when explaining the behavior of tragic heroes like Oedipus, Agamemnon, or Antigone. In literary works, causes and effects usually resemble one another. Human beings with understandable motivations influence other human beings. Finding the origins of spa culture in thousands of miles of unseen underground ducting requires a potent critical imagination. The collapse of causes, comparisons, and other forms of explanation in dark environments might induce critics to impose a daytime-only restriction

56  Kevin L. Cope on neoclassical art were it not that explorers often find themselves in darkness—as it were, within the metaphor. A scientist like Michael Escholt stands apart from phenomena and tries to link them together, but a spelunker dives into the cave and (temporarily) abides within its darkness. In a first-hand report of his 1775 descent into Penpark Hole, near Bristol, traveler William White juxtaposed the misty and magnificent against the minute: The Roof over the Bason of Water is tolerably regular resembling the Roof of an ancient Gothic Cathedral and about 40 feet above the Surface of the Water; so that from the Roof to the bottom of the Water must be nearly 100 Feet, & from the Surface…215 Feet.10 White accommodated the strangeness of Penpark Hole to the experience of his readers by comparing it to monumental architecture, shoring up that comparison with exact measurements. He stood inside the cave, experiencing the would-be cathedral as a kind of worshiper rather than as a gawking tourist surveying the site from an outdoor plaza. To his reader, the cave is like a cathedral, but White himself was in a church. White’s exact measurements point up the insuperable interiority of this experience: at 215 feet above water level, this little world stops. There is no exterior shingling beyond the ceiling, no sunlight on the other side, no 216th foot. Penpark Hole is a contained universe, a world that holds and restrains comparisons, making them easier to assimilate and believe. In such pitchy as well as pitched-up environments, stretched comparisons can work with comical simplicity. Penpark Hole gained notoriety in 1775, when a certain Reverend Newnam stumbled into the cave, plunging forever into darkness shortly after delivering a Sunday sermon on the 88th Psalm, which features the chilling line, “I am counted with them that go down into the pit.”11 George Catcott’s account of the Penpark calamity, which was republished in assorted newspapers and on broadsides, found no hermeneutic value in Newnam’s mishap and declined to infer a moral from the poor Reverend’s sad story. Such resonance, irony, or shock value as accrues from the coincidence of the sermon theme with Reverend Newnam’s fate remains within the closed world of melancholy cave tales. The darkly comic Newnam story symptomatizes a yearning for adequate comparisons, analogies, and causes: a search for a new sort of verisimilitude that fits with dark, sometimes preternatural environments. Throughout the long eighteenth century, authors carried out literary experiments in an attempt to adapt familiar genres to the unfamiliar dark world underground. In one witty jeu d’esprit, Adventures Under-Ground, the lead character is swallowed up by the Earth during the 1750 London earthquake. Finding himself in a vast subterranean metropolis, he goes house-to-house and room-to-room on all sort of odd adventures, whether a chat with Conyers Middleton, the author of tracts on miracles, or a visit

Abysms on Open View  57 to the Cave of Spleen that appears in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. Another mixture of the artistic, the mineralogical, and the fictional, Gabriel Platte’s A Discovery of Subterraneall Treasure includes an appended letter in the form of a brief epistolary novel recounting the tale of a certain Count Alberti who, after fighting a duel, is condemned to toil under atrocious conditions in Slovenian mercury mines.12 Running through most every genre the era invented, this underground odyssey features segments recalling eighteenth-century joke anthologies, picaresque novels, and Menippean satire.13 Another work in the vein of gothic novels, The Affecting History of the Duchess of C————, opens with a wicked nobleman locking his wife in a vast, lightless cave complex beneath his castle: “You do not yet know all,” said the Duke: “learn that I have, under this castle, some vast caverns, unknown to the world, and to which light never comes.”— “O God! I am undone then. I am lost for ever.”14 These and many other literary experiments that showcase dark, underground settings perform a two-way adaptation. The extremity of the underground world allows the author to extend existing genres in daring new ways. At the same time, the recognizable but modified, enlarged, and enhanced underground version of the genre provides a framework for experiencing a dark subterranean world so foreign that we cannot even see it.

Settings and Theaters The world underground inspired a literature not only of, but also about, settings. Just as major museum exhibitions create canons and enthrone masterpieces—one thinks, for example, of the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition that began in 1976, that is still on a revival tour, and that has created its own anthology of Egyptian culture—subterranean settings provide display spaces for noteworthy objects while generating the storylines that make these items significant. Those interdisciplinary virtuosi who ventured into caves quickly discovered the easy synonymy of underground galleries and display or performance spaces. Full of nooks, crannies, recesses, and, often enough, long chambers, caves could pass as ready-made exhibition halls replete with built-in artifacts, whether shaped speleothems or roaring waterfalls viewed through frames of eroded rocks. Astronomers might need prolonged observations to find order in nature, but spelunking philosophers need only walk through caves to suspect that a divine curator organizes these awesome exhibitions. Cave environments combine the theater, the museum, and the philosophical treatise. Caves present collections of natural wonders, many of which, such as the aforementioned lively waterfalls and evolving

58  Kevin L. Cope stalactites, perform as well as appear. Dramas played out in dark vaults below the karst easily outdo those on the West End stage; their players are genuine natural wonders rather than fictitious characters and their plots revolve around nothing less than God’s plan for the universe.15 Writers of all sorts explored the analogy between underground vaults and the dark display spaces of theaters. Exemplifying the cave theatrical genre is Samuel James Arnold’s operetta, Up All Night, in which merry smugglers sing their way through nocturnal crimes, using their perpetually dark cave as a stage: “The Night is past, the dawn appears, / We labor hard while others sleep; / And when the morn the mountain cheers, / In silence to our Cave we creep.”16 Paul Hiffernan, another master of insubstantial spectacles, amped up H. Jones’s novel, The Cave of Idra, which represents the sufferings of the previously mentioned Count Alberti in eastern European quicksilver mines. Hiffernan explains that he upgraded Jones’s story by adding more characters and by allowing occasional shafts of daylight to penetrate the subterranean scenes.17 Such theatrical bagatelles might seem trivial. Yet these whimsical entertainments gather and organize blocks of otherwise unwieldy information, fitting reports about the awesome, dangerous, dark, and occasionally beautiful underground world together with more accessible aspects of human experience. In one bizarre experiment, George Thor’s Zoraster’s Cave, a peculiar mix of prose, verse, closet drama, hermeticism, Zoroastrianism, and backyard chemistry, a cave acts as a gigantic philosophical echo chamber. From their rocky nooks deep within the cave, droves of unseen alchemists call out a cacophony of scientific maxims, research suggestions, and oracular utterances, their disembodied but informative voices reverberating from the walls of the dark abyss.18 By allowing darkness to remove distracting visual attributes from his generalized cave, Thor created a display or performance space suitable for the presentation of almost anything known about the universe. An even more encyclopedic cavetheater appears in The Bonze, a work of orientalizing moralism not unlike Oliver Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, in which a philosophizing hermit delivers life lessons from his cavernous dwelling. Reaching the Bonze’s retreat requires crossing a mighty ridge through a narrow cleft, then entering a gorgeous mountain valley, descending into a grotto, and then finally beholding the hermit’s deep dark den: He [the Bonze] conducted them through his little hall, into a dark passage; and all of a sudden led them unexpectedly into a magnificent kind of saloon, formed by the petrific hand of artless Nature, in a taste that mocks the symmetry of science, out of a rock’s protuberant bosom. It was circularly irregular, rounded off as it uprose spacious into a hollow cupola, from which depended Fancy-formed in a wonderful manner, rustic arches, bulging freezes [sic], and over-­ jetting cornishes [sic]; supported by innumerable pillars, pilasters,

Abysms on Open View  59 and fluted columns, in the vanishing confusion of unbounded variety; all of chrystals, lustrous as the brilliant diamond, congealed from the lapse of lucid water, petrified into millions of forms, and solid incrustations. In the hollows of soliaceous spars, were concealed numbers of little lighted lamps, which the glassy spangles in rays beautifully tinged, reflected in a manner delightfully astonishing.19 Having already outdone human art in the design of this cave, nature delivers a veritable encyclopedia of architecture that includes everything from Greco-Roman pillars to a baroque cupola to “millions of forms” vastly outnumbering anything devised by Palladio or Wren. Dark, limited spaces interact with luminous objects in such a way as to suggest infinite intelligence. The Bonze’s dwelling erases simple distinctions between museums, theaters, and philosophy—as well as, with its star-like roof, between inside and outside or between dark and light. It creates a theater of maximal inclusivity in minimal space, minimal light, and, given that this view comes as a kind of epiphany, minimal time.

Seeing is More than Believing: Optical Effects In most theaters, settings, however artful, are usually less noteworthy than the stories on stage. In underground galleries, this relationship flips. The story is all about getting to the setting; the setting tells the most interesting tales. The core experience is seeing the setting: viewing all that transpires in the sub-surface world. In contrast to ordinary science, which seeks normative laws valid across all of nature, the study of the low-light underground world prizes anomalies and takes place amidst odd, offbeat, or unaccountable experiences. Stories about adventures in the underground abound with singular events that both invite and defy explanation. Many of these unique moments may be characterized as low-light optical events, experiences that challenge science by complicating perception. Vulcanology, for example, lends itself as much to art as to science by persistently calling attention to the lighting and to the machinery of an eruption. Vulcanology is perhaps the only science best practiced at night, when its inventory of optical effects appears in full glory. Spanish adventurer, scientist, and politician Antonio de Ulloa applauded the wraparound nighttime lighting effects created by the ferocious 1743–1744 eruption of Cotopaxi, in which light shooting from the burning Ecuadoran mountain bounced off glaciers to illuminate the entire theater of nature: In the month of May, the flames increased, and forced their passage through several other parts on the sides of the mountain; so that in clear nights, the flames being reflected by the transparent ice, formed a very grand and beautiful illumination.20

60  Kevin L. Cope During such an eruption, the best observing—whether scientific or hedonic—occurs after dinner. Versifying scientist Erasmus Darwin enjoyed a longer wavelength version of the volcanic disruption of day– night distinctions, praising “the red volcanic light, / Which HECCLA lifts amid the dusky night.”21 Transoceanic travel was not a prerequisite for such expectation-overturning experiences. Travelers within Europe could also witness such a “night piece,” as did a certain exhilarated “W. B. E.” in 1766: I wish, my Lord, it was in the power of my pen to paint this truly sublime and majestic Night-piece and by proper warmth and glow of colours to do any justice to so aweful and tremendous a picture, the bare recollection of which makes one shudder! Represent to your imagination two of the mouths of this vast cauldron ejecting every moment, to the height of many hundred feet, vollies of huge red-hot masses, or rather rocks (Scapulos avolsaque viscera mantis) several of half a ton weight.22 That inveterate traveler, virtuoso, collector, and commentator, John Ray, describes his mid-1660s passage from Naples to Messina under the light of burning volcanos, unveiling an eerie scene in which obscured skies simulate night while molten lava restores the semblance of day.23 For Ray, the optical effects that surround his extra-circadian journey are his story, or at least figure more prominently than whatever it is that he passes as he transits from Vesuvius to Aetna. Ulloa, Darwin, W. B. E., and Ray were all travelers, yet their stories pay less attention to boots, roads, inns, carriages, and the physical realities of travel than to the ability of light to transform, distort, or enhance experience. Ulloa, for example, is remembered to this day for his discovery of Ulloa’s halo, an optical effect in which horizontal shafts of light like those that appear at sunrise—the moment when night turns into day—project an image of the viewer into a circular rainbow. Not coincidentally, Ulloa discovered this effect atop the Ecuadorian volcano Pambamarca.24 Light is understood in relation to dark, yet is detached from it; its peculiar behavior draws attention to the differences between perception, knowledge, and things-in-themselves. Daytime, with its brilliant sunlight, is no rival for night when it comes to examining the uncertain relation between experience and reality. John Hutton, who, in the 1770s, toured and lusciously described an assortment of Yorkshire caves, found illusory light in subterranean soil. He talks about a remarkable “black earth” or “igneum lutum” that in the night resembles fire, when it is agitated by being trod upon: The effects it produces in a dark evening are truly curious and amazing. Strangers are always surprised, and often frightened, to see their

Abysms on Open View  61 own and horses legs besprinkled to all appearance with fire, and sparks of it flying in every direction, as if struck out of the ground from under their feet. They are as much alarmed with it, as the country people are with the Will with the wisp, or mariners with the luminous vapour of the delapsed Castor and Pollux. Though the dark and dreary moor is broke into thousands of luminous particles, like so many glow-worms, when troubled by the benighted traveller, yet if any part of this natural phosphorous is brought before a lighted candle, its splendour immediately vanishes, and it shrinks back into its original dull and dark state of sordid earth.25 Each and every sentence of this passage conveys some bit of hard, factual knowledge, yet these same sentences shimmer with immaterial lighting effects as well as with allusions to folklore and superstition. A dark setting unveils an unexpected alliance between uncanny effects and scientific savvy. At another stop on his itinerary, alongside an underground lake, Hutton revels in illusions created by a low-light scene. The sun shining on the surface of the water, illuminated the bottom of the superincumbent rocks, only five feet above; which, being viewed by reflection in the lake, caused a curious deception, scarce any where to be met with: They appeared at the like distance below its surface in form of a rugged bottom. All of this is enhanced by “large black trout,” which also remain minimally visible in this dark, mirage-distorted world.26 Setting up a threeway analogy between the poet John Milton, the objective study of caves, and the oddities of optics, Hutton conjures up a Stygian yet informative and entertaining display comprised of dark, obscured, and illusory phenomena. Light, lighting, and optical effects occupy a focal point in illustrations of underground phenomena. Experimentation with light and dark occurs in almost every depiction of a volcanic eruption. Eruption scenes may well constitute the utmost extension of the landscape painting tradition. Like landscapes, eruptions must be viewed from a distance, panoramically, if only owing to the dangers attending crater-side easel placement.27 Almost all landscapes (or seascapes or mountain views) appear in daylight or even full sun; a volcano, with its smoke and debris, darkens almost everything even while also propagating light and lighting effects. An especially complex but not atypical example is Pierre-Jacques Volaire’s Eruption of Vesuvius (1777), in which the blazing mountain that eclipses most of the sky with charcoal-grey dust shoots a vertical torch of blowing magma high into the air, illuminating both the volcano and the village below while the sun weakly peeps over the horizon, carving a whole in the pitchy clouds (Figure 3.3). The viewer of such a

62  Kevin L. Cope

Figure 3.3 Pierre-Jacques Volaire (1729–1802). Eruption of Vesuvius in 1717 with view of Portici. Oil on canvas, 131 × 227.5 cm. INV733. Photo: Gérard Blot. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NYC.

scene sees night and day simultaneously, in different places and in different ways and levels of illumination, without any clear indication as to what time it might really be. The interaction of night and day is even more ferocious in Joseph Wright of Derby’s Eruption of Vesuvius (c.1771), where a combination of darkness and heavy clouds seem to crush in on the mountain, which responds by boring a hole through the heavens with its brilliant magma plume (Figure 3.4).28 Meanwhile, on the left margin, the bright moon creates a memory of day in clear-sky twilight. Decorative and household arts also explored such contrasts, as is exemplified by an Italian fan featuring a night eruption of Vesuvius situated between two calmer daytime views, all sketched on the light paper of a pocket cooling aid (Figure 3.5). In all these images, the unique character of volcanic light creates compelling scenes that are at once part of natural history but also belong to the muses. Who can say whether a luminous paradox like light that rivals the sun but originates underground, in the perpetually dark recesses of our planet, is a matter of science or art?

Fascinating Rhythms: The Tempo of Geologic Change Light and dark are about time. Sunrise and sunset mark days; artificial light, whether Augustan candles or modern light bulbs, portends either immurement in office spaces for the workday or the opening of social spaces at night. On our spinning, sunlit planet, night is short, averaging no more than twelve hours minus twilight moments. Whatever happens

Abysms on Open View  63

Figure 3.4 Joseph Wright of Derby, Eruption of Vesuvius (also known as Vesuvius from Portici and Vesuvius in Eruption) (circa 1774–1776). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Frances Crandall Dyke Bequest. © Courtesy of the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California.

at night must be experienced quickly. The fact that light itself is quick was not lost on the period that first measured its velocity. Churchmen and geologists—who, in the long eighteenth century, were often the same—devoted considerable attention to the tempo of geologic change. Quick geological change could serve a moral purpose by illustrating the rapidity with which punitive judgments or other landmark moments in eschatological history may occur. Religion and science both sought to reconcile the apparently slow pace of most telluric activities with the shorter timeline of biblical history. Pastor and seismologist Thomas Doolittle expatiated on the instructive suddenness of earth movements: God needs not length of time to do the most great and wonderful works. Suddenly there was an Earthquake. God can make it move in an instant. When it’s said God in six days made this World, it’s not to be understood that he did need so many days to make it in. It was his pleasure to take that time to finish, beautifie and compleat it. When God did create the Earth, and brought it out of nothing, it was

64  Kevin L. Cope

Figure 3.5 Anonymous, 18th century. Fan Design with Eruption of Vesuvius and Three Views, 18th century. Watercolor and gouache on vellum? Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1938 (38.91.105). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

suddenly done. He did but speak, Let it be, and suddenly started out of Nothing into Being. Creation is an instantaneous action: he that did so suddenly and so easily make it, can as suddenly and as easily make it quake and tremble. How suddenly did God make the Earth to quake where London stood, and after his shaking of it, through his great mercy yet doth stand!29 A less pious compiler such as Sigaud de la Fond, editor of the wonder anthology Dictionnaire des Merveilles, assembled a massive inventory of earthquakes to show that a geological calamity may occur at any time, including night.30 Some high-speed, hybrid events combine geological with hydrological transformations. Thomas Rodd reports that, on the night between the 22d and 23d of August, 1749, the thunder and lightning split a mountain asunder in Cumberland, from whence came so great a body of water, that it bore down every thing before it, houses, trees, and rocks.31 Those wondering about the source and delivery speed of the water for Noah’s flood need only think of such incidents; the many who have never bothered to ask the time of day when Noah’s deluge started may here note that it commenced at night. The emotional force of such examples comes into sharper focus in the more domestic quarters of the cottage.

Abysms on Open View  65 The author of an account of the 1683 evening temblor in Oxford muses over the “Tables, Stools, Trunks and Chests” in Oxfordshire cottages that were sent tumbling while wryly observing local sluggards getting a jolt of energy and running fearfully from their beds.32 The Oxford account paints a rather more quaint scene than do heroic renderings of the volatile Vesuvius, yet the themes of nighttime suddenness and surprise scintillate equally in both.33 It is not only land that picks up speed during a geological spasm. Water can suddenly dunk unwitting victims in a dark abyss. Earthquakes trigger tidal waves; volcanos spew water; caves abound in water hazards. Sudden darkness through violent immersion was surprisingly common during the Enlightenment. An earthquake-induced tidal wave in Concepción in 1730 instantly buried the city up to the first-story level. One witness to the 1746 Callao (Peru) earthquake lamented the “Suddenness of the Attack” during which a fellow colonist “felt the Earthquake [and] met the Water at the Top of the Garrett-Stairs: for the House, adds he, sunk downright, and is now near 30 Foot under Water.”34 An even more dramatic immersion accompanied the eruption of Chimborazo on June 20, 1698, “upon which issued such a great quantity of water as caused an inundation throughout the neighbourhood, if mouldering earth mixed with water into a mud may be so called,” a torrent that buried the nearby village of Latacunga.35 Surely the most horrifying of all these sudden dips into dark depths was the tidal wave arising from the 1692 Jamaica earthquake, which overwhelmed the island, set off nighttime rioting and reveling worthy of a swashbuckling movie, included underground transport experiences, transpired under an eerie red sky, and gave rise to multitudinous commentaries by assorted authors.36 The bottom line in both inundation reports and general discussions of suddenness is that any moment is potentially night: that, at the blink of an eye, the Earth might open up or smoke might blacken the sky or torrents of water might blot out the sun. Dark, night, and the termination of empirical experience are permanent possibilities.

The Sun Never Rises on Night’s Empire The worldwide distribution of volcanos, earthquakes, and other subterranean phenomena—the fact that they happen in Lima, Jamaica, Italy, Iceland, or Australia—calls into question colloquial understandings of night and day. The eruption underway during an Ecuador afternoon is happening on a Heidelberg evening. If we accept the opinion of some eighteenth-century geologists that the Earth is riddled with tubes conducting geothermal energy around the world, the very same earthquake roiling Jamaica at night can shake the Earth on a Cape Town morning. The eighteenth century had no formal time zones, but regional differences in time, including the recognition that it is always night somewhere, played

66  Kevin L. Cope a part in the lives of many, especially those who used the Sun and stars in navigation. On a smaller scale, the geographical illustrations that filled eighteenth-century “coffee-table books” often set up a contrast between the instant of arrival—the moment when some great natural wonder reveals itself—and the permanence of natural phenomena. The waterfall in William Westall’s illustration of Weathercote Cave runs twenty-four hours per day, but Westall only shows the visitor’s moment of arrival. Geological literature of the period abounds in events that extend the boundaries of night, events that make night seem to go on forever or present changes that happen at night but endure for a long time or that look at processes that unsettle circadian rhythms by running on for days. The dwelling of a certain Richard Reynolds near the Buildwas Bridge underwent a shock lasting for an unspecified period on the night between May 25 and 26, 1773; his entire compound, including “Garden Court and Road in front of the House, continued in Motion all that Day,” while the main Coalbrooke earthquake itself is credited to yet a third day, May 27.37 This elastic rendering of time draws together the spontaneity and limited duration of an earthquake with the permanence of the resulting transformations. Stretching the apparent duration of earthquakes increases their emotional and narrative value while also creating fictional omniscient narrators who are apparently on duty around the clock. Earthquake collector John Bevis, for example, reported that a quake beginning in early February 1663 “raged throughout all Canada ’till July following, tho’ but for a quarter or half an hour together, almost every day or night,” thus vastly stretching out an event that surely included intermissions.38 Rampaging “day or night,” the unremitting havoc supports narrative continuity. Bevis’s account of a 1686 earthquake in the German nations adds spatial to temporal extension: On the 7th of July 1686 about daybreak, between two and three in the morning, a great part of Germany and the neighbouring parts of Italy felt a tremendous commotion. At Altorff and the nearest towns of Bavaria and Suevia, Ratisbon, Memmingen, Nordlingen, with so many others, the inhabitants were awakened out of their sleep and grievously terrified by the rocking of their beds and jarring of their windows. In other places, as Inspruck and Venice, the tottering edifices threatened immediate destruction: And at Hall the walls, with many towers and stately buildings were shattered.39 Going step-by-step and country-to-country, Bevis stretches the earthquake through a good part of Europe, beginning with a few tiny towns on Germany’s Romantic Road and then passing over the Austrian Alps en route to Venetian canals. Given enough time and a long enough night, this earthquake could rumble through the entire world. Bevis was an earthquake collector, but similar accounts of long-lasting, enormously

Abysms on Open View  67 extended events appear throughout the volcano, cave, and even hermit literature, where almost anything can happen so long as it happens for a long time. Volcanos erupt for months, caves disgorge water for the fortytwo days and nights of Noah’s flood, hermits live in dark recesses for centuries: all during a period that seemed to want to outlast itself, that routinely presented time as longer than it is.

The Clock-Free Personality The long nights of the long eighteenth century were always producing climactic telluric personalities: persons who, in various ways and at various times, mimicked the nonstop action of the underworld. At the center of this wide band of personality types were the collectors, anatomists, encyclopedists, and even a few pastors who recorded the locations and times of catastrophes. For a preacher, a 10:30 p.m. onset made a point about readiness for judgment. For an encyclopedia editor, such detailed facts demonstrated competence and authority. For an explorer like Antonio de Ulloa, noting a tremor at 4:00 in the morning showed a dogged commitment to thorough fieldwork. The outer ends of the spectrum of seismically minded intellectuals are home to literally offbeat characters: persons who have no daily or nightly rhythm and seem to live in a timeless mosaic of moments for which night provides a permanent background. On the upper end of this spectrum, moving among the aristocrats and diplomats, is Sir William Hamilton, England’s “Envoy Extraordinaire to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,” who spent far more time climbing, sketching, and sampling Neapolitan volcanos than conducting embassy business. Corresponding regularly with the Royal Society and with assorted science-loving gentry, Hamilton delivered data in every genre, from watercolor sketches to diary entries to field reports fixed at every hour on the clock dial. He styles himself as someone without temporal limits who watches, explores, tests, collects, and analyzes twenty-four hours per day. Hamilton’s reportage sometimes verges on the ridiculous as he clambers up mountains, lauds wonders, and implements experiments without concern for the clock: I passed the whole day and the night of the 12th upon the mountain, and followed the course of the lava to its very source: it burst out of the side of the mountain, within about half a mile of the mouth of the Volcano, like a torrent, attended with violent explosions, which threw up inflamed matter to a considerable height, the adjacent ground quivering like the timbers of a water-mill; the heat of the lava was so great, as not to suffer me to approach nearer than within ten feet of the stream, and of such a consistency (though it appeared liquid as water) as almost to resist the impression of a long stick, with which

68  Kevin L. Cope I made the experiment; large stones thrown on it with all my force did not sink, but, making a slight impression, floated on the surface… these rivers of fire, communicating their heat to the cinders of former lavas, between one branch and the other, had the appearance at night of a continued sheet of fire, four miles in length, and in some parts near two in breadth. Your Lordship may imagine the glorious appearance of this uncommon scene, such as passes all description.40 Thanks to multidirectional lava lighting and a friendly explosion or two, Hamilton paints an “uncommon scene” that is simultaneously dark and light, that could happen at noon or midnight, and that is not going to stop even should this human dynamo feel sleepy. Night, usually associated with sleep or some sort of intermission, is stripped of anthropomorphic limitations while Hamilton transforms himself into some sort of volcanic personality. Collecting an surplus of experience in a way that far exceeds normal human capacities, Hamilton acted like an empiricist yet accumulated sense data in staggeringly extreme contexts and on a schedule that challenges credulity. On the other side of the behavioral spectrum from Hamilton are unheralded persons who dwelled underground: the surprisingly large population of hermits, recluses, sociopaths, and eccentrics who opted out of the highly public culture of the Enlightenment, choosing to haunt distant caves rather than metropolitan salons. This large but nearly invisible population is characterized by superhuman longevity, including prodigious periods passed alone in dark domains underground.41 There was the hermit discovered by Captain Buckland deep in the American frontier who had lived in his hollow for 228 years; there was Amos Wilson, the “Pennsylvania Hermit,” who inhabited a cave near modern Harrisburg for nineteen years; there was Robert Voorhis, a mixed-race hermit who spent months at a time in the “perpetual darkness” of his grim dwelling; there was the Hermit of Lindholme, whose physical legacy, a substantial hermitage and church in the middle of a bog, continued to induce speculation long after he had vanished into the mists of time.42 These and many more hermits turn the kind of personality cultivated by Sir William Hamilton inside-out. Rather than living on a nonstop calendar marked by violent as well as public subterranean upheavals, long-eighteenthcentury hermits abide underground, in the dark, bereft of experience yet engaged in assorted mental processes, whether ventilating grief or seeking spiritual advancement or producing moral writings, on a timetable never calibrated with familiar daily solar rhythms. Seemingly superhuman and, in their deep lairs, literally subhuman, these Enlightenment underground outcasts seem to embody geologic time spans. In hyperbolic characters like Hamilton or sunken solitaries like the erratic ensemble of Enlightenment hermits, we extend the story of e­ mpiricism—of

Abysms on Open View  69 the long-eighteenth-century enchantment with experience. Whether essaywriting investigators like John Locke, George Berkeley, or David Hume; whether critical analysts like Immanuel Kant; or whether enameling observers like Joshua Reynolds or Thomas Gainsborough or Canaletto, eighteenth-century observers always thought that observing might deliver more than meets the eye. At the very least, observers noticed the setting, the context, the lighting, their own character, and the time of day or night. But those who watched their way through the long eighteenth century also reveled in the miraculous, apparitional character of experience: the fact that what we see has a way of popping into view, often owing to complicated unseen influences. The habitually ocular long eighteenth century privileged vision above the other senses. “The evidence of the senses” often meant “what we see.” It required a deep dive into what cannot be seen, into the dark and mysterious world underground, to bring to light that fully apparitional and revelatory character of experience: to show, by trying to paint volcanos raging through the night or by speculating about earthquakes that happened at 1:00 a.m. or by plunging into perpetually dim abysms, that, especially at night, a little bit of experience goes a very long way.

Notes 1 Arthur Dillon, A Winter in Iceland and Lapland (London, 1840), 784. 2 Juan de Abreu de Galindo, The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands: Translated from a Spanish Manuscript, Lately Found in the Island of Palma, trans. George Glas (London, 1764), 244–245. 3 Charles Cotton, The Wonders of the Peake (Nottingham, n.d.), 6–7. 4 Kenneth Macleay, Description of the Spar Cave, Lately Discovered in the Isle of Skye (Edinburgh, 1811), 35–36. 5 See Thomas Doolittle, Earthquakes Explained and Practically Improved (London, 1693), 62–64. 6 J. D. R., French Minister, Observations upon Three Earthquakes (London, 1694), 9. 7 Anonymous, A True and Particular Relation of the Dreadful Earthquake Which Happen’d at Lima, the Capital of Peru, and the neighboring Port of Callao, On the 28th of October, 1746 (London, 1748), 336. 8 Thomas Rodd, A Defence of the Veracity of Moses, in his Records of the Creation and General Deluge; Illustrated by Observations in the Caverns of the Peak of Derby (London, 1820), 99. 9 Michael Peterson Escholt, trans. Daniel Collins, Geologia Norvegica. Or, a Brief Instructive Remembrancer, Concerning that very Great and Spurious Earthquake, Which Hapned almost quite through the South Parts of Norway: Upon the 24th day of April, in the year 1657. Also Physical, Historical, and Theological Grounds and Reasons concerning the Causes and Significations of Earthquakes (London, 1663), 9–12. 10 William White, “An Account of Penpark Hole,” pamphlet bound together with the Harvard Houghton Library copy of George Catcott, A Descriptive Account of a Descent Made into Penpark-hole, in the Parish of Westburyupon-Trim, in the County of Gloucester, in the Year 1775 (Bristol, 1792), 6. 11 For an account of Reverend Newnam’s accident, see Catcott, 33–34.

70  Kevin L. Cope 12 See Gabriel Plattes, A Discovery of Subterraneall Treasure, viz. of all Manner of Mines and Mineralls (London: 1679 [this date is partially pasted over with a correction reading 1684]), 35–28. 13 Anonymous, Adventures Under-Ground, a Letter from a Gentleman Swallowed Up in the Late Earthquake to a Friend on his Travels (London, 1750). See especially 6–7, 10–11, 12–14. 24. 14 Stéphanie Félicité Brulart, Comtesse de Genlis, The Affecting History of the Duchess of C————, who was Confined Nine Years in a Horrid Dungeon. Under Groud. Where Light Never Entered (Derby, [between 1803 and 1820]), 14. 15 Caves were not the only telluric phenomena that could interact with the theater world. French Revolutionary theater represented geological catastrophe as part of its propaganda campaign. In one tour de force, playwright Sylvain Maréchal staged a climax in which a volcanic eruption would “launch stones and burning coals” into the theater, thus dissolving the distinction between ordinary indoor productions and the colossal outdoor theater of vulcanism. See Mary Ashburn Miller, “Mountain, Become a Volcano: The Image of the Volcano in the Rhetoric of the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 32, no. 4 (2009): 555–556. 16 Samuel James Arnold, Songs, Duetts &c. Choruses, and Finales of Up All Night! or, The Smuggler’s Cave, a Comic Opera (London, 1809), 3. 17 Paul Hiffernan, The Heroine of the Cave. A Tragedy (London, 1775). Supplemental information in the Bodleian Library catalogue notes that this work was “Altered by P. Hiffernan from The Cave of Idra, by H. Jones.” 18 George Thor, An Easie Introduction to the Philosophers Magical Gold; to which is Added, Zoraster’s [sic] Cave (London, 1667); see especially 57. 19 Hoamchi-Vam, The Bonze, or Chinese Anchorite, an Oriental Novel, 2 volumes (London, 1769), 1:14–15. 20 Antonio de Ulloa, A Voyage to South America. Describing At Large, The Spanish Cities, Towns, Provinces, &c. on that Extensive Continent, 2nd ed. (London, 1760), 445–445. 21 Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, “The Economy of Vegetation,” I:509– 510, accessed from Project Gutenberg 8 January 2018 [http://www.gutenberg. org/cache/epub/9612/pg9612-images.html]. 22 W. B. E., A Letter to the Late Lord Lyttelton, Containing a Description of the Last Great Eruption, &c, of Mount Aetna, A.D. 1766 (n.p., n.d.), 9–10, 12, 18. 23 See John Ray, Travels through the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France, With Curious Observations, Natural, Topographical, Moral Physiological, &c., 2nd ed.(London, 1738), 239. 24 For the account, see Antonio de Ulloa, 1:445–462. 25 John Hutton, A Tour to the Caves, in the Environs of Ingleborough and Settle, in the West-Riding of Yorkshire, 2nd ed. (London, 1781), 35–36. 26 Ibid., 23–24. 27 The challenge of representing phenomena that must be seen at a distance and that appear under special lighting conditions had been considered in other genres and disciplines, most notably in astronomy, where stars remain tiny points of light no matter how great the magnification, and in the didactical poetry about that science that mesmerized its eighteenth-century audience. See Gerald J. Butler, “The Night Sky of the Enlightenment, William Herschel’s Disposition toward the Empirical, and ‘Profundity,’” in The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, eds. Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit (New York: AMS Press, 2010), 148.

Abysms on Open View  71 28 During the course of his travels in Italy, Wright of Derby produced no less than thirty renderings of the eruption of Vesuvius, becoming the most prolific of a host of British volcano illustrators. Muriel Adrien notes that Wright uses lighting effects not only to interrupt the normal alternation of night and day but also to create “an equivalence between the atmospheric world and the telluric world.” See Muriel Adrien, “Light and Shade in Wright of Derby’s Paintings,” in The Enlightenment by Night, 148–149. 29 Doolittle, 18–19. 30 See Sigaud de la Fond, Dictionnaire des Merveilles de la Nature (Paris, 1781), 2 vols., 2:402–427. 31 Rodd, 112. 32 See Anonymous, Strange News From Oxfordshire: Being A True and Faithful Account of a Wonderful and Dreadful Earthquake that Happened in those Parts on Monday the 17th of this Present September, 1683 (London, [1683]) (single folio sheet). 33 Some nighttime earthquakes even elicit extended, sophisticated commentary juxtaposing the surprise value of a calamity that strikes under cover of darkness against the enduring value of (usually moral or religious) lessons learned. Following the earthquake in Lynn End, Massachusetts, which occurred at 10:30 p.m. on October 29, 1727, some ten otherwise simple residents of that New England town set down “relations” of what had transpired that night and elucidated what could be learned from it. See Kenneth P. Minkema, “The Lynn End ‘Earthquake’ Relations of 1727,” The New England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters 69, no. 3 (1996): 473–99. 34 A True and Particular Relation of the Dreadful Earthquake which Happen’d at Lima, the Capital [sic] of Peru, and the Neighboring Port of Callao, On the 28th of October, 1746 (London, 1748), iii–iv, 339. 35 See John Bevis, The History and Philosophy of Earthquakes, From The Remotest to the Present Times: Collected From the Best Writers on the Subject (London, 1757), 200–201. 36 For an overview of the events as well as worldwide coverage and analysis devoted to this mammoth earthquake and tsunami, see Larry Gragg, “The Port Royal Earthquake,” History Today 50, no. 9 (2000): 28–34. 37 See Anonymous, A Concise Account of the Earthquake that Happened the 27th of May, 1773, at the Birches, between Coalbrooke Dale and Buildwas Bridge in Shropshire (Coalbrookedale, 1750), ¶7. 38 Bevis, 6–8. 39 Ibid., 12. 40 Sir William Hamilton, Campi Phlegræi. Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies as They Have Been Communicated to the Royal Society (Naples, 1776), 18. 41 For a study of the new-world side of the eighteenth-century hermit culture, see Kevin L. Cope,“The Enigmatic and the Ecological: American Late Enlightenment Hermits and the Pursuit of, in Addition to Happiness, Permanence,” in Cultures of Solitude: Loneliness—Limitation—Liberation, eds. Ina Bergmann and Stefan Hippler (Frankfurt: Verlag Peter Lang, 2017), 61–78. 42 For more information about these hermits, see James Buckland, A Wonderful Discovery of a Hermit, who Lived Upward of 200 Years (Springfield, 1786); Anonymous, The Pennsylvania Hermit. A Narrative of the Extraordinary Life of Amos Wilson. Who Expired in a Cave, in the Neighborhood of Harrisburgh, Pennsylvania, after having therein Lived, in Solitary Retirement, for Nineteen

72  Kevin L. Cope Years, in Consequence of the Ignominious Death of his Sister (Philadelphia, 1839); Robert Voorhis, The Life and Adventures of Robert Voorhis, The Hermit of Massachusetts, Who Has Lived 14 Years in a Cave, Secluded from Human Society (Providence, 1829); and Abraham De la Pryme with T. Oughtibridge, The West Prospect of Lindholme, in the Parish of Hatfield, Yorkshire (London, [1727]) [large folio-format broadside].

4 “One Thousand Divine Truths” Night, Darkness and the Sublime in the Poetry of Juan Meléndez Valdés Matthieu P. Raillard

Juan Meléndez Valdés (1754–1817) is widely regarded as the most important and gifted poet of the Spanish eighteenth century. Rogelio Reyes sees him as the most relevant Spanish poet of the Spanish Enlightenment, while John Polt calls him the foremost poet of the era, standing out for his mastery of various poetic registers.1 Like many of his peers, his literary endeavors flourished alongside a career as a public official and magistrate. Trained in law, Meléndez Valdés would also serve as chair of humanities at the prestigious University of Salamanca before being appointed as judge and prosecutor in Zaragoza, Valladolid, and Madrid. He achieved a great measure of fame as a poet following the publication of his pastoral poem Batilo (1780), which won a literary contest organized by the Spanish Royal Academy. Although he was respected as a poet, his support for King Joseph Bonaparte during the French occupation (1808–1813) would earn him the reputation of afrancesado (“Francophile” or “frenchified”), a pejorative label given to those Spaniards who welcomed and supported French rule of Spain.2 In spite of his political leanings, Meléndez is remembered today as one of the best representatives of Spanish neoclassical poetry. His Rococo compositions—such as eclogues and Anacreontic odes— are some of the most anthologized Spanish poems.3 They are replete with sensual, luminous, and pastoral imagery, with Meléndez playfully revisiting classical topoi such as locus amoenus, beatus ille, collige virgo rosas, and tempus fugit.4 The gentle eroticism of Meléndez’s poems such as “El amor mariposa” (“Love as Butterfly”) or “De la paloma de Filis” (“Of Filis’ Dove”) might seem, at first blush, at odds with the Spanish eighteenth century’s (erroneous) reputation as consisting primarily of prosaic, didactic or moral works, or with its insistence on reason and progress. Nonetheless, the impact of the works of John Locke, David Hume, and Etienne de Condillac had begun to stress empiricism, experientialism, and sensualism, and had resulted in a newfound interest in the individual and sensory experience. Their impact in Spain is unequivocal; in 1776, Meléndez Valdés wrote to his friend and mentor Gaspar Melchor de DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-5

74  Matthieu P. Raillard Jovellanos that he had memorized Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding.5 As David Gies explains, this fusion of scientific developments and a renewed interest in individual senses and experiences led in Spain to a “subtle transformation of the poetic language of the eighteenth century into something both more scientific and more intimate.”6 The Rococo compositions of eighteenth-century Spanish authors like Meléndez function as an articulation of these emerging epistemologies, striving to understand the world through the new lenses of experience and sensualism, as well as to reframe the experience of the individual within this context. In addition to his Rococo poems, Meléndez also cultivated a more philosophical, serious brand of poetry. This shift in tone and content has been attributed in part to Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos’ epistolary poem “Carta de Jovino a sus amigos salmantinos” (“Letter from Jovino to his Friends from Salamanca”), in which he instructed his fellow poets and friends on which genre best suited their talents. Addressing Meléndez Valdés directly, the elder Jovellanos—who used the poetic pen name of Jovino—recommended that he “cast aside the pastoral flute” and dedicate himself to singing the feats of “Spanish heroes, / wars, victories.”7 Meléndez Valdés shared a deep and long-running friendship with Jovellanos, whom he considered a mentor both as an author and jurist. While his poetry never did acquire quite the epic tone that Jovellanos prescribed, it did shift significantly, moving away from Rococo and pastoral compositions. Meléndez’s later poems showcased a philosophical, moral, and religious preoccupation, and in many ways reflected the cultural shifts happening throughout Europe as the eighteenth century drew to a close. As Russell Sebold has shown, these later works reveal a preRomantic sensibility that is impossible to ignore and echoes the existential crises surrounding Romanticism. When Meléndez Valdés describes his “fastidio universal” (“universal fatigue or tedium”), Sebold argues that he has just named the Romantic disillusionment and angst that would become commonplace in early nineteenth-century Europe: mal du siècle in French, Weltschmerz in German.8 The playful, sensual, and joyous compositions of his youth may appear quite distant—thematically and stylistically—from his later philosophical and pre-Romantic poems, yet there exist common threads. One of these is his recurrent use of the night, darkness, and nocturnal imagery throughout his career. The poetry of Meléndez Valdés continues to be a fertile field of inquiry for scholars, yet the concept of night has been understudied, aside from a few articles.9 Therefore, this chapter explores the function and representation of night (and, concomitantly, darkness and obscurity) in Meléndez Valdés’ poetry. His depictions of night fall into three distinct categories, which should be viewed not as an evolution from one to the next but rather as co-existing throughout his career. In the first instance, Meléndez uses night as an expression of the literary

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  75 sublime, as codified and popularized by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. Secondly, night is frequently represented as a source of solace, introspection, and inspiration, a peaceful and quiet idyll where our poet is free to philosophize or contemplate nature. Third, night in Meléndez Valdés is a key component of the deist cycle of existence, as the Yin to daytime’s Yang. In this formulation, night is seen as an essential part of the universe and as a manifestation of the Creator.

Night and the Sublime As James Mandrell notes, despite its importance in eighteenth-century literature, “the sublime has hardly entered into considerations—theoretical or otherwise—of Spanish literature.”10 This relative paucity of scholarship is all the more surprising when one considers the importance and relevance of the literary sublime to many Spanish authors of the eighteenth century. There were a number of ways in which the theories of the sublime—elaborated by Irish philosopher Edmund Burke and refined by German philosopher Immanuel Kant—made their way into Spain: through direct contact with their works (Meléndez read English), but also via the application of the sublime in popular British authors, such as Edward Young, whom Meléndez had read and admired.11 In his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke established the theoretical and aesthetic notion of the sublime, and he defined it thus: Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.12 The sublime works in opposition to the beautiful, which provokes feelings of love, tenderness, and harmony. Burke provided his readers with a comprehensive list of objects, situations, and conditions that elicit the sublime: terror, vastness, infinity, sudden sounds and light, pain, and foul stenches. Of particular relevance to this chapter is the second condition he details: obscurity. Burke views darkness as a lynchpin of the sublime experience: “To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary.”13 Darkness and night are sublime because they engender terror, and since “in utter darkness it is impossible to know in what degree of safety we stand.”14 Immanuel Kant put it even more succinctly in his treatise on the sublime: “Night is sublime, day is beautiful.”15 Moreover, dark objects, in general, are a source of the sublime for Kant: “dark coloring and black eyes are more closely related to the sublime, blue eyes and blonde coloring to the beautiful.”16 The lugubrious, violent,

76  Matthieu P. Raillard and horrific imagery commonly associated with Gothic and Romantic literature has its roots in the sublime, from the preponderance of jail cells and death-row prisoners, to wailing sounds, violent thunderstorms, and strange apparitions. Meléndez Valdés was a devout admirer of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742–1745), a work which is said to have inspired Burke’s treatise, and was enormously popular in the eighteenth century. Its gloomy, nocturnal aesthetic became the literary reference for the sublime, and we know that Meléndez Valdés owned both an original English copy and a French translation.17 His ode “La noche y la soledad” (“Night and Solitude”) includes an apostrophe to Young himself. It is clearly inspired by his sublime style and is analyzed later on in this chapter. Given the sublime’s cultural and literary impact, it is not surprising that Meléndez Valdés would draw inspiration from it and that many of his compositions would embrace this new aesthetic. Night and darkness are represented in a sublime fashion in numerous poems, spanning his entire literary career. “La tempestad” (“The Tempest”) offers readers a virtual catalog of sublime tropes and imagery. The violent natural spectacle of a storm is further pushed into the realm of the sublime by occurring at night, which Meléndez personifies with great effect: “The sun’s flame disappears, swallowed by dark clouds, and night begins her reign.”18 The sun’s meek disappearance at the hands of darkness heralds a dramatic shift, reflected in the wildlife’s fearful demeanor: birds flee in terror, while cattle remain paralyzed with fright, unable to find the shelter of their stable.19 Yet as Meléndez reminds his readers, the sublimely violent tempest is not simply a raw, chaotic natural spectacle: it is a manifestation of the Creator. The supreme being is displeased, and both humans and animals cower in fear: “Consumed by fear and terror, they who insulted God now pray, shaking.”20 Addressing God directly, the poet implores his creator to temper his fury and to look upon his flock who stand crying and cowering: “Kind God, where is your clemency? Do you come to destroy us?”21 It is evident in this poem that Meléndez’s use of night and darkness functions as part of a greater sublime tapestry, in which he weaves fear, thunder, and desolation at the hands of an angry God. The sublime apparatus—night, violent nature—can be interpreted as an application of the pathetic fallacy, whereby human attributes—anger, solitude, displeasure—are projected onto nature or objects. Meléndez recurs to this poetic device in numerous compositions, including some of his most celebrated and cited poems. “El invierno es el tiempo de la meditación” (“Winter Ode”) begins by situating the reader in a dark, lugubrious winterscape, replete with howling north winds and a sun that meekly flees from the elements, leaving only sublime darkness. This poem is a philosophical rumination, and, as Salvador Fajardo has explained, “violence and sunless days are the conditions in which dwells the divided self,

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  77 they are the dark woods of the poet’s present exploration.”22 The eponymous meditation leads Meléndez Valdés to contemplate humanity’s condition, which is to live in fear of death’s inevitable arrival. As a clear allegory for life’s journey, Meléndez represents the arrival of night as a sublime transition, with the sun’s departure like a “sudden, brilliant lightning bolt / leaving the sad walker briefly dazzled and then in darkness.” As a symbol of death, the arrival of night is carefully represented as wearing a dark, ominous “funereal cloak.”23 Meléndez Valdés articulates his “Winter Ode” around the classical and neoclassical concept of memento mori, and marshals forth a veritable catalog of sublime imagery, much of it centered around representations of night and darkness.24 As with “La tempestad,” animals are portrayed as cowering in the dark seeking shelter, with “the horrendous shriek of a night bird” disrupting the lugubrious silence.25 In “La esperanza” (“Hope”), Meléndez directly addresses a personification of hope in an apostrophic poem that again features a melancholy, solitary protagonist. The second stanza sets a distinctly sublime stage for the narrator’s existential cries: “Gloomy night, dreadful thunder, / the quivering flame of an angry lightning bolt / surround my sad forehead, / which is frozen in horror.”26 This panoply of sublime archetypes is again centered around darkness, from which horror and terror proceed. Meléndez, therefore, represents hope as the “the shine of the bright moon” which alone can dispel the uncertainty and despair, the “opaque frown of night.”27 Darkness and night are unsurprisingly utilized with a pronounced sublime effect in poems dealing with death, such as “En la muerte de Filis” (“On the Death of Filis”) and “En la desgraciada muerte del coronel don José Cadalso” (“On the Unfortunate Death of Colonel Don José Cadalso”). Filis was the name Meléndez used for a recurring, idealized female love interest featured in several poems, while José Cadalso was a fellow poet, author, and friend of Meléndez, who died in the battle of Gibraltar.28 Constructed as a long lament, “En la muerte de Filis” makes ample use of nocturnal imagery to convey the poet’s suffering, isolation, and despair. In clearly neoclassical fashion, he describes her physical attributes as a series of poetic objects now condemned to death and oblivion: “And that neck, that waist, that rare / grace which now grows dim in the eternal night!”29 His grief is so great that the entire world seems to stop functioning, as if mirroring his pain: “with a horrendous whistling the wind blows / nor does the water runs as it used to / nor is the soil as fertile and welcoming / nor does the blushing day arrive,” leaving only “the humid and cold night.”30 Filis’ death has left the world shrouded in a lugubrious, sublime night, where the author laments her death and the universe’s cruelty. In similar fashion, José Cadalso’s death is represented via a succession of sublime images, commonly anchored in the frightful desolation of night. Meléndez describes his melancholy as wandering a shady

78  Matthieu P. Raillard labyrinth, all the while accompanied by grief and silence, his “feelings / fleeing from the light of the spiteful day, song and happiness, like a nocturnal bird.”31 Death has taken his friend away from him, and now “darkness, solitude, eternal silence / and an unfathomable underworld separate us.”32 Meléndez Valdés’ use of night as a sublime concept generally offers a common psychological, poetic, and existential profile, in that night is viewed as overtaking, destroying, erasing, or otherwise consuming light, beauty, happiness, friendship, and life. As mentioned earlier, it is often an application of the pathetic fallacy, whereby Meléndez projects his internal turmoil onto the landscape, viewing and describing it through a sublime lens indebted to Burke, Kant, and Young.

