Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature) [1 ed.] 036719676X, 9780367196769

Citation preview

Painting Words

Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno have brought together an international group of scholars around the idea of “painting words,” which they define as the pictorial ability of language to stir the reader’s imagination and the way illustrators have “read” literary works over the course of centuries. Many traditional comparative studies examine literature belonging to specific time periods or movements, far less frequently do they bridge visual culture with text. Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text aims to do just that. Beatriz González-Moreno is a tenured professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain where she teaches English literature. Fernando González-Moreno is a tenured professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain where he teaches Art History.

Painting Words Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text

Edited by Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando GonzálezMoreno to be identified as the authors 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. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: González-Moreno, Beatriz, (Professor of literature) editor. | González Moreno, Fernando, 1977– editor. Title: Painting words : aesthetics and the relationship between image and text / edited by Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno. Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Editors, Beatriz González Moreno and Fernando González Moreno have brought together an international group of scholars around the idea of “painting words,” which they define as the pictorial ability of language to stir the reader’s imagination and the way illustrators have “read” literary works over the course of centuries. Many traditional comparative studies examine literature belonging to specific time periods or movements, far less frequently do they bridge visual culture with text—Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text aims to do just that”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020005839 (print) | LCCN 2020005840 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367196769 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367506377 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429242601 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Visual literature—History and criticism. | Art and literature. Classification: LCC PN56.V54 P35 2020 (print) | LCC PN56.V54 (ebook) | DDC 809/.93357—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005839 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005840 ISBN: 978-0-367-19676-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-50637-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-24260-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction

vii ix 1

B E AT R I Z G O N Z ÁL E Z - MORE NO AND F E R N A N D O G ONZ ÁL E Z - MORE NO

PART I

Old Concepts in New Garments: Ut Pictura Poesis and Ekphrasis 1 Cervantes, Painter of Allegories of Folly, Love and Prudence

9

11

F E R N A N D O G ONZ ÁL E Z - MORE NO

2 The Presence of Ut Pictura Poesis in William Shakespeare’s and Miguel de Cervantes’ Works

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A L E J A N D R O JAQUE RO E S PARCI A

PART II

The Sister Arts in the English Long-Nineteenth Century

49

3 Embellishing the Poetic Text: Felicia Hemans and Female Aesthetic Education in the Nineteenth-Century British Annuals

51

B E AT R I Z G O N Z ÁL E Z - MORE NO

4 Emily Eden’s Representations of India Through Sketches and Letters: A Picturesque Female Travel Account of the Empire TA G I R E M G AL L E GO GARCÍ A

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vi

Contents

5 William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry: Wandering Into the Realms of the Visual Arts

79

M A C A R E N A RODRÍ GUE Z RODRÍ GUE Z

PART III

Intermedial Encounters in America 6 The Pictorial Richness of Poe’s Oeuvre

91 93

M A R G A R I TA RI GAL - ARAGÓN AND F E RNANDO G O N Z Á L E Z - MORE NO

7 The (Literary) Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction

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J O S É M A N U E L CORRE OS O- RODE NAS

8 Word Painter: Visual Tropes of Enlightenment in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn

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B A R B A R A K . ROBI NS

PART IV

Where the Future Lies: Transatlantic Interdisciplinarity 9 Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life: Blake, Shelley, and Byron in José Joaquín de Mora’s Meditaciones Poéticas (1826)

143

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J O S E LY N M . A L ME I DA AND S ARA ME DI NA CALZA D A

10 ‘Make Visible’: Paul Klee’s Dictum and Wallace Stevens and José Ángel Valente’s Essays on Poetry

161

S A N T I A G O R O DRÍ GUE Z GUE RRE RO- S T RACHAN

Index

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Illustrations

1.1 1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5

1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 3.1 3.2

Phaeton, anonymous woodcut (London: R. Knaplock, D. Midwinter, J. Tonson et al., 1719) Don Quichotte conduit par la Folie et Embrasé de l’amour extravaguant de Dulcinée sort de chez luy pour estre Chevalier Errant. Charles-Antoine Coypel (des.) and Louis Surugue père (eng.) (Paris: Chez Surugue, c. 1724) Frontispiece I. Antonio Carnicero (des.) and Fernando Selma (eng.) (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1780) Frontispiece I. Luis Paret y Alcázar (des.) and Juan Moreno Tejada (eng.) (Madrid: G. Sancha, 1798–99) Entrée de L´amour et de la Richesse aux Noces de Gamache. Charles-Antoine Coypel (des.) and Louise-Magdeleine Cochin Horthemels (eng.) (Paris: Surugue, c. 1724) Don Quichotte est delivré de sa folie par la Sagesse. Charles-Antoine Coypel (des.) and Charles-Nicolas Cochin père (eng.) (Paris: Chez Surugue, c. 1728–30) Frontispiece II. Pedro Arnal (des.) and Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla (eng.) (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1780) Dedicatory Headpiece. Jacob van der Schley (des. and eng.) (La Haie: Pierre de Hondt, 1746) Frontispiece. Francis Hayman (des.) and Charles Grignion (eng.) (London: A. Millar, 1755) Frontispiece. Samuel Wale (des.) and Rennoldson (eng.) (London: J. Cooke, 1774) Women at Evening Prayers in a Private Home. Henry Singleton (des.) and Charles Heath (eng.) (London: R. Ackermann, 1826) Presentation Plate. Henry Corbould (des.) and John William Cook (eng.) (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1829)

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14 16 18

20 22 24 26 27 29 55 58

viii Illustrations 3.3 4.1

4.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 9.1 9.2 9.3

The Mother and Child. William Brockedon (des.) and William Humphrey (eng.) (London, Printed for Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1825) The Raja of Putteealla on his State Elephant. From Portraits of the Princes & People of India, 1844, by Lowes Cato Dickinson, Emily Eden, J Dickinson & Son, Charles Hullmandel Title Page. Portraits of the Princes & People of India, 1844, by Lowes Cato Dickinson, Emily Eden, J. Dickinson & Son, Charles Hullmandel Eleonora, John Byam Shaw (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1909) Metzengerstein, Hermann Vogel (Paris: A. Quantin, 1884) Metzengerstein, Hans Fronius (München: Rütten and Loening Verlag, 1965) The Oval Portrait, Frederick Simpson Coburn (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902) “Targets Are Where You Find ’Em!” The Colonnade (March 27, 1943) “‘Now Why Waste all Your Energy Getting Physically Fit? You’ll Never Look Like a WAVE Anyhow’” The Colonnade (February 6, 1943) “‘Isn’t It Fortunate That Genevieve Has Completely Escaped That Boy-Crazy Stage?’” The Colonnade (May 2, 1945) Blake as he Appears in Mora’s Frontispiece La eternidad y el espacio El juicio

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71 72 98 105 106 107 115 117 118 147 151 155

Acknowledgments

We would like to begin by thanking Routledge, Jennifer Abbott and the rest of the editorial team for believing in this project and making it possible. Thank you for your guidance and patience throughout this long journey. We are also deeply grateful to both Patti Urbina and Kathy Radosta for their insightful comments and thorough revisions. Your encouraging messages were really appreciated! Special thanks to our colleague and friend, Margarita, now recovered after battling through a tough period. The book would not have been possible without our wonderful research group LyA (Literature and Art), whose unparalleled friendship and support is proof of the importance of interdisciplinarity and interdepartmentality. LyA is, nonetheless, a reality thanks to the University of Castilla-La Mancha. And for that, we are extremely grateful. Our work is also part of the R+D+I project “Edgar A. Poe Online. Text and Image” (HAR2015-64580-P; FEDER). In this sense, we are very much indebted to the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for funding our research during all these years. And thanks to our parents, to Pedro for being always there unconditionally and to our little fairy Paula.

Introduction Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno

During the last few decades, and because of the preeminence of the image in everyday life, the Romantic aesthetics of dialogue and communication amongst the different arts become more necessary than ever. In a globalized world, isolation and compartmentalization hinder us, whereas the Romantic idea of belonging urges us to look beyond and to build bridges. Bearing this Romantic spirit in mind, this book is intended to promote interdisciplinary studies and encourage further dialogue between art and literature. In this regard, we adhere to Praz’s words: “There is nothing . . . to discourage us from searching for a common link between the various arts.”1 As a result, we aim to offer an analysis of a wide variety of texts and images as an example of how, across both time and space, the mutual dependency of the arts has always proved to be inspirational. Accordingly, we are not just focusing on one specific country and period but several, offering the reader an inspiring overview of the literary and visual department both in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Traditional comparative studies mostly examine texts belonging to either different periods or cultures, but it is highly infrequent that they promote comparison between text and image, embracing not only interdisciplinarity but also transdisciplinarity. In general, we can assert that art history has carried the interdisciplinary gene almost since its birth; no artwork can be fully understood without the culture that has surrounded its genesis, including literature. In this regard, several pioneers should be quoted here, such as Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut pictura poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (1940, 1967) or Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (1947). Also, the methodology started by Aby Warburg and developed by Erwin Panofsky has emphasized the necessity of exploring the relationship between text and image – a path that has produced multiple and enriching results. We may recall here Panofsky’s Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), whose study of Titian’s Allegory of Prudence reminds us that any artwork “however delightful as a visual spectacle, must also be understood as carrying a more-than-visual meaning.”2 Within the field of English studies and because of the influence of cultural studies, boundaries amongst disciplines have been easily trespassed and recent studies have recovered the concept of ekphrasis, “an old and yet surprisingly familiar bird.”3 In

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this regard, a few names are to be acknowledged: Grant F. Scott’s The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts (1994); W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (1994); James A. W. Heffernan’s Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (2004); and Stephen Cheeke’s Writing for Art. The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis (2010). By chronologically discussing these authors, the reader can realize to what extent debating about art and literature has been a harsh and perilous journey. Scott put it that way when he braved into this new world: Everywhere in ekphrastic studies we encounter the language of subterfuge, of conspiracy, there is something taboo about moving across media, even as there is something profoundly liberating. When we become ekphrastics, we begin to act out what is forbidden and incestuous; we traverse borders with a strange hush, as if being pursued by a brigade of aesthetic police.4 Moving across media is not an easy task and trying to establish a dialogue between art and literature is incestuous. That is why the relationship amongst the different arts is perceived as paragonal and not sisterly. Reinforcing this aspect, Mitchell’s emphasis lies on the “conviction that the tensions between visual and verbal representations are inseparable from struggles in cultural politics and political culture.”5 And Heffernan adheres to this paragonal connection, to this “struggle for dominance between the image and the word.”6 In this regard, this book departs from the approaches mentioned earlier. We do not seek to elucidate this struggle or reinforce it but to focus on the sisterhood of the different arts under the general umbrella of aesthetics and the resulting enriching dialogue. In this sense, we get closer to Cheeke’s stance, framing the subject to the larger questions and connecting it to the category of the aesthetic.7 One need just remember that aesthetics has to do with feelings and emotions and, ultimately, this is what both art and literature try to stir: “Aesthetics is to be understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the qualities of feeling.”8 Thus, to avoid getting lost in a myriad of definitions and losing the reader in the process, we follow Heffernan’s simple but meaningful definition of ekphrasis: “The verbal representation of visual representation.”9 In the end, it is not about art or English studies; it is not about compartmentalization but finding a common ground based on association, the Romantic Wordsworthian “inward eye.”10 Be it writers, be it painters, they both try to make us see, to conjure an image in our minds which, eventually, is mediated and recreated by the imagination. Here resonate Joseph Conrad’s words, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel – it is, before all, to make you see.”11 Thus, interdisciplinarity shakes hands with inter-art studies in order to make us look beyond and awake our curiosity. Not in vain, curiosity is a central concept in aesthetics, “The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or

Introduction 3 whatever pleasure we take in novelty.”12 Moved by curiosity, we confront the world; we confront ourselves. In their book, Art as Therapy (2013), Alain de Botton and John Armstrong contend how art (and we include under the label art, both the visual and the written text) becomes a frame for experience and selfknowledge, amongst many other psychological insights. Words interact with the visual and the visual with the written text, and it all interacts with us and within us. Thus, our purpose and our advice to the reader is “to navigate by new and larger constellations, drawn on by the delight of making cross-cultural connections. . . . Curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual ambition: these are the only prerequisites for making comparisons.”13 By embarking on this inter-arts journey, we soon realize that this book goes beyond comparative studies and that, rather, dialogic studies help us to shape the whole experience. At times, the writer dialogues with the image; the image dialogues with the writer. The reader is expected to engage in a dialogue, either to agree or disagree, but surely to be stirred, her imagination and curiosity awakened. We resort, in this regard, to Burbules’ definition of dialogue: “An activity directed toward discovery and new understanding, which stands to improve the knowledge, insight, or sensitivity of its participants.”14 Nevertheless, for dialogue to be successful, clarification is needed first concerning the aesthetic conceptual frame under which the chapters are written: the Horatian adagio ut pictura poesis (“as is painting so is poetry.”) Thus, the book opens with an analysis of this old concept clothed in new garments. The Renaissance promoted the development of this debate with an almost incomparable intensity. At the beginning of this period, those artists who began to claim for themselves the same liberality and nobility that poets already enjoyed set all their efforts in finding in the theoretical background of the antiquity the legitimation for their demands. The writers of the new art literature born under the protection of Humanism – Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgio Vasari . . . – found in authors such as Simonides of Ceos and Horace the starting point for their argumentation. They established a convenient re-reading of the Horatian ut pictura poesis: painting should imitate poetry; painters should act as poets who, instead of words, use drawing and colour. The artists who wanted to be considered as such, in the fullest dimension of the word, were forced to compose verses. We may recall here Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sonnets, where the sculptor tried to reflect the same sensibility that his chisel extracted from the marble. And the writers, as part of the culture of the ambidextrous artist, began to act as painters, making use of literary resources such as the ekphrasis, drawing on the artistic vocabulary to enrich the enargeia of their texts or reflecting on the artists’ contributions as if they were art critics. Around the end of the sixteenth century and during the first decades of the seventeenth century, the confluence of art and literature, painting and poetry reached a prosperous and fertile climax: painting pretended to be poetry, competing for the capacity to narrate stories, and poetry intended to be painting, emulating its visual and plastic values. Here we will find Cervantes as the best exponent of the Spanish Golden Age – a cultural

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moment when any “idle reader” was able to read the emblematic and allegorical images created by these authors. His statement about the relationship amongst history, painting and poetry cannot be more revealing: “La historia, la poesía y la pintura simbolizan entre sí, y se parecen tanto que, cuando escribes historia, pintas, y cuando pintas, compones.”15 And here we will encounter Shakespeare, whose works cannot be fully understood without bearing in mind several of the topoi originated by the aforementioned Renaissance tradition: the inclusion of references to artworks which are judged or valuated by the writer himself, the imitation of the pictorial work making use of the ekphrasis or the reflection on questions related to art theory, such as the ut pictura poesis. Necessarily, at the core of this edition lies the Romantic period. On the grounds of a common spirit (Geistesgeschichte), the sister arts are promoted and so is aesthetic education. We follow, in this sense, the path opened by Jean H. Hagstrum, to whose canonical Sister Arts: Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (1958) this book pays a humble homage. The term “sister arts” disembarked in England when John Dryden translated in 1695 into English prose the poem De Arte Graphica by the French Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy: “Painting and Poesy are two Sisters, which are so like in all things, that they mutually lend to each other both their Name and Office.”16 The Romantic sister arts were inclusive not only of painting and poetry but also of landscape gardening. Their degree of visuality was codified by means of three main aesthetic categories: the beautiful, the sublime and the picturesque, as elaborated by Edmund Burke, William Gilpin or Uvedale Price.17 Ultimately, the world was aestheticized, and the key to those pictorial realms came by the hand of an aesthetic education. Regarding this, William Wordsworth is a must since he perfectly embodies the idea of the poet as a vate: as a prophet guiding the reader to enlightenment. As a result, William Wordsworth’s ekphrastic poems will be examined by paying attention to how he dialogues with the visual arts. Wordsworth not only tries to make the reader see but “to see into the life of things,”18 reinforcing a sense of belonging and communion, dialogue aiming at transcendence. Also, Emily Eden’s use of both pen and pencil to sketch the Other is discussed. Dialogue, in this case, is biased at the expense of a silent, manufactured picturesque other. The picturesque, in this regard, helps to formulate a colonial discourse to appropriate the Other. From a gender perspective, Felicia Hemans epitomizes to what extent the aesthetic categories were gendered and how the beautiful was to be understood as female as opposed to the masculine sublime. She relies on a female aesthetic education based on acceptance and resignation, as a result of which the dialogue between the poem and the illustration is easy, fluid and deprived of any tension or inquiring remark. She faithfully accommodates text and image as an example of fine taste and female propriety. As we leave behind Europe, the book delves into intermedial encounters. The authors discussed try to communicate by means of different dialogic tools, and their works become an insightful meditation on the crossovers between art and literature. Although not an artist himself, E. A. Poe had a profound

Introduction 5 knowledge of aesthetics. He was an art expert, and some of his tales show this intimacy with visuality. Relying on Longinus’s treatise On the Sublime, we come across two significant concepts intertwined with ekphrasis: “The object of the poetical form is to enthral [ekplexis], and that of the prose form to present things vividly [enargeia], though both indeed aim at the emotional and the excited.”19 Without entering on the debate posed by Longinus’s pairing of prose with enargeia and poetry with ekplexis, Poe’s works are discussed as drawing on these two concepts, and thus, ultimately, it is analyzed how both of them revolve around a “process of visualization resulting in vivid presence or enthralment by means of an account that draws on the human tendency to experience emotions.”20 Poe’s detailed, visual technique favours that experience in connection with the eighteenth-century aesthetic categories of the beautiful, the sublime and the picturesque, offering the reader a whole range of feelings. As a result, he also paved the ground for an intermedial encounter between his works and illustrators, which have become valuable contributions that enlighten us about Poe’s rich imaginings. As part of these intermedial encounters, some of Flannery O’Connor’s tales are examined. She was herself a caricaturist and, as a consequence, it is significant to analyze how she managed to translate her “pictoric” techniques to her writings. In this sense, her caricaturesque scenes benefit from the encounter between two differentiated art forms: word and image in dialogue again. In fact, such a dialogue was a necessity for her. The visual arts helped her to shape the world and to understand the writing process: “For the writer of fiction,” Flannery O’Connor said, “everything has its testing point in the eye, and the eye is an organ that eventually involves the whole personality, and as much of the world as can be got into it.”21 Similarly, N. Scott Momaday, as a writer who paints, brings a visual sensibility to his fiction. To achieve that, tropes of vision and light are used to make the reader see beyond, to be “enlightened.” A multifaceted reality is offered by means of glasses, lenses, only to help us see how the characters relate amongst themselves in their quest for identity and balance. In a Wordsworthian way, Momaday conceives the imagination as a divine blindness in which we see with our souls. No better definition comes to mind to delineate the “inward eye,” and it comes out quite unexpectedly via a comparative encounter. Thus, bearing the above in mind, both authors, Flannery O’Connor and N. Scott Momaday, rely on their intimacy with the pictorial technique to paint words and emphasize the sisterhood of the different arts to apprehend the world. The book closes with a focus on transatlantic interdisciplinarity, where different dialogues are established amongst diverse authors, periods and continents. The journey begins with William Blake’s first foray in America through the eyes of the Spanish José Joaquín de Mora, who embraces the Blakean interplay between text and image. Mora becomes an outstanding example of the pan-Atlantic cultural exchanges with the newly established Iberoamerican republics, while encouraging the reader to meditate on the value of reception and the reciprocity between art and literature on the one hand and pan-Atlantic

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encounters on the other. In a similar multifaceted dialogue, the book examines the presence of the Swiss-German Paul Klee in the American Wallace Stevens and the Spanish José Ángel Valente. Although they responded to Klee’s aesthetics differently, the painter acted as a revolutionary force to them by means of his axiomatic “art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible.”22 In the case of Stevens, he appropriates Simone Weil’s theological concept of decreation in his quest for transcendence, where on the brink of nothingness, on the abyss, the poet awaits for revelation. The void is accepted by Valente to experience an ecstatic knowledge conducive to final creation; the work of art reveals itself thus as auratic, disclosing a hidden reality, allowing the poet to see into the life of things. “We are aesthetic beings through and through; we apprehend the world through aesthetic eyes,”23 and the authors analyzed here know that too well. They lean on painting words to aestheticize the world so that the reader may see both beyond and within, and they rely on both art and literature. Bearing this in mind, in a much image-mediated era, this book tries to raise awareness not only about the importance of dialogue amongst the different arts, but also about the relevance of historical and cultural perspectives. “Aesthetic value can be understood properly only in the context of a broader inquiry into human values and cultures.”24 And this is what this book tries to offer to the reader: an interdisciplinary journey of dialogue throughout time and space under the belief in a common spirit.

Notes 1. Mario Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel Between Literature and the Visual Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 54. 2. Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (London: Penguin, 1970), 205. 3. James A.W. Heffernan, “Ekphrasis and Representation,” New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 297. Many times revisited, the concept of ekphrasis has been defined from numerous perspectives resulting in a variation of ekphrastic experiences. See, for example, Hollander’s distinction between “notional” (imaginative, fictional work) and “actual” (real, existing work) ekphrasis. John Hollander, “The Poetics of Ekphrasis,” Word & Image 4, no. 1 (1988): 209–219, https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436238. 4. Grant F. Scott, The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994), xiii. 5. William John Thomas Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3. Mitchell distinguishes three phases in the ekphrastic experience: “ekphrastic indifference,” “a commonsense perception that ekphrasis is impossible”; “ekphrastic hope,” “the impossibility of ekphrasis is overcome in imagination”; and “ekphrastic fear,” “the moment of resistance or counterdesire that occurs when we sense that the difference between the verbal and visual representation might collapse” (152–154). 6. James A.W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 1. 7. Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art. The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 3. 8. Sigmund Freud, Art and Literature (London: Penguin, 1990), 339.

Introduction 7 9. James A.W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 3. 10. The phrase “inward eye” was coined by William Wordsworth in his poem “I wandered lonely as a Cloud.” 11. Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1914), 14. 12. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 29. 13. Ben Hutchinson, Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 3. 14. Nicholas C. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), 9. 15. “History, poetry, and painting resemble each other and indeed they are so much alike that when you write history you are painting, and when you paint you are composing poetry.” Miguel de Cervantes, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2016), 354. 16. John Dryden, The Works of John Dryden: In Verse and Prose, with a Life, Vol. 2 (New York: George Dearborn Publisher, 1836), 342. 17. See Beatriz González-Moreno, Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el Romanticismo Inglés (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2007). 18. Lines belonging to William Wordsworth’s poem, “Lines written a few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” 19. Longinus, On the Sublime, revised by Donald Russell, trans. W.H. Fyfe (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1995), 15.1–2, http://dx.doi. org/10.4159/dlcl.longinus-sublime.1995. 20. Caroline van Eck, “The Petrifying Gaze of Medusa: Ambivalence, Ekplexis, and the Sublime,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 8, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 2, https://doi.org/10.5092/jhna.2016.8.2.3. 21. Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons, ed. Kelly Gerald (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012), 101. 22. Paul Klee, The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I. The Thinking Eye, ed. Jürg Spiller, trans. Ralph Manheim (San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013), 76. 23. Colin McGinn, Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 121. 24. Alan Singer and Allen Dunn, eds., Literary Aesthetics: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 3.

Bibliography Burbules, Nicholas C. Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Cervantes, Miguel de. Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2016. Cheeke, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of the Narcissus. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1914. Dryden, John. The Works of John Dryden: In Verse and Prose, with a Life (2 vols.). New York: George Dearborn Publisher, 1836. Freud, Sigmund. Art and Literature. London: Penguin, 1990.

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González-Moreno, Beatriz. Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el Romanticismo Inglés. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2007. Heffernan, James A. W. “Ekphrasis and Representation.” New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 297–316. https://doi.org/10.2307/469040. Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Hollander, John. “The Poetics of Ekphrasis.” Word & Image 4, no. 1 (1988): 209–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436238. Hutchinson, Ben. Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Klee, Paul. The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I: The Thinking Eye. Edited by Jürg Spiller and translated by Ralph Manheim. San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013. Longinus. On the Sublime. Revised by Donald Russell and translated by W. H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA. and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. McGinn, Colin. Ethics, Evil and Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Mitchell, William John Thomas. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. O’Connor, Flannery. Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons. Edited by Kelly Gerald. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012. Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts. London: Penguin, 1970. Praz, Mario. Mnemosyne: The Parallel Between Literature and the Visual Arts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Scott, Grant F. The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994. Singer, Alan, and Allen Dunn, eds. Literary Aesthetics: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Van Eck, Caroline. “The Petrifying Gaze of Medusa: Ambivalence, Ekplexis, and the Sublime.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 8, no. 2 (Summer 2016). https://doi.org/10.5092/jhna.2016.8.2.3.

Part I

Old Concepts in New Garments Ut Pictura Poesis and Ekphrasis

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Cervantes, Painter of Allegories of Folly, Love and Prudence Fernando González-Moreno

Poets and painters competed amongst themselves to create the most complex and obscure emblems and allegories as part of Renaissance humanism, becoming an essential part of its culture not only in the sixteenth century but also in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although they were created by the intellectual and humanist elite, these elaborate pieces of hermetic knowledge were widely known by the whole society. Theatre was one of the most important ways by which common people could learn the meaning of these symbolical images. In the Spanish Siglo de Oro theatre, the presence of allegorical or emblematical characters with which the playwright could express his moral ideas was common. Miguel de Cervantes’s theatre is a good example. His Tragedy of Numancia (1582) displays several historical characters, including the allegory of Spain. Cervantes “paints” her as a maiden with a mural crown holding a tower. He also “depicts” the allegories of the river Ebro and its three main tributaries; the allegory of War as a woman armed with a shield and a lance; Sickness like a woman with a yellow mask, a bandage around her head and a crutch; Famine dressed as a woman with a mask and yellow clothes; and, finally, the allegory of Fame.1 Cervantes knew and used the emblematical and allegorical culture – a common place for both writers and painters – in his works, and, of course, his universally known masterpiece Don Quixote (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1605 and 1615) was not alien to it. If we read Chapter XX in Part II, there, once again in a theatrical performance, we discover a poetical, elaborate and ingenious allegorical scene. In this chapter, during Camacho’s wedding, we witness the staging of the allegorical confrontation of Love, represented as Cupid, and his retinue (Poetry, Discretion, Good Lineage and Valour) against Wealth and his retinue (Liberality, Largesse, Treasure and Peaceful Possession) – a scene that I will discuss later. However, it is not in the text but in Don Quixote’s illustrations where we find the most extensive connection between Cervantes’s book and the emblematical tradition. These illustrations show us Cervantes’s capacity to inspire allegorical images. When Don Quixote began to be illustrated in the 1640s and 1650s outside Spain (the first extensively illustrated edition was published by Savery in Dordrecht, 1657),2 the illustrators preferred scenes with obvious amusing

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actions. Don Quixote was mainly read as a comical and entertaining book, so the illustrations should reflect such a reading. However, since the beginning of the eighteenth century, Don Quixote started to be read in different ways, not only as a popular and funny book but also almost as a moral one.3 Don Quixote became a renewed literature masterpiece from which important lessons on Truth, Knowledge, Madness, Love, Prudence and Satire could be learnt – ideas that soon began to be represented through emblems and allegories.

The Extravagant Knight of La Mancha Folly was the first idea from Don Quixote that interested illustrators. The first attempt to represent it in a symbolical way appeared in 1719 in the edition published in London by Knaplock. Here, as a decorative tailpiece, there is a little woodcut that, at first sight, has nothing to do with Don Quixote’s history. It represents Phaeton, Phoebus’ son, falling from the cart of the sun as it was described by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. But why has the illustrator selected this Roman myth to accompany Cervantes’s text? What do Don Quixote and Phaeton have in common? We find the answer in Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum libellus (or Book of the Emblems, 1531). In this book, there are two emblems, LV and LVI, about Recklessness or Stultitia (Temeritas and In Temerarios). In the first one, a mad man is compared with a cart drawn by runaway horses. In this allegory, the cart alludes to the human body, the charioteer to the human reason and the horses to the senses; man becomes mad when the body is not controlled by reason but by perturbed senses.4 Alciato stated, A driver pulled by a horse whose mouth does not respond to the bridle is rushed headlong and in vain drags the reins. You cannot readily trust one whom no reason governs, one who is heedlessly taken where his fancy goes.5 And in the second emblem, Alciato used Phaeton’s myth in a similar way [Figure 1.1]: Even so, the majority of the kings are borne up to heaven on the wheels of Fortune, driven by youth’s ambition. After they have brought great disaster on the human race and themselves, they finally pay the penalty for all their crimes.6 Phaeton becomes a symbol of reckless or mad acts; he dies because of his reckless action because he tries to act without reason, just guided by a passion. The metaphor fits Don Quixote really well. This first example of how emblems began to be used in Don Quixote’s illustrations marks the beginning of a symbolical and iconographical tradition that will endure during all of the eighteenth century – a tradition whose chief inaugurator was Charles-Antoine Coypel.7 Between 1717 and 1734, the

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 13

Figure 1.1 Phaeton, anonymous woodcut (London: R. Knaplock, D. Midwinter, J. Tonson et al., 1719) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

French painter Charles-Antoine Coypel designed 27 tapestry cartons based on episodes from Don Quixote that served to produce several series of tapestries at the Gobelins manufacture in Paris. These designs were such an early success that starting in 1723, they were engraved and sold in Paris at Chez Surugue as a set of prints by themselves. Coypel’s compositions are in keeping with eighteenth-century French, court and baroque tastes; they resemble great theatrical performances where all the elements of eighteenth-century theatre have been included, chiefly emblems and allegories. Coypel’s series of engravings, composed as emblems with a pictura (image) and a suscriptio (caption), begin with Don Quichotte conduit par la Folie et Embrasé de l’amour extravaguant de Dulcinée sort de chez luy pour estre Chevalier Errant [Don Quixote, led by Folly and embraced by the extravagant love of Dulcinea, leaves his house to be an Errant Knight], plate engraved by Surugue in 1724 (Figure 1.2).8 Here we find the first allegory of Folly clearly applied to Don Quixote. The knight initiates his first sally accompanied by the allegory of Folly, who points towards some of the adventures that await him: the flock of sheep and the windmill half-transformed into a giant. Folly is represented as a female figure with a sceptre, such as those used by jesters, and wearing a barber basin as a helmet (Mambrino’s helmet). This element,

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Figure 1.2 Don Quichotte conduit par la Folie et Embrasé de l’amour extravaguant de Dulcinée sort de chez luy pour estre Chevalier Errant. Charles-Antoine Coypel (des.) and Louis Surugue père (eng.) (Paris: Chez Surugue, c. 1724) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

the basin, is a purely quijotesco [quixotic] symbol; it was the one won by Don Quixote during one of his adventures and now, taken from the novel, it becomes a symbol of madness itself. Moreover, this basin has been decorated with several feathers, which are not just a mere ornament as discussed next. If we search again in Alciato’s Emblematum libellus, we find another emblem, in this case number LXV, about Foolishness (Fatuitas). Alciato explained, You are surprised that in my poem you are called Otus, when your ancient family name, handed down for generations, is Otho. The otus is eared and has feathers like the little owl. The skilful birdcatcher gets the bird into his

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 15 power as it dances. For this reason we call stupid people, easy to catch, oti. You too can have this name, which suits you.9 In Latin, Otus refers to a long-eared owl (scientifically known as Asio otus) described by Pliny in his Natural History as an easy to catch bird because, when it fixes its attention on one person, it does not notice if another one circles around it.10 Due to that, the otus was considered a stupid animal, and Alciato took its name to designate the stupid man, depicting his emblem as a man with owl feathers. That is the reason why Coypel has incorporated some feathers into Don Quixote’s basin or, better said, Folly’s basin. Finally, this allegory of Folly is completed with the appearance of another one with which the cause of Don Quixote’s madness is explained – namely, Cupid or Love. In Coypel’s opinion, Love is the cause of Don Quixote’s folly; as it is said in the description of the illustration: “An Extravagant Passion for Dulcinea.” Coypel has represented Love in a traditional way with the winged figure of Cupid, Venus’ son. However, here he is not holding his usual bow and arrows but a torch with which he is touching Don Quixote’s heart in order to inflame it with this incommensurable and mad love. This idea of Love as a torch or as a flame is well-known, and it appears in another of the most important books of allegories: Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593). When Ripa describes the allegory of Love Tamed, he refers to “Cupid sitting, and his flambeau being burnt out.”11 So, according to Coypel’s illustration, Don Quixote’s madness is caused by his extravagant – even indecorous due to Alonso Quijano’s age – passion for Dulcinea, to whom Folly is pointing. Or maybe Folly is the cause of this Love. In any case, it is interesting to observe that this union between Love and Madness was a subject in which Renaissance and baroque painters were very interested. Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, for example, was dedicated to it. Painted around 1545, it represents the incestuous and mad love between Venus and her own son Cupid caused by Folly, depicted as a little boy. The image created by Coypel was so successful that later illustrators kept showing similar allegorical representations. For example, the frontispiece designed by Antonio Carnicero and engraved by Fernando Selma for the Spanish Royal Academy edition printed by Ibarra in Madrid, 1780 (Figure 1.3). In this frontispiece, Don Quixote has been represented as the Knight of the Lions (an allusion to the adventure in the second part) accompanied again by Folly and Love. Both of them hold Dulcinea’s portrait, the cause of Don Quixote’s folly. Love’s image is not new: Cupid with his bow and arrows. However, this image of Folly has some novelties with respect to Coypel’s representation. It appears as a female figure dressed as a jester; her clothes are full of little bells, and she holds a whirligig. This element has been taken from Ripa’s Iconologia, where Folly is described as a person at man’s state, in a long, black garment; laughing; riding upon a hobby-horse; holding, in one hand, a whirligig of past-board; and plays

Figure 1.3 Frontispiece I. Antonio Carnicero (des.) and Fernando Selma (eng.) (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1780) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 17 the fool with children, who make him twirl it by the wind. Folly is only acting contrary to due decorum, and the common custom of men, delighting in childish toys, and things of little moment.12 The frontispiece is completed with the image of a Satyr, which will be explained later. The same idea also appears in a headpiece from the edition of Madrid: G. Sancha, 1798. The image, designed by Luis Paret y Alcázar and engraved by Juan Moreno de Tejada, depicts Don Quixote at his library receiving the influence of Folly, a female winged figure with two feathers on her head; we have already seen the symbolism of these feathers in Alciato. And, again, Folly calls Don Quixote’s attention to Dulcinea’s portrait, held by Love or Cupid. Don Quixote’s love towards Dulcinea is once more the cause of his madness. In other cases, this union between Folly and Love will continue with some variations. For example, in the aforementioned edition (Madrid: G. Sancha, 1798), there is a frontispiece designed and engraved by the same artists, Luis Paret y Alcázar and Juan Moreno de Tejada, where Don Quixote is guided by Folly and surrounded by several symbols of Love: two little Cupids and a pair of doves (Figure 1.4). The presence of these birds is clear; they are the usual animals that accompany Venus.13 But we also find two novelties: a shining temple and a tomb; two elements that indicate that Folly is not only tempting Don Quixote with Love but also with Fame. The shining temple is a classical reference to Fame; it is the promise of glory for the feats of the great heroes. Indeed, one famous Spanish book of emblems was entitled The Temple of Fame (El Templo de la Fama con Instrucciones Políticas y Morales by Andrés Ferrer de Valdecebro, Madrid: 1680). Regarding the tomb, we find the explanation for this element in another of Alciato’s emblems. Emblem CXXXV, Strenuorum immortale nomen (the name of the men of action is immortal) says, You see the tomb of Aeacus’ descendant on the Rhoetean shore, which white-footed Thetis often visits. This stone is always covered with green amaranth, because the honour due to heroes shall never die. This man was “the wall of the Greeks”, and the destruction of great Hector, and he owes no more to Lydian poet than the poet does to him.14 Alciato uses the image of Achilles’s tomb to refer to how great heroes’ fame is remembered after death, so the tomb in Paret’s illustration is Don Quixote’s own tomb, the promise of how his great, although mad, feats will be remembered after his death. This union between Love and Folly began to disappear as the eighteenth century came to an end. Due to the influence of Romanticism, the place that had been occupied by Love, as the cause of Don Quixote’s madness, would be taken by Fantasy. We find this new vision of Folly in the 1799 French edition by Didot. One of its illustrations, designed by Lefebvre and engraved by Louis Joseph Masquelier, represents Don Quixote at his library in the very moment

Figure 1.4 Frontispiece I. Luis Paret y Alcázar (des.) and Juan Moreno Tejada (eng.) (Madrid: G. Sancha, 1798–99) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 19 when Folly, crowned by feathers, touches his head with her jester sceptre and the knight begins to imagine monsters, evils and bojigangas15 (represented amongst dark clouds). Love and Dulcinea do not accompany Folly any longer; instead, Don Quixote’s (un)reason is now ruled by extreme Fantasy. This is the beginning of a new iconographical era that will triumph in the Romantic illustrations by Tony Johannot (Paris: Dubochet, 1836–1837) or Gustave Doré (Paris: Hachette, 1863). We have seen how Love appears in some illustrations linked to Madness, but this is not the only kind of Love that we can find in Cervantes’s novel. Indeed, to discuss Love’s nature, the writer devotes a whole episode where he draws on a theatrical and allegorical performance. In Chapter XX, Part II, during Camacho’s wedding, a “danza de artificio y de las que llaman habladas” takes place.16 During the staged celebrations, two retinues appear with eight nymphs. Cervantes describes them as if they were painted emblems: with their names written over a parchment (the inscriptio or title), an allegorical figure (pictura) and a poem (suscriptio). The first retinue is led by Love as Cupid, “adornado de alas, arco, aljaba y saetas,”17 followed by Poetry, Discretion, Good Lineage and Valour; the second retinue is led by Wealth, “vestido de ricas y diversas colores de oro y seda,”18 followed by Liberality, Largesse, Treasure and Peaceful Possession. Both Love and Wealth try to conquer a maiden protected in the Castle of Modesty: Love with his arrows and Wealth with a bag full of money. This bag of money is used to destroy the castle that protects the maiden, but, finally, Love and his retinue manage to rebuild it and to save the maiden from Wealth. In this way, Cervantes defends that Love, when it is discreet, such as the one sung by poets, not extravagant as Don Quixote’s love for Dulcinea, and when it is accompanied by valour, as Basilio proves is stronger than the kind of love caused by Wealth, represented by Camacho. Coypel chose this scene for one of his tapestry cartons, and LouiseMagdeleine Hortemels engraved it in 1724 (Figure 1.5). As a rich, symbolic and theatrical representation, it fits Copypel’s style and taste quite well. In the centre, we see Love painted following Cervantes’s description: winged Cupid with his bow, quiver and throwing an arrow towards the maiden’s castle. At his right, the first allegory is Poetry, with a trumpet in her right hand and wearing a garment with stars. This image was explained by Cesare Ripa, who described Poetry as a lady in a sky coloured garment; with stars. . . . The sky-colours signifie (sic) that none can excel in this Art, if he be not endowed with extraordinary talents from Heaven;. . . . The starry robe, Divinity, as having her original from Heaven. and that “with the left hand she holds the lyre, and with the other a trumpet, the former has affinity to the cadence of verses, with the harmony of music, and the latter alludes to the poets aiming at fame.”19 Except for the lyre, Coypel represents all the other elements.