Night as Solace Readers of Meléndez Valdés’ poetry could be forgiven for thinking that night functions primarily as a proto-Gothic, sublime device, showcasing the poet’s despair, existential anguish, or grief. All the more revelatory, then, are poems like “De la noche” (“Of the Night”), “La noche y la soledad” (“Night and Solitude”), “La tarde” (“The evening”), and “A un lucero” (“To an evening star”), which offer a decidedly different representation of night. These works point to a different stylistic and philosophical tack, one which recasts night and darkness as a source of peace, solace, and inspiration. His poem “De la noche” begins by asking a question many readers, accustomed to the poems discussed above, would ponder as well: “where are, graceful night, / your sad face and the fear / that you strike in mortals / with your somber silence?”33 Where are the horror and the grief, Meléndez asks, “how different, how beautiful / I see you, I who fleeing / from the noise of people / desire sweet peace!”34 With these verses, Meléndez signals a drastic shift in his representation of night. Moving away from the aforementioned doom and gloom, he chooses instead to portray night as a source of peace, and, in many ways, a companion in his philosophical journey. The nightscape described in “De la noche” is nothing short of a nocturnal arcadia, in which the poet frolics in delight. He sings the praises of the night sky, the soft shadows, the silvery majesty of the moon, and the melodious songs of the nightingale, among other natural wonders. Night is therefore seen as a normal component of the natural world and also as an external source of peace. It could be argued that it, too, is an application of the pathetic fallacy, in that the nocturnal countryside is merely reflecting the positive spirits in which Meléndez finds himself. In both cases, it reveals the plasticity of the concept of night as it manifests itself in his works. Meléndez also incorporates nocturnal settings and imagery into his more playful, bucolic compositions. In “De un baile” (“About a Dance”), he describes a joyful, flirty springtime dance, invoking many of the tropes common to Anacreontic odes: liveliness, song, dance, wine, and love. In

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  79 this instance, night is depicted not as a source of horror, but as an ally, if not a companion, to the ludic escapades of the villagers: “Come out, come out, girls; / … / Come for the sun is going into hiding / the shadows, kinder, give modesty a veil / and love new audacity.”35 Night is tightly linked to peace and the atmosphere of joy that the dancing villagers experience, and thus connects the gentle sensuality of Anacreontics with the recurring figure of night and darkness. Similarly, night is featured as providing inspiration in “A mi lira” (“To my Lyre”), where he notes that the dark night’s “opaque horror” encourages more sublime and serious songs.36 In “De mi vida en la aldea” (“Of My Life in the Village”), Meléndez flees the city for the peace of his hometown, where, unlike city life’s sinful nocturnal activities such as gambling, nights here are filled with “sweet books and neglected sleep.”37 Village life allows him to “lose myself among the shadows / of the darkest wood” when the sun is shining, and when night draws her tapestry of stars, to study them and retreat to his books, contemplating the nature of the universe.38 Irene Gómez Castellanos, in her study of day and night imagery in Meléndez Valdés, argues that he began to situate his poems in a nocturnal setting as a response to Jovellanos’ recommendation (discussed above) that he dedicate his poetry to more serious themes than Anacreontic odes.39 His ode “La noche y la soledad” (“Night and Solitude”) is one of the first “serious” philosophical compositions by Meléndez, written around 1780, some four years after Jovellanos’ exhortation to his poet friends.40 It begins with a supplication by the poetic narrator, “Come, sweet solitude, and free my soul,” who seeks respite from his pre-Romantic weariness. Solitude is described as “sublime,” and Meléndez exclaims “Oh Young!” in reference and reverence to Edward Young and his famous work, Night Thoughts, making clear that he was aware of the influence current aesthetic and philosophical trends had on his own work.41 In addition to solitude and Young, Meléndez directly addresses a series of objects and natural phenomena: the “celestial retreat” of the heavens, the moon, the “sublime spirit” of the Creator, and, of course, night itself. Night is described as serene and glorious, and even though it is so dark in the forest that “a moonbeam may barely pass through,” the poet feels his heart beat in “soft ecstasy.”42 “La noche y la soledad” is not, however, merely a descriptive poem, a joyful appreciation for solitude and night’s majesty. It is at night, he explains, that “the Lord reigns,” and that communion with the almighty is possible: “his tranquil and mysterious silence / give the mind a rest / which the dawn’s light robs.”43 While the daytime and its chores, socializing, and a multitude of activities keep humanity from the secret pleasures of meditation, night allows the soul to contemplate nature, the Creator, and ultimately itself. In an unexpected turn for an Enlightenmentera author, Meléndez equates light—usually symbolizing reason and knowledge in this period—with blindness. The light of the new day and

80  Matthieu P. Raillard its superficial activities “distance the soul from sweet mediation / and leave it in error and blindness.”44 It is instead in the quiet peace of night that the poet finds truth, beauty, and freedom, and the resulting experience is transcendental for Meléndez Valdés. He describes the surrender to night’s majesty, whereby his passions, his heart, his reason gradually relinquish their grip on his soul and: “free from the bonds of my body I rise / towards the supreme Maker; before him / I sing his marvels / […] / and with him I feel pleasure, relief and selflessness.”45 The poet, in effect, ceases to exist and joins the Creator through the meditation and contemplation afforded to him by the silent night. There are antecedents in Spanish literature in which night is featured as a source of solace and spiritual transcendence. Scholars of Early Modern Spanish literature will no doubt find echoes of the works of the Spanish mystic poet Saint John of the Cross. In his poem “Noche oscura” (“The Dark Night of the Soul”), the Carmelite friar and mystic poet describes a romantic encounter between a woman and her lover. It is, in fact, a religious and mystical allegory, whereby the young woman (the soul) flees her house into the darkness of the outdoors, meeting up with her lover (God). Scholars interpret the sensual, tender encounter as an allegorical representation of theosis, the union with God. Theosis was the ultimate goal of the mystics and the result of a series of prescribed steps that the faithful had to undertake, which would bring about a dissociation of the body and soul, allowing one to unite with the Creator.46 Saint John’s verses are a clear antecedent to Meléndez Valdés’; their union achieved, the lovers (soul / God) rest in the breezy night: “all my senses suspended / I stayed still and forgot myself, / my face laid on my beloved, / everything stopped, and I abandoned myself / leaving all my cares / forgotten among the lilies.”47 In a similar fashion, in “La noche y la soledad,” the poet achieves a mystical state of transcendence through peaceful meditation at nighttime, during which he feels communion with the great Creator. Meléndez does modify the traditional path to transcendence by incorporating another element: reading Edward Young’s Night Thoughts. He closes his poem by writing that: “and with Young we quietly enter / into tender peace through these solitudes / where in his sublime Nights we meditate / one thousand divine truths.”48 This original ingredient— popular, non-biblical literature as a source of transcendence—marks Meléndez Valdés’ quasi-mysticism as an evolution from that of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Ávila, and offers a novel interpretation of a poet’s search for peace and meaning. Night offers solace to Meléndez Valdés not only through spiritual transcendence but also by offering relief from the pains and turmoil he associates with daytime and sunlight. In his ode “A la mañana, en mi desamparo y orfandad” (“To The Morning, in my time of abandonment and orphanhood”), readers observe once again the influence of Young’s Night Thoughts, although scholars believe this poem was motivated by the

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  81 death of Meléndez Valdés’ older brother Esteban, who was only 35 years old.49 The poet’s grief is explicitly stated early on: “with dawn / I don’t feel happiness, / but rather more despair / than with the hushed night.”50 As a result, he flees the “odious light,” and instead begins a long apostrophe to night itself, and calls upon her to come to him, with her “funereal cloak.”51 While the imagery used to describe night is indeed reminiscent of Young’s Night Thoughts and the Burkean sublime described earlier in this chapter, the key difference here is that darkness and the nocturnal setting do not function as sources of the sublime (that is to say, provoking fear, terror, and extreme emotions), but rather as progenitors of solace and refuge. Night is not a source of horror, but instead the poet’s “friendly night,” whom he tells “I love you all the more / oh shady night, / than the irritating light of the sad day.”52 The consecration of night as idyll and source of peace, therefore, manifests itself also in the poet’s rejection of light, which is apparent throughout the poem. Light and day are described as “odious” and “sad,” and diametrically opposed to the “clement fervor” of night, which is depicted as a deity with “black wings” who conveys the poet’s lament to God.53 A similar formula is apparent in Meléndez Valdés’ compositions centered on astronomy, which includes poems such as “A la luna” (“To the Moon”), “A un lucero” (“To a star”), and “A las estrellas” (“To the Stars”). He categorized these works as part of his odas filosóficas y sagradas (philosophical and sacred odes), and, as Polt notes, they share a worldview in which the universe contains moral, philosophical, and physical order, overseen by a benevolent creator God.54 A common conceit in these poems is the solitary poet’s awe-filled observation of the night sky, which fills his spirit with adoration for the creator as well as a sense of peace and well-being. In “A las estrellas,” the poetic persona finds himself wondering: “What of the dark Earth, / this atom of dust that proudly / is destroyed by insane mankind / now in harsh war?”55 Calmly and happily, the poet announces that it has disappeared, receding from his view as he contemplates the majesty of the universe. This sense of cosmic scale drives “A las estrellas” and imbues the poem with a sense of wonder and peace. The earth’s relative unimportance leaves him filled not with dread or panic but rather feeling “sublimated / running in the immensity” of space.56 The night sky is a treasure trove of natural wonders and affords Meléndez Valdés a space in which to reflect on humanity’s insignificance, or “unspeakable beauty,” as well as the Creator’s awesome power.57 His child-like sense of awe sees him crying out: “If only in [the immense vault] united / with a flaming comet, on its speedy, / immeasurable race I could accompany!”58 In his romance (ballad) “A un lucero,” Meléndez Valdés turns his poetic gaze to a single night star. Romances were typical lyrical compositions in the Middle Ages and are emblematic of the oral tradition of sung poetry, with their rhythm and rhyme lending themselves to adaptation to local

82  Matthieu P. Raillard music. In “A un lucero,” the poetic effect is one of wonder, awe, and joyful singing, and is perfectly suited to the text’s content. The majority of the stanzas are exclamations, giving the poem a joyous tone, replete with wonder and admiration: “How in the shady night / with sweet violence you / draw ecstatic eyes onto you / and with your glow you bewitch me!”59 The stars are portrayed as a road map to the Creator, and Meléndez describes how the wise men of days long ago, “drunken with its divine beauty,” named constellations.60 In true enlightenment fashion, the universe created by God can be deciphered thanks to him, and Isaac Newton was the one who reached God through the stars: “from him he happily learned / the admirable law which unites / the universe.”61 Newton’s many achievements, such as the laws of motion and gravitation, helped prove Kepler’s theories of planetary motion, and were instrumental in explaining heretofore mysterious natural processes, such as tides and equinoxes, trajectories of celestial bodies, to list but a few. It is quite telling that Meléndez Valdés would showcase the “divine Newton” as having begun to decipher the laws of the universe—up until then known only to God—through the contemplation of the night sky. Perhaps Meléndez was inspired by Alexander Pope’s Epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton: “Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night / God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”62 Penetrating the mysteries of God’s universe was, after all, one of the aims of Meléndez Valdés in his odas filosóficas y sagradas. As he writes in the prologue to the 1797 edition of his collected works, The goodness of God, his beneficent providence, the order and harmony of the Universe, the immense variety of beings that populate and beautify it, drive us powerfully to contemplation; and to value the dignity of our being and the celestial wonder of virtue.63 As Lorenzo Álvarez succinctly puts it, night is the space where the mind’s flights of fancy lead to the Maker.64 This theme is at the core of Meléndez’s “La noche de invierno” (“A Winter Night”), in which contemplation of the violent, seemingly-inhospitable winter night leads the poet to God. He addresses the stormy, chaotic winter night, revealing that: “Your fearful confusion / elevates me to the divine / Being, humbly adoring / his immense power.”65 God, once again, is to be found in the totality of nature, from the golden wheat in the fields to the howling winds of a winter’s night.

Night as Part of the Deist Cycle The function of night as a source of peace and inspiration showed how Meléndez conceived of night not merely as a tapestry of pre-Gothic, sublime imagery, but as a balm for the soul of the weary philosopher and as a catalyst for fruitful reflection and meditation. Additionally, it was at

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  83 nighttime when his poetic persona felt closest to God, with the night sky showcasing the virtual infinity of the Maker’s creations. In addition to giving a sense of scale to humanity’s travails, it established a clear link between the Creator and humanity. The deity in Meléndez Valdés’ works is not an Old Testament God, nor is he an anthropomorphized symbol of humanity’s suffering and doubt, in the mold of Jesus Christ. What emerges from his compositions is a God in the Deist tradition. As Raillard explains it: Deism has often been referred to as a “neoclassical religion” in that it abolished the notion of divine revelation or an omnipresent, meddlesome deity, in favor of an appreciation of nature and logic, and human independence through reason. It is a product of the Enlightenment, a union of scientific methods, objectivity and the tantalizing possibility of learning directly from our world. It is a reconciliation of reason and God, and for Spanish authors of this era deism represented a rational alternative to the intransigence and fanaticism of religion.66 Whether Meléndez Valdés was a bona fide deist in his personal life is somewhat irrelevant; virtually no Spanish authors from that era would ever dare contravene the Catholic Church by publicly recognizing their adherence to another belief system. As with atheists, deist concepts manifested themselves indirectly in the correspondence and published works of eighteen-century Spanish intellectuals. What is apparent from engaging with Meléndez Valdés’ poetry is that his writing was imbued with deist concepts, terminology, and philosophy.67 Terms such as “Creator” or “Maker” are used interchangeably with “God” in Meléndez Valdés’ works. Virtually absent are the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and references to Catholic rituals. In their place, his poems often feature apostrophes to philosophical concepts and to nature: solitude, peace, night, stars, the moon. Similarly, his compositions are devoid of references to sin— whether original or otherwise—and other hallmarks of Christianity and Catholicism. The world portrayed by Meléndez is not one meant to be used to prove our worth in order to gain entry to what Catholics consider the real world, heaven, and the afterlife. It does not exist for humans, and thus his world is not as anthropocentric as in religious texts. It is, first and foremost, a world populated by the wonders of nature, the unfathomable beauty and ineffable mysteries it still holds. It is a world that humans, Meléndez seems to tell us, would do well to observe, contemplate, cherish and imitate. The deist God stands behind his creation and may perhaps be glimpsed through honest appreciation and contemplation of his creation, as expressed in the poems above. Therefore, night in Meléndez Valdés functions as both a source of the sublime and as a source of peace and meditation. It is of little surprise

84  Matthieu P. Raillard that night should again prove to be a valuable concept onto which Meléndez would map his deist explorations. The aptly named “La presencia de Dios” (God’s Presence”) offers readers a window into such a worldview. The poet-narrator begins by describing the presence of God as total and ubiquitous; wherever he lays his eyes, his spirit feels God’s presence. He is in all things, and thus is all things: “the humble little grass / that I tread on, the mountain that with eternal snow / covered rises.”68 The Creator’s immensity fills all things with life, “from the invisible / insect to the elephant, / from the atom to the shining comet.”69 Light has often been associated with God; Dante’s Paradiso culminates with the Pilgrim’s ascension to the Primum Mobile and eventually to the Empyrean, where he sees God. Represented not as a bearded old man (as in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam), God is instead depicted as a being of light, composed of three circles, symbolizing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Dante writes in Canto XXXIII: “In the deep and bright / essence of that exalted Light, three circles / appeared to me,” and “Eternal Light, You only dwell within / Yourself, and only You know You.”70 Meléndez offers a subtle modification on this traditional representation of God-as-light when he writes: “You give the dark night / its dusky cloak, and the subtle veil / to the joyful morning.”71 Meléndez Valdés’ deist God is present in all things, not just light; he repeatedly stresses that darkness is a particularly propitious environment for experiencing the divine Creator: “If therefore to the dark wood / I run, in its shade I find you.”72 The poem’s final stanza extends the omnipresence of God to the being’s skin color, rejecting the notion that whites are the “chosen” skin tone in God’s eyes: “We are all your sons: / the Tartar, the Laplander, the crude Indian, / the tanned African, / is a man, is your image, and is my brother.”73 In “A la luna” (“To the Moon”), Meléndez further refines his view of the world as a deist cycle, alternating night and day, with no preference for light or sunshine. This paean to the moon’s majesty is replete with breathless descriptions of its effect on humans: “Oh with how much joy / fills the sky your serene splendor! / Oh how the universe is reborn, full / of your silvery flame.”74 The moon is depicted as a nighttime sister to the sun and is equally beneficial and appreciated by the humans who dwell below: “everything, moon, adores you.”75 The moon is a deity in Meléndez’s poetic universe, in much the same way as she was depicted in the classical period when Romans called her Luna and Greeks Selene. As such, her function is that of a comforting, maternal presence, who provides solace to all, “soothing their pains / and filling with hope and sweetness / miserable mortals.”76 As a cloud covers the moon, Meléndez decries the ensuing moonless blackness, which plunges the world back into a sublime darkness. One of the most detailed representations of the night-day cycle of nature occurs in his ode “A Don Salvador de Mena, en un infortunio”

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  85 (“To Don Salvador de Mena, in Misfortune”), in which Meléndez succinctly states: “Nothing lasts forever. / Good follows bad, the pale new day / follows the dark night.”77 Night and day exist in a state of balance, which sees the sun bring life as it “fertilizes the ground,” only to cede eventually to the all-covering night.78 He invokes the deist cycle as a manner of consoling his friend, who is going through a hardship, reminding him that just as day follows night, peace follows adversity. Similarly, the aptly named poem “Mis combates” (“My struggles”) details the poet’s laments as to his lot in life. His misfortune finds no solace in the usual places and is so pronounced that even “reason flees meekly and fearfully.”79 In vain, he seeks peace “in the sacred light of the new day,” as well as in the “somber, funereal empire of the frozen night.”80 It is important to underscore the equal relationship between day and night; Meléndez does not seek day only to find night, but rather considers both viable sources of peace. Gómez Castellanos interprets this dichotomy between night and day as a representation of the duality in Meléndez Valdés’ poetry. In this view, sun, daytime, and light would be associated with the luminosity of the Anacreontic style, while the darkness of night is linked to his philosophical compositions.81 It is certainly true that his poetic style evolved over time, but as we have seen, nocturnal poems are found throughout his career, while Anacreontic compositions are mainly the product of Meléndez Valdés’ youth. Night is a constant in Juan Meléndez Valdés’ poetry; it can be found in his early works and in his later poems, fulfilling different roles and beholden to diverse literary traditions. It is a plastic concept onto which the poet was free to map his poetic explorations. As Lorenzo Álvarez explains, night (and often solitude) provides a certain kind of lucidity and invites transcendence.82 The three manifestations explored in this chapter—night as sublime, night as solace, night as part of the deist cycle—all share a common existential thread. The poetic narrator’s contemplation of night and darkness leads invariably to a transformation, a transcendence of the self, be it due to the shock and awe of a sublime nightscape, the peaceful sublimation brought about by solace, or the reassurance that night is part of the Creator’s universal cycle of being. Meléndez repeatedly clamors for night’s powerful effects, which are not circumscribed by limited notions of good or bad, safe or dangerous. Instead, night offers him a transformative experience, one in which he can contemplate “One thousand divine truths.”83

Notes 1 Rogelio Reyes, Poesía española del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Cátedra, 1988), 232; John H. R. Polt, Poesía del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1994), 228. 2 Meléndez Valdés wrote poems praising Joseph Bonaparte, such as his Odes XXV, “Al rey,” and XXVI “España a su rey don José Napoleón I, en su feliz

86  Matthieu P. Raillard vuelta de Francia” (“To the King” and “Spain to her king Don José Napoleon I, on his Happy Return from France”). All translations in this chapter are my own. 3 Anacreontics, named for the Greek poet Anacreon, were lyrical compositions that sang the praises of wine, women and song. They were often pastoral, bucolic and depicted a style of joyful, sensual hedonism. 4 Locus amoenus, or “pleasant place,” refers to an idealized natural idyll; beatus ille comes from Horace’s second Epode, where he states “blessed are they [who live far from business]” and refers to an idealization of life in the country; collige virgo rosas, or “gather, virgin, your roses,” is an exhortation to enjoy youth; tempus fugit, “time flees,” refers to the transitory nature of life, and was often used to underscore the need to enjoy the present day, or carpe diem. 5 Poetas líricos del siglo XVIII, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, LXIII (Madrid: Atlas, 1952–1953), 73. 6 David Gies, “Sensibilidad y sensualismo en la poesía dieciochesca,” Eros y amistad (Barcelona: Calambur, 2016), 26. 7 Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Poesía. Teatro. Prosa literaria, ed. John H. R. Polt (Madrid: Taurus, 1993), lines 272–278. 8 Russell P. Sebold, “La cosmovisión romántica: siete síntomas y cinco metáforas,” Castilla. Estudios de literatura 2 (2011): 314–315. 9 Elena de Lorenzo Álvarez, “Lo sublime cósmico en la poesía de Juan Meléndez Valdés,” Cuadernos dieciochistas 18 (2017): 101–156; Irene Gómez Castellanos, “De lo diurno a lo nocturno en la poesía de Meléndez Valdés,” eHumanista 22 (2012): 252–271; Matthieu P. Raillard, “Deism, the Sublime and the Formulation of Early Romanticism in Juan Meléndez Valdés and José de Cadalso,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 39 (Fall 2010): 123–142; James Mandrell, “The Literary Sublime in Spain: Meléndez Valdés and Espronceda,” Modern Language Notes 106 (1991): 294–313. 10 Mandrell, 294. 11 Raillard, 127. 12 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. David Womersley (New York: Penguin, 1998), 86. 13 Ibid., 102. 14 Ibid., 172. 15 Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 47. 16 Ibid., 55. 17 Georges Demerson, Don Juan Meléndez Valdés et son temps (1754-1817) (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961), 56. 18 Meléndez Valdés, Juan. “La tempestad,” Obras completas. Poesías, ed. Emilio Palacios Fernández (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 1996), lines 13–5. All Meléndez Valdés poem citations come from this edition. I indicate line number instead of page number to facilitate referencing in other editions. 19 Ibid., lines 17–20. 20 Ibid., lines 61–63. 21 Ibid., lines 84–85. 22 Salvador J. Fajardo, “Meléndez Valdés’ Winter Ode,” Dieciocho 26, no. 1 (2003): 46. 23 Meléndez Valdés, “El invierno es el tiempo de la meditación,” lines 52–55. 24 Literally, “remember that you have to die.” 25 Meléndez Valdés, “El invierno es el tiempo de la meditación,” lines 103–105. 26 Meléndez Valdés, “La esperanza,” lines 9–12.

“One Thousand Divine Truths”  87 7 Ibid., lines 37–38. 2 28 Scholars have long wondered whether Filis was a real person, or a poetic creation. Meléndez Valdés’ use of various recurring idealized female love interests would suggest the latter. 29 Meléndez Valdés, “En la muerte de Filis,” lines 61–62. 30 Ibid., lines 67–72. 31 Meléndez Valdés, “En la desgraciada muerte del coronel Don José Cadalso,” lines 18–20. 32 Ibid., lines 136–138. 33 Meléndez Valdés, “De la noche,” lines 1–4. 34 Ibid., lines 9–13. 35 Meléndez Valdés, “De un baile,” lines 13–20. 36 Meléndez Valdés, “A mi lira,” lines 21–24. 37 Meléndez Valdés, “De mi vida en la aldea,” lines 13–16. 38 Ibid., lines 25–40. 39 Gómez Castellanos, “De lo diurno a lo nocturno en la poesía de Meléndez Valdés,” 255. 40 John H. R. Polt and Georges Demerson, La lira de marfil (Madrid: Castalia, 1981), 241. 41 Meléndez Valdés, “La noche y la soledad,” lines 128. 42 Ibid., lines 215–218. 43 Ibid., lines 266–268. 44 Ibid., lines 272–273. 45 Ibid., lines 281–286. 46 Santa Teresa de Ávila, mystic poet, religious reformer, and mentor to Saint John of the Cross, wrote about the path to Theosis in her works, especially in Camino de perfección (The Way of Perfection) and El castillo interior (The Interior Castle). 47 San Juan de la Cruz, “Noche oscura,” Poesía, ed. Domingo Yndurain (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000), lines 35–40. 48 Meléndez Valdés, “La noche y la soledad,” lines 320–325. 49 Antonio Astorgano Abajo, “Esteban Meléndez Valdés,” Real Academia de la Historia, accessed August 15, 2020, http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/45446/ esteban-melendez-valdes. 50 Meléndez Valdés, “En la mañana en mi desamparo y orfandad,” lines 41–44. 51 Ibid., line 48; line 53. 52 Ibid., lines 90–91. 53 Ibid., lines 66–67. 54 Polt and Demerson, 36. 55 Meléndez Valdés, “A las estrellas,” lines 21–24. 56 Ibid., lines 31–32. 57 Ibid., line 44. 58 Ibid., lines 71–73. 59 Meléndez Valdés, “A un lucero,” lines 9–12. 60 Ibid., lines 43–44. 61 Ibid., lines 109–11. 62 N. C. Craig Sharp, “Nature’s Laws Revealed in Rhyming Couplets,” Nature 413, no. 108 (2001), accessed August 3, 2020, https://doi. org/10.1038/35093273. 63 Meléndez Valdés, Juan. Poesías, Vol. I. (Valladolid: Viuda e Hijos de Santander, 1797), xii. 64 Lorenzo Álvarez, 121. 65 Meléndez Valdés, “La noche de invierno,” lines 29–32.

88  Matthieu P. Raillard 6 Raillard, 132. 6 67 The presence and dominance of the Catholic Church, including its own Inquisition, made publicly avowed divergence from Catholic dogma and faith virtually non-existent. In the absence of records, interviews or first-hand accounts, it is very likely that the personal religious beliefs of eighteenthcentury Spanish intellectuals will never be known with any certainty. 68 Meléndez Valdés, “La presencia de Dios,” lines 9–11. 69 Ibid., lines 26–28. 70 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Digital Dante, accessed September 1, 2020, https:// digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-33/, lines 114–116; lines 124–125. 71 Meléndez Valdés, “La presencia de Dios,” lines 29–31. 72 Ibid., lines 41–42. 73 Ibid., lines 77–80. 74 Meléndez Valdés, “A la luna,” lines 41–44. 75 Ibid., lines 91–92. 76 Ibid., lines 154–156. 77 Meléndez Valdés, “A Don Salvador de Mena, en un infortunio,” lines 1–3. 78 Ibid., line 17. 79 Meléndez Valdés, “Mis combates,” lines 7–8. 80 Ibid., lines 19–21. 81 Gómez Castellanos, 256–258. 82 Lorenzo Álvarez, 121. 83 Meléndez Valdés, “La noche y la soledad,” line 323.

5 Shadowed Celebration Goethe’s Klassische Walpurgisnacht and Creative Profusion Jeffrey Bellomi

Introduction A paragon of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s two-part masterpiece Faust (1808, 1831) continues to dazzle with its alchemical admixture of the tragic and comic to this day. To be sure, the play’s central conceit of a “devil’s wager” persists as its most resonant motif, adapted from the greater Faust mythos and amplified through Goethe’s attuned eye for grandeur. However, upon reading Faust I and its significantly more complicated sequel, Faust II, one might note that this wager comfortably operates in the background of the narrative. Serving as a condition of future judgment, the wager catalyzing the adventures of Faust I and II provides a framework in which Goethe probes the nature of both human ambition and cosmic order, all by way of Faust’s often morally suspect actions and subsequent epiphany by story’s end. Indeed, Goethe’s Faust is a restless man, entombed in his stagnant academic world and desperate for escape, something that Mephistopheles’ seductive offer of worldly pleasures conveniently presents. The ensuing journey takes Faust from spaces such as a dimly lit witch’s hovel as far as a position in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, concluding with his ascension to Heaven despite technically losing the bet with Mephistopheles. True to his word, Mephistopheles shows Faust the world. As a whole, Faust I & II are plays replete with thematic tensions, such as the struggle between emotional catharsis and rationality, experience and imagination, even the growing divide between Enlightenment and Romantic thought. As Walter Kaufmann notes in the introduction to his seminal translation of Faust I, for all of the manners through which Goethe’s characterization of Faust inspired future Romantic archetypes, Faust’s wretched deeds throughout the plays appear to provide satirical commentary on the limitations of this aesthetic philosophy.1 Long considered a generative text for the Romantic movement at large, Faust nevertheless focuses on a near-caricature of Romantic excesses, a point Stuart Atkins attributes to Goethe’s complex relationship with the philosophical movement.2 Whether arriving through the biting wit of Mephistopheles DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-6

90  Jeffrey Bellomi or through Goethe’s own narrative architecture, the two plays appear intent on questioning the limits and successes of Romanticism, right up until Faust’s vision of a utopian world and subsequent salvation in his final moments. It is a fitting polemic when considering the time in which Faust I & II arrived in the world. Both plays were first published in the waning years of the “long eighteenth century,” with Part I first published in 1808 and Part II posthumously published in 1832, just months after Goethe’s death. Between the two, one can detect a seismic shift in thought, the passage from Enlightenment rationality to Romantic experiential epistemology. But this passage is not a smooth one by any means, and Faust finds himself ensnared as deeply within the tension between theoretical knowledge and worldly experience as he is by Mephistopheles’ devious wager. As Faust struggles to free himself from his prison of texts and abstractions, so too does Goethe work to reconfigure and invert traditional symbolic narratives adhered to the conceptual program of Enlightenment rhetoric. This chapter focuses on how Goethe deploys night and day (and even more broadly, darkness and light) to ends that slyly subvert their traditional symbolic functions within Enlightenment thought. It examines how “Walpurgis Night” in Part I and “Classical Walpurgis Night” in Part II work to establish an evolutionary path for night within the context of Faust as a whole. To be sure, “night” and “day” as metaphors are coded with meaning to the point of saturation, and these functions are ever-shifting, highly contextually sensitive, and even near paradoxical. Within Faust I & II alone, the chiaroscuro tableau of dark hovels and brilliantly illuminated spaces maintains a mercurial malleability in its metaphorical import. If we constrain our field of interpretation to how these metaphors were deployed during the European Enlightenment, however, it is somewhat easier to map out a comparatively stable network of meaning (but only just so) against which Goethe’s work can be read. German philosopher Hans Blumenberg once noted that certain metaphors are so approachable and elemental in their applicability that they assume a near “absolute” form, in which their narrative function retains a basic level of consistency across cultural lines and temporal boundaries. “Light” and “dark” operate as such metaphors for him, with the former tending to represent concepts such as truth, stability, and harmony, while the latter suggests danger, obscurity, unchecked production, and falsehood.3 It is worth noting that despite using the word “absolute”, there remains plenty of room for such metaphors to adapt in different ways, assuming the role of counter-narratives and subverting traditional symbolic systems. Furthermore, these metaphors require a certain amount of cultural maintenance, in which their mode of investment into a particular culture is upheld by a narrative practice that keeps them relevant. Consider the

Shadowed Celebration  91 name “Enlightenment” alone, in which the concepts of rationality, human progress, and emancipatory knowledge are affixed to “light” at large. This conceptualization of light, in turn, led to a reinforcement of the dark or nighttime as a potentially dangerous foil to the light, a cultural process that Tim Edensor links to the development of modern concepts of urban space. Drawing from a great phenomenon he refers to as “nyctophobia,” he traces the affixation of darkness and night to danger back to pre-Christian times. Lending credence to Blumenberg’s philosophy, Edensor notes that “[the] permeation of this fear of the dark—­ nyctophobia—and these religious and modern allusions that cross cultures, spaces, and times extend into other judgments, with darkness persistently linked with negative understandings of particular settings.”4 Of course, he is clear to note that there remain practical considerations at play concerning night-based fears, as even evolutionary issues such as greater threat-awareness in the dark come into play. The concern is when such anxieties or fears are extracted from this context and projected into metaphorical systems. Returning to the issue of the Enlightenment proper, symbols of illumination such as sunlight and fire were taken to represent all that the night was not: clarity, truth, and revelation. Rolf Reichardt traces the development of Enlightenment visual symbols, charting the shift from light as a mainly Catholic symbol of divine revelation into a representation of human reason and intellectual emancipation.5 While the context of the deployment of light, dark, night, and day shifts over the course of history, a Blumenbergian “absolutist” reading would take account of how the central conceits of illumination and revelation operate in tension against obfuscation and danger. Phenomena such as light, the sun, and day as a whole have infused with the concepts of truth, clarity, and order, amongst others, over time. Night, on the other hand, has in large part come to be associated with hidden threats and deceptions under cover of darkness. Therefore, the two clusters of metaphors begin to define each other by way of their distinction, inscribing them more and more ineluctably into the cultural consciousness of a given moment. The field of Night Studies is fertile indeed, as nocturnal landscapes and signifiers impart potent narrative augmentations. Depictions of the night lend themselves to a complex system of interpretations and readings, and their symbolic potential often extends beyond its literary and artistic origins, crossing into sociological and cultural effects. For example, a subfield of Night Studies focuses on how urban spaces and landscapes have evolved over centuries to adapt to growing populations that must navigate the city at night. While Tim Edensor’s work explores how night and darkness narratives found themselves entwined with narratives of illumination, he also sets forth to restore some of the positive and liberating aspects to nocturnal symbology.6 He is not alone in this regard, as Night

92  Jeffrey Bellomi Studies uncovers a network of media that approach the nocturnal world as a zone of narrative potentiality and aesthetic production. Hélène Valence notes that urban nocturnal depictions in art can go as far as to have a definitive function in the formation of national identity, particularly that of a cultural bifurcation between the urban and rural space at night.7 From a sociological perspective, Murray Melbin referred to night as a new “frontier” due to increased activity at night.8 This observation was later reinforced by Ilse van Liempt, Irina van Aalst, and Tim Schwanen’s consideration of urban nocturnes as “produced” spaces insofar that they reflect culturally coded expressions of time and space. While some areas close down at night, others surge forth with social and economic forces, subject to evolving regulations and methods of navigation.9 Luc Gwiazdzinski notes that Night Studies perhaps exists as a natural extension of such developments, as the field finds its footing in its unique capacity to examine such cultural trends.10 In turn, Night Studies research could play an integral part in augmenting these processes, aiding and offering context for growing nocturnal infrastructures. While the perception and cultural function of night has certainly shifted in tandem with the expansion of urban landscapes, this is not to say that night was never considered prior to the fact. In the introduction to his book The Nocturnal City, Robert Shaw remarks that nighttime is simply a function of the planet, something that human beings, insofar that they are “planetary” beings, must always consider: “Being planetary involves experiencing the conditions of living on Earth as a planet. Night is one such condition; it is inevitable, even if developments in technology mean that it has been dramatically altered.”11 Indeed, night has been aesthetically considered since Antiquity, something Elisabeth Bronfen’s masterful book Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film addresses.12 Bronfen charts representations of night from the anthropomorphic depictions of Ancient Greece to modern media treatments, demonstrating, as Shaw does as well, that the night has always been there, serving as a narrative wellspring for artistic creation. As such, Night Studies possesses the unique capacity to trace this oft-neglected lineage of human creativity in all of its existential considerations. Arriving at the end of the Enlightenment, an era defined by its opposition to darkness, and in the early years of a new era of illumination, Goethe’s Faust occupies a fascinating space within this discourse. Turning its sights back to a decidedly pre-urban time and space, the play provides a stirring argument for the beauty and generative power of the nocturnal, all within the irrational phantasmagoria of a spirit procession.

A Dark Milieu While Faust I & II often settle into step with these well-trodden narrative paths, this expected pattern serves to make its narrative innovations all

Shadowed Celebration  93 the more striking when encountered. Consider the famous “Prologue in Heaven” from Faust I, in which its resident angels describe Heaven as a static, illuminated space in which nothing has changed since the dawn of its creation. Raphael proclaims: The sun intones, in ancient tourney With brother spheres, a rival air; And his predestinated journey, he closes with a thunderous blare. His sight, as none can comprehend it, Gives strength to angels; the array Of works, unfathomably splendid, Is glorious as on the first day. (K)13 That Goethe depicts Heaven as a place of unchanging perfection is in and of itself not all that surprising. This is a relatively traditional consideration of the space, in which the trials and struggles of corporeal life give way to the full breadth of divine perfection, a space in need of no change. By the end of Faust II, once again in the heavenly spheres, Goethe appears to shift towards the Enlightenment depiction of illumination: the process towards perfectibility. The Chorus Mysticus sings: All that is transitory is only a symbol; what seems unachievable here is seen done; what’s indescribable here becomes fact… (A)14 In this final vision of Heaven, in which Faust finds his salvation, he can finally bear witness to the process through which transitory experience or knowledge reifies into the absolute truth of divine perfection. It is a subtle shift in description, admittedly settling on the idea of illuminated stasis in the final instance. But this is a key distinction for Faust given his journey across the course of the two plays, especially considering the state in which the reader first meets him. Terminally bored and exasperated with his life, Goethe introduces Faust on the edge of suicide, desperate to escape the doldrums of his static existence. Before they even meet, his foil exists in Heaven in the form of Mephistopheles, equally maligned with the ennui of repetition. Faust’s abortive plan to drink poison, as well as his first meeting with Mephistopheles, takes place in a scene simply called “Night,” and given the loaded history of this term, such dangerous and shady dealings under the cloak of darkness should come as little surprise. The scene complicates the symbol, however, as the action occurs within an illuminated

94  Jeffrey Bellomi room, and the source of Faust’s misery is the limit of recorded human knowledge. He laments: I have, alas, studied philosophy, Jurisprudence and medicine, too, And, worst of all, theology With keen endeavor, through and through— And here I am, for all my lore, The wretched fool I was before. Called Master of Arts, and Doctor to boot, For ten years almost I confute And up and down, wherever it goes, I drag my students by the nose— And see that for all our science and art We can know nothing. It burns my heart. (K)15 The Enlightenment and illumination are placed in ironic opposition in this moment. Surrounded by books and in possession of the breadth of human knowledge, Faust sees no resolution or reward in the pursuit of Reason. During a nighttime scene, the “revelation” comes forth that whatever enlightened discourse humankind may produce will remain a proxy for experiential knowledge, something that Faust craves and that Mephistopheles offers. In his introduction to the play, David E. Wellbery writes: “Faust agrees to the wager, in other words, only after realizing that immediate access to the Absolute is foreclosed to him.”16 It is as if Faust realizes not only the limit of his own knowledge but also the barrier blocking humanity from transcendence. No amount of philosophy or scientific discovery could breach into an absolute grasp of existence in its totality, and so Faust recognizes his work for the sunk cost fallacy that it is. The devil’s bargain is so much more attractive. Could it be that the night represents Faust’s ignorance of the divine organization of the world, thus leading him to foolishly consign himself to damnation in exchange for worldly experience? Perhaps Faust’s gambit is an ignorant one in the end. Despite believing that Mephistopheles could never provide him absolute joy, Faust does indeed have a moment of true happiness at the end of Faust II and subsequently drops dead on the spot. But divine intercession occurs at this instant, spiriting Faust to Heaven as an icon of redemption. Furthermore, this moment of joy comes from an ideal vision born from his adventures, having taken in his experiences in the shambling Holy Roman court and projecting an image of a proto-Socialist utopia of shared property and harmony. As Alfred Hoezel observes, a vision of “potential” rather than absolute knowledge grants Faust access to his moment of true happiness.17 In other words, by the end of Faust II, Goethe seems to provide no redemption for the collected works of human Reason as seen in “Night.” For all of Faust’s romantic

Shadowed Celebration  95 excesses and subsequently wretched deeds born of unchecked feeling and desire, they nevertheless open a path to redemption, salvation, and perfection in the end: access to a world in which “what seems unachievable/ here is seen done.”18 As a flawed hero anticipating the Romantic shift out of the “long eighteenth century,” little could be more fitting for him. Critically, what it takes for Faust to reach this point is escaping his illuminated chambers and fleeing into the night, with Mephistopheles guiding him through a world of libidinal temptations, bawdy rural scenes, and supernatural tableaus. Several of these scenes tap into “standard” narrative histories of the night, such as hushed meetings between Faust and Gretchen after dark, a rowdy tavern scene in which Mephistopheles plays the mischievous bartender, and a witch’s coven replete with foul sorceries. However, there are two “night scenes” in particular that are so pivotal for their respective sections of the play that they serve as mutual centerpieces: “Walpurgis Night” and “Classical Walpurgis Night.” “Walpurgis Night” depicts the frightening specters and dangers of night in a manner harmonious with Enlightenment narrative tropes, while “Classical Walpurgis Night” is something else entirely. Interpolating concepts of creation and production, this scene establishes the night as its own domain of creative profusion in contrast to the illuminated sphere, a process further indebted to the Classical world from which it draws its name. While Faust ultimately falls short of attaining Helen for himself in the end, “Classical Walpurgis Night” nevertheless serves as a stirring counterpoint to Faust II’s final beatific vision of Heaven and, in turn, marks a widening in nocturnal discourse.

Walpurgis Nights At the core, the “Walpurgis Night” scene of Faust I is Mephistopheles’ first grand flourish in showing Faust the supernatural world he craves to experience. There is, of course, a historical precedent for selecting this night of all nights. Walpurgis Night (German: Walpurgisnacht) is a holiday similar to Halloween, albeit through a fusion of Celtic pagan and Early Christian practices into a holiday in honor of Saint Walpurga.19 As a saint, Walpurga is revered for her protective abilities against witchcraft and otherworldly spirits, and, as such, the festival of Walpurgis Night blurs the line between the banishment of the spirit realm and its celebration. Within the scope of Faust I, Mephistopheles shows Faust a version of the holiday distinctly bent towards the latter permutation, as Faust is made privy to a seedy world of sorcery and criminality that emerges under cover of darkness, all the while encircled with vibrant natural splendor. In his translation, Kaufmann acknowledges how out of place the scene has seemed to some readers, appearing to interrupt the action of the play. Instead, he sees this scene as a crucial reinforcement of Faust as

96  Jeffrey Bellomi the play’s central figure, knowingly breaking away from Margaret’s growing misery (by Faust’s hand, no less) and drawing him more deeply into the experiential world he so craves.20 Shortly into the scene, Faust joins Mephistopheles and a will-o’-the-wisp spirit in a song that serves as a thematic overture, describing the swaying trees of the forest and the melodious splashes of brooks, a universe teeming with animal life so much that it seems to blend into a morass of motion and metamorphosis.21 Beautiful and invigorating at first, this surge of natural energy grows monstrous and frightening, with Faust making the following observation: “The tempests lash the air and rave/And with gigantic blows they hit my shoulders.”22 This moment syncs with the appearance of a witches’ chorus, singing of obscene and disturbing imagery, immediately restoring to the night scene a sense of its traditional menace and frightfulness. In stark opposition to both the static harmony of Heaven and the draining ennui of Faust’s chamber, the witches capture the frightful productivity and motion of the night, erratic and ineffable in its mutability. Mephistopheles describes the setting as such: They throng and push, they rush and clatter. They hiss and whirl, they pull and chatter. It glistens, sparks, and stinks and flares; Those are indeed the witches’ airs! (K)23 But this is the world that Faust desired to see, or so he once supposed while trapped inside his study. As “Walpurgis Night” continues, the spectral activity gives way to more and more unsettling sights, and Mephistopheles describes the transformation as the creation of “little worlds within the bigger one.”24 Echoing the Enlightenment narrative that fastens darkness and night to falsehood and deception, one such “little world” is populated by a “Huckster-Witch” and her prospective marks. Four figures lament the current state of the world: a general who resents being forgotten by the country he once served, a statesman who waxes nostalgic to a time when the word of elders was law, a once wealthy and famous man named Parvenu who regrets the eroding force of time, and an author who resents a lack of readership amongst youth. All four lament the passage of time and its ensuing changes, and the witch offers them little more than trinkets that were once used to harm others both physically and emotionally. Nurturing their hatred and resentment, this “little world” offers little to sate the sorrow of these figures and all the more to inflame it. Turning to the night, they are offered neither solace nor respite, and their desire for order and hierarchy serves as prime fodder for the witch’s manipulation. If this moment in “Walpurgis Night” is suggestive of Goethe’s engagement with Enlightenment symbology, the appearance of the “Proktophantasmist” is far more explicit in its aims. The character’s name is in itself a crude joke,

Shadowed Celebration  97 with Kaufmann loosely translating it to “Rump-ghostler,” albeit in a heavily euphemistic tone.25 He concludes that this character serves as a caricature for the Enlightenment figure Friedrich Nicolai, a staunch opponent of the burgeoning Romantic movement and a firm non-believer in the supernatural to boot. Nicolai’s characterization in “Walpurgis Night” is less than flattering, as his declarations that ghosts do not exist to the very ghosts that appear before him is at best an impotent gesture. He cries: You are still there! Oh no! That’s without precedent. Please go! Have we not brought enlightenment? By our rules these devils are not daunted; We are so smart, but Tegel is still haunted. To sweep illusion out, my energies were spent, But things never get clean; that’s without precedent. (K)26 Confronted with this nocturnal world, teeming and surging through within the shadows of nightfall, the Enlightenment fails to do away with its sworn enemies of falsity and the supernatural. The night scene evades any orderly explanation, and Faust’s journey through the various tableaus is so rapid as to be disorienting for both him and the reader/spectator. There is a new sight around every corner, shifting and morphing before Faust’s eyes while Mephistopheles watches with glee. By this point, “Walpurgis Night” does little to challenge the Enlightenment notions of night and its inherent dangers, but within Faust, the nocturnal world emerges victorious in its myriad snares and treacheries. It is the very seductive world to which Faust wished to escape, something the stilted knowledge lining his bookshelves could not hope to reproduce through the gifts of Reason. Indeed, “Walpurgis Night” is a very unreasonable scene, an explosion of the inexplicable that appears suddenly within the center of Gretchen’s looming tragedy. In the first part of the play, Gretchen plays the role of Faust’s love interest, her innocence eventually corrupted by his noxious influence. She is sentenced to prison for drowning their infant child in a fit of madness, catalyzed by the accidental death of her own mother. Faust is culpable in part for this as well, having previously given a sleeping potion to Gretchen to use on her mother, inadvertently killing her. The night’s revel nearly serves to liberate Faust from his guilt, were it not for the appearance of a spectral Gretchen at the end of the scene, shackled and withered as she wastes away in a dungeon for the death of her mother and child at Faust’s misguided direction. Unlike the disenchanted who sit in the thrall of the Huckster-Witch, no object of treachery can work to distract Faust from the sorrow he himself brought into Gretchen’s life. Faust cries out: “What Rapture! Oh what agony!/I cannot leave her, cannot flee” (K).27 If the night were to serve as the panacea to Faust’s ennui, an escape into an otherworldly realm of change and potential, it fails in

98  Jeffrey Bellomi the last instance. The gravity of Faust’s worldly actions snatches him out of the phantasmagoria of Walpurgis Night, and the nocturnal scene only offers temporary relief. Like the gentle winds growing into threatening torrents, so too does the illusory world of the night return to bear its fangs via the apparition of Gretchen’s torment. But if, in the end, “Walpurgis Night” exposes itself as a realm of danger and falsehood, in line with the Enlightenment’s symbolic appropriation of the night, it nevertheless resists rational explanation with formidable force. The Proktophantasmist is left aghast at the sights, claiming that the moment is without precedent. Taken as the fulcrum of Faust I, Walpurgis Night is without precedent in his own life as well. While Faust demonstrates the capacity to contact the supernatural realm in the first “Night” scene, the spirit he summons disobeys him on the spot, leaving Faust dejected and alone once more. Entering directly into the dangerous spaces of the night, the productive potential of the world reveals itself with greater clarity than any text can do for him. Frightening and agonizing as it may be in the end, its falsehoods, dangers, and treacheries impart knowledge nevertheless, sending Faust into a frenzied attempt to save the woman he has condemned with his terrible choices. In the end, the only one who can save Gretchen is God himself, as Faust flees from her cell with Mephistopheles and passes into the entangled narratives of Faust II. Before leading into the “Classical Walpurgis Night” scene proper, it is worth recounting the preceding events in abbreviated form. In a startling shift, Faust has ingratiated himself into the position of the court magician for the Holy Roman Emperor. The Empire is in disarray, with social distress and disorder fermenting to the point of spillover. Financial failures, armed conflict, property inequalities: the order that the Empire had promised by nature has begun to dissolve, and how several court officials deliver this news parallels the laments of the “Walpurgis Night” foursome in extended form.28 Faust and Mephistopheles propose the creation of paper currency to solve economic troubles, and this catches the eye of the Emperor. Notably, before offering his solution, Faust enters the court along with a veritable parade of figures from Classical Greek mythology, foreshadowing how Faust II will wrestle to harmonize the Classical and Romantic literary form. Shortly thereafter, Faust and Mephistopheles put on an illusion show with a magic lantern, recreating the kidnapping of Helen prior to the Trojan war. So enamored with his own illusory Helen, Faust reaches out to touch her, causing the illusion to explode and igniting the passion of his heart once again. He concludes that he must spirit her into existence by whatever means possible, leading to his journey into the supernatural world of Greek mythology. This sequence of events is utterly improbable, nearly impossible when taken in direct continuation from Faust I. For all of the supernatural and nocturnal flourishes of “Walpurgis Night”, Faust I is a remarkably grounded play for one about a deal with the devil. Focusing mainly on

Shadowed Celebration  99 the sequence of events that lead to Gretchen’s tragic end, Faust I comfortably sticks to its dimly lit corridors and vaulted rooms, save for “Walpurgis Night” proper. Having passed through the nocturnal excesses of this evening, it is as if the door to all potential is open as Faust II begins, with the titular character’s journey inflated to exaggerated excesses. This appears to be due to the grander intellectual ambitions of the play, one of its central goals being the fusion of Classical and Romantic aesthetics in a productive way. It is a synthesis that is readily apparent from the start, as the phantoms and occult creatures of the Walpurgis Night of Faust I are replaced with mythical beings and monsters from the annals of Antiquity, cloaked in a nightscape far more charged with historical gravity. During Faust’s quest to encounter what amounts to Helen’s purest essence, Mephistopheles embarks on a parallel journey, integrating himself with the mythical bestiary of the night and reinscribing himself as a fourth member of the Phorkiad sisters, amongst other typically ribald exchanges. But differences appear to reign supreme at first glance. For all of the seething treachery and danger of the Faust I Walpurgis Night, the event in Faust II imparts less of the sinister ambiance of its parallel. While the panoply of entities in the classical phantasmagoria is indeed quite monstrous, their presence amounts more to a festival of creation, setting forth the breadth of the Antiquity’s paranormal cosmology. Whereas the Walpurgis Night of Faust I repels Faust, consigning him to the fringes for safety, the Classical Walpurgis Night is uniquely inviting, Faust and Mephistopheles diving into the milieu with abandon. However, despite the fundamental distinctions between the two scenes, critic Benjamin Bennett notes that a deeper synthetic sense is at play, marrying the concerns of Romantic and Classical concepts of production and creation: a modern power, indeed. He writes, “As in the case of the Greek and the German, moreover, Goethe’s ultimate aim is a synthesis or reconciliation between the classical and the Romantic as types of modern power, a synthesis not only in theory…but also in practice.”29 Consider Faust’s encounter with Seismos, in which the primordial being makes a case for its central function in creating the Earth. It remarks: I did this all with no assistance, as people will someday acknowledge; and if it were not for my shakes and jolts, how would this world be such a thing of beauty? How could your mountains stand majestic in azure skies’ translucent splendor had I not shoved them there for you to see with picturesque delight? (A)30 Seismos puts forth a binary of fear and beauty, hallmark qualities of the Romantic sublime, amplifying this tension through its references to tall

100  Jeffrey Bellomi mountains and wide skies. Classical cosmology gives way to Romantic splendor, an act Seismos affirms in the shadows of Walpurgis Night. Notably, the primordial deity appears to be an invention of Goethe’s, distinct from the pantheon of Titans that preceded the Olympian gods during the dawn of the universe’s creation. Appropriating Classical signifiers to this end, Goethe begins a refrain of production and creation throughout Walpurgis Night, and that these proclamations occur at nighttime appears to be of no coincidence. Night adopts a womb-like state, birthing an entire universe into existence, a far cry from the trickery and danger of Faust I’s “Walpurgis Night.” A few lines later, Seismos describes an event from its youth in which it played a ball game with the Titans, all while under the supervision of Night and Chaos.31 These latter figures are critical to Goethe’s reframing of the night in this section, crucial as they are in the scope of Classical cosmological genesis myths. Born from the primordial deity Chaos, darkness assumed a doubled form in Greek mythology, an event notably chronicled in Hesiod’s Theogony. The first-named form, Erebos, represents darkness as a greater concept, while its sibling, Night or Nyx, serves as the unit of time. In other words, Erebos commands the domain of darkness in a general sense. As his immediate sister, Nyx’s function is more specific, as night works here as a particular type of darkness. Following their genealogical line, Nyx’s two children, Hypnos and Thanatos, symbolize sleep and death, respectively. Here, darkness moves into a physiological, psychological, or even spiritual format, wherein both serve as a kind of “darkness” that rests beyond the limits of consciousness. Hesiod captures Erebos and Nyx’s relationship in the following lines: “From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night./And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse/With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.”32 The implications of this passage are clear: darkness precedes light and luminosity, placing the generative power of creation into the milieu of night at large. Seismos’ reference to Night and Chaos further situates himself in this moment, doubling down on the image of all creation stemming in nighttime rather than the illumination of daylight. This is a calculated inversion at play, serving to reinscribe night into a productive framework of beauty and splendor as well as cast a stark contrast against the frightening goings-on in Faust I’s Walpurgis Night. While both scenes possess an overarching tone of chaos and instability, the “Classical Walpurgis Night” scenes present the “unknown” of nighttime as raw material, a backdrop against which a new and beautiful world could be cast. Fittingly, Seismos ends his passage as follows: “Now, too, with superhuman straining,/I’ve pushed up out of my abyss/and loudly summon to a new existence/all who would gladly settle here.”33 The references to creative forces at play in the “Classical Walpurgis Night” remain pronounced throughout, something noted by Helmut Rehder in his study on the section. He claims that standard reception of

Shadowed Celebration  101 the scene at the time of publication saw it in part as a sort of artistic excess for Goethe, uncharitably portrayed as “the lapse of an aging poet into rococo artificiality.”34 Indeed, the “Classical Walpurgis Night” stands out amongst its surrounding scenes in its maximalism, seemingly distinct from the plot of the play as a whole. But Rehder argues that Goethe strives for something far more powerful: a totalized representation of creative force by way of art. While the scene appears to pause the action of the play, perhaps it is best to view it as a framing centerpiece or a sort of overture for Goethe’s thematic conceits, as Rehder contends: “Thus the entire action and, particularly, its concluding ‘tableau,’ the festival of creative Eros, mirrors a procession, indeed a consistent process, of ‘Bildung,’ form-giving energy.”35 Further, he asserts that Antiquity functions less as a specified unit of time and more as a conceptual representation of creativity in the general sense, for human expression and art find their genesis in this distant moment.36 It functions as a wholly distinct counterpoint to the greed, danger, and treachery of Faust I’s “Walpurgis Night,” a point that Rehder captures in the following passage: “And thus the Classical Walpurgis Night…unfolds in an immense tableau of the totality of existence in fundamental or archetypal situations suggesting fertility and growth amidst the futility of waste.”37 The scene is replete with fearsome monsters such as sphinxes, griffins, shades, and even giant ants, but they sing paeans to creation and vivacity throughout, bearing little of the menace of the humans and witches of “Walpurgis Night” proper. If it is a scene projected from some dead era, it speaks to the contrary, reveling in the creation of the Earth and the gifts it pours forth. As the carnivalesque happenings of the festival come to pass, several beings draw attention to the night in a sort of immanent critique of its purpose. The scene proceeds as a sort of tour, similar to the progression of “Walpurgis Night,” and Rehder is apt to refer to it as a “procession,” as Faust encounters notable mythological beings such as the Sirens, the centaur Chiron, and a variety of dryads and naiads, amongst others. The Sirens, in particular, are among the first beings to directly address the night, and their introductory hymn is telling it its adherence to inversion. They sing: Even though Thessalian witches sometimes have on nights of horror drawn you down to serve their crimes, look from your nocturnal sky tranquilly on waves that ripple with the gentlest iridescence; shed your light on the commotion now arising from these waters! We are ever-faithful servants— lovely Luna, hear our prayer! (A)38

102  Jeffrey Bellomi The contrast is immediate and striking. The Sirens allude to witches of Antiquity, drawing a harmonic parallel with the witches of “Walpurgis Night,” and they sing a song of reappropriation, wherein the night will shift from a realm of threats to one of docile beauty. Notably, the Sirens are quite fearsome when viewed through their mythological context: they are, after all, beings who sang to lead countless sailors to their deaths. In Goethe’s rendering, they instead reject and repel danger, invoking a gentle beauty that recontextualizes the concept of night within the scene. It is well worth noting that the Sirens not only sing the praises of the night alone but also to the presence of the moon. The celestial body returns periodically through the second half of the scene, waxing and waning appropriately with a serene luminosity. It raises a point so obvious that it often seems overlooked in narratives concerning danger lurking in the dark of night: nighttime does have its own source of luminescence at times. While there certainly exists a myriad of unsettling and frightening tropes concerning the moon (werewolves and extraterrestrials come to mind), “Classical Walpurgis Night” reframes it as a source of beatific light no less galvanizing than its solar counterpart. What is especially fascinating is that Goethe dedicates several passages to shifting perceptions of the moon and the very night that it calls home. Shortly after their opening song, the Sirens point to clouds encircling the moon, referring to them as doves. Nereus, a sea god, then speaks to the Greek philosopher Thales, known for his theory that water serves as the fundamental building block of all existence. Nereus remarks, to Thales’ approval: A nocturnal traveler may call that ring mere play of light, but we spirits have another, and the only proper, theory: they are doves, and they escort Galatea’s sea-borne conch, flying in a rare formation wondrous taught them long ago. (A)39 On the one hand, Nereus’ claim could be taken as a confrontation between mythological ontology and the realm of natural philosophy. He views nocturnal clouds through the lens of supernatural production, symbols that point to a network of mythic explanations for natural phenomena. That Thales agrees in response is fascinating, as if it were a tacit acknowledgment of myth’s dominion in the scene. However, what stands out in the context of examining night as a whole is how this directly shifts an image of potentially ill portent to one of grace and beauty. Rather than ominous clouds surrounding a foreboding moon, it is an image of peace and creation, inscribing the nocturnal vista into a system of production: the clouds are doves.

Shadowed Celebration  103 This image is one more striking contrast from the “Walpurgis Night” of Faust I, as that scene is hallmarked by deception and dissimulation. “Classical Walpurgis Night” captures a nocturnal moment wherein anything seems possible, and all of the creatures offer praise to beauty and mutability. For Nereus, this setting provides its own theory: the theory of creation, no less. It is precisely the irrational, the supernatural, and the inexplicable that ironically attempt to offer a totalized explanation of the cosmos. In this sense, Goethe’s “Classical Walpurgis Night” perhaps remains in opposition to the rational explanatory mechanisms of the Enlightenment, but it operates as an alternatively luminous and productive space rather than a frightening contrast in the negative. In establishing a binary opposition between his two plays, the scene serves less as a corrective image of the night and more as a restoration of its mythic beauty and creative potential. There is one remaining character from the scene who bears mention: the Homunculus. One of the most bizarre inclusions in Faust II, and no small feat for it, the Homunculus is a small entity that lives inside of a flask, encountered a scene earlier in a laboratory. The being was brought into existence by Faust’s old student, Wagner, portrayed in Faust I as a dutiful, if not overly enthusiastic, foil to Faust’s caustic boredom. At best, the Homunculus is an enigmatic figure, driven by curiosity while also serving as a secondary guide through “Classical Walpurgis Night.” Notably, the light emitted by its flask serves as a secondary source of illumination throughout, at one point revealing the god Proteus in his true form. This sea god is known for his shapeshifting prowess, representing mutability and change as a central function of life. His final interaction with the Homunculus serves as the conclusion to “Classical Walpurgis Night,” and the scene can only be described as resplendent. Proteus shatters the Homunculus’s vial, releasing the being in a flash of fire that then infuses with the ocean, glittering in the moonlight. The Sirens describe the moment as follows: What miraculous fire transfigures our waves, that break on each other and shatter and sparkle? Lights wave and hover, the brightness comes nearer, and all is enveloped in eddies of fire. Let Eros now rule, the creator of all! (A)40 The scene commences with the witch, Erichtho, setting the stage for a fearsome and terrifying phenomenon, wherein all of the abominations Antiquity could provide will rise again and wreak havoc. The ending of the scene is nothing of the sort. For one evening, night itself transmutes from a foreboding realm of death to a glittering tableau of birth. Rays of light refract through the waves, fire leaps up in symbolic celebration, and night pulses with the glow of creation. Goethe’s “Classical Walpurgis

104  Jeffrey Bellomi Night” is a paradox in this way, inverting night into a trembling celebration by way of an era long since passed. It is a far cry from the static “Prologue in Heaven” of Faust I and, for this, serves as one of Faust’s breathtaking climaxes. The tension between the respective “Walpurgis Nights” of Faust I and Faust II could therefore be seen as a liminal force, pushing the very concept of night forth in a manner that rejects Enlightenment-era nyctophobia in part. That it does so through a return to Antiquity almost infuses it with a sense of historical irony at the core. So often did the greatest of Enlightenment minds look back to this period as a wellspring of inspired thought and philosophical heights. And yet, popular discourse of the Enlightenment era appropriated the night as a reliable (and well-worn) metaphorical matrix for a vast array of dangers, evils, and intellectual failings. Reason would illuminate the dark recesses of ignorance. But Goethe’s rendering of the “Classical Walpurgis Night” turns this narrative on its head completely, sourcing a vibrant and productive image of night from the very classical era that served as a foundation for so much Enlightenment thought. This conception of nocturnal space, the source and natal point for all existence as we know it: this was always there, existing since the dawn of Western writing and mythological ontology. As such, Goethe offers a contemporary and horrifying vision of the night in Faust I’s “Walpurgis Night,” only to offer a restorative panacea some twenty-three years later with Faust II. And in returning to the past with this single, ebullient moment, he charts a path forward into the Romantic Era itself.

Notes 1 Walter Kaufmann, “Introduction,” Goethe’s Faust (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 24. 2 Stuart Atkins, “The Evaluation of Romanticism in Goethe’s Faust,” The Journal of English and German Philology 54, no.1 (Jan. 1955): 10. 3 Hans Blumenberg, “Light as a Metaphor for Truth,” Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 31. 4 Tim Edensor, From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination, and Gloom (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 169. 5 Rolf Reichardt and Deborah Louise Cohen, “Light against Darkness: The Visual Representations of a Central Enlightenment Concept,” Representations, no. 61 (Winter 1998): 95–148. 6 Tim Edensor, From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination, and Gloom. 7 Hélène Valence, Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890–1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). 8 Murray Melbin, “Night as Frontier,” American Sociological Review 43, no. 1 (Feb. 1978): 3–22. 9 Ilse van Liempt, Irina van Aalst, and Time Schwanen, “Introduction: Geographies of the Urban Night,” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (Feb. 2015): 1–15.

Shadowed Celebration  105 10 Luc Gwiazdzinski, “Introduction: The Urban Night: A Space Time for Innovation and Sustainable Development,” Articulo: Journal of Urban Research 11 (2015): 1–14. 11 Robert Shaw, The Nocturnal City (New York: Routledge, 2018), 7. 12 Elisabeth Bronfen, Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). 13 Goethe, Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufmann, 83, l. 243–250. I identify Kaufmann’s translation with a (K) vs. Atkins’ with an (A) after each in-text citation for the sake of clarity. I cite quotations from the body of each play first by page number with specific line numbers following thereafter. 14 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 2014), 305, l. 12,104–12,109. 15 Goethe, Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufmann, 93, l. 354–365. 16 David E. Wellbery, Introduction to Faust I & II (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 2014), xxiii. 17 Alfred Hoelzel, “The Conclusion of Goethe’s Faust,” The German Quarterly 55, no. 1 (Jan. 1982): 4. 18 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins, 305, l. 12,106–12,107. 19 Javier A. Galván, They Do What? A Cultural Encyclopedia of Extraordinary and Exotic Customs (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2014), 51. 20 Kaufmann, 27. 21 Goethe, Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufmann, 361–365, l. 3871–3911. 22 Ibid., 361–365, l. 3936–3937. 23 Ibid., 361–365, l. 4016–4019. 24 Ibid., 361–365, l. 4045. 25 Kaufmann, 28. 26 Goethe, Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufmann, 361–365, l. 4158–4163. 27 Ibid., 361–365, l. 3936–3937. 28 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins, 125–127, l. 4772–4875. 29 Benjamin Bennett, “The Classical, the Romantic, and the Tragic in Part Two of Goethe’s Faust,” Studies in Romanticism 19, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 530. 30 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins, 193, l. 7550–7557. 31 Ibid., 193, 1. 7558–7562. 32 Stephen M. Trzaskowsa, R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunett, eds., Theogony. Anthology of Classical Myth (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 2016), 135. l. 123–125. 33 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins, 193, l. 7570–7573. 34 Helmut Rehder, “The Classical Walpurgis Night in Goethe’s Faust,” The Journal of English and German Philology 54, no. 4 (Oct. 1955): 592. 35 Ibid., 597. 36 Ibid., 598. 37 Ibid., 600. 38 Goethe, Faust I & II, trans. Stuart Atkins, 204, l. 8034–8043. 39 Ibid., 212, l. 8347–8354. 40 Ibid., 215, l. 8474–8479.

Part II

Nocturnal Visions

6 Francisco de Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence in the Caprichos Ana Rueda

Introduction Between 1793 and 1796 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) produced the Caprichos series, a collection of eighty etchings that denounced the irrationality, superstition, corruption, and ignorance of his native Spain. Goya’s initial ideas for many of the Caprichos appear in two drawing albums known as the Sanlúcar Album and the Madrid Album. While he was finishing the Madrid Album drawings, he gradually conceived the idea of creating a collection of twenty-six satirical prints that bear the title Sueños (Dreams). Thus, the preparatory drawing for the Sueños series evolved into the final Caprichos (Capricci or Follies). The imagery of the Caprichos clusters around themes such as the sleep/dream of reason, religion, education, prostitution, marriage, and witchcraft. Throughout the etchings, Goya demonstrates—and narrates in highly-coded text c­ aptions— the nightmarish underside of the Enlightenment. Manuscripts not authored by Goya that accompanied the series complement the Caprichos.1 That underside of the Enlightenment was implicit in the foolish misuse of power by the Church and the Government and in the follies of humankind and Spanish society in general. The Caprichos were explicitly not targeted at specific historical figures, even though some critics argue that the images are also coded to hide the identities of historical personages, such as Godoy and Queen María Luisa, among others.2 The Italian term capriccio had been used to refer to artistic and architectural fantasies. According to Robert Hughes, Goya “was the first artist to use the word capricho to denote images that had some critical purpose: a vein, a core, of social commentary.”3 An additional consideration is that while his oil paintings were commissioned works, the Caprichos, as their name indicates, refers to “fancies” or whimsical creations that allow the artist to break away from traditional rules of art or the constraints based on the client’s expectations. The publisher’s advertisement that appeared in Diario de Madrid on February 6, 1799 (the year that 300 prints of the 80 copperplates were put on sale), presumably written by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, states that the author of the Caprichos was not a copiante servil (servile copier) but DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-8

110  Ana Rueda an inventor (inventor), with complete creative freedom.4 He was putting forth “images that until now have resided in the human mind—a mind obscured and confounded by lack of enlightenment or obfuscated by immoderate passions.”5 Goya may have used the well-tried concept of sleep/dream as a barrier to protect himself and his satirical pieces from the Inquisition. Perhaps more than a tactic to elude the repression of the Inquisition, duermevela— the state of being both half-awake and half-asleep simultaneously—can be seen as a twilight state that denies the reality of displeasure we will encounter upon waking, in other words, horrors that we cannot bear once awake. By exploiting the state of duermevela, Goya projects images accompanied by signifiers that invite the viewer to coalesce disparate elements into meaningful ensembles in spite of the split between word and image, and of silence cutting into the world of speech. The chapter argues that in the Caprichos the level of consciousness associated with duermevela appears more incisive than the placid representations of sleeping/ dreaming because the monstrosity of the dream imagery is displaced to the realm of the figure that sleeps. As a result, the images of the dreamers in the Caprichos instill an insidious form of terror in the viewer that is key to the social and political denunciation of these etchings. The Caprichos may thus strike us as an intellectual act that requires deciphering through the distorted hypnagogic accounts of the bits and pieces of the narrated imagery to point to threshold regions of consciousness. Undoubtedly, the oil paintings and tapestry cartoons are part of a tradition that appeals to the viewer through a naturalistic form of representation, while the Caprichos borrow from well-established engraving procedures, in Spain, and caricature, in England and France, to expose human follies in Enlightened—or not-so-enlightened—Spain. In her catalogue-study Goya: Images of Women, Janis A. Tomlinson rightfully acknowledges that “Sleep is a constant in Goya’s work” and offers two possible interpretations for this theme: it can have a purely picturesque meaning, as in the sleeping girl in the cartoon of The Laundresses…; or it can represent the key concept of the Enlightenment, as in the iconic The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters (Capricho 43). (Figures 6.1 and 6.5)6 Nevertheless, the Caprichos do not convey a univocal representation of the concept of reason, while the tapestry cartoons and paintings of sleeping figures that depict innocence and serenity are not without erotic overtones. Notwithstanding the substantial differences in medium, execution, and target audience, the recurrent topic of sleep invites us to engage these works in dialogue with each other. When we do so, the naturalistic and seemingly harmless representations of sleeping women are perhaps not as naïve or complacent as they appear to be. In fact, the sleeping subjects

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  111

Figure 6.1  Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Imitator. Las lavanderas (The Washerwomen), late 19th or early 20th century. Oil on canvas. 86.5 × 59 cm. Inv. no. 1955.4. Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz,’ Winterthur, Switzerland. Reproduced with permission.

and the borderland state of hypnagogic imagery in the Caprichos project darker shades of aquatint that transport the viewer to an “Enlightened” Spain that appears to be haunted by nightmarish creatures. A brief review of apparently candid glimpses of sleeping subjects in tapestry cartoons and paintings serves as a background to the more disturbing images associated with sleep in Goya’s Caprichos. The Laundresses (Figure 6.1), a tapestry cartoon designed between 1779 and 1780 for the antechamber to the bedroom of the Princes of Asturias at the Royal Palace of El Pardo, depicts a sleeping laundress surrounded by other women of the same trade. The bucolic setting features the Manzanares river with the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains in the distance.7 Goya describes the foreground action in his invoice dated January 24, 1780: “It represents Washerwomen resting on the bank of the river, one of them falls asleep in the lap of another, whom they are going to wake up with a lamb that two of them place against her head….”8 Since laundering required public exposure of arms and legs, laundresses were socially

112  Ana Rueda stereotyped as women of weak morals.9 Is the sleeping laundress resting from her physically taxing laundering chores or from a sexual interlude? Goya places the sleeping laundress at the center of the group of figures, two of whom continue their chores while the other two play pranks on her.10 The laundresses watching her sleep are mischievously placing a lamb’s head over her neck to awaken her brusquely.11 This image foreshadows the man–beast fusions in the Caprichos and Goya’s interest in the phases of sleep. The adjacent laundress caressing the animal’s horn also anticipates the voluptuousness and eroticism that we encounter in oil paintings like Sleeping Woman, believed to be a sopraporte (overdoor decorative panel) paired to The Dream.12 Eroticism, as we shall see, will take on cruder proportions in the Caprichos. The erotic overtones of Sleeping Woman and The Dream are unequivocal. Both figures are set in placid, resting positions against a dark background and lit by soft candlelight that illuminates their bosoms and their translucent bodices (Figures 6.2 and 6.3). The female figure in Sleeping Woman, partially wrapped in a red blanket, resembles an odalisque in an unlike, if not uncomfortable, sleeping posture. More likely, she is not dormida, asleep, but adormecida or in the act of falling asleep, as suggested by the chiaroscuro background, equally divided into two large areas: one dark, one light. Reclining on a bed of straw, her posture resembles a post-coital slumber. Her right arm is raised to hold her head while her left arm is pulled back to reveal her seductive figure and to accentuate the low-cut bodice of her dress. Moreover, the red cover wrapped around her thighs attracts the viewer’s attention, concealing and at the same time emphasizing the woman’s anatomy through its serpentine golden trim. The female image in The Dream, attired in a revealing Empire-style bodice, rests in an undisturbed stillness, engulfed in total darkness. The background on the canvas is completely dark, and her face, turned away

Figure 6.2 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Mujer dormida (Sleeping Woman). 1790–1793. The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  113

Figure 6.3 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), El Sueño, c.1800. Oil on canvas. 46.5 × 76 cm. NGI.1928. National Gallery of Ireland. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.

in half-shadow, suggests that she has completed the transition to sleep. Nevertheless, the candlelight effect on her bosom is highly provocative for the viewer; it trespasses her peaceful, innocent sleep, making her the viewer’s dream. In a sense, the candlelight stroking her breast induces the desiring viewer’s act. Both paintings display strokes of gold and translucent garments that make the viewer desire the sleeping subjects: the “rural” odalisque (Mujer dormida) is further illuminated by the golden straw on which she rests, while the more “urban” sleeper of El sueño gleams in her golden headdress and waistband. To contextualize Goya’s paintings of sleeping women and the sleeping figures in the Caprichos, we must recall each medium’s respective traditions, if only to understand how Goya not only assimilates but surpasses these practices. The pictorial tradition of reclining women in a state of somnolence is rich indeed, as Cassou’s and Kryger’s studies attest.13 The appetite for paintings of reclining female was still very much alive in late eighteenth-century Spain, to judge by Goya’s commissions such as The Nude Maja (1797–1800) and The Clothed Maja (1800–1805). It is noteworthy that these paintings were often commissioned or purchased by gentlemen as erotic cabinet paintings.14 It is for this reason that I gender the viewer as masculine. Just like The Nude Maja, who, unlike these figures, was very much awake and looking provocatively straight at the viewer, Sleeping Woman is documented as being commissioned by Spanish royal favorite and prime minister Manuel Godoy, who collected erotic scenes in his private study.15 Goya’s sleeping female figures, however, do not depict narratives taken from Antiquity, such as Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos (1809– 1814) by the American John Vanderlyn or Birth of Venus (1863) by the French painter Alexandre Cabanel; Goya’s images of reclining females are modeled on contemporary figures. Therefore, the paintings are not Neo-Classical in terms of subject matter but do retain certain formal

114  Ana Rueda aspects. The Dream and Sleeping Woman echo the reclining nudes of the Renaissance and show the influence of French Neo-Classicism, but also anticipate many famous nineteenth-century examples such as Ingres’s Grande Odalisque (1814), Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), or Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (1863). Nevertheless, Goya’s drawing A Woman About to Attack a Sleeping Man with an Axe (ca.1812– 1820) serves as a stark counterpoint to the commissioned pieces just reviewed, for it turns the genre issue upside down through a more graphic kind of violation of the sleeper’s rest (Figure 6.4). In Spanish literature, satire concerning the topic of sleep had enjoyed a long tradition, from medieval times to Francisco de Quevedo in the seventeenth century, but not so in painting. For his Caprichos, Goya drew on the Spanish Baroque and its satirical treatment of sleep, and the British and French tradition of political and social caricature. The earliest drawings for the Caprichos series, executed in pen and ink, bear the manuscript title sueño (dream). Goya may have used the well-known concept

Figure 6.4 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, A woman attacking a sleeping man; page 87 from the ‘Images of Spain’ album (F), ca.1812–1820. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935. Accession Number 35.103.46. Public domain.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  115 of sleep/dream as a barrier to shield himself and his satirical pieces from the Inquisition. Helmut C. Jacobs mentions that Théophile Gautier and his friend Piot, who traveled to Spain in 1840, confirmed that many references in the Caprichos were received as a biting critique of Spanish society or alluded to the repressive political situation against liberal tendencies at the turn of the century, which later critics have also understood as “un mensaje político cifrado” (a coded political message).16 These references against institutions such as the Church and the State notwithstanding, Goya was undeterred from publishing the Caprichos in 1799 and suffered no retaliation for doing so.17 However, in 1825 he does state in a letter to his friend Joaquín Ferrer that he sold the remaining prints because, as Carrete Parrondo confirms, he had been reported to the Inquisition.18 Being asleep or awake, or in a state of delightful slumber, may have specific functions in the interpretation of what might be referred to as “gentlemen’s paintings,” in terms of the kind of erotic flight that these states are designed to trigger in the viewer in his own half-dream state. Nevertheless, the dreams of the sleeping women in Sleeping Woman and The Dream do not produce monsters or “the creations of man’s irrationality” to use Heckes’s interpretation.19 Instead, the images of the sleeping women draw in the gaze of the viewer as voyeur, producing, through a deliberate inducement, a disturbance in his consciousness, at the threshold between wakefulness and dream. The representation of sleep is linked to the overt sexuality of the images and designed to cause a form of hypnagogia in the viewer by intruding a dream-like image into his wakefulness and possibly leading him to willful daydreaming, but without the continuum between artistic fantasy and hypnagogic representations found in the Caprichos. In both oil paintings, the female figure becomes the dream object for the viewer. She is the dream. In spite of the subtler configurations of the sleeping figures, these paintings prompt in the viewer sensations of half-sleep, drifting in and out of sleep. The erotic implication of these placid dreamers may thus trigger in the viewer visions aligned with daydreaming that suggest a deliberate persuasion that the artist exerts on the viewer. Let us move from Goya’s subtler configurations of the dreamer figure in paintings such as Sleeping Woman and The Dream to the role of such figures in the hypnagogic Caprichos. The harmlessness of the scene in the tapestry cartoon The Laundresses and the delight of the erotic cabinet paintings become horrific in the Caprichos. As we shall see, voyeuristic eroticism turns into full-blown lust; the vulnerability of the innocent female sleeper morphs into frightful power; recumbent sleepers deform to the point of being revolting; and leisure activities transform into absurd toil, performed by creatures of the night such as goblins. Still, the pleasure and the displeasure principles contained in all sleep images are part of a deliberate inducement that the artist exerts on the viewer.

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Sleep and Somnolence in the Caprichos Goya’s Capricho 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, originally designed as the frontispiece for the series and often considered a selfportrait of the artist asleep at his desk, has elicited contradictory interpretations as critics consider the semantic polyvalence of sueño: “sleep,” “dream” or “reverie” (Figure 6.5).20 When reason sleeps or is disengaged, some arguments go, nocturnal creatures—owls, cats, bats—emerge, whereas other interpretations underscore that the dream of reason, in its mad agenda, produces such monsters. Capricho 43 is deliberately evasive, especially if we consider it also inscribed in a code to which the viewer, like the dreamer—once awake—, has no access. Is Plate 43 an allegory of Enlightenment, or does it suggest an anti-­ enlightenment agenda that values other functions of man’s intellect that are irreducible to reason, such as the flight of the artist’s imagination? Do the nocturnal, demonic creatures pose a threat to the artist, or do they fuel his creativity, as suggested by the owl that offers the sleeping artist a crayon holder?

Figure 6.5 Francisco [José] de Goya y Lucientes, Plate 43, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), from Caprichos, 1797–1799. © Museo Nacional del Prado.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  117 Can man ignore “un-Reason,” the dark side of the Enlightenment that Goya and other eighteenth-century Spaniards experienced in their everyday reality, especially in their encounters with the Inquisition? The preparatory drawings for this Capricho and the ambiguous inscriptions accompanying the etchings complicate matters further and may unlock the hermeneutic impasse: does Reason produce clear ideas and dispel monstrous visions, or does it, on the contrary, engender these aberrations? This chapter posits that a critical concept to unraveling the hidden connections between sleep, dream, and the Enlightenment is perhaps neither sleep nor wakefulness, but duermevela, the state of being half-awake and half-asleep simultaneously; more precisely, the mental phenomena that occur in the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep and the onset of wakefulness, also known, respectively, as hypnagogia and hypnopompia.21 The term “hypnagogia,” however, is also used to cover both falling asleep and waking up since British physician and psychologist Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) questioned the need for separate terms coined in the 1800s.22 These border regions of consciousness in sleep, as Krippner notes, “resemble dreams in that both are marked by ‘primary process’ thinking and contain visual, auditory, and/or kinesthetic imagery. However, material from these twilight states is not typically characterized by narration, as are dreams.”23 Goya, however, surpassed the static, non-narrative limitation of hypnagogic images in the Caprichos by creating visuals that incorporate a strong kinetic element and by attaching captions that are in a state of flux with the corresponding image. Thus, duermevela allows the artist to defer the displeasures encountered in waking life but confronts the viewer with its horror. At the same time, the hypnagogic images point to a more insidious form of terror than the concept of sleep in Plate 43 because sleep and wakefulness are not clearly differentiated. During the so-called “threshold consciousness” of hypnagogia, alert thought occurs, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and other phenomena known as phantasmata. Following Mitchell’s concept of perceptual images, these image spaces are “sense-making processes…distributed onto images. In such cases, images act to provide representations that support human imagining.”24 As the name suggests, phantasmata is the imprint or the markings of something that is no longer there or that has vanished recently. We can thus look at duermevela as a way to prolong a dream, that is, to hold on to a state between consciousness and unconsciousness where the dreamer may defer a displeasing image upon awakening. Future displeasures are thus temporarily suspended while others sleep, as in Capricho 71, When day breaks, we will be off, or Capricho 78, Be quick, they are waking up. These Caprichos may point back to Capricho 49 Hobgoblins, which represents creatures who in plain daylight somaticize the grotesque, that is, a heightened sense of gesture and emotions with a dash of the diabolical (Figures 6.6 and 6.7). Duendes or

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Figure 6.6 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Despacha, que dispiertan (Be Quick, They Are Waking Up), Plate 78 from Caprichos, 1799. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Mrs. Grafton H. Pyne, 1951. Accession Number 51.530.1(78). Public domain.

Figure 6.7 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Duendecitos (Hobgoblins), Plate 49 from Caprichos, 1799. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of M. Knoedler & Co., 1918. Gift of M. Knoedler & Co., 1918. Accession Number 18.64(49). Public domain.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  119 goblins may be charming creatures who do our chores while we sleep, but they are frightful as phantasmata. Plate 49, with daylight entering a slatted opening of a doorway, reveals their horrendous presence. These grotesque duendecillos (hobgoblins) did more than give someone a “hand” with their household chores, as the disproportionate hand suggests. At dawn, they are enjoying their hot chocolate con churros, a breakfast that became popular in the eighteenth century and in which Spaniards indulged, according to their excessive patterns of consumption.25 Based on Goya’s sequencing of his Plates, the viewer wakes up to the horrendous reality of Plate 49 before the goblin on Plate 78 whispers to the others to hurry with their chores before they get caught in broad daylight. Hypnagogic imagery is as yet an untapped analytical approach for Goya’s work, and the data available are generally linked to Goya’s illness and convalescence in 1793, a period during which he suffered from vertigo, ringing noises, and impaired hearing, which led him to a state of stupor mixed with hallucinations and delirium.26 It is precisely the year he began working on the Caprichos. When he emerged from his convalescence, Goya was completely deaf. In 1796 Goya spent the summer with the Duchess of Alba in her estate at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in Cádiz, to recover from his health problems only to face the duchess’s amorous rejection. The Caprichos bring out the imagery of sleep-altered consciousness, not necessarily to represent the artist’s own illness and personal disillusion, but rather the malaise of the society in which he lived. As the Caprichos attest, after his illness, Goya showed a renewed interest in hypnagogia—moving toward sleep or wakefulness—and, in general, sleep as a state of transformation and mobility that is particularly apt for interrogating consciousness. The phenomenon of hypnagogia may even have had a bearing on the enhanced creativity that these complex plates feature.27 In fact, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Goya had already anticipated, especially in the Caprichos, the hypnagogic states of consciousness that held such appeal for the Romantics at the height of that movement in Spain in the 1830s and 1840s.28 In Sleep Overcomes Them, two women by a latticed arched gate, paired with two mysterious hooded characters resembling nuns or clerics, succumb to sleep (Figure 6.8). In the last Capricho of the series, It’s Time, grotesque, monk-like figures yawn as if awakening from a long sleep/ dream (Figure 6.9). Since the meanings of the Caprichos extend beyond specific reference to historical personages, what does succumbing to sleep or rousing from a state of sopor—an abnormally deep sleep—tell us about natural and induced sleep, dream, and vigil? Moreover, what does sleep associated with work or leisure mean in late eighteenth-century Spain? Are the creatures of the night, such as prostitutes, witches, goblins, apparitions, and phantoms, indeed sensitive to light? What becomes of

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Figure 6.8 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Las rinde el Sueño (Sleep Overcomes Them), Plate 34 from Caprichos, 1799. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of M. Knoedler & Co., 1918. Accession Number 18.64(34). Public domain.

them? Did an enlightened Spain fail to dispel superstitions and horrors in an irreversible way? The two women in Sleep Overcomes Them, possibly prostitutes, are depicted in the act of succumbing to sleep—hypnagogia.29 Legs wide apart and sitting on uneven ground and in half-shadow, the central figure in the composition leans her head on her hand and rests her arm on her thigh. She is barefooted and wears a striped ribbon on her hair. The other woman, right below her, has surrendered to sleep. Heads down and with their hand clasped in the form of prayer, the hooded figures appear to be inducing the two women into a state of somnolence/sleep. It is up to the viewer to shuffle possible interpretations: are the nuns doing their duty by asking the women to do penitence for their sins and by making them rest from their exhausting sexual encounters; or are the hooded figures, so prominent in Goya’s work, the phantasmata of the women’s state of duermevela and what caused their present situation? In any event, the plate hints at an odd complicity between the Church and prostitution in the context of sleep, since the polysemantic word rendir (to surrender) in

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Figure 6.9 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Ya es hora (It’s time), Plate 80 from Caprichos, 1799. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York. Gift of M. Knoedler & Co., 1918, Accession Number 18.64(80). Public domain.

the caption suggests that the figures not only succumb to sleep but are being defeated by it, forced to admit, confess, yield or surrender. The exceptionally vivid and elaborate hypnagogic images of the hooded figures are consonant with those found in relevant reviews from the contemporary scientific world.30 The grate could indicate a prison or a convent. The chiaroscuro background, with the split light from the latticed opening, reinforces hypnagogia in its stark combination of light and darkness, day and night. This composition affects the space, which suggests that what is inside or outside the grate is reversible. If that is the case, are the women jailed inside or outside their cells in this prison/convent setting? Are the hooded figures part of the women’s fearful dream, or are they partners in crime? This visual fluidity is also consonant with hypnogagia. In It’s Time, which concludes the Caprichos on a diabolic note, grotesque figures wearing a monk-like attire appear yawning and stretching their arms in the state of hypnapompia, or the onset of wakefulness after a long sleep (Figure 6.9). How long have these horrifying creatures been

122  Ana Rueda sleeping? What are they waking up from or to? Can we only see them as they are because it is daylight? Dawn, marked by the white background, seems to be bringing them to wakefulness, but what induced them to sleep so long? How long had the Catholic Church in Spain been in a state of somnolence? Unlike The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the bestial hominids in It’s Time are not in a realm separate from that of the already awake dreamer/viewer, for the dreamer is the monster. In contrast to the drawing He Wakes Up Kicking, where a man on the floor kicks his legs after waking from a nightmare and tries to free himself from a monk-like habit, the creatures waking up in It’s Time are not yet aware of waking up to the horror of their dreams, but the viewer is (Figure 6.10). Worse than the hypnogagic women who fall asleep with ominous, hooded nuns, or the man waking from a nightmare, the hypnopompic monks in It’s Time are indeed the embodiment of their dreams, which renders the state of waking up more terrifying than sleeping or even having nightmares.

Figure 6.10 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Dispierta dando patadas (He Wakes Up Kicking: A Man on the Floor Kicking His Legs after Waking from a Nightmare), folio 13 from the Witches and Old Women Album ‘D’, ca.1819–1823. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935. Accession Number 35.103.26, Public domain.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  123 In many ways, Goya was ahead of his time, and he explored the mental states of hypnagogia to modulate his biting satires. In comparison with that of alert wakefulness, hypnagogic cognition is characterized by heightened suggestibility and an illogical, more fluid association of ideas.31 Therefore, the Caprichos are not just dreams or nightmares, but phantasmata—another term for hypnagogia—or disturbing images that conjure reason and imagination simultaneously to expose unreason. The hypnagogic images in Plates 34 and 80 do more than challenge the viewer in the way Plate 43 does; they pull him into the physical and mental environment of the sleeping figures, allowing him to internalize their follies. This heightened receptivity can thus create a flux in the viewer comparable to being on the edges of sleep, moving in and out of the artist’s imagination, in and out of reason. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a satirist and an experimental physicist at the University of Göttingen, who died the year Goya published his Caprichos, recommended the scientific study of dreams.32 Lichtenberg wrote: I know from undeniable experience that dreams lead to self-knowledge. Sensation not interpreted by reason is much stronger. This is demonstrated by the fact that a roaring noise in our ears during sleep is found to be quite faint upon awaking.33 This separation of faculties in the human brain is directly related to the intricate equilibrium that the German physicist observes between what he called the “scepter” of Reason and man’s proclivity to dream as soon as Reason lays down its ruling scepter.34 In Goya’s Capricho 43, the artist appears to be dreaming without the aid of reason (Figure 6.5). At this point, strange hybrid animals emerge. The Museo Nacional del Prado manuscript interprets the plate in this fashion: “imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.”35 Goya’s poetics reflects some of Lichtenberg’s philosophical writings, although the quotation has typically been interpreted as a strong Romantic statement. While altered states of consciousness and subjective experiences of sleep and wakefulness would become of vital interest to Romantic artists and writers, it was unusual to represent the borderland of sleep pictorially or in written form as early as the 1790s. Even Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli’s famous painting The Nightmare (1781), portraying simultaneously a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare (an incubus and a horse’s head), does not suggest hypnagogia, as the woman seems unconscious or in a state of sleep paralysis (dyspnea).36 There has been much debate over how to interpret the polemic Capricho, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, especially in light of its evolution through numerous preparatory sketches (Figures 6.11 and  6.12).37

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Figure 6.11 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Preparatory sketches for El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) (c.1799): Idioma universal. El Autor soñando (Universal Language. The Author Dreaming), 1797. © Museo Nacional del Prado.

Figure 6.12 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Preparatory sketches for El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) (c.1799): El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), 1796–1797. © Museo Nacional del Prado.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  125 Preparatory drawings in pen and sepia ink help explain the image of the artist at his desk beset by the forces of irrationality suggested by the bats, the owls, and a sinister cat or lynx. These infernal deities of dreams lurk behind the artist, slouched over his desk in a deep sleep.38 The prominent arc of light on the upper left of the sketch seems impenetrable by the creatures of darkness (Figure 6.11). This strong chiaroscuro of the background separating day from night, enlightenment from superstition, vanishes in subsequent versions, where the giant bat is reduced and eventually inserted in a more balanced composition. The second version, in which the artist is also asleep over a desk, shows a little more of his face, suggesting a state of duermevela (Figure 6.12). His eyes are half-open as if the artist had awoken from the posture in the previous drawing and tried to go back to sleep. Two frontal views of Goya’s face—eyes wide open—appear in the swirling dream cloud, intermingled with infernal bats, winged cats, parts of a donkey, and zoomorphic human faces. The completely different background suggests a much more chaotic dream floating in an aquatint sky. Leaning diagonally against the artist’s chair is an etched copperplate representing Minerva, goddess of wisdom and the arts. The etched Minerva is no longer present in the final version, perhaps because her attributes— owls—are already there: the owls represent both the world of darkness and ignorance, and, as symbols of the goddess, wisdom and the arts. This may explain why the owl is offering a crayon holder to the artist in the final plate. Seen in this sequence, the preparatory drawings and the final plate interrogate consciousness by dramatizing the dreamer’s transitions from sleep to wakefulness and back to sleep (Figures 6.5, 6.11 and 6.12). Instead of trials leading to a final version, they can be seen as different experiments with hypnagogia, intermittent flashes of this borderland state of consciousness. They also suggest multiple levels of phantasmata in the blinking of an eye and the process by which the artist’s duermevela may have helped dispel nightmarish horrors. Thus, Plate 43 can embrace the dreamer and the dream in a seamless composition thanks to the lucidity of hypnagogia. Let’s now put Plate 43 in dialogue with the hypnagogic Plates 34 and 80. While The Sleep of Reason shows the dreamer and the dreamer’s vision on the same plane, Sleep overcomes them and It’s Time incorporate the dreamers’ dark visions with the figures of the sleepers/dreamers themselves (Figures 6.5, 6.8 and 6.9). The fantasies associated with hypnagogia in The Sleep of Reason do not vanish but are somatized. In Sleep Overcomes Them, they are embodied in the sinister hooded figures that form a circle with the somnolent women, thus uniting dreamers and phantasmata in an uninterrupted chain. In It’s Time, the monstrous unhooded figures that wake from their sleep form another set of linked figures. A similar distribution of figures reinforces the parallelisms: three at a lower level, one slightly above the others, yet all linked. This displacement of the dream to

126  Ana Rueda the states of hypnagogia and hypnopompia strikes the viewer as more menacing since the sleeping figures embody the dreamers’ dark visions that denounce society’s evils, to wit: prostitution and the corruption of the clergy. The pre-somnal state in Sleep Overcomes Them shares something disquieting with the post-somnal state in It’s Time. In both, the naked horrors of reality strike the viewer precisely at the boundary between sleep and wakefulness. These horrors are the moments in which we as viewers see past consciousness into the power of desires that threaten us because they inhabit us. Goya does not allow the viewer to return to the fixity of the known order and its reassuring consistencies. The women fall asleep under the inducement of nuns or monks who incarnate the disquieting elements of dream. The monk-like figures wake up as grotesque monsters. Figures falling asleep or waking up somatize the disquieting dream element to produce a striking image of horror or monstrosity. Incorporated into the dreamer, the disturbing images become part of our fantasies— our own caprichos—and our language. While these fantasies are projections of the artist, the viewer must confront them in his/her own wakefulness, when the horror of the dream and the horror of reality coalesce. Falling asleep and waking up are usually banal, recurrent events in everyday life. Goya, however, infuses them with abjection, fear, and monstrosity. Dreaming, sleeping, suspending reason, and moving to an altered state where visions and hallucinations share the same space as everyday reality have a disturbing effect on the viewer and his/her own reality. The liminality of duermevela is not a sleeping disorder but a state that allows the viewer a lucid glimpse of the topsy-turvy reality of Spain’s Enlightenment.

Conclusion To conclude, the Caprichos demand a viewer able to process the hypnagogic mental states of the figures depicted and decipher them. The viewer must wake up from his daily stupor to assess the rationality and the irrationality of his own reality. Goya’s etchings induce people to use reason, wit, imagination, and the power of their own senses, elements that are beyond the precepts of Reason and reform as advocated by enlightened thinkers such as Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Leandro Fernández de Moratín. The light that awakens the dreamers or viewers does not appear to represent reality or even the Enlightenment itself. It is Goya’s wake-up call. By representing the blurry boundary between sleep and wakefulness, the strong engagement with hypnagogia in the Caprichos points to humankind’s need to imagine intelligently and, at the same time, to its failure or inability to do so collectively. Graphic phantasmata or perceptual images that emerge from the border region of hypnagogia offer key glimpses of such hybridity. Without the freedom to

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  127 imagine, Goya’s Spain would be reduced to an enlightened barbarism or a barbaric Enlightenment. Finally, one might suggest that this analysis could extend to Caprichos that do not necessarily portray figures in the process of waking up or falling asleep. For instance, Plate 65 Where Is Mommy Going? could be seen as a telling montage of hypnagogic imagery (Figure 6.13). The plate wakes us in the Other reality, the reality of the dream hidden behind what passes for representation. The naked mommy—seated as in the children’s game “A la silla de la reina” (The Queen’s Chair)—is carried away by a pyramid of sexually charged figures that rests entirely on the wings of an owl and is topped off by a cat holding a parasol, two animals from The Sleep of Reason and a clear departure from Goya’s serene and cheerful scene depicted in El quitasol (The Parasol).39 What governs this bestial cluster in its dream-like flight? What secrets does it tell about its viewer? If the Caprichos are indeed aimed at what is no longer there as represented, that is, phantasmata, the viewer must reenact the disturbing movements of a restless mind, always in transit, in a dialectic perpetually oscillating

Figure 6.13 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Dónde vá mama? (Where Is Mommy Going?) Plate 65 from Caprichos, 1797–1799. © Museo Nacional del Prado.

128  Ana Rueda between the image and the written word, the conscious and the unconscious, light and darkness, day and night, sleep and wakefulness.

Notes 1 Two manuscripts from the time of the publication of the engravings have survived: the manuscript of the Museo Nacional del Prado, presumably written by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, and the anonymous manuscript of the Biblioteca Nacional. They contain commentary on the engravings, but often obfuscate more than they clarify the meaning of the images. For Capricho 43, in the Museo Nacional del Prado manuscript we read: La fantasía abandonada de la razón produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella es madre de las artes y origen de las maravillas (Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with it, it is the mother of the arts and the origin of wonders). In the Biblioteca Nacional manuscript we read: Portada para esta obra: cuando los hombres no oyen el grito de la razón, todo se vuelve visiones (Cover for this work: when men do not hear the cry of reason, everything becomes visions). As Hofer states, “no manuscript is clearly authoritative; they vary in the power of their prose, and the conviction which the ‘explanation’ carries.” Philip Hofer, ed., Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya y Lucientes (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), 3. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are the author’s. 2 According to the February 6, 1799 Diario de Madrid ad, “the author has intended no satire of the personal defects of any specific individual in any of his compositions” (English translation in Robert Hughes, Goya [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003], 181). 3 Hughes, 180. 4 Gorka López de Munain Iturrospe, “Los Caprichos de Goya. Estampas y textos contra el sueño de la razón,” Revista Sans Soleil/Estudios de la imagen 2 (2019): 87. 5 See, for instance, López de Munain Iturrospe: “…el autor ni ha seguido los exemplos de otro, ni ha podido copiar tan poco de la naturaleza…exponer a los ojos formas y actitudes que solo han existido hasta ahora en la mente humana, obscurecida y confusa por la falta de ilustración ó acalorada con el desenfreno de las pasiones” (87). 6 Janis A. Tomlinson, ed., with contributions by Francisco Calvo Serraller, Aileen Ribeiro, Concha Herrero Carretero, and Anna Reuter, Goya: Images of Women (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2002), 224. 7 For a commentary on this cartoon, see Tomlinson, who confirms that “laundresses were reputedly loose in their morals” (120–121). 8 Ibid., 120. 9 Carmen Sarasúa, “El oficio más molesto, más duro: el trabajo de las lavanderas en la España de los siglos XVIII al XX,” Historia Social 45 (2003): 69. 10 Goya echoes this figure arrangement in Group with Sleeping Woman (ca.1822), a crayon lithograph on paper, ca.1820–1823, housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 11 Gaspare Traversi offers a parodic image of the upper class in his oil painting Teasing a Sleeping Girl (ca.1760). An old man, surrounded by other members of the household, tickles a young girl who has fallen asleep with the box of keepsakes on her lap, making fun of her latent erotic posture. Goya’s The Launderesses aligns with this pictorial motif of teasing a sleeper with a straw or a feather.

Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence  129 12 Goya painted it for the enlightened businessman Sebastián Martínez in Cádiz while he stayed at his house in the winters of 1792 and 1793. There may have been a third sopraporte whose image and subject matter await confirmation from art historians. 13 Jean Cassou, Le sommeil dans l’art (Paris: P.A. Chavane, 1959); Meir Kryger, Sleep in Art. How Artists Portrayed Sleep Over the Last 7000 Years (N.p.: Independently published, 2019). 14 Goya’s The Naked Maja was designed to hang in Manuel de Godoy’s private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Legend would have it that this was the Duchess of Alba, but the model has also been identified as Pepita Tudó, who became Godoy’s mistress in 1797. The painting hung as a sopraporte in Manuel Godoy’s palace, but without its companion piece, The Clothed Maja. 15 Tomlinson, 228. 16 Jacobs, 240. 17 Priscilla E. Muller, “Los Caprichos como obra en curso,” in Goya, ed. Noemí Sobregués (Barcelona: Fundación Amigos del Museo Nacional del Prado; Galaxia Gutenberg, Círculo de Lectores, S.A., 2002), 86–87. Heckes mentions that no records of any trial exist. Frank I. Heckes, “Goya’s Caprichos,” Art Journal 19 (1978/1979): 3. 18 Juan Carrete Parrondo and Javier Blas, Goya. Los Caprichos. Dibujos y aguafuertes (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1944), 16. 19 Heckes, 34. 20 Jacobs explains the polyvalent concept of sueño in the eighteenth century in his detailed analysis devoted to Capricho 43 and its permutations in different artistic media. Helmut C. Jacobs, El sueño de la razón. El Capricho 43 de Goya en el arte visual, la literatura y la música, trans. Beatriz Galán Echevarría and Helmut C. Jacobs (Madrid/Frankfurt on the Main: IberoamericanaVervuert, 2011), 225–227. 21 See Mavromatis’s 1987 study Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness and Sleep, where he establishes the term hypnagogia in popular psychology literature. Andreas Mavromatis, Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness and Sleep (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Reprint, n.p.: Thyrsos Press, 2010). 22 Ellis discusses “the hypnagogic (or hypnopompic) state immediately following sleep.” Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (The Project Gutenberg eBook, 2019), 210. 23 Stanley Krippner, “Altered and Transitional States,” in Encyclopedia of Creativity: A-H. Vol. 1, ed. Mark A. Runco and Stephen R. Pritzker (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1999), 63. 24 D. Fox Harrell, Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression (Cambridge, MA; London, England: The MIT Press, 2013), 40. 25 For the amounts of chocolate consumed in Spain in the eighteenth century and how this stimulant drink became an integral part of how the Spanish were represented and characterized, see Irene Fattacciu, “Atlantic History and Spanish Consumer Goods in the 18th Century: The Assimilation of Exotic Drinks and the Fragmentation of European Identities,” Nuevo Mundo/ Nuevos Mundos [En ligne], Colloques, June 27, 2012, accessed September 20, 2020, http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/63480. 26 Vallés Varela, 122–131, cited in López de Munain Iturrospe, 107. 27 Krippner identifies other artists, writers, scientists, and inventors who acknowledge hypnagogic states as fueling their creativity, 63–64. See also

130  Ana Rueda M. Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Collins, 1996). 28 Nevertheless, I agree with Andrew Schulz in his statement that “Situating Goya within the orbit of the Spanish Enlightenment has been invaluable in rescuing the artist from the conventions of Romantic biography.” Andrew Schulz, Goya’s Caprichos. Aesthetics, Perception, and the Body (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9. 29 The figures have been interpreted as nuns, beggars, imprisoned women, and prostitutes, exhausted at the end of the day in an unhospitable setting. See Miguel Moliné, Los Caprichos. Capricho 34. Almendrón, https://www. almendron.com/arte/pintura/goya/estampas/caprichos/caprichos_02.htm. 30 F. E. Leaning, “An Introductory Study of Hypnagogic Phenomena,” Proceedings of the Society for Physical Research 35 (1925): 289–409; D. L. Schacter, “The Hypnagogic State: A Critical Review of the Literature,” Psychological Bulletin 83 (1976): 452–481; Andreas Mavromatis, n.p. 31 Mavromatis, 53–54. 32 Quoted in Peter Gay, Age of Enlightenment: Great Ages of Man (Time-Life Books Inc., 1966), 102. 33 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Steven Tester (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), 84. 34 Ibid. 35 Hofer, “La fantasía abandonada de la razón, produce monstruos imposibles: unida a ella, es madre de las artes y origen de sus maravillas,” In Philip Hofer, ed., Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya y Lucientes (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), 43. For Goya’s Capricho and its critics see Nigel Glendinning, Goya and His Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) and Goya, la década de los Caprichos, Dibujos y Aquatintas (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1992). 36 See Detroit Institute of the Arts, https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/ nightmare-45573. 37 Heckes, 8. These were executed in pen and sepia ink with the occasional addition of Indian ink wash or sanguine wash. 38 On the side of the desk is written “Universal language [Ydioma universal]. Drawn and etched by Francisco de Goya in the year 1797.” Then, below the design, is scribbled in pencil: “The author dreaming. His only purpose is to root out harmful ideas, commonly believed, and to perpetuate with his work of the Caprichos the soundly based testimony of truth” (trans. Hughes, 180). 39 The Parasol is part of a cartoon series of oil on linen paintings designed to decorate the walls of the dining room of the Royal Palace in Madrid.

7 The Other Side of Night Enlightened Dreaming in GabrielleSuzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740) Valentine Balguerie Once upon a time, in Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, the Countess of Aulnoy’s “Wild Boar” (1698), a childless queen fell asleep in the woods and dreamed that fairies were gifting her with a much-desired son. Upon waking up, the queen discussed her dream with her husband, the king, but while he worried about the laughter of the third, mumbling fairy, “for most of them are mischievous, and it is not always a good sign when they laugh,” the queen dismissed his anxiety. Matter-of-factly, she explained her dreams as the result of her mind’s preoccupation: “[m]y mind is filled with desire to have a son, and thus, I imagine a hundred things.” The queen had “lived with great sadness” and yearned for a son with all of her being, “[sleeping] little and…always sighing and praying to the gods and all the fairies to give her what she wished.” Only a dream, however, could make this “no longer young” queen’s wishes come true.1 Dream time alone has the power to turn back the clocks of biological aging and bypass the mechanics of human reproduction, thus offering creative solutions to the very real concerns of early modern women. In granting the queen her long-desired son, the dream fairies enable her to fulfill her responsibility to ensure the kingdom’s succession, which strengthens her position at court and guarantees her future and continued happiness. As Luce Irigaray writes ironically in The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry, “by giving life to one who has the right to power, she wins the right to be perfectly happy.”2 This perfect happiness is harder to reach than expected, as the queen gives birth to a “little wild boar” instead of the desired prince, which leads to many disagreements with her husband. After a lengthy process of civilization, however, the queen’s beastly son finally becomes a decent human man and a worthy sovereign, thereby legitimizing her royal status.3 Dreamscapes and what Lewis Seifert has called their “queer temporalities,” whether they appear in Aulnoy’s “Wild Boar,” Charles Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty,” or Chevalier de Mailly’s “Blanche Belle,” offer tantalizing possibilities for female characters to escape the linearity of “real” time and the constraints that natural and social laws impose on them. DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-9

132  Valentine Balguerie Seifert notes that, not unlike Aulnoy’s queen, Blanche-Belle’s mother, who appeared to be barren, dreams of spending the night with a handsome sylph and ends up pregnant as a result. Sleeping Beauty, in turn, experiences “sweet dreams” before being woken up from her long sleep, which could be read not only as heterosexual fantasies but also as “a moment of erotic pleasure given to her by the fairy [which] signal[s] a relationship between the two women, a relationship grounded in eroticism.” Sleeping Beauty’s year-long sleep thus becomes an alternative to the sexual constraints exercised on early modern women but also pushes back against “the enduring pleasures a reproductive future is supposed to guarantee.”4 While Seifert’s interpretation offers an intriguing insight into the role of dreamscapes in fairy tales, dream temporalities are often relegated to brief and ephemeral interludes that are part of the fairy tale arsenal and explained by narrative imperatives. Once its purpose is reached, the dream usually vanishes, and the dreamer is locked out of the dreamscape forever. Beauty, the heroine of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740), has a vastly different experience as she returns to an enduring dreamscape in no less than ten dreams. A young woman of many qualities and much admired in society, she is forced to abandon her bourgeois lifestyle and retreat to a remote house in the countryside after her merchant father loses his fortune. While her sisters lament the loss of the luxuries they were accustomed to, and her brothers and father labor in the fields, Beauty simultaneously takes on the roles of homemaker and family cheerleader. After two years, the merchant unexpectedly receives news from the city, raising his family’s hopes for the future. Unfortunately, these do not come to pass, and the disappointed merchant loses his way as he returns home. Stranded in a cold and gloomy forest, he spends the night in terror before finding refuge in a mysterious castle. Facing the prospect of his family’s chagrin, he decides to pick a rose for his youngest daughter, causing the ire of the lord of the castle: the Beast. The monster offers Beauty’s father a bargain: immediate death, or survival if one of his daughters consents to become his prisoner in his place. Despite her father’s reluctance, Beauty, whose sisters consider responsible for this turn of events, decides to go to the castle in his stead. She expects to meet an awful death there but instead is coddled and provided with luxuries that she could only dream of. Although the Beast’s clumsy wooing makes her uncomfortable, she gladly welcomes the attentions of the Unknown, an attractive young man she meets in her dreams. However, her dream lover is not merely a figment of her imagination, and Beauty is determined to solve the mystery of his existence, encouraged in this pursuit by another dream character, the Intelligence, a fairy. As the novelty of the entertainments available to her wears off, Beauty yearns for her family to such an extent that the Beast allows her to go home, with the caveat that she return within two months. Beauty’s joy at being reunited with her

The Other Side of Night  133 father and her siblings is tempered by her sisters’ jealousy and the unwelcomed attention of their suitors. She also misses the freedoms that she enjoyed in the castle and her dream lover’s nightly visits. Ultimately, it is a dream of the dying Beast and the Lady Fairy’s reproaches that convince her to return to the castle. She arrives at the castle just in time to save the monster and, following the advice of both the Unknown and the Fairy, agrees to sleep with and marry him. Her wedding night is rewarded by the transformation of the Beast into her beloved Unknown. However, their union does not equally rejoice his mother, the Amazon Queen, who arrives at the castle with the Intelligence as soon as the curse is broken. Despite the Intelligence and the Prince’s attempts to convince her otherwise, the Queen remains horrified at the unequal marriage between her noble heir and a destitute bourgeois lady until the Fairy reveals Beauty’s true parentage: her mother is the Intelligence’s sister and her father is the king of the Happy Isle. After hearing the dramatic stories of her parents’ separation and the prince’s transformation, both caused by evil fairies, the wedding is finally celebrated in the presence of Beauty’s adoptive and birth family, and the Beast’s dream castle is gifted to the happy couple as a wedding present from the Intelligence. Dreams in Beauty and the Beast are neither fleeting escapes from reality nor rule-bending episodes whose first purpose is to serve the overall narrative. Instead, they constitute what Aurélia Gaillard calls a “parallel scene” or even a “double-jointed plot,” created by and for female characters.5 Under the auspices of a reconceived nighttime, where monsters and nightmares have lost their fearsome power, Beauty and the Beast’s dreamscape, a distorted double of the “real” world, is the stage of a female reconceptualization of the Enlightenment. That women have had a hard time finding their place in the masculine light of the Enlightenment is nothing new. As Heidi Bostic notes, during the eighteenth century, “‘woman’ was labeled as ‘irrational’ and intellectual ‘reason’ as unwomanly.”6 Even today, “[i]ntellectual women of the French eighteenth century continue to be excluded from the Enlightenment. Their works are too often trivialized or treated as mere embellishments when they are not simply ignored.”7 Often dismissed by scholars as “unknown (and not worth knowing),” Villeneuve does not fight for a share of the light.8 Instead, in rewriting and making hers the space of night, she creates an alternative dream reality where her heroine Beauty, and women in general, can redefine and experience the meaning of a woman-driven Enlightenment. Villeneuve occupies a space often maligned by Enlightenment thinkers by deconstructing traditional and folkloric perceptions of night and rewriting the nightscape through a feminine lens.9 She is not the only one to see the potential of darkness. As Marine Ganofsky investigates in Night in French Libertine Fiction, eighteenth-century libertine writers such as Crébillon, Sade, and Laclos turned to the night as a locus of self-expression and fantasies.10 Villeneuve, too, draws on this aspect as her Beast keeps asking

134  Valentine Balguerie Beauty whether she will allow him to sleep with her. Unlike libertine authors, however, Villeneuve carves out a female-centric space in the nightscape, a multi-layered dreamscape that often parallels reality but deeply disturbs the dynamics of power or desire that operate in the “real” world. Moreover, in giving only Beauty, her heroine, and the Lady Fairy full power to create and access the dreamscape, Villeneuve weaves into the main narrative an alternative version of what a female-driven Enlightenment would look like.

The Rewriting of Night Night has long been envisioned as a time of terror, when human beings, plunged into darkness and unable to see clearly, faced danger, real or imagined, at every corner. Such a peril, and probably the most tangible one, came from other people. Data collected by Roger Muchembled based on the study of 3468 letters of remission granting royal grace to murderers shows that in Artois, from 1386 to 1660, morning or noontime are rarely indexed. The afternoon is the occasion for 17 percent of fights, night 22 percent and the evening 55 percent…In winter just as in summer, the ephemeral moment of twilight seems to increase the tension among men of these times.11 Until the second half of the seventeenth century, streets were illuminated only during extraordinary events, and the darkness that reigned most of the time presented many opportunities for crime to flourish, as the playwright Isaac de Benserade famously illustrated in his Ballet royal de la nuit (1653).12 Showcasing the young Louis XIV as the rising Sun king who dispelled obscurity, Benserade cataloged over four parts, or “wakes,” the stereotypes attached to nightscapes. There criminals abounded: bandits, robbers, thieving fortune-tellers, and counterfeiters constantly took advantage of the lovers or bourgeois ladies who were too imprudent to return home by nightfall and faced the soldiers and archers deployed throughout the city with varying degrees of success. However, criminality was but one of the terrors that nighttime had in store. In the imagination of quasi-blinded human beings, vague shadows took diabolic shapes and superstitious meanings: sorcerers, witches celebrating Sabbath, monsters, and werewolves were all part of the nighttime bestiary that was staged by Benserade in 1653 and still haunted the popular imagination by the time Villeneuve put her words to paper. Beauty’s father, whose repeated designation as a “good old man” alludes to both age and naivety, confirms the persistent nature of these superstitions when he gets lost in the woods as he returns home after a failed attempt at regaining his lost fortune.13 “[U]nprepared for nightfall, stung by the most biting cold and buried, so to speak, beneath the snow with his

The Other Side of Night  135 horse,” in the middle of dark woods, he encounters night in its most terrifying form. Although he finally finds shelter in the trunk of a rotten tree, his reprieve is brief, and to the already bleak situation that he finds himself in are added the torments of hunger and wild beasts: “in this state, the night seemed unending; moreover, tormented by pangs of hunger and frightened by the howling of wild beasts constantly prowling close by, could he find a moment of peace?”14 Night, far from offering respite from the day’s events, intensifies his fears and anxiety and has such a pernicious influence that its effects last long after sunrise, as the good old man discovers that “his struggles and worries did not end with the night.”15 Once dawn arrives, the merchant resumes his journey but, disoriented by the snow, he loses his way and arrives at the Beast’s castle. While he finds comfort and refreshments there, he also encounters one of the most iconic characters of the traditional nightscape: the monster, known as the Beast. This Beast is fearsome in appearance and deed (Figure 7.1). He intimidates not only with his enormous size, but also with his hybrid body; made of a “trunk, similar to an elephant’s,” “two horrible paws,” and scales that clink, he closely resembles a chimera, an evil half-lion,

Figure 7.1 Henry Justice Ford, “The Beast Scaring Beauty’s Father”, The Blue Fairy Book, ed. Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), 104.