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Figure 1.5 Entrée de L´amour et de la Richesse aux Noces de Gamache. CharlesAntoine Coypel (des.) and Louise-Magdeleine Cochin Horthemels (eng.) (Paris: Surugue, c. 1724) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Projects

The next allegory in Cupid’s retinue is Discretion. Here we must first include a comment on François Filleau de Saint-Martin’s French translation (1677), the one used by Coypel to read Cervantes. The Spanish author mentions five allegories: “Amor” (Love), “Poesía” (Poetry), “Discreción” (Discretion or Wit), “Buen linaje” (Good Lineage or Nobility) and “Valentía” (Valour). Filleau de Saint-Martin translated them respectively as “Amour,” “Poésie,” “Sagesse,” “Illustre Naissance” and “Valeur.” So if we bear in mind that Coypel, following that translation, understands Discretion as Wisdom (“Sagesse”), we may think that this virtue is the one depicted as Pallas Athena since she is the goddess of Wisdom. However, this would be a mistake. Coypel has represented Discretion (understood as Wisdom) following Ripa once more: “A maid . . . holding a lamp lighted. . . . The Lamp signifies the Light of the Understanding.”20 However, this symbol implies a deeper meaning which connects the image with the allegory of Discretion or

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 21 Prudence too. In Saint Matthew’s gospel (25.1), it is said that the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins who carried their oil lamps to wait for the bridegroom. Five of them were discreet and took more oil; the other five were foolish and did not take more. When the bridegroom arrived, the five discreet virgins were waiting with their lamps burning and could go into the marriage feast; the foolish virgins had run out of oil and had to go to buy more, so when the bridegroom arrived, they could not enter the marriage feast. This is the reason why the oil lamp also represents Discretion or Prudence – a virtue opposed to Folly. Regarding the two other allegories, Good Lineage or Nobility and Valour, the images depicted by Coypel – Pallas Athena and a female figure holding a crown – may seem confusing. If we read Ripa’s Iconologia, we find that Good Lineage, understood as Nobility, is described as a lady in a grave habit, with a spear in one hand, and the picture of Minerva in the other. . . . The spear and Minerva show that all nobility is acquired by Arts or Arms; Minerva being the Protectrice of both alike. True nobility arises from virtuous actions.21 However, Ripa also mentions that the allegory of Nobility holds a pair of crowns. Before that ambiguity, we defend that Athena or Minerva represents Nobility (Good Lineage) and the woman holding a crown Valour. This idea is supported by one detail in Ripa’s description of Valour: “Holding a crown of laurel in one hand. . . . The crown of laurel denotes the consistent and unvaried conduct of a man of valour.”22 Regarding Wealth and its retinue, the first allegory follows Cervantes’s description: dressed with several rich colours of gold and silk. Neither Alciato nor Ripa say anything about this figure, but this allegory was well-known during the baroque. In fact, an allegory of Wealth (La Richesse, c. 1640, Louvre Museum) is one of the most famous paintings by Simon Vouet, the French painter who introduced the Italian baroque style in France. Following Wealth appears Liberality, a female figure holding two cornucopias and a pair of compasses. Both cornucopias are rightly represented if we read Cesare Ripa, who described Liberality or Munificence as the act of giving with becoming generosity. It is allegorically expressed by the figure of a cheerful looking woman, dressed in rich white robes. . . . In the right hand she holds a cornucopia, inclining downwards, flowing with money and jewels; and in the left hand she holds another cornucopia, containing fruit and flowers. . . . The two cornucopias indicate that Liberality observes a proper medium between prodigality and avarice, are expressive of a noble and generous mind, and that Liberality regards the riches she possesses, and distributes her favours on objects of merit and worth.23 And the pair of compasses is mentioned by Ripa too; this tool indicates that Liberality is a virtue that has to be exercised according to and in fair measure

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with each one’s own richness.24 The three last allegories in Wealth’s retinue are Largesse, Treasure and Peaceful Possession, but Coypel does not seem to be too much interested in their representations. He just introduces a single female figure without any kind of symbol, so she cannot be recognized. Indeed, these allegories are quite rare and neither Cervantes, nor Alciato, nor Ripa give any kind of description.

Folly Defeated by Prudence I began this chapter talking about Folly as one of the main ideas we can find represented in allegorical illustrations, and, of course, we can find her opposites too. The first of them is Wisdom. Her representation appears in another of Coypel’s illustrations, Don Quichotte est delivré de sa Folie par la Sagesse [Don Quixote delivered from his Folly by Wisdom],25 whose design was engraved by Charles-Nicolas Cochin père c. 1728–30 (Figure 1.6). In this illustration, which

Figure 1.6 Don Quichotte est delivré de sa folie par la Sagesse. Charles-Antoine Coypel (des.) and Charles-Nicolas Cochin père (eng.) (Paris: Chez Surugue, c. 1728–30) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 23 symbolizes how Don Quixote recovers his reason, Wisdom appears opposing Folly. Don Quixote, asleep, receives a vision of Wisdom, represented by Coypel as Pallas Athena or Minerva. This allegory of Wisdom was defended by Ripa, who said, Minerva was the goddess of Wisdom, and the patroness of the sciences which render men useful to society, and entitle them to esteem of posterity. . . . Minerva is usually represented in a standing attitude completely armed, with a composed but smiling countenance, a golden breastplate, a spear in her right hand, and her terrible Aegis or shield in her left, on which is the head of Medusa, entwined with snakes, and her helmet was decorated with olives, to denote Peace, Life and Happiness.26 The appearance of Wisdom makes Don Quixote abandon his arms, including his basin or helmet with feathers (symbols of Folly). On the contrary, now Sancho remains captivated by Folly. She tempts him with a castle and the promise of becoming governor of an Ínsula [Island]. Perhaps we could think that the same opposite ideas have been represented in the frontispiece designed by Pedro Arnal and engraved by Juan de la Cruz for the Spanish Royal Academy edition of 1780 (Figure 1.7). Here we see Don Quixote’s tomb with the allegory of Folly, who cries because Don Quixote has died as a sane man, and a second allegory that could be identified as Wisdom. This figure seems very similar to the previous one (an armed female figure), so she could be Wisdom or maybe Reason. Ripa described Reason as “armed like Pallas; upon her helmet is a crown of gold; a drawn sword in her right hand; a Lion bridled in her left. . . . The sword intimates the extirpating vice that wars against the soul.”27 Our figure has some of those elements. She is armed like Pallas with a helmet and a sword, and even a lion appears in her shield. But there is another detail that clarifies this allegory. Around the sword, there is a snake or, better said, a remora or sucking fish. This refers to one of Alciato’s emblems: number XX, Maturandum (Making good speed): Everyone tells us to deal with things quickly, but they also tell us to hold back – not to be impetuous, not yet to wait too long. A missile linked with a sucking-fish can demonstrate this for you: the fish is slow, but arrows fly fast when they leave the shooter’s hand.28 According to Alciato, a prudent man ought to act not as fast as an arrow but neither as slow as a sucking fish (echeneis or remora). Ripa took this emblem to create his allegory of Prudence, the one that we see in Arnal’s design: A woman with . . . a gilded Helmet on her head; . . . in her right hand an arrow and a Remora fish twisting about it. The helmet signifies the Wisdom of a prudent man, to be armed with wise counsel to defend himself. . . . The Remora, that stops a ship, not to delay doing Good, when time serves.29

Figure 1.7 Frontispiece II. Pedro Arnal (des.) and Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla (eng.) (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1780) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 25 The appearance of Prudence as one of the ideas opposed to Folly is rooted in the Middle Ages. Prudence is one of the seven virtues, or one of the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance), and her opposite vice was intended to be Folly, known as Stultitia or Foolishness. This can be seen at the Capella dei Scrovegni in Padova (Italy), where Giotto, around 1306, painted Stultitia (Foolishness) facing Prudentia (Prudence). In this case, Stultitia appears as a man dressed in a funny way, holding a club and with headgear made of feathers. We find another very notable representation of Prudence in a headpiece designed and engraved by the Flemish designer Jacob van der Schley (La Haie: Pierre de Hondt, 1746) (Figure 1.8).30 Some of the symbols used to identify Prudence here have been explained before: the arrow and the remora described by Ripa and Alciato and the oil lamp as a symbol of Discretion taken from the Bible. Now a mirror and a crane also appear; the first, according to Ripa, “bids us examine our defects by knowing ourselves.”31 Regarding the relation between the crane and Prudence, neither Ripa32 nor Alciato explain it, but in a medieval bestiary we can find the next indication based on Pliny “the elder” and Isidoro de Sevilla: “Cranes keep a watchful guard at night. . . . They keep themselves awake for their sentry-go by holding stones in their claws, and share the night-watches equally, taking over in turn”; if the watcher falls asleep, the stone will fall and wake him.33 So, according to this medieval bestiary, the crane is an animal characterized by being always on guard, as a prudent man ought to be. In this headpiece, Prudence is accompanied by Reason. Schley has reproduced Ripa’s description, to which I referred partially before, in a very complete way. She is armed like Pallas Athena, including her shield with Medusa’s head or Gorgoneion, and she holds a pair of bridles, which are explained by Ripa as “the command over wild passions” because “the unruly passions ought to be controuled by the powers of reason.”34 Close to these ideas of Wisdom, Reason and Prudence, we also find the allegory of Truth, which was mainly used to refer to Cervantes’s principal aim when writing Don Quixote. Tonson’s 1738 edition canonized Cervantes’s Don Quixote as a literary masterpiece that showed the Truth about chivalry novels, books full of absurd and fantastic feats that could only be considered as detestable literature. The frontispiece designed by Francis Hayman and engraved by Charles Grignion for Millar’s edition (1755) developed this idea (Figure 1.9). J. Stratford, editor of the 1811 edition printed by Rousseau, described this frontispiece in the following way: In the Frontispiece the Designer seems to have imbided (sic) the true spirit of Cervantes, and to have made a full display of the extravagance of Quixotism or Knight-Errantry. The strong Castles, which have been raised in the romantic ages of Chivalry, are here represented as falling to ruins on the appearance of Minerva, who by the mirror which she holds in her hand, reflecting the rays of science on the edifices of folly, exposes at once the ridiculous notions of romance.35

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Figure 1.8 Dedicatory Headpiece. Jacob van der Schley (des. and eng.) (La Haie: Pierre de Hondt, 1746) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

Before Minerva, goddess of knowledge, the characters of chivalry novels (dwarfs, four-arm giants, knights and damsels) flee, and the castles of medieval literature fall down. But she is not alone in this exploit; here we can also see the allegory of Comedy, the literary genre used by Cervantes to carry on his purpose. Comedy appears here as the muse of comedy and lyric poetry, Thalia, represented as “a young woman of a chearful (sic) countenance” with the mask of comedy.36 She draws a sword and helps Truth to knock down the buildings of gothic literature, where a dwarf appears blowing a horn as Don Quixote imagines when he arrives to an inn (3:1). This frontispiece was especially successful, and the same idea was repeated in other frontispieces. For example, in the 1794 edition published by Hogg (London), we find a frontispiece designed by Riley and engraved by Scott that includes an explanation of its allegorical image: Emblematical Representation of TRUTH with her MIRROR dispelling the Visions of GOTHIC SUPERSTITION and KNIGHT-ERRANTRY, while the Enchanted Castle and its Giant Master, the Dragon, the Distressed Damsel Ghost in the back ground & c. describe the wild creations of a distempered brain. But probably the most accurate allegorical representation of this concept is the frontispiece designed by Samuel Wale and engraved by Rennoldson for the 1774 edition published by Cooke in London (Figure 1.10). The design includes a poem explaining the meaning of the illustration:

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 27

Figure 1.9 Frontispiece. Francis Hayman (des.) and Charles Grignion (eng.) (London: A. Millar, 1755) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

When Whims and Madness had possess’d each knight, who fancy’d he was only born to fight,37 This well tim’d Satire with plain Truth combin’d, At once gave Pleasure and Reform’d the Mind.

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Folly, Truth and Satire are the three allegories here represented. It is interesting to discover that Folly has been incarnated by Don Quixote himself, already recognized as a symbol of Madness and of those bad chivalry novels. Regarding Truth and Satire, both of them have been represented following Ripa in a very accurate way. Truth, according to this author, It is allegorically expressed by the figure of a very fine naked young woman looking up to Heaven, with the sun above her head; she holds a book in one hand.38 And in the other a palm branch, and rests her right foot upon a globe. She is represented young and naked to denote that Truth is naturally without any affectation or artifice: and she is looking up to Heaven, to point out that the Almighty is the author and fountain of all Truth. The sun above her head is the hieroglyphic of Truth and illumination of the faculties, they being inseparably connected. The book in her hand with the motto verbum Dei, denotes that the holy scriptures contain the most infallible truths. The palm branch alludes to victory and fortitude of mind, and to the triumph she obtains over fraud and falsehood. The attitude of trampling on the globe, points out that Truth despises all worldly considerations, and spurns at every object which deviates from the principles of purity and integrity.39 Regarding Satirical Poetry, Ripa40 describes it as the last sort of poetry, in which wickedness or folly are censured. It is represented by the figure of a Faun or Sylvan god, of a petulant or wanton aspect, leaning on a thyrsus, and holding an arrow in his hand,41 with which he is pointing to the following inscription, irridens cuspide figo.42 It is interesting to notice the duality of cuspis, which can be translated as rapier (in Spanish, puya) but also, in a metaphorical sense, as gibe, dig or a satirical phrase (in Spanish, pulla). Now we also understand why in the 1780 Spanish Royal Academy edition, the frontispiece presents a satyr setting fire to several chivalry novels (Amadís de Gaula, El Caballero de la Cruz, Olivante de Laura and others); it refers to the literary genre used by Cervantes in his book. Most of the editions mentioned in this chapter are in keeping with the way of reading Don Quixote inaugurated by Lord Carteret’s edition (London: Tonson, 1738). Tonson and his collaborator John Oldfield defended the moral and literary value of Cervantes’s novel – a masterpiece from which the erudite reader could learn relevant lessons not only on literature but also on life. The educated reader should not read Don Quixote just as an entertaining or amusing book. On the contrary, he had to find the truth beyond the mask of comedy and satire. He had to unveil the hidden meanings that Cervantes had concealed under the appearance of allegories and emblems – images that took form through the illustrated editions during the eighteenth century. Cervantes’ lessons on madness, reason, prudence and love have the strength of icons, and, although

Figure 1.10 Frontispiece. Samuel Wale (des.) and Rennoldson (eng.) (London: J. Cooke, 1774) Source: Image courtesy of the Cervantes Project

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nowadays we are unable to understand many elements of that emblematic culture, one of his “pictures” has managed to survive century after century until becoming one of the most iconic symbols of idealism, quest, madness, hope: Don Quixote.

Notes 1. This chapter has been possible thanks to the Cervantes Project (http://cervantes. dh.tamu.edu), which includes the project Iconografía textual del Quijote; all the illustrations included in this chapter belong to it: (http://cervantes.dh.tamu.edu/ V2/CPI/iconography/pres.html). Fernando González, Eduardo Urbina, Richard Furuta, and Jei Deng, “La colección de Quijotes ilustrados del proyecto Cervantes: catálogo de ediciones y archivo digital de imágenes,” Cervantes. Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America XXV, no. 1 (2005 [2006]): 79–104; and Eduardo Urbina et al., “Visual Knowledge: Textual Iconography of the Quixote,” in Don Quixote Illustrated: Textual Images and Visual Readings, eds. Eduardo Urbina and Jesús. G. Maestro (Pontevedra: Mirabel Editorial, 2005), 15–38. 2. The first edition with an illustrated title page (and with a well-conformed iconography of Don Quixote) has been considered Paris: La veuve de Jacques du Clou et Denis Moreau, 1618 (also in London: Blounte, 1620), and the first edition with illustrated chapters was Frankfurt: T. Matthiae Gotzen, 1648. 3. See Rachel Schmidt, The Canonization of Don Quixote through Illustrated Editions of the Eighteenth Century (Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). 4. The image of the charioteer of the soul has been taken from Plato, Phaedrus, trans. by Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/London: William Heinemann Ltd.), 246. 5. Andrea Alciato, Emblemata, ed., trans., and annot. by Betty I. Knott (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996), 63. 6. Ibid., 65. 7. See Thierry Lefrançois, Charles Coypel. Peintre du Roi (1694–1752) (Paris: Arthena 1994); and Fernando González, “Don Quichotte Conduit Par La Folie: la herencia de Charles-Antoine Coypel en las ediciones ilustradas del Quijote,” Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 4 (2008): 1–50. 8. Don Quixot led by Folly & Inflamed by an Extravagant Passion for Dulciana Sets out upon Knight Errantry. The English caption belongs to the Don Quixote edition of London: Walthoe, 1731, where the same French illustrations were included. 9. Alciato, Emblemata, 73. 10. Pliny, Natural History, ed. by Jeffrey Henderson and trans. by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2003), X.33.68. 11. Cesare Ripa, Iconologia or Moral Emblems, at the charge of P. Tempest (London: Benj. Motte, 1709), 4, fig. 16. 12. Ibid., 59, fig. 238. 13. George Richardson, Iconology or a Collection of Emblematical Figures (London: G. Scott, 1779, 2 vols), II, 100, fig. 343. I have used two editions of Ripa’s Iconologia to complete each other since they do not include the original complete descriptions. Richardson copies Ripa’s allegories. 14. Alciato, Emblemata, 147. 15. Bojiganga, a small company of travelling players who performed comedies. 16. “An artistic dance of the sort they call speaking dance.” 17. “Furnished with wings, bow, quiver and arrows.” 18. “In a rich dress of gold and silk of divers colours.” 19. Ripa, Iconologia, 61, fig. 243; and Richardson, Iconology, I, 62, fig. 114. 20. Ibid., 67, fig. 270.

Cervantes, Painter of Allegories 31 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Ibid., 56, fig. 221. Richardson, Iconology, II, 18, fig. 221. Ibid., 107–108, fig. 349 and Ripa, Iconologia, 49, fig. 196. Ibid. Don Quixot’s deliverance out of Folly by Wisdom (London: Walthoe, 1731). Richardson, Iconology, II, 106–107, fig. 348. Ripa, Iconologia, 64, fig. 255. Alciato, Emblemata, 26. Ripa, Iconologia, 63, fig. 251. Regarding the allegories of Prudence in Don Quixote, see Fernando González, “Elogio de la prudencia: alegorías de la locura en el Quijote,” Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 8 (2011): 31–56; and “Don Quijote como emblema de la Locura y elogio de la Prudencia,” in La impronta humanística (Ss. XV–XVIII). Saberes, visiones e interpretaciones, eds. Ana Castro Santamaría y Joaquín García Nistal (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2013), 451–464. Ibid. A crane appears in Ripa’s allegory of Vigilance, which could be considered as Prudence in a sense. Ripa, Iconologia, 78, fig. 313. Terence Hanbury White (trans. and ed.), The Book of Beasts Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954), 110–112. Ripa, Iconologia, 64, fig. 255; and Richardson, Iconology, I, 100, fig. 181. Stratford’s 1811 edition included Hayman’s frontispiece re-engraved by A. Warren. See Henry Spencer Ashbee, An Iconography of Don Quixote, 1605–1895 (London: Printed for the author by the University Press, Aberdeen, and issued by the Bibliographical Society, 1895), 114. Richardson, Iconology, I, 43–44, fig. 79. It refers to Cervantes. In the engraving, both sun and book appear on the shield. Richardson, Iconology, II, 94, fig. 337. Ibid., I, 109, fig. 196. In the engraving, both the thyrsus and the arrow appear together. “Between laughs I thrust my rapier.”

Cervantes’s Works Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1605. ———. Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1615. ———. Den Verstandigen Vroomen Ridder, Don Quichot de la Mancha. Dordrecht: Jacobus Savry, 1657. ———. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha. London: R. Knaplock, D. Midwinter, J. Tonson et al., 1719. ———. Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Londres: J. y R. Tonson, 1738. ———. Les principales Avantures de l’admirable Don Quichotte, représentées en figures par Coypel, [. . .]. La Haie: Pierre de Hondt, 1746. ———. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. London: A. Millar, 1755. ———. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha. London: J. Cooke, 1774.

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———. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1780. ———. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. London: Alex. Hogg, 1794. ———. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid: Gabriel de Sancha, 1798–99. ———. Don Quichotte de la Manche. Paris: Imprimerie de P. Didot l’âiné, 1799. ———. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. London: J. Stratford/S. Rousseau, 1811. ———. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Edited and annotated by Francisco Rico. [Madrid]: Punto de Lectura, [2007].

Bibliography Alciato, Andrea. Emblemata. Edited, translated, and annotated by Betty I. Knott. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996. González, Fernando. “Don Quichotte Conduit Par La Folie: la herencia de CharlesAntoine Coypel en las ediciones ilustradas del Quijote.” Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 4 (2008): 1–50. ———. “Elogio de la prudencia: alegorías de la locura en el Quijote.” Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 8 (2011): 31–56. ———. “Don Quijote como emblema de la Locura y elogio de la Prudencia.” In La impronta humanística (Ss. XV–XVIII). Saberes, visiones e interpretaciones, edited by Ana Castro Santamaría y Joaquín García Nistal, 451–464. Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2013. González, Fernando, Eduardo Urbina, Richard Furuta, and Jei Deng. “La colección de Quijotes ilustrados del proyecto Cervantes: catálogo de ediciones y archivo digital de imágenes.” Cervantes. Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America XXV, no. 1 (2005 [2006]): 79–104. Lefrançois, Thierry. Charles Coypel. Peintre du Roi (1694–1752). Paris: Arthena 1994. Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925. Pliny. Natural History. Edited by Jeffrey Henderson and translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2003 (1952). Richardson, George. Iconology or a Collection of Emblematical Figures. London: G. Scott, 1779. Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia or Moral Emblems, at the charge of P. Tempest. London: Benj. Motte, 1709. Schmidt, Rachel. The Canonization of Don Quixote through Illustrated Editions of the Eighteenth Century. Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. Urbina, Eduardo et al. “Visual Knowledge: Textual Iconography of the Quixote.” In Don Quixote Illustrated: Textual Images and Visual Readings, edited by Eduardo Urbina and Jesús G. Maestro, 15–38. Pontevedra: Mirabel Editorial, 2005. White, Terence Hanbury, trans. and ed. The Book of Beasts Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954.

2

The Presence of Ut Pictura Poesis in William Shakespeare’s and Miguel de Cervantes’ Works Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia

Painters’ journey towards social recognition, carved through centuries, favoured the production of a wide range of apologetic works aimed at achieving such purpose, with writers acquiring vital importance in the process of regarding pictorial art as a liberal one. Many of them were involved in defending the painters, colleagues whom they considered their peers, since they practised an art different from handicraft work.1 The debate’s roots may be found in Italy, where painters eventually acquired a status that served as an archetype for the claims of painters throughout other geographical areas.2 In the following lines, we intend to offer an overview of the subject by presenting contributions made by two of the most outstanding figures in universal literature: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. Even though we have grouped both authors under the theme Ut Pictura Poesis, a complete analysis is intended herein about their particular interpretations of the Horatian motto, how their words manage “to paint” the whole of certain narrations and how they make use of the art of painting in their literary production. It must also be made clear that research involving the link of the arts with these two writers has been largely developed from a philological perspective, with considerable contributions being made in this regard. Marguerite A. Tassi’s, John Dixon Hunt’s and Michele Marrapodi’s works, amongst many other authors, give a relevant example of Shakespeare’s figure in the context of arts. Repercussion of the paragone of arts, ekphrasis, emblematic elements and the impact of the visual culture of the Italian Renaissance have been some of the issues addressed by such authors.3 In a parallel way, it may well be observed that something similar has happened throughout Cervantes’ production. Although some historians of art have been getting involved in the debate, the bulk of research carried out so far falls under the philological field. Work by Frederick de Armas, Ignacio Arellano, Margarita Levisi and Adela Lupi claims to integrate the Spanish writer into the debate of the Golden Age regarding arts.4 What is intended herein is to present the extension to which the art of painting is included in both writers’ literary discourse, eventually claiming kinship between “the paintbrush and the pen.”

34 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia

Ut Pictura Poesis: Biased Interpretations in Spain and England The Horatian aphorism Ut Pictura Poesis acquired particular relevance in the Modern Age, with this fact being mainly due to innovative reflections by Italian writers on the link between painting and poetry. Although highly regarded writers such as Dante, Petrarch or Bocaccio had already dealt with such relationships in the early days of the Renaissance, interest increased throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a consequence of painters’ social demands. New humanists raised the debate again by putting forward a certain reformulation of pre-existing artistic literature, by trying to find, back in the antiquity, samples of the outstanding reputation that painting had had.5 Under the intellectual certainty conveyed by the Horatian platitude, as rightly interpreted, artists and intellectuals assumed standards which were typical of classical times yet they were re-oriented to the social and cultural demands of the period.6 The establishment of a new system of arts led to recollection and redirection of ancient classic topos, which had already been glimpsed in previous works, such as those by Cennino Cennini, yet seeking new goals.7 The philosophical ideology promoted by Marsilio Ficino and his circle allowed for retrieving the knowledge of classical antiquity and displaying new subjects that promoted comparison between both arts. These new trends of thought eventually appealed to emerging authors, such as Alberti or Leonardo, who reflected on intellectual concerns that had been developed during that time. Alberti’s approach tried to emphasize the importance of poetry for painting, arts sharing similar creative processes and being a relevant source of inspiration. On the other hand, Leonardo da Vinci took a more dramatic side by advocating supremacy of pictorial art over poetry.8 The path chosen by writers in the sixteenth century becomes progressively aligned with the opinions expressed by Alberti since interest to reinforce connection of painting with a highly recognized liberal art depended on it.9 Giorgio Vasari’s Le Vite de´più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori did not avoid recalling the arts’ Horatian filiation, specifically within the biographies of Dosso and the Battista Dossi brothers. Vasari made use of the reflections of Ut Pictura Poesis in order to compose the biography of the Ferrarese painters and to praise poet Lodovico Ariosto, a contemporary peer far better than them as far as artistic quality is concerned.10 While the overall picture developed in Italy was the materialization of a claim long sought by artists, a similar approach was intended in other European countries. Recognition given to painting and sculpture in Spain’s sixteenth century could not succeed aside from mechanical and artisanal craft. The late acceptance of the humanistic debate, well established in Italy, perpetuated the classification of these activities under the category of craft work, submitted to the yoke of the guilds.11 However, as noted by Gállego, this period can be benchmarked as the beginning of literary claims in favour of the art of painting; Portuguese Francisco de Holanda blatantly stated, “One is the reason for Spain and Portugal being infamous; and this is that neither in Spain nor

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Portugal is painting well-known, nor are there good painting works, nor even is painting honored.”12 Not much more flattering was the situation at the Anglo-Saxon side, with some parallels being established thereto. It stems from a similar premise in which English artists sought to break up with certain critical judgements of the Middle Ages towards their artistic skills.13 Translation of some Italian essays helped configure a range of vocabulary that favoured the idea of the noble arts, as happened in the version of Giovanni Paola Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte della Pittura, translated by Richard Haydocke.14 The survival of medieval models and the issue of iconography with religious motives in Anglo-Saxon countries did not allow the new Italian aesthetic ideology to be implemented promptly.15 This progress did actually leave a mark on the literary ground. Contributions by writers began to include, amongst their reflections, classic quotes and references that endorsed the strength of the arts of the paintbrush and the pen. Interpretations of classical texts, such as Horatio’s Epistula Ad Pisones by theoreticians and Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defense of Poesie, are clear examples of this.16 In the opuscule, loaded with evocative quotes from the classical world, specific utterances are included about links with the art of painting, amongst which Ut Pictura Poesis is included. The motto will also be used as a stylistic resource, seeking a technical outcome which stems from such connection and which may be reflected in texts – that is to say, the consequences of “painting with words.” However, both in Spain and in England, it will be meant to strengthen this kinship with obvious practical interests leading to social recognition of pictorial activity.17 In this context, we may well add Spanish writers, some well-known poet-painters, who have been so prolific at connecting painting and poetry in Spain’s Golden Age, together with English humanists or virtuosi.18

The Art of Painting in William Shakespeare Shakespeare’s connection with the world of arts is a well-proved fact, shaped by research. Back at the early twentieth century, Thorp analyzed, in one of his essays, a range of works by the English writer and the possible issues that should begin to be raised to such an extent.19 By inquiring into an array of approaches coherent with the history of arts, we believe that three levels of utility of the figurative arts on the part of the author can be established – namely, the use of art as a constructive element in order to configure the narration of some of his work, which brings news or assessments about such works of art; the imitation of pictorial work through literature or, rather, the exercises of ekphrasis (an element of interdisciplinary research); and, finally, the inclusion of theoretical reflections on art and literature, amongst which Ut Pictura Poesis may be found. Starting from these three concepts, in the terms that have been mentioned before, we will proceed to study an example of each through the literary works

36 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia of the English writer, firstly, with the analysis of The Taming of the Shrew (c.1590). At the beginning, and as part of the trick that is proposed to be played on the character of Christopher Sly, the Lord decides to prepare an activity which will have him puzzled through a series of paintings, specifically regarding the “most suggestive” paintings: LORD. Even as a flatt’ring dream or worthless fancy. / Then take him up, and manage well the jest: / Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, / And hang it round with all my wanton pictures. (I, i, 53–56)20 In the subsequent scene, the trick has been perpetrated, and Sly awakens in the Lord’s chambers. He begins to be enticed into the pleasures and luxuries of the aristocracy, stemming from music and references to the classical world. One of the Lord’s servants eventually lures Sly into the stratagem, suggesting, as another of the noble virtuosi’s delights, which pictorial images should satisfy his own cravings: SECOND SERVANT. Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight / Adonis painted by a running brook, / And Cytherea all in sedges hid, / Which seem to move and wanton with her breath / Even as the waving sedges play wi’ th’ wind. (I, ii, 56–60)21 The servants keep making suggestions about what works of art might be presented before the new gentleman, amidst which they emphasize such paintings as Io and Jupiter or Daphne and Apollo. Besides framing the narrative plot in the Italian city of Padua, Shakespeare makes use of classic iconography, which is representative of the Italian Renaissance: mythological stories. The new Renaissance aesthetics takes a relevant space here, particularly as far as social class differentiation is concerned; painting is presented as linked to aristocracy, an array of social stratum consisting of monarchy, nobility and clergy. Painting is appreciated, acquired and collected similarly as had happened in the dawn of the Italian Renaissance.22 The visual ideology which is displayed goes accordingly with the artistic production of the age: Sebastiano del Piombo’s (1511–12) or Titian’s (1554) Venus and Adonis, Correggio’s (1531–32) or Paris Bordone’s (c.1550) Jupiter and Io and even Antonio da Pollaiolo’s (c.1470) Apollo and Daphne. It is not that the writer is inspired by the specific models generated by these painters but that he echoes the artistic background of the time, including references to works which were trendy at that point. Similarly, he might well have been influenced by the engravings accompanying the illustrated editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – from the first English translation in 1480 by William Caxton – scenes which, to some extent, are biased by the moralizing, medievalist revision of classical mythology.23 Therefore, what we can notice in this narration is the use of pictorial art

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which is shaping the basic profile of the noble Englishman, even an attempt to elaborate such an exercise of ekphrasis in the Lord’s mythological paintings. In this sense, we can find a number of similarities in the artistic advices given by Baldassare Castiglione to the idyllic gentleman in Il Cortigiano (1528): the knowledge of art as something necessary in any Renaissance gentleman’s perfect education. In other Shakespearean works, a highly critical attitude is shown towards subjects of specific interest related to the arts and literature. For example, in Hamlet (c. 1599–1602), an interesting lesson on the limits of imitation may be learnt, being valid both for literature and the figurative arts. This modus operandi is conveyed by the main character to the comedians who are to take part in the small play before Claudius and Gertrud: HAMLET. Be not too tame neither. But let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the world, the world to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ‘twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (III, ii, 17–26)24 Hamlet’s lesson becomes obvious: the action to be performed in the play must not exceed nature’s boundaries since, in doing so, we would face a distorted image of reality, a standard which is identical to that of the poetic arts of the time or that of essays on pictorial art. Imitation must keep nature as an archetype. These same recommendations given on imitation of nature are applied in some other exercises of ekphrasis throughout Hamlet, an example of it being Gertrude’s narration of the death of Ophelia, addressed to her brother, Laertes.25 If one of Shakespeare’s approaches to the theoretical aspects of the arts is to be prioritized, then attention should be focussed on Timon of Athens (c. 1605). As first explained by Blunt, assessing the paragone amongst the arts that are explicit in this literary context becomes of special interest.26 The dialogue between the painter and the poet in this play ends up offering a higher view of painting, as opposed to poetry. Such a view contradicts the ideology of poetics of that age, although it was in total accordance with the Italian artistic theory of the fifteenth century, especially with Leonardo’s.27 We ought not to overlook one of Shakespeare’s most significant approaches to the topic of Ut Pictura Poesis in his poetry. Amongst the sonnets written by the author, under the influence of the Italian metrics, there are numerous references to the pictorial world, both at the constructive level of such poetry and as a main element of it. A relevant example of this may well be found in the verses of the sonnet “Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d,” where Shakespeare describes the beauty of his idyllic love by “painting” it.28