136  Valentine Balguerie half-goat mythological creature with a snake tail.16 Beauty’s father, however, is no heroic Bellerophon and is overcome with panic, as is made apparent by the plethora of fear-inducing terms connected with the Beast’s arrival: the merchant hears “a terrible noise” and experiences “tremendous fright” when he is faced with “a horrible beast” who gives him “a furious look” and speaks to him in “a frightful voice.”17 Confronted with the increasing likelihood of imminent death, the good old man is reduced to attempting to earn the Beast’s mercy by telling him of his misfortunes and begging for forgiveness. The Beast, barely appeased, agrees to spare him provided one of his daughters takes his place voluntarily. This terrifying experience draws on popular folk representations of nighttime and its dangers. While not false altogether, the perils of the night are amplified by the lack of visual acuity, which makes the products of the darkest imagination come to life. Although forests remain dark spaces today, Louis XIV and his ministers attempted to alleviate the oppressiveness of urban nights. Following Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s suggestion, street lighting was introduced in Paris in 1667 and expanded so fast that “by 1702 there were 5400 public candle-lanterns in place across the city, lit from October to March.”18 These new city lights enabled city dwellers, male and female, as well as visitors to enjoy all that the nocturnal city had to offer in a much freer frame of mind.19 With these technological changes, the nightscape became open to new interpretations. Libertine fiction writers used it productively, as Marine Ganofsky has shown.20 In Beauty and the Beast, Villeneuve showcases this moment of transition and the possibilities of this new nightscape by rewriting the arrival at the castle with Beauty as a central character. Night had been a paralyzing event for the merchant and his horse, leaving them stranded, cold, and afraid in the middle of the woods at the mercy of wild beasts. Once Beauty enters the stage, the nightscape does not cause such immobility: “the night fell while the horse (sent by the Beast) continued to gallop through the darkness.”21 Moreover, as soon as Beauty and her father are in reach of the castle, the obscurity and the cold are dispelled in a spectacular fashion: the most surprising display made the darkness vanish in an instant. Fireworks of all kinds filled the air: flowerpots, whirls, starbursts, fountains, and all the most beautiful wonders of invention dazzled the eyes of our two travelers. These delightful and astonishing lights brightened the whole forest sky and spread a gentle warmth through the air, which they welcomed because the cold in this region was more biting at night than during the day.22 Originating in China and used in the Western world “with the double purpose of attacking enemy-fortifications and highlighting public celebrations,” fireworks became particularly essential to French festivities

The Other Side of Night  137 under Louis XIV and Louis XV, who used them to dazzle and impress both their subjects and their adversaries, foreign or domestic.23 Villeneuve arrived in Paris in 1728 and could very well have had the privilege to witness either the celebrations of the dauphin’s birthday in 1730 or the wedding of Madame Louise Elisabeth, daughter of King Louis XV, to Don Felipe, infant of Spain, in 1739. Barring that, she might have had the opportunity to peruse the luxurious fête book published by JacquesFrançois Blondel under the title Description des festes données par la ville de Paris à l’occasion du mariage de Madame Louise-Elizabeth (Figure 7.2). This book included engraving and etchings that may have helped inform her technical description of the types of fireworks.24 Whatever Villeneuve’s personal experience with fireworks may have been, Beauty and her father

Figure 7.2 Jacques François Blondel, View of The Fireworks on August 29th, 1739: The Final Blaze, 18th century. Courtesy of Paris Musées /Musée Carnavalet—Histoire de Paris.

138  Valentine Balguerie are clearly not accustomed to this type of entertainment. While their aesthetic appreciation is indicated through the use of adjectives such as “beautiful,” “delightful,” and “charming,” it is balanced with a good measure of awe conveyed by the use of words like “surprising” and “astonishing.” Beauty and her father are “dazzled” by the “enchanting effects” of the fireworks, which include not only unusual warmth for the season but also a certain disorientation on the travelers’ part.25 One of the most enchanting effects of the technological use of lights, however, is that it radically changes the external appearance of the castle and advertises it as Beauty’s property. While both arrival scenes take place on the avenue of orange trees, the castle surveyed by the father appeared chaotic and its aesthetics haphazard: Statues were erected without any order or symmetry; some were on the avenue, others were seen dispersed amongst the trees, all were made of an unknown substance, and were of human size and color, in different positions and in various costumes, the majority of which were soldiers.26 Beauty’s arrival, by contrast, marks a return to order and logic, both in the continuity of the lighting system and in their arrangement: By these charming lights, the father and daughter discovered they were on the avenue of orange trees. As soon as they entered, the fireworks ceased, but the blazing torches in the hands of all the statues replaced the light. In addition, an infinite number of lanterns covered the entire facade of the palace; symmetrically placed, they formed the shape of lovers’ knots and crowned monograms topped with intertwined initials of Ls and Bs.27 These changes in the castle’s appearance signal a transformation of the nightscape, caused by the joint action of Beauty, whose name is inscribed on the façade, and technology. Night has lost its ancestral bite, and a new age is being ushered in by the young heroine. Far from being hindered by the terrors that her father experienced, Beauty fearlessly ventures alone in the dark to save the Beast as he is about to die. The monster, along with the other negative attributes of night, has been neutralized by Beauty long before his return to humanity. In the presence of the good old man, the Beast fulfilled many of the monster stereotypes: “full of rage” and “gnash[ing] his teeth,” he displayed his ferocity by threatening to kill the merchant, “and all [his] race even if a hundred thousand men were there to defend [him].”28 With Beauty, however, the Beast is tamer. Even though he crudely asks, every night, “if she would allow him to sleep with her,” which initially makes Beauty fear that her captor might rape her, the power clearly rests in her hands.29 In fact, Aurelia Gaillard argues that

The Other Side of Night  139 “the fear of violent rape, omnipresent in the narrative, is merely a trick, the Beast’s request requires instead that Beauty become aware of her own desire.”30 While she fretfully ponders her response, the Beast clarifies her clout over her situation, over him and her sexuality, giving her the power to consent or reject her monstrous suitor: “without fear answer as you must. Say either yes or no.” Once rebuffed, the Beast, rendered “docile,” wishes her good night and leaves “the frightened girl” “extremely relieved that she had no violence to fear.”31 After spending more time in the castle, Beauty realizes that the Beast’s fearsome traits are owed more to physical attributes than a vicious nature. She is far more afraid of being crushed, both physically and spiritually, by his heavy body than of being devoured by him.32 Under Beauty’s influence, the enchanted palace becomes a place of light, inhabited by a monster devoid of his former menacing aura and dedicated to fulfilling the heroine’s wishes night and day. The separation between daytime and nighttime, which used to be so stark, fades thanks to an omnipresent lighting system, which ensures that “all of the apartments” receive proper illumination and enables Beauty’s full enjoyment of the entertainments provided her, well into the night, sometimes “past midnight.”33 “[N]o matter what time of the day,” Beauty is sure to find something to amuse herself.34 She can take a stroll in the portrait gallery or the magnificent gardens. Anything that she can dream of is within reach: her thirst for knowledge can be satiated in the immense library, any yearning for music can be fulfilled by playing any instrument that she wants, and well-equipped ateliers are available for her to “make all kinds of objects.”35 When she needs more novel entertainment, she goes to the aviary or attends a play put on by the amiable monkeys who serve her. If she misses the divertissements that she is accustomed to, she uses a newfangled invention that displays the theater, the Opera, the Opera-Comique, the Foire Saint-Germain, the Comédie Italienne, the Tuileries.36 The profusion and the nature of the activities at Beauty’s disposal clearly indicate that Villeneuve’s rewriting of night is an elitist one. As Craig Koslofsky notes, “[e]xtending the day into the night had become a part of aristocratic style.”37 The “perfumed candles placed in clear or colored chandeliers, not of crystal, but of diamonds and rubies” used in the castle are the kind of privileges reserved for those of the aristocracy or bourgeoisie rich enough to avail themselves of these luxuries.38 Beauty’s enjoyment of nighttime’s more traditional functions, namely sleep and dreams, is also a luxury of the very rich. As Alain Cabantous has shown, labor extends well into the night for the working classes, and sleep is neither plentiful nor restful.39 Beauty’s transition from her previous life as a peasant woman is apparent from the very first night that she spends in the castle when she falls “deeply into the tranquil slumber that had completely eluded her since she had received that fatal rose.”40 Costly delicacies such as “a cup of chocolate on the

140  Valentine Balguerie night table” and extravagant nightly rituals only reinforce the lavish art of sleeping cultivated in the castle:41 Her ladies in waiting, the Barbary apes, undressed their mistress, put her to bed, and thoughtfully opened the windows so that the birds could sing a gentler tune than they had during the day, so as to lull her into sleep and dull her senses, offering her the pleasure of seeing her amiable lover again.42 In transforming nighttime into a safe and luxurious space for women, regardless of actual social status, Villeneuve opens up the possibility of conceiving change in terms not limited by the traditional parameters set by canonical Enlightenment thinkers. Because night is a time that Beauty can inhabit without fear, it also becomes a time where she can break away from rigid social rules and prejudices and productively dream of new technologies and modes of being.

Down the Layered Dreamscape: Dreams within a Dream The castle itself is the first dream that this new night brings forth. It appears to Beauty and her father only once night has fallen, as they ride to exchange Beauty for her father’s life, and Beauty can only leave it by night. When she starts to miss her family and asks the Beast to let her visit them, Beauty is met with his utter sorrow. Nevertheless, he ultimately relents and allows her to leave for two months and wishes her goodbye: “Good night. Have no fear; sleep in peace; you will see your father early tomorrow morning. Farewell, Beauty.”43 The following day, after a night of sleep, she wakes up “to find herself in a bedroom she did not recognize, and whose furniture did not rival the magnificence of that found in the Beast’s palace.”44 After two months spent in her father’s house, as she prepares to return to the Beast’s side, she follows the instructions that he had given before her departure to return to the castle: when you wish to return, you will not need a carriage; just say farewell to your family in the evening before you retire, and when you are in bed turn the gem of your ring towards your palm and say in a firm voice: “I want to return to my palace to see my Beast again.”45 Under the auspices of this newly reconfigured night, sleeping becomes a way for Beauty to travel to and out of the enchanted castle. Yet, this peculiar mode of traveling reveals the true nature of the palace as the first layer of Beauty’s intricate dreamscape. Guillaume Garnier suggests that dreams of traveling are often used in literary works as a way to escape the frustrations of daily lives.46 Beauty has suffered from her father’s misfortunes more than anyone in her family. Admired by her peers for her

The Other Side of Night  141 beauty and her charms, she could have made a brilliant marriage but chose to follow her family to their remote country home. There she, along with her siblings, “must perform all the chores of country life”, to which Beauty adds the task of entertaining her whole family.47 Although her jealous sisters find her attempts pointless and ridicule her, Beauty is far from being blissfully happy: “To lessen her woes in her free hours, she adorn[s] her hair with flowers, as shepherdesses had done in earlier times.” She also finds solace in fashioning herself as the idyllic heroine of the pastoral novels that were popular in the Renaissance and the seventeenth century.48 For someone used to acting the part of luckier literary characters during the daytime, playing lady of the castle in her dreams is only a logical extension. It is, however, a notable one. Beauty’s imagination, powered by a reimagined nightscape, does not merely embellish her pitiful situation, as she does when she is awake, but rather invents a fairytale world perfectly suited to her desires. The castle is a self-contained space where Beauty can escape from the life of drudgery that she leads at home and thoroughly indulge in the luxurious and idle lifestyle of the aristocracy. Everything seems designed to make it an ideal dwelling for the young woman, which contributes to increase her already considerable appeal: The peaceful days she had spent in her solitary palace, the innocent pleasures that gentle sleep continually bade her, the thousands of continual amusements so that boredom never made its way into her heart, in short, all the monster’s attentions, had made her even more beautiful and charming than she was when her father had left her there.49 Beauty is so changed when she returns to her family that “they beh[o]ld her as if she had returned from another world.”50 This other world, shaped for and by Beauty, is fitted to her needs and wants, even if it means bending the natural laws that human beings rely on. Although the woods surrounding the castle are twice described as bitingly cold, the “beautiful weather” on the castle grounds allows the hedges of myrtle and orange trees, two Mediterranean species, to prosper, which enables Beauty to stroll in “the most beautiful garden in the world.”51 The enchanted castle’s climate is so favorable to gardening that, as the Beast later relates to Beauty, “what [he] planted took no more than a day to reach its ultimate perfection.”52 The castle is made exactly to Beauty’s ideal specifications so that she should never want to leave it. There she has access to everything that she could wish for and more. Impossibly clever animal servants, who put on plays for her and help with her every need, reflect a trend towards exotic animal ownership among the aristocracy in the eighteenth century but go beyond it in their ability to serve and entertain Beauty.53 The “thousands of continual amusements”

142  Valentine Balguerie forestall boredom by providing Beauty not only with countless on-site amenities but with fancy machines of Villeneuve’s imagination.54 Beauty is especially fascinated by the drawing room’s four windows that enable her to attend plays at different theaters, go to the Foire Saint Germain, “visit a famous embassy, witness an illustrious marriage unfolding, or observe some fascinating revolution.”55 As Anne Defrance notes, this apparatus alludes to the way fairy tales can enhance scientific objects. The description of this setup, a “masterpiece of optics,” “a mirror [that reflects] back to her from on high all that transpire[s] in the most beautiful theater in the world,” combines several known optical machines: a camera obscura, a periscope or even Galileo’s eyeglass.56 In creating a “system able to broadcast in real time a spectacle taking place far away to another enclosed space,” Villeneuve unknowingly anticipates the invention of the television.57 Villeneuve’s innovative contraptions reveal the technological possibilities in a world shaped by a woman’s dreams. However, the barriers between Beauty’s dream world and the real world remain impassable. From her ideal castle, even through her makeshift television, Beauty remains a powerless onlooker as she “hear[s] and s[ees] everything very distinctly, without others being able to hear her voice or even notice her presence.”58 Faced with this impossibility to communicate with the world outside her dreams, Beauty retreats further into the dreamscape, into sub-layers that she dreams up from within the castle. Aurélia Gaillard points out that the mirrored construction of the text establishes two spaces, the Beast’s castle and the father’s house, and two levels of reality, daytime and dream reality.59 Nonetheless, dreams do not belong to a homogeneous reality in Beauty and the Beast. Instead, they can be more easily divided into two categories: Beauty’s dreams about the castle and her dreams in the castle, where she encounters the Unknown and the Lady Fairy. Three intertwined spaces can thus be distinguished: first, the father’s house, then, the castle, which is the first dream layer, and finally, Beauty’s dreams, which constitute a second dream layer embedded within the castle dreamscape. The three spaces also overlap in places. The castle dream can reflect real-world events through the television-like device, but its overall appearance subscribes more to the fantasy-laden grotesque aesthetics that Virginia Swain studies in detail in “Beauty’s Chambers: Mixed Styles and Mixed Messages in Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast.”60 Similarly, as Gaillard shows, the dreamscape in which Beauty’s dreams take place parallels her castle life.61 The most salient point of convergence between the two spaces resides in the castle’s décor, with its classical French gardens and “the great canal bordered with orange trees and myrtles.”62 Beauty sees this exact location in her first dream within the confines of the castle. While the castle space and Beauty’s dreams coincide in many ways, they are not the same. Only within the second dream layer does Beauty encounter the Unknown, her dream lover, and the Lady Fairy, who

The Other Side of Night  143

Figure 7.3 Henry Justice Ford, “Beauty Dreaming”, in The Blue Fairy Book, ed. Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), 110.

ultimately helps her break the curse that has transformed her beloved into the Beast (Figure 7.3). The Unknown himself only appears as the Beast and “the portrait of [a] handsome cavalier” in the castle layer.63 This second dream layer represents new modes of understanding and interacting with the world. The castle dreamscape improved on various aspects of reality, combining different scientific instruments to create a precursor to modern television or embellishing the functions of exotic animals in the household. On the other hand, Beauty’s dreams within the castle introduce new characters and new conceptions of time and space. This is illustrated in her first dream: “her sleep lasted for more than five hours, during which she saw the young man in a hundred different places and taking on a hundred different airs.”64 As the realm of dreams bends the rules of physics, Beauty’s encounters with the Unknown and the Fairy do not always result in complete understanding and transparency of meaning. When she tries to question the Unknown about ways to help him, the Unknown responded to her, but in a way that was so confusing that she did not understand a thing. He put a thousand extravagant actions before her eyes. She saw the monster on a throne, bedazzled with jewels, who beckoned her to sit by his side. A moment later, the Unknown removed the Beast hurriedly and sat in his place. Then the Beast regained the advantage and disappeared in turn.65

144  Valentine Balguerie These puzzling dreams often leave Beauty in a “pensive” state, a word which Aurora Wolfgang chooses to translate “rêveuse” in the French text.66 Conveying the complex meaning of the French “rêveuse,” which alludes both to dreaming and daydreaming, is no easy task. Jean M. Goulemot’s analysis of the word “rêverie” in “Dreaming in the Age of the Enlightenment: An Overview” indicates that such a state could also imply Beauty’s unconscious desire for the Beast. Reverie in the eighteenth century tended to be described as a pathological condition and associated with excessive sexuality, especially among women.67 Yet, Wolfgang’s necessary translation choice abolishes the connection between the nocturnal and the diurnal dream and separates thinking and dreaming along the divide created by Cartesian philosophy. One of the main goals of Cartesian philosophy was to determine what was not a dream and could therefore be understood as a reliable source of knowledge.68 Beauty’s reflections about her first dream within the boundaries of the castle, before she ultimately dismisses it as an “illusion”, mirror this approach: “I am so confused. But what fool I am! I spend my time looking for reasons to explain an illusion conjured by my sleep and which dissipates upon waking. I should pay it no heed.”69 However logical these arguments appear, this process of refutation fails as she first recognizes the Unknown on a bracelet and a life-size painting, and then comes upon the same canal lined with orange trees and myrtle bushes that she had seen in her dreams in the gardens.70 Guillaume Garnier notes that “seventeenthand eighteenth-century thinkers constantly argued that oneiric activity was a result of daytime thoughts.”71 This was definitely the case with the castle dreamscape, which features numerous elements of reality. By sequencing events so that the second layer of the dreamscape forecasts some features of the castle before Beauty had discovered them, Villeneuve also hints that the reverse may also be true. Dreams in Beauty and the Beast have the power to create, rather than to merely reflect, and alter reality. Through her dream interactions with the Unknown and the Lady Fairy, Beauty receives critical knowledge, which makes her increasingly “rêveuse” when she is awake.72 It is because of this dream-born pensiveness, which emphasizes the connection between thinking and dreaming, that she is able to break the Unknown’s curse and return to the social station that was hers by birth.

The Dream of Another Enlightenment Once a time of anxiety and danger, nighttime grows increasingly welcoming in Beauty and the Beast. The combined action of technology and reason helps Beauty dispel the nightmares, tame the monster, and fully enjoy nighttime. As the nightscape loses its more fearsome aspects under Beauty’s influence, Villeneuve carves out a multi-layered dreamscape where her heroine can reimagine her life and identity and escape the

The Other Side of Night  145 restrictions that her gender and class generate. Beauty is often perceived as an unconventional fairy tale heroine, especially when compared to her seventeenth-century counterparts. According to Marina Warner, the goals of the female fairy tale writers were to “reveal possibilities, to map out a different way and a new perception of love, marriage, women’s skills, thus advocating a means of escaping imposed limits and prescribed destiny.”73 The Countess of Aulnoy’s Belle-Belle, for instance, cross-dressed to enlist in her father’s place, saved her country, and became a queen in “Belle-Belle; or, The Chevalier Fortuné.”74 Next to her, Beauty appears submissive and trained, both through her experience in the countryside and the dreams lessons of the Lady Fairy, for what is “a quintessentially private and familial life”, one where she is advised to be satisfied with the hugely unappealing but nonetheless familiar life with the Beast and to forego the greater uncertainty of a possibly illusory pleasure, summed up with all its foreignness and potential danger in the suitor’s only name: the Unknown.75 This model of female domesticity, which coexists with more progressive conceptions of womanhood in the Enlightenment period and in the pages of Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, is skin-deep when it comes to Beauty and her dreams only emphasize the divide between her docile public persona and her inner feelings and aspirations. According to Beauty’s aunt, the Lady Fairy, “her virtue and beauty [a]re equaled by her intelligence,” and tellingly she is the only character who can connect with the Intelligence through her dreams.76 Beauty’s encounters with this otherworldly being, which can also be read as deeper explorations into her own mind, lead not only to the furthering of her unusually progressive education but also to her empowerment, as the fairy encourages Beauty to increase her personal agency. Beauty, who is otherwise subjected to social and sexual norms like many eighteenth-century women, experiences true freedom of action within the second layer of the dreamscape. As she says goodbye to the Unknown, she tells him the most flattering things that a tender-hearted lover could say to her beloved. She was not held back by proud rules of propriety, and as her dreams allowed her to react naturally, she revealed her feelings to him, which she would have concealed if she were in perfect control of her reason. In creating this dreamscape, Villeneuve questions and denounces the repressive quality of eighteenth-century society, especially for women: the rule of “reason,” instead of being enlightening, is used to “conceal” and hinder natural feelings.77

146  Valentine Balguerie Dreams, however, can upend traditional hierarchies of power. As the Beast relates to his new wife the events that led to his monstrous state, he reveals the role of the Intelligence, or female intelligence, as the architect of the dream world. In a rebuke of a historical space where women are not allowed to own property and find themselves at the mercy of male figures, be they father, husband, or brother, Villeneuve creates a womanmade space where only female dreamers are allowed to take an active role and the Prince, turned into a dream puppet, becomes the helpless object of erotic fantasy.78 Yet, a dream is only a dream, and while Beauty’s completely changed the course of her life, Villeneuve did not believe in happily-ever-afters. Although Beauty is “recognized by enlightened people for what she was” and much sought after by them, she herself is never referred to as “enlightened.”79 Thus, like many other women, she is denied full and public participation in the Enlightenment. Even Beauty and the Beast’s classic fairy-tale ending is followed by “the worries that are inseparable from their rank” and solace is only found through brief sojourns in the dream palace the Intelligence has gifted them.80 In creating a resilient dreamscape, Villeneuve transforms and splinters the fairy tale genre. Imperfect fairy-tale worlds cannot provide happy endings: only in dreams can her characters escape everyday drudgery and reinvent themselves, their happiness, and their lives. Dreams may not, by definition, lead to concrete change; however, in carving a permanent space in the nightscape, one made by and for women, Villeneuve reaffirms the power of the female mind and opens up to eighteenth-century women what is already, ahead of Virginia Woolf, a dark “room of their own” amidst the bright light of male-centric Enlightenment.

Notes 1 Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Wild Boar,” in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition from Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes (New York: Norton Critical Editions, 2001), 57. 2 Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 107. 3 For more about this civilizing process, see Lewis Seifert, “Pig or Prince? Murat, D’Aulnoy and The Limits of Civilized Masculinity,” in High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France, ed. Kathleen Long (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), 183–209. 4 Lewis Seifert, “Queer Time in Charles Perrault’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’,” Marvels and Tales 29, no. 1 (2015): 36–38. 5 Aurélia Gaillard, “Songe et Enchantement à la fin de l’âge Classique,” in Songes et Songeurs (XIIIe–XVIIIe siècle), ed. Nathalie Dauvois and JeanPhilippe Grosperrin (Canada: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008), 176. 6 Heidi Bostic, The Fiction of Enlightenment: Women of Reason in the French Eighteenth Century (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010), 35. 7 Ibid., 17.

The Other Side of Night  147 8 Jacques Barchilon, “‘Le Cabinet des fées’ et l’imagination romanesque,” Études littéraires 1, no. 2 (1968): 227. 9 Jean Sgard notes that “the great writers of this enlightened century had an archaic perspective of night. For them, the metaphor of night signals an uprising of the forces of Evil, the return of the repressed, the realm of the Devil”. Jean Sgard, “La métaphore nocturne,” in Eclectisme et cohérence des Lumières: Mélanges offerts à Jean Ehrard, ed. Jean Ehrard and Jean-Louis Jam (Paris: Librarie Nizet, 1992), 251. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified. 10 Marine Ganofsky, Night in French Libertine Fiction (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2018). 11 Robert Muchembled, “La Violence et la nuit sous l’Ancien Régime,” Ethnologie Française: Revue Trimestrielle de la Société d’Ethnologie Française 21, no. 3 (July–September 1991): 237–242. 12 Isaac de Benserade, Ballet royal de la nuit (Paris: Robert Ballard, 1653). 13 The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694) states that “bonhomme” (a good old man) can mean both an old man and a simple, idiotic one. 14 Alain Cabantous notes that among the tales of the Bibliothèque Bleue, such as Charles Perrault’s “Little Thumb,” “the fear of getting lost in the dark, in thick dark woods, where wild animals roam” is the most prevalent perception of night. Alain Cabantous, Histoire de la nuit (Paris: Fayard, 2009), chap. 1. Kindle. 15 Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast: The Original Story, ed. and trans. Aurora Wolfgang (Toronto: ITER, 2020), 93–95. 16 Ibid., 95, 143. 17 Ibid., 95. 18 Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 131. 19 Koslofsky notes that “urban spaces that served as an extension of the court (…) aristocratic women used the night freely to socialize and maintain social networks”. Madame de Sévigné, for instance, writes how much she enjoys the freedom of walking around Paris at night, shortly after street lighting made its appearance in the Parisian streets. Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 186. 20 Ganofsky, Night in French Libertine Fiction. 21 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 102. 22 Ibid. 23 Bärbel Czennia, “Night Skies Enlightened: Fireworks as Art, Science, Recreation and Collective Symbol,” in The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit (Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2010), 32. 24 Kevin Salatino, Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Institute for the History of Arts and Humanities, 1997), 21–26. 25 Czennia, “Night Skies Enlightened,” 55. 26 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 94. 27 Ibid., 102. 28 Ibid., 96. 29 Ibid., 109. 30 Aurélia Gaillard, “Le corps enchanté chez Mme de Villeneuve et Mlle de Lubert: exploration des corps amoureux et invention poétique dans quelques contes de 1740,” in Le Conte merveilleux au XVIIIe siècle: une poétique expérimentale, ed. Régine Jomand-Baudry and Jean-François Perrin (Paris: Editions Kimé, 2002), 301.

148  Valentine Balguerie 1 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 109. 3 32 Gaillard, “Corps enchanté,” 302. 33 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 116. 34 Ibid., 117. 35 Ibid., 110. 36 The Opera likely alludes to the Théâtre du Palais Royal, in Paris, which was used as an opera house from 1673 until 1763, when it was destroyed by fire. The Foire Saint Germain was a yearly street fair that took place around Easter and gathered artisans and street artists from the Middle Ages to 1789. The Opéra Comique was a theater in Paris that staged opera comique plays, an eighteenth-century genre that blended dialogues and sung parts. Les Tuileries allude both to a public Parisian garden and its theater, while Comédie Italienne plays, which correspond to the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, could be seen at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, in Paris. 37 Koslofsky, 114. 38 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 109. 39 Cabantous, Histoire de la nuit, chap. 2. Kindle. 40 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 106. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 112. 43 Ibid., 120. 44 Ibid., 121. 45 Ibid., 120. 46 Guillaume Garnier, “Songes et voyages imaginaires aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest 113–114, no. 4 (2006): 187. 47 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 90. 48 Ibid., 91. 49 Ibid., 124. 50 Ibid., 121. 51 Ibid., 110. 52 Ibid., 146. 53 Marcy Norton, “Going to the Birds: Animal as Things and Beings in Early Modernity,” in Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500– 1800, ed. Paula Findlen and Milton Park (UK: Routledge, 2021), chap. 3. Kindle. 54 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 124. 55 Ibid., 116–117. 56 Ibid., 113. 57 Anne Defrance, “La réfraction des sciences dans le conte de fées,” Féeries 6 (2009): 70. 58 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 116. 59 Gaillard, “Songe et Enchantement,” 177. 60 Virginia Swain, “Beauty’s Chambers: Mixed Styles and Mixed Messages in Villeneuve’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’,” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 19, no. 2 (January 2005): 197–223. 61 Gaillard, “Songe et Enchantement,” 177. 62 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 110. 63 Ibid., 108. 64 Ibid., 107. 65 Ibid., 114. 66 Ibid., 114. 67 Jean M. Goulemot, “Aperçus du rêve au siècle des Lumières,” in Rêver en France au 17e siècle, Revue des Sciences Humaines 82, no. 211 (July– September 1988): 238–239.

The Other Side of Night  149 68 René Descartes begins his first Meditation with a reflection on the confusing nature of dreams: “How often my sleep at night has convinced me of all these familiar things–that I was here, wrapped in my gown, sitting by the fire–when in fact I was lying naked under the bedclothes.–All the same, I am now perceiving this paper with eyes that are certainly awake; the head I am nodding is not drowsy; I stretch out my hand and feel it knowingly and deliberately; a sleeper would not have these experiences so distinctly.–But have I then forgotten those other occasions on which I have been deceived by similar thoughts in my dreams? When I think this over more carefully I see so clearly that waking can never be distinguished from sleep by any conclusive indications that I am stupefied; and this very stupor comes close to persuading me that I am asleep after all.” René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations on First Philosophy, with Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed. and trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 14. 69 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 108. 70 Ibid., 110. 71 Garnier, “Songes et voyages imaginaires,” 186. 72 While Aurelie Gaillard notes that Beauty becomes increasingly “rêveuse”, she sees this reverie as a contradiction to the dreamscape: “the more the story progresses, the more Beauty looks for pleasant dreams, but also becomes more pensive/rêveuse, in the grip of reveries or even “rêveuse” in her dreams! Then a dialectical relationship between dreaming and reverie/pensiveness starts: reverie, a pathological state, impedes dreaming because it produces insomnia, but also because it produces displeasure and dissatisfaction inside the dream itself.” In Gaillard, “Songe et enchantement,” 177. 73 Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 24. 74 Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “Belle-Belle; or, The Chevalier Fortuné,” in Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, 174–205. 75 Virginia Swain, “Beauty’s Chambers,” 202, 208. 76 Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 164. 77 Ibid., 121. 78 To a certain extent, we could apply here to these shared dreams a similar analysis as the one Lewis Seifert makes of Sleeping Beauty’s dreams: “Sleeping Beauty’s dreams, then, are a moment of erotic pleasure given to her by the fairy, and as such they signal a relationship between the two women, a relationship grounded in eroticism.” In Seifert, “Queer Time,” 38. 79 This is my translation. Wolfgang translates “connue des personnes éclairées pour ce qu’elle était” (Villeneuve, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de, La Belle et la Bête, ed. Martine Reid [Paris: Gallimard, 2010], 23) to “recognized by enlightened young men for her true virtues” (Villeneuve, Beauty and the Beast, 91). While this translation showcases the admiration that Beauty receives in society, it also limits Beauty’s social interactions to the context of marriage economy, genders the concept of enlightenment by associating it with men, and emphasizes the importance of female virtue at the expanse of intelligence. While Beauty may be admired by young men for all her qualities, it is also entirely possible, given the popularity of salons at the time, that other highly intelligent women may recognize her for the same reasons and seek her out. 80 Ibid., 170.

8 Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830) Florence Fesneau

Throughout the eighteenth century, the night was a scenery of fires that had either comical or deeply dramatic consequences. Sometimes caused by inexplicable cases of bad luck, by the negligence of those who left chimneys unattended and candles lit through the night, or by the malicious acts of enemies, nocturnal fires could burn down a single dwelling, an entire district, or even a whole city.1 The destructive consequences of these incidents were fueled, quite literally, by the proximity of the wooden constructions that dominated eighteenth-century cities.2 Written evidence testifies to the frequency of nocturnal fires and underlines the everrenewed interest they generated as being part of the French people’s daily life. However, surprisingly enough, nocturnal fires were seldom taken as a painting’s subject matter. This contradiction between text and image, together with the apparent difficulty of representing the nocturnal fire’s events so often experienced, calls for further investigation into the relationship eighteenth-century society maintained with the night and its representation. The idea that the light of Reason would enlighten its readers and hence inspire them to build a better world imbues the Discours Préliminaire de l’Encyclopédie (Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia), by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert. The whole enterprise of the Encyclopédie was conducted to fight obscurity and darkness.3 In the context of this longing for progress and this unwavering faith in the future, the representation of the night and its raging fires could represent an unwelcomed pessimistic antithesis. How could the pictorial representation capture the drama experienced by the nocturnal fires’ victims in order to match the stories so diversely recounted by newspapers, history books, or novels? Over the course of the eighteenth century, artists’ perception of nocturnal fires evolved to accompany the economic, social, and political changes of French society. It testifies to the progressive taming of night even in its most damaging form. Engraving, as well as history and genre painting, offer different answers to the nocturnal fire’s representation that mirror not only the anxieties of the time but also the DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-10

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  151 eighteenth-century French people’s desire. Engraving is informative. Selecting narrative scenes from religious, mythological, or allegorical subjects, history painting depicts the reactions of a limited number of heroic figures whose gestures and expressions are dramatized by the vivid fire’s color. Focusing on more intimate scenes that illustrate the everyday life of anonymous figures, genre painting plays with the semantic wealth of the vocabulary associated with the flames of passion. In this process, the individual figure becomes more and more the center of attention, announcing Romanticism’s emphasis on personal feelings and emotion.

An Informative Engraving At the beginning of the eighteenth century, artists showed practically no interest in representing nocturnal fires despite their frequency, which is attested by the numerous mentions in all geographical dictionaries. Organized alphabetically by city, these dictionaries detailed every noteworthy historical event, and nocturnal fires were certainly one of them.4 For its unprecedented magnitude, the fire in Rennes remained one of a kind.5 The event’s impact went well beyond the limits of the province of Brittany and marked the French collective memory substantially.6 It started on the night of December 23, 1720, and lasted six days, burning down half of the city. Its exact causes were identified: At about 9:00 p.m. in the evening, a carpenter set fire to his shop, and the flames soon reached the whole house and attic. The rapidity and the violence with which the fire swallowed the house did not enable his wife to save herself, and she died in the fire. With regard to her husband, the patrol, fortunately, managed to save him from the burning house and took him to prison.7 Once this explanation was given, neither the carpenter’s fate, whose name is not even mentioned, nor that of his wife, who perished in the flames, remained of interest. The chroniclers focused on describing the disarray the massive fire left behind and the extent of the material—rather than human—loss. The memorialist Edmond-Jean-François Barbier reported the testimony of the Rennes’ citizens who denounced “the soldiers who fueled the fire, as it died out, in order to loot.”8 In contrast, the monthly magazine La Suite de la Clef evoked “the deplorable desolation” of the inhabitants.9 And the memoirist Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, concluded that “the misfortune was complete for both life and properties.”10 The fire in Rennes is the subject of two artworks that do not belong to history or genre painting. They depict an extraordinary event lived by ordinary people. The Fire in the City of Rennes Seen from the Place du Palais was made by the Rennes-born architect Jean-François Huguet,

152  Florence Fesneau who took great care in choosing to represent one of the city’s most emblematic places: Place du Palais (Figure 8.1). This engraving, whose subject and location are thus easily identifiable, presents itself as a testimony to all the possible reactions to the event. Each of the little scenes it depicts can be taken separately as each of them illustrates one of the nocturnal fire’s multiple consequences: on the negative side distress and destitution, on the positive side solidarity and a dose of humor that never abandoned the eighteenth-century French spirit. The portrayal of individuals throwing their belongings out of the windows to save them singles out the fact that the untimely start of a fire in the middle of the night was all the more dreadful as it seized its victims asleep, when they were most vulnerable, half-naked, and in a state of mental confusion. The representation of other inhabitants fleeing in carts overloaded with their possessions suggests that most victims were not as lucky and found themselves destitute with no insurance to cover their loss.11 According to jurisprudence, compensation had to be paid by whoever started the fire. In the case of Rennes’ fire, the culprit, although well-identified, could obviously not compensate for the dramatic damages caused to the city. In other cases, identifying night fires’ culprits proved to be particularly challenging due to the lack of witnesses.12 An example of this state of affairs can be found in the claim issued by a merchant who deemed his landlord responsible for the night fire. Confronted with the latter’s bad faith, this unlucky tenant found no other solution than to publish his story in the hope of being heard and indemnified.13 If night fires can reveal the dark sides of human nature, they can also celebrate the sense of duty and the solidarity that animated the common people. In the Rennes’ fire engraving, some other citizens are shown running with buckets and ladders, desperately trying to stop the spread of flames. But these noble feelings were not necessarily extended to the whole country. In Paris, for example, the same well-intentioned people might have been blamed for the fires’ transmission. Indeed, mistakenly believing that “the public service providing fire pumps and Officials is tremendously expensive,” they often refused to call the communal authorities in case of fire.14 However, ordinary people trying to control a fire by themselves were not the only ones to be incriminated since it was well known throughout the country that officials could be difficult to wake up at night. In this regard, the report about the fire in Saint Malo in 1776 provided by the geographer Jean Ogée in his Dictionnaire historique et géographique de la province de la Bretagne (Historical and Geographical Dictionary of the Province of Brittany) signals the difficulties of getting help in cases of fire when the night sentry and all the guardhouse staff were sound asleep despite the repeated alarm calls.15 But, as this specific incident had no dramatic consequence, Ogée’s narration is rather entertaining. As a matter of fact, night fires can also have quite a

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  153

Figure 8.1 Simon Thomassin after Jean-François Huguet, Partie de l’incendie de la Ville de Rennes vue de la place du Palais (Part of the Fire in the City of Rennes Seen from the Place du Palais), 1721, engraving, 31 × 23 cm, Musée de Bretagne, Rennes. Public domain.

154  Florence Fesneau comical turn. In the Rennes’ fire engraving, the abbot’s presence is there to remind us about it. His serene demeanor as he oversees the removal of a coffin strongly contrasts with the general agitation. This scene alludes to much more incongruous events narrated throughout the century. For example, in 1739, the memorialist Barbier recounted that instead of watching over the deceased Duke of Tresmes, the Parisian clergymen feasted in an adjoining room and fell asleep without realizing that the candles surrounding the dead man’s bed were setting the pall on fire.16 A similar burlesque short news item is reported by the essayist Pierre-Jean Baptiste Nougaret in 1789. The thoughtlessness of a Parisian abbot who fell asleep instead of reciting prayers all night long resulted in the apartment burning down and the loss of the deceased’s fortune.17 By putting all these details together, whether dramatic or comic, the Rennes’ fire engraving shows that nocturnal fires were the cause of social upheaval that threw the nobility, the clergy, and the representatives of the Third Estate into the street indiscriminately. As a result, for a brief moment, the hierarchical boundaries between the three orders that defined the society of the Ancien Régime were abolished.18 The engraving’s composition, which does not privilege any figure over another, prevents the viewer from empathizing with the victims. By listing all the actions and reactions possible during the fire without making any final judgment on any of the figures involved, Huguet succeeds in saturating the viewer with so much information that he cannot decide what to look at, as if he were in the middle of the fire. The engraving bewilders the spectator as it reproduces the sensation of disorder the night fire generates and the difficulty of coping with it. The Vow to Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, made from a watercolor also by Huguet, is a large votive painting commissioned by the Rennes’ parishioners of Saint-Etienne and Saint-Aubin who wanted to thank the Virgin for preserving their districts from the fire.19 The painting, signed by Nicolas Leroy, shows the Virgin repelling the fire with her hand. Placed in a sky obscured by the night and the smoke, the Virgin dominates the entire city as well as the Cathedral miraculously spared by the flames. The inhabitants are hardly discernible, as they disappear in favor of an entity superior to them; the city of Rennes gives thanks in their name for the miracle accomplished. Whatever their creators’ artistic ambitions, both Huguet’s engraving and Leroy’s painting respond to a specific agenda that goes beyond individual interest. The former is deeply informative and, alongside other elements, aimed at supporting the speech of the mayor and his aldermen. They demanded tax exemptions from the King to relieve citizens and financial aid to rebuild the city, which they eventually obtained. The painting aimed to strengthen popular faith; the assurance of knowing they were in the Virgin’s hands enabled the Rennes’ community to endure better the material difficulties they faced after the fire.

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The Nocturnal Fire Glorified by History Painting Joseph Vernet was one of the first artists to choose the theme of the nocturnal fire for purely artistic purposes when he designed his Night Fire for the Salon of 1748 (Figure 8.2).20 Rather than depicting a specific fire, Vernet’s artwork captures the quintessential aspect of the nocturnal fire as a dramatic luminous phenomenon. The picture is emblematic due to the artist’s aesthetic and narrative choices and the philosophical reflection it offers to the viewer. The city in flames that occupies the background evokes, all at once, the ancient cities of Troy, Alexandria, and Rome, and yet it makes no specific references to any of these locations. Nonetheless, the Abbot of Fontenay noted that to better depict those nocturnal fires in his paintings, Vernet often ordered people to light fires by the Tiber at night and copied the lighting effects they created on land and water, often comparing them to those made by the moonlight.21 The choice to depict a port city enabled the artist to combine the four elements that reinforce the scene’s dramatic charge.22 The fire ravaging the city causes the night to lose its typical darkness. The glowing light adds value to the city’s architecture even more successfully than daylight.

Figure 8.2 Claude-Joseph Vernet, Incendie Nocturne (Night Fire), 1748, oil on canvas, 41.3 × 51.5 cm, Bibliothèque-musée Inguimbertine, Carpentras, inv. 461. © CICRP/Caroline Martens.

156  Florence Fesneau By appearing thicker, the air filled with smoke conveys a feeling of oppression that, together with fear, accompanied the fleeing population. With its reflections, the water amplifies the fire’s threatening redness and brings it to the foreground of the painting. The land, however, appears to be a welcoming refuge to the disaster victims. The glow that contributes to the nocturnal fire’s rendering diminishes the strength of the chiaroscuro’s typical tonal contrasts. Hence, the painter achieves a pictorial compromise to satisfy the taste of the time, which favored the fair and amiable painting style of François Boucher and its light colors.23 Nevertheless, Vernet offered a dramatic reading of the image. In the poem he dedicated to Vernet’s painting, the Abbot of Malespine remarked that “the shading effects add to the horror.”24 The painting’s narrative focuses on a few figures and the noblest of feelings: grief is expressed alongside despondency and relief for having managed to save the children. The painter omitted the representation of the criminal behaviors and cowardice that could fuel nocturnal fires. The rendering of the two figures who witness the tragedy with their arms raised highlights their shock as they face the fire from a distance. Mutatis mutandis, these figures invite the painting’s viewers to endeavor in a similar contemplation.25 This distanced observation of danger not only makes it possible to experience the “delightful horror” that Edmund Burke theorized in A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful but also to appreciate the painter’s talent.26 As Diderot claimed, “the art of expression requires a vivid imagination, a fiery verve, and talent for arousing fantasies, for animating them, for feeding them.”27 Vernet’s representation of the nocturnal fire met Diderot’s expectations exceptionally well since it offers a ghostly vision of the victims while also crystallizing the creative fever that consumed the artist.

The Libertine Conflagration of the Senses and Imagination This tragic and distanced representation of the nocturnal fire was often supplanted by that of the nocturnal ‘flames’ of amorous passion. Literature encouraged the formulation of these images, mainly since the vocabulary used to describe romantic impulses frequently borrowed from that employed to describe fire. These metaphoric expressions accompany the gradual change that occurred during the Enlightenment with respect to emotions: over time, individual happiness became the greatest good and passion the measure of love.28 Some examples taken randomly throughout the eighteenth century, from the most celebrated as well as minor works, prove the point. In Les Aventures de Télémaque (The Adventures of Telemachus), published in 1699, François de Fénelon writes that Télémaque’s passion for Calypso was “as an ill-extinguished fire which bursts forth occasionally from under the ashes and throws out some bright sparks.”29 Similarly, Les Baisers (The Kisses), a suite of poems

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  157 dedicated to the art of kissing published by Claude-Joseph Dorat in 1770, provides a particularly delicate example of this semantic tendency.30 Indeed, in his Réflexions Préliminaires (Preliminary Reflections), the author states that his verses “breathe the most inflamed love, the purest sentiment, and the most irreproachable pleasure.”31 In his poems, Venus “feels this fire roaming from vein to vein and, as it progresses, its lure increases,” while Thaïs “is turned on by the rays of (her lover’s) flames.”32 Anchored in everyday language, these colorful expressions find their place in Dorat’s Baisers as well as in licentious works. Published anonymously in 1784, La Cauchoise is illustrated with pornographic prints that leave no doubt about the content of the novella. It tells the story of a peasant girl from the Pays de Caux who has turned to prostitution. The prostitute recalls that her first lover kissed her on the mouth “with an inexplicable fire” and that during her deflowering, “her cheeks were flaming; a burning fire ran through all her veins.”33 Once she lost all prudishness, she sat by the chimney with her numerous lovers to better “warm up” their senses.34 Playing on these multiple literary references, Jean-Honoré Fragonard enjoyed depicting, quite literally, the nocturnal conflagration of the senses. In the Feu aux poudres (Match to Powderkeg), the cherub places a flaming torch between the sleeping young woman’s thighs, thereby revealing her dreams (Figure 8.3). As it pushes darkness out of the scene, the torch held by the other cherub illuminates the naked body of the sleeping figure. This bright light could only ignite the imagination and the senses of the voyeuristic spectator. Thus, the fire that possesses the

Figure 8.3 Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Le feu aux poudres (Match to Powderkeg), 1763–1764, oil on canvas, 37 × 45 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © 2016 RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Franck Raux.

158  Florence Fesneau sleeping woman reaches the viewer, ultimately establishing a sensual communication between the two. This silent exchange is reciprocal, as the sleeping woman’s representation enables the viewer to believe that she is dreaming of him and that his very presence is the cause of her arousal. The painting exemplifies the sensualist philosophy that Julien Offray de La Mettrie developed in L’école de la volupté (The Reign of Pleasure).35 In this book, the author, acting as the spokesperson of Love, “is pleased to enlighten lovers with the torch of pleasure.”36 In doing so, La Mettrie underlined the importance of sleep, which provides lovers with some resting time and enables them to re-live in their dreams their lovemaking of the day before, allowing them to increase their desire for each other. During the night, lovers fall asleep, but nature, by taking control over the body, stimulates their imagination; it is the imagination, not the mind, which always stays awake, and dreams are, so to speak, at its mercy, since it is through them that imagination makes lovers feel pleasure in their sleep.37 Speaking directly to women, La Mettrie urged them to remain awake in order to enjoy their sleeping lover’s company: “the same heart, the same soul will communicate their fires to you, fires which will be all the more passionate because your lover will not be distracted from you by your physical presence.”38 If the lover has the chance to focus on his own pleasure in his sleep, his mistress may rest assured that she is the source of his erotic dreams. La Mettrie advised men to do the same by inviting them to wake up just before dawn to contemplate their sleeping mistress: his eager eye feasts on the charms that his heart adores, and they will all receive together, as well as singularly, the tribute that is due to them. How deftly he lifts the veil that hides them from his sight…his curious glances will never be satisfied.39 Fragonard, who skillfully revealed to the viewer the charms of his sleeping figure, seems to have adopted an approach similar to the one described by La Mettrie. The light projected by the torches, which annihilates the night, resides at the libertine discourse’s foundation that aimed to reveal the sensualist mechanics of pleasures. The glow of these amorous fires blushes the sleeper’s cheeks, thus betraying the internal agitation of the senses.40 In his Essai sur la Peinture (Essay on Painting), Diderot underlined the erotic significance of this visual emotion through a question: “Does the complexion of a woman remain the same when she waits for pleasure, when she is in the arms of pleasure, and when she leaves them?”41 Fueling Enlightenment men’s imagination, Fragonard’s sleeping

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  159 young woman is lit by the flames of love just as much from inside her body as from outside. Even when Fragonard illustrated a simple domestic incident, the image remained loaded with erotic overtones due to the semantic richness of the fire vocabulary. As bedrooms had little or no heating, especially when they were in the attic, the bedsheets easily became damp and cold. In the evening, the use of a warming pan containing burning hot embers was necessary to dry and heat them. However, the bedding could catch fire when the warming pan was left too long between the sheets. This is precisely what occurs in Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!), which displays how the warming pan sets on fire the young, distraught woman’s nightgown (Figure 8.4). Her companion, already in bed, wakes up as two young women enter the bedroom, warned by the yelling. One of them grabs a pitcher of water to extinguish this small nocturnal fire. Made after Fragonard’s drawing, Augustin Le Grand’s engraving Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!) aims at a larger audience of amateurs (Figure 8.5). It reveals all the sexual allusions that Fragonard’s drawing addresses only allusively. In Le Grand’s work, a small dog occupies the bed, ultimately replacing the lover. It evokes Senneterre’s and Diderot’s stories about a dog sharing its mistress’s bed.42 In the engraving, the paintings that decorate the bedroom reinforce the love symbolism. The wall to the left of the fireplace is adorned with a representation of Leda and the swan, one of the most iconic and appreciated examples of

Figure 8.4 Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!), 1788, drawing, 24.4 × 37.1 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © RMN—Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Michel Urtado.

160  Florence Fesneau

Figure 8.5 Augustin-Claude-Simon Le Grand after Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ma Chemise brûle! (Burn my shirt!), 1789, engraving, 31 × 40 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Widener Collection. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

mythological love. The wall above the fireplace is decorated with a couple kissing. The young women who burst into the room no longer seem distraught. On the contrary, they seem to be in high spirits as they spill the water from the pitcher onto an already extinguished candle without paying attention to neither the shirt nor the warming pan. The nocturnal fire of Ma Chemise brûle! alludes to the ease with which the young woman’s heart and senses could ‘catch fire’ while also denouncing the potentially devastating effects of passion. The cat and its spiky fur, which symbolize the female sex, prompt the viewer to wonder whether the fire’s destructive power does not also refer to both the physical rape perpetrated by the invisible nocturnal lover and the visual one committed by the artist and the voyeuristic spectator. The nocturnal fire’s representation may invite yet another interpretation, suggesting sensual daydreams, sexual arousal, or even rape. At first glance, Avis aux Lecteurs (Notice to Readers) by Michel-Honoré Bounieu only sought to display the dangers of reading in bed (Figure 8.6). The sleeping reader does not realize that her candle has set the chair on fire and that the flames are quickly reaching the bedsheets.43 If the nocturnal fire punished reckless behavior, it could also denounce the damaging

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  161

Figure 8.6 Michel-Honoré Bounieu, Avis aux lecteurs (Notice to Readers), circa 1785, engraving, 25.1 × 17.5 cm. Private collection.

nature of certain novels that inflamed the imagination and filled young, malleable minds with dangerous illusions. As early as 1728, the Marquise de Lambert warned her daughter against reading novels that “ignite the imagination, weaken modesty, disrupt the heart; and as long as a young person is inclined to tenderness, they hasten and precipitate their inclinations.”44 Throughout the eighteenth century, sermons and medical treatises promoted this warning. They sought to make an impression on young minds by comparing the irreversible damage these novels inflicted on their readers to the devastation caused by fires.45 Writers themselves participated in the stigmatization of corrupting books, which ultimately enabled them, somewhat surreptitiously, to recommend the readings they denounced.46 These novels’ main criticism stemmed from their attempt to illustrate the consequences of love: those descriptions were considered criminal as they could be the potential sources of all possible debaucheries.47 In 1762 Diderot juxtaposed the licentious novel, which he claimed to be a “web of quixotic and frivolous events whose reading [is] dangerous for taste and manners,” to sentimental novels “that elevate the spirit,

162  Florence Fesneau touch the soul, and breathe everywhere the appreciation of what is good.”48 The romantic novel had to set the example for the sensitive soul, but this did not make it flawless. In the preface to La nouvelle Héloïse (The New Heloise) in 1761, Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not hesitate to argue that “there are no chaste girls who have read novels…She, who, despite this title, will dare to read a single page, is a lost girl.”49 However, he invited the reckless young girl to pursue the reading she had begun, believing she had nothing to lose and therefore suggesting it was possible to fight fire with fire. The libertine novel prepares, excites, and incites love. It can elicit voluptuous dreams that promote onanism, a sin that righteous souls would avoid at all costs. In 1828, Doctor Rozier continued to oppose the shameful nocturnal activities that could harm young girls’ health by recommending a minimal reading list.50

The Patriotic Flame The Revolution put an end to the spirit of libertinism that promoted the transgression of codes by playing with words and images. A nocturnal fire’s representation that did not have any sexual overtones finally regained its tragic dimension while gradually becoming closer to the individual experience. This approach was very different from that adopted by artists in the 1770s and 1780s. By accounting for contemporary events, painters were at first more interested in the emblematic character of place than the hardships endured by men. In his depiction of the fire that swept through Foire St Germain on the night of March 16, 1762, Pierre Antoine Demachy emphasized the destruction caused by the fire and the monumentality of the cityscape illuminated by the flames. The firefighters and the ordinary people are left in the semi-darkness of the buildings to mark their helplessness in the face of the event.51 Hubert Robert employed a similar approach in his representation of the fires at the Hôtel-Dieu in 1772 and the PalaisRoyal’s Opera House in 1781. The painter underlined the unusual light that these fires generated in the night rather than the men’s reaction, who remained mere spectators of the tragedy.52 In these paintings, the search for the sensational takes precedence over a detailed description of the chain of events, especially in Fire at the Opera of the Palais-Royal, Viewed from a Crossing in the Louvre in which Robert, using some shadow play, portrayed the scene as if observed from afar by Italian actors perched on a ladder.53 After the Revolution, the representation of nocturnal fire switched its focus back to the individual and the value of men’s moral rectitude. The small figures who used to be portrayed motionlessly observing raging fires moved out of anonymity and into the foreground to enable the viewers to empathize with the victims and identify with their savior. L. F. Labrousse’s engravings that accompanied Les Fastes du Peuple Français (The Splendors of the French People), published by Jacques Grasset Saint-Sauveur in 1796, anchored the nocturnal fire in reality and paid homage to everyday heroes who embodied the revolutionary ideal

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  163

Figure 8.7 Jean-Marie Mixelle after L. F. Labrousse, Un enfant de neuf ans sauve, au milieu des flammes, sa sœur encore au berceau (A Nine-year-old Child saves his Baby-Sister from the Midst of the Flames), engraving, in Les Fastes du Peuple Français ou Tableaux raisonnés de toutes les actions héroïques et civiques du soldat et du citoyen français (The Splendors of the French People or Reasoned Tables of all heroic and civic actions of the soldier and the French citizen), ed. J. Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, (Paris: Deroy, 1796). Private collection.

(Figure 8.7). The National Convention commissioned Les Fastes as part of its program to publish books intended for public instruction. Consequently, Les Fastes attempted to illustrate a selection of acts of heroism and civility performed by French citizens. A text detailing the event’s circumstances accompanied the engraving and provided readers with models of edifying behaviors to follow.54 These captivating engravings effectively taught patriotic morality and were thus capable of strengthening the national cohesion advocated by Father Grégoire. This deputy to the National Convention and member of the Public Instruction Committee was convinced that it was necessary to “inspire young citizens with generous emulation and induce them to imitate the virtues of the founders of the Republic.”55 Hence, Les Fastes displayed three distinct nocturnal fires that highlighted, respectively, the courage of a young child,

164  Florence Fesneau the bravery of a soldier, and the combined action of a group of citizens. The engraving entitled A Nine-year-old Child saves his Baby-Sister from the Midst of the Flames (Figure 8.7) displayed an unprecedented event that occurred on the night of August 29, 1797 (12 Fructidor An 5), as fire devastated the homes of seven poor farmers living in the Bordeaux region. Awakened by the smoke, a nine-year-old boy managed to escape: but soon he remembers his two sisters that he left behind him in the midst of the flames and blames himself for abandoning them; he then rushes towards them, careless of the danger, and throws himself into whirlpools of fires and smoke, grabs the cradle where his younger sister lies and removes her from the fire’s threat.56 The young age of the hero, his status as a simple villager, and his selfsacrifice in the face of danger allowed him to display “a sublime and naive form of virtue” and promote a new generation of French people descending from the Revolution without, however, having taken part in any of its ill-behaviors.57 As he emerged from the house that was soon reduced to ashes, the young boy left behind the eighteenth century and its dangerous revolutionary nights to enter a new, highly promising era. The engraving entitled Captain Soyer’s Courage and Humanity aimed to restore French society’s confidence in its army, as many soldiers took advantage of the revolutionary period to loot and massacre the population, especially, but not only, in the Vendée (Figure 8.8). Captain Soyer’s good deeds, detailed in Le Moniteur universel, offered the opportunity to illustrate military virtue at the service of French citizens. On the night of January 23, 1799 (16 Nivôse An 7), a veteran accidentally set his bed on fire as he tried to heat it with a hot brick. The circumstances of this nocturnal fire are identical to those described by Fragonard in Burn my shirt!, but the engraving’s spirit is radically different. The engraving no longer sought to entertain the libertine viewer by encouraging him to decipher its erotic allusions but rather to reassure the citizen by providing evidence of the national army’s worth. Hence, within the composition, a sickly old man replaces Fragonard’s charming naked young woman. The scene’s simple setting forces the viewer to concentrate his attention on the distress of the victim immobilized in his bed and on Captain Soyer’s bravery. Its nocturnal character fades in favor of a didacticism that demands a perfectly legible image, but it persists in the story suggesting that nighttime rescues were more challenging to accomplish. Notwithstanding the darkness, Captain Soyer does not hesitate to grab hold of an unstable ladder “at the risk of falling over twenty-five feet onto the pavement” to save the old man, whose feet were already half-burnt. Le Moniteur universel took good care in pointing out that Captain Soyer was already a war hero who had courageously suffered “the impact of British ferocity” while he was a prisoner.58 Being a valiant defender of the fatherland, the Captain

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  165

Figure 8.8 L. F. Labrousse, Courage et humanité du Capitaine Soyer (Captain Soyer’s Courage and Humanity), 1798, engraving, 11.8 × 15.6 cm, Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris. Public domain.

crystallized the exemplary French individual and became the civilians’ role model of good conduct, especially since his story effectively proved that the army could help the French population in case of a disaster.59 Devotion of CO Nélié, Beckers, etc. brings together in one unique composition the protagonists of the two previous engravings (Figure 8.9). Soldiers and villagers alike fought the violent fire that started on the night of April 4, 1799 (15 Germinal An 7) in the town of Maeght. Le Mercure de France celebrated the courage of five citizens who, despite the fire’s tremendous force that had already destroyed twenty-two houses, saved from certain death a father, a mother, and their children, who had been imprisoned by the fire in their own home. Among “these commendable men who deserve to receive public recognition” was a health officer who worked for the army and various hospitals, a wheelwright, the mayor of the village, and two brewers.60 The merit of those who risked their lives fighting the nocturnal fires was all the more celebrated since every citizen had learned to empathize with the victims and understood the nature of the danger. These occurrences, which demonstrated the French’s courage in the face of adversity and concretely illustrated collaboration, fueled the national sense of identity and the Republican flame.

166  Florence Fesneau

Figure 8.9 L. F. Labrousse, Dévouement des Cnd Nélié, Beckers, &c, &c. Le péril n’est rien quand il faut sauver ses semblables (Devotion of CO Nélié, Beckers, etc. Danger is nothing when you must save your fellow men), circa 1800, engraving, 26.5 × 21.1 cm, Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris. Public domain.

Conclusion Informative for Huguet, grandiose for Vernet, erotic for Fragonard, patriotic for Labrousse, the analysis of the pictorial representations of nocturnal fires makes it possible to measure the evolution of French attitudes towards the night. Thanks to the emerging aesthetic of the sublime, the

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  167 night was glorified by painters who used fire to deprive it visually of its ominous darkness. It was then tamed by the libertines, who observed the fire’s effects on human love and favored the evocation of unbridled pleasures over that of profound feelings. Finally, it was integrated into French daily life through the Directory’s educational propaganda, which used the nocturnal fire to promote the new heroes of the First Republic. The multiple interpretations of nocturnal fires point to the growing interest artists cultivated as they explored these catastrophes’ realities and testify to the increasingly empathetic approach they adopted. Consequently, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, representations were finally ready to focus on the individual victim independently from any political propaganda. The family unit was then at the center of attention. The post-revolutionary sensibility promoted the motive of the defenseless loving mother with young children who the French society must honor, cherish, and protect. Philibert-Louis Debucourt’s engraving L’Incendie (The Fire) offered an enticing reminder of these noble duties by showing a mother in desperate need of help as she faced a violent fire (Figure 8.10).

Figure 8.10  Louis Philibert Debucourt, L’Incendie (The Fire), 1804. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959. Accession Number: 59.599.56. Public domain.

168  Florence Fesneau She is portrayed holding the linen in which she has placed her child with her teeth as she grasps the bedsheet hanging from the window railing. Following the fire’s spread, she left behind a box that possibly contained her most precious belongings, as well as a locket displaying the portrait of her lover, who is not present to help. The extremely dangerous situation in which she finds herself can only arouse in the viewer the secret desire to save her and the dream of becoming her hero. Charming, touching, and dramatic, this scene announced a romanticism that fed on the unfortunate events experienced by its heroines to ignite the hearts of readers and viewers, encouraging them to discover a renewed nightscape.

Notes 1 Cases of arson will not be examined in this chapter. 2 Instead of using oil lamps, which produced a lot of smoke and did not illuminate adequately, ordinary people usually used tallow candles, while the rich used wax ones. See Chantal Waltisperger, “Avant l’ampoule” (Before the Electrical Bulb), Les cahiers de médiologie no. 10 (2000), 78–83. All the translations are mine, unless otherwise mentioned. 3 “Darkness will end with a new century of light. We will be more struck by the daylight, after having been in the dark for a while”. Encyclopédie, Discours préliminaire (Paris: Briasson, 1751), 1:33. 4 For a thorough study of these dictionaries used for teaching and entertainment purposes, see Christine Lamarre, “Les incendies de villes dans les géographies du XVIIIe siècle” (City Fires in Eighteenth-Century Geographies), in Les hommes et le feu de l’antiquité à nos jours: du feu mythique et bienfaiteur au feu dévastateur (Men and Fire from Antiquity to the Present Day: From Mythical and Benefactor Fire to Devastating Fire) (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007), 283–292. 5 The fire in Rennes is mentioned in every eighteenth-century geographical dictionary; see Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de la Martinière, “Rennes,” in Le Grand Dictionnaire géographique et critique (La Haye: Gosse, 1737), 7:59; Jean-Aimar Piganiol de la Force, “Rennes,” in Nouveau Voyage de France, avec un Itinéraire et des Cartes faites exprès (Paris: Legras, 1755), 1:183; Jean-Joseph Expilly, Dictionnaire historique géographique et politique des Gaules et de la France (Paris: Desaint et Saillant, 1770), 6:182; Robert de Hesseln, “Rennes,” Dictionnaire universel de la France (Paris: Desaint, 1771), 5:563; Jean Ogée, Dictionnaire historique et géographique de la province de la Bretagne (Historical and Geographical Dictionary of the Province of Brittany) (Nantes: Vatar, 1780) 4:98. 6 After having recalled the circumstances of the fire in Rennes and the royalty’s financial efforts to aid the population, Claude Nières underlined that the city’s architectural modernization amplified the event’s impact. See Claude Nières, La Reconstruction d’une ville au XVIIIe siècle: Rennes, 1720–1760 (Reconstruction of a City in the Eighteenth Century) (Rennes: Université de Haute Bretagne, 1972), 34. 7 “Incendie de Rennes en Bretagne” (Rennes’ Fire in Brittany), Le Nouveau Mercure (Paris: Cavelier, January 1721), 185. 8 Edmond-Jean-François Barbier, Journal historique et anecdotique du règne de Louis XV (Historical and Anecdotal Diary of the Reign of Louis XV) (Paris: Renouard, 1849), 1:68. 9 La Suite de la Clef (Paris: Brocart, February 1721), 133.

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  169 10 Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires complets et authentiques (Complete and Authentic Memories) (Paris: Barda, 1856), 18:329. 11 The first French insurance company against fire was created in 1786. Retracing the different stages that led to its creation, the lawyer Desessarts emphasized how warmly Parisians welcomed it. See Nicolas-Toussaint Desessarts, “Incendie” (Fire), Dictionnaire universel de police (Universal Police Dictionary) (Paris: Moutard, 1788), 5:364. 12 To illustrate the jurisprudence, the lawyer Guyot mentioned the story of a baker who fell asleep by his oven overnight. See Joseph-Nicolas Guyot, Répertoire universel et raisonné de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et bénéficiale (Universal and Reasoned Repertoire of Civil, Criminal, Canonical and Beneficial Jurisprudence) (Paris: Panckoucke, 1779), 30:486. 13 In his publication, the tenant stated: “Mr. de Pizay (the landlord) agrees he first noticed the fire at 5.30 a.m. At that moment his mother, his wife, and the other dwellers of the house escaped. Everyone knows that when the fire was first discovered, nobody thought of warning me of the eminent danger. As the sun rose at about 7.00 a.m., I woke up surrounded by flames. The only way out was the window. The shock and the turmoil deprived me of all my strength. I owe my salvation to the courage and presence of mind of Mrs. Colliart who managed to use bedsheets to help me out the window.” Réponse du Sieur Boucher, Bourgeois, ci-devant Négociant à Lyon, Au Mémoire signifié de la part de M. le Président Sabot de Pizay (Reply from Sieur Boucher, Citizen, Formerly Merchant in Lyon, To the Memorandum Served on behalf of Mr. President Sabot de Pizay) (Lyon: Faucheux, 1773), 3. 14 Desessarts, Dictionnaire universel de police, 354. 15 “In 1776 a fire started in the house of Mr. de Chateaubriand, Lord of Combourg. His mansion is located opposite the guardhouse of Saint-Vincent, which is watched day and night by a sentry. However, the sentry was sleeping when the fire started burning down the house, the neighboring buildings, and even some haylofts. It was not discovered by the sentry, who kept sleeping even though the fire was ferocious, but by the coachmen of the public coach that left for Rennes from Saint-Malo on that night. They ran to the guardhouse: everything was silent there. It was necessary to scream ‘fire’ to wake up those useless guardians and yell at them repetitively. Then, one had to get the drummer and the emergency services only came, as it were, when they were no longer needed.” Ogée, Dictionnaire historique et géographique de la Bretagne, 4:309–310. 16 Barbier, Journal historique et anecdotique, 2:226–227. 17 “Everyone in Paris is aware of the tragic events which took place on the occasion of the death of Mr. de B***. The priest, who should have recited prayers all night long next to the body of the deceased, fell asleep; a lit candle set fire to the bed of the deceased, and as the flames spread with prodigious violence, the whole apartment was set ablaze in a few moments. The priest had hardly the time to escape and, alongside the many precious belongings reduced to ashes, it is said that five hundred thousand pounds in notes from the Caisse d’Escompte were burned down.” Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret, Tableau Mouvant de Paris (Moving Painting of Paris) (Paris: Duchesne, 1787), 304. 18 Alain Cabantous lists the nocturnal catastrophes and illustrates how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century people perceived nocturnal dangers. See Alain Cabantous, Histoire de la Nuit. XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle (History of the Night. Seventeenth-and Eighteenth Centuries) (Paris: Fayard, 2009), 48–52. 19 The painting measures 305 by 410 cm.

170  Florence Fesneau 20 The Salon was the most prestigious art event in the Western world during the eighteenth century. It was a biennial art exhibition organized by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris which enabled the artists of this Academy to present their works to the public. For more information on Salons, see Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985). 21 See “Mort Remarquable” (Remarkable Death), Journal général de France (Monday, January 25, 1790): 99. 22 Vernet was quite fittingly nicknamed “the God of the four elements”. See Le Frondeur, ou Dialogues sur le Salon par l’Auteur du Coup de Patte et du Triumvirat (1785), 29. 23 To explore a renewed approach of François Boucher’s art, see Making Up the Rococo: François Boucher and His Critics, eds. M. Hyde and M. Ledbury (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006). 24 Abbot of Malespine, L’incendie, poème, suivi d’une épitre à M. Le Mierre sur son Poème de la Peinture (Paris: Prault, 1770), 6. 25 Fires are conducive to absorption, both literally and metaphorically. In the Encyclopédie, to illustrate the difference between the verbs “to absorb” and “to engulf”, Diderot compared the action of fire to that of water. In Absorption and Theatricality, Michael Fried reported the explanation, providing a full translation of Diderot’s article “Absorber, Engloutir”: “To Absorb expresses a general but successive action, which beginning only on a part of the subject, continues thereafter and spreads over the whole. But to engulf indicates an action whose general effect is rapid and seizes everything at the same time without breaking it up into parts. The first has a particular relationship to consumption & destruction. The second properly designates something that envelops, sweeps away and causes suddenly to disappear? Thus, fire absorbs, so to speak, but water engulfs.” Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality. Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press), 183. 26 “If the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror.” Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: Dodsley, 1757), 257. 27 Denis Diderot, Essai sur la peinture, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier, 1876), 10:504. 28 Allan H. Pasco, Revolutionary Love in Eighteenth-and Early NineteenthCentury France (Farham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009); Histoire des émotions (History of Emotions), eds. A. Corbin, J.-J. Courtine, and G. Vigarello, 3 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 2016–2017). 29 François de Fénelon, Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse (Bruxelles, 1699), 132. 30 Jean-Pierre Dubost conducted a detailed study of Les Baisers in which Dorat highlighted the nature of happiness and love, and displayed the variety of sensations that derive from it. See Jean-Pierre Dubost, “Les baisers de ClaudeJoseph Dorat,” in Les baisers des Lumières, ed. A. Montandon (ClermontFerrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2001), 75–94. 31 Claude-Joseph Dorat, Les Baisers précédés du mois de mai (Paris: Delalain, 1770), 27. 32 Ibid., 62, 84.

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  171 33 Histoire de Marguerite fille de Suzon, nièce de D** B**** suivie de La Cauchoise (Paris: Imprimerie du Louvre, 1784), 121, 131. 34 Ibid., 349. 35 The book was first published in 1746 under the title L’école de la volupté (The School of Pleasure) and then re-published in 1750 under the title L’Art de jouir (The Reign of Pleasure). In England, as the book was not published until 1757, it is only known by the title The Reign of Pleasure. 36 Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L’école de la volupté (Cologne: Marteau, 1746), 75. 37 Ibid., 68. 38 Ibid., 69. 39 Ibid., 70. 40 On the original bond between painting and desire, see Jacqueline Lichtenstein, The Eloquence of Color. Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age, trans. E. McVarish (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 41 Diderot, Essai sur la peinture, 473. 42 In L’Epagneul (The Spaniel), an infatuated prince begs his fairy godmother to transform him into a dog so that he could share intimate moments with the woman he loved but who did not pay attention to him. See Henri-Charles de Senneterre, Nouveaux contes de fées (Amsterdam, 1745), 49–59. In Les Bijoux indiscrets [The Indiscreet Jewels], Haria, who is neglected by her lovers, comforts herself with four dogs that accompany her day and night. See Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets (Paris, 1748), 113. 43 This kind of accident was recurrent enough for the architect Piroux to mention it: “We should avoid placing lit candles by the bed or on the floor, as well as falling asleep before having extinguished them; we should also avoid placing lidless heaters containing burning embers on top or underneath our beds.” Augustin-Charles Piroux, Moyens de préserver les édifices d’incendies et d’empêcher le progrès des flames (Means of Preserving Buildings from Fires and Preventing the Progress of the Flames) (Strasbourg: Gay, 1782), 116. 44 Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles marquise de Lambert, Avis d’une mère à son fils et à sa fille (Advice Given by a Mother to Her Son and Daughter) (Paris: Ganeau, 1728), 144–145. 45 While Bishop Massillon made the distinction between frivolous and lascivious books, he accused them both of igniting the imagination. See Jean-Baptiste Massillon, Discours sur les dangers des mauvaises lectures (Discourse on the Dangers of Bad Readings) (Paris: Beaucé-Rusand, 1818), 31. Doctor Bienville mentioned the case of Lucille, whose behavior, physiology, and mental health were disrupted by the reading of lustful books. See Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, La Nymphomanie ou Traité de la fureur utérine (Nymphomania or Treatise on Uterine Fury) (Amsterdam, 1784), 94–95. 46 Restif recommended lustful readings to his readers when he referred to “a girl of perfect beauty who was ignited by the reading of the writings of Aretino and his successors which deeply enlightened her”. See Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne, Le paysan perverti, ou les dangers de la ville (The Peasant Perverted, or the Dangers of the City) (La Haye and Paris: Esprit, 1776), 3:175. For a complete study of corrupting novels, see Henri Coulet, “Le topos du roman corrupteur dans les romans français du XVIIIe siècle” (The Topos of the Corrupting Novel in Eighteenth-Century French Novels), in L’épreuve du lecteur. Livres et lectures dans le roman d’Ancien Régime (Reader’s Trial. Books and Readings in the Ancien Régime Novel), eds. J. Herman and P. Pelckmans (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 1995), 175–190.

172  Florence Fesneau 47 This subject was discussed by Jean-Marie Goulemot who showed that the seduction a character exerted on others was often replaced by the seduction exerted by a lustful book. See Jean-Marie Goulemot, Ces Livres qu’on ne lit que d’une main (Those Books read with only one hand) (Aix-en-Provence: Alinéa, 1991). This study was pursued further by Alain Montandon who formulated an inventory of eighteenth-century romances, by Marc André Bernier who clarified the female reader’s profile, and by Alain Corbin who examined the way men imagined female arousal between 1770 and 1860. See Alain Montandon, Le Roman au XVIIIe siècle en Europe [The Novel in EighteenthCentury Europe] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999); Marc André Bernier, “Lectrice libertine, lectrice philosophe” (Libertine Reader, Philosopher Reader), in Lectrices d’Ancien Régime (Ancien Régime Readers), ed. I. Brouard-Arends (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), 687–699; Alain Corbin, L’Harmonie des plaisirs au temps des libertins. Les manières de jouir du siècle des Lumières à l’avènement de la sexologie (The Pleasures’ Harmony in the Age of Libertines. Ways to Reach Orgasm from the Enlightenment to the Advent of Sexology) (Paris: Perrin, 2007). 48 Denis Diderot, Éloge de Richardson (Eulogy of Richardson), (1761), Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier, 1875), 5:212–213. 49 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, preface to Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (Julie, or the New Heloise) (Amsterdam: Rey, 1761). 50 Rozier, Des habitudes secrètes ou Des maladies produites par l’onanisme chez les femmes (Secret Habits or Diseases Produced by Onanism in Women) (Paris: Peytieux, 1825), 270–276. 51 See Anne Prah-Perochon, Les rues de Paris (The Streets of Paris) (Paris: La Pensée universelle, 1979), 255. 52 While the Opera’s fire, which occurred right after a show, registered no human liability, that of Hôtel Dieu forced many sick patients to vacate their hospital rooms at night and gather in the Parisian cold streets wearing only their nightgowns. However, Robert omitted altogether their representation. His scene aimed to portray the spectacular, as suggested by the attractive red tones of those “scenes from Hell”. See Nina L. Dubin, Futures & Ruins. Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010), 61–108. 53 The composition was nevertheless considered too theatrical by critics: “his talent suffered from his choice of placing only a few, emotionless spectators in a scene which, instead, demanded to be imbued with a sense of concern, turmoil, and horror.” See Louis Petit Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la république des Lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu’à nos jours (Secret Memoirs Serving as a History of the Republic of Letters in France from 1762 until Our Days) (London: Adamson, 1783), 312. 54 Beth S. Wright argues that this visual pedagogy derives from the concepts formulated by Locke (Thoughts on Education, 1693) and developed by Condillac (Traité des sensations, Treatise on the Sensations, 1754), according to which what we learn is strictly linked to what we see and to the way we see it: images require us to look actively, rather than merely passively. See Beth S. Wright, “L’éducation par les yeux: texte et image à la fin du XVIIIe siècle” (Education through the Eyes: Text and Image at the End of the Eighteenth Century), Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, no. 57 (2005): 153–171. 55 Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire, Rapport sur les moyens de rassembler les matériaux nécessaires à former les annales du civisme, et sur la forme de cet ouvrage, par le citoyen Grégoire; séance du 28 septembre 1793, l’an

Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)  173 deuxième de la République (Report on the Means of Gathering the Materials Necessary to Form the Annals of Civicism, and on the Form of this Work, by Citizen Grégoire), in Procès-verbaux du Comité d’instruction publique de la Convention nationale, vol. 2, ed. J. Guillaume (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1894), 500. 56 Jacques Grasset Saint-Sauveur, Les Fastes du Peuple Français, Un enfant de neuf ans, sauve, du milieu des flammes, sa sœur encore au berceau (The Splendors of the French People, A Nine-Year-Old Child Saves His Baby-Sister from the Midst of the Flames) (Paris: Deroy, 1796). 57 Ibid. 58 Le Moniteur universel, no. 124 (Paris: Panckoucke, January 23, 1799), 505. 59 After the Reign of Terror, harmony became one of the central themes of the political discourse. See Christina Schröer, “La représentation du Nouveau Régime: les élites politiques et sociales dans les gravures du Directoire” (The New Régime’s Representation: Political and Social Elites in the Engravings of the Directory), in Représentation et pouvoir. La politique symbolique en France (1789–1830) (Representation and Power. Symbolic Politics in France), ed. N. Scholz and C. Schröer (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 39–61. 60 Mercure de France (Paris: Cailleau, 1799), 4:56.

Part III

Nocturnal Sights and Sounds

9 Early to Bed Sleep, Artificial Light, and Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul1 Avner Wishnitzer

Istanbul is very often described as a city that “never sleeps.” That, however, was not always the case. According to an English travel handbook published in 1840, “Constantinople and an [sic] European city is still more strongly marked at night. By ten o’clock every human voice is hushed.”2 About a century earlier, the Dublin-born aristocrat traveler James Caulfield (1728–1799) described the “pitchy darkness of the night, here unallayed even by the twinkling of a single lamp, and the dead silence which now reigned through this populous and lately busy town.”3 Should we infer from these descriptions of quiet, desolate streets that people were already in their beds? Is it even possible that everybody turned in around the same time? This chapter shows that such blanket assumptions cannot be accurate. In fact, various social groups went to sleep at different times, as determined by such factors as access to light and the desirability of darkness. Discussion focuses on the majority of people who stayed home, and then compares their bedtime with that of the palace elite. It is shown that while “respectable” residents generally turned in around two hours after sunset, nocturnal entertainment in the palaces of the imperial elite often lasted up two to three hours longer. The main argument is that this difference was first and foremost linked to access to artificial light, the cost of which was high enough to discourage many from staying up late and certainly from engaging in modes of illuminated nocturnal conviviality. The palace elite, by contrast, suffered no shortage of light and could therefore prolong their merrymaking for as long as they wished. Moreover, the nature of entertainment in the palace changed in the early eighteenth century, involving more light than ever before, indeed relying upon it to advertise the ruling elite’s power. It appears, then, that the process that Craig Koslofsky dubbed “nocturnalization” was not limited to Europe.4 Yet, even at the imperial court, nighttime gatherings and parties would end early by contemporary European standards. This study, therefore, shows a gap in both sleeping and entertainment patterns not only between Ottoman elites and commoners but also between Ottoman rulers and courtiers, and their European peers. DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-12

178  Avner Wishnitzer

Light and Sleep Rapid changes in sleep patterns over the last decades are prompting a flurry of new research into the world of slumber in the humanities and social sciences. Most relevant for this discussion, a growing literature shows how sleep patterns varied across geographies and between social groups, affected by social class, gender, seasonality, technology, modes of nocturnal entertainment, and many additional variables.5 While the need for sleep is biological, everything about it, from sleeping time to sleeping spaces and arrangements, is socially constructed. The history of sleep demonstrates how these constructions change over time, affected by complex historical processes, social tensions, and discourse. Roger Ekirch, a pioneer in the previously little-traveled historical landscapes of sleep, has shown that in pre-industrial Europe, sleep was broken into two intervals known in most European languages as “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Pre-industrial families typically went to bed around nine or ten o’clock in the evening and then woke up around midnight and spent the next hour or two in a kind of quiet wakefulness, performing chores, reading, praying, conversing, having sex, or meditating. They then went back to sleep for another few hours until daybreak.6 Over the nineteenth century, this sleeping pattern gradually gave way to a consolidated, “monophasic” sleep. The most important reason for this change, Ekirch argues, was the growing availability of artificial light, which, as recent studies have shown, works physiologically as a powerful drug that deters sleep. However, Ekirch, and, more recently, Sasha Handley, note that various additional factors, including one’s place in her or his life cycle, religious sensibilities, and nighttime sociability, to name but a few, influenced sleeping patterns. Furthermore, these patterns changed over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and became the object of heated debates.7 This chapter follows Ekirch’s lead regarding the importance of artificial light in timing sleep, but rather than examining its impact diachronously, it compares the effect of differential access to light on the sleeping patterns of different groups that co-inhabited in eighteenth-century Istanbul. The focus on the relations between light and sleep should not blind us to the multiple other factors that may have affected sleeping time and further diversified times among different groups. What all these groups did share, at least according to the evidence at hand, is that biphasic sleep was not a common, enduring pattern among any of them.

Sunset Throughout the early modern period, walled cities across the Ottoman Empire closed their gates at sunset, segregating urban communities from their rural hinterland. The gates of roofed bazaars, quarters, neighborhood

Early to Bed  179 courtyards, religious colleges, and bachelor inns were also closed at the same time, breaking the urban fabric into a series of almost isolated cells.8 The city was further segregated along gender and age lines. While men would often remain in coffeehouses and taverns, women and children had to be home by sunset.9 Whether this interval belonged to the social day or night was not always clear. At times, people called it “evening” (akşam), as distinct from both the day (ruz; nehar; gün) and the night (gece; şeb; leyl). On other occasions, the time following the evening prayer was referred to as “night.”10 Jurists, too, recognized the liminal nature of this time and distinguished it from both day and night because, despite the deepening darkness, there were still people in the streets.11 Sunset also effected an important sensorial shift, rendering eyes increasingly less effective as darkness deepened. The other senses, and hearing in particular, now became much more sensitive.12 The city’s aural texture also changed around the same time. The soundscape of pre-industrial cities was comprised of sounds produced by humans and animals, and depending on the time and place, natural sounds like waves and winds. The rapid urbanization of the early modern period amplified and multiplied this soundscape but did not radically change its composition.13 The call for the evening prayer, cried more or less simultaneously from dozens of minarets, would hover over and above this soundscape, anticipating the end of the social day. In the absence of cheap lighting and energy, urban life slowly calmed down. One could actually hear twilight. Markets were already closed, and traffic receded. Animals gradually dozed off. In residential areas, mothers could now be heard singing their little children to sleep.14 The adults would remain awake for a little longer. The call for the night prayer (Tur. yatsı, Ara. ʿishāʾ) was the ending chord of the day, marking the boundary of this liminal phase. The call for prayer would be sounded between an hour and a half and two hours after sunset, which translates into about 7:15 p.m. in Istanbul at the height of winter, and 10:40 p.m. on the longest day of the year. Once the prayer had ended, the lights in most mosques would be extinguished, and the devout would make their way home. Watchmen would set out into the streets, knocking their clubs against the ground as they went. In cities throughout the empire, anybody with business outside had to carry a lantern.15 Very few people remained outside after this time.16 Narrative sources are supported by records from the court of Üsküdar, a neighborhood on the Asian side of the Bosporus. Of 146 nighttime cases from the middle decades of the century gleaned from eight different registers, 59 cases provide information about the time of night the incident occurred; the others simply state “at night.” Out of these, 49 incidents (83 percent) took place at what would today be considered evening, that is, between the evening prayer and the night prayer, or soon thereafter. Only 10 cases (16.9 percent) use terms such as “midnight” or specify an hour that falls

180  Avner Wishnitzer later than two hours after sunset. At least in residential areas such as Üsküdar, then, people and their disputes turned in early by modern terms. Even the crimes and conflicts that did occur after sunset, which are by definition an upsetting of “every night” routine, mostly took place indoors or near private domiciles (e.g., in courtyards or right outside the door). Of 142 cases for which such information is provided, only 46 cases (32.4 percent) occurred in the streets or in public spaces such as squares or markets, or in businesses such as coffeehouses.17 By way of comparison, another study that examined mostly diurnal cases from the same district in the same period reveals an almost diametrically opposed picture. Of 64 violent cases, 33 (51.5 percent) took place outside, and an additional 15 (23.4 percent) incidents occurred in privately-owned commercial spaces (shops, taverns, etc.). Only thirteen incidents (20.3 percent) took place in private homes.18 In other words, while during the day most of the disputes and violent incidents took place in public areas, where people tended to congregate, at night such incidents mostly occurred in residential areas, where most people were concentrated. It is clear, then, that darkness pushed the vast majority of people indoors. Yet, inside it was even darker, as light from the moon and stars was totally ineffective. Indoors, people were completely dependent on artificial lighting, which came with a price.

The Cost-Effectiveness of Early Sleep Lighting materials, especially tallow, beeswax, and olive oil, were funneled to Istanbul through an elaborate provisioning system and sold at fixed prices that were updated from time to time. These prices hardly reflect real market prices, which oscillated not only between years but also within the same year, depending on the availability of the raw materials. Widespread illegal trade in lighting materials and products further complicates any attempt to assess the real cost of lighting for consumers.19 Taking these complexities into account, the following cannot be considered more than a glimpse of a much more compound picture. It appears that candle costs in Istanbul rose significantly over the eighteenth century when measured against flour, the most essential commodity. Beeswax was more than four and a half times more expensive than tallow in 1807 and almost three times more costly in 1831.20 Light in Istanbul became increasingly less accessible also when compared with contemporary London. Table 9.1 compares candle costs in the two cities, calculated in terms of kilograms of candle that a simple construction worker could purchase with a day’s earnings. Data for Istanbul are incomplete, and the table includes only years for which such information was available. Figures on prices and wages for London are based on data published by economic historian Robert (‘Bob’) Allen.21

Early to Bed  181 Table 9.1  A Comparison of Candle Costs Between Istanbul and London Istanbul

Year 1708 1756 1807 1831a

London

Candle pricea

Daily wageb

Kg of candle per a day’s earnings

Candle pricec

Daily waged

Kg of candle per a day’s earnings

20 42 135 446.5

24.20 36.70 116.80 533.60

1.5500 1.1194 1.1083 1.5309

 5  6.67 11  7.45

22 24 39 36

1.9954 1.6326 1.6079 2.1927

a In akçe per okka. 1 okka = 1.281 kg b Of an unskilled construction worker c In pence per lb. 1lb = 0.4535 kg d Of an unskilled construction worker Note: Candle price is the average of figures cited by Doğan Kuban [Doğan Kuban, “Aydınlatma: Osmanlı Dönemi,” Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı and Tarih Vakfı, 1993), 475.]

The table shows that throughout the period under discussion, a simple construction worker in London could purchase more candles with a day’s earnings than his Istanbulite counterpart. Whereas in 1708 the former could buy more than 2 kg of candle, the latter could buy only a little over 1.5 kg. By 1831 the gap widened, allowing London construction workers to buy almost 1 kg more than their Istanbulite counterparts for the same amount of labor. It should be noted that the difference reflects a wider economic divergence that has to do with the European price revolution. For the purposes of this discussion, however, it is enough to note that Londoners enjoyed better access to light, which allowed for the expansion of nocturnal activity. In Istanbul, for almost a day’s earnings, an unskilled construction worker would be able to buy about twenty-five “common” candles, each providing about two hours and forty minutes of light.22 This light, however, was very dim. According to one estimate, even seventy such candles put together would still give less light than a single sixty-watt bulb.23 Eighteenth-century people were no doubt more accustomed to operating with meager amounts of light, at least by twenty-first-century standards. Still, even for them, one standard tallow candle would hardly be enough for more than basic orientation and the performance of simple tasks. In other words, access to light, or lack thereof, determined the range of possible after-dark activities. It is, therefore, important to note the various levels of inequality in the availability of light. Wealthy households consumed large quantities of candles on a daily basis (Figure 9.1). Just how large these quantities were is evident from the records kept of the supplies provided by the imperial kitchen to senior officials traveling with their households to the battlefront during campaigns. Around the

182  Avner Wishnitzer Figure 9.1 An Iftar meal at the grand vizier’s palace, late eighteenth century. Huge candles illuminate the hall, and additional candles are placed on the tables. From Ignatius Mouradgea D’Ohsson, Tableau Général de l’Empire Othoman, divisé en deux parties, dont l’une comprend la Législation Mahométane, vol. II (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Monsieur, 1790).

Early to Bed  183 turn of the seventeenth century, the household of the powerful Chief Mufti (Şeyhülislam) Feyzullah (1639–1703) was allocated 2.56 kg of tallow daily, the monthly cost being 2160 akçe. In addition, he received a daily allotment of 0.64 kg of beeswax, which was enough to produce more than fifty tallow candles and twelve-and-a-half wax candles a day.24 Even keeping in mind that the Chief Mufti’s household consisted of several hundred people, its daily consumption of candles is still considerable, especially when measured against the meager amount of light unskilled workers could afford.25 Probate inventories seem to corroborate the picture of differential access to light. A study that examined 792 inventories from Istanbul between 1785 and 1875 has shown that while among commoners, 44 percent possessed candleholders, among members of the state-serving elite (askeri), the possession rate reached 69 percent. Data for roughly the first half of this period show that while commoners typically had two candleholders on average, elite members owned almost three.26 Unequal access to light was a matter not only of prices but also of power. While commoners often suffered candle scarcities, privileged individuals and households could manipulate the imperial “lighting system” mentioned above in order to secure their needs. In early 1788, a purchasing agent (bazarbaşı) for the old palace in intramural Istanbul and the imperial palace in Galata reported that due to candle scarcity, it was hard to provision the two palaces with the customary number of candles. According to the report, the monthly consumption of candles in these palaces reached eighty-five okka (~109 kg), in addition to a few large candles of the type known as “tube candles” (sing. fuçi mum). Yet, unlike common subjects, the palace elite did not suffer the inconvenience of darkness. The bazarbaşı secured a decree that sanctioned the allocation of the needed amounts of tallow straight from the candlemakers’ guild in Yedikule.27 The gap in access to light was even wider since eighteenth-century candles were not only expensive and unequally distributed but also laborintensive. Tallow candles burned unevenly, losing their brilliance over time. They tended to gutter, which wasted much burning material and made the flame flicker; they also gave off much smoke and an unpleasant smell. An unattended candle would lose almost two-thirds of its original brilliance in just eleven minutes. It could burn away in less than half an hour, using only 5 percent of its tallow and wasting all the rest.28 In order to keep a candle alive and prevent it from guttering and smoking, the burnt wick had to be snuffed frequently and rekindled at least once every half-hour.29 A special type of clipper, known as mum mikrazı, was used for that purpose.30 Keeping many candles burning at the same time took constant care. In Ottoman palaces, the job was entrusted to the hands of servants known as şamdanılar or şamdancılar who were headed by a candlemaster, or şamdancı başı.31

184  Avner Wishnitzer

Figure 9.2 Armenians playing cards in candlelight, Istanbul, 1730s. Work by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste Vanmour. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

At least in the more “important” parts of these palaces, no doubt beeswax candles were used since they gave brighter light and did not emit a foul odor (Figure 9.2). They also burned much more evenly and needed little maintenance, another good reason for their very high price.32 Baron François de Tott (1733–1793), military advisor to sultan Mustafa III (r.  1757–1774), described one such candle, two inches thick and three feet high, that was placed by his bed when he was a guest in the house of the chief dragoman of the Sublime Porte, the center of the Ottoman government in the eighteenth century. The wick, he wrote, was almost as thick as a finger.33 Most people could only dream of such amenities as they were sitting in their poorly lighted homes. The darkness that reigned in the houses of commoners rendered many daytime activities simply impossible. Moreover, as recent studies show, darkness induces sleep in humans.34 It is, therefore, very likely that most people turned in after the night prayer and woke up still in the dark, in time for the morning prayer. This rhythm was believed to have been enjoined by the Prophet himself. According to one tradition that has many versions, the Prophet disapproved of sleeping before the night prayer and staying up after it. In some versions, it is said that the Prophet disliked “conversation” (ḥadı ̄th) after the night prayer, and, in others, that he did not “stay up” socializing (samara) after that prayer.35 In other

Early to Bed  185 words, “early to bed” was not only borne out of material limitation; it was a socio-religious ideal. As a whole, cities in the Ottoman Empire maintained their morning to night-prayer rhythm deep into the nineteenth century. Many walled cities continued to shut their gates at sunset until the mid-century and beyond. Behind the closed gates, most people continued to turn in relatively early. Writing in the mid-1840s, the British Officer Charles White described the “daily mode of life of the respectable inhabitants of Stambol” and noted that they woke up at dawn for the morning prayer and typically retired at around nine o’clock in the evening. By ten, everybody was already asleep. Locals, too, recorded similar patterns down to the early twentieth century.36 Nocturnal realities began to change more dramatically only with the introduction of street lighting in the second half of the nineteenth century.37 Yet not everyone in the city went to sleep. Some of the poorest people found their livelihood at night, taking jobs the more established city residents rejected because they offered low pay, or because they were stigmatized, or both. Night work in Istanbul included several methods of night fishing, heating furnaces in almost 200 public bathhouses around the cities, processing meat, smuggling, prostitution, and serving alcohol in the hundreds of taverns of the city. Finally, there were hundreds of guards of various kinds, and they too were mostly of very modest means. It can be carefully estimated that the number of people who found at least part of their livelihood in the dark hours reached at least a few thousand, and probably more.38 Then there were those who used the night for illicit pleasures. Late eighteenth-century Istanbul had almost 600 alcohol-selling businesses of different kinds (Figure 9.3). Most of these businesses were unauthorized and operated only after dark. Due to the Sharia’s ban on the selling and consumption of alcohol, all taverns were run by Christians and Jews. Yet, they attracted a great number of Muslims. The state tolerated this huge scene because it generated great amounts in tax money. Whereas infringements in broad daylight were a direct challenge to established order, it was often comfortable for all parties to pretend nighttime violations never happened. Muslim drinkers could enjoy a few nightcaps and pretend they were not; law enforcers could continue to frequent the same “dens of mischief” they were supposed to police, and drink, impose fines or extract bribe money. The tax revenue from these same dens could continue to flow to the treasury, even when their Muslim clientele was on the rise.39 The flourishing of this scene, however, cannot be reduced to the intersection of interests. Social drinking was often conceived in the mystical terms of the meclis, that is, gatherings in which participants assumed the roles of dervishes seeking union with God. In heterodox Sufi currents that heavily influenced this tradition, the night was considered the best time

186  Avner Wishnitzer

Figure 9.3 A glimpse of tavern life. The poet ͑Aṭāʾ  ı ̄, himself not a drinker, is shown conversing with a dervish on the left. From Ḫ amse-i Aṭāʾ  ı ̄. Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, W.666, 44a.

for these purposes, and drinking was a means to break away from the sensorial perception that tied humans to the illusion of this worldly reality, veiling them from the true reality of God (hak). In a sense, the meclis was a ritual of inversion, in which orthodox Muslims could temporarily break free from the strict limitation of the Sharia.40 A significant part of this inversion was the reversing of relations between night and day, which helped cultivate a sense of spiritual elitism. The meclis was defined by its very difference from the outer world, which was now dark and fast asleep. The participants perceived themselves as erbab-ı batın, those of the internal, mystical understanding. Within the poetry-suffused world of the meclis, they were spiritually enlightened, awake to the presence of God in everything created. They were contrasted with “those of the outside” (erbab-ı zahir), the ignorant crowds and dogmatic moralists who were “sleeping the sleep of heedlessness,” renouncing beauty and pleasure without truly understanding their internal, divine qualities. In Ottoman poetry, these outsiders always lurk outside the confines of the gathering, threatening it but also serving to consolidate the bonds between those who partake in it.41

Early to Bed  187 These notions were typical of the meclis tradition in both its popular and elite varieties. The following example is taken from a popular story that circulated in manuscript form in the eighteenth century and was eventually printed in 1851–1852. The story tells of a handsome young man by the name of Süleyman, who attracts the attention of a rich lady, known as Hançerli Hürmüz (lit. Jupiter with a dagger). She falls madly in love with him but, unfortunately for her, Süleyman falls madly in love with her slave girl, Kamer (lit. moon).42 The names already imply the nocturnal setting of love, which is at once carnal and divine. The story includes several scenes of nocturnal drinking. For example, one night, when Süleyman visits the lady’s house, her slave girl (and his beloved), Kamer prepares a “drinking table” (işret masası) complete with a music band. Then “The three together, drinking slowly, started to listen to the delicate music of the lute.” Süleyman, “seeking to arouse the love of the lady and to strengthen the base of his own love [for Kamer],” started reciting the following poem: How lovely, the unequaled garden How lovely, the garden, the night-chamber (şebistan) of imagination If the beauties of the heavens (houris) saw the beauties of this place they would fall down, jealous, into the fire. Don’t think it is dew on the red rose Sweat breaks out on the fresh face.43 This poem, like more standard gazels (love poems), moves back and forth between the actual and the mystical, between the seen and the unseen (ghayb) worlds. The first couplets turn the actual garden into a space of spiritual contemplation by likening it to a şebistan (literally a nightplace), a word that designates both a bedchamber and a cell for Sufi nocturnal meditation. On the level of the actual party, the fire in the second couplet is that of the candles, but as a metaphor, it stands for the love—carnal and platonic—aroused in, and by, the party. The houris, those divine creatures of the heavens mentioned in the Quran, are here described as attracted to and jealous of the human beauties in the party. The unseen world is not only present but actively seeking to participate in the actual party. The houris here are much like moths drawn to the fire, another standard metaphor for intense love that would have been known to all readers and listeners of the story. Much like moths, again, the houris are burned by their uncontrollable attraction and “fall into the fire.” The rose in the following couplet represents, as always in Persian and Ottoman poetry, the beloved who in turn represents and serves as a corridor to God. Here the rose is described covered in, and freshened by, night dew. That dew, however, is actually the sweat breaking out on the beloved’s face, aroused and excited as she is by the intensive experience of

188  Avner Wishnitzer love. The poet, in the standard role of the lover, courts the beloved, consciously and explicitly using his poetry to enhance this experience. The night emerges as the time of love and intoxication, of intoxication by love. The poem continues by mentioning all the typical components of the poetic garden, and the drinking gathering (here referred to as bezm-i işret): the cypress trees, the narcissus, the rose, and the tulip, and ends with a typical Hafezian call: “Let us drink, sip by sip, from the goblet of pleasure/Let us forget the day of sorrow.”44 The day is here presented as a time of sorrow, and the meclis as an escapade, a time of pleasure and bliss. The conceptualization of nocturnal revelry in the terms of the mystical gathering (meclis) gave it meaning in spiritual-Islamic terms, thus serving to legitimize it, at least in the eyes of some.45 In short, the popular nightlife scene flourished in the dark, because of the dark. The privileged elites, by contrast, enjoyed illuminated entertainment and used this illumination to advertise their privilege.

Celebrating Light at Night Sultans and their immediate social circle turned in long after most of their subjects. For example, Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) reportedly left the evening parties organized for him by some of his high officials between three and five hours after sunset. The daily logs (sing. ruzname) of later sultans show that they usually turned in between three and four hours after sunset.46 Staying up late and, certainly, nocturnal entertainment depended first and foremost on access to light, and the palace elite suffered no shortage of it. They could therefore prolong their merrymaking for as long as they wished. Just as important, they did not have to open a workshop before dawn, and nobody would scold them for missing the morning prayer in the neighborhood mosque. In other words, the palace elite could allow itself a different rhythm from the commoners.47 If staying late often was a privilege facilitated by access to light, light also allowed celebrating this privilege and advertising it. The early eighteenth century presented the palace with tremendous challenges. Its legitimacy and authority were shaken by repeated defeats, starting with the failed siege of Vienna in 1683, financial difficulties, and internal unrest, which culminated in a full-fledged revolt in 1703. Following the rebellion, the Ottoman court returned to Istanbul from Edirne, seeking to reassert its power within the elite and vis-à-vis the commoners. As grand military campaigns were no longer possible, the court turned to other means in order to augment its legitimacy, including intensive building activity, patronage of the arts, and lavish demonstrations of riches and pomp. These trends have been associated in scholarship and popular imagination with the grand vizierate of Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Paşa (1718–1730), a period known as the “Tulip Era.” According to the late Ottoman and early Republican historian Ahmet Refik (1881–1937), who

Early to Bed  189 coined the term, Damad Ibrahim’s office as grand vizier was characterized, among other things, by the indulgence of the elite in a culture of pleasure and extravagance, symbolized by the craze for tulips.48 Later historians have doubted the notion of a distinct Tulip Era and downplayed its uniqueness. Recent studies tend to stress long-term processes that began before Ibrahim’s rise to power and continued long after his downfall.49 Most of these studies nevertheless agree on the role of the elite’s extravagant leisure in affirming social hierarchies. High officials followed the palace’s example and spent huge funds on buildings, costumes, and retinues, but they were careful not to overstep their place in the intra-elite hierarchy.50 All these manifestations of status could be used mainly during the day. At night, power was demonstrated by light. The çırağan (lamps) parties of the 1720s should be situated in this intersection of patrimonial power, leisure, and aesthetics. Full-moon, outdoor summer parties were favored in court circles long before the eighteenth century, and evidence suggests that even çırağan parties were not entirely new.51 Yet several eighteenth-century writers, both local and foreign, identified this tradition with grand vizier Damad İbrahim Paşa.52 It seems that the grand vizier took an existing practice and elaborated on it. The lamp parties developed within the wider meclis tradition already mentioned above, of parties endowed with mystical significance. Court poetry (divan şiiri) provided the actual and emotional protocols for these gatherings, and its recitation was integral to the happening. The “script” of the typical elite meclis as gleaned from countless collections of court poetry stipulates that it should take place within the walls of a secluded garden on a spring evening in the company of close friends. Food and wine would be served, poetry recited, and music played.53 The çırağan party of the eighteenth century was unique with regards to the wider meclis tradition in that it turned light, real and metaphoric, into the main theme. Thousands of candles, lamps, mirrors, and vases of colored water were placed in and around the tulip beds, creating a bewildering game of lights and reflections. Sometimes, displays of fireworks were arranged. Poems produced at court to celebrate these parties associate light with the participants’ intimacy, beauty, and love, thus serving to consolidate bonds of affection within the court elite, and differentiate them from their others, be them commoners or elites who were not part of these circles. But these parties were at the same time ostentatious: against the heavy darkness of eighteenth-century Istanbul, the glow generated by thousands of candles, and the fireworks (with their additional audio dimension), could be easily discerned from the outside, which served to project an image of imperial power that was near and yet inaccessible.54 The poems written about the çırağan parties, and, most likely, recited in them, made explicit the association between light and power and allowed for the circulation of this message beyond the circle of participants. With typical

190  Avner Wishnitzer hyperboles, poets celebrated the amount of light and its dazzling impact. Take, for example, the following lines by Mirza-Zade Ahmed Neyli (d. 1748): The kingly nature desires that lamps be plentiful/So it’s no wonder that the rulers of the age wish çırağan. /Don’t think it a lamps party; the stars have gathered on earth/To observe the flower garden of the world-tending king of kings.55 The amount of light is here directly connected to the nature of sovereignty. The kings of the world, the rulers of the empire, flock to the çırağan parties, or the Çırağan palace in Beşiktaş, which hosted many of these parties. Even the stars join them in marveling at the beauty of the garden of the king of kings, the sultan.56 The ability to “turn night into day” sent a message of power to those left outside the garden, whether they were lesser officials or commoners. Far from being a transparent entity that allows social interaction to take place, light was at the center of the party. It was physically arranged in the actual parties and portrayed in the poetry about these parties to attract attention to the power of the ruler who financed and organized these displays. In making this connection between light and power, the Ottoman çırağan was very similar to contemporary European light festivals. According to Craig Koslofsky, European court societies led a process he calls “nocturnalization,” that is, an “increase in scope and legitimacy of everyday nocturnal activity.”57 This thrust into the dark hours was much less significant in the Ottoman Empire during the period covered here. As shown above, in the late eighteenth century Sultan Selim III would still go to bed no later than five hours after sunset, and usually earlier, just like his grandfather, Sultan Ahmed III, had done some seventy years before him. Translated into mean time hours, Ottoman sultans retired around one o’clock a.m., at the latest. References to elite drinking parties that went on until dawn crop up, especially in poetry, but are rarely corroborated by other sources.58 In contemporary England, by comparison, genteel nighttime entertainment could often last until four or five in the morning.59 The difference did not stop at the level of courts. Unlike authorities in contemporary Europe, the Ottomans did not promote street lighting, and outdoor illumination beyond the court continued to mark festivals rather than routine. Whereas in Europe nocturnalization propelled street lighting, no such driving force existed in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the opposite may have been the case. As shown elsewhere, various actors had a strong interest in keeping the city’s nightlife scene in the dark.60 There may have been material reasons as well. The Ottomans had no access to whale oil that increasingly illuminated European and North American cities. Whatever the reason, street lighting

Early to Bed  191 was not introduced to the Ottoman capital until the middle of the nineteenth century.61 There seems to have been one final difference between sleeping times in Istanbul and contemporary European cities. Unlike Europe, the sources examined for this work do not include a single reference to segmented sleep. Narrative sources, court records, palace documents, and medical manuscripts that occasionally touch upon slumber never once mention a “first” and “second” sleep. Medical treatises sometimes refer to the desired length of sleep but fail to mention a “segmented” pattern. For example, in keeping with the humoral tradition’s emphasis on balance, one author recommended a “moderate” sleep, which he defined as eight to ten hours.62 This advice matches recommendations about sleeping lengths in early modern political and moralistic treatises. Such texts typically advise sultans and grand viziers to divide their day into three intervals of eight hours each: one for state affairs, one for leisure, and one for sleep.63 The Chief Imperial Treasurer Sarı Mehmed Paşa (d. 1717) included in his advice book similar recommendations, tying them to personal health and the good of the state, and supported his argument with a prophetic tradition.64 Like their European colleagues, Ottoman physicians cautioned against sleeping more or less than the recommended length.65 They warned that sleeping makes the body too moist and weakens mental capacity. Sleeping less than prescribed damages digestion, upsets the temper, and may very well lead to mental complications. If one cannot sleep enough at night, one should complete the recommended duration during the day.66 This advice merely gave medical legitimation for the ancient tradition of afternoon slumber, which seems to have been common in the palace and among the people.67 The more popular “Prophetic medicine” (tibb-i nebevi), which relied on health-related traditions ascribed to Muhammad, similarly enjoined the afternoon nap (Ar. qaylūla). For example, the prominent scholar of prophetic traditions (ḥad ı̄th) Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani cites a tradition according to which the Prophet said, “Sleep in the afternoon; only devils don’t sleep.”68 Ottoman society can clearly be counted among the “siesta cultures.”69 Yet the main interval of sleep was to remain at night. The author of The Science of Medicine (I ̇lm-i Tıbb) warns that sleeping too much during the day might corrupt one’s color and ruin the temper, weaken her or his mental strength, and “stupefy the mind.”70 Again, no mention is made of segmented sleep. The fact that afternoon slumber was common in parts of the Ottoman Empire can hardly explain the absence of segmented sleep. According to Ekirch, bi-phasic snooze was also prevalent in “siesta countries” such as Italy and Spain.71 It appears that night sleep in the Ottoman world was only interrupted for devotional purposes, as in the case of the Jewish tiqūn ḥatsot and other nocturnal rituals.72 However, it is not at all clear how prevalent these practices were. Moreover, some of these rituals were

192  Avner Wishnitzer associated with particular holidays or times of the year. In short, sleeping times changed over the years, between communities, religious confessions, and around the year. As noted above, such diversity was typical of contemporary Europe as well. Still, the difference between the monophasic pattern that seems to have been common in the Ottoman Empire and the bi-phasic pattern prevalent in Europe remains unexplained, at least until further evidence comes to light.

Conclusion This discussion shows that while the general population in eighteenthcentury Istanbul and large western European cities turned in around the same time, elites in Europe went to sleep later than their Ottoman peers. Second, if nocturnalization beyond the court was promoted and, in turn, encouraged by street lighting, a similar dynamic was not at work in Istanbul. The lack of public lighting most certainly discouraged many from going out after dark and, considering the limited choice of indoor diversions, probably encouraged early sleeping. “Early to bed” was also considered morally and religiously desirable. In short, despite several important similarities, sleeping patterns in Istanbul and European metropoles grew more different as the century progressed. Comparison with Europe is less important than evaluating differences in sleeping patterns between various groups within Istanbul itself. Unequal access to light, along with many other factors, including nocturnal diversions and devotion, worked to diversify sleeping times. Thus, while seeking to identify general trends in sleeping times and arrangements, it should be noted that social hierarchies, and religious and familial obligations do not vanish into the dark. They continue to shape domestic life and certainly sleeping patterns. Only such awareness will allow us to progress toward a more articulate “map” of sleeping practices in early modern societies and gouge the consequences of these patterns.

Notes 1 This study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, grant no. 423/16. I thank Zeynep Üzümçeke and Omar Halabi for their assistance and good advice. I am especially grateful to Ramiz Üzümçeker, who offered his expertise in dealing with the economic aspects. 2 A Handbook for Travellers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor and Constantinople, … (London: John Murray, 1840), 152. See also John Broughton, A Journey through Albania: And Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the Years 1809–1810, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Printed for J. Cawthorn, 1813), 820; Charles Colville Frankland, Travels to and from Constantinople in the Years 1827 and 1828, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1829), 84.