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The Art of Painting in Miguel de Cervantes’ Work Cervantes’ connection with the visual arts has also been consolidated by research. His narrative works have abundant mentions and judgements conveying the humanistic spirit, which prevailed at the time; attraction to figurative arts is well noticed in such works. The author, therefore, remains consistent with those Spanish Golden Age writers who decided to shield and exalt the art of painting.29 Due to the overwhelming amount of research arising from Cervantes’ literature and the visual arts, we have decided, as in the previous instance, to highlight a number of aspects which allow us to confirm Cervantes’ closeness to the Horatian platitude and help us contextualize them within the methodology of the history of art. Starting our path from the exegesis of the author’s most relevant works, the use of the literary resource may be observed, not only at the level of considering the pictorial object a work of art but also as it is included in some theoretical speculations about the art of painting. This fact is well exemplified by Maritornes’ description in the first part of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha where it is suggested that “she had the shades and the looks of a Christian woman.”30 As pointed out by Allen in the Castilian edition of the text, this term addresses evaluative features of painting. Distinctive jargon arises from pictorial work, which will eventually refine the literary description of a character. More relevant in this part becomes the author’s personal assessment of imitation, as explained by Don Quixote to Sancho in Chapter XXV: Digo asimismo que cuando algún pintor quiere salir famoso en su arte, procura imitar los originales de los más únicos pintores que sabe. Y esta mesma regla corre por todos los más oficios de cuenta que sirven para adorno de las repúblicas, y así lo ha de hacer y hace el que quiere alcanzar nombre de prudente y sufrido, imitando a Ulíses, en cuya persona y trabajos nos pinta Homero un retrato vivo de prudencia y de sufrimiento, como también nos mostró Virgilio, en persona de Eneas, el valor de un hijo piadoso y la sagacidad de un valiente y entendido capitán, no pintándolo ni [describiéndolo] como ellos fueron, sino habían de ser, para quedar ejemplo a los venideros hombres de sus virtudes.31 Cervantes replicates the imitative theories which were typical of the poetic and pictorial arts and had been developed throughout the Renaissance – an age where the motto Ut Pictura Poesis had emerged again. The imitative scheme is equivalent to that established by Renaissance theorists: idealization of nature, vying for the maximum expression of beauty, an idea which was put forward in the episode El Caballero del Verde Gabán [The Knight of the Green Cloak], well into Don Quixote’s second part: También digo que el natural poeta que se ayudare del arte será mucho mejor y se aventajará al poeta que solo por saber el arte quisiere serlo; la razón es porque el arte no se aventaja a la naturaleza, sino perficiónala; así

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que, mezcladas la naturaleza y el arte, y el arte con la naturaleza, sacarán un perfetísimo poeta.32 Such creative processes arise from theoretical reflections which are almost identical since exchange of ideas between poetic arts and essays on painting were commonplace at the time.33 Don Quixote’s second part displays many a mention of pictorial art. Likewise, it includes some references to painting from a burlesque angle, much related to Cervantes’ narrative – for instance, references to the story of Orbaneja, the hopelessly untalented painter, within Chapters III and LXXI, where the same anecdote is described: the painter has such a blatant lack of skill that he needs to accompany the description of his paintings with words in order to facilitate their understanding, as stated in Chapter LXXI: Yo apostaré – dijo Sancho – que antes de mucho tiempo no ha de haber bodegón, venta ni mesón, o tienda de barbero, donde no ande pintada la historia de nuestras hazañas. Pero querría yo que la pintasen manos de otro mejor pintor que el que ha pintado a estas. – Tienes razón, Sancho – dijo don Quijote –, porque este pintor es como Orbaneja, un pintor que estaba en Úbeda; q[u]e, cuando le preguntaban qué pintaba, respondía: “Lo que saliere”; y si por ventura pintaba un gallo, escribía debajo: “Este es gallo”, porque no pensasen que era zorra.34 Cervantes uses a parodic tale linked to the subject of fine arts in order to attack Avellaneda, author of Don Quixote’s spurious second part.35 Also, parody and painting will be embraced within other narrative arguments, thus emphasizing the importance of humorous elements in building the narrative,36 which may be exemplified by Sancho’s discussion with the farmer in Chapter XLVII, referring to him as a painter since the latter is describing the portrait of his beloved. Another example may be found in Teresa Panza’s letter to her husband in which she tells him about the news from home. Teresa reports La Berrueca’s daughter being married to an unskilled painter who will soon become a farmer.37 It is interesting to notice how the pictorial activity is trivialized in order to create a comedy scene at a time where the opposite is sought to be conveyed. Similarly, the use of words from the field of pictorial art with the purpose of defining descriptions, such as painting, sketching, drawing, doodling and designing, amongst other nuances, became evident in Cervantes’ style, an event that García Berrio defined as “synaesthesia of the Arts.”38 Literature finds a huge archetype, aimed at imitation, in the field of painting, consequently entailing enhancement of the pictorial arts. Following this brief account, at the beginning of the prologue of Novelas Ejemplares [Exemplary Novels] (1613), the writer comments on his interest in having a portrait painted by a famous artist to accompany the work’s edition: Quisiera yo, si fuera posible, lector amantísimo, excusarme de escribir este prólogo, porque no me fue tan bien con el que puse en mi Don Quijote,

40 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia que quedase con gana de segundar con éste. Desto tiene la culpa algún amigo, de los muchos que en el discurso de mi vida he granjeado, antes con mi condición que con mi ingenio, el cual amigo bien pudiera, como es uso y costumbre, grabarme y esculpirme en la primera hoja deste libro, pues le diera mi retrato el famoso don Juan de Jáuregui, y con esto quedara mi ambicion satisfecha.39 Being portrayed by a great artist – namely, Juan de Jáuregui, poet and painter of the seventeenth century – seems to be utterly consistent with the premises of Ut Pictura Poesis: it would allow the author to go beyond his time, having an idealized image of himself in the future, in addition to achieving welldeserved recognition. In the same way, in the speech that follows, Cervantes gives “sketches” on how such work should be carried out by making a literary self-portrait – an exercise of ekphrasis by means of an ideal painting. The chance of achieving immortality through artistic work, hereby through the art of painting/engraving, was a common thought throughout the humanistic world; for that matter, Cervantes would return to such an idea some years later.40 Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda [The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda] (1617) was the author’s work at the height of his career and maturity, also the one that contains a larger number of reflections on painting, which range from recurrent exercises of ekphrasis and quotes by classical antiquity’s painters and artists to theoretical reflections.41 To a certain extent, Cervantes continues and goes further into the path which had been opened in Don Quixote’s second part, regarding kinship with pictorial art. As has already been mentioned, he insists on the image surviving through the picture: Bien quisiera el anciano Villaseñor que todo esto se añadiera al lienzo, pero todos fueron de parecer que, no solamente se añadiese, sino que aun lo pintado se borrase, porque tan grandes y tan no vistas cosas no eran para andar en lienzos débiles, sino en láminas de bronce escritas y en las memorias de las gentes grabadas.42 Nevertheless, there is no doubt whatsoever that the most interesting thing that may be noticed when reading Persiles is the author’s unambiguous message in defence of the art of painting and its links with poetry. The utterance stated at the beginning of one of the chapters is definitely consistent with the Horatian motto: La historia, la poesía y la pintura simbolizan entre sí y se parecen tanto que, cuando escribes historia, pintas, y cuando pintas, compones. No siempre va en un mismo peso la historia, ni la pintura pinta cosas grandes y magnificas, ni la poesía conversa siempre por los cielos. Bajezas admite la historia, la pintura, hierbas y retamas en sus cuadros y, la poesía, tal vez se realza cantando cosas humildes.43

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This excerpt clearly reflects the writer’s opinion of the sister arts, with the idea of dignifying the artistic binomium. Kinship of painting and poetry is accurately described in the text, making such a link extensive to the field of history – an utterance which eventually strengthens the ideology outlined in previous writings from the Spanish author. Similarly, identical conceptions may be noticed in the poetry that is part of Cervantes’ inheritance. His poetry deserves further research so as to find coincident elements to those which are present in prose works – a subject which has already drawn attention from some researchers.44 A case to be taken into consideration, without going deeper into the analysis of La Galatea or El viaje al Parnaso [The Trip of Parnassus], may well be the sonnet dedicated “A San Francisco” [“To San Francisco”], included in Pedro de Padilla’s El Jardín Espiritual [Spiritual Garden] (1585), in which verses Cervantes introduces a large amount of pictorial vocabulary illustrating the topic of Deus Pictor remarkably.45 These few lines can briefly raise an approach to the huge contribution to the field of artistic speculation that both Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ works provide by observing their particular vision of the Horatian aphorism. We have only been able to outline the main points of what remains an utterly suggestive field of study regarding these two outstanding figures of literature; nevertheless, some similarities may be taken into consideration, thus allowing us to encompass both authors in identical cultural dynamics. Both considered painting equal to poetry and, hence, to liberal arts. Although it might be argued whether such concepts are used as stylistic resources within each author’s distinctive works, the subject of the liberality of pictorial art was in full debate and should not come unnoticed. Both Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ arguments add further support to the painters’ socio-economic demands, thus highlighting England and Spain’s particular issues, for that matter. Furthermore, they use description and ekphrasis in such a way that they often consider themselves poets-painters, managing to mesh both disciplines, which was a genuine baroque trend. The examples that have been presented herein reflect the overwhelming intellectual repertory that both authors dealt with, especially regarding visual arts. The extensive humanistic background that is displayed in their literature made it possible for them to provide this intensely personal interpretation of Ut Pictura Poesis.

Notes 1. Rudolf Wittkower, “The Artist and the Liberal Arts,” Eidos 1 (1950): 11–17; Anthony Blunt, La teoría de las artes en Italia. Del 1450 a 1600, trans. José Luis Checa Cremades (Madrid: Alianza, 1990), 65–74 y Larry A. Silver, “Step-Sister of the Muses. Painting as Liberal and Sister Art,” in Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson, ed. Richard Wendorf (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 36–69. 2. Rudolf Wittkower and Margot Wittkower, Nacidos bajo el signo de Saturno. Genio y temperamento de los artistas desde la Antigüedad hasta la Revolución Francesa, trans. Deborah Dietrick (Madrid: Cátedra, 2015), 13–26. 3. Arthur Henry Rolph Fairchild, Shakespeare and the Arts of Design: (Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting) (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1937); Clark Hulse,

42 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia

4.

5. 6. 7 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

“Recent Studies of Literature and Painting in the English Renaissance,” English Literary Renaissance 15, no. 1 (1985): 129–132; John Dixont Hunt, “Shakespeare and the Paragone: A Reading of Timon of Athens,” in Images of Shakespeare. Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Shakespeare Association, eds. Warner Habicht, David John Palmer, and Roger Pringle (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), 47–63; Natalia Carbajosa Palmero, “Ut Pictura Poesis: reflexiones desde el teatro de Shakespeare,” Signa: Revista de la Asociación Española de Semiótica 12 (2003): 587–602; Marguerite A. Tassi, “O’erpicturing Apelles: Shakespeare’s ‘Paragone’ with Painting in Antonio and Cleopatra,” in Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays, ed. Sarah Munson Deats (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 291–307; Richard Meek, Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare (Farham/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009); Michele Marrapodi, “Shakespeare e le Arti Sorelle. Rappresentazione pittorica e tensione ekfrastica in Othello e Cymbeline,” In Verbis, Lingue Letterature Culture 2 (2013): 37–62. Margarita Levisi, “La pintura en la narrativa de Cervantes,” Boletín de la Biblioteca Menéndez Pelayo 48 (1972): 295–325; Carlos Brito Díaz, “Porque lo pide así la pintura: la escritura peregrina en el lienzo del Persiles,” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 17, no. 1 (1997): 145–164; Ignacio Arellano, “Visiones y símbolos emblemáticos en la poesía de Cervantes,” Anales Cervantinos 34 (1998): 169–212; Adelia Lupi, “El Ut Pictura Poesis cervantino: alegorías y bodegones en el Persiles,” in Volver a Cervantes. Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas, ed. Bernat Vistarini (Mallorca: Universitat de les Illes Balears, 2001), II, 907–912; Jesús Félix Pascual Molina, “Pintura y fama en El Quijote: Cervantes y la teoría artística,” in Actas del XL Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Europea de Profesores de Español. 400 años de Don Quijote: pasado y perspectivas de futuro, ed. Sara M. Saz (Madrid: AEPE, 2006), 155–167; Frederick de Armas, Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Frederick de Armas, “Van Eyck, Juan de Roelas y Tiziano: misterios pictóricos en el coloquio de los perros,” Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 5 (2009): 85–100. Paul Oskar Kristeller, El pensamiento renacentista y las artes, trans. Bernardo Moreno Carrillo (Madrid: Taurus, 1986), 197–203. Henryk Markiewicz, “Ut Pictura Poesis: historia del topos y del problema,” in Literatura y Arte, ed. Antonio Monegal Brancos (Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2000), 51–61. Moshe Barasch, Teorías del arte. De Platón a Winckelmann, trans. Fabiola Salcedo Garcés (Madrid: Alianza, 1991), 139–141. Leonardo da Vinci, Tratado de Pintura, ed. David García López (Madrid: Alianza, 2013), 30–31 y 65. Paola Barocchi, Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento (Milano/Napoli: Ricciardi, 1971), I, 223–234. Giorgio Vasari, “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori (original text from the edition by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, Firenze: Studio Per Edizione Scelte-Sansoni, 1966–87)”, accessed April 14, 2018, http://memofonte. accademiadellacrusca.org/capitolo.asp?ID=375. Julián Gállego, El pintor. De artesano a artista (Granada: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada, 1976), 29–51 and Susann Waldmann, El artista y su retrato en la España del siglo XVII. Una aportación al estudio de la pintura retratista española, trans. José Luis Gil Aristu (Madrid: Alianza, 2007), 27–28. Francisco de Holanda, Diálogos de Roma, trans. Isabel Soler (Barcelona: Acantilado, 2018), 51. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists; A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth I (London: University of London-Athlone Press, 1954) y Guy Fitch

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14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

43

Lytle y Stephen Orgel (eds.), Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 293–379. Luigi Salerno, “Seventeenth-Century English Literature on Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, nos. 3–4 (1951): 234–238. C. Pamela Graves, “From an Archaeology of Iconoclasm to an Anthropology of the Body: Images, Punishment, and Personhood in England, 1500–1660,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 1 (February 2008): 35–60 y John R. Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in Its History and Art (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 40–59. Sir Philip Sidney, Defensa de la poesía, trans. Berta Cano Echevarría, Mª. Eugenia Perojo Arronte, and Ana Sáez Hidalgo (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), 125–133. Anat Feinberg-Jütte, “Painters and Counterfeiters: The Painting Artist in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama,” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 16, no. 1 (1991): 3–12 y Juan José Martín González, El artista en la sociedad española del siglo XVII (Madrid: Cátedra, 1984), 77–80. Walter E. Houghton, Jr., “The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century: Part II,” Journal of the History of Ideas 3, no. 2 (April 1942): 205–211 and Emilio Orozco Díaz, Temas del Barroco de poesía y pintura (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1989), 55–67. Margaret Farrand Thorp, “Shakespeare and the Fine Arts,” PMLA 46, no. 3 (1931): 672–693. William Shakespeare, The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. by Manley Wood (London: George Kearsley, 1806), V, 9. Ibid., V, 15. Andre Chastel, Arte y humanismo en Florencia en la época de Lorenzo el Magnífico, trans. Luis López Jiménez and Luis Eduardo López Esteve (Madrid: Cátedra, 1982), 37–45 and Ernst Hans Gombrich, Norma y forma. Estudios sobre el arte del Renacimiento I, trans. Remigio Gómez Díaz (Madrid: Editorial Debate, 2000), 35–57. Christina Wald, “‘But of Course the Stage Has Certain Limits?’ The Adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Shakespeare’s Plays,” Anglia. Journal of English Philology 127, no. 3 (2010): 425–458. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, trans. Manuel Ángel Conejero Dionís-Bayer (Madrid: Cátedra, 2015), 348–350. Simonetta Falchi, “Re-mediating Ophelia with Pre-Raphaelite Eyes,” Interlitteraria 20, no. 2 (2015): 171–183. Anthony Blunt, “An Echo of the ‘Paragone’ in Shakespeare,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 3 (January 1939): 260–262. John Dixont Hunt, “Shakespeare and the Paragone: A Reading of Timon of Athens,” in Images of Shakespeare: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Shakespeare Association, eds. Werner Habicht, D.J. Palmer, and Roger Pringle (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), 47–62; Jennifer A. Royston, “Mute Poem, Speaking Picture: The Personification of the Paragone in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens,” in Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion, eds. Walter S. Melion and Bart Ramakers (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 337–353 y Michele Marrapodi, “Timon of Athens: The Theatre and the Visual,” in Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence, ed. Michele Marrapodi (London/New York: Routledge, 2017), 14–18. William Shakespeare, Sonetos, trans. Jenaro Talens and Richard Waswo (Madrid: Cátedra, 2014), 102 and Judith Dundas, Pencils Rethorique: Renaissance Poets and the Art of Painting (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), 57–63. Javier Portús Pérez, Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega (Guipúzcoa: Nerea, 1999), 58–60 and 67–73. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid: Cátedra, 2014), 255.

44 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia 31. Ibid., 343. “I say also, that if a painter would be famous in his art, he must endeavour to copy after the originals of the most excellent masters he knows. The same rule holds good for all other arts and sciences, that serve as ornaments of the commonwealth. In like manner, whoever aspires to the character of prudent and patient, must imitate Ulysses, in whose persons and toils Homer draws a lively picture of prudence and patience; as Virgil also does of a pious son and a valiant and expert captain, in the person of Aeneas; not delineating or describing them as they really were, but as they ought to be, in order to serve as patterns of virtue to succeeding generations.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Charles Jarvis (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1857), I, 230. 32. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016), 170. “Not, I must add, but that a natural poet, who improves himself by art, will be a much better poet and have the advantage of him who has no other title to it but the knowledge of that art alone. The reason is because art cannot exceed nature, but only perfect it; so that art mixed with nature, and nature with art, form a complete poet.” Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 172. 33. M.ª Pilar Manero Sorolla, “El precepto horaciano de la relación “fraterna” entre pintura y poesía y las poéticas ítalo-españolas durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII,” Boletín de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo 64 (1988): 171–191. 34. Cervantes, Don Quijote II, 628. “‘I hold a wager’, said Sancho, ‘that ere it be long there will be neither eating-house, tavern, inn, nor barber’s shop, in which the history if our exploits will not be painted. But I could wish they may be done by the hand of a better painter than he who did these.’ — ‘You are in the right, Sancho,’ replied Don Quixote, ‘for this painter is like Orbaneja of Ubeda, who, when he was asked what he was drawing, answered: ‘As it shall happen; and if it chanced to be a cock, he wrote under it: ‘This is a cock,’ lest people should take it for a fox.” Don Quixote, II, 744. 35. Javier Portús Pérez, “Un cuentecillo del Siglo de Oro sobre la mala pintura: Orbaneja,” Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 5 (1988): 46–55. 36. Eduardo Urbina, Principios y fines del Quijote (Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1990), 129–177 and José Montero Reguera, “Humanismo, erudición y parodia en Cervantes: del Quijote al Persiles,” Edad de Oro 15 (1996): 87–109. 37. Cervantes, Don Quijote II, 427, 440 and 476–477. 38. Antonio García Berrio and Teresa Hernández Fernández, Ut poesis pictura. Poética del arte visual (Madrid: Tecnos, 1988), 17. 39. Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Ejemplares I (Madrid: Cátedra, 2010), 50–51. “I WISH it were possible, dear reader, to dispense with writing this preface; for that which I put at the beginning of my ‘Don Quixote’ did not turn out so well for me as to give me any inclination to write another. The fault lies with a friend of mine one of the many I have made in the course of my life with my heart rather tan my head. This friend might well have caused my portrait, which the famous Don Juan de Jauregui would have given him, to be engraved and put in the first page of this book, according to custom. By that means he would have gratified my ambition and the wishes of several persons, who would like to know what sort of face and figure has he who makes bold to come before the world with so many works of his own invention.” Miguel de Cervantes, The Exemplary Novels of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, trans. by Walter K. Kelly (London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1855), IX. 40. Antonio Gallego, Historia del Grabado en España (Madrid: Cátedra, 1979), 133–140. 41. Karl-Ludwig Selig, “Persiles y Sigismunda: Notes on Pictures, Portraits, and Portraiture,” Hispanic Review 41 (1973): 305–312; Aurora Egido Martínez, Fronteras de la poesía en el Barroco (Barcelona: Crítica, 1990), 189–191 and Isabel Lozano

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42.

43.

44.

45.

45

Renieblas, “La función de la écfrasis en el Persiles,” in Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas, ed. Antonio Pablo Bernat Vistarini (Mallorca: Universitat de les Illes Balears, Servei de Publicacions i Intercanvi Científic, 1998), 507–515. Miguel de Cervantes, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004), 525. “The old Villaseñor wished this also to be added to the picture, and all agreed that it should be done, and that the history of such wonderful and unheard of adventures ought not to be merely depicted upon a perishable canvass, but should be written on tables of bronze, and graven on the memories of men.” Miguel de Cervantes, The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda; A Northern Story, trans. Louisa Dorothea Stanley (London: Joseph Cundall, 1854), 321. Cervantes, Persiles, 570–571. “History, poetry, and painting resemble one another, and so it appears that in writing history, one paints a picture; in painting, one composes a story; history does not always treat of weighty matters, neither does the painter always choose great or magnificent subjects for his pencil; poetry is not always in the clouds; history must treat of base deeds; painting has grass and furze in her pictures, and poetry exalts humble things.” Cervantes, The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda, 354. Ellen Lokos, “El lenguaje emblemático en el Viaje del Parnaso,” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 9, no. 1 (1989): 63–74 and Adrián J. Sáez, “Pintura sobre pintura”: el arte en la poesía de Cervantes,” Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofía 43 (2016): 77–88. Pedro de Padilla, Jardín Espiritual (Madrid: Casa de Querino Gerardo Flamenco, 1585), 230v–231r; Emile L. Bergmann, Art Inscribed: Essays on Ekphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 49–50 and 56 and Miguel de Cervantes, Poesías, ed. Adrián J. Sáez (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016), 167–168.

Bibliography Auerbach, Erna. Tudor Artists; A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth I. London: University of London-Athlone Press, 1954. Barasch, Moshe. Teorías del arte. De Platón a Winckelmann. Translated by Fabiola Salcedo Garcés. Madrid: Alianza, 1991. Barocchi, Paola. Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento. Milano/Napoli: Ricciardi, 1971. Bergmann, Emile L. Art Inscribed: Essays on Ekphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Blunt, Anthony. La teoría de las artes en Italia. Del 1450 a 1600. Translated by José Luis Checa Cremades. Madrid: Alianza, 1990. Cervantes, Miguel de. The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda; A Northern Story. Translated by Louisa Dorothea Stanley. London: Joseph Cundall, 1854. ———. The Exemplary Novels of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Translated by Walter K. Kelly. London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1855. ———. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated by Charles Jarvis. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1857. ———. Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Madrid: Cátedra, 2004. ———. Novelas Ejemplares, I. Madrid: Cátedra, 2010. ———. Don Quijote de la Mancha, I. Madrid: Cátedra, 2014. ———. Don Quijote de la Mancha, II. Madrid: Cátedra, 2016.

46 Alejandro Jaquero Esparcia ———. Poesías. Madrid: Cátedra, 2016. Chastel, André. Arte y Humanismo en Florencia en la época de Lorenzo el Magnífico. Translated by Luis López Jiménez and Luis Eduardo López Esteve. Madrid: Cátedra, 1991. Dundas, Judith. Pencils Rethorique: Renaissance Poets and the Art of Painting. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993. Egido Martínez, Aurora. Fronteras de la poesía en el Barroco. Barcelona: Crítica, 1990. Gállego, Julián. El pintor. De artesano a artista. Granada: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada, 1976. García Berrio, Antonio, and Teresa Hernández Fernández. Ut poesis pictura. Poética del arte visual. Madrid: Tecnos, 1988. Gent, Lucy. Picture and Poetry 1560–1620: Relations between Literature and the Visual Arts in the English Renaissance. Warwickshire: James Hall, 1981. Grassi, Luigi. Teorici e storia della critica d’arte. Prima Parte: Dall’ Antichità a tutto il Cinquecento. Roma: Multigrafica Editrice, 1985. Hale, John R. England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in its History and Art. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Holanda, Francisco de. Diálogos de Roma. Translated by Isabel Soler. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2018. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. El pensamiento renacentista y las artes. Translated by Bernardo Moreno Carrillo. Madrid: Taurus, 1986. Lee, Rensselaer W. Ut Pictura Poesis. La teoría humanística de la pintura. Translated by Consuelo Luca de Tena. Madrid: Cátedra, 1982. Lytle, Guy Fitch and Orgel, Stephen, eds. Patronage in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Martín González, Juan José. El artista en la sociedad española del siglo XVII. Madrid: Cátedra, 1984. Meek, Richard. Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare. Farham/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009. Orozco Díaz, Emilio. Temas del Barroco de poesía y pintura. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1989. Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. New York/London: Harper & Row, 1972. Portús Pérez, Javier. Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega. Guipúzcoa: Nerea, 1999. Rolph Fairchild, Arthur Henry. Shakespeare and the Arts of Design: (Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting). Columbia: University of Missouri, 1937. Salerno, Luigi. “Seventeenth-Century English Literature on Painting.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, nos. 3–4 (1951): 234–258. Shakespeare, William. Sonetos. Translated by Jenaro Talens and Richard Waswo. Madrid: Cátedra, 2014. ———. Hamlet. Translated by Manuel Ángel Conejero Dionís-Bayer. Madrid: Cátedra, 2015. Sidney, Sir Philip. Defensa de la poesía. Translated by Berta Cano Echevarría, Mª. Eugenia Perojo Arronte, and Ana Sáez Hidalgo. Madrid: Cátedra, 2003. Silver, Larry A. “Step-Sister of the Muses. Painting as Liberal and Sister Art.” In Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson, edited by Richard Wendorf, 36–69. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Urbina, Eduardo. Principios y fines del Quijote. Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1990.

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Vinci, Leonardo da. Tratado de Pintura. Edited by David García López. Madrid: Alianza, 2013. Waldmann, Susann. El artista y su retrato en la España del siglo XVII. Una aportación al estudio de la pintura retratista española. Translated by José Luis Gil Aristu. Madrid: Alianza, 2007. Wittkower, Rudolf, and Margot Wittkower. Nacidos bajo el signo de Saturno. Genio y temperamento de los artistas desde la Antigüedad hasta la Revolución Francesa. Translated by Deborah Dietrick. Madrid: Cátedra, 2015.

Part II

The Sister Arts in the English Long-Nineteenth Century

3

Embellishing the Poetic Text Felicia Hemans and Female Aesthetic Education in the Nineteenth-Century British Annuals Beatriz González-Moreno

“Beautiful, elegant, and decorated.”1 This is the Kantian definition for the strong inborn feeling women have. Eighteenth-century aesthetics revolved around key issues, such as taste, genius, imagination and the categories of the beautiful and the sublime. While debating the nature of those ideas and the relevance of acknowledging the “pleasures of the imagination,” aesthetics became gendered and, as a consequence, the different sexes were also expected to develop different tastes, but just as the aesthetic education of the subject led him/her one way or another, the subject him/herself became an object of either beauty or sublimity. Aesthetics were broadened by the inclusion of a category which struggled against the traditional Platonic equation between the good and the beautiful. The sublime promoted terror, a taste for which is obscure, vast and great, and paved the way for the gothic genre to develop. Within this eighteenth-century debate, Edmund Burke systematised these aesthetic categories in his influential A Philosophical Enquiry (1757), where the beautiful and the sublime were described as a system of opposites. Thus, whereas the sublime was grounded on solitude, ambition, grandeur or power, to name just a few, the beautiful was cemented on pleasure, society, weakness, smoothness and delicacy; in the end, “by beauty,” he meant “that quality or those qualities in bodies by which they cause love or some passion similar to it.”2 In this sense, it is no wonder that Anne K. Mellor had observed the relation between the masculine-sublime and the female-beautiful and that Burke, as he constructed the category of the beautiful, also constructed the image of the ideal woman: Beauty is identified with the softer virtues, with easiness of temper, compassion, kindness and liberality, as opposed to the higher qualities of mind, those virtues which cause admiration such as fortitude, justice and wisdom, . . . assigned to the masculine sublime.3 Nevertheless, this division is even sharper in Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), where he made it even more explicit that the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime is to be

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equated with the feminine and the masculine. Women, referred to as “the fair sex” as opposed to “the noble sex,” have a strong inborn feeling for all that is beautiful, elegant and decorated. Even in childhood they like to be dressed up, and take pleasure when they are adorned. . . . They love pleasantry and can be entertained by trivialities. . . . They have many sympathetic sensations, good heartedness, and compassion, prefer the beautiful to the useful, and gladly turn abundance of circumstance into parsimony, in order to support expenditure on adornment and glitter. . . . The fair sex has just as much understanding as the male, but it is a beautiful understanding, whereas ours should be a deep understanding, an expression that signifies identity with the sublime.4 Thus, aesthetics was not only about the beautiful and the sublime as connected with nature and other elements but about the different sexes. As a consequence, women could be neither an object of sublimity (embodying power, grandeur, deep meditation, laborious learning, etc.) nor a subject experiencing the sublime since their inborn feelings were for the beautiful. Necessarily, the idea of an aesthetic education and its relation to taste led to the gendering of a new genre: the gift-book, which embodied the ideal woman and appealed to her taste for “expenditure on adornment and glitter,” as seen earlier. In this sense, aesthetics, and more specifically the sublime, had opened the door to new territories, but those were confined to men. Women were expected to remain in the safety of the home, promoting domestic affections and developing a taste for “luxurious softness and delicacy.”5 During the eighteenth century, conduct books had been specifically in charge of educating women, but then throughout the century and due to the development of aesthetics, these conduct books came to be replaced (or dressed up) by their aestheticised counterparts: the literary annual and the gift-book. In John Gregory’s conduct book A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (1761), it can be read that one of the chief beauties in a female character is that modest reserve, that retiring delicacy, which avoids the public eye, and is disconcerted even at the gaze of admiration. . . . When a girl ceases to blush, she has lost the most powerful charm of beauty. . . . Blushing is so far from being necessarily an attendant on guilt, that it is the usual companion of innocence.6 The passage is relevant because it emphasises the idea of “gaze” and helps us to connect the conduct manual with the gift-book. A woman’s power lies in her ability to charm by blushing and by becoming an object of beauty and an epitome of innocence; thus, women are expected to be modest, whereas at the same time, they have to be aware that they are an object to be admired as a compendium of virtues; as a consequence, it will be frequent the portrayal, as we will see, of women casting down their eyes. In this sense, gift-books’ main

Embellishing the Poetic Text 53 appeal becomes the inclusion of embellishments, plates depicting ideal young ladies and mirror-canvases where women were to find a female role model to imitate. Undoubtedly, the first “literary annual” was The Forget-Me-Not (1823– 1847), published in England by Rudolph Ackermann in 1825 and edited by Frederic Shoberl; it set the pattern for the “really truly gift-book,” which, in Frederick W. Faxon’s words had an appearance and make-up all their own, very different from any other volumes. At first they were the small duodecimos. . . . Their bindings were ornate, often to the point of gaudiness . . . or profusely gilt, or if a cloth was desired, a watered silk dress gave distinction to the volumes. . . . Some had bindings with a floral design inlaid with mother-of-pearl . . ., a ribbon being attached with which to pull forth the volume. . . . The contents consisted of prose short stories and essays and selected poetry often with flowery borders about each page. There were illustrations engravings or colored plates dignified in the catalogues as embellishments. . . . Thus in binding, contents, illustrations, and name these interesting “butterfly books” were easily distinguished from the common run.7 The gift-book is described in such a way that it suggests both that it was aimed at a female reading public and that the book itself was perceived as a feminine literary gift dressed in women’s clothes: the make-up, the gilt lettering, the soft silk dress, the flowery ornaments, all of it binding the recipient and the book; both were objects of beauty to be admired and both embodied a set of virtues. Literary annuals became “butterfly books,” just as women were regarded: fragile beauties belonging to the safe sphere of the domestic – pinned butterflies exhibited as trophies. The publisher of The Forget-Me-Not flatters himself in his advertisement for the 1823 edition by stating that, regarding the literary department, “it has been his aim to unite the agreeable with the useful,” but it is “the graphic embellishments” of which he is most proud.8 In this sense, the frontispiece opening this edition is clearly meaningful and sets the ideological tone of these publications. The plate to which we are introduced is a Madonna engraved by J. Agar, inspired by a painting by Vincenzo da San Gimignano. And precisely this is going to be the target reader of these publications: women; women conceived as madonne, iconic role models of behaviour and good conduct. The rest of the engravings contained within this first volume consist of 12 vignettes of The Months designed by Edward Burney and engraved by Agar, where he depicts a woman-mother playing with or taking care of her children. This seasonal gift also included “a blank for the purpose of receiving a presentation inscription”9 surrounded by an engraved wreath of the flower, framing the female addressee into a precious object of contemplation. Against this background, it is thus highly significant to explore how women and ideas about femininity were portrayed in some of the main gift-books during the Romantic period. In order to

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do that, Felicia Hemans (1793–1835), one of the most fruitful contributors to these annuals, has been chosen as a guiding hand; by analysing both her reception as a woman writer and the relationship between text and image she maintained, it is the aim of this chapter to reach a deeper insight into issues such as female genius, education and prevailing ideas about womanhood. Felicia Hemans contributed to The Forget-Me-Not for the 1826 edition with the poem “Evening Prayer at a Girl’s School” (1826). The poem puts forward two main virtues of true womanhood: piety and strength within a religious context. According to Barbara Welter, The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors, and her society could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. . . . Religion or piety was the core of woman’s virtue, the source of her strength. Young men looking for a mate were cautioned to search first for piety.10 Since gift-books were many times intended as wooing presents, Felicia Hemans is emphasising the standards any good woman and wife should embody. The poem opens with a room described as a temple, where the “fair young heads” are bowed in prayer “as flowers.”11 “Gaze on – ‘tis lovely!” the author immediately added. Hemans, thus, highlighted the idea of gazing, gazing such a holy scene, gazing upon those young ladies, innocent and beautiful flowers, gazing the embellishment; whereas at the same time, Hemans referred to their lot: “Silent tears to weep” and “to be found untired.” In this sense, the poem becomes the perfect ekphrasis of the plate Evening Prayer (painted by Henry Singleton and engraved by Charles Heath) (Figure 3.1).12 Hemans did not question the embellishment but urged the reader to gaze at the ideal mirror, to focus her attention on a perfect model of behaviour, where pain and suffering seem to be a woman’s lot. Significantly, reviewers focused on the religious tone of the poem and how such a mode of writing could have only been carried out by a woman: Her mind . . . possessed a strong and decidedly marked character of its own, which coloured all her productions – a character which though anything but feeble or sentimental, was essentially feminine. . . . Mrs. Hemans’ poems could not have been written by a man: their love is without selfishness, their passion without a stain of this world’s coarseness, their high heroism . . . unsullied by any grosser alloy of mean ambition. Her religion, too, is essentially womanly, fervent, clinging to belief, and, “hoping on, hoping ever,” in spite of the peculiar trials appointed to her sex, so exquisitely described in the “Evening Prayer in a Girls’ School.”13 The previous quote puts forward how Hemans’ poetry embodied perfect femininity in connection with a religious ideal: hoping on, hoping ever. Also,

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Figure 3.1 Women at Evening Prayers in a Private Home. Henry Singleton (des.) and Charles Heath (eng.) (London: R. Ackermann, 1826) Source: Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection. CC BY

interestingly enough, the reviewer declared that only a woman could have written such a poem. Complying with Kantian and Burkean aesthetics, unselfish love and resignation are referred to as female innate qualities. In this regard, female aesthetic education promotes the idea that a woman’s strength is tenderness and silent resignation when facing their lot: “Her lot is on you – silent tears to weep. . . . / Her lot is on you – to be found untired.” It is, then, no wonder that the poem was later included in Young Ladies’ Class Book (1832), where, regarding the chapter devoted to the “Education of Females,” it can be read, There is no longer any dread lest the culture of science should foster that masculine boldness or restless independence. . . . We have seen that here, as every where else, knowledge is favorable to human virtue and human happiness; that the refinement of literature adds lustre to the devotion of piety; that true learning, like true taste, is modest and unostentatious; that grace of manners receives a higher polish from the discipline of the schools; that cultivated genius sheds a cheering light over domestic duties,

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Women can be educated but not to foster a masculine boldness or independence. The nineteenth-century aesthetic issues of taste and genius appear in the text only to be gendered. The kind of taste a woman is to develop diverges from that of a man’s, just as her genius is connected with domesticity – at this point, we should remember again the Kantian reference to the female understanding as opposed to the deep male understanding. Genius, according to the eighteenth-century debate regarding this subject, was connected with the sublime, and as a consequence, genius belonged to a man’s realm: The sublime is the proper walk of a great Genius . . . the most lawless excursions of an original Genius, like the flight of an eagle, are towering, though devious; its path, as the course of a comet is blazing, though irregular; and its errors and excellencies are equally inimitable.15 So, then, what kind of genius does a woman have? As discussed earlier, hers is not a deep understanding; hers is not a great genius. Her genius is connected with domesticity and domesticity only. Francis Jeffrey, in her review of Hemans’ Records of Woman in 1829, offered a portrait of Hemans as the epitome of female resignation and as a fine exemplification of Female Poetry and we think it has much of the perfection which we have ventured to ascribe to the happier productions of female genius. It may not be the best imaginable poetry, and may not indicate the very highest or most commanding genius; but it embraces a great deal of that which gives the very best poetry its chief power of pleasing; and would strike us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not regulated and harmonised by the most beautiful taste. It is singularly sweet, elegant, and tender – touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished throughout with an exquisite delicacy, and even severity of execution, but informed with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and allay the apprehensions of those who are most afraid of the passionate exaggerations of poetry. The diction is always beautiful, harmonious, and free.16 Jeffrey distinguished a genius specifically feminine – a genius not towering but humble, a genius which exhibits a beautiful accuracy and which indicates an inherent taste for elegance. And Hemans certainly embraced this idea, proving that “poetic genius and domestic virtue could be equally supportive and that poetry’s moral influence could grow eventually from its origins in a life of domestic responsibility and affection.”17 Male genius meant passion, greatness,

Embellishing the Poetic Text 57 unmeasuredness; the man of genius was removed from ordinary life; in the end, genius was equated with being a man, and if a woman was transformed into a man, she could not possibly deal with her domestic duties. Regarding this, Hemans relied on Wordsworth’s words to her: “It is not because they possess genius that they make unhappy homes, but because they do not possess genius enough; a higher order of mind would enable them to see and feel all the beauty of domestic ties.”18 Thus, although connected with domesticity, at least Wordsworth acknowledged that women were capable of possessing enough genius to become poets. As it has been stated before, gift-books were many times intended as wooing presents. Meaningfully, Blackwood’s Magazine commented, “It is a hundred to one that you are a married man in six weeks or two months; nay if it be a ‘large paper copy’ one flesh will ye be before the new moon,”19 and, as a consequence, marriage became the main concern in most of the texts. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the Friendship’s Offering for 1829: it includes the traditional inscription plate, but this time, putti are overemphasised (Figure 3.2).20 The use of putti helps to reinforce two main ideas. On the one hand, the perception of women as angels, asexual entities. In this sense, Mary Wollstonecraft’s quotation comes to mind: Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink them below women? Or, that a gentle innocent female is an object that comes nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than any other.21 Gift-books were helping to perpetuate what Victorians would label as the angel in the house: women who, paraphrasing Edmund Burke, learn to counterfeit weakness in their pursuit of beauty.22 On the other hand, putti may be used as a representation of Cupid. And it is no coincidence that the frontispiece is devoted to Cupid and Psyche. Significantly, by framing the name of the intended within the girdle of these little Cupids and by identifying the lady with Cupid, the gift-book transforms the woman into a divinity in search of her soulmate – the suitor being the mortal Psyche. Thus the myth, although travestied when reading the image in context, exalts marriage and the different trials to be endured. As the wedding vows have it, “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.”23 Felicia Hemans’ “The Brigand and His Wife” (1827) precisely explores this other trait of ideal womanhood: becoming the perfect wife: “She will not shrink in doubt and dread . . ./ Nor leave thee, though thy closing eyes/ No longer may to her’s reply. . . . Thine is her lone devotion” [15, 17–18, 30], Hemans emphasised.24 The poem was published in the Friendship’s Offering for 1827 and very similarly to The Forget-Me-Not, an embellishment was provided by the editors to endorse a conservative female aesthetic education and to pinpoint the idea of marriage. The text appeared with an accompanying engraving by William Humphrey after a painting from Sir Charles Lock Eastlake entitled

Figure 3.2 Presentation Plate. Henry Corbould (des.) and John William Cook (eng.) (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1829) Source: Image courtesy of Google Books

Embellishing the Poetic Text 59 The Brigand. Eastlake had painted a whole series regarding the topic, moving from the meaningful The Wounded Brigand Chief Successfully Protected to The Dying Brigand. Thus, although female devotion is highly stressed, we are reminded that a woman’s place is in the home. Wandering outside home results in a loss of femininity, and, as Welter reminded us, “one reason religion was valued was that it did not take a woman away from her proper sphere, her home.”25 In epitomising the safe sphere of the domestic realm, the leader’s wife has followed her husband in an attempt to extend that protection over him; however, as Katherine Harris has pointed out, “The ‘home’ does not protect him, because it is a false structure.”26 The open field of violence is not her proper sphere. And not only does she fail at saving him but also risks her own femininity when “from home estranged and guided wrong”: Oh! many a soft and quiet grace Hath faded from her soul and face; And many a thought, the fitting guest Of woman’s meek, religious breast, Hath perished, in her wanderings wide, Through the deep forests, by thy side.27 The brigand leader’s wife has neglected her religious education and, as a result, she has lost her grace and is not blushing anymore – John Gregory’s words about blushing in his conduct book are to be recalled. Burke reminded the reader that grace, described as “a delicacy of attitude and motion,”28 was one of the causes of the beautiful, and, as a consequence, of the feminine. By wandering, she has attempted to move towards the sublime – the masculine – and the result is both negative for her and her husband. The ending of the poem, together with the series painted by Eastlake, conducted the female reader to remember Hemans’ adagio in her “Evening Prayer”: “Her lot is on you – silent tears to weep.” Once more, it comes as no surprise that the poem received positive reviews. The Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1826) acknowledged a “sincere admiration of genius”29 regarding Hemans’ poetry; also, The Oriental Herald (1826) referred to it as a “sweet piece of poetry.”30 But it is even more worth mentioning the Belle Assemblée: Or, Court and Fashionable Magazine (1826), a magazine which had as its main goal to promote good taste. By including Hemans’ poem, as well as the embellishment, the Belle Assemblée positions Hemans’ poetry within the realm of fine taste as it should be developed by every self-respecting lady: ‘The Brigand Chief and his Wife’ is admirably engraved by W. Humphrey, from Eastlake’s well-known charming picture: the execution is altogether fine. . . . We are not aware that we can commence better than by introducing Mrs. Hemans’ illustration of Eastlake’s picture of the Brigand Leader and his Wife.31

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Therefore, Hemans voiced Eastlake’s painting and Humphrey’s engraving and devises a story for the embellishment where she accommodated her ideas about femininity. There is no discrepancy between image and text but rather a preservation of the role of the woman “behind her husband, hand upon his shoulder, representative of the support and devotion.”32 There is no contest, mastery or struggle for dominance between image and text. W. J. T. Mitchell and James Heffernan’s line of inquiry as regards ekphrasis is lost on Hemans’ poetry.33 The female gaze perfectly matched to the prevailing male discourse. Consistency also presides in Hemans’ next poem, “The Mother and Child.” Her contribution appeared in The Literary Souvenir for 1825. The Literary Souvenir, or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance (1825–1837) was edited by Alaric A. Watts and became one of the most successful, longest running of the British literary annuals. The gift-book opens with a frontispiece portraying Minerva/ Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, representing the protection of the arts, both visual and written; it should also be noticed that compositions of this kind were traditionally presided by Apollo since he is regarded as the protector of the Muses (Apollon Musegetes). Here Apollo has been substituted by Minerva, stressing the idea that the whole gift-book was directed to women, but the purpose is double fold since, at the same time, she embodies the classical ideas of a prevailing reason in tune with the dictum of the academy. The head of the Gorgon in her shield comes to symbolise the submission and repression of irrational thinking and, in the end, of imagination. Thus, the frontispiece exalts reason and the beautiful against the perils of imagination and the masculine sublime. Also, very meaningfully, the motto adopted for this annual belonged to the following lines by Sir Walter Scott: “I have a Song of War for knight;/ Lay of Love for lady bright;/ Fairy Tale to lull the heir;/ Goblin grim the maids to scare.” Once more, the editor made it clear that women – these bright ladies and maids – were going to find accounts of love or gothic stories, whereas those tales related to war were aimed at men. Felicia Hemans’ contribution to the Literary Souvenir for 1825, as stated earlier, was a poem entitled “The Mother and Child” in which she explored a woman’s ultimate goal and raison d’être: motherhood. The poem is illustrated with the plate The Mother and Child, painted by Brockedon and engraved by Humphrey (Figure 3.3).34 The Gentleman’s Magazine, for 1824, singled out the engraving as belonging to “one of the most beautiful little volumes that ever came under our notice” but also included the poem by Mrs. Hemans, referring to it as a “beautiful little poem.”35 Throughout this piece of writing, Hemans voiced one of her greatest concerns: maternal sacrifice. As Jerome McGann has pointed out, “The draining melancholy of Hemans’ verse carries special force exactly because of its domesticity. What is most unstable, most threatened, is what she most values: the child and its immediate world, the family unit (centred in the mother).”36 “The Brigand Leader” offered the reader a decentred family, with the mother having followed her husband and turning home into a precarious scene. Here, Hemans focused on the mother and child archetype dating back to any

Figure 3.3 The Mother and Child. William Brockedon (des.) and William Humphrey (eng.) (London, Printed for Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1825) Source: Image courtesy of Google Books

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caring Madonna. The child playing “on the margin of the dizzy steep” and the approaching storm help to emphasise a maternal culture whose fragility is always at stake.37 In this sense, Mrs. Sigourney in her Essay on the Genius of Mrs. Hemans (1840) highlighted Hemans’ poetical genius and her awareness of “the value of maternal instruction.”38 According to Mrs. Sigourney, the nature of Hemans’ education was favourable to the development of her genius as “pure and holy” so that her poetry can be labelled as “essentially feminine,” focusing on domestic affections. In “The Mother and Child,” Hemans put forward the “valor of mothers who confront disaster bravely, conquering fear and oppression with self-sacrificing love.”39 The boy is safe back at his mother’s breast, clinging to life against “the dizzy steep.” At the same time, the emphasis on the mother’s breast – visually best appreciated in the illustration – reinforces the ideal image of the beautiful as connected with the female and further improves her holiness as an icon of the divine nurturing mother. Thus, love seems to stand out from the text. Similarly to her “Evening Prayer,” the scene is dominated by an absent father and governed by a woman alone. In this regard, Hemans hinted at Burkean aesthetics in order to build a family model and define how a woman/mother is expected to behave. Burke stressed the sublime authority of the father and how it “hinders us from having the entire love for him that we have for our mothers,”40 whose fondness and caressing attitudes are essentially beautifully female. Throughout these poems and the way Hemans dialogued with the illustrations, her defence of traditional values and domesticity can be easily perceived. Felicia Hemans relied on both Burkean and Kantian aesthetics in order to depict female characters by emphasising delicacy, piety and self-sacrificing love. She did not question the embellishments but fully accommodated the content.41 Equally, she perfectly embodied both the Kantian definition of a beautiful understanding and Francis Jeffrey’s definition of the female genius – sweet, elegant and tender. As a consequence, Hemans got on well with the literary annuals’ publishers, who were conservative and thought of themselves as the moral guardians of the reading public, especially the female one. The task of the gift-book united female stereotypes in two ways: it aimed to convey elegance and buon gusto, appealing thus to the eye, but it also provided female readers with a good set of values, appealing thus to the mind. Faxon had described the literary annuals as butterfly books, and butterfly books they were, helping to transform female readers into butterflies themselves.

Notes 1. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 77. 2. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 83. 3. Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender (London: Routledge, 1993), 108. 4. Kant, Observations, 77–78. 5. William Hazlitt, “On Gusto,” in Selected Writings (London: Penguin, 1982), 201.

Embellishing the Poetic Text 63 6. John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, 1795), 20–21. 7. Frederick W. Faxon, Literary Annuals and Gift-Books (Boston: Boston Book Company, 1912), 14–15. 8. Advertisement for the Forget Me Not for 1823, p. v, in Katherine D. Harris, “Forget Me Not: A Hypertextual Archive of Ackermann’s 19th-Century Literary Annual,” Poetess Archive. General Editor Laura Mandell, accessed October 18, 2018, www. orgs.miamioh.edu/anthologies/FMN/Frame_1.htm 9. Ibid., vi. 10. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer 1966): 152. 11. Felicia Hemans, The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1857), 338–339. Further quotations belong to this edition. 12. Frederic Shoberl, ed., Forget Me Not; A Christmas and New Year’s Present (London: R. Ackermann, 1826), 156. 13. The New Monthly Magazine (London: Henry Colburn, 1835), 266. 14. Ebenezer Bailey, The Young Ladies’ Class Book (Boston: Lincoln and Edmands, 1832), 11–12. 15. William Duff, “An Essay on Original Genius (1767),” in The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, eds. Andrew Ashfield and Peter De Bolla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 173, 175. 16. Francis Jeffrey, The Modern British Essayists: Jeffrey, Francis, contributions to the Edinburgh Review (Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1852), 474. 17. Julian North, The Domestication of Genius. Biography and the Romantic Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 204. 18. Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans and Harriet Mary Browne Owen, The Works of Mrs. Hemans, with a Memoir by Her Sister, and an Essay on Her Genius by Mrs. Sigourney (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840), 220. 19. Blackwood’s Magazine, 94. 20. Friendship’s Offering: A Literary Album, and Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1829 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1829), the Presentation Plate. 21. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London: Everyman, 1995), 107. 22. Burke, Enquiry, 100. 23. The Book of Common Prayer, 255. 24. Hemans and Browne Owen, Works of Mrs. Hemans, 224–225. 25. Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” 153. 26. Katherine D. Harris, Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual, 1823– 1835 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015). 27. Hemans, Poetical Works, lines 34; 19–24. 28. Burke, Enquiry, 109. 29. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1826), vol. 20: 903. 30. The Oriental Herald & Journal of General Literature (1826), vol. 11: 615. 31. Belle Assemblée: Or, Court and Fashionable Magazine; Containing Interesting and Original Literature, and Records of the Beau-Monde (1826): 300–301. 32. Literature and Art Go Hand-in-Hand: Felicia Hemans’ “Brigand Leader and His Wife” and “Evening Prayer” in www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/StudentProjects/Kim/ Brigand%20Leader_poem.html 33. James Heffernan, Museum of Words (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 1. 34. Literary Souvenir for 1825 (London: Printed for Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1825), 63. 35. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle (1824), vol. 94, part 2: 445–446.

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36. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Selected Writings, eds. Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Literary Press, 1997), 20. 37. This fragile maternal culture can be appreciated in many of Hemans’ poems, but I would especially like to highlight the ekphrastic “The Image in Lava” (1828). See, for example, Grant F. Scott, “Felicia Hemans and Romantic Ekphrasis,” in Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 49–50. 38. Browne Hemans and Browne Owen, The Works of Mrs. Hemans, viii–ix, xiii, xxi. 39. Julie Kipp, Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 87. Hemans’ poem “Pauline” runs a similar theme. 40. Burke, Enquiry, 101. 41. For a different approach where the author tried to accommodate the picture to the content of her own narrative, see Beatriz González-Moreno’s “Beautiful and Ineffectual Angels: Changing Identities in Mary Shelley’s Tales for the Literary Annuals.”

Bibliography Bailey, Ebenezer. The Young Ladies’ Class Book. Boston: Lincoln and Edmands, 1832. Belle Assemblée: Or, Court and Fashionable Magazine; Containing Interesting and Original Literature, and Records of the Beau-Monde. Vol. 4 (July–December 1826). London: J. L. Cox. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 17 (January 1825). Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 20 (July–December 1826). The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments; and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church. New York: Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, 1871. Duff, William. “An Essay on Original Genius.” In The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, edited by Andrew Ashfield and Peter De Bolla, 173–177. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Faxon, Frederick W. Literary Annuals and Gift-Books. Boston: Boston Book Company, 1912. Feldman, Paula R., ed. The Keepsake for 1829. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Encore Editions, 2006. Friendship’s Offering: A Literary Album, and Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1829. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1829. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle (1824), vol. 94, part 2: 445–446. González Moreno, Beatriz. “Beautiful and Ineffectual Angels: Changing Identities in Mary Shelley’s Tales for the Literary Annuals.” In Culture & Power: Identity and Identification, edited by Ángel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo and Eduardo de GregorioGodeo, 83–99. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Gregory, John. A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters. Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, 1795. Harris, Katherine D. “Feminizing the Textual Body: Women and their Literary Annuals in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, no. 4 (December 2005): 573–622. ———. Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual, 1823–1835. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015.

Embellishing the Poetic Text 65 ———. “Forget Me Not: A Hypertextual Archive of Ackermann’s 19th-Century Literary Annual.” Poetess Archive. General Editor Laura Mandell. Accessed October 18, 2018. www.orgs.miamioh.edu/anthologies/FMN/Index.htm Hazlitt, William. Selected Writings. London: Penguin, 1982. Heffernan, James. Museum of Words. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Hemans, Felicia. The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1857. Hemans, Felicia, Dorothea Browne, and Harriet Mary Browne Owen. The Works of Mrs. Hemans, With a Memoir by Her Sister, And an Essay on Her Genius by Mrs. Sigourney. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840. Jeffrey, Francis. The Modern British Essayists: Contributions to the Edinburgh Review by Francis Jeffrey. Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1852. Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Kipp, Julie. Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Landon, Letitia Elizabeth. Selected Writings, edited by Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Literary Press, 1997. “Literature and Art Go Hand-in-Hand: Felicia Hemans’ ‘Brigand Leader and His Wife’ and ‘Evening Prayer’.” Digital Project Created by Lisa Kim. SJSU, Spring 2006. Supervised by Katherine D. Harris. Accessed February 2, 2012. www.sjsu. edu/faculty/harris/StudentProjects/Kim/Brigand%20Leader_poem.html Literary Souvenir. London: Printed for Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1825. McGann, Jerome. Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Mellor, Anne K. Romanticism and Gender. London: Routledge, 1993. The New Monthly Magazine, 1835. London: Henry Colburn. North, Julian. The Domestication of Genius: Biography and the Romantic Poet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. The Oriental Herald & Journal of General Literature (1826), vol. 11. London: James Silk Buckingham. Scott, Grant F. “The Fragile Image. Felicia Hemans and Romantic Ekphrasis.” In Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk, 36–54. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Shoberl, Frederic, ed., Forget Me Not; A Christmas and New Year’s Present. London: R. Ackermann, 1826. Watts, Alaric Alexander, ed. The Literary Souvenir, or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance for 1825. London: Hurst, Robinson and Co, 1825. ———. The Poetical Album and Register of Modern Fugitive Poetry. London: Hurst, Chance and Co, 1828. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer 1966): 151–174. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Everyman, 1995.

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Emily Eden’s Representations of India Through Sketches and Letters A Picturesque Female Travel Account of the Empire Tagirem Gallego García

Emily Eden (1797–1869) recorded her observations of life in India in the form of letters and a collection of sketches during her stay in the Upper Provinces from 1835 to 1842, a period of time during which her brother George, Lord Auckland (1784–1849) served as governor-general in India. Eden’s works, both in words and images, serve as a pre-Mutiny account and a relevant testimony of India from a female perspective. In her letters, she described the discomforts of staying in an alien land, far from her yearned England, thus establishing a constant contrast between her motherland and the remote Other, India. Her descriptions of India tend to be witty and critical in her written work, yet stereotyped in her sketches, presenting portraits of sumptuous rajas or exotic landscapes. In Up the Country (1866), there are several references to the action of stopping their travel to sketch and observe, as described by Eden, a picturesque India. The essence of her journey lies in the need to leave a testimony of it, both in writing and graphically through the execution of small and quick sketches.1 The picturesque serves as an instrument to capture the experiences she lived as a traveller away from her homeland. Her travel to India and her tour therein coincided with the British trend of the “picturesque travel,” an educational and aesthetical adventure that involves the meeting of the foreign Other and its nature. Travel literature authors would give “‘first hand’ accounts of the customs and traditions of the inhabitants. Their reflections often presented an imaginary construct, the consequence of an aesthetically mediated inward eye.”2 Initially, the picturesque, in its etymological sense, concerned the art of painting and was often applied to the analysis of gardens or parks. The picturesque called for arranging a landscape, thereby manipulating a view to render it more suitable for pictorial representation.3 Towards the mid-eighteenth century, the picturesque became a concept related to art theory. It was introduced within the emerging Romantic sensibility debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales: &c. Relative Chiefly to the Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770. It becomes then an aesthetic category concerned with the tension between the beautiful and the sublime.4 With the use of this new category, the picturesque evokes “something delightful for the observer and stimulating to the senses.”5 It calls for what is diverse or uneven in the landscape and relates to an emergence of picturesque tourism – i.e. an aesthetical

Emily Eden’s Representations of India 67 experience during the journey away from home. Even if the picturesque tour was more common within European boundaries, the growing interest and the use of this category led also to observations of “Oriental” lands and peoples, giving way to Orientalism. Emily Eden’s focus on the picturesque makes us wonder whether her depictions of the people, landscapes or customs belong to the Orientalist discourse, as developed by Said. The collection of Eden’s published letters is not accompanied by images, yet the drawings she produced in situ during her stay in India were published separately. This helps us distinguish the written works and the sketches as complete and independent units, which are, nevertheless, complementary representations of the Other. Both formats provide a more complete image of India through Emily Eden’s eyes. In order to grasp the images of India by Eden, we will focus on her textual testimonies while observing her pictorial representations, with the aim of establishing some relevant links between the two. Both artistic forms, the collection of her letters and her portraits, are revealingly insightful for understanding Emily Eden’s persona, her context and her presence in India as a memsahib, as well as her perceptions of the Empire and her role in India in the pre-Mutiny years. Although Emily Eden wrote from within the colonial system, with her being a British aristocrat or memsahib, this chapter aims to show how she created an alternative, personal and unique account of the imperial presence in India. The Edens would know the India prior to the Sepoy Mutiny or the Revolt of 1857 and the British Raj thereafter (1858–1947). At the turn of the nineteenth century, Richard Wellesley (1760–1842), politician and colonial administrator, began an expansion of the British East India Company in India. These appropriations of land territories were achieved either by direct military annexation or by subsidiary alliances between the company and native rulers, thus creating the princely states: with maharajas as Hindu rulers or nawabs if the princes were Muslims. As explained by Amy Marie Christiansen, “The 1830s and 1840s were an unstable time for British imperial policy in India.”6 Taking advantage of the enmity between various princely states and religious and social groups, the British East Company implemented the “Divide and Rule” policy, and by the 1850s, they controlled most of the Indian subcontinent. By ruling over the Indian land, the British Empire was indisputably securing its power through imperialism and colonialism, as explained by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism (1993): Territory and possessions are at stake, geography and power. Everything about human history is rooted in the earth, which has meant that we must think about habitation, but it has also meant that people have planned to have more territory and therefore must do something about its indigenous residents. At some very basic level, imperialism means thinking about, settling on, controlling land that you don’t possess, that is distant, that is lived on and owned by others. For all kinds of reasons it attracts some people and often involves untold misery for other. … As I shall be using the term, “imperialism” means the practice, theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory; “colonialism,”

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Britain succeeded in justifying its policy of colonization by the “civilizing mission” in accordance with its supposed moral, racial and national superiority: England claimed the idea of a civilizing mission and the duty to liberate the individual from social oppression and the enslavement of customs, as well as the restructuring of legislation and education. Its precepts defined not only “Western” civilization but civilization itself.8 Non-Westerners were considered less evolved, biologically and culturally and therefore would not be ready to govern themselves or their territories. Stereotypes about the colonized forged them as savage and barbaric peoples, civilizations or societies that needed to be domesticated: “‘They’ were not like ‘us’, and for that reason deserved to be ruled.”9 Linked to imperialism and the opposition of the ruler’s identity versus a barbaric Other lies the concept of “Orientalism,” clearly contrasting deictic mechanisms of “here” versus “there,” “us” versus “them”: It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. . . . Both geographical and cultural entities – to say nothing of historical entities – such locales, regions, geographical sectors as “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.10 In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said analyzes how the West perceives and represents the East, how it “creates” the Orient. Said developed three perceptions or understandings of Orientalism. In the first place, Orientalism became a new knowledge and research field and hence can be studied at an academic level: Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient – and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist – either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism.11 Secondly, the Orient possesses an evocative power in the collective and artistic imaginary. This relates to the representation that Western authors make of the East or the Orient and how it is reflected in their works, novels, poems, descriptions or theories. In this sense, the Orient is conceived as a stage for a theatrical play directed by the West: “The idea of representation is a theatrical one: the Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined.”12 This stage brings characters, figures and spaces associated with the Orient, symbolizing a

Emily Eden’s Representations of India 69 world of heroes, monsters, terrors, desires, pleasures and mysteries as if it were a mythical, dreamlike and magical universe for the Western spectator. The Orient would be the scene of illicit passions or transgressions of Victorian morality. For Europe or the West, the Orient also possessed an attraction towards the forbidden, as a space for the liberation of morality and sexuality: “the Orient was a place where one could look for sexual experience unobtainable in Europe. . . . What they looked for often was a different type of sexuality, perhaps more libertine and less guilt-ridden.”13 Finally, the third understanding of Orientalism by Said has to do with power relations, by making statements about it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. … Oriental-ism, which is the system of European or Western knowledge about the Orient, thus becomes synonymous with European domination of the Orient.14 The fact that Britain, through its colonizing enterprise, reaches eastern territories, India in this case makes it “possess the other” in at least two aspects: physically by the appropriation and exploitation of its lands and intellectually by the interest in knowing its culture and the academic institutionalization of “Orientalism.” Said argued that knowledge of the other is equivalent to its possession: “To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it.”15 Considering the power relation and the rapport between the English and the Indians, most Britons in India were young men serving the Empire looking for the reward of status and fortune through company service: “India meaning a career rather than a country.”16 The figure of the nabob is that of a wealthy European established in India who would return to his homeland after making a fortune. Somehow, there is an “orientalization” of the nabob through the adoption of “oriental” manners, such as smoking the hookah or dressing in Indian clothes. However, with the increase of power during the British rule in India, the nabob was no longer viewed as an acceptable model for Anglo-Indian identity in the nineteenth century, and the British sovereignty in India was represented by the figure of the governor-general or the development of the sahib, a bureaucratic representative of the Crown.17 The sahib was a “distancing mechanism to separate Briton from India”18 by demarcating class and racial differences. On the same terms, the figure of the memsahib (i.e., “madam sahib”) “suggests that connotations of colonial power, privilege and status were being displaced upon de sahib’s wives as well.”19 “Memsahib” refers to the British or foreign women living in India – who used to be officers’ wives or female servants. Emily Eden was thus unique in India; she was an aristocratic, unmarried English woman and “did not match the standard demography of colonial personnel.”20 Her position as an educated whig lady travelling abroad being a “memsahib offers a rich opportunity for reflection into the subtleties of gender within the British Empire.”21

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A woman travelling in the nineteenth century was not a common affair. Yet there are several women who took upon themselves the challenge of travelling, often accompanying a man (normally husband or friend or in Emily Eden’s case her brother) but sometimes alone. The Victorian lady would be “trained from birth to an almost impossible ideal of womanly submission and selfdiscipline, of obligation to class and devotion to religion, she had need of an emotional as well as of an intellectual outlet.”22 The Victorian doctrine of “separate spheres” would place domesticity and the home as the woman’s realm, whereas the world outside would be a manly task.23 In this sense, a woman travelling would mean a transgression of the Victorian status quo: “Women travelling alone in dangerous situations transgress the notion of the necessity for women to be chaperoned.”24 A woman travelling to India would transgress her domestic boundary, which defined her identity, by cultivating the private. The act of travelling, especially as a solo traveller, could present the occasion of encountering and learning about the other since travel “involves the familiarization or domestication of the unfamiliar at the same time as the defamiliarization of the familiar or domestic. Travel seems potentially liberating because of the opportunities for transgression and questioning of ideas formulated at home.”25 However, the presence of British women in India in the nineteenth century would not mean a transgression but an imitation of their home away from home: “As wives/sisters/daughters of the official elite, they came to embody many of the complex and contradictory links between domesticity and imperialism.”26 Such was the case of Emily Eden, considered an “ironic traveller”27 by Indira Ghose. In fact, Emily was reluctant to travel, and in her letters, she would express an underlying discomfort with travelling and a constant longing for England. The Edens reached Calcutta on March 3, 1836, on the very same day Emily Eden turned 39. She was accompanying her brother George, governor-general of India, along with her sister, Fanny Eden, and her nephew, William Osbourne. The narrative of her published work Up the Country (1866) describes the tour Emily Eden made across North India from October 1837 to February 1840. It was a political trip where Governor-General Lord Auckland and his entourage toured through the Upper Provinces, meeting with the Indian princes. Emily Eden portrayed some of the rulers they encountered: the Maharaja Sher-Singh; the Maharaja Ranjit Singh; the Raja of Nahun; the Raja of Patiala (Figure 4.1); the Raja Hira Singh, son of the prime minister of the Punjab; and the Raja Hindu Rao (Figure 4.1), amongst others. In this voyage, the Edens carried a big retinue with elephants, camels, horses and soldiers, and “during the entire journey, utmost care and high standards were maintained to replicate the home environ in an alien land.”28 They had their British social life transferred in India. Being the sister of a governorgeneral, Emily had access to her brother’s milieu and the vantage point from which she could observe the relation between colonizers and colonized in nineteenth century India and Anglo-Indian society: “A dull dinner, very! But Mr. – is in himself a jewel,”29 she would complain with wit. In fact, she was critical of her dull and gossipy compatriots. Furthermore, she was annoyed by the

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Figure 4.1 The Raja of Putteealla on his State Elephant. From Portraits of the Princes & People of India, 1844, by Lowes Cato Dickinson, Emily Eden, J Dickinson & Son, Charles Hullmandel Source: Image reproduced by courtesy of Te Papa/Museum of New Zealand (1992-0035-24092)30

oppressive weather: “The nights are dreadful – all for want of a punkah31 – and hardly any of us get a wink of sleep. However, we shall soon overtake cooler weather.”32 Her discomforts in the alien land and her longing for England made her state, “I cannot abide India, and that is the truth, and it is almost come to not abiding in India.”33

Figure 4.2 Title Page. Portraits of the Princes & People of India, 1844, by Lowes Cato Dickinson, Emily Eden, J. Dickinson & Son, Charles Hullmandel Source: Image reproduced by courtesy of Te Papa/Museum of New Zealand (1992-0035-24091)34

Emily Eden’s Representations of India 73 After her stay in India, when Emily Eden returned to England in 1842, she got her artistic works published. Her sketches were published prior to her letters or written works. She had her images printed in a portfolio with 24 lithographs. The portraits were published in 1844 as Portraits of the Princes & People of India (Figure 4.2). They represent the Indian princes, their families and other miscellaneous people and places from India the Edens had encountered, and sketched, during their tour in the Upper Provinces. Emily Eden also wrote two short novels commenting on the social behaviour of her time, The Semi-Detached House (1859) and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). “Up the Country became so popular a book, that the authoress was repeatedly urged to publish more of her Letters from India.”35 The letters she had exchanged during her stay in India were collected and edited by her niece Eleanor Eden and published posthumously in two volumes as Letters from India by the Hon. Emily Eden (1871, 1872). Emily Eden’s epistolary style and her collection of letters belongs to the “feminine tradition” of a more sentimental genre, like writing memoirs and sketching – unlike the male authors who would write about “history, ancient literature, philosophy and such pursuits of cold reasoning.”36 The fact of writing letters from India would allow Emily Eden a degree of certain intimacy, spontaneity and immediacy, and would be the only source of connection with her homeland through family and friends. It would, nevertheless, be “a fallacy to conclude that Miss Eden’s epistles are merely a literature of emotional release. They strike us almost as the giggles of a mischievous spinster peering over the shoulders of the Victorian male.”37 Eden’s written works offer a fresh and witty perspective on Anglo-Indian society and how she perceived herself in an alien country. It is common both in Up the Country and in her posthumously published letters to find references to the activity of sketching. Thus her narrative includes an interesting mechanism of combining the epistles with her own mentions of drawing – two forms of representing the India that she witnessed. Emily Eden, together with her sister Fanny and their retinue, would stop during the tour in the Upper Provinces to rest and sketch: “We landed at four, saw the ruins, which are very picturesque, gave Chance a run on shore, and we had time for one sketch.”38 The mention of sketching is, in fact, very frequent in her writings, and it appears as the way to approach and recreate (more immediately by images and later through letters) the places and people she would encounter; that is to say, the unknown Other: “There were so many people there whom he ought to see, and we saw so many objects that were tempting to sketch, that he agreed to remain there all day.”39 To the eyes of Emily Eden, the India she knew and captured in her sketching activity, and described, thusly, was indeed constantly linked to the picturesque: “There was never anything so provokingly picturesque, considering that the steamer goes boring on without the slightest regard for our love of sketching,”40 or “F. and I had two very picturesque camels and camel-drivers to sketch in the morning, and the rajah to whom they belonged sent in the afternoon to beg we would accept both camels and riders”41 are just a few examples of this focus on the picturesque and

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Eden’s will to capture it through sketches, as if she were a tourist photographing in modern times. While sketching, Emily Eden framed what she saw and made the places or people aesthetic objects. This act of framing can be seen as a process of detachment from the Other: the picturesque “serves as a distancing device towards the other. . . . The picturesque . . . is concerned with framing the other, filtering it through an aestheticizing lens.”42 Eden’s distance through the picturesque appears also in another letter, where she described some natives passing by in carriages: Every figure one passes looks strange and picturesque. There are moments when a feeling of desperation comes over me to think that I must dream this dream, so distinct from all my past life, for five years, with, I opine, very little of real interest in them; but I mean to make the best of it.43 Here the “strange and picturesque” have negative connotations and are linked to “a feeling of desperation,” therefore suggesting that the Oriental other poses a threat. By framing and making it an aesthetic object, the unknown Other becomes domesticated and less dangerous. Sketching becomes a form of appropriation, and the picturesque connects to Said’s notion of the Western perception of the Orient as dangerous, uncivilized or underdeveloped. In Women Travellers in Colonial India, Indira Ghose stated, “The aesthetics of the picturesque were enormously influential in moulding nineteenth-century traveller’s perceptions of India. Particularly texts by women travellers were shaped by the conventions of the picturesque.”44 Anglo-Indian women would have the habit, as Emily Eden did, of writing letters or would “paint picturesque scenery, setting aside domestic boundaries to step outside and draw.”45 Eden participated in this “trend” of depicting the Oriental other through sketches, and in one of her letters, she summarized her view of India as extremely picturesque: In short, just what people say of India; you know it all, but it is pretty to see; and I mean the ‘moral’ of my Indian experience to be, that it is the most picturesque population, with the ugliest scenery, that ever was put together.46 After considering Said’s approaches to Orientalism, Emily Eden’s experience and representation of India and her artistic productions, firstly with the publication of her sketches and secondly through her travel account and letters, we can conclude that there is a clear link between Orientalism and the picturesque. India is very picturesque and utterly un-English for Emily Eden. She tends to detach herself from the Indians through the aesthetic framing in her sketches, as well as in her narrative. This distance can be explained as a sentiment of her national identity, as Eden’s sense of Englishness. In her travel narrative and letters, she appears as an outsider, facing the unknown Indian society on the one hand and “observing the absurdity of the British presence in India”47

Emily Eden’s Representations of India 75 on the other. Emily Eden’s letters from her stay and travels in India constitute a personal and unique representation of India in colonial times. Through images and words, she depicted her encounter with the strange Oriental other. Her testimonies display Orientalism, as she tended to detach herself from the Indians by othering, especially through the act of sketching the picturesque. However, despite her privileged position as an educated British lady and the governorgeneral’s sister, her letters are distinguished from the Orientalist tradition in the sense that she did not show justification of Western authority over the East. She, in fact, was critical towards the attitude of her male compatriots in India and often wrote in an ironic style to mock them. Eden had no interest in justifying colonial rule, neither in a political nor moral appropriation of the other. With no special interest in travelling and without political zeal or an educative mission, Emily Eden was defined as “a refined and witty mind silently assessing the whole scenario.”48 She would rather focus on her self-definition as outsider, constantly missing her motherland, England. She became the other in the India she found strange and un-English. Her portraits and letters are a rich testimony of her personal account of the Empire during the complex years prior to the Mutiny and stronger policies from the British presence in India.