Early to Bed  193 3 James Caulfield Charlemont, The Travels of Lord Charlemont in Greece and Turkey 1749, ed. W. B. Stanford and E. J. Finopoulos (London: Trigraph for the A.G. Leventis Foundation, 1984), 210. 4 Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 5 On the socio-cultural embeddedness of sleep in various societies, see for example, Yasmine Musharbash, “Embodied Meaning: Sleeping Arrangements in Central Australia,” in Sleep around the World: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Katie Glaskin and Richard Chenall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 45–60; Roger Ivar Lohmann, “Sleeping among the Asabano: Surprises in Intimacy and Sociality at the Margins of Consciousness,” in Sleep around the World, 21–44; Eric l. Hsu, “The Sociology of Sleep and the Measure of Social Acceleration,” Time & Society 23, no. 2 (2014): 212–234; Simon J. Williams, Sleep and Society: Sociological Ventures into the Un(Known) (Milton Park, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2005). 6 A. Roger Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (2001): 343–386; A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York: Norton, 2005), 300–302, 305–311. 7 A. Roger Ekirch, “The Modernization of Western Sleep: Or, Does Insomnia Have a History?,” Past & Present 226, no. 1 (2015): 149–192; Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost”; Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 8–9. For a review of studies on the effect of light– darkness alterations on sleep patterns, see Jacques Galinier et al., “Anthropology of the Night,” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (2010): 824–825. 8 On the “shutting down” of Ottoman cities at night, see Ignatius Mouradgea D’Ohsson, Tableau général de l’empire Othoman (Paris: Didot Pere et Fils, 1824), 4:241; Caulfield, The Travels, 210; Stephen Olin, Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849), 2:78. On other Ottoman cities, see Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 16, 279, 284; Bruce McGowan, “The Age of Ayans, 1699–1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, eds. Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2:647. 9 On evenings in coffeehouses, see Thomas Milner, The Ottoman Empire: The Sultans, the Territory and the People (London: Religious Tract Society, 1859), 250. On the stigmatization of women outside after dark, see Raphaela Lewis, Everyday Life in Ottoman Turkey (London and New York: Batsford; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 115; Zeyneb Hanım & Ellisson M. Grace, A Turksih Women’s European Impressions (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1913), 171–172. 10 Resul Attila, “Istanbul Galata Kadılığı 353 Numaralı Şerʿiyye Sicili, 3.R.1173-7.Ca.1173 (21 Aralık 1759 – 26 Ocak 1760)” [Register no. 353 of the Galata Judgeship in Istanbul] (MA thesis, Marmara Üniversitesi, 1994), 38; Erdal Kılıç, “1158–1159 (1745–1746) Tarihli Üsküdar Sicili” [An Üsküdar Court Register Dated (1745–1746)] (MA Thesis, Marmara Üniversitesi, 1997), 26–27. 11 Nasuhi Bilmen, “Hukukı ̆ Islâmiyye ve ı ̆stı ̆lahatı ̆ Fı ̆khiyye” Kamusu [A Dictionary of Islamic Law and Jurispridence Terms], vol. 3 (Istanbul: Bilmen yayı ̆nevi, 1967), 274. 12 Historians, geographers, and anthropologists have recently grown aware of this shift, although studies that focus on it are still scant. For examples of such

194  Avner Wishnitzer studies, see Tim Edensor, “Reconnecting with Darkness: Gloomy Landscapes, Lightless Places,” Social & Cultural Geography, 14, no. 4 (2013): esp. 457– 459; Nina J. Morris, “Night Walking: Darkness and Sensory Perception in a Night-Time Landscape Installation,” Cultural Geographies, 18, no. 3 (2011): 315–342. 13 Emily Ann Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002), 116–117. Aimée Boutin argues that not only the city noise changed with modernity but also the way we listen to it. See Aimée Boutin, City of Noise: Sound and Nineteenth-Century Paris (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). 14 That the voices of women singing lullabies echoed in the street was a source of concern for some Jewish moralists in eighteenth-century Jerusalem. See Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, “Ḥ ayey yom yom be-ḥūg ha-mishpaḥah ha-sefaradı̄t lefı̄ peyrūsho shel r’ yaʿaqov kūley le-sefer bereʾshı̄t ba-ḥı ̄būr me-ʿam loʿez” [Daily Life in Sephardi Families according to the Exegesis of Jacob Kuley to Genesis in his me-ʿam loʿez], in Nashı̄m, zeqenı̄m ve-ṭaf: qovets maʼamarim li-khevodah shel Shūlamı̄t Shaḥar, Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Yitzhak Hen, eds. (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-toldot Yiśraʼel, 2001), 161. 15 On lighting arrangements in mosques and the obligatory carrying of lanterns, see Avner Wishnitzer, As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 62–64. 16 Fuad Carım, trans., Pedro’nun Zorunlu I ̇stanbul Seyahati: 16. Yüzyılda Türklere Esir Düşen Bir I ̇spanyol’un Anıları [Pedro’s Forced Journey to Istanbul: The Memories of a 16th-Century Spanish Captive in the Hands of the Turks] (Istanbul: Güncel Yayıncılık, 2002), 156; D’Ohsson, Tableau général, 4:241; A Handbook for Travellers, 152; Charles White, Three Years in Constantinople; or, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, vol. 3 (London: Henry Colburn, 1846),77; Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza, Eski Zamanlarda I ̇stanbul Hayatı [Life in Istanbul in Olden Times] (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2001), 153. See also the sources brought at the beginning of this article. 17 All data are based on Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 19–20. 18 Işık Tamdoğan, “Atı Alan Üsküdar’a Geçti Ya Da 18. Yüzyılda Üsküdar’da Şiddet ve Hareketlilik İişkisi” [That Who Stole the Horse Crossed over to Üsküdar or the Relations between Violence and Traffic in 18th-Century Üsküdar], in Osmanlı’da Asayiş, Suç ve Ceza, 18.–20. Yüzyıllar, eds. Noémi Lévy and Alexandre Toumarkine (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı, 2010), 80–95. 19 On the provisioning of lighting materials, see Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, esp. 144–156. 20 Ibid., 160–162. 21 Fixed prices of candles for Istanbul are taken from Arif Bilgin, “Narh Listeleri ve Üsküdar Mal Piyasası” [Narh Lists and the Commodity Market of Üsküdar] in Üsküdar Sempozyonu IV (Istanbul, 2007), 186–187. Data on wages for Istanbul are based on Şevket Pamuk, I ̇stanbul ve Diğer Kentlerde 500 Yıllık Fiyatlar ve Ücretler 1469–1998 [500 Years of Prices and Wages in Istanbul and Other Cities, 1469–1998] (Ankara: Devlet İstatik Enstitüsü Matbaası, 2000), 72. The calculations of candle prices and wages for Istanbul are explained in Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 160–162. For Robert Allen’s data on London, see https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/people/sites/allen-researchpages/. Accessed 8 December, 2021. 22 For the calculations of candle size and lighting time, see Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 160–166. 23 This estimation is based on R. B. Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567– 1642 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 130. I converted the

Early to Bed  195 English standard to the Ottoman measure of 51.312 grams per common tallow candle. Measuring the effectiveness of a light source is in fact more complicated. See Sophie Reculin, “‘Le Règne de La Nuit Désormais va Finir’ L’invention et La Diffusion de l’Éclairage Public Dans Le Royaume de France (1697–1789)” (PhD diss., Université Charles-de-Gaulle, 2017), 156–159. 24 The information about candle quantities is taken from Michael Nizri, Ottoman High Politics and the Ulema Household (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 162–163. In order to simplify things, I calculated beeswax candles as being of the same size as “common” tallow candles, although I have no indication that this was the case. 25 On the household of the Feyzullah Efendi, see Nizri, 81. 26 Fatih Bozkurt, “Tereke Defterleri ve Osmanlı Maddı Kültüründe Değişim (1785–1875)” [Probate Inventories and the Transformation of Ottoman Material Culture] (PhD diss., Sakarya University, 2011), 315–321. On inequality in access to light, see also Cemal Kafadar, “How Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, How Bitter the Tale of Love: The Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in Early Modern Istanbul,” in Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean, eds. Arzu Ozturkmen and Evelyn Birge Vitz (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014), 257–258. 27 Tabakoğlu et al., İstanbul Ahkâm Defterleri: I ̇stanbul Esnaf Tarihi (1764– 1793), vol. 2, 369, beginning of Ca 1202 (8–17 February 1788). 28 John Scoffern, “The Chemistry of Artificial Illumination,” in The Circle of the Sciences: A Series of Treatises on the Principles of the Sciences, with Their Application to Practical Pursuits, vol. 7 (London: Richard Griffin & Co., 1860), 452; Jane Brox, Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 13–14; Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 14–16. 29 Scoffern, 452; Graves, 14. 30 Mehmet Zeki Pakalın, “Mum Makası” (Candle Clipper), Osmanlı Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1971), 581. 31 Pakalın, “Şamdancı Başı” (Candlemaster), Osmanlı Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü, 3:308. 32 William O’Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 6, 18–19. 33 François Tott, Memoires of the Baron de Tott: Containing the State of the Turkish Empire & the Crimea during the Late War with Russia (London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 1786), 96. 34 Ekirch, “The Modernization of Western Sleep,” 176–177. 35 See, for example, Muḥammad bin ʾIsmāʿı ̄l bin Ibrāhı̄m al-Bukhārı ̄, Ṣaḥı ̄ḥ al-Bukhārı̄, kitāb badʾ al-khalq [The Trusted Traditions of al- Bukhārı̄: The Book of the Beginning of Creation], vol. 1 (Damascus: Dār Abū Kathı ̄r l-lṭibāʿa wa-l-nashr wa tawzı̄ʿ, 2002), book 10, no. 552. 36 White, Three Years, 3:94–96. Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza, Eski Zamanlarda, 153; Falih Rıfkı Atay, Batış Yılları [Years of Decline] (Istanbul: Hürriyet, 2012), 23. In late nineteenth-century fiction, too, the neighborhood goes to sleep early. See, for example, İbrahim Şinasi, Şair Evlenmesi [The Marriage of a Poet] (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1982), 43; Hüseyin Rahmi [Gürpınar], Şık [Chic] (Istanbul: Atlas Kitabevi, 1968), 56–57. 37 On the closing of the gates of Jerusalem at night, see Yehoshuʿa Ben-Arieh, ʿIr̄ bi-Reʾı ̄ tqūfah: yerūshalayim ha-ḥadashah be-reʾshı̄tah, vol. 1 [A City in the Mirror of an Era: The Beginnings of New Jerusalem] (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1977), 36; Ben-Arieh, ʿIr̄ bi-Reʾi teqūfah, 1979, 2:105, 167. On

196  Avner Wishnitzer street lighting and the changing of Ottoman nocturnal realities, see Nurçin İleri, “A Nocturnal History of Fin de Siècle Istanbul” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2015); Avner Wishnitzer, “Eyes in the Dark: Nightlife and Visual Regimes in Late Ottoman Istanbul,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37, no. 2 (2017): 245–261; Idem., “Kerosene Nights: Light and Enlightenment in Late Ottoman Jerusalem,” Past & Present, 248, no. 1 (2020): 165–207. 38 R. Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople, during a Period Including the Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions, vol. 2 (London: F. Westley & A.H. Davis, 1836), 40. Minna Rozen, “A Pound of Flesh: The Meat Trade and Social Struggle in Jewish Istanbul, 1700–1923,” in Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi and Randi Deguilhem (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 200; Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment, 136; Nina Ergin, “The Albanian Tellâk Connection: Labor Migration to the Hamams of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul, Based on the 1752 İstanbul Hamâmları Defteri,” Turcica 43 (2011): 231–256; Thomas Allom and Robert Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor (London: Fisher Son & Co., 1838), 40. 39 Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 81–109. 40 B. Deniz Çalış-Kural, Şehrengiz, Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism in Ottoman Istanbul (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 10. 41 Wishnitzer, “Into the Dark,” 520. 42 Yakup Çelik, ed., Hançerli Hanım Hikaye-i Garibesi (Ankara: Akçağ Yayınları 1999). On the story and its social context, see David Selim Sayers, “Sociocultural Roles in Ottoman Pulp Fiction,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 49, no. 2 (2017): 215–216, 218–221. On the “realism” of the stories and their connection to the storytelling tradition, see also David Selim Sayers, “Tıflî Hikâyelerinin Türsel Gelişimi” (PhD diss., Bilkent University, 2005); David Selim Sayers, “Letâʾifnâme ve Çokseslilik,” in Mitten Meddaha Türk Halk Anlatıları Uluslararası Sempozyum Bildirileri, ed. M. Öcal Oğuz (Ankara: Gazi University, 2006), 90–99. 43 Çelik, Hançerli Hanım, 21–22. 44 Ibid. 45 Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 110–143. 46 See, for example, Raşid Efendi, Tarih-i Raşid [The Chronicle of Raşid], vol. 3 (Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Amire, 1865), 319; Asım Efendi Küçükçelebizade, Tarih-i İsmail Asım Efendi eş-şehir bi-Küçük Çelebizade [The Chronicle of İsmail Asım Efendi] (brought in Tarih-i Raşid, vol. 6), 366–377, 470–471. In mean time terms, according to sunset hours in April for the latitude of Istanbul, these hours would translate to between eleven o’clock at night and one in the morning. Fikret Sarıcaoğlu, Kendi Kaleminden bir Padişahın Portresi: Sultan I. Abdülhamid (1774–1789) [A Self-Portrait of a Ruler: Sultan Abdülhamid I] (Istanbul: Tatav, Tarih ve Tabiat Vakfı, 2000), 45–46; Sema Arıkan, “III. Selim’in Sırkatibi Ahmed Efendi Tarfınan Tutulan Rüznamesi” [The Daily Log of Selim III Kept by His Chief Secretary Ahmed Efendi] (Master’s thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1988). 47 A similar gap between elite and commoners’ sleeping time was demonstrated for Europe. See Craig Koslofsky, “Princes of Darkness: The Night at Court, 1650–1750,” The Journal of Modern History 79 (2007): 235–273; Craig Koslofsky, “Court Culture and Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” Journal of Urban History 28, no. 6 (2002): 743–768; Sasha Handley, “Sociable Sleeping in Early Modern England, 1660–1760,” History 98, no. 329 (2013): 79–104.

Early to Bed  197 8 Ahmet Refik, Lale Devri (Istanbuk: Hilmi Kitaphanesi, 1932). 4 49 Tülay Artan, “Architecture as a Theatre of Life: Profile of the Eighteenth Century Bosporus” (PhD diss., MIT, 1989); Shirine Hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007); Selim Karahasanoğlu, “A Tulip Age Legend: Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in the Ottoman Empire (1718–1740)” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2009); Can Erimtan, Ottomans Looking West? The Origins of the Tulip Age and Its Development in Modern Turkey (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008). 50 Cf. Necipoğlu Gülru, “A Kanun for the State, a Canon for the Arts: Conceptualizing the Classical Synthesis of Ottoman Art and Architecture,” in Soliman Le Magnifique et Son Temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: Documentation Français, 1992), 208–209; Artan, “Architecture as Theatre,” 67–69, 92–96. 51 Özge Öztekin, Divanlardan Yansıyan Görüntüler: XVIII. Yüzyıl Divan Şiirinde Toplumsal Hayatın Izleri [Images Reflected from Poetry Collections: Traces of Daily Life in 18th-Century Court Poetry] (Ankara: Ürün Yayınları, 2006), 351; Refik, Lale Devri, 35–36. 52 D’Ohsson, Tableau Général, 4:429; Joseph De Hammer, Histoire de’l Empire Ottoman depuis son origine jusqu’a nos jours, recherche (Paris: Bellizard, Barthes, Dufour et Lowell, 1839), 14:64–65; Mehmed Raşid Efendi, Tarih-i Raşid, 3:205–206. 53 Walter G. Andrews, Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), 146–157. 54 The parties were known and noted in real time by people who were not invited to take part in them. See Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 522, n. 62. 55 Öztekin, Divanlardan Yansıyan Görüntüler, 355. 56 For more example and a thorough discussion, see Wishnitzer, “Into the Dark,” 519–523. 57 Koslofsky, “Princes of Darkness,” 236, 251–258. Koslofsky’s definition of the term “nocturnalization” applies also to the use of the night for political spectacles. 58 In one case, brought before the court of Üsküdar, two commoners were charged for immoral conduct, having been caught partying with prostitutes, “until the morning.” This, however, may only be a figure of speech intended to highlight the defendants’ licentiousness. See Üsküdar Sicili, vol. 407, p. 3, 5 C 1155 (7 August 1742). 59 Handley, “Sociable Sleeping.” 60 Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, esp. 81–109. 61 The most comprehensive account of the introduction of street lighting is İleri, “A Nocturnal History.” 62 Muhammed Bin Hasan, “İlm-i Tıbb (İnceleme-Metin-Dizin)” [The Science of Medicine] ed. Hande Ünver Özdoğan (Master’s thesis, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, 2015), 129. For similar recommendations, albeit without the specification of desired sleep length, see Gevrekzade Hafız Hasan, Aslü’l-usul tercüme-i faslü’l-fusul (1796) [The Foundation of Method: A Translation of faslü’l-fusul], İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, TY, nr. 4289, p. 3. 63 Marinos Sariyannis, “Time, Work and Pleasure: A Preliminary Approach to Leisure in Ottoman Mentality,” in New Trends in Ottoman Studies: Papers Presented at the 20th CIÉPo Symposium, Rethymno 27 June–1 July 2012, ed. Marinos Sariyannis et al. (Rethymno: University of Crete, 2012), 799–800. 64 Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Paşa, Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and Governors–Nasaihü’l-Vüzera, ed. and trans. Walter Livingston Wright Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1935), 80.

198  Avner Wishnitzer 65 Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost,” 348–349. American physicians and moralists too warned against oversleeping. See Matthew Wolf-Meyer, The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 54–55. 66 Bin Hasan, “İlm-i Tıbb,” 26a–27a (in the original text, brought in the appendix of the published work). Compare Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England, 22–29. 67 For references to afternoon sleep across the Ottoman Empire, from the early modern period to the early twentieth century, see for example Yunus Irmak, ed., “III. Mustafa Rûznâmesı̄ (H. 1171–1177/M. 1757–1763)” (MA thesis, Marmara University, 1991), 107; Thomas P. Hughes, Travels in Greece and Albania, vol. 2 (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830), 66–67; Georgina Mackenzie, The Turks, the Greeks, and the Slavons: Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in-Europe (London: Bell & Daldy, 1867), 13, 76, 265. See also Sariyannis, “Time, Work and Pleasure,” 807; Salim Tamari, “The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem’s Prince of Idleness,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 19 (2003): 33; Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 2005), 197; Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 20. 68 Muḥhammad Nāṣir al-Dı ̄n Al-Albānı ̄, Silsilat al-aḥādı̄th al-ṣaḥıh̄ ̣a wa-shayʿan min fiqhihā wa-fawāʾidhā [The Sequence of Trusted Traditions with a Glimpse of their Wisdom and Value], vol. 4 (Riyadh: Maktabat al-maʿārif li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzı̄ʿ, 2000), 202. On “prophetic medicine” and its popularity and competition with humoral medicine, see Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Ottoman Medicine: Healing and Medical Institutions, 1500–1700 (Albany: State University of New York, 2009), 24, 66–67. 69 On “siesta cultures” see Brigitte Steger and Lodewijk Brunt, “Introduction: Into the Night and the World of Sleep,” in Night-Time and Sleep in Asia and the West, 17–19. In fact, afternoon slumber seems to have been common throughout early modern Europe, possibly owning to chronic sleep deprivation. Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost,” 361. 70 Merin Güven, “Abdulvehhâb Bin Yusuf’un Müntahhab-ı Fi’t-Tıbb’ı (Dil İncelemesi-Metin-Dizin)” [Abdulvehhâb Bin Yusuf’s Selections of Medicine] (Ph.D. diss., Pamukkale Üniversitesi, 2005), 211. 71 Ekirch, “The Modernization of Western Sleep,” 158. 72 Wishnitzer, As Night Falls, 115–126.

10 The Uncertainty of Evening in Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic Sarah Cullen

Seduction and the Evening Time This chapter examines seduction novels published in early America during the period 1789–1812. It argues that these literary texts used the nightscape to highlight the failings of paternalist policies that infantilized and delegitimized American women in order to ensure wealthy white male dominance. In a burgeoning state, uncertain of the type of class distinctions already established in Britain, the fear of the sexual possession of American women was explored in the period’s many seduction novels, which illustrated the dangers from English and American men who attempted to coerce women into situations where they were raped and then abandoned.1 Crucially, these seducers often coerced women by meeting with them during evening encounters. Neither entirely day nor night, the evening became a time of uncertainty or liminality where men could rely on women’s deferential status to pressure them into rendezvous they would prefer to avoid. While these meetings may not have been sanctioned by society, neither were they explicitly forbidden, making it increasingly difficult for the victims to refuse them. These seduction novels use the nightscape to highlight the shameful and often-hidden dangers of coverture that signal a failure to break with the conventions of Britain and hence their inability to redress the systems of inequality upon which America depended post-revolution.2 This chapter, then, explores the close relationship between the evening time, seduction, and coverture, demonstrating how the three combine together to make the night the literal and metaphorical lowest point for the protagonists. The night is the space in which the victims of seduction, thanks to the failures of coverture, suffer the fallout of the unjust system, experiencing social ostracization and death in pregnancy. This examination focuses on two of the best-known and emblematic seduction novels of the period—Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791 Britain; 1794 U.S.) and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797)—in order to illustrate the nocturnal seduction narrative that is explored throughout the genre. In this narrative, corrupt men co-opted DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-13

200  Sarah Cullen the evening as a site of control. They used it to lead women away from their friends and family before abandoning them to their deaths once they became pregnant and destitute. Explaining the common law doctrine of coverture, this chapter demonstrates how the literary evening acts as a liminal space in which women, without their own legal identities, were left at the mercy of men who promised marriage but never delivered. It explores how the seduction novels critique the early American belief that the actions of fathers were sufficient to protect their daughters from dangerous suitors, arguing instead that women needed to be educated to avoid these liaisons. The chapter also focuses on examples in the genre that expand and complicate the nocturnal seduction narrative, including Judith Sargent Murray’s Story of Margaretta (1792), which depicts a successful heroine who manages to avoid an evening-time seduction, and Leonora Sansay’s Laura (1809), which illustrates how a well-intentioned suitor can effectively be interchangeable with a corrupt one. It then moves on to Rebecca Rush’s Kelroy (1812), arguing that this text was both the chronological and thematic conclusion of the American seduction narrative. In particular, Rush’s novel expands on many of the ideas present from the first American seduction novel, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789). In Kelroy, its heroine cannot trust even her own mother, who attempts to marry her off to a dangerous suitor. Turning to Susanna Rowson’s final work, Lucy Temple (1828), published a decade and a half after Kelroy, we see an example of heroines finally given scope to explore the evening without the danger of seduction. The conclusion reflects on how the literary evening time is represented, nuanced, and expanded upon throughout this period to demonstrate the necessity of changes to American laws concerning both married and unmarried women.

Not Doing Exactly Right Following an encounter with the untrustworthy Montraville, the eponymous protagonist of Susanna Rowson’s transatlantic seduction novel Charlotte Temple confides in her mentor: “I cannot think we have done exactly right in going out this evening, Mademoiselle.” Correcting herself, Charlotte continues: “nay, I am sure it was not right; for I expected to be very happy, but was sadly disappointed.”3 Charlotte may be correct in saying it was not right, yet it is telling that she could not brand it as wrong. After all, her furtive evening activity, in which she secretly met with visiting soldier Montraville, sneaking out of her British boarding school without permission from her headmistress, was not strictly forbidden either. Indeed, she is encouraged and directed towards this meeting by another of her teachers, Mademoiselle La Rue, who, as Ann Douglas has observed, was herself a victim of seduction and, in turn, learned how to manipulate those around her, which is how she gained her employment

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  201 as Charlotte’s teacher in the first place.4 Charlotte Temple’s British evening is a space of uncertainty in which the innocent fifteen-year-old Charlotte can be courted by Montraville, who can conduct his underhanded affair without gaining the permission of any of Charlotte’s guardians. Charlotte, we learn, continued every evening to meet Montraville, and in her heart every meeting was resolved to be the last; but alas! when Montraville at parting would earnestly intreat one more interview, that treacherous heart betrayed her;…and so well did Montraville improve each opportunity, that the heedless girl at length confessed no idea could be so painful to her as that of never seeing him again.5 Montraville convinces Charlotte, against her better judgment, to meet with him night after night until he leaves for military service. Then, promising Charlotte marriage if she agrees to travel with him, Montraville transports the naive Charlotte to New York, where she dies, after giving birth and enduring storms and snow in the American night. The seduction plot in Charlotte Temple therefore tracks a movement from the British day into the American night, with the ambiguities in the evening proving conducive to the actions of the bad-intentioned seducer. Meanwhile, in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, the American evening becomes a time of uncertainty or liminality when men can pressure women into meetings they would prefer to avoid and that they are aware may be considered unacceptable by their society. Despite her wish to remain unmarried, Foster’s protagonist, Eliza Wharton, cannot avoid participating in the courtship rituals expected of members of her society. As a result, she entertains several men who visit her in the garden of her friends’ residences, at times enthusiastically and voluntarily, and at others less so. Thanks to the demure and accommodating positions she is expected to adopt while steadfastly maintaining her virtue at all costs, Eliza finds herself only able to parry away the advances of one of her suitors. Sanford visits her in semi-private locations during the evening hours and demands secret meetings even when married. Eliza ultimately becomes pregnant during their hidden affair and flees her community before dying alone. Previously, after attempting to cut off communications with Sanford, she receives an accusatory letter from him, in which he demands a further meeting with her. Eliza reluctantly agrees, arranging a rendezvous for five in the evening. The encounter between them demonstrates that they are both attempting to avoid scrutiny. Eliza writes that When he appeared, a consciousness of the impropriety of this clandestine intercourse suffused my cheek, and gave a coldness to my manners. He immediately penetrated the cause, and observed that my very countenance told him he was no longer a welcome guest to

202  Sarah Cullen me. I asked him if he ought so to be; since his motives for seeking admission, were unworthy of being communicated to my friends? That he said was not the case, but that prudence in the present instance required a temporary concealment. Eliza wishes to rid herself of a dogged pursuer and hopes that a final surreptitious meeting will end their one-sided relationship, perhaps naively believing Sanford would keep his word and stay away from her as he claimed “from your lips only…I can hear my sentence.”6 Sanford, meanwhile, as demonstrated in the above quote, has attempted to keep his interactions with Eliza hidden from the greater community while simultaneously underplaying his actions to Eliza as a “temporary concealment.” The Coquette underscores the double standards of a society that demands that women be held accountable for the behavior of men: Eliza frequently finds herself in dubious and uncertain situations during the evening, expected to act as an accommodating host to her suitors, regardless of her own feelings of safety or certainty. As a result, the evening, in which Sanford is able to negotiate more and more time with the ambivalent Eliza, becomes the time in which the rules of respectability are stretched to meet Sanford’s own dishonorable intentions. In these storylines, Rowson, Foster, and their fellow proto-feminist authors, such as Tabitha Tenney and Judith Sargent Murray, used their medium to argue against the paternalist policy of coverture that heavily policed the lives of British and American women. In these seduction narratives, disreputable men take advantage of the extended access they have to these women during the evening to gain their trust. Using the legitimacy that coverture affords them, they are able to lead these women further away from safety under the false promise of marriage. The examination of seduction novels from this period, therefore, reveals how the literary nightscape was used to highlight the failings of coverture. Coverture was a legal doctrine in English common law introduced into medieval courts that ensured that husbands maintained legal and economic control in marriage. Tim Stretton and Krita J. Kesselring write: The main consequences of coverture at common law changed little from at least the twelfth century until the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Upon marriage a wife lost the ability to own or control property, enter into contracts, make a will, or bring or defend a lawsuit without her husband. A married woman’s real property—her lands—fell under her husband’s control.7 Under coverture, a married woman’s legal identity was absorbed into, or “covered,” by her husband. This meant that married women could not own property and had no legal personhood distinct from that of their husbands. Coverture was expanded upon by English jurist and judge

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  203 William Blackwell in the 1760s, whose influence enshrined the principle of “unity of person” at its core.8 As Cathy N. Davidson writes, a woman’s status as a feme covert effectively rendered her legally invisible…For the most part, in 1800, by law and legal precedent, a married woman’s signature had no weight on legal documents and she had no individual legal identity.9 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coverture was viewed as a way of supposedly protecting women who would be unable to defend themselves otherwise.10 By curtailing women’s freedom, wealthy white men benefited from constructing the new republic in ways they denied to others, ensuring their wives remained legally dependent on them. This is not to say that coverture was a problem that only affected married women. As observed by Lolita Buckner Inniss, “To argue that women were free from the strictures of coverture if they chose not to marry seems to laud a negative liberty that is, for many women, little more than a remote possibility.”11 This discussion of coverture in relation to these unmarried protagonists follows on previous scholarship that discusses how, despite her desire to remain unmarried, Eliza Wharton’s narrative cannot be separated from the requirements of coverture. Eve Cherniavsky writes that Eliza is “an uncovered feminine presence occupying a kind of social non-space—living under the protection, the coverture, as it were, of women who, being themselves covered, have no protection to extend.”12 As a lonely feme sole living among married friends, Eliza’s safety is dependent on the kindness they choose to extend, and, as a result, she has no protection when an ill-intentioned man from her own social circle takes sexual advantage of her. Furthermore, as Karen A. Weyler has observed, this is indeed what happens when Sanford chooses to abandon Eliza in favor of a marriage to a wealthier woman: Dependence on coverture is implicit in Sanford’s desire to marry a rich woman and his disqualification of Eliza as a potential wife. Without coverture, Sanford would have no incentive to pursue Nancy, the woman he eventually marries…Additionally, without the access to Nancy’s funds that coverture ensures him, Sanford would be unable to continue his pursuit of Eliza.13 Eliza’s experience of single womanhood is therefore constricted by the rules of coverture and the ways in which men may shape it to their own requirements, ensuring their financial and social success to the detriment of the single women they seduce and then abandon. Similarly, in Charlotte Temple, the abandonment of Charlotte by the ill-intentioned suitor Montraville is explicitly linked to her lack of wealth: Mademoiselle [La Rue] informed him, that though Charlotte’s father possessed a genteel independence, it was by no means probable that

204  Sarah Cullen he could give his daughter more than a thousand pounds; and in case she did not marry to his liking, it was possible he might not give her a single SOUS; nor did it appear the least likely, that Mr. Temple would agree to her union with a young man on the point of embarking for the feat of war. As a result, Montraville concludes that “it was impossible he should ever marry Charlotte Temple; and what end he proposed to himself by continuing the acquaintance he had commenced with her, he did not at that moment give himself time to enquire.”14 Montraville’s discovery that marriage to Charlotte would not provide him with access to wealth leads directly to his decision to abandon her, which leads to her death. As a result, in both novels coverture is represented as a dehumanizing force that leads to the destruction of the life and liberty of unmarried women. The evening in the seduction novel challenges the dichotomy between night and day and undermines the logic of the coverture system, which assumes that women can be successfully protected from unwanted and unworthy male attention in public spaces. Transitory, in-between locations, such as gardens and fields, in which the men in both texts manufacture seemingly spontaneous meetings, demonstrate how public areas cannot be successfully policed to prevent undesired outcomes to vulnerable women. As the daytime blends into night, the conventions and practices of public and private blend into each other, ultimately leading to unwanted pregnancies and the social ostracization of the protagonist. This leads to the nadirs of the narratives, which are also literally their darkest points. The protagonists are isolated in a space they do not recognize, alone without social support, and entirely vulnerable in the nighttime of the American continent. This is seen when Eliza Wharton can no longer conceal her pregnant state and writes to her mother that “This night, therefore, I leave your hospitable mansion! This night I become a wretched wanderer from thy paternal roof! Oh, that the grave were this night to be my lodging!”15 This pattern is also found in Leonora Sansay’s Laura, as the lowest point for the eponymous protagonist comes when, similarly pregnant and alone, she is forced to spend the night sleeping on her mother’s grave.16 The evening in the seduction novel becomes a turning point that can lead to danger and darkness. William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy from 1789, the first American seduction novel, also widely considered the first American novel, describes the act of seduction as a “black…die” and the “blackest ingratitude,” and is a horror that is visited almost exclusively on the victims of seduction rather than the seducers themselves.17 The text’s seduction subplots highlight the disastrous mental breakdowns and social ostracism the victims endure, described in terms of dark and night imagery. While the victims of seduction are plunged into a darkness wherein they feel cut off from their community and any sense of justice, the seducers remain viewed as pillars

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  205 of the community. The night in early American prose demonstrates the unfeasible nature of coverture by highlighting how debilitating and dangerous a structure it is for everyone involved.

Great Good Places Many early American seduction novelists, including Rowson, Foster, Tenney, and Murray, were also educational theorists and teachers who advocated for improving female education. One of the practical didactic purposes of their novels was to argue that education had to be uncoupled from nocturnal control. As already mentioned, Charlotte’s teacher, Mademoiselle La Rue, is partly responsible for Charlotte’s seduction by convincing her to meet with Montraville after hours. However, rather than suggesting that Charlotte should not have received an education and remained instead safely at home with her parents, Charlotte Temple argues that current systems of education are dangerously flawed. As already observed, a victim of seduction herself, Mademoiselle La Rue learned how to manipulate those around her, thus gaining employment as Charlotte’s teacher. These seduction novels ultimately argue that young women needed to break free of education that did not enable them to avoid evening seduction attempts. One of the ways the novels demonstrate this argument is by showing how women themselves must be empowered, as even their fathers may prove unable to protect them. Illustrating how detrimental coverture is to the women directly affected by it, primarily in the form of illegitimate pregnancies and familial destruction, many of these novels show that coverture does not contribute to the American narrative of the virtuous woman in the New World, safely ensconced in the home. While some men may genuinely attempt to protect women, familiar men, such as husbands and brothers, often end up inflicting the most damage on their female relatives. The novels also demonstrate that coverture is not a system that can be restructured or reworked to ensure that trustworthy men are in charge. This is highlighted in Charlotte Temple. Charlotte’s father, Henry Temple, may provide his daughter with a loving atmosphere in which to grow and the necessities for spiritual and educational improvement, but even within this atmosphere, she encounters danger. Montraville may seduce Charlotte in the evening when she has finished her day in boarding school, but the seduction starts earlier when Mademoiselle La Rue convinces her to stay out late in the first place. Nowhere is safe from corruption. Charlotte’s father may have sent her to a school with a good reputation, but there is little he can do to shield her from any unreliable figures she may encounter. Touching on this corruption, Robert Lawson-Peebles has claimed that The representative Great Good Place is Charlotte’s childhood home, somewhere in southern England, where “Plenty, and her handmaid,

206  Sarah Cullen Prudence, presided at their board, Hospitality stood at their gate, Peace smiled on each face, Content reigned in each heart, and Love and Health strewed roses on their pillows” (21–2). The Great Bad Place is everywhere else: Britain and the United States differ only in the extent of their degeneracy.18 While Charlotte’s childhood home may indeed be the “Great Good Place,” a place in which virtue can flourish, it is not somewhere Charlotte can be permitted to reside eternally if her parents are to allow her to get an education and marry, or in other words, to participate as a member of the republic. Rowson demonstrates this by contrasting Charlotte’s experience with her parents’ far more fortunate relationship. When Charlotte’s father, a relatively well-off and well-intentioned son of an earl, chose to marry Lucy née Lewis, he lifted her out of poverty and into a life of virtue. Throughout her youth, she had supported her father by paying off his creditors through needlework and painting. Moreover, according to her father, “She leaves me every night, and goes to a lodging near the bridge; but returns in the morning, to cheer me with her smiles, and bless me by her duteous affection.”19 By marrying Lucy, Henry Temple ensured that she would no longer be required to risk the dangers of nightlife and the damage such an association could have on a woman’s reputation. Financially stable, Lucy Temple is able to live contentedly with her husband in a “Great Good Place.” Lucy’s virtue is constructed because her love and desires happen to align with those of a generous and wealthy man. In comparison, Charlotte is simply unlucky: the men and women she encounters are ill-intentioned. The “Great Good Place” that her father created under his benevolent rule is an oasis in a world of “Big Bad Places” that Henry cannot mitigate against. The laws of coverture mean that even the best man can protect only his own wife against the dangers of the night. Rowson demonstrates that this virtue is a construct of wealth and class and is a result of British and American women’s lives under the ruling of coverture. This overarching thesis can be nuanced by considering a seduction novel that contradicts this narrative. In Story of Margaretta, written by Judith Sargent Murray, the eponymous heroine Margaretta Melworth is the sole heroine to achieve a successful and happy marriage. Margaretta is given the opportunity to discover the dangers of seduction under the watchful eye of her adoptive parents, Mr. and Mrs. Vigillius. Learning from Margaretta that she has grown attached to a suspected rake, the aptly named Sinisterus Courtland, her guardians permit her to spend an evening in his company. Upon observing his behavior with other young women, Margaretta begs her guardians to desist, telling them that “never more do I wish to behold the man who hath this evening passed your doors;…and never shall my soul bind itself in alliance with an unworthy

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  207 pretender.”20 Murray’s novel argues that transparency and honesty within the family sphere can protect young women from the dangers of an evening seduction. While Margaretta may err in falling for Sinisterus, sharing her thoughts and feelings with her sympathetic parents ensures that they can correct the course. In an address to the reader, who Mr. Vigillius terms “dear children,” he informs them that your most direct step is an open declaration of what passes in the inmost recesses of your bosoms, to parents, who will not fail to patronize and uphold you in every action, which is, strictly speaking, the result of undeviating rectitude.21 Rather than forcing their daughter to resort to secret evening meetings, the Vigilliuses encourage open and public evening encounters between Margaretta and Sinisterius in which they carefully observe their interactions. As a result, the Vigilliuses are able to shepherd Margaretta safely along to a reputable marriage at a respectable age. Highlighting this success, the evening before her wedding is spent entertaining her parents “at [their] first request, with many of our favourite airs, upon her piano forte. I did not perceive her heart flying through her bodice! and her tremors being of the governable kind, she was all her own agreeable self.”22 Rather than an evening of uncertainty that leads to despair, Margaretta remains safe and happy under the watchful eye of her parents before embarking on an officially sanctioned marriage. Because the Vigilliuses are successful in keeping Margaretta carefully under their observation, particularly during the liminal hours of the evening, Story of Margaretta is at odds with the other novels, hinting that the required system of education is attainable under coverture. Unlike Charlotte or Eliza, who keep secrets from their parents, Margaretta’s move towards seduction does not decide her fate or lead her into the darkness of the American night. Margaretta’s evenings are not spent hidden away from her family or friends in the company of her seducer. Even the surname, Vigillius, suggests their careful night watch or vigil. Murray’s novel, therefore, argues that disaster can be averted by family support and a more considerate approach to night watching. Instead of simply discouraging clandestine social gatherings, evening meetings should be welcomed under benevolent parental observation. However, where Story of Margaretta shows its shortcomings is precisely in its belief that a supportive family alone is enough to ensure the safety of its daughters. Not only is this highlighted in other seduction narratives, but Story of Margaretta’s own internal logic challenges the legitimacy of this idea. Shortly after her supposedly successful marriage to the upstanding Edward Hamilton, Margaretta fears that he may be a seducer as he relegates himself to his study. This space, we learn, “Edward had consecrated [as] the scene of his most retired moments; thither, at

208  Sarah Cullen certain hours of the day, she knew that he repaired” and therein spends a suspicious amount of time with Margaretta’s friend, Serafina.23 We eventually discover that he is not a seducer. He is not pursuing a relationship with Serafina, who is revealed to be his half-sister. Instead, he is trying to pay off gambling debts he amassed before their marriage while pining for Margaretta. Unlike Margaretta, then, Edward is permitted space to conduct his covert affairs. Despite the grief and upset Margaretta endures and the very real danger that Edward’s gambling debts pose for her, the narrative hinges on Margaretta’s mistake as the cause of their misfortune: that of her brief attraction to Sinisterus Courtland, and the implication, believed by Edward, that Courtland’s marriage night was shared with Margaretta. In other words, Margaretta’s brief lack of transparency, leaving Edward metaphorically in the dark regarding her true feelings for him—the implication being that she loved him and not Sinisterus—is blamed for Edward’s failure. Considering that author Murray’s views on the education of women, as illustrated in “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), were couched in the wider belief that women were naturally dependent upon men, Story of Margaretta inadvertently demonstrates how the double standards of coverture affect women even in advantageous circumstances.24 By taking control of Margaretta’s business affairs, Edward does not need to share details of business transactions that directly involve his wife’s economic safety. This means Margaretta’s transparency alone cannot overcome the injustices of a society that permits her husband’s covert activity. Families, then, are not enough to prevent seductions when men, both well- and ill-intentioned, are permitted to conduct their private and business affairs without any supervision. Sometimes seductions succeed because the woman is alone and vulnerable, but other times seductions succeed despite the positive influences of caring families, particularly fathers. The night that inevitably falls in the seduction novel, and the illintentioned men that populate it, mean that women cannot be kept safe from seduction indefinitely. Seducers can even use their powers to remove protective fathers. In Charles Brockden Brown’s gothic seduction novel Ormond; or, The Secret Witness (1799), the protagonist, Constantia Dudley, falls prey to the eponymous wealthy seducer when her father, Stephen, loses his fortune. Ormond’s unbound entitlement, coupled with his covert and far-reaching influences, leads to Stephen Dudley’s death. He is murdered in his bedroom by an assassin sent by Ormond to render Constantia more vulnerable to his advances.25 In Tabitha Tenney’s satirical take on the genre, Female Quixotism (1801), Dorcasina Sheldon’s father’s wealth and benevolence cannot prevent her nocturnal encounters with various men who attempt to seduce her. Throughout the novel, which spans her life from her twenties to fifties, Dorcasina is the target of four seduction attempts—including a kidnapping and various deceptions via impersonation—perpetrated by men in order to marry into the

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  209 Sheldon family’s fortune or simply entertain themselves.26 No matter how good fathers try to protect their daughters, there are forces beyond their control that undermine their best efforts. Even a vigilant father cannot prevent all the nocturnal threats their daughters may encounter.

Mask of Love The early American seduction narrative is, therefore, a rumination on the uncertainty of class and socialization in the emerging republic, challenging the idea that even good men can uphold the rule of law if those very laws undermine their intentions. It builds upon contemporary British seduction narratives that challenged “the polarization of male characters into heroes and villains.”27 Where many British narratives had two prominent characters, a good suitor and a seducer whose actions often challenged these mutable definitions, in the American narrative, these two characters blend into one. Manifesting in the liminal space of the evening, seducers and good men can be impossible to tell apart and, in fact, may be one and the same. Discussing Montraville, Davidson identifies the uncertainty regarding how his actions should be read: Perhaps Montraville is the real villain in that his villainy is so sanctioned by his society that it can pass as virtue. Rowson’s larger point here well might be that a standard double standard of sexual conduct allows even a relatively decent young man to become, indirectly and second hand, a murderer.28 Montraville’s activity cannot be fully separated from those of an upstanding gentleman or, indeed, the well-intentioned actions of a genuine suitor, and his evening seduction attempts demonstrate the ambivalence of his position. Leonora Sansay’s Laura explores the ambiguity of such a well-intentioned suitor. This gothic novel concerns the relationship between the eponymous Laura, a lonely young woman who recently lost her mother, and Belfield, a medical student and younger son of a wealthy Philadelphian family. Belfield has genuine intentions to take care of and marry Laura, yet he performs similarly to other literary seducers. While he does not coerce Laura into an evening meeting, as Montraville or Sanford do, he attempts to convince her of his worthiness through nocturnal wooing. Although Belfield intends to marry Laura, he proves himself unfit to do so. Once Laura falls pregnant, Belfield, unable to afford marriage, desperately tries to find somewhere safe for Laura each night. Belfield eventually dies in a duel trying to defend Laura’s honor, leaving her destitute. Belfield’s actions turn him inadvertently into a seducer, not through any cruel streak but because he is literally not prepared for the American night: he has nowhere safe to house his soon-to-be wife and unborn child,

210  Sarah Cullen and although he promises marriage, he cannot deliver. Furthermore, he is unable to remove his ego from the equation. When Laura, with nowhere else to shelter, is discovered in a brothel at night and assumed to be a sex worker, he challenges the accuser to a duel. As a result, Belfield dies, leaving Laura, like Charlotte and Eliza, impoverished and pregnant. Breaking the mold of the tragic heroine, Laura does not die and instead becomes a mother and marries again. However, the conclusion stresses that she never again escaped from the depression alleviated in Belfield’s presence. In this way, the nightscape is crucial to revealing how male relatives are frequently to blame for the suffering of women in their care. This revelation is also the focus of William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy. The courtship between Harrington the younger and Harriot, the novel’s main storyline, ends in tragedy when it is revealed that they are half-siblings: sharing a father, Harriot was the result of a secret affair subsequently kept secret after the death of her mother in childbirth. Observing, as Elizabeth Barnes has, that a “father’s act of seduction” becomes the “catalyst and moral exemplum” for his children, “The Court of Vice,” a poem written by Harrington the younger, makes clear how the elder Harrington’s sins are revisited on his children.29 In it, he describes “a solemn night of state” in which all the vices are put on trial for their crimes. Seduction is the final vice addressed in the poem: ‘With thee, SEDUCTION! are ally’d ‘HORROUR, DESPAIR and SUICIDE. ‘YOU wound—but the devoted heart ‘Feels not alone—the poignant smart: ‘YOU wound—th’ electrick pain extends ‘To fathers, mothers, sisters, friends. ‘MURDER may yet delight in blood, ‘And deluge round the crimson flood; ‘But sure his merits rank above, ‘Who murders in the mask of love.’30 Seduction is seen as particularly dangerous because it is so hidden: it comes out of the night (often literally) from an individual who wears “the mask of love” and seems on the surface to have the best intentions for the victim. Unlike the other personified vices that describe themselves in the poem, seduction is unwilling to speak for itself. It remains unvoiced, a secret shame throughout the community, making it doubly dangerous because it remains hidden for many years. Were Harrington the elder or any of his confidantes to have disclosed the truth behind Harriot’s birth at any time over the sixteen years before she met her half-brother, the deaths of both his children could have been avoided. The Harrington household, which would be a “Great Good Place” in an ideal republic, is destroyed from the inside by a dark secret.

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  211 One of the later novels from this period demonstrates most clearly how the darkness of coverture destroys the early republic from the inside. In Kelroy (1812), Rebecca Rush expands on themes developed from the beginning of the period in question, illustrating how seduction functions in an underhanded way to achieve a coverture arrangement. In particular, Rush builds upon Hill Brown’s exploration of the systemic failings of coverture found in The Power of Sympathy, demonstrating just how insidious the use of the “mask of love” can be. Rush’s only extant (and possibly only) novel concerns the actions of Mrs. Hammond, a widow with two daughters who becomes destitute upon the death of her husband. Recognizing that the only way she can reclaim any wealth in a society that denies all women lucrative professions—and older women are unlikely to secure a husband—is to guarantee that her daughters marry into wealth, she borrows far beyond her means. Borrowing enables her to appear more financially stable than she really is, ensuring that her daughters socialize with the high class of Philadelphia society. She is successful in marrying her eldest daughter, Lucy, to a wealthy Englishman, but her second daughter, Emily, proves far more difficult when she falls in love with Kelroy, an American poet whose family wealth is tied up in a venture in India and whose fortune is far from certain. Determined to avoid an impoverished marriage and most likely take advantage of the rulings of coverture to ensure her family’s debts could be paid off by a wealthier son-in-law than Kelroy, Mrs. Hammond takes every opportunity available to keep Emily and Kelroy apart.31 In Kelroy, Mrs. Hammond proves to be one of the most conniving and well-hidden seducers found throughout the genre. As Steve Hamelman argues, Kelroy’s plot pivots on Mrs. Hammond’s compulsion to control all discourse. She rages whenever she has to tell the truth, whenever someone else’s insights undermine her power to control a discussion, and whenever someone threatens to expose her facade of wealth (arguing with a milliner about a bill, Mrs. Hammond is furious “to such a degree, that she with difficulty refrained from striking [the milliner]” [118]). Underlying Mrs. Hammond’s insane repertoire of guises is her conviction that she can or should attempt to control destiny by controlling all signs, text, and people within her domain.32 Mrs. Hammond does indeed attempt to “control all discourse,” and she does so by controlling Emily’s movements in the night. She is particularly careful to watch over Emily in the evenings to ensure that Kelroy cannot spend time with her when the Hammonds are entertaining guests. This requires her to change her habits and schedule. The reader learns that Mrs. Hammond’s “engagements which had hitherto seemed indispensable, were now relinquished, that her evenings might be devoted to

212  Sarah Cullen Emily…Kelroy was frequently there too; and she did not choose to risk the chance, which might, perhaps, render all further precautions fruitless.”33 What makes Mrs. Hammond such a considerable seducer is her personal stakes in the venture. Recognizing the dangers of seduction for women in poverty and depending wholly on her daughters’ success to ensure her own security, her ruthlessness is rooted (at least in part) in a desperate attempt to secure financial stability for her family. As Dana D. Nelson writes: it seems the attentive reader must…qualify her judgment of the mother. While we may finally deplore Mrs. Hammond’s secret manipulations and seeming disregard for the affections of her own daughter, we cannot overlook the social circumstances that so sharply define her self-interest by so harshly limiting her alternatives.34 Like the Vigilliuses from Story of Margaretta, Mrs. Hammond attempts to shield her daughter from the advances of suitors who she views as taking advantage of her, but in doing so, she abuses her position as protector. She is described as a “female Argus” who sits home “Night after night” in her dogged determination to prevent any activity between Emily and Kelroy.35 Mrs. Hammond becomes a seducer, not in the straightforward sense of Montraville or Sanford, but by guiding her daughter towards a chaotic conclusion. Mrs. Hammond takes on the role by manipulating Emily’s emotions towards a union with a suitor that ultimately ends in her death. She enacts many of the same deceptions seen throughout seduction novels. Unbeknownst to all, Mrs. Hammond conspires with Marney, the man who would ostensibly be the seducer in a typical seduction novel, to undermine Emily and Kelroy’s relationship. In a pivotal night scene, Mrs. Hammond assiduously organizes evening events so that Emily and Marney are left alone in the parlor after the rest of the guests have left. When Emily tries to leave the room, Marney “seized her hands” and threw “himself on his knees,” and it is at this moment that Kelroy arrives.36 While initially suspect about what he has observed, Kelroy is soon convinced of Emily’s innocence and chooses politeness to Marney over a violent response. Marney quickly storms off, and Kelroy leaves the next morning for India. This scene may initially have appeared to be an affirmation of the unshakable love between Kelroy and Emily. They have, after all, quickly overcome and countered the kind of nocturnal misunderstanding that leads to chaos in other narratives, from Charlotte Temple to Laura. However, this exchange ultimately helps to seal their fate. Mrs. Hammond uses Marney’s entitlement as a weapon to undermine their relationship. She recognizes that Marney is jealous of Kelroy and views himself as a spurned lover of Emily. She convinces him to hide Kelroy’s correspondence

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  213 and fabricate letters of response from Emily. Through the machinations of Mrs. Hammond and Marney, Kelroy demonstrates how the demands of coverture mean that women can become threats to other women, resulting in families conspiring against their own daughters. Mrs. Hammond becomes the incarnate form of seduction as described in The Power of Sympathy: she murders “in the mask of love.”37 Hamelman has demonstrated that her masks are crucial to her character: “what is more ‘real’ than Mrs. Hammond’s disguises? If her masks are all that most of her neighbors, her creditors, and her own daughters know about her, they must comprise her true essence.”38 Kelroy demonstrates that acts of love can never be wholly divorced from acts of seduction due to the influences of coverture. Mrs. Hammond appears to be performing a night watch, much like the Vigilliuses, keeping Emily safe from predatory men, even as she is steering Emily towards a much greater seduction. In comparison to Belfield or Harrington the younger, who genuinely love the woman they unintentionally seduce, Mrs. Hammond’s seduction is harder to parse. It is difficult to know to what degree her actions may be based on love or merely another mask. Either way, Mrs. Hammond’s actions are related to a maternal love that cannot be entirely divorced from her desire for personal gain. While her scheme may culminate in little more than spiteful revenge, it originated in a desire to see her daughter’s future safe and secure. It is no surprise that Davidson describes Kelroy as “one of the grimmest of early American novels and requires none of the blood and gore of Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798) to qualify as a horror story.”39 Kelroy is, in many ways, the thematic conclusion of the American seduction narrative. Individuals are unable to trust even those closest to them for risk of seduction. The results are uniformly bleak for all involved. After her mother’s sudden death, Emily discovers the hidden letters from Kelroy, and the shock kills her. Upon returning from India, Kelroy learns the truth behind Mrs. Hammond’s deception but, unable to live among the people and in the place that reminds him of Emily, he returns to sea and drowns in a storm. The bleakness of this ending is put into particularly stark contrast when, as Davidson has noted, Kelroy was published “one year after Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and prior to either Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Emma (1816).” While Rush and Austen both begin sharing similar preoccupations “with the relationships between love, marriage, and money,” Rush’s gothic ending of death and despair is far removed from Austen’s romantic conclusion.40 Due to the outbreak of war against Britain that same year, Rush’s novel received little attention. This is both unsurprising and ironic when considering the novel’s subject matter. America was once again at war with the paternal body it wished to disentangle itself from, yet its enduring tie to Britain, in the shape of coverture, would remain intact for another sixty years.

214  Sarah Cullen

Rambling about in the Dusk In 1828, Rowson’s sequel to Charlotte Temple, Lucy Temple, was published several years after her death. Although it is uncertain when Rowson wrote it, her biographer speculates that she wrote it late in life.41 Set in England, the text focuses on Charlotte Temple’s daughter and two other girls, all of whom have come under the guardianship of a village reverend, Mr. Matthews; hence the novel’s subtitle The Three Orphans. Lucy manages to prosper where her mother did not, avoiding seduction and living a long, happy life of personal fulfillment as a pioneering and unmarried schoolmistress. Like Charlotte, Lucy is courted; unlike her mother, however, it is by a man who does not wish to seduce her. Because this man turns out to be Montraville’s son—and hence her half-brother— Lucy’s narrative threatens a turn into despair and ostracism. But, unlike The Power of Sympathy, the half-siblings discover their familial connection before attempting to embark on any sexual union, thus preventing a tragic ending. In this way, Lucy Temple’s British setting can be read as a commentary on the continuing failure of the American night as a space in which women can flourish. Rowson’s heroine has had to turn to Britain to find space for safety and growth.42 Lucy Temple does not argue that England is an ideal space for women; rather, it is closer to being one. The novel begins with a reprimand to Lucy from Mr. Matthews, who warns that “my little Lucy must remember that she is now advancing towards womanhood, and that it is not always safe, nor perfectly proper, to be rambling about in the dusk of the evening without a companion.”43 While this initially may appear like the sequel’s response to how her mother might have avoided indignity and death, it can also be seen as a way in which the patriarchal systems governing America and Britain continue to fail women, as Desirée Henderson points out: Mr. Matthews is the embodiment of the affectionate patriarch and initially he appears to have solved the problem of the three girls’ orphanhood. However, Matthews demonstrates the failure of even the most benevolent exercise of patriarchal authority to protect daughters from the social illegitimacy of their gender.44 Mr. Matthews may wish to protect his female wards, like the Vigilliuses did, from the dangers of coverture, but proves unable to do so. Similarly, he may wish to prevent them from wandering in the British night, but he fails at this too. Two of his wards marry. Mary’s marriage is almost fatal: she is seduced by a man who abandons her in an isolated cottage and leaves her in the night. Aura, in comparison, marries successfully after encountering her future husband when walking alone on the grounds of the rectory one evening. The diametrically opposed experiences of Mary and Aura suggest that it is not being out in the evening that is dangerous to women but rather the conduct of the men they encounter.