Notes 1. Henry David Inglis, Andanzas tras los Pasos de Don Quijote, trans. Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno (Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, 2012), 16–17. 2. Beatriz González Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno, “English Travellers and the Belated Picturesque Tour,” in Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary, ed. J. M. Almeida (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2010), 342. 3. Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (London: Putnam, 1927), 4. 4. For a thorough analysis of the aesthetic categories and the development of the sublime during Romanticism, see Beatriz González Moreno, Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el romanticism inglés (Cuenca: Servicio Publicaciones UCLM, 2007). 5. Pablo Diener, “The Picturesque as an Aesthetic Category in the Art of Travelers: Notes on J. M. Rugendas’s Work,” trans. María Paz Fernández Smits, Historia (Santiago) 3 (2007): 6. 6. Amy Marie Christiansen, “The Discomforts of Empire: Emily Eden’s Life in India, 1836–1842” (Dissertation, Auburn University, 2012), 1. 7. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 7, 9. 8. Eduardo Vinatea Serrano, Orientalismo, colonialismo y antropología. Cultura y sociedad en India, China y Japón (Madrid: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 2010), 30. Translated from Spanish into English by the author of this chapter. 9. Said, Culture and Imperialism, xi. 10. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 4–5. 11. Ibid., 2. 12. Ibid., 63. 13. Ibid., 190. 14. Ibid., 197. 15. Ibid., 32.

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16. Jane Robinson, Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 237. 17. Elizabeth M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800–1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 3. 18. Ibid., 150. 19. Indrani Sen, Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858–1900) (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2002), 10. 20. Christiansen, “The Discomforts of Empire,” 2. 21. Ankita Das, “Emily Eden in India: A British Memsahib’s Account of India through Travel and Letters (1837–1841),” accessed November 20, 2018, https:// cafedissensus.com/2018/06/15/emily-eden-in-india-a-british-memsahibs-accountof-india-through-travel-and-letters-1837-1841/ 22. Dorothy Middleton, Victorian Lady Travellers (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1993), 4. 23. Sen, Woman and Empire, 2. 24. Sara Mills, Discourse of Difference. An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 29. 25. Alison Blunt, Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994), 17. 26. Das, “Emily Eden in India.” 27. Indira Ghose, The Power of the Female Gaze: Women Travellers in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 71–87. 28. Das, “Emily Eden in India.” 29. Emily Eden, ‘Up the Country’: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (London: Richard Bentley, 1867), 12. 30. Accessed on November 1, 2019, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1343543 31. Originally a handheld fan, or in British India a large swinging fan fixed to the ceiling. 32. Eden, ‘Up the Country’, 5. 33. Emily Eden, Letters from India, Vol. II (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872), 148. 34. Accessed on October 29, 2019, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1343471 35. Thus wrote Eleanor Eden in November 1871 in the preface to Emily Eden, Letters from India, Vol. I (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1871), iii. 36. Joseph Mundaplackal Varghese, “A Literary Study of the Works of Nineteenth Century British Intellectuals in India” (PhD diss., Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, 1989), 165. 37. Ibid., 165. 38. Eden, ‘Up the Country’, 8. 39. Ibid., 9. 40. Ibid., 11. 41. Ibid., 14. 42. Ghose, The Power of the Female Gaze, 47. 43. Eden, Letters from India, Vol. I, 94. 44. Ghose, The Power of the Female Gaze, 38. 45. Romita Ray, “The Memsahib’s Brush: Anglo-Indian Women and the Art of the Picturesque, 1830–1880,” in Orientalism Transposed: The Impact of the Colonies on British Culture, eds. Julie F. Codell and Dianne Sachko Macleod (New York: Routledge Revivals, 1998). 46. Eden, ‘Up the Country’, 12. 47. Amalie Due Svendsen, “Representations of the East: Orientalism in Emily Eden’s Travel Writing,” Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English, no. 2 (2018): 60–70, 67. 48. Mundaplackal Varghese, “A Literary Study,” 162.

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Bibliography Blunt, Alison. Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa. New York: The Guilford Press, 1994. Christiansen, Amy Marie. “The Discomforts of Empire: Emily Eden’s Life in India, 1836–1842.” Dissertation, Auburn University, 2012. Christie’s. “Emily Eden (1797–1869). Portraits of the Princes & Peoples of India.” Accessed November 20, 2018. www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/emily-eden-17971869-portraits-of-the-5310022-details.aspx Collingham, Elizabeth M. Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800–1947. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Das, Ankita. “Emily Eden in India: A British Memsahib’s Account of India through Travel and Letters (1837–1841).” Accessed November 20, 2018. https://cafedissensus. com/2018/06/15/emily-eden-in-india-a-british-memsahibs-account-of-india-throughtravel-and-letters-1837-1841/ Diener, Pablo. “The Picturesque as an Aesthetic Category in the Art of Travelers: Notes on J. M. Rugendas’s Work.” Translated by María Paz Fernández Smits. Historia (Santiago) 3 (2007). Eden, Emily. Portraits of the Princes & People of India, / by the Hon. Miss Eden, drawn on the Stone by L. Dickinson. London: J. Dickinson, 1844. www.loc.gov/ item/11005277 ———. ‘Up the Country’: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. London, Richard Bentley, 1867. ———. Letters from India, Vol. I. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1871. ———. Letters from India, Vol. II. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872. Ghose, Indira. The Power of the Female Gaze: Women Travellers in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. González Moreno, Beatriz. Lo sublime, lo gótico y lo romántico: la experiencia estética en el romanticismo inglés. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2007. González Moreno, Beatriz, and Fernando González-Moreno, “English Travellers and the Belated Picturesque Tour.” In Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary, edited by J. M. Almeida, 346–360. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2010. Hussey, Christopher. The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View. London: Putnam, 1927. Inglis, Henry David. Andanzas tras los Pasos de Don Quijote. Translated by Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno. Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, 2012. Middleton, Dorothy. Victorian Lady Travellers. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1993. Mills, Sara. Discourse of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Mundaplackal Varghese, Joseph. “A Literary Study of the Works of Nineteenth Century British Intellectuals in India.” PhD diss., Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, 1989. Accessed November 29, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10603/59669 Ray, Romita. “The Memsahib’s Brush: Anglo-Indian Women and the Art of the Picturesque, 1830–1880.” In Orientalism Transposed: the Impact of the Colonies on British Culture, edited by Julie F. Codell and Dianne Sachko Macleod. New York: Routledge Revivals, 1998.

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Robinson, Jane. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. ———. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Sen, Indrani. Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858–1900). Hyderabad: Orient Longman Private Limited, 2002. Svendsen, Amalie Due. “Representations of the East: Orientalism in Emily Eden’s Travel Writing.” Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English no. 2 (2018): 60–70. doi:10.7146/lev.v0i2.104691. Vinatea Serrano, Eduardo. Orientalismo, colonialismo y antropología. Cultura y sociedad en India, China y Japón. Madrid: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 2010.

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William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry Wandering Into the Realms of the Visual Arts Macarena Rodríguez Rodríguez

To analyse the ekphrastic production of William Wordsworth, it is necessary to trace the evolution of the poet regarding his relationship with the visual arts. The possibility to explore the world of the visual production was granted by his friend and patron Sir George Beaumont, whom Wordsworth admired and whose works suggested some of Wordsworth’s best-known ekphrastic poems. When those ekphrastic poems are analysed in-depth, it is common to find, on the one hand, Wordsworth praising the “fixative capacity” of the painting, and on the other hand a description which does not correspond to the painting from which the poet got inspiration. This is characteristic of Wordsworth’s evolution from a poetry centred in nature and imagination to the composition of ekphrastic poetry which praises the capacity of art to fix a moment in time, which the poet imitated by transforming his texts into paintings made with words. In a period when the visual arts were taking over the written word and in which poets aimed to transcend time, Wordsworth opted to become a poet-painter and transformed his texts into pieces of visual art, sometimes by appropriating the essence of the piece he was writing about and transforming it into a different scene. One need only compare the visual referents that Wordsworth used to compose his texts and the description he made of them to also notice Wordsworth’s “abhorrence for detail,”1 as Jacqueline Labbe named it since many of his ekphrases are not mere descriptions but reflections and accounts of the story inside the frame. As the taste of the audience was changing and the visual was taking over the written,2 the poet accepted the idea of the communion of the visual and verbal spheres, and he tried to prove his words as valid as paintings when it comes to the final and original purpose of ekphrasis: to make the reader “see,” creating in his readers a mental image of the element represented. In ancient Greece, “ekphrasis” referred to a rhetoric exercise by which the orator described a person, object or place in such an accurate, detailed and vivid way that the spectator thought he or she was in front of that object. Modern theorists reduce the use of the term to texts which describe pieces of visual art, such as James Heffernan, who proposed the definition “verbal representation of visual representation,”3 or Stephen Cheeke, who added the idea that “the poem knows something or tells something that had been held back by the silent image.”4 On some occasions, the ekphrastic text does not arise from

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any visual reference but only exists in the imagination of the writer. For those texts whose visual referent is invented, John Hollander brought up the term “notional ekphrasis.”5 “To make us see” is the final purpose of Wordsworth, who, as an ekphrastic poet, wanted to be able to imitate the capacity of visual arts to transcend in time. Wordsworth tried to achieve what Murray Krieger called “the spatial fix,” which deals with his term “ekphrastic principle”: “The desire of the verbal object to emulate the spatial character of painting by trying to force its words.”6 As mentioned earlier, the relationship Wordsworth had with the visual arts was not always fluent and cooperative. In 1810, he was commended to write The Guide to the Lakes as a monthly publication supplementing a series of engravings by Rev. Joseph Wilkinson’s. In this case, Wordsworth thought, words were dominated by images, and he did not fancy the idea of writing under the dictation of the visual, “as a slave subjected to the ‘despotic’ ‘tyranny’ of the bodily eye.”7 Wordsworth not only considered it unnecessary for images to accompany a description since he firmly believed that words can describe in a more accurate way than images, but he also complained about how images do not let the imagination of the reader – and spectator – work. This idea about images neglecting the power of imagination accompanied Wordsworth throughout his career. In a poem published in 1835, entitled “Upon Seeing a Coloured Drawing of the Bird of Paradise in an Album,” Wordsworth denounced the painter who dared portrait the bird of paradise. The poem is followed by a note by the poet in which he exposed his complaint clearly: I will here only, by way of comment, direct attention to the fact that pictures of animals and other productions of Nature, as seen in conservatories, menageries and museums, would do little for the national mind, nay, they would be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded by the presence of the object, more or less out of the state of Nature. If it were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the eagle, the palm-tree, and even the cedar, from the impassioned introduction of them so frequently in Holy Scripture, and by great poets, and divines who write as poets, the spiritual part of our nature, and therefore the higher part of it, would derive no benefit from such intercourse with such subjects.8 The painting does not leave any room for the imagination of the observer, nor does it provide an accurate depiction of what a real bird of paradise is. It is only thanks to the texts in the scriptures and “great poets” that we have a true account of reality. This footnote accompanies a poem in which Wordsworth used his words to paint what the pencil of the painter should have achieved. The poem opens with the poet despising what a painter can do and states that description should be the painter’s realm, but that a poet can accomplish the same. However, the protagonist of the description – the bird

William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry 81 of paradise – “disclaims / the daring though” [5–6]. As the image considers that either the painter or the poet will be capable of giving a true account of itself, Wordsworth’s pencil will try to prove it wrong. In the main part of the poem, Wordsworth described the bird of paradise. This is in a way similar to what he did with Beaumont’s “Peele Castle” since he described the subject matter of the visual representation, not the representation itself: it is not the painting that he talked about, but the bird to be described. The vocabulary used in the description makes clear reference to the colours that the painter should have used: “So richly decked in variegated down / Green, sable, shining yellow, shadowy brown, / Tints softly with each other blended” [17–20]. With such a variety of colours and shiny hues, “began the pencil’s strife” and “O’erweening Art was caught as in a snare” [24–25]. The painter could not cope with such a description, but the poet, seeing how arrogantly art was failing to portray the animal appropriately, began his description and “drew / A juster judgement from a calmer view” [29–30]. As a conclusion, the last lines of the poem close this competition to state that poetry can describe the painting better because his words could “please that inward eye” [34] and “recall the truth by some faint trace” [36]. His text is then not only true to the bird being described but also stimulates the inward eye, the imagination of the reader, which would be left numb and useless if it only had the painting of the bird of paradise to conform a mental image of reality. The main complaint of Wordsworth about painting is that imagination is left aside, and the observer is dependent on the “bodily eye.” That is to say, there is no mental process and no progress if the public does not make the effort to see further than with their physical eyes. On this topic, as late as 1846, Wordsworth wrote “Illustrated Books and Newspapers,”9 a clearly logocentric poem in which Wordsworth despised painting as an art, calling it “dumb Art” [7]. He complained that visual art suits “the taste of this once-intellectual Land” [8] and stated that moving from writing to painting is a backward movement “from manhood back to childhood / Back towards caverned life’s first rude career” [9–10]. Again, Wordsworth complained that visual aid when describing does not leave room for the readers’ imagination. If a text is accompanied and “explained” with a painting, there will be one single image fixed to the spectator’s mind, and his or her intelligence and imagination will not be stimulated to create the person’s own mental image. This dismissal of visual arts as appropriate to accompany a descriptive text is not only found in his later years. Going back to The Guide, Wordsworth complained about the bad quality of the engravings his words were meant to describe and provided a description of some clouds in movement to demonstrate that painting only describes a part of reality and that the poet’s imagination and capacity can fulfil this task more successfully. In the 1822 edition, he described those “fleecy clouds resting upon the hill-tops” which “are not easily managed in picture, with their accompaniments of blue sky; but how glorious are they in nature! How pregnant with imagination for the poet!”10 Again, the idea of painting not being able to describe nature is reiterated and

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demonstrated by adding movement to this painting made of words. Together with this painting by Wordsworth there is his description of what there is actually in the painting, highlighting that all else speaks of tranquillity; – not a breath of air, no restlessness of insects, and not a moving object perceptible – except the clouds gliding in the depths of the lake, or the traveller passing along . . . whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time.11 With this comparison between what he saw in the engraving and what he described, Wordsworth “expands ‘the province of the pencil’ and inscribes time and movement into his verbal painting.”12 The image in the engraving cannot portray sound and movement, which the written description can, and thus Wordsworth exemplified why the written word and not the art of painting is suitable to describe nature. If it is only visually described, the spectator will not be able to appreciate the tranquil or “hurrying out of sight with speed of the sharpest edge” movement of the clouds or the pace of the person walking. Although Wordsworth considered that the visual arts were not appropriate to portray reality in a proper way on their own, he did praise the ability of certain painters and, above all, the capacity of their pencil to freeze a moment, as well as the feeling of permanence and durability that their works convey. Sir George Beaumont, friend, landlord and patron of Wordsworth, was one painter the poet admired. Their friendship united both mediums of expression to the point that some of Wordsworth’s best-known ekphrastic poems were born out of Beaumont’s paintings. Their professional union was many times depicted in the poet’s lines, such as in an 1808 inscription, “In the Grounds of Coleorton, the Seat of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., Leicestershire,”13 in which the cooperation of poetry and painting was articulated in a metaphor related to the growing of a cedar tree “planted by Beaumont’s and by Wordsworth’s hands” [4]. In that poem Wordsworth also described their relationship as one of “interchange of knowledge and delight” [7]. From the union between Beaumont and Wordsworth, Hazlitt pointed out, sprung Wordsworth’s “ekphrastic turn,” generally believed to have started in 1806 by the composition of “Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont” and finished with one of his last poems, written in 1846, “To Luca Giordano.” Wordsworth not only used Beaumont’s paintings as a source of inspiration but also learnt about the plastic arts from his patron, who “gave him access to the arts world, giving him direct access to one private collection and indirectly to a number of others through letters of commendation.”14 With the composition of “Peele Castle,” the poet wanted to thank his friend and demonstrate his new vocabulary imitating a painting which he did not see. Beaumont did not show Wordsworth his painting of Peele Castle before he wrote the poem, as he thought the poet’s grief over the death of his brother in a shipwreck would be aggravated, as Wordsworth acknowledged in a letter to his friend:

William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry 83 I am glad you liked the verses, I could not but write them with feeling with such a subject, and one that touched me so nearly: your delicacy in not leading me to the Picture did not escape me. . . . The Picture was to me a very moving one; it exists in my mind at this moment as if it were before my eyes.15 “Peele Castle” is then an example of notional ekphrasis since the painting described was only in Wordsworth’s imagination when he wrote it. It is a good example of how Wordsworth could paint with words because if we were not told that he had not seen the actual painting before writing, we could analyse the poem as containing a description of a painting by Beaumont. In the poem, we can distinguish three different depictions of the same landscape, one of which could well be on the painter’s canvas, while the other two represent, on the one hand Wordsworth’s memories of his experience when he visited that landscape and on the other hand the painting he would like to have painted if he had had the necessary skills. He did, however, but using words. In the first three stanzas, the scene is introduced, addressing the castle in the first line: “I was thy neighbour once, though rugged Pile!” [1]. Heffernan analysed this as “a typically ekphrastic gesture toward prosopopeia: he apostrophizes what he might at first take to be the picture designated by his title.”16 Wordsworth here presented a quiet, peaceful scene on which the castle is “sleeping on a glassy sea” [4], “So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!” [5]. The poet fixed the image of the landscape highlighting the quietness of the air, and in the following lines, he went on with this idea: “Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there; / It trembled, but it never passed away” [7–8]. As mentioned before, the capacity to fix a moment is what Wordsworth valued most in visual arts, and in this presentation of his memory, he tried to achieve it by telling the castle that no matter how time goes by, its memory will always accompany him. Heffernan studied these first stanzas of the poem as a “memory-painting” since Wordsworth was not really describing the castle per se, nor what the title announced would be in the painting: a storm.17 This is what Wordsworth wished to have found on Beaumont’s canvas and what he would have painted if he had been a painter. He thus introduced in the fourth stanza the description of the imaginary painting he would have presented “if mine had been the Painter’s hand” [13], which is “the Poet’s dream” [16]; “I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile / Amid a world how different from this!” [17–18]. It is interesting to notice that Wordsworth would have planted the castle. Choosing the verb plant instead of paint or any other verb referring to plastic creation might well be in relation to the poem analysed earlier in which Wordsworth united the painter and the writer’s hand to plant a cedar tree, symbolising the communion between poet and painter, painting and writing. In that line, the vocabulary used by Wordsworth is a reflection on the fixative power of painting, now found on his poem-canvas. “No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, / Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life” [27–28]. Instead of describing the motion of the sky as he did in the description of

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the evolution of the three clouds in the engravings in The Guide, where he argued that words are better at describing than images since they are static, Wordsworth presented a still scene, forgetting about the capacity of words to add movement to images. He was thus, painting with words. It is interesting to read Frederick Burwick’s analysis of Wordsworth’s text in “Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Crisis of Romanticism.” In his article, Burwick notices that there is no element in Wordsworth’s hypothetical painting that evokes the passing of time. It reads, “In his own imagined painting, nothing is allowed to disrupt the tranquility, there is also nothing to mark the passing of time: all action, all movement have been suspended in utter passivity.”18 This confirms two ideas: on the one hand, the poem is an example of Mitchell’s “ekphrastic hope” since the poet could freeze a moment verbally and “makes us see” as if we were contemplating a static painting; on the other hand, the poet becomes a painter during some stanzas and leaves aside the characteristics of written words – movement, expression of time passing – to paint his hypothetical painting. As a result, this leads to Mitchell’s “ekphrastic fear”, which happens when the limits of painting and writing are mingled, and one discipline uses the characteristics of the other, and the poet finally becomes a painter.19 The last stanza is also interesting in terms of Wordsworth’s newly acquired relationship with the visual. He said goodbye to his isolation as an artist: “Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, / Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!” [53–54] and welcomed the union with a painter such as Beaumont, foreseeing a happy and productive future together: “But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, / And frequent sights of what is to be borne!” [57–58]. Simonsen read this last stanza as “the return of the visible” in his use of the word “sight,” and he said that “the poem prepares for the significant collective ‘we’” in the final line: “Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”20 The poet, after drawing the poem with his words, imitating the capacity of the painter Beaumont, confirmed that his poetry is going to be linked to his paintings. In this way, he will be able to achieve the permanence and durability he so much praised in the visual arts and longed for thanks to his collaboration with Beaumont. One of the best examples of Wordsworth’s ekphrastic creation springing from Beaumont’s works is “Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont,” composed in 1811 and published four years later.21 In this composition, it is appreciated how the poet imitates the fixative capacity of visual arts. The author wrote these lines in a letter addressed to his painter friend, and his comments are also interesting to read. The poem praises in a straightforward way the capacity of the painting to freeze a moment in time. It mentions how the painting could portray a cloud “and fix it in that glorious shape” [2], how some “thin smoke” is not allowed to escape from the canvas, or how a band of travellers stopped on their way. It also mentions a “bark upon the glassy flood / For ever anchored in her sheltering bay” [7–8]. All these are evidence of how the painting “has given / To one brief moment caught from fleeting time / The appropriate calm of blest eternity” [12–14]. That is to say, the painter managed to freeze the image and movement of the elements

William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry 85 represented and, thus, he made them immortal. In this sense, it is ironic that the painting by Beaumont has been lost, whereas Wordsworth’s poem remains; the poet has, as a consequence, achieved one of his objectives when he wrote ekphrases: to help visual productions (at least Beaumont’s) persist. Another ekphrastic achievement here is the addition of elements that were not present in the painting, making the reader believe that they were actually on the image. As he confessed in the letter which accompanied the poem, “The images of the smoke and the Travellers are taken from your Picture; the rest were added, in order to place the thought in a clear point of view, and for the sake of variety.”22 As Simonsen has analysed, “Wordsworth creates as much as re-creates or describes the picture.”23 The poet represents the painting by Beaumont and, without telling his readers, he presents some elements. If it were not for his letter, we could not distinguish between what was actually on the canvas and what was a painting with words, so the conclusion that could be drawn is that Wordsworth became a painter during a few lines by “verbally conjuring a ‘sight.’”24 Wordsworth, thanks to his friendship with Beaumont, was up to date with the visual arts culture of Romanticism, which showed “a great interest in art and a desire to own pictures and objects d’art as a sign of culture and breeding.”25 As mentioned before, he was aware of the fact that the visual was taking over the written word. There was a growing market of reproductions and prints gained popularity amongst those who could not afford to own an original painting. Wordsworth, observing how the taste of the audience was changing towards the visual, “worried that the eye might become more important than the ear” and claimed that “the eye and the ear must co-operate rather than compete.”26 As explained in previous pages, Wordsworth considered this renewed interest in the visual as a step back in regard to intellectual evolution and thought that the imagination of the audience of museums and of those who relied on visual descriptions to know reality was not benefited. However, despite his Romantic colleagues, he did not like the print, and Wordsworth was aware that “poetry won’t sell without prints”; he was “a little too proud to let my Ship sail in the wake of the Engravers and the drawing-mongers,”27 as he confessed in a letter to his publisher Edward Moxon in 1833. This new interest in printed works of visual arts together with the flourishing interest of society in museums are probably the reasons Wordsworth adapted his works in order to boost his sales and to be remembered as an artist. He was convinced that his genius would not be appreciated before his death “and therefore stood in dire need of the promise of the kind of durability and permanence that has been called “typographical fixity.” He, then, used the sonnet and certain typographical arrangements in his compositions as “word-preserving entities.”28 That is to say, by organising his poems in a determined way on the printed page and using the visual scheme characteristic of sonnets, he wanted to confer visual pleasure in his reader not only with the contents of his expression but also with the format of his compositions. In this way, he built his own museum of words and published Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems (1835), his most important

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publication from his later period and in which his ekphrastic turn was “fully realised,”29 although not all the poems in the collection are sonnets. It was a successful move, as Stephen Gill commented, since “Yarrow Revisited was the first of Wordsworth’s publications to sell widely, and it certainly confirmed his own sense, as well as his readers, that at last his time had come.”30 “Daniel in the Lions’ Den, at Hamilton Palace” (1831) and “Lines Suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone” (1835) are the most relevant examples of Wordsworth’s ekphrases collected in Yarrow Revisited. These poems engage readers as spectators of the paintings and as characters within the story narrated. “Daniel in the Lions’ Den, at Hamilton Palace”31 is an actual ekphrastic sonnet inspired by Rubens’ painting “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” (1615). The opening lines set the scene: “Amid a fertile region green with wood / And fresh with rivers” [1–2], referring to Hamilton Palace, where Wordsworth could see the painting. In the following lines, the lions, protagonist of the painting, are called “children of Art” [5] as they have been born from the pencil of an artist. They “claim a strange brotherhood” [5] because those they resemble from real life are lions too. However, the ones in the canvas cannot move or utter sounds as the living ones do. The ones found in nature “roam at large” [6] whilst the ones represented in the painting are trapped and motionless, “couched in their den” [6]. They are “still to eye and ear” [9], which, as Simonsen explained, “captures the silencing and the fixation brought about by the art of painting as it transforms the real lions into representation.”32 Wordsworth was thus reiterating the idea of art freezing a moment in time, arresting all movement and sound from reality and, therefore, conferring immortality to the scene. This could have a double reading: on the one hand, Wordsworth could be praising once more the capacity of art to stop time; on the other hand, it could be read as a criticism to painting nature, as we saw him do with “The Bird of Paradise.” He calls the painted lions a “strange brotherhood”: the images claim to be siblings of their real, natural referents, but they do not share the same characteristics since they cannot utter any sound or do any movement, and therefore the poet could be implying that the painting cannot reflect what happens in nature. Indeed, Wordsworth compared these still lions “couched in their den” with “those that roam at large / Over the burning wilderness, and charge / The wind with terror while they roar for food” [6–8]. The ekphrastic importance of this poem lies in the hypothesis that Wordsworth made from line 10. He made his reader imagine what would happen if the static lions represented came to life, engaging his audience in his description as actual protagonists of the painting: while we gaze, we are tranquil as Daniel is, but thanks to the stillness of the lions, we have time to wonder what would happen “if his Companions, now bedrowsed / Outstretched and listless, were by hunger roused” [10–13]. Simonsen phrased it as its very stillness gives time “while we gaze” to recall the story of Daniel and replace a fear of nature with a fear of the God who holds nature in His power, who decides whether the lions will spare whoever is thrown into their den.33

William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry 87 Following this reasoning, it could be said that Wordsworth is that “God” who decides if the lions move or not. He can do that by describing with his words the movement and attack of the animals, although it is not the case in this poem. It is also noticeable that Wordsworth said that Daniel looks tranquil and does not show fear, but in the actual painting by Rubens, he does not seem that calm and instead looks rather scared, as if he was praying for mercy. It is easy to assume that Wordsworth portrayed a calm Daniel because the prophet knew that the lions would not jump on him since art froze them in their sleep. This is the poet’s ekphrastic game in these lines: to describe a scene and change what we think about it with his words, making us form a mental image of the moment which is different from what is found on the canvas. In the case of “Lines Suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone,”34 Wordsworth not only made us see the painting he was writing about, but he also explained the story behind it, the symbolism that the objects in the canvas convey. He again highlighted the capacity of visual art to freeze time and used his words to add value to the art by making the relationship of painting to writing mutually enriching. From the very first lines, Wordsworth praised the work of F. Stone: “I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam / Of beauty never ceases to enrich / The common light” [6–8] and soon highlighted the characteristics of visual art present with nouns like “stillness” [7], “repose” [8] and “silence” [10] which “Surpasses sweetest music” [11]. In the two following paragraphs, Wordsworth provided a brief description of the portrait in which a young girl dressed in white holds a flower on her lap. He linked his description of the painting with the art of sculpture (“marble neck [13], “pillar of her throat” [14]), appealing to the reader’s inner eye to “look at her” [22]. It could be said that this opening of the poem is an example of Mitchell’s “ekphrastic hope” since Wordsworth wanted us to “see” the girl in his lines. The following part of the poem reaches the moment of “ekphrastic fear” when the desire of “ekphrastic hope” is finally achieved thanks to a detailed description in which the poet used visual vocabulary, detailing the hues in the “azure depth” [33] colour of the girl’s eyes and saying how “voiceless” [35] her prayer is, or how the painter made the girl renounce to her “peculiar life of motion” [36–37]. As explained in the analysis of “Peele Castle” and “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” Wordsworth not only proved that his words can portray a variety of forms and colours but also that he could do what he admired about visual arts: he could capture a moment, freeze it and make it last forever. As we go on reading, his ekphrastic game begins: he creates a story behind the painting and provides the reader with an explanation for the pensive, sad mood of the girl. In this regard, the flower she holds helps to offer an answer. The flower she is holding was her mother’s favourite, and she is sad because her mother has died. Wordsworth further emphasised this addition to the painting by means of his poem: “Words have something told / More than the pencil can, and verily / More than is needed, but the precious Art / Forgives their interference – Art divine, /that both creates and fixes, in despite / Of Death and Time” [74–79]. However, he did not criticise the painting for not explaining the image, but

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again, he claimed that “Art divine” managed to fix a moment in time. This is another example of how Wordsworth articulated his ekphrases: he described the matter of his inspiration, praised the painter’s ability to capture a scene and mimicked this capacity with his words. In this case, he proved once more that his words were more capable of telling a story than the visual representation and that “poetry thus gains the upper hand in this paragon.”35 William Wordsworth was a poet who knew how to adapt his poetry to the new taste of Romanticism and learned to transform his lines into brushstrokes in order to succeed. Even if he openly rejected the idea of educating society through images as he considered them infantilising, he acknowledged their superior capacity to fix a moment and make it everlasting. The beginning of his public career was marked by the composition of a series of landscape descriptions to accompany “poor-quality” engravings for The Guide to the Lakes (1810), which made him feel like a slave of the visual and rebel against this “tyranny of the bodily eye”; however, due to his relationship with Sir George Beaumont, he learnt to appreciate visual compositions from a different point of view: he grew to admire the visual arts and their characteristic silence and still motion as tools to reach one of the goals of the romantic poet: permanence. William Wordsworth was able to master his descriptive skills by studying Beaumont’s works and other paintings to which he had access. This first-hand intimacy with the visual arts together with his knowledge about art criticism and mimesis techniques resulted in his ekphrastic poetry and finally “made us see.” He conferred in his lines the idea of permanence and the fixity he had so much admired, and at the same time, he proved that words “can more than images say” by recreating through motion and voice the scene depicted in a more complete way than a painting alone could. His greatest success came with the publication of the recollection of sonnets and other poems in Yarrow Revisited (1835), which contains two of the clearest examples of this communion between words and images. Words were, thus, transformed into both images and stories. Wordsworth created this union and was eager to complete the meaning of a painting as long as his words were not servile to the visual. Further than that, he achieved two of his lifetime goals: on the one hand, to prove that words are superior to images when it comes to portraying accurately a scene and telling a story, and, finally, he managed to appropriate the capacity of the visual scene to transcend time by transforming his written descriptions into immutable, permanent visual poetry and thus reach posterity.

Notes 1. Jacqueline M. Labbe, Romantic Visualities: Landscape, Gender and Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1998), 147. 2. Gillen D’Arcy Wood, The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 173. 3. James Heffernan, The Museum of Words (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), 299. 4. Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 6.

William Wordsworth’s Ekphrastic Poetry 89 5. John Hollander, The Gazer’s Spirit (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), 4. 6. Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 10. 7. Peter Simonsen, Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 22. 8. William Wordsworth, The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, ed. Jared Curtis (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 1993), 49. 9. William Wordsworth, The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Henry Reed (Philadelphia: Troutman & Hayes, 1851), 235. 10. William Wordsworth, The Prose Works, eds. W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 190. 11. Ibid., 192. 12. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 25. 13. William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works, eds. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 270. 14. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 81. 15. Wordsworth, The Poetical Works, 270. 16. Heffernan, Museum, 96. 17. Ibid., 97. 18. Frederick Burwick, “Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Crisis of Romanticism,” in Icons, Texts, Iconotexts, ed. Peter Wagner (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 78–104. 19. William John Thomas Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other,” in Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), 152. 20. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 86. 21. Wordsworth, The Poetical Works, 200. 22. Ibid., 507. 23. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 96. 24. Ibid., 97. 25. Basil Hunnisett, Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England (London: Scholar University Press, 1980), 2. 26. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 31. 27. Wordsworth, Fenwick Notes, 617. 28. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 53. 29. Ibid., 58. 30. Stephen Gill, Wordsworth and the Victorians (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 19. 31. Wordsworth, The Poetical Works, 275. 32. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 134. 33. Ibid., 135. 34. Wordsworth, The Poetical Works, 120. 35. Simonsen, Wordsworth, 152.

Bibliography Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Burwick, Frederick. “Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Crisis of Romanticism.” In Icons, Texts, Iconotexts, edited by Peter Wagner, 78–104. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. Cheeke, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Galperin, William. The Return of the Visible in British Romanticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkis University Press, 1898.

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Gill, Stephen. Wordsworth and the Victorians. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Hartman, Geoffrey. Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787–1814. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987 Heffernan, James. The Museum of Words. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993. Hollander, John. The Gazer’s Spirit. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Hunnisett, Basil. Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England. London: Scholar Press, 1980. Johnson, Lee M. Wordsworth and the Sonnet. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1973. Krieger, Murray. Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1992. Labbe, Jacqueline M. Romantic Visualities: Landscape, Gender and Romanticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1998. Lessing, Gotthold E. Laocöon. Translated by Robert Philimore. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1905. Manning, Peter. Reading Romantics: Texts and Contexts. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Mitchell, William John Thomas. Picture Theory: Essays on the Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. Simonsen, Peter. Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007. Scott, Grant F. The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994. Shackford, Martha H. Wordsworth’s Interest in Painters and Paintings. Wellesley: The Wellesley Press, 1994. Wood, Gillen D’Arcy. The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760– 1860. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Wordsworth, William. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Edited by Henry Reed. Philadelphia: Troutman & Hayes, 1851. ———. The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (Vol. IV). Edited by Edward Moxon. London: Moxon & Sons, 1870. ———. The Poetical Works (Vol. 5). Edited by Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. ———. The Prose Works (Vol. 3). Edited by W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. ———. The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth. Edited by Jared Curtis. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1993. Wu, Duncan. Wordsworth: An Inner Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Part III

Intermedial Encounters in America

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The Pictorial Richness of Poe’s Oeuvre Margarita Rigal-Aragón and Fernando González-Moreno

Introduction Edgar Allan Poe’s life (1809–1849) coincided, chronologically, with a period in which illustrated books were a growing demand. All through his career, he defended that when a text was accompanied by illustrations, images should be in accordance with it: appropriate and obvious, not mere ornaments. This can be distinctly observed in the different prospectuses of his two projected literary journals: The Penn Magazine and The Stylus. Poe meant to outshine by incorporating suitable illustrations: “The pictorial embellishments will be numerous, and by the leading artists of the country, but will be only introduced in the necessary illustration of the text,”1 and “Engravings, when used, will be in the highest style of Art, but are promised only in obvious illustration of the text, and in strict keeping with the Magazine character.”2 These two quotations are enough to show Poe’s recognition of illustrations as textual interpretative tools. This chapter explores several of Poe’s tales through the lens of his own aesthetic knowledge.3 We reconsider pieces that go from the very beginning of his narrative career (1832), like “Metzengerstein,” until the end, like “Landor’s Cottage” (1849). For this reexamination, we focus on Poe’s aesthetic ideas and the visual-literary resources present in those tales and sketches. Towards this purpose, we divide the chapter into three main sections: Poe as a painter of landscapes, Poe as a painter of effects, and Poe as an art “expert.” In the first section, the author’s ability to paint sceneries is shown through the analysis of his most famous landscape pieces (“The Landscape Garden” or “Landor’s Cottage”) and others less often related with this ability, such as “Eleonora” – a tale almost forgotten by most of Poe’s critics – or “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains.” Concepts such as those of ekphrasis, mimesis (not as mere imitation, but also as idealization) and paragone are explored here. The second section shows how Poe made use of pictorial references by Lorrain, Rosa or Fuseli, for instance, to reinforce the visuality (enargeia) of his descriptions as if they were art pieces (ekphrasis); this visuality, in some cases, develops into a vivid and enthralling mental image (ekpledzis). Finally, in the last section, with the help of “Metzengerstein” and “The Oval Portrait,”

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we investigate the power Poe gave to art; in these two texts, art pieces – a tapestry and a painting – become reality in themselves, going beyond mimesis. Elements like these and many others help to explain the visual and pictorial richness of Poe’s oeuvre.

A Painter of Landscapes Poe’s capacity to provide his texts with visuality or pictorial vividness – using the classic terms, evidentia or enargeia – can be traced throughout the use of different resources or literary devices. Among them, the traditional ekphrasis stands out as the genre that made Poe act more directly as a painter. Poe drew on ekphrasis in several of his tales as a main part of the plot. Thus we must highlight “The Landscape Garden” (1842) or, to be more precise, the extended version, “The Domain of Arnheim” (1846/47). It is in this last variation that we find the description of a landscape as a work of art. However, regarding the debate over the sister arts, the results of the first release of this tale are highly significant: here Poe offers the reader several clues and opinions on topics such as the Horatian ut pictura poesis or the Renaissance paragone. According to Poe, mimesis is a common purpose for any art. The origin of any type of art – poetry, painting, music, sculpture – may be found in the imitation of Nature. She offers artists raw materials whose variety of colors, forms and novel beauty exceed any human fantasy. Nevertheless, the artist must neither purely imitate Nature nor idealize it. In regard to the first statement, we must remember Poe’s definition of art: Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term “Art,” I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “Artist.” Denner was no artist. The grapes of Zeuxis were inartistic – unless in a bird’s-eye view; and not even the curtain of Parrhasius could conceal his deficiency in point of genius. I have mentioned “the veil of the soul.” Something of the kind appears indispensable in Art. We can, at any time, double the true beauty of an actual landscape by half closing our eyes as we look at it. The naked Senses sometimes see too little – but then always they see too much.4 Poe criticized the German painter Balthasar Denner,5 who was praised for his highly detailed portraits, and does not hesitate to condemn two almost sacred references in the history of painting, such us Zeuxis or Parrhasius. The works of these two painters from ancient Greece, lost and only known thanks to Pliny’s descriptions, had become real myths – benchmarks to be equaled – due to their capacity to mimic reality and deceive Nature herself.6 Nevertheless, for Poe, this ability would be insufficient to declare their works as art. On the other hand, the writer tears down another classical and recurring art myth when he condemns “idealization” too. In “The Landscape Garden,” Poe stated,

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The criticism which says, of sculpture or of portraiture, that “Nature is to be exalted rather than imitated,” is in error. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.7 This paragraph echoes and criticizes another legend by Zeuxis: when the ancient Greek painter chose the most beautiful parts of five different maidens to paint his ideal image of Helen of Troy for a temple in Croton or Agrigento.8 This anecdote was recurrently used by Renaissance theorists, such as Alberti or Vasari, to justify the idealization of Nature. Not all of the arts, however, could achieve their purpose with the same success. Despite being a poet, and obviously due to the specific argument developed in “The Landscape Garden,” Poe established a certain paragone among the arts according to their capacity to generate a “physical” or “plastic” work – after all, Nature, the object to be imitated, is physical – but also according to their ability to combine the imitated elements: The most advantageous, if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment, was to be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet.9 Hence, although Poe made the narrator, Mr. Ellison, pronounce a strong defense of poetry and music, plastic arts, such as sculpture or painting, occupy a leading position in this paragone. However, the text includes a remark on sculpture that would have made Poe earn Michelangelo Buonarroti’s complete enmity: “The field of sculpture, although in its nature rigidly poetical, was too limited in its extent and in its consequences.”10 Therefore, painting seems to stand out as the most adequate medium to imitate Nature due to the painter’s capacity to correct its defects or excesses, to compose the original elements in more poetical and varied ways of forms, colors and novel beauty: “No such combinations of scenery exist in Nature as the painter of genius has in his power to produce”;11 this is praise that is personalized in the French baroque painter Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682).12 However, the art that finally emerges victorious in this paragone is landscape gardening: “My friend could not fail to perceive that the creation of the Landscape-Garden offered to the true muse the most magnificent of opportunities.”13 The last part of the text offers a theoretical description of what that ideal landscape-garden should be like and what it should include: A mixture of pure art in a garden scene, adds to it a great beauty. This is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design, and partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss-covered balustrade, calls up at once to the eye, the fair forms that have passed there in other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care and human interest.14

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Poe’s description implies a defense of natural gardening against artificial gardening and follows point by point the principles of picturesque beauty developed by authors and works such as William Gilpin’s Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape (1792); Sir Uvedale Price’s Essays on the Picturesque (1794); and Richard Payne Knight’s The Landscape (1794). Under the new precepts spread by the picturesque, painters, writers and travelers displayed an unusual interest in nature emphasizing its most picturesque and varied characteristics: the rude and craggy mountains, the irregular barks of the trees, worn-out elements, animals of rough coat (cows, goats, donkeys), etc. Scenes where the union of simplicity and variety produces a form of delight that cannot be considered either beautiful – it lacks harmony and measured proportion – or sublime – it is not overwhelming or terrifying – but that deserves to be captured in a painting. Still, in “The Landscape Garden,” that painting was missing. According to Aristotle’s Poetics (1455a), In constructing plots and completing the effect by the help of dialogue the poet should, as far as possible, keep the scene before his eyes. Only thus by getting the picture as clear as if he were present at the actual event, will he find what is fitting and detect contradictions.15 Poe failed to include the painting that would have completed and reinforced the enargeia of his tale. Nevertheless, this lack would be resolved with the publication in 1847 of the extended version of the text, re-titled as “The Domain of Arnheim.” Now the tale concludes with a perfect ekphrasis that pictures the previous theoretical argument: a painting that puts before the eyes of the reader the landscape-garden imagined by Poe and that transforms the reader into a spectator.16 This landscape-garden, as stated earlier, includes most of the elements that characterize the picturesque landscape: a garden that looks like a work of Nature but that is actually a work of human art. It has been a poet-paintergardener who has arranged the natural components to achieve a poetic sentiment: “The thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification.”17 The rolling meadows, the river of thousand turns, the sheep, the gorges and ravines, the long plume-like moss, woods, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture . . . all these elements guide the reader-spectator through a journey of discovery – the idea of travelling is intrinsic to the idea of the picturesque – that culminates in a fascinating, surprising and breath-taking vision. To achieve that effect, Poe’s ekphrasis combines detail and generality perfectly; it is a painting to be observed “at large from some remote point in the heavens.”18 He took care of every single brushstroke, but moreover, he was interested in the general effect, the general poetic sentiment. The method used by Poe to “paint” can be better visualized by having in mind his own pictorial referents: the already mentioned Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin or Clarkson Frederick Stanfield but also the American landscape

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painter Frederic Edwin Church,19 whom Poe had visited in his studio.20 Before Poe’s death in 1849, Church had already attained a notable reputation thanks to his vivid and romantic views of New York and New England. Poe, as Church, is not only interested in the mimetic representation of Nature – that would not be art – but also in his dramatic and subjective use as a mirror of a feeling: “Through the veil of the soul.” In this sense, we must recall the special value that Poe himself gave to this tale, “which, moreover, expresses much of my soul,”21 as he confessed to Sarah Helen Whitman (October 18, 1848).22 In the copy of the text sent to her, he also stated, “This story contains more of myself and of my inherent tastes and habits of thought than anything I have written.”23 The use of the ekphrasis as a way to culminate the enargeia of the text can be traced in other tales. “Morning on the Wissahiccon” (“The Elk,” 1843) offers a remarkable example. In this case, the description of the river reminds us of the capacity of the landscape to trigger the traveler’s fantasy and to evoke distant times and places: “My imagination revelled in visions of the Wissahiccon of ancient days.”24 “Landor’s Cottage” (1849) further encourages Poe’s visual capacity to conceive his descriptions as paintings, to recreate views and scenes worthy of a picture: the essence of the picturesque. The whole tale can be considered a brief treatise on picturesque beauty: In fact, nothing could well be more simple – more utterly unpretending than this cottage. Its marvelous effect lay altogether in its artistic arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it, that some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush.25 Another must among this selection of Poe’s texts is “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844). In this case, the author placed his easel “at the foot of a high mountain, and looking down into a vast plain, through which wound a majestic river” and described an Eastern-looking city of irregular and narrow streets, the Indian Benares, whose “houses were wildly picturesque”;26 thus, Poe’s ekphrasis recalls one of the Orientalist paintings to the liking of nineteenth-century Romantic taste. We must include a last example of ekphrasis in Poe’s tales to emphasize his ability to depict Nature “through the veil of the soul”; that is, to paint a landscape as the mirror of the characters’ feelings. In “Eleonora” (1841), the description of the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass reflects the evolution of the love between the narrator and Eleonora. First, the valley is presented with several of the elements of the picturesque beauty: the many dazzling rivulets, the hills, the grass and the varied flowers, etc., but we soon discover that this is not a mere mimesis but a place where the natural elements are charged with a subjective and symbolic connotation: the river of silence, the fantastic trees, shadowy gorges – a landscape whose “beauty spoke to our hearts.”27 That subjectivism becomes more evident as the feelings of the characters evolve and the landscape itself begins to change. In this sense, the sequence of different flowers blossoming in the valley is especially symbolic. When the relation

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between both characters is pure and infantile, the most predominant flower is the white daisy since it traditionally symbolizes optimism, purity and, moreover, children’s innocence. Later, when they fall in love, Nature flourishes with joyful exuberance, including scarlet flamingos, and the ruby-red asphodels take the place of the daisies. Here Poe rewrites tradition and breaths life (rubyred blood) into a flower that – white in reality – had a funerary symbolism:

Figure 6.1 Eleonora, John Byam Shaw (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1909) Source: Image courtesy of the Poe Online: Text and Image Project

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the Asphodel Meadows were a part of the ancient Greek underworld where the dead may be sent. In this way, Poe reminds the reader that this earthly and carnal love is temporary and unavoidably condemned to death. This final fate is symbolized by the last presence of purple and dark eye-like violets, which ancient Romans and Greeks associated with death and funerals. Furthermore, in the nineteenth century, purple violets meant the remembrance of deceased loved ones.28 The symbolic pictorialism of this ekphrasis made this tale especially attractive for those illustrators trained under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and symbolism. In this sense, we must highlight the illustrations in this tale by Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871–1960), The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902) and by John Byam Liston Shaw (1872–1919), Selected Tales of Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1909) (Figure 6.1).

A Painter of Effects As a way to reinforce the composition of mental images in the reader’s mind, Poe did not doubt in including explicit pictorial references in his ekphrasis. We can find this resource in three of the aforementioned tales: “The Domain of Arnheim,” “The Elk” and “Landor’s Cottage.” In the first case, as we have already indicated, the depiction of the landscape-garden is preceded by an allusion to Claude Lorrain’s canvasses, which present a combination of sceneries that Nature itself cannot surpass. A first writing of this tale mentions Nicolas Poussin and William Clarkson Stanfield too; however, both painters were eliminated in the final version of the tale. Regarding “The Elk” and “Landor’s Cottage,” references to Salvator Rosa’s style are used in order to describe the landscapes.29 In the first tale, the place where the elk appears is described as “a steep rocky cliff, abutting far into the stream, and presenting much more of the Salvator character than any portion of the shore hitherto passed”;30 and in the second, the magnificent trunks of hickories, black walnuts, chestnuts and oaks found along the edge of a cliff are described as “Salvatorish in character.”31 A reader fairly familiar with those painters and their artworks would undoubtedly be conditioned by these visual references while reading the tales.32 Poe’s ekphrasis of the domain would be mentally visualized as one of those paintings on which Lorrain combined idealized and lyrical visions of Nature with ancient ruins: placid and serene landscapes reminiscent of lost times. Works such as Landscape with a Rock Arch and River (1630, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) or Sunrise (1646–47, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) could be mentioned here. Concerning Salvator Rosa, the picturesque and pre-Romantic landscapes of this Neapolitan painter – characterized by craggy mountains, stormy clouds and rough tree trunks – perfectly echo and reinforce Poe’s descriptions. Rosa’s landscapes reach a poetical level just as Poe’s tales reach a pictorial one. His works reflect a dramatic vision of Nature as a mirror of the human being, becoming more and more expressive and, in some cases, even truculent. Thus Rosa distanced himself from a more classical

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representation of Nature, well signified by Lorrain but, especially, by Nicolas Poussin. This may be the reason why Poe decided to eliminate Poussin from his last version of “The Landscape Garden.” Poe’s ability to use his art expertise to emphasize the visuality of his descriptions – both of settings and characters – can be especially noted in “The Visionary” (“The Assignation,” 1834). There we find the obvious references to the common Venetian monuments – the Palladian palaces, the Bridge of Sighs, the Ducal Palace, Campanile, etc.– that help us to recreate the Italian city; however, it is more interesting to notice how he built up the characters as artworks too. The description of both the main male character and the Marchesa Aphrodite should be considered as ekphrasis again, a poetical exercise to evoke classical sculptures. Nevertheless, Poe was aware of the fatigue that long and detailed descriptions imply, so he preferred to conclude them with art references that imprint in the reader’s mind a faster and more complete picture. In the case of the Byronic character, it is said, “His were features than which I have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus.”33 We must remember here Commodus’ description by Herodian of Antioch, author of History of the Roman Empire: At this time he was in the prime of youth, striking in appearance, with a well-developed body and a face that was handsome without being pretty. His commanding eyes flashed like lightning; his hair, naturally blond and curly, gleamed in the sunlight as if it were on fire; some thought that he sprinkled his hair with gold dust before appearing in public, while others saw in it something divine, saying that a heavenly light shone round his head.34 Pondering the Marchesa, her description begins as that of a Hellenistic sculpture, well characterized by the wet drapery whose transparency reveals the female body: “In the statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe.”35 Poe mentioned here the statue group of Niobe and Her Youngest Daughter, a portrayal of a desperate mother attempting to protect one of her children from inevitable death,36 a perfect example of Hellenistic preference for emotional and pathetic themes. Later, this marble sculpture acquires life remembering Pygmalion’s myth: “The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson.”37 However, she will suffer another metamorphosis, now as a full-length painting that offers Poe the possibility of a new ekphrasis. In this case, the Marchesa is described as the pictorial allegory of melancholic beauty herself: a winged female figure with “that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.”38 The use of art references reaches its apotheosis in “The Assignation” when the palazzo chamber is described by the main character. The room, designed to

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excite all our senses by means of its splendor and luxuriousness, becomes an imaginary fine arts gallery that reminds the reader of those paintings created by Giovanni Paolo Panini,39 Ancient Rome (1757, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Modern Rome (1757, Museum of Fine Art, Boston): In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. . . . The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none – neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt.40 Here Poe choose to describe the scene as a suggesting pinacotheca with “paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour.”41 Among them, apart from Marchesa Aphrodite’s veiled portrait, Guido Reni’s masterpiece and symbol of classical baroque stands out: The Madonna della Pietà.42 The presence of this artwork leads the characters to debate on other epitomes of classical beauty, all of them linked to the Neoclassical aesthetic ideas of Johann Joachim Winckelmann: the Venus de’ Medici (first century BCE, Gallery of the Uffizi, Florence), a marble copy of an original Greek bronze sculpture; the Venus Victrix (1805–08, Galleria Borghese, Rome), a Neoclassical portrait of Pauline Bonaparte by Antonio Canova; the Apollo Belvedere (mid-second century CE, copy of an original bronze statue of 330–320 BCE, Vatican Museums, Rome), which from the mid-eighteenth century was considered the greatest ancient sculpture and the quintessence of aesthetic perfection; and the Antinous. Regarding this last one, Poe may have referred to the Belvedere Hermes (early second century CE, marble copy after a bronze by Praxiteles, Vatican Museums, Rome), which was recognized as an Antinous until the first decades of the nineteenth century.43 This sequence of art references, as well as others of mosaic, furniture, glass, upholstery, etc., dazzles and overwhelms the reader’s fantasy; however, it is worth noting the way in which Poe managed to hide among all these real artworks other allusions that are mere evocations. When he mentioned “the grotesques of the Greek painters,”44 our minds fail to imagine them since (unless on ceramic) there is no current trace of the Greek painting. We only know what the works of these great painters (Zeuxis, Parrhasius, etc.) looked like thanks to the literary descriptions of authors such as Philostratus of Lemnos, Pliny or Pausanias – that is, thanks to their ekphrasis. Thus Poe was able to imprint on our fantasy an image whose referent, in fact, is not visual, but literary. Poe’s use of the word “grotesque,” here applied to Greek painting, deserves a remark. Traditionally, the origin of the term refers to the Roman grotteschi: ornamentations in which natural forms and monstrous figures are intertwined in bizarre or fanciful combinations. However, we must bear in mind Poe’s dislike for the excessive mimetic character of ancient Greek painting – as it is expressed in his definition of art – declaring it inartistic. So, the term “grotesques” does not refer here to “bizarre or fanciful combinations”45 but to an absurd and preposterous mimesis.

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Among those tales in which Poe drew on this literary-pictorial resource, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) must be highlighted. When the narrator tries to describe the paintings over which Roderick Usher’s elaborate fancy broods, he declares that words are not enough to provide an accurate idea of them: “From these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.”46 This assertion is quite significant in the context of the debate of the sister arts since Poe seemed to recognize that neither language – the visual nor the literary – can compete in the creation of images; this field belongs to plastic arts. In consequence, he declined to offer any extensive and tedious description and, once again, he made use of his art background to include a more effective art referent: There arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.47 Although Poe described Usher’s paintings as pure abstractions, nineteenthcentury painting did not offer many examples of this style; Poe, however, was able to find a not too distant precedent. Living from 1741 to 1825, Henry Fuseli was well-known for his representations of supernatural, oneiric and ghostly matters. Works such as The Nightmare (1781, Detroit Institute of Arts) or Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1810–12, Tate Gallery, London) made Fuseli a precursor not only of Surrealism but also of Abstraction too. His paintings include figures with exaggerated proportions or contorted attitudes – a way of reshaping the natural world for expressive purposes that can be declared as abstraction. In this sense – and taking once more into consideration Poe’s definition of art – Usher’s style could be recognized as figurative abstraction; that is, a painting where “imitation” (mimesis) has been completely subordinated to “the veil of the soul” (idea). Poe was able to achieve the right and effective enargeia of the text with this pictorial referent, but he did it in such an enthralling manner that it became a real ekpledzis. This image is aimed at imprinting on the reader’s mind the same terror that inhabits Usher’s: mental pictures prompted by his despair and melancholic insanity that lead the reader to experience the kind of sublimity (the terrifying sublime) that Poe explored in this tale of the arabesque. In this sense, Poe applied the use of this ekpledzis as Longinus recommended in his On the Sublime: Weight, grandeur, and energy in writing are very largely produced, dear pupil, by the use of “images.” (That at least is what some people call the actual mental pictures.) For the term Imagination is applied in general to an idea which enters the mind from any source and engenders speech, but the word has now come to be used predominantly of passages where, inspired by strong emotion, you seem to see what you describe and bring

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it vividly before the eyes of your audience. That imagination means one thing in oratory and another in poetry you will yourself detect, and also that the object of poetry is to enthrall, of prose writing to present things vividly, though both indeed aim at this latter and at excited feeling.48 Poe could not avoid completing this mental picture, including a brief ekphrasis, despite the narrator’s previous warning. He described a white, subterranean, brilliant and endless “vault or tunnel”49 that may be related to the image depicted by another precursor of Surrealism: Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450– 1516). The Netherlandish artist painted a view of the Ascent into Heaven (c. 1490, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice) where we can see the blessed entering a long and shining tunnel. Usher’s depiction seems opposite to Bosch’s: while the latest ascends towards divine salvation, the first, subterranean, plunges into Usher’s psyche and damnation.

An Art Connoisseur This chapter cannot be closed without dealing with those cases in which Poe conferred a relevant role in the plot to a specific artwork, as it happened in one of his earliest tales: “Metzengerstein” (1832). Here Poe departed from the idea of metempsychosis, the purported capacity of the human soul to migrate after death from one body to another either human or animal or into a thing. Funerary art in Ancient Egypt was based on this belief; a sculpture, properly created according to a series of pre-stablished rules, could host the deceased’s soul while his mummy was prepared. This tradition provides to plastic arts a relevant position in regard to the paragone of the arts. Both poetry and visual arts have mimesis as a common aim, but plastic arts achieve this purpose in a better way since they generate a physical work. Moreover, according to the tradition of metempsychosis, the visual arts would not only be able to mimic reality but also supplant it. An artwork could go beyond mere mimesis and become reality itself. Horace Walpole had made use of this idea in his The Castle of Otranto (1764). Here, the painting that represents Manfred’s grandfather hosts his specter to the extent that, at one point, Manfred “saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air.”50 Poe retook several of these elements in “Metzengerstein,” in which a tapestry is a key element. In the tale, when the young Baron Frederick Metzengerstein contemplates a tapestry representing “the figure of an enormous, and unnaturally colored horse”51 – as well as one of his ancestors killing another of his rival family, the Berlifitzing – the effect of the vision on Metzengerstein, like a devilish spell, is immediate. The horse, as an incarnation of the deadly enmity that has existed between both lineages, comes to life, first inside the tapestry and then outside it and takes possession of the baron. From that moment, he becomes a rider without any will, a maniac subdued to the curse of this unnatural horse that will cause the destruction of the Berlifitzing and of its rider as well. In this sense, the tapestry plays a double role: it hosts and materializes

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the evil hostility between both families and serves to fulfil the prophecy that had announced their destruction. Unluckily, most of the illustrators who have approached this tale have not recognized the special value of the scene when the baron contemplates the tapestry for the first time. From its first representations, the moment chosen as most iconic has been the final climax: horseman and steed galloping along the collapsing ruins of the palace. We can see this in Hermann Vogel’s illustration for Histoires extraordinaires and Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (Paris: A. Quantin, 1884).52 However, Hans Fronius offered an exception worth noting in Das verräterische Herz. 13 Erzählungen (München: Rütten & Loening Verlag, 1965). The edition includes a fiercely expressive depiction of the horse looking from the tapestry at the baron, who retreats before the menacing gesture of the animal (Figures 6.2 and 6.3). Undeniably, “Life in Death” (“The Oval Portrait,” 1842) is the most representative among Poe’s tales where an artwork is a key element of the plot and, once more, an artifact able to host a human soul. Here a precedent should be mentioned: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Prophetic Pictures” (1837). In this case, the painter’s works are praised for being more real than reality itself; his paintings are able to reflect not the appearance of the portrayed but his true personality. In this way, the painter becomes a new god, able to create a new reality to which the old one re-adapts itself.53 Regarding Poe’s tale, it tells the story of a man who, after arriving at a castle among the Apennines, encounters an inexplicably appealing and moving portrait, as well as a book in which the story of the picture is related. Poe presented a brief ekphrasis of the portrait and its frame, but, as we have seen before, he preferred to enhance the visuality of the depiction not by a tedious description but by imprinting onto the reader’s mind an already existing image: the works of Robert Matthew Sully,54 a painter from Virginia who had portrayed Poe himself:55 The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filagreed in Moresque.56 The mystery of the painting lays in its capacity to confuse the viewer, who seems to see a real living person, not a painted one. After reading the old volume with the description of the portrait, the narrator discovers the unnatural explanation of this enigma: the painter, a “passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries,”57 who had been able to transfer his young bride’s soul to the canvas. The maiden gradually lost her life with every single brushstroke and, when her lover finished the portrait, she died. Poe described the painter with the attributes of the melancholic character, those that belong to the creator-artist under the influence of Saturn.58 This tradition refers to the idea of Deus Pictor: God created as a painter, and His creation can be considered an artwork. Now the painter acts as God himself; his work is not mere

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Figure 6.2 Metzengerstein, Hermann Vogel (Paris: A. Quantin, 1884) Source: Image courtesy of the Poe Online: Text and Image Project

mimesis but a new reality. Moreover, Poe was able to subvert a traditional function of art creation. Art had commonly served to immortalize a person, to keep his or her memory alive after death. However, in “The Oval Portrait,” the painting accomplishes its task so literally that it becomes a way to reach death.

Figure 6.3 Metzengerstein, Hans Fronius (München: Rütten and Loening Verlag, 1965) Source: Image courtesy of the Poe Online: Text and Image Project

Figure 6.4 The Oval Portrait, Frederick Simpson Coburn (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902) Source: Image courtesy of the Poe Online: Text and Image Project

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The painter Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871–1960) was able to recognize this value in his illustration for The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902). Here the illustrator did not focus either on the painter – with his back turned on the viewer – or the portrait – half-hidden by the artist – but on the tremulous maiden lurked by the allegory of death (Figure 6.4).

Conclusions Edgar Allan Poe stands up among those writers whose works cannot be completely understood without taking into consideration the debate on the sister arts. His literary career concurred with the Romantic age, an epoch in which nature, originality, imagination, the senses, the emotional responses, the psychological states, the passions, etc., were at the center of the universe. But this was also a period in which being a writer meant being a genius. Artists were able to comprehend the world as no other regular human being could – beyond reality itself and beyond the veil of the soul – and in order to transmit their more complete and complex experiences, they were forced to make use of any different creative manifestation. It did not matter if they were painters, musicians, composers, architects, sculptors, craftsmen or writers, the boundaries among the different artistic expressions had been extinguished and what mattered was the creation of art – art for its own sake. In this sense, Poe showed an exceptional capacity to build up his tales not as mere literary pieces but as complete works of art. His mastery knowledge of art and the aesthetic categories, which proves that he was not a mere connoisseur, allowed him to reinforce the visuality (enargeia) of his texts, to endow them with plastic references that transformed the words in captivating and enthralling mental images. We have seen how Poe disserted art and literature, how he set out his aesthetic ideas in subjects such as landscape or painting or how he made use of well-known art pieces to enrich his texts; however, we have also explored his capacity to create – and re-recreate – his own works of art, especially by the use of ekphrasis. Poe built his “Domain of Arnheim,” his “Elk” and his “Landor’s Cottage,” proving himself as a landscape painter-poet. The same as the painters Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Clarkson Frederick Stanfield or Frederic Edwin Church showed their responses to Nature by drawing the landscapes that surrounded them, Poe “painted” his own surroundings: he described his American native land through sketches painted with words instead of brushes. Nevertheless, those “paintings” were not a mere mimesis. As other Romantic writers (Goethe, Blake or Tieck) or painters (Fuseli, Turner or Delacroix) had done, Poe drank from the philosophical and aesthetic theories of his time on the sublime, the beautiful, the picturesque. In this way, he learned to delve into human passions and to paint them, exploring the visual effects put onto the canvases by painters and translating them into words. And he achieved this in pieces as rich and different as “The Fall of the House of Usher” or “Eleonora.” And in order to accomplish these effects, as we stated

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earlier, Poe needed to be more than a mere art connoisseur; in fact, he was a frequent visitor of galleries and temporary exhibitions, as well as a voracious reader of magazines, journals and books. Poe’s exposure to art was frequent and, thanks to this knowledge and to his craftsmanship, he shone by adding pictorial values to his writings. This is how he became the painter-writer we universally acclaim.

Notes 1. “Prospectus for The Penn,” Saturday Evening Post, June 6, 1840, www.eapoe.org/ works/misc/prosp002.htm. 2. “Prospectus for The Stylus,” Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843, www.eapoe.org/ works/misc/prosp010.htm. 3. This study has been possible thanks to the Research Project “Edgar A. Poe on-line. Texto e imagen” [Edgar A. Poe Online. Text and Image], sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (Ref. HAR2015-64580-P), and thanks to the Research Group “LyA” [Literature and Art], supported by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). As usual, we would like to thank our proofreader, Kathy Radosta, associate director of the Writing Center at UNO, an invaluable member of our research project. 4. Included in Southern Literary Messenger XV (June 1849): 336–338. Edgar Allan Poe, “Marginalia – part 15,” in The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. II: The Brevities, ed. Burton R. Pollin (New York: The Gordian Press, 1985), 385, item 243. 5. (Born 1685, died 1749). 6. Zeuxis had painted a bunch of grapes so successfully that birds flew up to eat them, while Parrhasius deceived Zeuxis himself by painting a curtain that the other painter believed to be real. Pliny, Natural History, ed. Jeffrey Henderson and trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2003 (1952)), IX, book 33, 65–66, 308–310. 7. Edgar Allan Poe, Tales & Sketches, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbot (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), I, 708. All quotations from Poe’s tales or sketches are taken from this same edition. 8. Cicero, De Inventione (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/London: William Heinemann, 1969–1984), book 2, 1–2; and Pliny, Natural History, book 35, 64. 9. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 706. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 707. 12. (Born c. 1600, died 1682). The earliest version of the story also included the names of the French landscape-painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and the British marine painter Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (1793–1867). 13. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 707. 14. Ibid., 710. 15. Aristotle, The Poetics, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (London/Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press, 1995), 1455ª. 16. It is worth noting that, in Julio Cortázar’s Spanish translation, when the narrator expresses his desire to describe the marvels of the landscape-garden (III, 1277), it has been translated as “deseo pintarlas” (I desire to paint them), making even more evident that the following paragraphs make up an ekphrasis. 17. Poe, Tales & Sketches, II, 1277. 18. Ibid., I, 709. 19. (Born 1826, died 1900).

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20. David C. Huntington, The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era (New York: George Braziller, 1966), 29. In regard to the admiration Poe felt for Frederic Edwin Church, see also Barbara Cantalupo, Poe and the Visual Arts (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2014), 46–47, 81–82 and 91. 21. Poe, Tales & Sketches, II, 1266. 22. Quotations from Poe’s letters are taken from the Ostrom, Pollin and Savoye edition of 2008. Edgar Allan Poe, The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John Ward Ostrom, Burton R. Pollin, and Jeffrey Savoye (New York: The Gordian Press, 2008), II, 706–714. The precise words appear on page 712. 23. Poe, Tales & Sketches, II, 1266. 24. Ibid., 865. 25. Ibid., 1335. 26. Ibid., 944–945. 27. Ibid., I, 640. 28. The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems (London, Edinburgh, and New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1858), 9, 11, 26 and 29. Farrin Chwalkowski, Symbols in Arts, Religion and Culture: The Soul of Nature (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). 29. (Born 1615, died 1673). 30. Poe, Tales & Sketches, II, 865. 31. Ibid., 1332. 32. For deeper insight into this, see Cantalupo, Poe and the Visual Arts, especially Chapter 1, “Poe’s exposure to art exhibited in Philadelphia and Manhattan, 1838– 1845,” 19–48. 33. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 156. 34. Herodian of Antioch, History of the Roman Empire, trans. Edward C. Echols (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), I, 7, 5. 35. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 153. 36. The sculpture, a later Roman copy after an original Greek (early third century BCE), is kept at the Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy). 37. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 154. 38. Ibid., 164. 39. (Born 1691, died 1765). 40. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 157. 41. Ibid., 160. 42. This reference to Guido’s Pietà may hide a little mystery. Mabbott identified it with the Pietà dei Mendicanti (1613–16, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna) (Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 168, note 18); however, taking into consideration Poe’s habit of using more complex art allusions, we must think that it refers to another version of the Pietà by Guido lost and only known thanks to early copies (such as the one by an unknown painter preserved at the York Art Gallery) and engravings. In this sense, the fact that the male character of “The Assignation” possesses this lost canvas acquires a more significant relevance. 43. Winckelmann was a German archeologist and art historian (born 1717, died 1768). Another copy of this Antinous-Hermes is kept in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. Nathaniel Hawthorne mentions this last copy in The Marble Faun (1860). 44. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 157. 45. See, for instance, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grotesque#h2. 46. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 405. 47. Ibid. 48. Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (London/Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press, 1995), XV. 49. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 405. Mabbott indicated that, for the creation of this scene, Poe may have been inspired by a view of the West Lawn Arcade at the University of Virginia (Mabbot, in Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 418).

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50. Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 26. 51. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 22. 52. Vogel designed a first version for this illustration (the baron observing the horse out of the tapestry) that was finally substituted. This and other original drawings, which were collected by Quantin in a volume, are kept at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore: Histoires extraordinaires, nouvelles histoires extraordinaires: dessins originaux de Vierge, Wogel, Ferat, Meyer, épreuves d’artiste de Nargeot, Chifflart, Abot, Herpin et Meaulle [PS2618 .H58 B38 1887F]. See Christian Drost, “Illuminating Poe. The Reflection of Edgar Allan Poe’s Pictorialism in the Illustrations for the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” (PhD diss., Universität Hamburg, 2006). See Fernando González and Margarita Rigal, The Portrayal of the Grotesque in Stoddard’s and Quantin’s Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884). An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Relations Between the Visual and the Verbal (New York and Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2017), 164–165. 53. Hawthorne made use again of this topic in The House of the Seven Gables (1851); here, Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait remains in the house as a symbol of its dark past and the weight of the curse upon the spirit of its inhabitants. 54. (Born 1803, died 1855). For more information regarding the relationship between Poe and Sully, see Cantalupo, Poe and the Visual Arts, 6, 20 and 66–68. 55. Sully painted a portrait of Poe and, at least, two copies after it; all three are missing. Mark Sherman, “Mystery Picture Reveals Poe’s Artistic Side,” The Poe Museum. Blog Test, December 16, 2015, www.poemuseum.org/blog-test/mysterypicture-reveals-poes-artistic-side. 56. Poe, Tales & Sketches, I, 664. 57. Ibid., 665. 58. See Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1964).