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  215 As a result, Mr. Matthews’ careful nocturnal policing is not suitable for his wards. Instead, what is needed is to equip women with the education they require to navigate their way better: the very thing that Lucy dedicates her life to doing. Unlike Charlotte, Lucy is not rambling about in the dusk in order to meet with a suitor. Instead, she performs acts of philanthropy for her community, something she continues throughout her life, eventually setting up high-performing schools for girls. Lucy has, therefore, succeeded in uncoupling female education from nocturnal control. The school, built for “ameliorating the condition of the poor” through the “education of female children,” is taught by a staff of young women. Success is soon evident, as we learn: “several of the pupils are now married, and others are giving instruction in different parts of the country.”45 Here, Rowson illustrates that women’s narratives can exist outside of both seduction plots and marriage plot. This requires educating women without the unrealistic demands of nocturnal control. As a result, young women are empowered to take control of their own narratives, unlike Margaretta in Story of Margaretta, wherein the Vigilliuses do not entrust her to her own decisions.

Conclusion By broadening the view of the seduction novel to encompass the narratives of three women with vastly differing experiences, Lucy Temple extends the argument found throughout the texts of the period 1789– 1812. It is the night, both in England and by extension the colonies, rather than women, that must change in order to ensure personal and national betterment. Lucy Temple explicitly succeeds in doing what the other seduction novels can only imply, demonstrating that freedom for American women can be found in the nighttime if only they are given the required opportunities in the evening time. As a result, the authors of the seduction novels demonstrate that the American nightscape has intentionally been shaped by corrupt men intending to exploit and rape women. Women risk their lives in the American night not because it is inherently more dangerous for women than for men but because of systemic inequalities ensuring that women remain destitute and powerless under the control of ill-intentioned men. Using the evening to demonstrate the failures of coverture, these texts warn against parental surveillance and control and argue instead for education to ensure unmarried women can navigate their way in the new continent.

Notes 1 Several prominent seduction narratives, including Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette and William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, were based on real-life seduction cases. 2 Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) were looming presences on the American

216  Sarah Cullen literary landscape. The novels considered all struggle with a decidedly British form, along with the fallout of an English patriarchal system in a nation that was ostensibly attempting to repudiate its British roots. The American seduction narrative, therefore, has some distinct qualities that differentiate it from its British origins, all the while remaining within its influence. For further details, consult Ezra Tawil, “Seduction, Sentiment, and the Transatlantic Plain Style,” Early American Literature 51, no. 2 (2016): 255–295. 3 Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 27. 4 Ann Douglas, Introduction to Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple (New York: Penguin, 1991), xxxii. 5 Rowson, Charlotte Temple, 40. 6 Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 91–92. 7 Tim Stretton and Krita J. Kesselring, “Coverture and Continuity,” Introduction. Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2013), Loc 246–58. Kindle. 8 Ibid., Loc 241–53. 9 Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), 194–195. 10 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book I: Of the Rights of Persons, ed. David Lemmings (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016), 287. 11 Lolita Buckner Inniss, “(Un)Common Law and the Female Body,” British College Law Review 61, no. 9 (2020), 99. 12 Eva Cherniavsky, That Pale Mother Rising: Sentimental Discourses and the Imitation of Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995), 39. 13 Karen A. Weyler, “Marriage, Coverture, and the Companionate Ideal in The Coquette and Dorval,” Legacy 26, no. 1 (2009): 11–12. 14 Rowson, Charlotte Temple, 39. 15 Foster, The Coquette, 154. 16 Leonora Sansay, Laura, Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura, ed. by Michael L. Drexler (Peterborough: Broadview, 2008), 59–154. 17 William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy: Or, the Triumph of Nature, Founded in Truth. The Power of Sympathy and The Coquette, ed. Carla Mulford (London: Penguin, 1996), 44, 38. 18 Robert Lawson-Peebles, American Literature before 1880 (London: Pearson Longman, 2003), 160. Lawson-Peebles references Charlotte Temple, ed. Ann Douglas (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). 19 Rowson, Charlotte Temple, 15. 20 Judith Sargent Murray, Story of Margaretta: The Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995), 195–196. 21 Ibid., 223. 22 Ibid., 225. 23 Ibid., 239. 24 Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes,” The Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995), 3–14. 25 Charles Brockden Brown, Ormond; or The Secret Witness, ed. Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009). 26 Tabitha Tenney, Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon, ed. Jean Nienkamp and Andrea Collins, New ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.) 27 Katherine Binhammer, The Seduction Narrative in Britain, 1747–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 156.

Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic  217 8 Davidson, Revolution, 217. 2 29 Elizabeth Barnes, “Affecting Relations: Pedagogy, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Sympathy,” American Literary History 8, no. 4 (1996): 605–609. 30 Brown, The Power of Sympathy, 47. 31 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 285. 32 Steve Hamelman, “Aphasia in Rebecca Rush’s ‘Kelroy’,” South Atlantic Review 62, no. 2 (1997): 103. 33 Rebecca Rush, Kelroy: A Novel (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992), 48. 34 Dana D. Nelson, Introduction to Kelroy: A Novel (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992), xvii. 35 Rush, Kelroy, 48. 36 Ibid., 134. 37 Brown, The Power of Sympathy, 47. 38 Hamelman, “Aphasia in Rebecca Rush’s ‘Kelroy’,” 102. 39 Davidson, “Introduction” in Kelroy, v. 40 Ibid. 41 Patricia L. Parker, Susanna Rowson (Connecticut: Twayne, 1986), 98–100. 42 Douglas, Introduction to Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, xli. 43 Rowson, Lucy Temple; or, The Three Orphans (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 137. 44 Desirée Henderson, “Illegitimate Children and Bastard Sequels: The Case of Susanna Rowson’s Lucy Temple,” Legacy 24, no. 1 (2007): 9. 45 Rowson, Lucy Temple, 240, 262–263.

11 “Like a Night without Darkness” Music and Nightscape in the Early Piano Nocturne (1810–1830) Katelyn Clark

In April 1830, six months before leaving his native Poland for Vienna, Italy, and finally Paris, pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) wrote of day and night: How often I take night for day, and day for night; how often I live in my dreams, and sleep in the daytime;—worse than sleep, because I feel just the same; and instead of recuperating during that state of numbness, as one does in sleep, I get weaker and more tired than ever;1 Warsaw, 17 April 1830 Chopin’s poetic and vulnerable description of time and of night, addressed to his close friend and confidant Tytus Woyciechowski (1808– 1879), appears during a key period for the young pianist. As he was on the cusp of traveling to what would be his long-term place of residence from 1831—Paris—Chopin was at the height of absorbing much of the musical, environmental, and emotional material that would feed his rich and individualistic œuvre.2 Although he would not return to Poland during his lifetime, national character, traditional idioms, and longing memory dominated much of Chopin’s musical output. His experience of night as day and of day as night is especially poignant in this respect, as Chopin would go on to work in the specific atmospheric nightscape of his Parisian apartments, the space in which he wrote much of his composition during the 1830s. The composer preferred to create during the evening, as documented in the accounts and memories of his colleagues and friends. It was within this night-like space that Chopin’s work took shape from improvisatory form, his musical gatherings and imagined experiences combining memory with an adopted Parisian environment for inspiration. Chopin’s work fed on night-driven improvisation; experimentation and place for limitless musical thought were crucial parts of his artistic process. This place reflected a timeless and disassociated environment, a perpetual nightscape that can “remove any idea of limitation.”3 DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-14

“Like a Night without Darkness”  219 Nightscape, as a scene conveyed through artwork, exists as both a visual depiction and a heard representation. A nocturnal soundscape can include a rich mix of elements, including musical, environmental, and imagined sound. A piece of music inspired by night-driven sounds can use only part of one heard element as base material, or a mix of elements, the origins of which are rarely known. For instance, quoting a song heard during an evening performance, capturing the rhythmic drive of dance music, or evoking the stillness of moonlight are complex materials upon which a musician can draw. It is difficult to recapture and discuss such a process, as it is deeply personal, subjective, and ephemeral. However, the late Enlightenment saw the development of a type of solo piano work that is, even in title, a musical nightscape—the nocturne. Although it is not possible to re-experience many of the late Enlightenment’s sounds and musical activities with precision, considering elements around the piano nocturne provide indications of what the composer and pianist absorbed locally. The nocturne captures a personal encounter with night through a musical score that one can consider and perform repeatedly, opening a unique heard and felt window to the music’s time of writing. Retracing the piano nocturne within its late-Enlightenment night culture provides insight into this transient artistic character, a nightscape that is continuously re-imagined and experienced through performance and careful perception. The nocturne as a general musical genre—most simply described as a musical creation that happens at night—is malleable and holds traces of nocturnal experience, night as place, and imagined nightscape. Although Chopin was not the inventor of this specific musical form—the Irish-born and Russian-based pianist-composer John Field (1782–1837) wrote the earliest piano nocturnes—Chopin’s nocturnes are renowned among the most exquisite examples of the genre and remain a core part of the pianist’s repertoire. He charged his 21 piano nocturnes with a deeply personal nature, exceptional beauty, and limitless expressivity.4 The following essay explores early examples of these night-inspired piano works. Comparing elements of Chopin’s Op. 9 nocturnes (c.1829) to Field’s early publications (nocturnes H. 24, H. 25, composed c.1810) helps define the characteristics of the genre. In addition, discussion of Chopin’s microenvironments—his apartment-studio and the Parisian music venue Salons Pleyel—gives personal insight into his artistic practice and the places where he imagined and created early piano nocturnes. This is particularly useful for considering ways in which night sound and culture translate into musical form through artistic work and how the piano nocturne score holds both local nocturnal sound and the influence of musical culture in its pages. This exploration also points to ways in which the nocturne expanded from the late-Enlightenment base of miniature nightscape representation to the larger-scale Romantic piano works composed throughout the nineteenth century. The origin of the piano nocturne, the

220  Katelyn Clark rise of the piano and its night-driven public and private concert culture during the late Enlightenment, and historical commentary on Chopin’s life and process are considered. This exploration helps uncover the piano nocturne as a component of an Enlightened musical environment and attempts to recapture Chopin’s fleeting heard nightscape.

The Piano Nocturne The piano’s development and popularity strongly link to late-Enlightenment night culture in private homes and public concerts. In many ways, the sound of the piano is the sound of a developing middle class of listeners and artists, with the newly available keyboard instrument available to a much wider public than any earlier keyboards, such as the harpsichord or the clavichord. As an instrument of the Enlightenment, the piano underwent a fast and demanding period of growth during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with instrument construction reflecting the needs of renowned pianists and their students. Based on the late-seventeenth-century work of Florentine inventor and instrument builder Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), the piano became increasingly popular throughout western Europe and the British Isles over the course of the eighteenth century.5 Availability with local builders lowered costs associated with newly developed instruments, and fashionable makers such as John Broadwood & Sons (London), Sébastien Érard (Paris), and Pleyel et Cie. (Paris, the maker of Chopin’s preferred piano) competed for a highly demanding market of professionals and amateurs. This continued in the nineteenth century, with pianos growing in physical size and sensitivity of touch, allowing for ever-increasing levels of expressivity. The piano’s proponents, such as Chopin and Field, reflected these developments through the repertoire they created, such as the nocturne. Early piano nocturnes, such as John Field’s works from the first decades of the nineteenth century, are a type of miniature composition for solo piano, often only a few minutes long. The nocturne gained immense popularity with both professional and amateur musicians throughout Europe, Russia, and North America over the course of the nineteenth century, with Chopin and Field’s published scores circulating widely and many composers embracing the nocturne genre in new work. Unlike other musical forms popular at the end of the eighteenth century, such as multi-movement sonatas and concerti, the single-movement piano nocturnes were in many ways a liberation from the constraints of strict classical style. Instead of fitting within prescribed formulaic construction of thematic material or a set structure of presentation and planned development, as demanded by many classical musical forms, the nocturne is a type of musical fantasy as nightscape; it explores the piano’s evolving tonal capacity and is largely free of the formal expectation of melodic progress. A static harmonic structure with an extremely limited range of

“Like a Night without Darkness”  221 movement between key harmonies, such as a focus on the tonic chord and prolonged pedal points, gives the nocturne a peculiar and dreamy character. Virtuosic and improvisational passages of melody in the upper range of the piano and detailed and long-sustained pedaling (achieved with a raised damper pedal, discussed further below) emphasize a usual slow bass note progression.6 Repetitive broken chord accompaniment figures in the bass of the piano (left hand) emphasize the static harmonic nature. This type of foundation often pairs with a cantilena (or songlike) melody in the piano’s upper range, creating a palette for improvisatory and fantastic melodic development full of emotions. The dynamic character of the piano nocturne also defines the genre, although such description is almost impossible to classify. As a musical genre, the piano nocturne gains some definition through loose descriptions, musical examples, and related work composed during the final decades of the Enlightenment while transitioning to, and overlapping with, Romanticism. Music in Europe was going through a significant change during this period, with printed music and a growing concert scene increasing public consumption of the artform. Entertainment previously reserved for aristocracy became more easily accessible, particularly with the creation of concert halls for large general audiences and various ticketed events held for the benefit of individual musicians. For instance, in London, the largest center of music consumption in Europe during the late Enlightenment, public music events were available every night of the week, including opera, symphonic work, and chamber music.7 The popularity of the nocturne genre also coincided with the piano’s rapidly growing middle class of consumers. Effectively, night culture and music were deeply entwined in the nocturne output, and there was a public fascinated by this product. Despite the relatively short musical duration of these pieces, which grew and expanded through Chopin’s application of the genre, the nocturne had virtuosic elements that challenged an amateur’s skill set and pushed forward an emotional connection of player and score, encapsulating and expressing an idea of nightscape. The nocturne, with its characteristically mysterious nature, does not lend itself well to the limitations of strict musical classification and is consequently vague at times. Titles for the “nocturne” vary—“notturno” and “Nachstück” appear on title pages to publications and are often interchangeable as simply translations of the more standard “nocturne” descriptor. At times, nocturnes were also rebranded from one publication to the next. For example, John Field’s earliest nocturnes were rebranded “romances” by the German publisher Breitkopf and Härtel.8 The term “romance” is also vague and suggests a short lyrical piece. The lack of specificity and interchangeable titles adds to the piano nocturne’s elusive nature as nightscape, amplified further in accounts of genre. Descriptions of the genre associate the nocturne with “reveries of a soul,” “dreamy vagueness,” and simply “performed by night.”9 Nonetheless, Frédéric

222  Katelyn Clark Chopin and the earlier John Field piano nocturnes have a group of defining characteristics that are both technical and expressive and link one nocturne to the next in a night-inspired character. Chopin’s nocturnes brought his unique perspective to the genre, building and modifying the Field-style nocturne form into new work of the 1820s and 1830s. Field’s own numerous piano nocturnes—which are difficult to date precisely due to multiple layers of revision, with earliest examples published by 1810 by Dalmas in Russia—reflect the St. Petersburg and Moscow nightscapes in which he worked after leaving London in the early nineteenth century.10 Russia provided a remarkable location for developing music of nocturnal expression. Particularly notable is the high latitude of St. Petersburg that provides intense nocturnal variance with extreme darkness near the winter solstice and a lack of darkness near the summer solstice. In his essay on Field, pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886) recognized the impact of the northern environment on the piano nocturne and imagined Field’s experience in Russia as “night without darkness.”11 Similar to Liszt’s experience and, even if unacknowledged by the composer himself, the influence of Field’s Russian nightscape on Chopin’s early nocturnes represents a potential exchange of place and sound. Field captured his experience of Russian night within his work and Chopin re-experienced this place through the score and performance of Field’s nocturnes. Stylistic elements that define the Field nocturne clearly and deeply influenced Chopin’s own iterations of the nocturne genre, evident when comparing examples by the two composers.

Field’s Early Nocturnes and Chopin’s Op. 9 Trois Nocturnes pour le Pianoforte To understand and explore the features in specific piano nocturne examples is to understand night and its culture, as expressed through the musical language of these works. Song, dance, and environmental elements exist within the composition of these pieces, and considering their stylistic qualities gives evidence of the late-Enlightenment heard nightscape. It is not possible to pinpoint each individual moment of inspiration for a composer or each sound absorbed and imitated or developed in works, but it is possible to consider elements more generally. Field’s earliest ­nocturnes—H. 24 and H. 25—are prototypical for the nocturne genre and hold many night-themed characteristics associated with this type of piano work. Several features associated with the Field piano nocturne and the emotional outbursts that characterize the genre are present in H. 24. Published by Dalmas in St Petersburg in 1812, this nocturne in E-flat major, marked Molto moderato, has a simple form, a lack of modulation with drone-like qualities, highly developed and defined pedaling, and passages of improvisatory decoration that hold the character of cantilena (Figure 11.1). The second nocturne, H. 25 in C minor, also

“Like a Night without Darkness”  223

Figure 11.1 John Field, Premier Nocturne, H. 24, mm. 1–4. Figure set by author, based on John Field, Premier Nocturne pour le Pianoforte composé et dédié á Mademoiselle de Daunouroff (St. Petersburg: Dalmas, before 1812): 2.

Figure 11.2  John Field, Second Nocturne, H. 25, mm. 81–92. Figure set by author, based on John Field, Second Nocturne pour le Pianoforte composé et dédié à Mademoiselle de Chéamin (St. Petersburg: Dalmas, 1812): 4.

published by Dalmas in 1812, presents these characteristics with the added essence of a Russian folk song. Marked Moderato e molto espressivo, H. 25’s melodic treatment includes gentle moments of descending thirds with extended range and smooth leaps. An outstanding feature in this nocturne is the long passage of upper-note repetitions and leaps in the right hand, placed in the piano’s uppermost range (Figure 11.2). The effect created by this repetitive figure reflects an adaptation of the characteristically London-based compositional technique of playing within the high and un-dampened register of the piano, as found in Muzio Clementi

224  Katelyn Clark (1752–1832) and Joseph Haydn’s (1732–1809) grand sonatas. Field’s use of the piano’s register extremities pushes the instrument to its tonal limits and creates a broad sense of sound and resonance. Often compared to Field’s work, Chopin’s first three nocturnes (Op. 9, composed c.1829 and published in 1833) do indeed hold many characteristics adopted from the Russian-created nocturne model. Chopin biographer Maurycy Karasowski (1823–1892) discusses Op. 9, criticism for Chopin’s early work abroad, and the similarity of Chopin’s nocturnes to Field’s compositions: The three Nocturnes (Op. 9) are true Petrarchian sonnets, overflowing with grace, fairy-like charm, and captivating sweetness; they seem like whisperings, on a still summer night, under the balcony of the beloved one. Chopin writes: “I have the cognoscenti and the poetic natures on my side.” But the reviewers appear to have belonged to neither category, for the reception they gave to the nocturnes was to put their heads together and say, “he has stolen it from Field!” They even went so far as to assert that Chopin was a pupil of that composer, who was then living in St. Petersburg.12 Examining Op. 9 helps bring out these stylistic elements closely shared between the composers. The first nocturne of Op. 9 is a delicate Larghetto, set in B-flat minor. Opening with a downward statement from the melodic right hand, the nocturne’s gentle tempo of 6/4 creates a lilting effect, a pulse emphasized in the bass pattern that focuses on the tonic B-flat for much of the opening page (Figure 11.3). The bass provides a constant sense of movement with eighth notes throughout, the broken chordal

Figure 11.3 Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 9, no. 1, mm. 1–4. Figure set by author, based on Frédéric Chopin, 1er Nocturne from Trois Nocturnes pour le Pianoforte composés et dédiés à Madame Camille Pleyel (Paris: Schlesinger, 1833): 2.

“Like a Night without Darkness”  225

Figure 11.4 Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 9, no. 2, mm. 1–4. Figure set by author, based on Frédéric Chopin, 2d Nocturne from Trois Nocturnes pour le Pianoforte composés et dédiés à Madame Camille Pleyel (Paris: Schlesinger, 1833): 6.

pattern stable and phrased in two large groups per bar. Op. 9 no. 1 shares characteristics with Field’s nocturne in E-flat major, H. 24, such as its complex time signatures that divide into a larger duple pulse, an illusionary melody that demands perfect execution and careful attention to the unexpected flourishes and improvisational moments, and an ending that fades into the distance with soft dynamic and extended use of the damper pedal. Op. 9 no. 2, in 12/8 time and E-flat major, is an Andante. The frequent pedaling within the opening of the work is particularly notable and is unusual within the nocturne genre (Figure 11.4). A defining feature of the nocturne is the drone-like sustained harmonies that move very infrequently and envelope within a murky sustain, expanded through the use of the damper pedal. However, in this case, the change with each pulse creates a rhythmic motif within the pedaling itself, the pulsation emphasized by the foot with the dampers raised repeatedly. In terms of melodic treatment and general emotion evoked by Op. 9 no. 2 and its melancholy yet dance-like impression (as is also the case for Op. 2 no. 3), there is a strong similarity with Field’s nocturne in E-flat major, H. 24 (Figure 11.1). The melody suggests a fragment taken from a folk dance or song, the bass pattern divided in a manner that emphasizes four groups of three within each 12/8 measure. Like H. 24, the melody gradually opens to gestures of improvisatory runs and cadential figures, making the nocturne an interplay of wandering harmony and fanciful virtuosity. The ease with which motives change within the nocturne also demonstrates a technical similarity between Field and Chopin, both embracing a fluidity between figures and melodic treatment that is unusual and effortless.

226  Katelyn Clark In all these examples, elements of a dreamy night, dance, and song combine characteristically to create a nightscape—precise pedaling that utilizes the piano’s capacity for ambiguity or rhythmic precision, melodic treatment that hazily suggests folksong and aria, and bass patterns that move between a fluid landscape of sound and dance-like moments. In Chopin’s iterations of the nocturne genre, melodic treatment is reminiscent of Polish folk song that evokes gentle pulses and melody that extends with Chopin’s characteristic virtuosic heights. Although composers did not leave descriptions of specific inspiration behind each work, the nocturne provides a structure on which the listener can freshly imagine the early nineteenth-century musical experience. Taking cues from accounts of dream-filled landscape and the intimate apartment salons in which both Field and Chopin produced most of their work, the piano nocturne becomes a vehicle for the transmission of place and emotive conditions. Pianist Carl Czerny (1791–1857) stated that the piano nocturne “must be calculated to create an impression of a soft, fanciful, gracefully-romantic, or even passionate kind, but never of a harsh or strange [kind].”13 His comments point to the importance of emotional display through a nocturne performance and signal an affective style that is positively associated with night (softness, grace, passion, etc.). Czerny’s description is also typically imprecise since it would be difficult to imagine what a nocturne is meant to sound like through his account. In general, discussion of music’s sound is challenging for several reasons, including the ephemeral nature of sound, a lack of precise documentation or description, and the complexity of applying historical terminology to individual musical specimens. Although people as listeners become immersed in sound and music as part of their environment, a highly imaginative approach is required to ascertain what elements an individual work conveys. Czerny noted that the piano nocturne must be “calculated” to create a specific impression. An emphasis on intention is essential in the nocturne’s delicate character, which hinges on a dream-like state and sense of timelessness. A sense of endlessness also becomes a key defining characteristic of the piano nocturne, created by the repetitive nature of the bass register accompanying figures (often broken chords) and the static harmonic movement previously mentioned. A lack of harmonic movement coupled with constant rhythmic movement creates a feeling of moving in place that is both “soft” and “fanciful,” as noted by Czerny, certainly evocative of night-related experience.

Chopin’s Nightscape Czerny’s description is also reminiscent of night impressions captured by Karasowski, who noted that: Chopin generally improvised in the dark, frequently at night, as then the mind is undisturbed by outward impressions. Then he would

“Like a Night without Darkness”  227 bury himself in the [musical] theme heart and soul, and develop from it tone-pictures full of lofty inspiration and fairy-like poetry.14 This style of improvisation in the dark and during the night would lend itself effortlessly to the piano nocturne, improvisation progressing to a more formal and fixed version over time and with familiarity and experimentation. Although this was not unique to Chopin’s nocturne creation and was a tool used for his compositional process in general, considering specific moments of night lends well to uncovering some of the impetus behind Chopin’s night-themed work. It is rare to find documentation or particular reference to Chopin’s inspiration behind individual works; we do not know the subject or object that first inspired most of his compositions. Often, inference and conjecture help to piece together sources of inspiration behind his music. However, there are a handful of descriptions left that refer to people or specific “tone-picture,” to use Karasowki’s terminology. The concept of sound creating or capturing a specific experience of night exists in several of Chopin’s works with poetic moments expressed through the musical score. One such tone poem appears in Chopin’s writing dating from the time of his journey from Poland to France. Although not named a “nocturne,” Chopin himself described a nightscape as the desired vision for the second movement of his concerto Op. 11 (an Adagio in E major from the E minor concerto [1830]): “It is to give the impression of the eye resting on some much loved landscape which awakens pleasant recollections, such as a lovely spring moon-light night.”15 This description is wonderfully specific and useful for imagining the type of night experience that served as inspiration for the dreamy Adagio. A “much loved landscape” suggests a familiarity with place designed to transmit from composer to player (one and the same, in the case of the early performance of Chopin’s and his work) and to the listener. Chopin also noted his inspiration behind the Adagio as romantic longing for pianist Leopoldine Blahetka (1809–1885): “her of whom I dream every night. While thinking of this lovely being I compose the Adagio for my new Concerto.”16 Blahetka’s own work may have influenced Chopin, as she was a touring musician with a significant œuvre of her own compositions, including several piano nocturnes, such as 2 Nocturnes pour le Piano, Op. 46, published in Paris by Bernard Latte.17 Her Op. 46 piano nocturnes are virtuosic and evoke night culture with rhythmic dance-like references, passionate outbursts, and dreamy passages that wash over most of the piano’s range. One can certainly imagine an artistic exchange of some sort between the two pianists, at least to the extent that it triggered such an emotional and musical response from the young Chopin within his Adagio writing for Op. 11. The combination of emotional expression, landscape, and night illustrates how Chopin captured intimate motivation and a natural backdrop for his work. Similar nightly landscapes and

228  Katelyn Clark personal inclination certainly exist within his piano nocturnes even without such described specificity. Despite Chopin’s substantial contribution to the early nineteenth-century piano nocturne repertoire, it can be challenging to separate a general nocturne style from elements unique to Chopin’s own night-themed miniatures. As pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886) would later describe Chopin’s piano work at large: His [Chopin’s] Preludes, his Études, especially his Nocturnes, his Scherzos, and his Concertos; his shortest as well as his longest compositions, share a similar sensibility that is expressed to different degrees, modified and varied in a thousand ways, but always one and the same.18 This “similar sensibility” can be challenging to describe, but it is certainly present and noticeable to those familiar with Chopin’s body of piano work, which is all fanciful in style and created in the same night-evoked environment as his nocturnes. The pianist’s personality surrounds all his music, which magnifies distinct features of different genres, including preludes, scherzos, mazurkas, or nocturnes. As Jeffrey Kallberg noted in his discussion of rhetoric and genre in Chopin’s Nocturne in G minor, Op. 15 no. 3 (c.1830–1833), the composer had seemingly moved away from some of the stylistic devices that typify the nocturne genre in this work, such as broken eighth-note bass patterns and the return of thematic material.19 However, one can also argue that Chopin had, in fact, progressively moved deeper towards the nocturne genre’s most important primary expressive devices of the drone-like tonal centers and the dreamy evocation of night, present in Op. 15 as much as in his earlier nocturnes of Op. 9. These devices deepen in Chopin’s work as tools for the musical communication of his nighttime environment. Chopin’s experience of place—of night and of locale—is embedded within his work, the memory of senses and emotions or impression captured within a nocturne’s musical score as nightscape.20 His work during the night at his own apartment, song and dance elements heard during evening events, and conversations at musical salons represent complex experiences potentially embedded within his nocturnes.

The Musical Salon and a Circle of Colleagues Chopin’s relationship to musical and literary salons spans his artistic lifetime, from early experiences in Poland to venues during his travels and finally salons in Paris. Salon culture was an important meeting point for artists of the late Enlightenment and served as a fascinating place for marketing and developing musical work and professional connections. A particularly important venue for Chopin’s early work in Paris was the

“Like a Night without Darkness”  229 Salons Pleyel, located within the hotel Cromot du Bourg on rue Cadet. This venue functioned primarily as a showroom for Pleyel pianos, a place for clients to visit the instrument before purchase. The space had three rooms, including a central salon, and played host to a series of exclusive evening concert events during the 1820s and 1830s.21 These musical evenings featured many of the renowned pianists active at the time and served as a meeting point for artists. Chopin gave his debut Paris concert at Salons Pleyel in February 1832 and occasionally performed there as one of the only venues for his rare public appearances. His initial concert was presented with the patronage of renowned pianist Frédéric Kalkbrenner (1785–1849), a Pleyel family associate and an active proponent of the young Chopin’s work. Chopin played several large-scale works at the event, including his Op. 11 concerto, performing nocturnes and mazurkas as encores.22 The Pleyel salon offered the first contact many attending musicians had with Chopin’s work, such as his piano nocturnes, most likely drawn from the Op. 9 collection. Although musicians and scholars often view the nocturne form as initiated by Field and then continued directly by Chopin, it is more suitable to consider a pool of related pianists who embraced the Field-styled nocturne as a compositional tool. Chopin was a committed proponent of Pleyel et Cie. pianos and was closely linked to the Pleyel family throughout his career. His relationship with the Pleyel piano entwined with his personal connections from his time in Paris and reflected his own musical supporters and colleagues. The circle of pianists associated with the Pleyel salon also connects directly to the piano nocturne, many composing nocturnes themselves. For instance, Camille Pleyel (1788–1855) composed piano nocturnes and published his Nocturne à la Field, Op. 52 in 1830. Kalkbrenner also wrote and published numerous nocturnes for piano solo or with accompaniment, including Nocturne for piano and horn or cello, Op. 95 (1828) and solo piano Nocturne in A-flat major, Op. 129 (composition date unknown, published by 1837). Kalkbrenner’s use of the nocturne form from at least 1828 also shows that the pianist was working within the genre before a young Chopin had published his Op. 9 nocturnes. The proliferation of nocturnes during the 1820s and 1830s demonstrates the popularity of the genre and the larger influence of Field’s work on piano repertoire and on venues where this music circulated. Kalkbrenner’s influence as an early proponent and admirer of Chopin’s work is also meaningful, with associated place, instrument, and relationships connecting the two pianists.23 Kalkbrennner’s finest student, the virtuoso pianist Marie Moke (1811–1875), was married to Camille Pleyel. Significantly, it was Moke who received the published dedication of Chopin’s first three nocturnes, Op. 9, released in Paris by Maurice Schlesinger (1798–1871) in 1833. Although it is likely these works existed in improvisatory form much earlier, even predating Chopin’s arrival in Paris, the connection between composer and dedicatee speaks to a

230  Katelyn Clark relationship that helped define the work and its local market appeal and the night culture marketed to its audience. Notably, Kalkbrenner was also one of Blahetka’s teachers, the pianist who inspired the Adagio in Chopin’s concerto Op. 11, as discussed previously. Evidence of night themes, personal relationships, and inspiration taken from the venues where these relationships developed interlink in numerous ways and demonstrate the connection of night-themed work to place and evening work environments. Chopin’s association with the Salons Pleyel also connects to his relationship with Franz Liszt. The two pianists met during Chopin’s Paris debut at Salons Pleyel in 1832 and maintained an unsteady but significant friendship and professional relationship until Chopin’s death in 1849. Notably, Liszt describes his memory of visiting Chopin for an evening at his apartment at Chaussée d’Antin in Paris. As Chopin gave public performances quite rarely and was known to prefer playing in his apartment for small groups of friends, the night Liszt recollects provides valuable evidence of the specific nighttime environment in which Chopin best thrived. In this memory, Liszt brings Chopin’s apartment into focus as a locale in which sound and light appear to intermingle as dominant sensory experiences. One can understand the sense of limitlessness that dominates the living space and the vagueness fed from a lack of light: His apartment, invaded by surprise, was lit by only a few candles, grouped around one of those Pleyel pianos that he [Chopin] was particularly fond of due to their slightly veiled silvery sound and their easy touch…The room’s dark corners seemed to remove any idea of limitation, and set the space into the shadows...The light, concentrated around the piano, fell on the floor, gliding over the surface like a wave, and joining broken flashes from the fireplace…24 This description is of Chopin’s personal nightscape, the environment that he manicured to fit his expressive needs and the place where he improvised and composed his works, including his piano nocturnes. Removing any “idea of limitation,” setting a space “into the shadows,” and imagining a slightly “veiled” and “silvery” tone are all elements that fit into a piano nocturne genre definition perfectly, embracing and capturing endless darkness that conjures hazy memories of sound and place. A nightscape of dreamy memories, hypothetical landscapes, and inventive sounds contribute to create a musical fantasy for the sonic imaginary, such as the connection of Chopin’s nocturnes to images and desire. Supporting this type of connection, Liszt’s description of Chopin’s nocturnes in his book F. Chopin is poignant and fits within his larger understanding of other fantastical solo piano miniatures, such as preludes and impromptus. Written in collaboration with Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (1819–1887), F. Chopin’s text originally appeared in installments from

“Like a Night without Darkness”  231 February to August 1851 for “La France Musicale” and then compiled as a book for Escudier in 1852. F. Chopin is poetical to the extent that its use as a bibliographical tool becomes secondary to the images, emotions, and places evoked. In Liszt’s description, conjured visions focus on the immediacy of musical and emotional experience within Chopin’s musical style: Almost all of them [Chopin’s compositions] are filled with the same amorous vapor that hovers like an ambient fluid through his Preludes, his Nocturnes, his Impromptus, through which the phases of passion are retraced one by one: the charming allure of coquetry; insensible attachment caused by inclination; capricious adornment that draws out fantasy; the deadly depression of feeble joys born dying, mourning flowers, like black roses that sadden with each petal’s perfume, petals that fall from their frail stems with the slightest breath;25 As Chopin’s work progressed stylistically until his death in 1849, his use of the nocturne idiom developed and purposed to fit his seemingly limitless expressive needs. Pianist Hermann Scholtz (1845–1918) noted that “Chopin gives us his finest and most finished work in the smallest forms, such as the nocturnes, in which we see the real enthusiasm of his nature.”26 And as the nineteenth century progressed, the nocturne reflected the general growth of an artistic voice for pianists. Liszt’s publications of both Chopin and Field’s works circulated widely, his advocacy cultivating interest in the nocturne. Pianist-composer Clara Wieck (1819–1896, marriée Schumann) wrote a group of night-themed works in her Opus 6 for solo piano, published by Hofmeister in 1836. Opus 6 loosely groups together six miniatures under the title “Soirées Musicales,” an expression of the nineteenth-century musical salons that were popular in all major European centers, including London, Warsaw, Leipzig, Vienna, and Paris. Wieck’s collection for a musical soirée includes a toccatina, ballade, polonaise, two mazurkas, and a nocturne, referencing a handful of the musical forms popular for nighttime entertainment and related piano composition. Entitled “notturno”, her nocturne is in 6/8 and marked Andante con moto, with the left-hand broken accompanying figure opening the work and creating a palette for the melody to enter half through the third measure. Affective markings such as dolce, rubato stretto, calando e morendo, couple with detailed pedaling within this transparent but complete score. Both Field and Chopin’s work clearly influenced Wieck within the nocturne genre, but she further developed the form through her stylistic traits, such as her particular manner of adding grace notes and sudden dynamic contrast. Chopin’s friend and copyist Edward Wolff (1814–1880) also published nocturnes, including his Hommage à Chopin, Reverie-Nocturne, in 1852, which is dreamily reminiscent of both Field and Chopin’s nocturnes.

232  Katelyn Clark As an intimate and individualistic artistic tool, the piano nocturne continued to capture night-based experiences, conflating locale and emotion into a singular musical nightscape. The composers’ encounters and imaginings mix with local night environments now as then, transmitted through the score to reach the audience; as Liszt said of Chopin’s final nocturne, “like a shred of memory.”27 The piano nocturne scores signal various heard elements embraced by the composer, including the natural phenomena of night, familiar and popular dance and song, and close relationships as inspiration. Highly personal and characteristically mysterious and redolent, the early piano nocturne continues to hold the sound of an Enlightened nightscape.

Notes 1 Frédéric Chopin, Chopin’s Letters, trans. Ethel Lillian Voynich (New York: Dover, 1988), 86. 2 For a general overview of Chopin’s life and work, see Jim Samson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Chopin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Jim Samson, ed., Chopin Studies, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Jonathan Bellman and Halina Goldberg, eds., Chopin and His World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 3 Franz Liszt, F. Chopin (Paris: Escudier, 1852), 83. 4 Chopin’s piano nocturnes include: Op. 9 Three Nocturnes (c.1829–1832), Op. 15 Three Nocturnes (1830–1833), Op. 27 Two Nocturnes (1835–1836), Op. 32 Two Nocturnes (1836–1837), Op. 37 Two Nocturnes (1838–1840), Op. 48 Two Nocturnes (1840–1841), Op. 55 Two Nocturnes (1843–1844), Op. 62 Two Nocturnes (1846). 5 Musicological study has thoroughly documented the piano’s eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century development. See for instance Michael Cole, The Pianoforte in the Classical Era (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) and James Parakilas et al., Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 6 Also called a “sustain” pedal-foot lever that causes the damper pads to lift from the piano strings, allowing the strings to ring for a prolonged amount of time. 7 For detailed discussion of London concert life during the Enlightenment, see Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh, eds., Concert Life in EighteenthCentury Britain (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004). 8 In July 1815, Field received an offer to publish all his existing works through Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, which he quickly accepted on the condition that 18 months would lapse between the publication in Leipzig and any sales in Saint Petersburg. In the same year, the Breitkopf edition of Field’s first nocturnes appeared, renamed romances. See Nicholas Temperley, “John Field and the First Nocturne,” Music & Letters 56, no. 3–4 (1975): 335–340. 9 Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (13 August 1834), col. 543; Franz Liszt, Über John Field’s Nocturne von Franz Liszt (Hamburg, Leipzig: J. Schuberth, 1859); Carl Czerny, School of Practical Composition: Complete Treatise on the Composition of All Kinds of Music, Opus 600, trans. John Bishop (London: Robert Cocks, 1848), I:97–98. 10 Field’s complete list of piano nocturnes is contentious due to the numerous title changes and work revisions during his lifetime. Nocturnes include: H. 13

“Like a Night without Darkness”  233 in E major, H. 14 in A major, H. 24 in E-flat major (c.1810), H. 25 in C minor (c.1810), H. 26 in A-flat major (c.1810), H. 30 in E-flat major, H. 36 in A major (c.1815), H. 37 in B-flat major (c.1815), H. 40 in F major, H. 45 in C major, H. 46 in E minor (Hopkinson [H] numbers do not reflect a composition date order, which is currently unknown). For a comprehensive scholarship on Field’s life and work, see Patrick Piggott, The Life and Music of John Field, 1782–1837, Creator of the Nocturne (London: Faber, 1973) and Aleksandr Nikolayev, John Field, trans. Harold Cardello (New York: Musical Scope, 1973). 11 Liszt, Über John Field’s Nocturne, 13. 12 Moritz Karasowski, Frederic Chopin: His Life, Letters, and Works, vol. 1, trans. Emily Hill (London: William Reeves, 1879), 132. 13 Czerny, School of Practical Composition, I:97. He also notes that “construction of it [the piano nocturne] is nearly that of a short Andante in a Sonata.” 14 Karasowski, Chopin, 27. 15 Ibid., 113. 16 Ibid., 99. 17 Publication date currently unknown. 18 Liszt, F. Chopin, 148. 19 Jeffrey Kallberg, “The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin’s Nocturne in G minor,” 19th-Century Music 11, no. 3 (1988): 238–261. Op. 15 no. 3 is part of Chopin’s second set of nocturnes (1830–1833). 20 As Holly Watkins has discussed regarding nineteenth-century place and placelessness in Schubert, Schumann, and Vienna, music has the ability to carry a trace of the composer’s locale, an occurrence that can be considered in music from various analytical standpoints. Holly Watkins, “Music Ecologies of Place and Placelessness,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (2011): 404–408. 21 Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, “Chopin and Pleyel,” Early Music 29, no. 3 (August 2001): 388–396. 22 Chopin’s Salons Pleyel debut was postponed on 13 January 1832 and held on 26 February 1832. The concert program can be viewed on Grove Music Online: https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/ gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-8000001194 (accessed 21 December 2021). 23 Kalkbrenner’s work in Paris and association with Chopin and Pleyel have been well addressed in scholarship and historical record. See Antoine François Marmontel, Les pianistes célèbres: silhouettes et medallions (Paris: Bousrez, 1878, 2/1887), 106–115 and Paul Dekeyser, “Kalkbrenner, Frédéric,” Grove Music Online; accessed 22 December 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-0000014623. 24 Liszt, F. Chopin, 83. 25 Ibid., 63–64. 26 Karasowski, Chopin, 138. Scholtz was a Chopin expert and published a three-volume edition of Chopin’s works for Edition Peters in the late nineteenth century. 27 Liszt, F. Chopin, 190 (“Il ne laissa de manuscrits achevés qu’un dernier Nocturne et une Valse très courte, comme un lambeau de souvenir”).

12 The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape Factories, Mills, and Ironworks at Night Bridget M. Marshall

One of the key innovations of the Industrial Revolution was to extend the hours of work beyond daylit hours and into the evening or even through the entire night. Leading cotton mill innovator Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) operated his Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, England, on a twenty-four-hour schedule with two sets of workers on twelve-hour shifts so that the mill never had to stop. Some greeted this innovation with approbation at the prospect of what they considered a more productive schedule that would benefit workers’ wages as well as owners’ profits. For example, in his Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire (1783), William Bray notes that the twenty-four-hour system provided “great advantage to [Arkwright] and the neighborhood,” where now “everything wears the face of industry and chearfulness.”1 Others decried the inhumanity of the system, and outbreaks of “putrid fevers” (typhus) in the 1780s led to the condemnation of nightwork specifically as the cause.2 Some commentators had mixed reactions. John Byng, Viscount Torrington, visited the area near Arkwright’s mill in 1790 and declared that the mills, “when they are lighted up, on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful.”3 However, he also registered concern with the fact that “the mills never leave off working. Rocks, mills and water ‘in confusion hurled,’” suggesting that in addition to harming workers, such a schedule was a violation of nature.4 Literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century demonstrates deep concern for the changes wrought by industrialization, including damages to beautiful landscapes and to human workers; literary depictions often relied on Gothic imagery that portrayed workers as the victims of nefarious powers—both individual mill owners and the entire factory system. Descriptions of workers portrayed their emaciated and often pale, work-worn bodies in ways that echo depictions of vampires’ victims, and representations of mill owners repeatedly referred to them as vampires who drained workers of their lifeblood. The operation of mills late into the evening and even through the entire night only added fuel to concerns that something wicked was happening inside these new DOI: 10.4324/9781003079965-15

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  235 factories that lit up the night sky. Such fears are echoed in paintings of this period that illustrated scenes of mills, factories, and iron works, particularly those that depicted such industrial landscapes at night rather than by day. Many of these images point to both existing contemporary anxiety about industrial activity at night and provoke similar unease in the viewer. Joseph Wright’s Arkwright’s Cotton Mills by Night (c. 1782) depicts the cotton mill as an unnatural eruption within an otherwise pastoral moonlit scene. Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Coalbrookdale by Night (1801) provides a nighttime view of ironwork furnaces in Shropshire. The trend continued in later images such as Thomas Hornor’s Rolling Mills, Merthyr Tydfil (1817), which demonstrates how the night sky in Brynmawr was artificially lit by the flames of the iron furnaces, and Penry Williams’ Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night (1825), which portrays a South Wales ironworks as a frightening scene of shadowy figures and smoke. This chapter will explore literary and visual depictions of industrial endeavors at night that indicate deep concerns about night-work specifically and the Industrial Revolution more generally. First, it will show how examples of British fiction, poetry, and even legislation depicted nightwork as torturing workers, damaging not just their bodies, but also their morality. Such depictions evoked frightening images of crimes against workers and of purported sexual impropriety among workers. The chapter then turns to several British and American descriptions of industrial landscapes in fiction that focus specifically on nighttime visions of industry as unnatural, supernatural, and even uncanny. The second half of the chapter considers how the nighttime setting of iconic industrial landscape paintings of cotton and iron mills provoke anxiety about these unnatural and even dangerous interventions in an otherwise peaceful countryside. Both the literary and the visual depictions of industrial ventures at night represent extreme versions of popular concerns about worker safety and environmental damage that was increasingly common with the rise of industrialization, ultimately critiquing industrialization’s demand for working through the night, without regard for natural or human limits. For those living outside the immediate vicinity of new industrial ventures, the changes to the landscape and the scale of new industrial architecture were scarcely comprehensible. The existence of a substantial tourist industry specifically focused on visiting industrial sites—coal mines, cotton mills, and iron forges—attests to the novelty of such scenes.5 Swiss architect and textile factory owner Hans Caspar Escher commented upon a visit to Manchester in 1814: Unless one has seen it for oneself it is impossible to imagine how grand is the sight of a big cotton mill when a facade of 256 windows is lit as if the brightest sunshine were streaming through the windows.6

236  Bridget M. Marshall His feeling that it is “impossible to imagine” such scenes is notable, as such travelogues—in addition to literary depictions and artistic renderings—were essential to help people to imagine these entirely new buildings, landscapes, and ways of life in the new industrial order. Literary and visual depictions of the lighting up of mills contributed to the growing understanding of the true impacts of the Industrial Revolution. Early industrial buildings were designed with windows that maximized the amount of natural light that could be used. The artificial lighting of factories—first by candles and oil lamps and only later by gas and e­ lectricity— was a costly and even dangerous aspect of manufacturing. The earliest lighting technologies contributed to hazardous conditions in mills: fires could easily ignite by the open flame of a candle or oil lamp, and the conditions within mills, which were filled with highly flammable textile dust and machine oil, meant fires could spread with terrifying speed. Although artificial light could extend working hours beyond the natural daylight, night-work and the artificial light that it required raised even more concerns for the safety of these spaces and the workers who occupied them.

Lighting up the Mills in Literature Before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, most agricultural labor was typically done by daylight; however, night-work was not entirely new. Some farm workers periodically engaged in night-work, and among some trade workers—bakers, for example—it was relatively common. But even the earliest development of limited night-work was met with concern.7 Bread bakers in France declared in 1715 that because of their work schedule, “The night, a time of rest, is for us a time of torture,” emphasizing that night-work was not merely the same work at a different time of day, but that it was a particularly damaging kind of labor.8 As night-work became an important aspect of the rise of the Industrial Revolution— especially in the cotton and iron industries—there was an increasing concern for the safety of such work, which appeared to be even more dangerous when done at night. Legislation slowly attempted to eliminate night-work, which was seen as acutely damaging for children. The 1802 Heath and Morals of Apprentices Act protected children under the age of nine from night-work, and the 1831 Cotton Mill Act forbade night-work in the cotton industry for all under the age of twenty-one.9 But despite such legislative relief, historian Katrina Honeyman notes that “night working remained quite common well into the nineteenth century.”10 Numerous commentators objected to night-work by calling it unnatural and destructive, a social ill that needed to be stopped. The Poor Man’s Advocate decried night-work in a series of articles in 1832, declaring that mills that used night-work were “Midnight Robbers,” framing such labor practices in Gothic terms. In several installments, they insisted that the

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  237 mill owner who first initiated night-work in England “has sent scores of miserable wretches to an untimely grave by his horrid system of unceasing slavery,” and called him “the father of this stain upon British humanity.”11 This language makes clear that the working poor and their advocates understood night-work to be a death sentence, and effectively accused those manufacturers who demanded it of murder. A worker attested in The Poor Man’s Advocate that “working in the night had affected him so much, that he found his health declining very quickly, that he had begun to spit blood, that he could not stand it much longer.”12 Such testimonies demonstrate that workers themselves felt night-work put their health in peril, and their advocates agreed. Fredrich Engels claimed that night-work was more damaging to workers than daytime work, which he already thought was harmful for workers. He claimed that night-work caused “irritation of the whole nervous system, with general lassitude and enfeeblement of the entire frame,” and that it led to “temptation to drunkenness and unbridled sexual indulgence.”13 Engels emphasized that it was not only a health hazard but also, in fact, a moral hazard, asserting that a manufacturer informed him that under a nightwork system, “the number of illegitimate children born was doubled, and such general demoralization prevailed that he was obliged to give up night-work.”14 The dangers here—purportedly encouraging sexual relations among workers, or, even worse, between workers and overseers— were serious concerns among advocates for improving factory conditions, and show the ways that night-work was coded as sexually deviant, a danger not just to physical health but to the morality of the community. The 1831 Labour in Cotton Mills Act that banned night-work did so explicitly because of concern about sexual activity among workers; in introducing the ban on night-work, the text of the act explained it has of late become a Practice in Cotton Mills and Cotton Factories to employ a great Number of young Persons of both Sexes late at Night, and in many Instances all Night; and certain Regulations have become necessary to preserve the Health and Morals of such Persons.15 This language suggests that it is specifically the mingling of workers of both sexes “late at night” that is the cause for the introduction of these protective measures. While sexual activity among workers could just as easily happen during a daytime shift, these reports suggest that such behavior was far more likely during the nighttime hours, when, despite the introduction of lighting technology, darkness might provide some cover. Despite some claims to the contrary, night-work was not undertaken because of worker preferences; rather, it was a matter of industrial economics.16 Karl Marx argued that because mill and factory owners invested their money in physical assets like their buildings and machines, they felt that their capital was being wasted when those machines and facilities

238  Bridget M. Marshall were not actively producing products to be sold. Marx explained that when machines were not running, “their mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of capital.”17 Marx went on to emphasize that the capitalist’s sense that his machines and factories were losing money further demonstrated that the capitalist’s interest was entirely in profit whatever the cost to the workers. Marx warned that “[t]he prolongation of the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour.”18 His comparison of the mill owner to a vampire makes quite clear his position that the capitalist mill owner’s use of night-work was an evil perpetrated against workers, depicting the mill owners as vampires literally draining the blood of their worker-victims, with night-work only making them thirstier. While such imagery might seem to be fanciful in a work of non-fiction, such graphic metaphors were also common in poetry and fiction. Literary representations repeatedly depicted night-work as damaging to workers. Visionary poet William Blake was one of the earliest to protest how the Industrial Revolution’s innovations had harmed workers, specifically with regard to how the twenty-four-hour system blended night into day, leading to a sense of work as an eternal condition of workers’ lives. In his poem “Vala” (c. 1797) and again in “Jerusalem” (c. 1804–1810), he depicted exploited workers who saw no difference between day and night because they worked around the clock like machines: And, in their stead, intricate wheels, involved, wheel without wheel, To perplex youth in their outgoings, and bind the labourers Of day and night, the myriads of eternity, that they might file And polish brass and iron hour after hour, laborious work,19 It is as if working through the night made already repetitive physical labor even more mind-numbing, causing workers to lose track of time entirely. Frances Trollope’s novel The Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840) depicts night-work as a vicious form of labor, also emphasizing the violence it did to workers: even at dead of night the machinery was never stopped, and when one set of fainting children were dragged from the mules another set were dragged from the reeking beds they were about to occupy, in order to take their places.20 Trollope’s “fainting” children are “dragged” through the factory, suggesting the bodily damage endured by these young, exhausted, and completely unprotected workers. Trollope, who in her preface to the novel announced that she hoped to “drag into the light of day” the abuses experienced by

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  239 factory workers, emphasized the viciousness of night-work and the owners who demanded it.21 When a terrible fever spreads through the night-working mill that kills many children, the owners make sure that “all that died by day [were] buried by night.”22 Thus “night-work” was doubly dark: it was killing workers but also enabling the owners to keep such deaths a secret. But it seems it was not a well-kept secret in the real world since night-work repeatedly appears in fiction as a known terror of industrial labor. For instance, in Charlotte Tonna’s industrial novel Helen Fleetwood: A Tale of the Factories (1841), the workers discuss the case of a young woman who took on night-work at the factory and was dead within the year, contending that working conditions were far more dangerous at night, but also that this was common knowledge among workers.23 While these many descriptions emphasize the damage done to workers because of night-work, other literary depictions focused on the terror of the industrial landscape’s appearance at night. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Charles Dickens vividly laid out the horrors attending the industrial scene at night: But night-time in this dreadful spot!—night, when the smoke was changed to fire; when every chimney spirited up its flame; and places, that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red-hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws, and calling to one another with hoarse cries—night, when the noise of every stranger machine was aggravated by the darkness when the people near them looked wilder and more savage.24 As Dickens’ passage shows, night amplified what were already frightening conditions. The sights and sounds of the machinery all appeared more terrifying by night, with vivid fire and flames making machines seem demonic in the darkness. Further, the bodies of the workers appear to be that much “wilder and more savage” in the nighttime, when they ought to be resting, not continuing to work. A remarkably similar depiction appears in an American portrayal of industrial labor in Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron Mills” (1861), in which the narrator observes that by night one can see fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light.25 Like Dickens, Davis portrays night-work as a frightening scene that transforms workers into inhuman—ghastly and ghostly—figures. Within the story, one of Davis’s characters walking to the iron mills at night calls

240  Bridget M. Marshall them “summat devilish [something devilish] to look at by night,” and, indeed, the association with hell resonates with many literary and visual depictions of iron works at night.26 Iron mills were known for working through the night since the nature of the work required keeping fires burning in order to complete the melting and forming of the metal. Allowing a forge to cool so that workers could pause for rest meant taking considerable time to heat it back up to a working temperature. For mill owners, such a rest was a waste of time and capital, but it was the workers who paid the price, sacrificing their bodies and lives for the industrial “efficiency” of working through the night and without regard for natural human needs for rest nor nature’s limited daylight hours. In general, textile mills did not have the same impetus to continuous work schedules; however, some British textile mills operated on twenty- or twenty-four-hour systems, often due to the limitations of the waterpower available to them. Overnight work was far less common in U.S. textile mills, with most mills operating on single daily twelve- or fourteen-hour shifts. Although they typically did not work overnight, many U.S. mill operations still needed some “lighting up” for the evening hours of the day, especially in the winter months with shorter hours of daylight. In many towns, the beginning of the use of artificial light was tied to a specific date. In Lowell, Massachusetts, lighting up happened on 20 September, while “blowing out” occurred on 20 March. Both dates were cause for seasonal celebrations among operatives.27 Writing in The Stranger in Lowell (1845), John Greenleaf Whittier described viewing his first “lighting up” of the mills of Lowell from across the river, observing that suddenly gleams of light broke out from the black masses of masonry on the Lowell bank; at first feeble and scattered, flitting from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o’-wisps in a forest, or fire-flies in a summer’s night.28 Whittier’s description makes the lighting up of the building seem magical through his invocation of the folkloric ghostly will-o’-the-wisps or even natural with his comparison to fireflies; his language resonates with a brief passage in Hard Times (1854) in which Dickens’ narrator mentions “the lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces—or the travellers by express-train said so.”29 The notion that lit-up mills might be “fairy palaces” or somehow enchanted appeared in many descriptions but, as Dickens notes, such an impression was only for those who viewed the factory from a distance, and while they were moving quickly. Whittier, like Dickens’ express-train viewer, described how tier after tier of windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the river, from basement to roof, became chequered

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  241 with light, reflected with the star-beams from the still water beneath. With a little effort of fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated, into palaces, lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and fashion, moving in graceful dances.30 The scene he describes is a beautiful one, making the mills seem like festive palaces and the workers as upper-class socialites. However, despite his apparent admiration for the scene, Whittier was still critical of what such beauty meant. Later in the same essay, he called the schedule of the Lowell mills, under which they maintained an average of twelve-and-ahalf hours of work every day, “a serious evil, demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic.”31 Nighttime may have offered beautiful views, but workers and their advocates understood that such beauty came at a cost borne not by those who admired the mills from outside but by those who labored continuously inside the giant litup buildings.