Bibliography Aristotle. The Poetics. Translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe. London: William Heinemann/ Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Cantalupo, Barbara. Poe and the Visual Arts. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2014. Chwalkowski, Farrin. Symbols in Arts, Religion and Culture: The Soul of Nature. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Cicero. Cicero: In Twenty-Eight Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/ London: William Heinemann, 1969–1984. González-Moreno, Beatriz. “Poe y los sueños de inmortalidad de un poeta-jardinero.” In Revisión del canon literario norteamericano: 1607?-1890, edited by Lucía Mora and Margarita Rigal-Aragón, 165–173. Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la UCLM, 2000. González-Moreno, Fernando, and Margarita Rigal-Aragón. The Portrayal of the Grotesque in Stoddard’s and Quantin’s Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884): An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Relations Between the Visual and the Verbal. New York and Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2017. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Prophetic Pictures.” In Twice Told Tales, 192–210. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1898. Herodian of Antioch. History of the Roman Empire. Translated by Edward C. Echols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961.

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The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems. London, Edinburgh and New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1858. Longinus. On the Sublime. Translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe. London: William Heinemann/ Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Mabbott, Thomas Ollive. “Notes to ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.” In The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. I: Tales and Sketches, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, 417–422. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Monegal, Antonio, coord. Literatura y pintura. Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2000. Pliny. Natural History (10 vols.). Edited by Jeffrey Henderson and translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2003 (1952). Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902. ———. Selected Tales of Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1909. ———. Das verräterische Herz. 13 Erzählungen. München: Rütten & Loening Verlag, 1965. ———. Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe – Vol. II. The Brevities: pinakidia, Marginalia, Fifty Suggestions and Other Works. Edited by Burton R. Pollin. New York: the Gordian Press, 1985. ———. Tales & Sketches (2 vols.). Edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbot. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ———. The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe (2 vols.). Edited by John Ward Ostrom, Burton R. Pollin, and Jeffrey Savoye. New York: The Gordian Press, 2008. Rainwater, Catherine. “Poe’s Landscape Tales and the ‘Picturesque’ Tradition.” Southern Literary Journal 16 (1984): 30–43. Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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The (Literary) Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction1 José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas

Introduction: The South and the Humor Since the earliest examples of occupation of what today is considered the South of the United States, the literature of the region has been strongly influenced by humor and satire, begetting a tradition that has lasted to the present day. Indeed, some aspects already explored in these initial examples have also appeared in contemporary works. A group of these authors expands this dilated influence back to colonial times, when annalists (and writers), such as William Byrd II, offered humorous scenes in their productions. According to Debra Beilke (2002), Byrd’s Dividing Line (1728) shows the probable first example of southern humor. In relation to this, many authors in the nineteenth century intermingled the concept of the comic and the macabre, creating outstanding examples of the grotesque.2 One of the movements that had a wide influence on later authors, Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) among them, was “southwestern humor.” Typically, and according to John Grammer (2004), “the characteristic form of this tradition is the humorous sketch, a form reflecting both the modest ambitions of most Southwestern humor and its modest origins, in the magazine or newspaper account.”3 O’Connor was an honest inheritor of this movement, acquiring some of the most important characteristics these authors showed at the time. For example, the humor they created was a sui generis humor, not looking for the easy laugh but most likely for comic satire. According to Kathleen Feeley (1987), the prose O’Connor wrote followed the same purpose: “This laugh is not one of disdain or despondency or superiority, but rather one of deep understanding.”4 In the twentieth century, this symbiosis between the macabre and the comic continued to the level of being one of the most remarkable features of the Southern Gothic. This has moved authors like Thomas Inge (2002) or Rachel Hawley (2011) to discuss the imbrications of the two categories. Undoubtedly, O’Connor completely fulfilled both, as Inge pointed out, “In the twentiethcentury, the comic muse has found expression even amidst the epic tragedies and gothic tales of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty.”5 On the other hand, Rachel Hawley, while discussing the influence of dark humor in Southern Gothic literature, assessed that this

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“humorous sub-genre” has been central to the literature of the region. According to her, dark humor not only reflects one reaction to life but also life itself: By placing “normalcy” into question, dark humor may be an even more powerful type of literature than others because it forces its audience to question what they believe and whether their beliefs are valid in the face of this new other that is so unrecognizable. And yet, one of the greatest powers of dark humor is that there is a morsel of recognizability inherent in it. For one thing, the sources that dark humor criticizes (violence, death, racism, etc.) are almost universally subjects that most people can recognize and identify with. We have all experienced violence, fear death, and have racist thoughts. Moreover, we all know someone who is violent, someone who has died, and have encountered racism in one form or another. While we see the laughter generated at those things as inappropriate, we still recognize the subjects themselves and can see our own faces in them.6

Flannery O’Connor’s Engravings: A First Contact With Caricature From 1942 to 1945, Mary Flannery O’Connor was a student at the Georgia State College for Women, where she obtained her BA in sociology. During those years, as her literary career had not yet surfaced, she developed a different artistic itinerary: a brief yet intense incursion into the world of graphic arts as a cartoonist. Following Kathleen Feeley, it is quite easy to relate those early illustrations with her stories and novels: “O’Connor’s literary style is intrinsically related to her early career as a cartoonist.”7 Years before, during her time at the Peabody High School of Milledgeville, she already had contact with cartoons, drawings and periodical publications, and her first scenes appeared in The Peabody Palladium. O’Connor’s illustrations can be classified within four different groups: college life, the Waves and World War II, social satire and independent caricatures. Each of these groups presents characteristics that O’Connor would later include and further develop in her novels and short stories, such as grotesque or deformed characters, or laughable yet terrible situations. On the other hand, many of her engravings included a glimpse of dark humor, linking this early production with her later career. One of the most outstanding examples of this is the cartoon entitled “Targets Are Where You Find ’Em!” (Figure 7.1). This scene, produced during the military occupation of her college during World War II, shows the discontent of “regular” students with the situation and the privileges the Navy had. The black humor is displayed by the suggestion that one student could shoot them with an arrow while practicing archery. Paradoxically, these scenes concerning her personal feelings towards the members of the Navy are almost the only approach O’Connor showed in relation to World War II. Later, when she became a professional writer, this hugely influential topic only appeared tangentially in her writings. Those intermingled

Figure 7.1 “Targets Are Where You Find ’Em!” The Colonnade (March 27, 1943) Source: Reproduced with permission from Harold Matson Co., Inc.

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bodies that she depicted in scenes such as “‘Now Why Waste All Your Energy Getting Physically Fit? You’ll Never Look Like a WAVE Anyhow’” (Figure 7.2) found a reflection in the story of the Polish refugees when O’Connor wrote that magnificent paragraph describing a gas chamber in “The Displaced Person” (1955): Mrs. Shortley recalled a newsreel she had seen once of a small room piled high with bodies of dead naked corpses all in a heap, their arms and legs tangled together, a head thrust in here, a head there, a foot, a knee, a part that should have been covered up sticking out, a hand raised clutching nothing.8 Among the other mentioned groups of engravings O’Connor carved, it is also possible to find traces of what her later literary trajectory would become (for instance, failed intellectuals). Among the “pictorial” references she made to college life in her engravings and drawings, it is possible to see a certain disdain toward college life, especially regarding homework and social engagement, as seen in scenes like “Term Papers Add Quite a Lot to These Thanksgiving Holidays” or “‘Coming Back Affects Some People Worse Than Others.’” Flannery O’Connor was famous for not having been strongly involved in the social issues that affected her time and for showing a different and inner reality in her texts. However, she was not totally apart from the society she lived in, especially the community closer to her. A Prayer Journal (2013) is an outstanding example of this latter category, as she showed how her social relations in Iowa City were: Dear God, In a way I got a good punishment for my lack of charity to Mr. Rothburg last year. He came back at me today like a tornado which while it didn’t hurt me too much yet ruined my show. All this is about charity.9 As this quote proves, these relations were not always perfect or naïve. Nevertheless, before satirizing her classmates at the University of Iowa, she had already done something similar with her classmates at the Georgia State College for Women (Figure 7.3). This Genevieve O’Connor depicted as a college girl mad for boys could have been the inspiration for the seducer Sabbath Lily Hawks of Wise Blood (1952), and the dentist who cares more about his own comfort than that of his patients could be an early Manley Pointer. O’Connor’s cartoons and drawings also show some information concerning her family, as Kathleen Feeley assessed: When I was visiting her home, I saw one [cartoon] with the title, “Ladies and Gents, Meet the Three Mister Noseys.” Under the appropriate faces were the titles, “Mr. Long Nose; Mr. Sharp Nose; Mr. Snut Nose.” I also found a small booklet with several typed pages entitled, “My Relitives.” In

Figure 7.2 “‘Now Why Waste All Your Energy Getting Physically Fit? You’ll Never Look Like a WAVE Anyhow’” The Colonnade (February 6, 1943) Source: Reproduced with permission from Harold Matson Co., Inc.

Figure 7.3 “‘Isn’t It Fortunate That Genevieve Has Completely Escaped That Boy-Crazy Stage?’” The Colonnade (May 2, 1945) Source: Reproduced with permission from Harold Matson Co., Inc.

Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor 119 it were short satiric descriptions of uncles, cousins, etc. The best example of her youth cartooning I found in a folder in her library. A cartoon showed mother, father, and child walking down a street. Out of the mother’s mouth came a balloon saying, “Hold your head up, Mary Flannery, and you are just as bad, Ed.” Out of the child’s mouth came the words, “I was readin where someone died of holding up their head.” The cartoon had “age 9” written at the bottom of it.10 The mother depicted here is not far from the one who appears in “Good Country People,” whose only solace is the information a neighbor brings about the pregnancy of her daughter. On the other hand, the 9-year-old child who could conceive the scene Feeley describes is not far either from those children who are the main characters of “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” (1955), especially the one who dreams of martyrdom: She could stand to be shot but not to be burned in oil. She didn’t know if she could stand to be torn to pieces by lions or not. She began to prepare her martyrdom, seeing herself in a pair of tights in a great arena, lit by the early Christians hanging in cages of fire, making a gold dusty light that fell on her and the lions.11

(Literary) Caricatures in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Narrative At the University of Iowa, O’Connor seems to put cartooning behind her. Actually she turned her talent for pictorial representation into verbal art. One watches with delight her increasing ability to draw pictures with words. A study of her stories in the order of their composition shows how adroit she became in the verbal creation of people and situations which the reader can “see” as clearly as her cartoons.12

These words by Kathleen Feeley are an unbeatable transition to go from Flannery O’Connor’s cartoons to her short stories.13 However, before discussing them and their caricaturesque (yet sometimes terrible) implications, we need to understand O’Connor’s perception of some of the concepts that have already been introduced in previous paragraphs. Her opinions were especially relevant when applied to the grotesque since an entire essay (“Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction”) in Mystery and Manners is dedicated to this characteristic of southern literature: “Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic”;14 later on, she explained how this came to be: Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize

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José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. . . . In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.15

This paragraph supports the development of some of her tales by including freaks, such as the Misfit, Tom Shiftlet, Joy/Hulga, the freak of “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” Rufus Johnson, etc.16 The next section of this chapter will analyze how this caricature-like technique was explored by Flannery O’Connor in some of her most remarkable stories. One of the stories that deserves to be included is “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” (1955). The story of Lucynell Crater and Tom Shiftlet (along with “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” discussed next) allowed O’Connor to explore the theme of the freak. However, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” does not present a freak stricto sensu since the young Lucynell is never presented as one. On the other hand, a couple of scenes do introduce the meaning of caricature that has been explained in the previous paragraphs. One of the first moments in which this sense is displayed is the opening of the story, when both mother and daughter see Shiftlet for the first time: The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand. The daughter could not see far in front of her and continued to play with her fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of. His left coat sleeve was folded up to show there was only half an arm in it and his gaunt figure listed slightly to the side as if the breeze were pushing him. He had on a black town suit and a brown felt hat that was turned up in the front and down in the back and he carried a tin tool box by a handle.17 Even if this scene seems not to be loaded with grotesque or caricaturesque elements, it is the gateway for the development of the rest of the tale. The hiring of the wanderer and the almost sale of the daughter would not have taken place if it had not been for the confidence of the mother (and her perversity, for she seems to acknowledge what is going to happen). After this scene, the limelight of the story falls on Shiftlet himself. Once he has first contacted the family at the farm, one of the most remarkable scenes in all of O’Connor’s production takes place when Shiftlet pronounces his (in-) famous speech on identity:

Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor 121 I can tell you my name is Tom T. Shiftlet and I come from Tarwater, Tennessee, but you never have seen me before: how you know I ain’t lying? How you know my name ain’t Aaron Sparks, lady, and I come from Sigleberry, Georgia, or how you know it’s not George Speeds and I come from Lucy, Alabama, or how you know I ain’t Thomson Bright from Toolafalls, Mississippi?18 Of course, neither Lucynell’s mother nor the reader can answer those questions. By bringing doubt to the scene, he is making a freak out of himself, not disclosing who he really is. In addition, the names he proposes as alternatives to his own one can be easily seen as previous victims or people who were so unlucky as to find Tom Shiftlet on their way. However, the most freakish character in the story is, beyond any doubt, Lucynell. The descriptions offered by O’Connor outline her as a caricature, as a grotesque component of the story and of life in general. Deaf, mute and mentally retarded, she is used as a tool by her mother, first to get some renovations at the house completed and then to get rid of her. After a life taking care of her daughter, the mother seems to have had enough and has decided to let her go using the first opportunity, as the next lines prove: He had . . . taught Lucynell, who was completely deaf and had never said a word in her life, to say the word “bird.” The big rosty-faced girl followed him everywhere, saying “Burrttddt dbirrrttdt,” and clapping her hands. The old woman watched from a distance, secretly pleased. She was ravenous for a son-in-law.19 This will provoke the tragic outcome for the girl when she is left abandoned and with no possibility of returning to her home. The next story to be discussed is the already mentioned “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” (1955). As known, this story is the only one ever written by Flannery O’Connor that depicts a freak show. In this case, the special characteristic of the freak included in the story is that he is a hermaphrodite, which surprises the rest of the characters.20 This story is also one of the few examples in which O’Connor left children in charge of the action and the only story with clear Catholic implications. Obviously, the first caricature-related scene is that of the freak in which the children, disobeying their elders’ orders, go to the show and enter the tent where the freak is exhibited. His reaction leaves the spectators astonished: The tent where it was had been divided into two parts by a black curtain, one side for men and one for women. The freak went from one side to the other, talking first to the men and then to the women, but everyone could hear. The stage ran all the way across the front. The girls heard the freak say to the men, “I’m going to show you this and if you laugh, God may strike you the same way.” The freak had a country voice, slow and nasal

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José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas and neither high nor low, just flat. “God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing His way. I’m showing you because I got to make best of it. I don’t dispute hit.” Then there was a long silence on the other side of the tent and finally the freak left the men and came over onto the women’s side and said the same thing.21

This time, unlike in the previous example, nothing is suggested, and everything is clear. O’Connor is depicting the caricature and the grotesque to their most relevant extent. However, this is not the end of the passage. When the children return from the show, they tell their cousin (who had stayed in bed) about the “deformity” of the freak. However, as the young girl’s naive mind cannot conceive a being that is both male and female, she creates a new grotesque caricature to find an explanation: “You mean it had two heads?” she said. “No,” Susan said, “it was a man and a woman both. It pulled up its dress and showed us. It had on a blue dress.” The child wanted to ask how it could be a man and woman both without two heads but she did not.22 Finally, this story also provides a good example of how bizarre gory scenes can be transformed, through the geniality of O’Connor, in caricatures, moving the reader to laugh. As seen earlier, the 9-year-old girl who stays at home (a devout Catholic like O’Connor) is reflecting on her religion and about martyrdom, providing an outstanding stream of consciousness. Beside the fact that the scenes the young girl is conceiving in her mind are certainly terrible, knowing that they are being created by a child provokes laughter and not reflection on the inner meaning they can embrace. The last story discussed here is “Good Country People,” focusing on the characters of Joy/Hulga and Manley Pointer. This story has been contemplated from many different points of view, from the relationship between the intellectual and her mother to how the traveling Bible salesman symbolically rapes Joy/Hulga in the barn. However, the tale also presents some caricaturesque characteristics that are worth mentioning. The first of them is, paradoxically, neither the lame intellectual nor the “innocent” salesman. Soon after the story opens, the narrator gives us a glimpse of Joy/Hulga’s mother’s most inner desires when she speaks with Mrs. Freeman about the daughters of the latter: By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weather report and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese or Carramae, Joy called them Glycenin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her

Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor 123 stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report.23 This scene shows caricaturesque implications attending to different factors. First of all, the description O’Connor provides of Glynese and Carramae is absolutely distorted and grotesque, especially when dealing with the pregnancy of Carramae. On the other hand, Joy/Hulga herself, as a character, contributes to the highlight of this sense of caricature when she parodies their names to make fun of them. Then, through the grotesque and the caricature, the story opens toward a tragic ending. Any of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters would be an ideal daughter for Mrs. Hopewell too. However, Joy/Hulga has not accomplished any of her expectations so far. Thus when the narrator stops focusing on the girl and begins focusing on her mother, showing what she thinks, a new caricature arises, this time with a glimpse of pity and hate: It was hard for Mrs. Hopewell to realize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more than twenty years she had had only one leg. She thought of her still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. Her name was really Joy but as soon as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally changed. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had hit upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it. Her legal name was Hulga.24 Through these lines, we witness a reverse process from the one described previously: a new grotesque caricature is presented through the eyes of another character without providing objective information about her. Furthermore, this quotation also shows that Mrs. Hopewell really sees her daughter as a freak, as the reference to the lost leg proves. In addition, this paragraph should be completed with the following one, in which Mrs. Hopewell concludes the caricature made out of her daughter: The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daughter is a schoolteacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.25 The humiliation continues through the girl’s highest achievement: the completion of a PhD. The misunderstanding and undervaluing of Joy/Hulga’s

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accomplishments also contributes to the creation of the ultimate caricature of her – a caricature that cannot be helped by anyone. That sense of helplessness will lead the young intellectual to the trap concocted by Manley Pointer. He will be the last caricature to be presented in “Good Country People” and the one the title of the story is directly referencing. The variation of this character through the tale is especially interesting because he completely fulfills the aforementioned category of the “terrible caricature” that often populates O’Connor’s fiction. In addition, he will provoke the last scene, where the caricaturesque directly joins with the horrific to create a scenario comic yet terrible. Beginning with the character himself, only a few details are known about him. The truth will be disclosed during the last scene, when his valise is opened, and its content sees the light of day: He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whisky, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with printing on it. He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card.26 These lines also contribute to emphasize the sense of religious caricature that is present in all of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. When the narrator describes the contents of Manley Pointer’s valise, the sentence used is “like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess.”27 Both the narrator and Manley Pointer make fun of the religion, comparing the profane scene of the barn with the adoration of Christianity. The image of the virgin is explicitly caricatured in this scene too. Finally, the encounter of Joy/Hulga with Manly Pointer displays the last caricature of this story. As the tale is reaching its outcome, the tragedy is increasing and, at the end, the girl is left without her artificial leg and with no hope of it being found any time soon. This last scene is also interesting because it revisits the topic of the freak and because it shows a very original inversion of how O’Connor had created the caricatures to this point. The ending of “Good Country People” shows Manly Pointer removing his mask and offering his true face: When all of him had passed but his head, he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had any admiration in it. “I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said. “One time I got a woman’s glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think you’ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long.

Caricatures of Flannery O’Connor 125 And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then the toast-colored had disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting on the straw in a dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face toward the opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake.28 The last caricature is offered as Manley Pointer leaves the scene. Joy/Hulga is not as smart as the rest of the story has attempted to prove, so she has been transformed into a laughable object through a terrible action.

Conclusions As seen in the previous pages, Flannery O’Connor showed an unusual mastery for the development of caricatures, and this artistic manifestation covered her entire artistic career, from her beginnings as a cartoonist to her success as a narrator of short fiction. The cartoons and drawings she conceived when she was a student at the Georgia State College for Women displayed a technique that would be later transferred to her texts. What O’Connor had to do when she transitioned to her literary career was simply to develop new plots and storylines because she already had under control the process of creating vivid images and caricaturesque descriptions of characters and scenes. Grotesque, caricature and Southern Gothic are terms that usually go hand in hand, and stories like “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” or “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” for instance, show the depth of this narrow linkage. Humor and horror have always been two joint categories within southern belles lettres, and O’Connor knew how to magisterially take advantage of both. The previous paragraphs show to what extent Flannery O’Connor used her knowledge of caricature and how she created caricaturesque scenes in some of her most remarkable examples of short fiction. The selected scenes of “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “Good Country People” could not have been possible without the aid and experience provided by the cartoons dealt with in the precedent sections. As said, Flannery O’Connor attempted, with great success, to be a complete and exemplary artist, gathering both word and image and finally melding them into stories in which descriptions are examples of the two kinds.

Notes 1. This study has been partially possible thanks to the post-doctoral scholarship provided by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. I would also like to thank Margarita Rigal-Aragón, PhD, for her suggestions on the first draft of this chapter and Fernando González-Moreno, PhD, for introducing me to the world of illustrated books and engravings. 2. This last concept and its relation to Edgar Allan Poe’s works and caricature has been recently discussed by Margarita Rigal-Aragón and Fernando González-Moreno

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3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas (2017): “Gradually, and moreover along the 18th century thanks to the carnivalesque tradition, the grotesque reached a wider meaning, becoming a space of free creation that inspired not only whimsical inventions, but satirical visions of reality, too. The grotesque, already equate with caricature, could be used as a social critic or parody disguised as fantastic folly. Poe used the ‘grotesque’ in several of his tales with this sense, understanding the term as a synonym for parody or satire; that is, hiding an absurdity behind the appearance of a well-conceived reality in order to criticize it or to cause a humorous result” (González-Moreno and Rigal-Aragón, The Portrayal of the Grotesque in Stoddard’s and Quantin’s Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884): An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Relations Between the Visual and the Verbal [New York and Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2017], 143–144). John M. Grammer, “Southwestern Humor,” in A Companion to the Literature and the Culture of the American South, eds. Richard Gray and Owen Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 370. Kathleen Feeley, “‘Mine Is a Comic Art . . .’ Flannery O’Connor,” in Realist of Distances: Flannery O’Connor Revisited, eds. Karl-Heinz Westarp and Jan Nordby Gretlund (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1987), 66. Thomas M. Inge, “Humor, 1900 to Present,” in The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs, eds. Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 356. For more information about Flannery O’Connor and the gothic, see, for instance, the essays by Ollye Tien Snow (1965), Li Jing (2006), Chad Rohman (2014) or the recent doctoral dissertation by José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas, where the influence of the “classical” gothic is highlighted and analyzed down to the last detail. Rachel S. Hawley, Vile Humor: Giving Voice to the Voiceless Through Dark Comedy in Southern Gothic Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Dissertation Publishing, 2011), 20–21. Feeley, “‘Mine Is a Comic Art,’” 67. CS, 196. Abbreviations used for Flannery O’Connor’s works: CS: The Complete Stories MM: Mystery and Manners. Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 19. Feeley, “‘Mine Is a Comic Art,’” 67. CS, 243. Feeley, “‘Mine Is a Comic Art,’” 68. However, as the limits of this chapter do not allow it, I will just focus on a selection of stories by Flannery O’Connor that illustrate these characteristics. MM, 40. An explanation to this was offered by Marita Nadal in 2008: “In fact, part of her aberrance consists in her two-fold divergence from both Southern and non-Southern writing. No doubt O’Connor’s fiction could be taken as a peculiar example of what Gray calls ‘Southern self-fashioning,’ which in her case implies both the rejection or distortion of traditional clichés and the foregrounding of elements usually discarded” (182). MM, 44–45. According to Anthony Di Renzo (1993), some of these freaks, intermingled with the terribleness O’Connor gave to her stories, created a new kind of gargoyle: “Her ‘gargoyles’ are the deranged Fundamentalists who adorn the pages of her fiction” (4). CS, 145. Ibid., 147–148. Ibid., 150. For more information about the grotesque implications of the freak’s body, see Anthony Di Renzo’s chapter “This Is My Body: The Word, the Flesh, and the

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Grotesque,” included in his book American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque, 60–96. CS, 245. Ibid. Ibid., 272. Ibid., 174; emphasis in the original. Ibid., 276. Ibid., 289–290. Ibid., 289. Ibid., 290–291.

Bibliography Beilke, Debra. “Humor, Beginnings to 1900.” In The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs, edited by Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan, 349–355. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Correoso Rodenas, José Manuel. “La literatura gótica llega al Nuevo Sur: influencias y reformulación del gótico en la obra de Flannery O’Connor/ Gothic Literature Reaches the New South: Influence and Retelling of the Gothic in the Works of Flannery O’Connor.” PhD diss., Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), 2017. Crow, Charles L., ed. A Companion to American Gothic. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Di Renzo, Anthony. American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. “Do you reverse?,” British Pathé YouTube Channel. Accessed January 21, 2018. www. youtube.com/watch?v=dtnV-iD2QlI. Feeley, Kathleen. “‘Mine is a Comic Art . . .’ Flannery O’Connor.” In Realist of Distances: Flannery O’Connor Revisited, edited by Karl-Heinz Westarp and Jan Nordby Gretlund, 66–72. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1987. “Flannery O’Connor to Receive the Alumnae Achievement Award Today.” The Colonnade, May 10, 1957. Flora, Joseph M. and Lucinda H. MacKethan, eds. The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. González-Moreno, Fernando, and Margarita Rigal-Aragón. The Portrayals of the Grotesque in Stoddard’s and Quantin’s Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe (1884): An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Relations Between the Visual and the Verbal. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2017. Grammer, John M. “Southwestern Humor.” In A Companion to the Literature and the Culture of the American South, edited by Richard Gray and Owen Robinson, 370– 387. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Gray, Richard, and Owen Robinson, eds. A Companion to the Literature and the Culture of the American South. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Hawley, Rachel S. Vile Humor: Giving Voice to the Voiceless Through Dark Comedy in Southern Gothic Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Dissertation Publishing, 2011. Inge, Thomas M. “Humor, 1900 to Present.” In The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs, edited by Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan, 356–361. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

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Jing, Li. “Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic Art.” Canadian Social Science 2, no. 2 (2006): 53–56. Jones, Timothy. The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015. Nadal, Marita. “Aberrations, Instabilities and Mythoclasm in the Tales of Flannery O’Connor.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, no. 57 (November 2008): 181–193. O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970. ———. The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. ———. The Cartoons. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012. ———. A Prayer Journal. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. “O’Connor’s Exhibition on Display in Library.” The Colonnade, May 10, 1957. Rigal Aragón, Margarita. “Lo gótico y lo cómico.” In Los legados de Poe, edited by Margarita Rigal, 17–35. Madrid: Síntesis, 2011. ———, ed. Los legados de Poe. Madrid: Síntesis, 2011. Rohman, Chad. “Awful Mystery: Flannery O’Connor as Gothic Artist.” In A Companion to American Gothic, edited by Charles L. Crow, 279–289. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Snow, Ollye Tine. “The Functional Gothic of Flannery O’Connor.” Southwest Review, no. 3 (1965): 286–299. Westarp, Karl-Heinz, and Jan Nordby Gretlund, eds. Realist of Distances: Flannery O’Connor Revisited. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1987.

8

Word Painter Visual Tropes of Enlightenment in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn Barbara K. Robins

Fifty years after the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), the story of a struggling World War II veteran from Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, continues to impress readers with its complex beauty and multi-cultural perspectives. Reflecting on the novel’s legacy, Chadwick Allen noted its “striking ambiguities” as having produced a “steady stream of response by two generations of readers and critics.”1 In particular, Matthias Schubnell, Susan Scarberry-Garcia, and Charles Woodard established that Momaday’s creative process was inspired by numerous traditional Pueblo, Diné (Navajo), and Kiowa stories; the Bible; Christian folk narratives; literary works; and Momaday’s interest in painting. Born in 1934 to Natachee Scott and Alfred (Al) Momaday, N. Scott Momaday credits his parents for influencing his artistic expression at a young age. At age 12, his parents took teaching positions at the Jemez Pueblo Day School where Al taught art from 1947–1967. Friends included Diné artist Quincy Tahoma, and Momaday recalled, “Some of my happiest memories are of painters coming to the house at Jemez.”2 The Cultural Milieu of the later 1940s and preceding publication of House offers other potential influences on Momaday’s visual style. Internationally, art movements such as Surrealism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism increasingly emphasized urban and industrial subjects and presented compelling points of comparison to the Los Angeles section of House. Alternatively, non-native artists seeking a primitive, natural state found inspiration in the same region where Momaday came of age. One such painter, Marsden Hartley, wrote of being “bewitched” by New Mexico. “It is the only place in America where true color exists. It is not a country of light on things – it is a country of things in light.”3 Momaday also described the vast landscapes of northern New Mexico in beautiful passages, emphasizing transcendent patterns of light and dark. Similarly, paintings created by members of the Taos Society of Artists, 1915–1930s, could easily serve as illustrations for House with luminous scenes of the same region. Widely regarded as a Modernist novel, scholars have discussed at length the presence of the Navajo Night Chant and the importance of the twin stories that form the novel’s narrative backbone with the brothers Vidal and Abel

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as the novel’s Stricken Twins.4 The story of protagonist Abel is presented in five parts – “Prologue,” “The Longhair,” “The Priest of the Sun,” “The Night Chanter,” and “The Dawn Runner” – in a circular narrative beginning at Jemez Pueblo; relocating to Los Angeles, California; and concluding back at Jemez. As the first novel of an accomplished poet, most scholarship favors the literary elements and only superficially mentions Momaday’s use of visuals or sounds.5 Therefore, it is noteworthy that in an interview with Woodard, Momaday readily compared poetry, which requires “precision, condensation, concentration,” to painting. “Of all the things one might paint or see, the painter’s job is to choose the essential part which reflects the whole.”6 Using the trope of sight – eyes, light/dark, color, and reflective materials – visual elements serve to inform readers of each character’s essence. Ultimately, each character’s comprehension of his or her world is shaped/colored by how and what the characters choose to see and determines the stories the characters choose to tell. Like the proverbial “rose-colored glasses” said to be worn by someone who sees an idealized, optimistic world, each character exhibits preferences in seeing and interpreting the world. In recognizing the visual patterns, the composition of House engages readers to experience character insights that, for the purpose of this chapter, can be called “enlightenment.” In addition, if we consider the term “composition” as having specific meaning for other creative processes resulting in story – namely, painting and music – we have three distinct mediums with challenges and opportunities for expressing the human experience. These mediums have overlapping influence in the novel, as will be explained in the sacred text formula of sight/sound/movement. To perceive light and color, we rely on our eyes – organs which focus light through a lens onto a retina where the image can be conveyed via the optic nerve and interpreted by the brain. Eyes as natural objects change due to environmental factors, and some pertinent examples from House include Fr. Olguin’s eye “clouded over with a blue, transparent film,” the eyes of a stunned rabbit shone “like porcelain,” and those of the dying Fragua “curdled and were impervious to the rain.” There is a playful mention of Angela coming to the village of Los Ojos, Spanish for “the eyes” and philosophical commentary on the quality of sight as birds have “perfect vision” but “latecoming things (the animals of colonization) . . . have an alien and inferior aspect, a poverty of vision and instinct.”7 Aside from the act of physically seeing, the choice to selectively see, or “watch,” reveals character agency. Understanding another’s perspective requires significant effort – a fact Momaday explored extensively in House by presenting multi-cultural forms of “knowing.”8 None of us sees perfectly, and thus we understand imperfectly. Like the characters, we are distracted, uninterested, or otherwise “blinded” by self-involved personality traits.9 Despite a desire for harmony in human interactions, Momaday’s characters frequently fail to see “insightfully,” resulting in misunderstandings and violence.10 Despite these propensities, several characters are avid “watchers.” Father Olguin, upon first seeing Angela, “followed her with his good eye . . . trying to imagine who

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she was,”11 and Angela “smiled and looked down from an upstairs window as (Abel) chopped the wood.” While seemingly neutral events in that one person gains a certain degree of information in watching, the degree of insightfulness is directly related to the intensity of light that illuminates the moment. In Platonic vision metaphors, light is the source of knowledge, whereas darkness equates to ignorance or delusion. When Angela sees Abel in daylight, she insightfully realizes a pain of unknown source: She watched, full of wonder, taking his motion apart. . . . He leaned into the swing and drove; the blade flashed and struck, and the wood gaped open. Angela caught her breath and said, “I see.” Now, now that she could see, she was aware of some useless agony that was spent upon the wood, some hurt she could not have imagined until now.12 For the short time he cuts her wood, she wonders at her ability to know him, but this quickly diminishes with the setting sun. In fact, with the growing exterior darkness, her internal darkness of self-hate effaces her insights, and misunderstanding leads to offense. “There he stood, dumb and docile at her pleasure, not knowing, she supposed, how even to take his leave. In the dark, she could no longer see him. She heard him walk away.”13 Well-known for his narrative style, which borrows easily from Eurowestern, as well as Indigenous beliefs, Momaday included flames as symbolic images of Christian ecstasy. In the first of two examples presented here, Angela collects some wood after her troubled encounter with Abel: She took the wood inside and laid it on a fireplace grate. It caught fire so slowly that she did not see it happen, though she looked hard for it. Then she watched the yellow-white flames curl around the wood, seeming never to lay hold of the hard, vital core.14 Francisco in a similar moment: The old man Francisco had already knelt at the small glass panel which opened upon the chapel altar. . . . He loved the candles; loved to see how the flame came upon the wicks, how slow it was to take hold and flare up.15 In such moments, characters exhibit unarticulated desires for something beyond themselves. They do express desires for things or happiness, but Father Nicolás may be the exception, expressing his desire to be one with his god. Nicolás writes, “Didst Thou see? Today when Thou were broken on my tongue didst Thou see me shake? I have never loved Thee more & I shall never love Thee less again.”16 Nicolás provides an interesting subject for another of Momaday’s frequent topics: the power of the imagination. Momaday wrote in his essay “A Divine