Lighting up the Mills in Art In addition to fiction and non-fiction that depicted scenes of industrialization, paintings were an important means of making the new industrial landscape imaginable for a wider audience who did not have first-hand experience of these transformations. Numerous artists were involved in creating and reproducing such scenes. Among the best-known images of early factories is Arkwright’s Cotton Mills by Night (c. 1782), painted by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), often referred to as “Wright of Derby” (Figure 12.1). F.D. Klingender, in Art and the Industrial Revolution, calls Wright “the first professional painter to express the spirit of the industrial revolution.”32 Richard Arkwright’s mill was particularly notable at the time, and he earned considerable fame as an early innovator in the textile industry. His first mill at Cromford was in operation by 1771, and a second was under construction by 1776. Both were powered by large waterwheels and by 1777 Arkwright employed at least 750 workers in his two mills.33 His building and labor practices—including his twentyfour-hour system with two sets of workers—served as models for many other industrial ventures that both copied and improved his designs. In fact, his mills would be the subject of numerous paintings, and they would even appear on porcelain plates and cups produced by Derby Porcelain in 1790.34 Joseph Wright had painted Richard Arkwright’s portrait and at least one other view of the Arkwright mill operation by day, and Wright benefitted considerably from the patronage of industrialists, including Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), founder of the Wedgwood pottery empire. Given this background, we might anticipate that his view of Arkwright’s mill would offer a positive portrayal of the industrial

242  Bridget M. Marshall

Figure 12.1 Arkwright’s Cotton Mills, 1790s (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97). Private Collection / Photo © Philip Mould Ltd, London/Bridgeman Images

landscape’s beauty. Nonetheless, most observers acknowledge that a sense of gloom pervades the image. At the center of the canvas the black-roofed red-brick mill stands six stories tall, with rows of windows lit in bright yellow. The mill structure is nestled in the middle of the landscape, with hills behind it and to either side. Above, a white moon partially obscured by clouds lights the night sky. But the clouds in the lower part of the sky seem to be brighter than mere moonlight would create; indeed, it appears that the mill itself is lighting up the sky closest to it. In the foreground, the viewer can see shadowy figures of a man behind a horse drawing a cart. Both appear to be carrying heavy loads as they head towards the bridge over the Derwent River to the left of the mill building. The painting features a prominent contrast between the straight lines that make up the factory building compared to the organic lines of the trees, land, and clouds. It was, of course, not remarkable that the buildings were square in shape rather than round, but industrial-focused buildings were exceptionally regular in this regard. Spinning mills, for instance, were “multi-storied and rectangular, to optimize distribution of power via line-shafting.”35 These buildings, in their largeness and squareness, stuck out of landscapes and were an extraordinary contrast in the rural areas where they appeared.

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  243 Removed from the cityscape, with no other large buildings nearby, such mill buildings appeared out of place and discordant with their surroundings. Amplifying the dissonance of their size and squareness was the new source of artificial light. The Cromford mills and others of the period were lit by candles and oil lamps. After 1783, the Argand oil lamp significantly improved the efficiency and cost of lighting up industrial spaces, but it was not until 1805 that gaslight would be introduced to cotton mills.36 But whether lit by candles, lamps, or gas, these buildings were visibly signaling to those outside that something new was happening here and that workers and owners were defying nature’s limits, extracting work and profit through the night, when otherwise workers would be sleeping or engaging in private, personal life outside of industrial or market production. Many understood this as an assault on nature—both on workers’ bodies and on the land itself. John Fielden (1784–1849), a British industrialist and Radical Member of Parliament who had worked in his own father’s cotton mill when he was a child, wrote in The Curse of the Factory System (1836) that night-work meant that day-shift workers jumped into the same beds that night-shift workers had just slept in, and claimed: “It is a common tradition in Lancashire, that the beds never got cold!”37 His disdain for this practice—his exclamation points and ­italics—is evident even before he goes on to explain that in response to this system of night-work, Nature herself took in hand; she would not tolerate this; and accordingly she stepped forth with an ominous and awful warning: contagious malignant fevers broke out, and began to spread their ravages around; neighbourhoods became alarmed; correspondences appeared in the newspapers, and a feeling of general horror was excited when the atrocities committed in those remote glens became even partially known.38 Fielden and others believed that what was going on in the mills generally was problematic, but night-work was imbued with particular horrors that seemed to emphasize all the worst worries about industrialization. Of all the paintings of Arkwright’s mill operation, and of all of Wright’s own paintings, Arkwright’s Cromford Mill at Night is the most wellknown and most reproduced image. Ian West notes that by setting the mill within a scene of darkness, Wright created “a potent symbol of the factory-owner’s power over his environment.”39 Indeed, one can certainly read the image as depicting the dominance of industrial architecture and its artificial lighting over the natural landscape and the natural light of the moon. But the image also generates a sort of eeriness that may be less congratulatory of industrialization. Wright’s choice to make the scene a nightscape fits extraordinarily well with Ann Radcliffe’s consideration of

244  Bridget M. Marshall the role of darkness in the sublime. As she writes in “On the Supernatural in Poetry”: The strong light which shows the mountains of a landscape in all their greatness, and with all their rugged sharpness, gives them nothing of the interest with which a more gloomy tint would invest their grandeur; dignifying, though it softens, and magnifying, while it obscures.40 Radcliffe’s conception of the ability of a “gloomy tint” to convey the true grandeur of the scene helps support the idea that Wright’s clearly gloomy depiction likewise adds power to the industrial building. However, it may also be that the natural scenery encircling the mill might be a threat to it. As the trees grow, might they overtake the industrial venture? What threats lie in those woods and mountains? In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke argued that, “darkness is more productive of sublime ideas than light.”41 He contended that the sublime feelings generated by darkness were not merely anxieties stoked by superstitions or fears of ghouls, but by an association of a more general nature, an association which takes in all mankind, may make darkness terrible; for in utter darkness it is impossible to know in what degree of safety we stand; we are ignorant of the objects that surround us.42 In Wright’s painting—and in other industrial nightscapes—it is impossible to know what dangers surround the mill, while the mill itself may also be a danger. Despite the mill being lit up, the adjacent woods are dark, and there is a general sense of menace about what may happen just out of reach of the bright industrial lights. There is a suggestion of unknown danger everywhere in such nighttime scenes. Arkwright’s mill—and others like it—certainly spurred concerns about the industrial production of cotton and other textiles, but it was iron mills that were most frequently portrayed in ominous nighttime settings. Philip James de Loutherbourg’s (1740–1812) Coalbrookdale by Night (1801) depicts ironwork furnaces in Shropshire, specifically the Bedlam Furnaces that were incorporated by the Coalbrookdale Company in 1776 (Figure 12.2). De Loutherbourg’s painting pushes beyond Wright’s gloomy foreboding, depicting the industrial scene as a veritable hellscape. Coalbrookdale (sometimes spelled Colebrookdale) was an important location for innovation in ironworking and had a long history in the iron industry, with blast furnaces dating back as far as 1658. Like Arkwright’s mill, Coalbrookdale was also the site of tourism and was considered an important destination for visiting dignitaries and industrialists. In 1814,

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  245

Figure 12.2 Coalbrookdale by Night, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, 1801. Courtesy of World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.

a Prussian Factory Commissioner specifically noted the stunning appearance of the area at night, describing how Coalbrookdale was “dedicated to the service of Vulcan—particularly at night when the blast furnaces, the coke ovens, and the lime kilns light up the sky and the surrounding hills.”43 The fact that workers were engaged in industrial activity around the clock was impossible to ignore given the unnatural light that it created in an otherwise dark landscape. The Coalbrookdale area, particularly the iron bridge that opened in 1779, became a major tourist attraction and was the object of numerous sketches and paintings, including William Williams’ morning and afternoon views, painted in 1778.44 De Loutherbourg had previously painted several scenes of industrial subjects, including A View of a Blacklead Mine in Cumberland (1787) and The Slate Mine (1800), but both depicted industry by daylight. Coalbrookdale by Night is unique in the choice to specifically represent it at night. Like Wright of Derby, de Loutherbourg was known for his artistic skill in painting light and shadow, which he developed through his years of work to innovate lighting techniques in theatrical scene design. Coalbrookdale by Night was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801 and was reproduced in de Loutherbourg’s book The Romantic and Picturesque Scenery of England and Wales (1805). The scene of Coalbrookdale by Night evokes infernal fires or a hellscape. Like Wright’s image of Arkwright’s mill, in the foreground there is a horse-drawn cart. In this painting, two horses are being driven towards the viewer by a man with a raised stick. Another man sits in the cart,

246  Bridget M. Marshall gesturing towards the walking man, possibly encouraging him to hasten the pace. From the left, a woman and small child walk down the hill towards the scene. The human and animal figures are all dwarfed by not only the enormous ironworks in the background but also by the large pieces of machinery that appear in the foreground like litter. Stephen Daniels has identified the parts, noting “the cylinder and pipes in the right corner are parts of a steam-engine, those to the left are falanged like part of a water-wheel, those in the centre in front of the coke hearths look like cannon.”45 Each piece is larger than any individual human, and together they depict the range of industrial endeavors, from steam engines to waterwheels that would provide power for other industrial operations, and cannons that would contribute to England’s martial dominance. The humans appear small and insignificant compared to both the enormous products of the forges and the burning forges themselves. Smoke from those forges dominates the sky, and the entire scene is illuminated by the fires that rage in the center of the painting. Coalbrookdale and other industrial sites were popular tourist destinations; the descriptions tourists wrote following such visits were loaded with negative associations. British social observer and agricultural writer Arthur Young (1741–1820) traveled there and decried the variety of horrors art has spread at the bottom [of the valley]: the noise of the forges, mills, & c with all their vast machinery, the flames bursting from the furnaces with the burning of the coal and the smoak of the lime kilns.46 The language of “horrors” repeatedly appears in this and other tourists’ descriptions of industrial iron production. George Perry, a partner in an ironworks, wrote in 1758 that “the noise of the Machines, and the roaring of the Furnaces, are apt to occasion a kind of Horror in those who happen to arrive in a dark Night,” emphasizing that night specifically seems to be the time when such locales are most terrifying.47 Dramatist Charles Dibdin wrote in 1801 of the shocking sight of the area, proposing that If an atheist who had never heard of Coalbrookdale could be transported there in a dream, and left to awake at the mouth of one of those furnaces, surrounded on all sides by such a number of infernal objects, though he had been all his life the most profligate unbeliever that ever added blasphemy to incredulity, he would infallibly tremble at the last judgement that in imagination would appear to him.48 Dibdin essentially describes this scene as a hellscape filled with powerful terrors, even for the atheist who might not otherwise imagine or fear hell. Such a depiction was more than merely an evocation of terrifying scenes

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  247 of biblical punishment for those who were already believers, but a powerful image that would shock anyone, of any belief system, with horror and fear. Several other paintings of ironworks at night echo de Loutherbourg’s painting, emphasizing the shocking contrast between the night scene and the artificial light of the ironworks. Both Thomas Hornor’s Rolling Mills, Merthyr Tydfil (1817) and Penry Williams’ Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night (1825) portrayed Welsh ironworks at night. On the back of a print of Rolling Mills, Hornor wrote: At night the view of the town is strikingly singular. Numbers of furnaces and truly volcanic accumulations of blazing cinders illuminate the vale, which combining with the incessant roar of the blasts, the clangour of ponderous hammers, the whirl of wheels, and the scarcely human aspect of the tall gaunt workmen seem to realise without too much aid from fancy many of our early fears.49 Hornor’s image and his notes about it help us understand the shock that such scenes gave to viewers, as well as how industrial settings seemed to transmute human workers into something otherworldly. Such transformations of the landscape and workers were terrifying; they convey the intensive changes that workers experienced with the rise of industrial production. His mention of “early fears” may well reference childhood fears of hell, but it may also refer to “early fears” of industrialization, marked by many writers, artists, workers, and activists before him, who warned of the dangers of unchecked industrial development.

The Dark Industrial Revolution: Night Scenes Some recent historical work has sought to challenge the notion of the “dark Industrial Revolution,” and indeed many historians question the entire term “Industrial Revolution.”50 It is undoubtedly true that many workers had positive experiences of industrial labor and that there were many benefits to a variety of constituents. Furthermore, research has shown that the Industrial Revolution did not happen all at once but rather was diffuse and diverse as it affected different industries and different locations in unique and patchwork ways.51 Despite this, throughout lateeighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and art, there are clearly consistent concerns about the role of industrialization, which often proceeded under cover of darkness, creating fear and anxiety. There were many fears—many of them justified—about the damages that industrial production caused workers and the environment, and the fact that such activity continued through the night only heightened concerns about, and, in some cases, the actual dangers of, industrial labor. The choice to depict an industrial landscape by night also emphasized the new and changing importance of time itself. Agricultural labor was undoubtedly physical

248  Bridget M. Marshall demanding, but it generally followed the natural rhythms of the seasons, including the shifting length of daylit hours. Yet under industrial systems, there were new and often punishing expectations of working hours that ignored the limitations of nature and of human bodies. In Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914, Katrina Honeyman argues that “all available evidence about conditions of work for factory apprentices indicates a gruelling timetable,” which included standard fourteen-hour days, including work on Saturdays and often Sundays, as well as overtime.52 The workers’ long hours damaged their bodies and severely constrained their ability to have a life of any sort outside of work. Monotonous hours of physical labor demanded an outsized proportion of workers’ wellbeing and time, leaving life out of balance for workers, their families, and society at large. While daylit landscapes might in some ways naturalize the appearance of industrial buildings, painting them as in harmony with the natural world, nightscapes could not help but highlight the very unnatural presence of these hulking, glowing, angular objects in the natural world. These paintings, along with travelogues, fiction, and non-fiction writing, contributed to a growing sense of the massive changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. The observable signs of industrialization became more and more visible to the world as factories and mills grew larger and multiplied across the globe and as more workers were drawn to industrial labor to expand that growth further. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary and visual depictions of these new industrial ventures provide insight into the misgivings many had about the safety and wisdom of the new industrial order.

Notes 1 William Bray, Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire: Including Part of Buckingham, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, Northampton, Bedford and Hertford-Shires (London: B. White, 1783), 119. 2 See a history of these accusations in “The Putrid Fever at Robert Peel’s Radcliffe Mill,” Notes & Queries 203 (January 1958): 26–35. 3 John Byng, The Torrington Diaries; a Selection from the Tours of the Hon. John Byng (Later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the Years 1781 and 1794 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954), 252. 4 Ibid., 251. 5 For an overview of the popularity of the “factory-tour-logue,” see Béatrice Laurent, “Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire,” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, no. 87 Printemps (June 1, 2018), accessed May 28, 2020, http:// journals.openedition.org/cve/3568. 6 W. O. Henderson, Industrial Britain under the Regency: The Diaries of Escher, Bodmer, May and de Gallois 1814–18 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 49. 7 See A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 174–184; as he describes, most of this ‘work’ was not formalized as in industry, but involved individuals or small groups engaging in productive labor for themselves, typically following their own

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  249 personal preferences, or at times dictated by seasonal schedules in the case of agricultural labor. Regarding bakers specifically, see Steven L. Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 227–228 and John Burnett, “The Baking Industry in the Nineteenth Century,” Business History 5, no. 2 (June 1963): 98–108, 101–102. 8 Quoted in Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris, 227. 9 The full title of the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 (42 Geo. III c. 73) was An Act for the Preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices and others, Employed in Cotton and Other Mills, and Cotton and Other Factories; it was commonly known as the Factory Act 1802. For more detailed analysis of the law and its impacts, see Joanna Innes, “Origins of the Factory Acts: The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, 1802,” in Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830, ed. Norma Landau (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 230–255. The Labour in Cotton Mills Act, 1831 (1 & 2 Will. IV, c. 39) was titled An Act to repeal the Laws relating to Apprentices and other Young Persons employed in Cotton Factories and Cotton Mills, and to make further Provisions in lieu thereof; it was also known as Hobhouse’s Act. 10 Katrina Honeyman, Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914 (London: Routledge, 2016), 73. 11 “A List of the ‘Midnight Robbers’ of the Repose of the Poor, by Working Factories in the Night,” The Poor Man’s Advocate, and People’s Library, no. 20 (March 31, 1832): 85. 12 “Correspondence. To the Editor of the Advocate,” The Poor Man’s Advocate, and People’s Library, no. 20 (June 2, 1832): 155–156, 155. 13 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892), 152. 14 Ibid. 15 The Labour in Cotton Mills Act, 1831, 1 & 2 Will. IV, c.39, S-II. 16 According to J. Augustus St. John, Journal of a Residence in Normandy (Edinburgh: Constable & Co., 1831), who wrote about his visit to France in 1829, lace-makers in Lions-sur-Mer, France, “prefer working all night” by the light of candles assisted by a glass that “throws a small stream of strong, pure, white light” that makes lace-making easier (24). Nonetheless, I have not found any accounts from workers themselves in any industry in which they indicate that they preferred night-work. In “A Day at the Nottingham LaceManufactories,” Knight’s Penny Magazine (March 1843): 113–120, the author asserts that it is the factory system, not the workers, that motivates the need for night-work: “the system on which the factory is conducted renders necessary a large amount of night-work. The machinery is kept at work for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, two complete sets of workpeople being engaged” (115). 17 Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1 (Champaign: Modern Barbarian Press, 2018), 175. 18 Ibid., 175. 19 See William Blake, Poetical Works (London: Chatto & Windus, 1906). This is the version of the lines as they appear in “Vala” (c. 1797) Stanza 670, page 132; a slightly different version of the same lines appears in “Jerusalem” (c. 1804–1810) stanza 20, page 383. 20 Frances Milton Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong: The Factory Boy (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), 212. 21 Ibid., iii. 22 Ibid., 214.

250  Bridget M. Marshall 23 Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, Helen Fleetwood (London: R. B. Seeley, 1841), 201. 24 Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1841), 242. 25 Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills; or, The Korl Woman, ed. Tillie Olsen Feminist Press reprint series, no. 1 (New York: Feminist Press, 1972), 19–20. 26 Ibid., 20. 27 The Boston Daily Bee of 21 March 1851 reported on the “Blowing-Out Ball at Lowell.” In Chris Wrigley, “Out and About in Cromford Mill, Lea Mills and the Lumsdale Valley,” Historian, no. 111 (September 2011): 26–31, Wrigley notes that Arkwright also marked candle-lighting in September with an annual celebratory parade and festival (27). 28 John Greenleaf Whittier, The Stranger in Lowell (Boston: Waite, Peirce and Co., 1845), 116. 29 Charles Dickens, Hard Times (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1854), 76. 30 Whittier, Stranger in Lowell, 116–117. 31 Ibid., 117. 32 Francis Donald Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 51. 33 Wrigley, “Out and About,” 27. 34 See “Plate, bone china, by Derby Porcelain Works, England, c. 1790,” Object Number 2005/200/15 Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, accessed August 4, 2020, https://ma.as/319454. 35 Ian West, “Industrializing Light: The Development and Deployment of Artificial Lighting in Early Factories,” in The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology, eds. Costas Papadopoulos and Holley Moyes (Oxford University Press, 2017), 2, accessed August 3, 2020, https://www.oxfordhandbooks. com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198788218.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198788218e-23. 36 Ibid., 5. West has shown that by 1834, a majority of mills in England were lit by gas. He also notes that prior to the development of public gas works, factories would have their own gas works to power their lighting (9–10). 37 John Fielden, The Curse of the Factory System (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1836), 6, emphasis in original. 38 Ibid., 6. 39 West, “Industrializing Light,” 13. 40 Ann Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” The New Monthly Magazine 16, no. 1 (January 1826): 145–152, 147. The essay was published posthumously. 41 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 5th ed. (London: J, Dodsley, 1767), 145. 42 Ibid., 273–274. 43 “Report on a Journey to England by Factory Commissioner J. G. May in 1814,” in Industrial Britain under the Regency: The Diaries of Escher, Bodmer, May and de Gallois 1814–18, ed. W. O. Henderson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 152. 44 On other artists’ renderings of Coalbrookdale and the bridge, see Francis Donald Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 86–92. See also Stephen Daniels, “Loutherbourg’s Chemical Theatre: Coalbrookdale by Night,” in Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on British Art, 1700–1850, ed. John Barrell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 195–230, 215. 45 Ibid., 207.

The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape  251 46 Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture, and Other Useful Arts, Volume IV (London: Printed for the Editor, 1785), 168. 47 George Perry, “A Description of Coalbrookdale in the County of Salop, with Two Perspective Views Thereof,” in The Most Extraordinary District in the World: Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale: An Anthology of Visitors’ Impressions of Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and the Shropshire Coalfield, ed. Barrie Stuart Trinder (London: Phillimore, 1977), 16–19, 19. 48 Quoted in Sharon Setzer, “‘Pond’rous Engines’ in ‘Outraged Groves’: The Environmental Argument of Anna Seward’s ‘Colebrook Dale’,” European Romantic Review 18, no. 1 (January 2007): 69–82, 72. 49 Quoted in Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution, 132. 50 See Emma Griffin, Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), which proposes a far more positive experience of the Industrial Revolution. Regarding the contesting of the concept of the “Industrial Revolution,” see Keith Tribe, “‘Industrialisation’ as a Historical Category,” in Genealogies of Capitalism (London: Macmillan, 1981), 101–120. 51 On the variety of modes of production in England, see Elaine Freedgood, Factory Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1–4. For discussion of the variations in home- and industrial-based textile production in the early U.S., see Marla Miller, Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and Landscapes of Change in Rural Massachusetts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 108–111. 52 Honeyman, Childhood and Child Labour, 73.

Selected Bibliography

Adrien, Muriel. “Light and Shade in Wright of Derby’s Paintings.” In The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, 63–90. New York: AMS Press, 2010. Armengaud, Marc, Mattias Armengaud, and Alessandra Cianchetta. Nightscapes, Paisajes nocturnos. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2009. Baldwin, Peter C. In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820– 1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Baxandall, Michael. Shadows and Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Beaumont, Matthew. Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London. London: Verso Books, 2015. Bertrand, Dominique. “Introduction.” In Penser la nuit (XVe–XVIIe siècles), edited by Dominique Bertrand, 7–19. Paris: Champion, 2003. Bertucci, Paola. “Sparks in the Dark: The Attraction of Electricity in the Eighteenth Century.” Endeavour 31 (2007): 88–93. Bille, Mikkel and Tim Flohr Sørensen. “An Anthropology of Luminosity. The Agency of Light.” Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3 (2007): 263–284. Bizzocchi, Roberto. Cicisbei: Morale privata e identità nazionale in Italia. Venice: Editorial Latterza, 2008. Blayney, Andrew. Narrative of a Forced Journey through Spain and France as a Prisoner of War in the years 1810 to 1814. Vol. I. London: E. Kerby, Bookseller and Stationer, 1814. Blumenberg, Hans. “Light as a Metaphor for Truth.” In Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, edited by David Michael Levin, 30–86. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Bogard, Paul. The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in the Age of Artificial Light. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013. Bothereau, Benjamin. “Illuminated Publics: Representations of Street Lamps in Revolutionary France.” Technology and Culture 61, no. 4 (October 2020): 1045–1075. Bouman, Mark J. “Luxury and Control: The Urbanity of Street Lighting in Nineteenth-Century Cities.” Journal of Urban History 14, no. 1 (November 1987): 7–37. Briseño, Lillian and Daniel Pérez Zapico. “La invención de lo nocturno. Por una historia social y cultural de la noche en el mundo iberoamericano, siglos

Selected Bibliography  253 XVIII–XIX.” In Estudos em torno da Noite, edited by Rosa Maria Fina, 101– 121. Lisbon: CLEPUL, 2018. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature and Film. Translated by Elisabeth Bronfen and David Brenner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Brox, Jane. Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 4th ed. London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1764. Butler, Gerald J. “The Night Sky of the Enlightenment, William Herschel’s Disposition toward the Empirical, and ‘Profundity’.” In The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, 145–158. New York: AMS Press, 2010. Cabantous, Alain. Histoire de la nuit: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Fayard, 2009. Chisick, Harvey. Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2005. “Competition to Edison’s Lamp.” Lighting a Revolution. Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Accessed January 15, 2022. https://americanhistory. si.edu/lighting/19thcent/comp19.htm Conlin, Jonathan. “Big City, Bright Lights? Night Spaces in Paris and London, 1660–1820.” In La Sociabilité en France et en Grande-Bretagne au Siècle des Lumières. L’émergence d’un nouveau modèle de société. Vol. 3, Les espaces de sociabilité, edited by Valérie Capdeville and Éric Francalanza, 101–138. Paris: Editions Le Manuscrit, 2014. Czennia, Bärbel. “Night Skies Enlightened: Fireworks as Art, Science, Recreation and Collective Symbol.” In The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Serge Soupel, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, 29–63. New York: AMS Press, 2010. Daniels, Stephen. “Loutherbourg’s Chemical Theatre: Coalbrookdale by Night.” In Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on British Art, 1700–1850, edited by John Barrell, 195–230. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Darlow, Mark and Marion Lafouge. “Introduction.” In “Clair-obscur,” edited by Mark Darlow and Marion Lafouge. Special issue, Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 37, no. 4 (2014): 427–441. Dillon, Maureen. Artificial Sunshine: A Social History of Domestic Lighting. London: National Trust, 2002. Dowd, Maureen and Robert Hensey, eds. The Archaeology of Darkness. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016. Edensor, Tim. From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination, and Gloom. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. ———. “The Gloomy City.” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (February 2015): 422–438. Edwards, Nina. Darkness: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion Books, 2018. Ekirch, A. Roger. At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past. New York: Norton, 2005. ———. “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles.” The American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (2001): 343–386. ———. “The Modernization of Western Sleep: Or, Does Insomnia Have a History?” Past & Present 226, no. 1 (2015): 149–292.

254  Selected Bibliography Fairclough, Mary. Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740–1840. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017. Fina, Rosa Maria, ed. Estudios em torno da noite. Lisbon: CLEPUL, 2018. Fleming, John V. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. Fitter, Chris. “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre.” Early Modern Literary Studies 3.2 (September 1997): 2.1–61, https://extra.shu. ac.uk/emls/03-2/fittnoct.html. Galinier, Jacques, et al. “Anthropology of the Night: Cross-Disciplinary Investigations.” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (December 2010): 819–847. Ganofsky, Marine. Night in French Libertine Fiction. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2018. Gómez Castellanos, Irene. “De lo diurno a lo nocturno en la poesía de Meléndez Valdés.” eHumanista 22 (2012): 252–271. Gonlin, Nancy and April Nowell, eds. Archaeology of the Night: Life After Dark in the Ancient World. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018. Guerrero Fernández, Alberto. “Primeras luces de Madrid.” Manual formativo de ACTA 52 (2009): 21–27. Gwiazdzinski, L., M. Maggioli, and W. Straw, eds. “Géographies de la nuit / Geographies of the night / Geografie della notte.” Special issue, Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana Serie 14, 1, no. 2 (December 2018). ———. Night Studies: Regards croisés sur les nouveaux visages de la nuit. France: Elya Éditions, 2020. Halimi, Suzy, ed. La nuit dans l'Angleterre des Lumières. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009. Hamadeh, Shirine. The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Handley, Sasha. Sleep in Early Modern England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. ———. “Sociable Sleeping in Early Modern England, 1660–1760.” History 98, no. 329 (2013): 79–104. Hellman, Mimi. “Enchanted Night: Decoration, Sociability, and Visuality after Dark.” In Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Charissa Bremer-David, 91–113. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. İleri, Nurçin. “A Nocturnal History of Fin de Siècle Istanbul.” PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2015. Isenstadt, Sandy, Margaret Maile Petty, and Dietrich Neumann, eds. Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination. New York: Routledge, 2015. Ker, James. “Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of Lucubratio.” Classical Philology 99, no. 3 (2004): 209–242. Koslofsky, Craig. “Court Culture and Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Europe.” Journal of Urban History 28, no. 6 (2002): 743–768. ———. Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ———. “Princes of Darkness: The Night at Court, 1650–1750.” The Journal of Modern History 79 (2007): 235–273. Kyba, Christopher C. M., et.al. “Night Matters—Why the Interdisciplinary Field of “Night Studies” Is Needed.” Multidisciplinary Scientific Journal 3 (2020): 1–6.

Selected Bibliography  255 Lafon, Henri. “Nocturnes.” In Le Dix-huitième siècle, histoire, mémoire et rêve: mélanges offerts à Jean Goulemot, edited by Didier Masseau, 319–328. Paris: Champion, 2006. Liempt, Ilse van, Irina van Aalst, and Tim Schwanen. “Introduction: Geographies of the Urban Night.” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (February 2015): 1–15. Lousada, Maria Alexandre. Espaços de Sociabilidade em Lisboa: finais do século XVIII a 1834. Lisbon: University of Lisbon, 1995. Martín Gaite, Carmen. Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España. Madrid: Anagrama, 1987. Martínez Gomis, Mario. “La noche y los noctámbulos en el siglo XVIII español.” In Fiesta, juego y ocio en la historia: XIV Jornadas de Estudios Históricos, edited by Angel Vaca Lorenzo, 147–171. Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2003. Martland, Samuel J. “Progress Illuminating the World: Street Lighting in Santiago, Valparaiso and La Plata, 1840–90.” Urban History 29, no. 2 (2002): 223–238. McMahon, Darrin M. “Illuminating the Enlightenment: Public Lighting Practices in the Siècle des Lumières.” Past and Present, no. 240 (August 2018a): 119–159. ———. “Writing the History of Illumination in the Siècle des Lumières: Enlightenment Narratives of Light.” In Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality, edited by Anton M. Matytsin and Dan Edelstein, 103–127. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018b. Melbin, Murray. Night as Frontier: Colonizing the World After Dark. New York: Free Press, 1978a. ———. “Night as Frontier.” American Sociological Review 43, no. 1 (February 1978b): 3–22. Miller, Christopher R. The Invention of Evening: Perception and Time in Romantic Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Montandon, Alain. Dictionnaire Littéraire de la Nuit. Paris, H. Champion, 2013. Moritz, C. P. Travels in England in 1782. London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1886. Muchembled, Robert. “La Violence et la nuit sous l’Ancien Régime.” Ethnologie Française: Revue Trimestrielle de la Société d'Ethnologie Française 21, no. 3 (July–September 1991): 237–242. Muurling, Sanne and Marion Pluskota. “The Gendered Geography of Violence in Bolgna, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries.” In The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, edited by Deborah Simonton, 153–163. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Nye, David E. American Illuminations: Urban Lighting, 1800–1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018. ———. “Foreword.” In Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination, edited by Sandy Isenstadt, Margaret Maile Petty, and Dietrich Neumann, xix– xxi. New York: Routledge, 2015. O’Dea, William. The Social History of Lighting. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. Palmer, Bryan D. Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the History of Transgression. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.

256  Selected Bibliography Peake, Charles. Poetry of the Landscape and the Night. London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 1967. Purnell, Carolyn. The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses. New York: Norton, 2017. Reculin, Sophie. “‘Le règne de la nuit désormais va finir’. L’invention et la diffusion de l’éclairage public dans le royaume de France (1697–1789).” PhD diss., Université Charles-de Gaulle, 2017. Reichardt, Rolf. “Light against Darkness: The Visual Representations of a Central Enlightenment Concept.” Translated by Deborah Louise Cohen. Representations LXI (Winter 1998): 95–148. Robertson, Ritchie. The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790. United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 2020. Rodríguez Cachón, Irene. “Temas y motivos de los discursos en prosa de la Academia de Nocturnos de Valencia (1591–1594).” Edad de Oro 39 (2020): 159–176. Salatino, Kevin. Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Institute for the History of Arts and Humanities, 1997. Schnepel, Burkhard and Eyal Ben-Ari. “Introduction: ‘When Darkness Comes…’: Steps toward an Anthropology of the Night.” Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 51 (2005): 153–163. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Disenchanted Night. The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Schlör, Joaquim. Nights in the Big City: Berlin, Paris, London 1840–1930. London: Reaktion Books, 1998. Scoffern, John. “The Chemistry of Artificial Illumination.” In The Circle of the Sciences: A Series of Treatises on the Principles of the Sciences, with Their Application to Practical Pursuits. Vol. 7, 429–552. London: Richard Griffin & Co., 1860. Serres, Michel. The Five Senses. A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (I). Translated by Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley. London and New York: Continuum Books, 2008. Sgard, Jean. “La métaphore nocturne.” In Éclectisme et cohérence des Lumières: mélanges offerts à Jean Ehrard, edited by Jean-Louis Jam, 249–255. Paris: Nizet, 1992. Shaw, Robert. “Beyond Night-Time Economy: Affective Atmospheres of the Urban Night.” Geoforum 51, no. 1 (2014): 87–95. ———. The Nocturnal City. London: Routledge, 2018. Soupel, Serge, Kevin L. Cope, and Alexander Pettit, eds. The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century. Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2010. Steger, Brigitte and Lodewijk Brunt, eds. Night-Time and Sleep in Asia and the West: Exploring the Dark Side of Life. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Straw, Will, Luc Gwiazdzinski, and Marco Maggioli. “The Emerging Field of ‘Night Studies’: Steps toward a Genealogy.” In Night Studies. Regards croisés sur les nouveaux visages de la nuit, edited by Luc Gwiazdzinski, Marco Maggioli, and Will Straw, 1–26. Grenoble: Editions Elya, 2020.

Selected Bibliography  257 Taylor, Jonathan.“Georgian and Victorian Street Lighting.” www.buildingconservation. com. Accessed December 6, 2021. https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/ street-lighting/street-lighting.htm “Traveling at Night in the 18th Century.” Jane Austen’s World Blog, April 12, 2008. Accessed December 6, 2021. Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: The Inventors of the Modern World, 1730–1810. London: Faber and Faber, 2010. Valence, Hélène. Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890–1917. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. West, Ian. “Industrializing Light: The Development and Deployment of Artificial Lighting in Early Factories.” In The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology, edited by Costas Papadopoulos and Holley Moyes. Oxford University Press, 2017. Accessed August 3, 2020. Williams, Robert. “Night Spaces. Darkness, Deterritorialization, and Social Control.” Space and Culture 11, no 4 (November 2008): 514–532. Williams, Simon J. Sleep and Society: Sociological Ventures Into the Un(known). Milton Park, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2005. Wishnitzer, Avner. As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. ———. “Eyes in the Dark: Nightlife and Visual Regimes in Late Ottoman Istanbul.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37, no. 2 (2017): 245–261. ———. “Into the Dark: Power, Light and Nocturnal Life in 18th-Century Istanbul.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 3 (2014): 513–531. ———. “Kerosene Nights: Light and Enlightenment in Late Ottoman Jerusalem.” Past & Present 248, no. 1 (2020): 165–207. Wolf-Meyer, Matthew. The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Index

Pages followed by n refer to notes. Aalst, Irina van 92 Academia de nocturnos 7 Adrien, Muriel 71n28 American colonies 215 Antiquity 92, 99, 101–104, 113, 168n4 architecture 35, 56, 90, 155, 235, 243 Argand lamp 3, 243 Argand, François Ami 3–4, 243 Arkwright, Richard 234–235, 241–243, 245 artificial light 10, 180, 236, 243 Atkins, Stuart 89

Bouman, Mark J. 20n4 Bounieu, Michel-Honoré 160–161 Briseño, Lillian 13, 23n59 Bronfen, Elisabeth 21n20, 47n75, 92 brothel 32, 210 Brown, William Hill 200, 204, 210–211 Brox, Jane 195n28 Brunt, Lodewijk 22n36, 198n69 Burke, Edmund 21n21, 75, 78, 156, 170n26, 244 Butler, Gerald J. 70n27

Bach, Johann Christian 5 baker 236, 248, 248n7 Baldwin, Peter C. 20n11, 20n13 Baltimore 4, 20n11 Baudrillard, Jean 36 Baxandall, Michael 4 Beaumont, Matthew 22n31 bed/bedroom 8, 17, 41–42, 111, 140, 154, 159–160, 164, 169n17, 171n43, 178, 184–185, 190, 208 bedtime 8, 177 beeswax 180, 183–184 Ben-Ari, Eyal 22n34 Berlin 4, 8 Bertrand, Dominique 44n24 Bertucci, Paola 20n12 bi-phasic sleep see sleep Bille, Mikkel 20n7 Blake, William 13, 238 Blayney, Andrew 8 Blondel, Jacques François 5, 137 Blumenberg, Hans 19n3, 90–91 Bogard, Paul 23n41 Bothereau, Benjamin 23n56

Cabantous, Alain 10–11, 28, 139, 147n14, 169n18 Cadalso, José de 8, 77 candles 6, 17, 62, 139, 150, 154, 168n2, 171n43, 181–184, 187, 189, 194n21, 195n24, 230, 236, 243, 249n16 Caprichos see Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de Capperonnier, Claude 31 Caribbean 49 Catholic Church 83, 88n67, 122 caves 14, 48–61, 65–69, 70n15 chiaroscuro 6, 21n21, 28, 32, 36, 38, 90, 112, 121, 125, 156 Chisick, Harvey 19n3 chocolate 7, 119, 129n25, 139 Chopin, Frédéric 5, 18, 218–222, 224–231 çırağan see lamp parties circadian rhythms 1, 66 class (social) 4, 11–12, 17, 32, 128n11, 139, 145, 178, 199, 206, 209, 211, 220–221, 241

Index  259 Classical Walpurgis Night see Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Coalbrookdale 19, 235, 244–246, 250n44 coffeehouses 7, 179–180, 193n9 color 75, 84, 138–139, 151, 156 Conlin, Jonathan 20n9, 21n22, 22n31 Cope, Kevin L. 12–13, 48–72 cotton mills 19, 235–237, 241–244 court records 17, 191 coverture 18, 199–200, 202–208, 211, 213–215 Crébillon, Claude 14, 32, 40, 133 crime/criminal/criminality 2, 35, 58, 95, 101, 121, 134–135, 156, 161, 180, 210, 236 Czennia, Bärbel 147n23, 147n25 danger 1, 11, 13, 16–17, 27, 58, 61, 75, 85, 90–91, 93, 95, 97–102, 104, 135–136, 144–145, 156, 160, 164, 166, 168, 199–200, 204–208, 210, 212, 214–215, 235–237, 239, 244, 247 Daniels, Stephen 246 dark/darkness 1–9, 11–15, 17–18, 27–30, 32–33, 35–36, 38–39, 41–42, 48–62, 65, 67–69, 74–81, 84–85, 90–96, 100, 102, 104, 111–112, 117, 121, 125–126, 128, 133–136, 138, 146, 147n14, 150, 152, 155, 157, 162, 164, 167, 168n3, 177, 179–181, 183–186, 188–190, 192, 193n7, 195n26, 204, 207–208, 210–211, 222, 226–227, 230, 234, 237, 239, 243–247 Davis, Rebecca Harding 239 dawn 1, 58, 79, 81, 119, 122, 135, 158, 185, 188, 190 day/daylight/daytime 1–5, 8–11, 14, 18, 21n15, 30, 32, 35–36, 48, 50–52, 54–55, 58, 60–67, 69, 75–82, 84–65, 90–91, 100, 119, 121–122, 125, 128, 135, 139–142, 155, 158, 168n3, 169n15, 178– 181, 184–186, 188–191, 200–201, 204–205, 208, 218, 234–241, 243, 245, 248 daydreaming see dream Debucourt, Philibert-Louis 17, 167 deism 83, 86n9 Denon, Dominique Vivant 14, 29, 34, 36, 39

description 18, 51, 68, 84, 93, 137, 142, 161–162, 177, 218, 221, 226–227, 231, 234–235, 239–240, 246 descriptive poem 79 devil, the 15, 33, 89, 94, 97–98, 147n9, 191 Dickens, Charles 239–240 Dillion, Arthur 49 Dillon, Maureen 43n14 Dowd, Maureen 22n34 dream/dreaming 3, 15–16, 33, 35, 40–41, 109–110, 112–117, 119, 121–127, 130n38, 131–134, 139–136, 149, 157–158, 160, 162, 168, 218, 226–228, 230–231, 246 drinking 185–188, 190 Dublin 4, 177 Duclos, Antoine Jean 7 Duclos, Charles Pinot 32 duermevela 16, 110, 117, 120, 125–126 earthquakes 14, 48–49, 64–66, 69, 71n33 Ecuador 59–60, 65 Edensor, Tim 20n7, 91, 193n12 Edwards, Nina 20n7 Ekirch, A. Roger 10–11, 28, 178, 191 emotion/emotional 7, 52, 64, 66, 81, 89, 96, 117, 151, 156, 158, 170n26, 172n53, 189, 212, 218, 221–222, 225–228, 231–232 empiricism 49, 68, 73 England 5, 20n11, 67, 110, 171n35, 190, 206, 214–215, 234, 237, 245–246, 248, 251n51 engraving 16–17, 53, 55, 110, 128n1, 138, 150–154, 159–167 Enlightenment 1–6, 9, 12, 14–16, 18, 19n3, 21n20, 27–29, 32, 34, 36, 38–42, 48, 52, 54, 65, 68, 73, 79, 82–83, 89–98, 103–104, 109–110, 116–117, 125–127, 130n28, 133–134, 140, 144–146, 149n79, 156, 158, 219–222, 228, 232n7 entertainment 17, 40, 58, 132, 138–139, 177–178, 188, 190, 221, 231 evening 2, 7–8, 10–11, 17–18, 30, 34, 50, 60, 65, 78, 103 evil 16, 33, 36, 41, 104, 126, 133

260 Index Fairclough, Mary 20n12 fairy tales 3, 16, 28–29, 132, 141–142, 145–146 Faust I & II see Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von fear 6–7, 11, 13, 15–16, 27–34, 39, 41, 65, 76–78, 81–82, 85, 91, 99, 101–103, 121, 126, 133, 135–136, 138–140, 144, 147n14, 156, 199, 207, 235, 244, 246–247 Field, John 18, 219–226, 229, 231, 232n8, 232n10 Fina, Rosa Maria 13 fire 16–17, 49, 51, 55, 60–61, 68, 91, 103, 149n68, 150–169, 187, 236, 239–240, 245–246 fireworks 5, 13, 30, 136–138, 147n23, 147n24, 189 Fleming, John V. 4 Fitter, Chris 21n27 Foster, Hannah Webster 199, 201 Foucault, Michel 11 Fragonard, Jean-Honoré 5, 17, 157–160, 164, 166 France 16, 23n56, 28–29, 32, 42, 110, 227, 236 French Revolution 162, 164, 167 Galinier, Jacques 22n34, 193n7 Ganofsky, Marine 13–14, 133, 136 gardens 6, 13, 30, 35, 139, 142, 144, 204 gender 4, 9, 18, 21n15, 113, 145, 149n79, 178–179, 214 genre painting 150–151 geology 48–49 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 3, 15, 89–90, 92–94, 96, 99–104 Gómez Castellanos, Irene 21n27, 79, 85 Gonlin, Nancy 22n34 Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de 5, 15–16, 41, 109–127 Guerrero Fernández, Alberto 20n11 Gwiazdzinski, Luc 9, 92 Haydn, Joseph 5, 224 Halimi, Suzy 13 Handel, George Frederic 5, 13 Handley, Sasha 178, 196n47, 197n59, 198n66 Hellman, Mimi 7 Hensey, Robert 22n34 hearing 119, 179

hermits 14, 48, 58, 67–68, 71n41, 71n42 Hesiod 1, 100 history painting 50, 151, 155 Hogarth, William 5 Holmes, Richard 38, 42n2 home 6–7, 27, 33, 41, 102, 132, 134, 141, 164–165, 177, 179–180, 184, 205–206, 212, 220 hypnagogia 115, 117, 119–121, 123, 125–126 ̇ Ileri, Nurçin 195n37, 197n61 illumination 2–4, 6–11, 17, 19, 20n11, 28, 30, 59, 62, 91–94, 100, 103, 139, 190 illustration 14, 42, 51–52, 61, 66 imagination 10, 35–36, 39–40, 50–51, 55, 60, 89, 116, 123, 126, 132, 134, 136, 142, 156–158, 161, 187–188, 246 Industrial Revolution 19, 234–236, 238, 241, 247–248 invisible 38–39, 49, 68, 84, 160, 203 ironworks 235, 244, 246, 247 Isenstadt, Sandy 20n11 Istanbul 17, 177–181, 183, 185, 188–189, 191–192 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de 74, 79, 126 Kant, Immanuel 69, 75, 78 Kareem, Sarah Tindal 38, 42n2 Kaufmann, Walter 89, 95, 97 Koslofsky, Craig 10–11, 17, 28, 30, 139, 177, 190 Kyba, Christopher C. M. 22n36 labor see work/workers Labrousse, L. F. 17, 162–163 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de 14, 32, 133 lamp parties 17, 189–190 landscape 3–5, 19, 50, 61, 78, 91–92, 226–227, 230, 234–236, 239, 241–245, 247–248 lanterns 2–3, 11–12, 27, 32, 136, 138, 194n15 Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent 3 leisure 4, 9, 11, 17, 115, 119, 189, 191 Liempt, Ilse van 92 Lisbon 49

Index  261 libertine/libertine fiction 3, 13–14, 27–29, 40–42, 133, 136 London 8, 30, 56, 64, 180–181, 220–223, 231, 232n7 Loutherbourg, Philip James de 19, 235, 244–245, 247 love/lovers 30, 32, 35–36, 39–42, 73, 75, 77–81, 97, 132–134, 138, 140, 142, 145, 156–162, 167–168, 187–189, 206, 208, 210–213 luminescence 102 Lunar Society of Birmingham 7 Madrid 4, 20n11, 23n56, 73, 109, 128n2 Maggioli, Marco 9 marriage 18, 109, 133, 141–142, 145, 149n79, 200–204, 206–211, 213–215 Martínez Gomis, Mario 13 Martland, Samuel J. 13 marvels 16, 30, 34, 38, 40, 42, 80 Marx, Karl 237–238 McMahon, Darrin M. 20n5, 20n9, 23n56 Melbin, Murray 10–11, 92 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien 31 merchant 132, 135–136, 138, 152 Meléndez Valdés, Juan 14–15, 21n27, 73–85 Miller, Christopher R. 21n27 miracles 56 modern/modernity 2–4, 10–11, 13, 21n20, 30, 33, 38, 48, 62, 69, 80, 91–92, 99, 131–132, 143, 178– 180, 191–192 Montandon, Alain 172n47 moon/moonlight 7, 15, 29, 32, 35, 39, 62, 77–79, 81, 83–84, 102–103, 155, 180, 187, 189, 219, 227, 235, 243–244 Moritz, Karl Philip 8 Muchembled, Robert 46n67, 134 Murray, Judith Sargent 200, 202, 205, 206–208 music 12–13, 18, 82, 139, 187, 189, 218–222, 226–232 Muurling, Sanne 21n15 mythology 15, 98, 100 Naples 60 nature 33–34, 38, 40, 42, 57–59, 75–76, 79, 82–84, 152, 234, 243, 248

neighborhood 178–179, 188, 195n36, 234 Neiner, Johannes 8 neoclassical 54–56, 73, 77, 83, 113–114 Neumann, Dietrich 20n11 night walking 22n31, 147n19, 214, 239 nightscape 3–5, 14, 17–19, 27–29, 39, 41–42, 78, 85, 99, 133–136, 138, 141, 144, 146, 168, 199, 202, 210, 215, 218–222, 226–228, 230, 232, 244 nightlife 10, 41, 188–190, 206 Night Studies 9–10, 15, 19, 91–92 nineteenth century 10, 17–19, 51, 74, 114, 167, 178, 185, 195n36, 219–220, 222, 226, 231, 232n5, 233n20, 234, 236, 247–248 nocturnal revels 29–30, 32 nocturnalization 10–11, 13, 17, 30, 177, 190, 192 noise 27, 39, 53, 78, 119, 123, 136, 194n13, 239, 246 Nowell, April 22n34 Nye, David E. 4, 23n50 O’Dea, William 43n15 oil lamps 17, 168n2, 236, 243 order/disorder 1, 3, 8, 10–11, 14–15, 18, 57, 81–82, 89, 91, 96, 98, 126, 138, 154, 185, 236, 248 Ottoman Empire 3, 13, 17, 178, 185, 190–192, 198n67 palace 30, 32, 35, 51, 111, 138–141, 146, 177, 182–184, 188–191, 240–241 Pall Mall 4 Palmer, Bryan D. 10–11 Paris 3–4, 10, 18, 20n4, 30–32, 35, 136–137, 148n36, 152, 154, 218–220, 227–231 Peake, Charles 21n27 Pérez Zapico, Daniel 13, 23n59 performance 57–58, 181, 219, 222, 226–227, 230 Pettit, Alexander 12 Petty, Margaret Maile 20n11 phantasmata 16, 117, 119–120, 123, 125, 127 piano nocturne 3, 6, 18, 219–232 Pluskota, Marion 21n15

262 Index poetry 14, 17, 21n27, 70n27, 74, 78–79, 80, 83, 85, 186–190, 227, 235, 238 police 31, 185, 202, 204 poor, the 4, 10, 50, 164, 185, 215, 237 pre-industrial night 178–179 prostitution 30, 109, 120, 126, 157, 185 Purnell, Carolyn 20n6, 21n18 rape 18, 57, 138–139, 160, 199, 215 Reculin, Sophie 23n56, 194n23 reading 10, 160, 178 Rehder, Helmut 100 religion/religious 2, 33–34, 54, 63, 74, 83, 91, 151, 178–179, 185, 192 Reichardt, Rolf 91 Rennes 16, 151–154, 168n5, 168n6, 169n15 respectable 18, 177, 185, 207 Rétif, Nicolas 22n31, 31 réverbère 3 Reynolds, Joshua 6, 69 rich, the 4, 10, 139, 168n2, 187, 203 Robertson, Ritchie 21n18 Rodríguez Cachón, Irene 21n23 Romanticism 15, 74, 90, 151, 168, 221 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 29, 32, 162 Rowson, Susanna 18, 199–200, 202, 205–206, 209, 214–215 rural 4, 7, 33, 92, 95, 113, 178, 242 Rush, Rebecca 18, 200, 211, 213 Salatino, Kevin 147n24 Sammartini, Giovanni Battista 5 Schnepel, Burkhard 22n34 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 3, 10 Schlör, Joaquim 20n11 Schwanen Tim 92 Scoffern, John 195n28 security/insecurity 2–3, 11–12, 212 seduction 3, 18, 35–36, 39, 41, 172n47, 199–202, 204–215 seduction novel 3, 199–202, 204–215 Sempère, Emmanuelle 38, 40 senses 10, 18, 54, 69, 74, 80, 126, 140, 157–158, 160, 179, 228 Serres, Michel 10 settings 53, 57, 59, 78, 91, 244, 247 seventeenth century 5, 10, 30, 33, 39, 55, 134, 144–145, 169n18, 178, 183, 220

sexual/sexuality 18, 32, 112, 115, 120, 127, 132, 139, 144–145, 159–160, 162, 199, 203, 209, 214, 235, 237 Sgard, Jean 147n9 Shaw, Robert 9, 92 shadows 4, 31, 35–36, 38–41, 78–79, 97, 100, 112–113, 120, 134, 162, 230, 235, 242, 245 sight 14, 34, 51, 93, 158 sixteenth century 2, 7, 30 slave/slavery 187, 237 sleep 3, 7, 9, 11, 15–17, 29, 32–33, 35, 40, 58, 66, 68, 79, 97, 100, 110–117, 119–128, 132–134, 138–141, 143–144, 149n68, 152, 154, 157–158, 160, 177–179, 184–186, 191–192, 193n5, 196n47, 197n62, 198n67, 204, 218, 243 slumber see sleep sociability 6–7, 18, 21n22, 21n26, 178 Sørensen, Tim Flohr 20n7 sound 3, 54, 75–76, 179, 219–220, 222, 224, 226–227, 230, 232, 239 Soupel, Serge 12 Spain 4, 7–8, 20n11, 23n56, 73, 109, 128n2 Steele, Richard 8 Steger, Brigitte 22n36, 198n69 street lighting 2–5, 10–12, 17, 30, 32, 41, 136, 147n19, 179–180, 185, 190, 192 Straw, Will 9 sublime 6–7, 15, 21n21, 48, 60, 75–81, 83–85, 99, 156, 164, 166, 244 subterranean 14, 48, 51, 56–58, 60, 68 sunrise 17, 60, 62, 135 sunset 17, 30–31, 62, 177–180, 185, 188, 190, 196 superstition 32–33, 38, 53, 61, 109, 120, 125, 244 Taylor, Jonathan 20n11 tavern 6–7, 95, 179–180, 185–188 tax 11, 154, 185 technology 11, 17, 19, 92, 138, 144, 178, 237 theater 8, 57–59, 139, 142 Theogony see Hesiod Tonna, Charlotte 239

Index  263 travel 8, 14, 30, 32, 50–51, 61, 71n28, 102, 115, 137–138, 140, 177, 181, 201, 218, 229, 240, 246 travel literature 8, 236, 248 Trollope, Frances 238 Tubières, Anne Claude Philippe de 12 tulips/Tulip Era 17, 188–189 Uglow, Jenny 21n24 Ulloa, Antonio de 14, 59–60, 67 urban 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 29–30, 91–92, 113, 136, 147n19, 178–179 Valence, Hélène 92 Vernet, Claude-Joseph 5, 17, 155–156, 166 Villeneuve, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de 16, 132–134, 136–137, 139–140, 142, 144–146 violence 21n15, 82, 139, 147n11, 151, 169n17, 170n26, 239 vision 4, 9, 52, 69, 90, 93–95, 104, 115, 117, 125–126, 156, 227, 231, 235 volcanos 49, 60, 65, 67, 69 Voltaire 14, 28–29, 33–34, 36, 38–39

wakefulness 16, 115, 117, 119, 121–123, 125–126, 128, 129n21, 178 Walpurgis Night see Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von watercolor 67, 154 West, Ian 243 Westall, William 14, 51–53, 55, 66 Whittier, John Greenleaf 240–241 Williams, Robert 9 Williams, Simon J. 193n5 wine 78, 86n3, 189 Wishnitzer, Avner 13, 17 Wolf-Meyer, Matthew 198n65 women 10, 28–29, 33, 110–113, 115, 119–122, 125–126, 131–133, 140, 144–146, 158–160, 179, 199–208, 210–215 work/workers 2, 4, 9–11, 19, 58, 62, 119, 132, 139, 180–181, 183, 185, 188, 210, 234–241, 243, 245, 247–248, 248n7 working class see poor, the Wright of Derby, Joseph 5, 19, 62–63, 71n28, 241–242, 245 Young, Edward 8, 13, 75–76, 78–81