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Blindness,” the “imagination is a kind of divine blindness in which we see not with our eyes but with our minds and souls, in which we dream our world and our being in it.”17 For Nicolás, the vision of the divine is shaped by a limited imagination. Some days He comes to me in a sourceless light that rises on His image at my bed & then I am caught of it & shine also as with a lightning on me. . . . He does bid me speak all my love but I cannot for I am always just then under it the whole heft of it & am mute against it as against a little mountain heaved upon me.18 Abel also desires, but his life is shaped by grief and the sociopolitical forces of his era, plus the compounding effects of combat and several years in prison. Benally reflects on Abel’s condition by noting “he was already sick inside. Maybe he was sick a long time, always, and nobody knew it.”19 Certainly, Abel lacked the ability to speak of his pain, contributing to the shame that leaves him “inarticulate”20 with his inner turmoil problematizing his thinking and actions. When Abel sees a pair of eagles, he seeks permission to join the Eagle Hunting Society and participates in their next hunt. As in previous examples, his inner self is only as strong as the natural light. Moving along the rim of the Valle Grande, “a great volcanic crater . . . right eye of the earth held open to the sun,” he sees the eagles “cavorting, spinning and spiraling on the cold, clear columns of air, and they were beautiful.”21 However, as the (sun)light fades, his inner turmoil causes him to resort to violence and kill the captive eagle: That night, while the others are by the fire, he stole away to look at the great bird. He drew the sack open: the bird shivered, he thought, and drew itself up. Bound and helpless, his eagle seemed drab and shapeless in the moonlight, too large and ungainly for flight. The sight of it filled him with shame and disgust. He took hold of its throat in the darkness and cut off its breath.22 To speak of the novel as a “composition” enables a discussion of “surfaces” and how they are affected by light. Paintings present mediums on a surface, and we see these compositions via reflected light. Actual light does not emanate, although a scene may represent light and the way it behaves in the world. A well-composed novel relies on the power of the reader’s imagination to create illuminated scenes. In this novel, where light is both a natural subject and a correlation with a character’s inner being, an author with an artistic eye, as Momaday is, may decide to play with the elements of his composition, seeking additional details to engage reader attention. It is my observation that glass serves in this capacity. Glass refracts, reflects, and inhibits light – facts that could affect the light’s color and/or intensity and by extension, demonstrate something about the inner qualities of a character. The largest single category of glass in House is windows, and the first windows described are those of the bus that brings Abel home from his service

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following World War II. Francisco waits eagerly, and from a distance, he sees the bus “and it’s windows caught for a moment the light of the sun.”23 Abel emerges drunk and doesn’t recognize his grandfather. Francisco must catch him before he falls and notices they are being watched by “faces through the glass.”24 Francisco performs for this audience, laughing off his grandson’s behavior and helping him to the cart despite his disappointment at Abel’s condition. In the days following his return, Abel revisits the village, but in the noon and early afternoon there was no sign of life in the town. . . . The streets were empty and sterile in the white glare of the sun . . . even the doorways and windows were flat and impenetrable. . . . His mind turned on him again in the silence and the heat, and he could not hold still.25 Windows are most frequently described in scenes involving Angela, Francisco, Father Olguin, Benally, and Tosamah, with each receiving a characterspecific detail or variation. As outsiders to Jemez, Olguin and Angela walk into the village to join the villagers. Instead, “they saw faces in the dark windows and doorways of houses, half in hiding, watching with wide, solemn eyes.”26 Alternatively, windows enable Francisco to maintain that observational distance from others. The last mention of windows is at his death when Abel notes “the windowpanes, those coal-black squares of dim reflection.”27 In Los Angeles, Benally is also associated with windows, but in his case, they are open, letting in rain. Benally is fascinated by the city, its lights, and the material goods behind storefront windows and in glass showcases. Benally desires what the western world has to offer and isn’t afraid to “to let it in.” That such objects of desire are associated with the life-giving properties and reverence for rain suggest that for some, choosing assimilation is a process they are seeking for their own sense of advancement. This presents a contrast to his memories of the natural world. In Benally’s lengthy personal narrative, his memories of the beauty and goodness of the natural world while living with his grandfather have much in common with the memories Abel carries of his childhood. But from his perspective in Los Angles, “there’s nothing there, you know, just the land, and the land is empty and dead. Everything is here, everything you could ever want.”28 The social worker Milly offers a “counterpoint” in that her associations are not with transparent glass. Milly’s flat was dingy and cheaply done, but she said to herself that it was charming and quaint and tastefully arranged. Her bedroom was colorless and cluttered with brassy trinkets and smelled of stale and sour air, but, no, she said, there was a kind of warmth and character to it, milk glass and marble and brownish photographs in antique oval frames.29 Milly’s colorless environment, which only she saw as pleasing, reveals her obscured inner vision. She is well-meaning but superficial. It is also noteworthy

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that glass is a cultural import – a product of the west. Therefore, mentions of glass take on additional weight, conveying Eurowestern power and influence. Milly wields authority as a white woman assisting in the effort to assimilate Abel, even though her own life has been shaped by poverty. Her limited vision is also that of the governmental policies she is employed to enforce. In painting, the absence of imagery may be an example of negative space – an intentional compositional choice. In the novel, gaps/silences could be attributed to the stylistic influences of Modernism or in the context of trauma, despair, and inability to speak of pain. The first of two significant silences in House allow us very little of Abel’s military service.30 When he returns, he seems disoriented but makes an effort to rejoin the life of the pueblo. To my reading, Abel’s historical and experiential traumas are the root cause of his feeling inarticulate upon his return to Walatowa. It is during his reintegration period that he has an affair with Angela St. John; participates in pueblo activities, including the Feast of Santiago rooster sacrifice; and kills Juan Reyes Fragua. Much like other protagonists in the growing body of veterans’ literature, Abel’s reintegration is characterized by restlessness, a tendency to use alcohol as a stress reliever, and feelings of insecurity and shame. Coinciding with Abel’s inability to speak, he is frustrated during his murder trial by the way others speak for and about him. Bowker begins his eyewitness account of Abel in the aftermath of a horrific battle by stating, “I had the glasses on it.”31 Bowker’s testimony of Abel’s dance – an act seen from a long, distorted distance – is interpreted through the lens of his own culturally informed ideas of Indians, combat, and courageous behavior. In Abel’s version of this event, “It was afternoon and there were bright, slanting shafts of light . . . the silence had awakened him – and the low, even mutter of the machine coming.”32 Abel, called back to his life, dances his challenge to the tank like the runners who accept the presence of evil rather than seek to defeat it. Another compositional absence is that of stained glass windows, a primary medium of Catholicism for the purpose of promoting Christian enlightenment. This absence/presence approach of inviting readers to see or recall that which is not there permeates the novel. In the case of traditional stories, some Catholic, some Indigenous, are included or referenced or hinted at in thoughtprovoking pairs. Zolbrod noted that pairings are an essential visual methodology and aesthetic. Everywhere in Navajo culture . . . opposites are somewhat tensely matched, analogous to the way Changing Woman insists that the Sun is to be matched with her, and as the creation story frequently demonstrates by employing continuous opposition of centrifugal movement against centripetal force.33 Scarberry-Garcia noted, “Momaday makes use of the Navajo ritual principles of pairing, sequence, multiplication, and numerology,”34 while Schubnell maintained that Momaday is bringing to his narrative style a preference for

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envisioning “a fluid line between what is natural and supernatural, material and spiritual, conscious and unconscious.”35 The artistic structure of House is one of visual/verbal entanglements, alliterative word choices, and color patterns that become rhythms – i.e., “a fine fan of fancy pheasant feathers”36 – and Benally’s memory of items from the trading post that include “a little bag full of the hard red candy, . . . a big can of whole tomatoes, . . . bottles of sweet red soda.”37 Light/sight details are paired with sound/silence details. Momaday described storytelling as “modulation of sound and silence, the conjunction of sound and silence.”38 Furthermore, the Indigenous sacred texts include movement, perhaps as the proof of new life. In pairing Eurowestern Catholicism with the Native American Church, Father Olguin, half-blind Catholic priest of Walatowa Village, is paired with Tosamah, right reverend, priest of the sun in Los Angeles, California. The comparison reveals Christianity as the way to enlightenment, but the pairing is unevenly described, leaving Olguin’s rituals broadly referenced. Presumably, he performs mass with a monstrance, an object used to display the host with a clear glass and decorative frame, suggesting rays of the sun. In contrast, the description of Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah is ironic and detailed. He preaches to his small urban congregation in a basement church dimly lit by two 40-watt bulbs which were screwed into the side walls above the dais. . . . The walls were bare and gray and streaked with water. The only windows were small, rectangular openings near the ceiling, at ground level; the panes covered over with a thick film of coal oil and dust, and spider webs clung to the frames or floated out like smoke across the room.39 The poor light serves as contrast to Olguin’s sacred pun of sun/son and evokes the underground darkness of the kiva. Tosamah also calls our attention to the creative power of the pairing of sight and sound. His sermon opens with Genesis: There was nothing, the Bible says. “And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep” . . . and in the darkness something happened. . . . It was almost nothing in itself, the smallest seed of sound – but it took hold of the darkness and there was light; it took hold of the stillness and there was motion forever; it took hold of the silence and there was sound.40 He continues on to preach the gospel according to John: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness to the Light, that all men through him might believe.”41 Whereas Olguin invokes enlightenment via communion, Tosamah lectures on the scientific effects of peyote on the human body – a biological assist for a visionary experience: Peyote is a small, spineless, carrot-shaped cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and southward. It contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the

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Abel is living in a world created from dichotomized ideas of civilized and savage, good and evil. As an “Indian,” Abel must navigate the dominant culture’s ideas of his race, as well as the imposition of Catholicism on his community. Momaday recalled the Catholic church could not approve of the Indian religion, but it certainly was aware of the Indian religion. When I was living at Jemez I was aware of that tension, and of course reflected it in House Made of Dawn.43 Even as both traditional Jemez and Catholic neighbors believe in the concepts of good and evil, each sees those forces through a cultural lens that dictates different, even conflicting, responses. Abel grows up in a household shaped by both traditions – a fact demonstrated by Francisco attending Catholic mass and participating in kiva events. Two additional characters, the albino Juan Reyes Fragua (“White Man”) and Martinez (“Culebra”), are positioned as comments on the presence of evil. Each is referred to as “a snake,” but a close examination of those circumstances is instructive. In the case of Fragua, his physical being is striking, and at birth, his odd appearance is noted in Father Nicolás’s journal. His lack of skin pigmentation contrasts sharply with the black lenses he wears and the black horse he rides. Even though Francisco senses an evil presence in his cornfield, the text alludes rather than confirms it is Fragua who is evil. Snakes are abhorrent to Catholics by virtue of Old Testament stories. They are not to traditionalists of the kiva societies. This would be one of many beliefs separating Indigenous practitioners of traditional ways and their Catholic neighbors. Every assertion that Fragua is evil is uttered by someone with a Christian education – namely, Olguin and Tosamah – and obscures other explanations for Fragua’s behaviors in the novel. What if Abel’s unresolved shame motivated his killing of Fragua over misunderstandings that the rooster blood sacrifice could hold twofold purposes: to renew the land for the people and cleanse Abel of his recent war contamination? Additionally, the conversation over wine may have been to encourage Abel regarding the work that needed to be done at home, especially given Francisco’s age and infirmities. In comparison, the actions of the corrupt cop Martinez clearly embody evil. Benally describes the location of their first encounter with Martinez as a dark, dead-end alley. “It’s always dark in there at night . . . there’s always a lot of cans and broken glass.”44 Martinez’s propensity for dominance and violence associates him with broken glass.45 On the beach where Abel was dropped after

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being beaten, he struggles to open one eye, sees little but a distant, single light. “There were cans and bits of paper and broken glass against the fence.”46 In one more element of Momaday’s compositional style, Clements argued that Momaday has drawn upon Renaissance-era forms of ekphrastic writing “for a dynamic interactional relationship” between his writing and visual art47 The result is an exchange between the literary and the visual. “The pictorial and the literary might be points at the end of a channel that flowed both ways, not just from the visual to the verbal as modern usage suggests.”48 This is relevant to two important oral stories, as told by Olguin and Tosamah. Father Olguin tells Angela the story of Santiago (Saint James), whose good deeds conclude with the sacrifice of his horse and a rooster. The blood of the horse becomes “a great herd of horses, enough for all the Pueblo people,” and the “blood and feathers of the bird became the cultivated plants and domestic animals.”49 Tosamah’s story recalls his grandmother “when that old Kiowa woman told me stories, I listened with only one ear.”50 Her story about the coming of Tai-me begins with a man so hungry, he walks four days seeking food. In a canyon, flashes of thunder and lightning are followed by a voice speaking to the man. “The man was afraid. The thing standing before him had the feet of a deer, and its body was covered with feathers.”51 The counterpart storytellers – one half-blind and the other self-described as effectively “half-deaf” – share stories that contrast domestic animals with the “wild” or untamed animal/spirit being. What these stories hold in common emphasizes the essential nature and necessity of sacrifice. As “one end of the channel,” these stories are made visual in the folk arts, the festivals of the pueblo, and the rituals of the Kiowa. In a further exploration of the forces of Catholicism upon the Jemez people, Francisco and Father Nicolás exhibit striking points of similarity and contrast. From the journals of the latter, we know the two had a long, intimate acquaintance, and both were keepers of personal books. Through Olguin’s eyes, we read the thoughts and desires of the elder priest. Nicolás’s letter of 1888 expresses considerable fear and frustration over the strained relationship with Francisco. (Francisco) is evil & desires to do me some injury & this after I befriended him all his life. . . . He is one of them & goes often in the kiva & puts on their horns & hides & does worship that Serpent which even is the One our most ancient enemy. Yet he is unashamed to make one of my sacristans & brother I am most fearful to forbid it.52 Throughout House, the significance of the kiva darkness goes unexplained by any who might have that direct knowledge, aggravating anxieties for Father Nicolás for whom the only appropriate conditions for seeking the deity are “up” and in full light. In Francisco’s ledger book, there was “a pencil drawing on the first page. . . . It was the likeness of a straight black man running in the snow. Beneath it was the legend ‘1889’”53 – a year of notable prosperity.

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For Francisco to willingly descend into the light-less kiva is an affront, an association with evil – much different from Francisco’s perspective that participation in kiva ceremonies or running with the black men is important and necessary. Was this the cause of their falling out? Does enlightenment require accepting one’s own path, regardless of a father’s scorn? Rejecting Father Nicolás’s world would have significant and multi-generational consequences for Francisco whether he is a biological son54 or “Son of God in Christ Jesus.” The Navajo singer Grey Moustache observed that when one doesn’t know the traditions one has nothing to light one’s way. It is as though one lived with a covering on one’s eyes, as if one lived being deaf and blind. Yet when one knows the traditions, one has vision to see . . . all the way to where the land meets the ocean.55 Traditions enable the most meaningful forms of seeing and hearing, teaching us how to know the world and our place in it. Which brings us to some final thoughts regarding these characters and some understanding of their respective states of being. Angela, or Mrs. Martin St. John, is a character labeled and laden with Catholic story. Certainly, Angela references angels, and St. John is the apostle and brother to Saint James (Santiago),56 but even Martin could be Saint Martin de Porres, the “half-breed” son of a Native American woman and Spanish father.57 She is also a seeker and described as having experienced more than one profound moment of insight. The first occurs at the Cochiti Corn Dance: It was beautiful and strange. . . . It was simply that they were grave, distant, intent upon some vision out of range that she could not see. Their eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at least; to see first the pure, bright colors of near things, and then all pollutions of color, all things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see finally beyond the clouds and the pale wash of sky – the none and nothing beyond that. To say “beyond the mountain” and to mean it, to mean, simply, beyond everything for which the mountain stands, of which it signifies the being. Somewhere, if only she could see it, there was neither nothing or anything. And there, just there, that was the last reality.58 After her time with Abel, a summer storm brings her consciousness from the “beyond” of the Corn Dancers to a hyper-aware present:

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And in the cold and denser dark, with the sound and sight of fury all around, Angela stood transfixed in the open door and breathed deep into her lungs the purest electric scent of the air. She closed her eyes, and the clear aftervision of the rain, which she could still hear and feel so perfectly as to conceive of nothing else, obliterated all the mean and myriad fears that had laid hold of her in the past. Sharpest angles of light played on the lids of her eyes, and the great avalanche of sound fell about her.59 Angela’s insights are rich in sight/sound cues but lack mention of movement. Benally’s monologue engages all three of the sight/sound/movement cues of sacredness, but they are juxtaposed with clues of addiction. In their plan to ride horses out “in the first light,” he and Abel were going to “get drunk and sing,” and it “was going to be right and beautiful.”60 By the novel’s end, Father Olguin finds “he has come to terms with the town.”61 Having been wakened by Abel and told of Francisco’s death, Olguin “peered out into the darkness” and shouts repeatedly, “I understand!,”62 suggesting that he comprehends the death of Francisco also ends the old conflict with Nicolás – an insight revealed without sunlight. Now Abel stands before him, revealing himself to be not a man of the church like his grandfather but solely a man of the old ways – the “Longhair.” If that is indeed the direction of Abel’s life, it has been expected because after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky. . . . They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.63 There are two mentions of an oil lamp at significant moments in Abel’s life. The first mention is in a scene where he and Juan Reyes Fragua have a wine bottle on the table between. “The precious ring of sweet red wine lay at the bottom of a green quart bottle, and the dark convexity of the glass rose and shone out of it like the fire of an emerald.”64 The two leave their table, and a short distance away, Abel stabs Fragua to death. The second mention is back in his grandfather’s house. Abel is attending to the dying man and waiting. On the morning of the seventh day, “The lamp had gone out. Nothing had awakened him. . . . He could see no movement, and he knew that the old man was dead.”65 To reflect upon Abel’s life is to see one shaped by fear of self-acceptance. Abel’s attempts to control or deny his place in the traditional world caused him shame and propelled him into violence. We do not witness “Longhair” hurled as an insult to Abel but to imagine such is to explain his violent behaviors. The old animosity of Francisco and Nicolás distorted his perceptions of the sacred, which caused him to kill the eagle. The shame stirred by Fragua caused Abel to kill in retaliation. Anyone who tested Abel’s identity, including Tosamah and Martinez, were confronted. The demands of church, government, and Francisco obscured Abel’s vision. “Through a glass, darkly” could describe Abel

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until he rejects dichotomized notions of light/dark representing inner divine knowledge and his true place as son of the sun. After attending to his dead grandfather, Abel manifests entirely the sight/sound/movement and sacred existence when at the novel’s end, he sees the darkness, enters the silence, finds the words to his song, and runs at dawn.

Notes 1. Chadwick Allen, “N. Scott Momaday: Becoming the Bear,” The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, eds. Joy Porter and Kenneth M. Roemer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 207. 2. Phyllis S. Morgan, N. Scott Momaday: Remembering Ancestors, Earth, and Traditions (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 27. 3. Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (New York: Knopf, 1997), 389. 4. “It seems probable that Momaday consciously used these (Pueblo and Navajo) mythic twin models, since the novel’s title comes from a prayer of the Night Chant that was sung by the two boys, the Stricken Twins, as they wandered into Tségihi, Canyon De Chelly. Furthermore, the Stricken Twins are mythic reflections of the Navajo Twin War Gods, Monster Slayer (Náyénĕzgani) and Born for Water (To’badzĭstsíni), widely thought to have evolved in oral tradition from the neighboring stories of the Pueblo War Twins. In this paradigm, the Pueblo War Gods, known at Jemez Pueblo as Masewi and Uyuyewe, have an unknown father who turns out to be the sun.” Susan Scarberry-Garcia, Landmarks of Healing: A Study of House Made of Dawn (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 18. 5. Drawing upon his museum experience with Navajo weavings, Zolbrod observed, “Visual splendor is incomplete without the use of language, whether spoken, sung, or written.” A full discussion of artistic composition should likewise include singing, but length constraints prohibit that inclusion here. Paul G. Zolbrod. “When Artifacts Speak,” in Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, eds. Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 27. 6. Charles L. Woodard, Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 121. 7. N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (New York: Harper & Row, (1968) 1989), 26, 20, 83, 28, and 57. 8. Voyant Tools. https://voyant-tools.org/ Corpus of novel House Made of Dawn is composed of 67,601 total words. Most frequent words in the corpus: like (304); know (201); away (199); time (185); going (182). 9. The highland Maya of San Juan Chamula also used sight metaphors to communicate an understanding of inner states referred to by the author as “empathic in-sight.” Kevin P. Groak, “Social Opacity and the Dynamics of Emphatic In-Sight among the Tzotzil Maya of Chiapas, Mexico,” Ethos 36, no. 4 (2008): 427–448, doi:10.1111/j.1548-1352.2008.00025x 10. Louis Owens explored a lack of insightfulness and asserted Momaday’s skill at straddling the expectations for the Modernist novel with reader desires for a suitably exotic sense of “Indian-ness” (Indian tourism) are fundamental reasons for his having won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. “Though an Amber Glass: Chief Doom and the Native American Novel Today.” Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). 11. Momaday, House, 24. 12. Ibid., 28–29.

Word Painter 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

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Ibid., 31. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 42. N. Scott Momaday, “Divine Blindness,” The Georgia Review, 55, no. 4/56, no. 1 (Winter 2001/Spring 2002): 351, www.jstor.org/stable/41402145 Momaday, House, 47. Ibid., 146. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 8. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 183. Ibid., 158. Ibid., 95. Abel’s prison sentence is the second silence in the time line. In general, literary trauma studies considers such gaps, as well as “hyper-detail,” to be relevant associations with and expressions of traumatic experience, particularly combat trauma. For other post– World War II veterans’ literature by Native American authors, see Leslie Silko’s Ceremony, Geary Hobson’s Plain of Jars, and poetry selections by Simon Ortiz. Momaday, House, 103. Ibid., 21–22. Zolbrod, “When Artifacts Speak,” 27. Scarberry-Garcia, Landmarks of Healing, 14. Matthias Schubnell, N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 65. Ibid., 80. Ibid., 138. Woodard, Ancestral Voice, 76. Momaday, House, 80. Ibid., 81. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 96–97. Woodard, Ancestral Voice, 9. Momaday, House, 152. This violence against Abel is foreshadowed by the presence of broken glass at the site of the old copper mine, a place of environmental violence on Jemez lands. Momaday, House, 54. Schubnell discusses the details of the beach location and interprets the symbols as a rite of passage. Schubnell, N. Scott Momaday, 125. William M. Clements, “‘Image and Word Cannot Be Divided’: N. Scott Momaday and Kiowa Ekphrasis,” Western American Literature 36, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 135–136, www.jstor.org/stable/43025009 An example of classic ekphrastic writing can be found in Father Nicolás’s journal with the description of bultos – carved figures of the Holy Child and Virgin Mary. Clements, “Image and Word,” 137. Momaday, House, 35. Ibid., 84. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 51.

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53. Ibid., 7–8. 54. Porcingula taunts Francisco with the possibility that Nicolás is his biological father. Momaday, House, 179. 55. Scarberry-Garcia, Landmarks of Healing, 37. 56. Given the extensive scholarship on brothers due to the influence of the Stricken Twins story, it is curious that the brother pair of Santiago (Saint James) and Saint John, the first apostles of Jesus, are largely overlooked by scholars. 57. AmericanCatholic.org www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx?id=1188 Accessed May 9, 2013. 58. Momaday, House, 32–33. 59. Ibid., 67. 60. Ibid., 166. 61. Ibid., 170. 62. Ibid., 184. 63. Ibid., 53. 64. Ibid., 72. 65. Ibid., 183.

Bibliography Allen, Chadwick. “N. Scott Momaday: Becoming the Bear.” In Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, edited by Joy Porter and Kenneth M. Roemer, 207–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Clements, William M. “‘Image and Word Cannot Be Divided’: N. Scott Momaday and Kiowa Ekphrasis.” Western American Literature 36, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 134–152. Accessed June 25, 2018. www.jstor.org/stable/43025009 Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper & Row, (1968) 1989. ———. “Divine Blindness.” The Georgia Review 55, no. 4/56, no. 1 (Winter 2001/ Spring 2002): 350–359. Accessed June 26, 2018. www.jstor.org/stable/41402145 Morgan, Phyllis S. N. Scott Momaday: Remembering Ancestors, Earth, and Traditions, An Annotated Bio-Bibliography. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Native American Novelists: N. Scott Momaday. A film by Matteo Bellinelli. Produced by Radiotelevisione della Svizzera italiana. Native American Novelists Series, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1995. Released in DVD 2004. Scarberry-Garcia, Susan. Landmarks of Healing: A Study of House Made of Dawn. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. Schubnell, Matthias. N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Woodard, Charles L. Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Zolbrod, Paul G. “When Artifacts Speak, What Can They Tell Us?” In Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat, 13–44. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Part IV

Where the Future Lies Transatlantic Interdisciplinarity

9

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life Blake, Shelley, and Byron in José Joaquín de Mora’s Meditaciones Poéticas (1826) Joselyn M. Almeida and Sara Medina Calzada

It has long been held that 1842 marks the first known instance of William Blake’s work appearing in America.1 But in reality, Blake made an earlier foray in the western hemisphere with the publication of José Joaquín de Mora’s Meditaciones poéticas [Poetic Meditations] (1826), in which Blake’s prints for The Grave by Robert Blair served as inspiration for the Spanish poet.2 Mora formed part of the Hispanic diaspora living in London in the 1810s and ’20s and belonged to the network of Joseph Blanco White, a more familiar name to British Romanticists thanks to scholars such as Martin Murphy, Diego Saglia, Nanora Sweet and the more recent work of Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Joselyn M. Almeida, and Lisa Surwillo.3 Mora, like Blanco, worked as a writer and translator for Rudolph Ackermann, who extended his publishing concern to supply the newly independent Iberoamerican republics with school books and literature.4 While these interests obviously drove Ackermann’s enterprise, what critics have not elucidated is that the publisher was capitalizing on the readerships that Blanco White, Hippólito da Costa, Andrés Bello, and others had built through journals, such as the Correio Brazilense ou Armazem Literario [Brazilian Courier] (1808–1822), its competitor O Investigador Portuguez Em Inglaterra [The Portuguese Investigator in England] (1811–1822), and Blanco White’s extraordinary El Español (1810–14). As Almeida has argued elsewhere, these journals created a pan-Atlantic public sphere from London to different locations across the Luso-Hispanic littoral, one that reflected the cultural, political, and material interrelations between Britain and the nonAnglophone Americas.5 The print and readerly reorientations that Blanco, Da Costa, Bello, Mora, and others opened between the North and South Atlantic continue to decenter cultural geographies and challenge recurring nationalist tendencies in literary studies, notwithstanding the growth of transnational and comparative methodologies. The circulation of a text like Mora’s Meditaciones poéticas between the North and South Atlantic complicates the geopolitical and cultural imaginaries of Romantic era as corresponding solely to an AngloAmerican order that reifies English as the language of modernity and scholarly discourse. Second, the Meditaciones unsettle mappings of the Anglo-Hispanic contact zone in the Age of Revolutions that render Britain’s engagements in

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Spain as a metonymy for the whole of the Luso-Hispanic world. While Diego Saglia and Ian Haywood rightly caution scholars to question the “historiographical bias in which Spain ceases to be important after the end of the Peninsular War in 1814,” the effort to recover the significance of Spain need not occlude the complex multiplicity of Atlantic contacts beyond Spain’s national borders.6 Through these North and South Atlantic networks, Blake’s penetrating gaze in the portrait by Thomas Phillips and his designs first arrived in ports from Mexico to Buenos Aires as belonging to “Guillermo Black.” But Mora’s Meditaciones also contain his engagement with other Romantic-era authors, notably Percy Shelley and Byron (Figure 9.1). More than “solely . . . illustrations of the engravings,” as Gerald Eades Bentley suggested,7 the Meditaciones poéticas embody the potentiality of the cultural pan-Atlantic relations between London and the Hispanic world that characterized the Age of Revolutions. The 12 etchings in the book were designed by Blake and etched by Luigi Schiavonetti for Robert Hartley Cromek’s lavish edition of The Grave of 1808. After Cromek’s death, Ackermann acquired the plates from his widow for a new edition of Blair’s poem in 1813.8 An opportunity for reissuing the plates arose when the German publisher began his Spanish editorial venture in the 1820s. Robert Essick and Morton Paley suggested that given the popularity of The Grave, Ackermann was receptive to Mora’s interest in writing a series of poems to accompany the plates. They also speculated that Mora and Blake may have met and discussed the publication of Meditaciones in the literary soirées that Ackermann used to host on Wednesdays.9 Although this hypothesis is tempting, Mora did not leave evidence of having met the British poet, whom he called a “verdadero poeta” [true poet],10 and it is more likely they only coincided at the publisher’s place. Mora’s interest in Blake and The Grave aside, the project likely appealed to Ackermann’s business sense since he relied on existing plates from English publications for his Spanish ones.11 Fernando Durán López pointed out that Mora balanced the commercial demands of the assignment with his own creativity, yet he underestimated Mora’s ekphrastic rendition of the work of the British poet when he suggested that the poetry is “poco o nada romántica” [only a little Romantic or not at all].12 Rather, Mora’s poetic ekphrasis of the drawings reproduced the visualverbal interactivity that Blake injected into his illustration work to destabilize Blair’s gothic rendition of death in the English original. Moreover, Mora’s disregard for the English text of Blair’s poem, his reordering and sometimes retitling of the plates to tell his own story, as Nina Lee Weisinger noted, suggests an experimental engagement with the visual poetics of Blake.13 But whereas she found the sequence of the plates to be more “logical” in Mora than in Blair, we argue that Mora’s insistence on the virtue of Blake’s non-mimetic function of the image in relation to the word ultimately subverts the generic expectations he set up by harkening back to Spanish mystical poetry of the sixteenth century in the advertisement and appearance of a narrative sequence. Mora embraced the Blakean non-mimetic interplay between word and image

Figure 9.1 Blake as he Appears in Mora’s Frontispiece Source: Reproduced with permission from Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

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to experiment with different poetic personae through each plate and poem. His personae express attitudes ranging from a Romantic Deism that verges on agnosticism, propounding sublime ideas of nature reflecting the poet’s reading of Jeremy Bentham and Byron, and suggesting knowledge of Percy Shelley, to more traditional ideas of Christian doctrine. Mora’s Blakean poetics in the Meditaciones refract a plurality of Romantic influences. But exactly who was Blake’s first Hispanic interlocutor? José Joaquín de Mora was a fascinating – yet relatively unknown – figure in the AngloHispanic cultural and political exchanges of the first half of the nineteenth century.14 His was a life of successive pan-Atlantic crossings from Spain to Britain; then to Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia; and back to Britain and Spain. His experiences through the breadth and length of the Atlantic littoral are only matched by his indefatigable activity as journalist and critic, translator, fiction writer, poet, teacher, and statesman. He started his peregrinations as a prisoner of war of the French during the Peninsular War, like Fernando Blanco White, Joseph’s younger brother.15 After his five-year captivity in France (1809–1814), he returned to Spain and started his career as a journalist, but he was forced to abandon his homeland again in 1823, when Rafael de Riego’s liberal regime collapsed after Ferdinand VII restored absolutism.16 Mora found refuge in London and joined the existing community of Iberoamerican exiles, among them the leading intellectuals Joseph Blanco White, Andrés Bello, and the Holland House Circle. In 1826, he left for Buenos Aires after accepting the invitation of Bernardo Rivadavia, the president of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata (present-day Argentina), to work as a government and educational consultant. This is the first of several instances in which Mora obtained the support of a head of state, collaborated with him, and then had to leave the country when a new party rose to power. He faced similar circumstances during his residence in Chile (1828–1831) and Peru (1831–1834). In 1834, he was invited to La Paz (Bolivia) by General Andrés de Santa Cruz, and he worked as his secretary until 1838 when he was commissioned to travel to London to act as Santa Cruz’s diplomatic agent in Britain. During this second residence in London, he published Leyendas españolas (1840), a collection of metrical tales that is considered his masterpiece. Mora built considerable cultural and political capital from these experiences, which served him well when after a 20-year absence, he finally returned to Spain in 1843. He became a member of the Real Academia Española in 1848 and was appointed advisor to Queen Isabella II for agriculture, industry, and commerce (1847–1864) and Spanish consul in London (1850–1851, 1853–1854, 1856–1858). In the 1850s, he became involved in the activities of the Evangelical Church in London, which suggests that he may have converted to Protestantism, although he never admitted it publicly.17 The Meditaciones thus belong to Mora’s first London period, a time of intense and productive writing activity. Under Ackermann’s editorship, he produced a literary annual (No me olvides [Forget Me Not], 1824–1827), two translations of Scott’s novels (Ivanhoe, 1825; El talismán [The Talisman], 1826), five

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life 149 catechisms (i.e. teaching manuals), two periodical publications (Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes [Universal Museum of Sciences and Arts], 1824–1826; Correo Literario y Político de Londres [London’s Literary and Political Courier], 1826), two works on the education of women (Cartas sobre la educación del bello sexo [Letters on the Education of the Fair Sex], 1824; Gimnástica del bello sexo [Gymnastics of the Fair Sex], 1824), books on history (Cuadros de la historia de los árabes [Records of the History of the Arabs], 1826), a translation of William Davis Robinson’s Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution (Memorias de la Revolución de México, 1824), and the second significant translation into Spanish of Francisco Clavijero’s Storia antica del Messico (Historia antigua de México, 1826 [published in English as History of Mexico, Collected from Spanish and Mexican Historians, from Manuscripts and Ancient Paintings of the Indians, 1787]).18 This impressive list of works proves not only Mora’s versatility and ability to respond to Ackermann’s editorial needs but also an evolution in his thoughts, particularly in his ideas about literature and his own literary practice. His three-year exile in London allowed him to obtain first-hand knowledge of British culture and to become familiar with the British Romantic models that he had despised during the so-called querella calderoniana (1814–1820),19 a literary dispute between him and the German Hispanophile Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber about the merits of Calderón’s drama. Their debate centered on the opposition between Neoclassicism, which Mora defended, and Romanticism, which Böhl vindicated, but the querella soon acquired a philosophical, political, and personal dimension.20 Mora’s Meditaciones poéticas reveal that by 1826, he had overcome at least some of his prejudices against Romanticism, although he was still influenced by his Enlightenment education and the Spanish Renaissance and Neoclassical literary tradition. As Mora observed in the “Advertencia” or preface, Blake and his engraver salieron de la senda trillada de la ejecución artística: fueron verdaderos poetas que conocieron el secreto de la inspiración, y que en sus producciones aspiraron a una esfera más alta que la que se contiene en la mera representación exterior de los objetos [left the worn path of artistic execution: they were true poets who understood the secret of inspiration, and their productions aspired to a higher sphere of the mere exterior representation of objects]. Mora embraces the Blakean interplay between word and image, reminding his readers that the “verdadera poesía” [true poetry] of the work is in the engravings, “pues no son menos admirables por la corrección del dibujo, que por el atrevimiento del designio, y por la sublime inteligencia que reina en las alegorías” [for they are no less admirable for the correctness of the drawing than for the daring design and the sublime intelligence that reigns in the allegories].21 For Mora, the value of Blake’s work is its non-mimetic function, which reflects the artist’s “daring design” and his expression through visual allegory. And although Mora calls his poems “ilustraciones” [illustrations] . . .

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“procurando imitar los giros y el estilo que emplearon en la Poesía Sagrada los hombres eminentes que la cultivaron en España en el Siglo XVI” [seeking to imitate the turns and the style of Sacred Poetry employed by the eminent men who cultivated it in the sixteenth century], the Meditaciones do not offer a linear story with a structure of fall, redemption, and salvation, although his arrangement of the plates might suggest that story, or a narrative of an early Protestantism, which critics such as Gabino Fernández Campos have attributed to the text.22 Alberto Zazo Esteban rightly pointed out that in Mora’s Meditaciones, as in Blair’s original, death becomes a kind of moralizing agent, with themes such as “Ubi sunt o Tempus fugit” and life as a vale of tears.23 This reading, however, privileges the textuality of Blair’s poem over Blake’s plates, where Mora indicated the “true poetry” resides (Figure 9.2). The first poem in the collection, “La eternidad y el espacio” [Eternity and Space], exemplifies Mora’s Blakean experimentation and his departure from generic expectations of Christian mysticism. Mora renamed the image, which in English is titled “Christ Descending into the Grave,” and through this act of renaming, he presented the divine figure as holding the keys to eternity and space. The apostrophe to the deity in the first section does not name Christ or God but rather a more anthropomorphic creator, “Padre del hombre” [Father of man], that recalls the Homeric epithet for Zeus, “father of men and gods.”24 Weisinger’s summary of the poem is fairly accurate: “What the [poet] does not doubt or question is that this luminous universe bounded by time and space will disappear into the dark abyss of Nothingness, leaving Eternity to hold its sceptre beside the divine throne.”25 Yet she did not mention the most radical proposition of the poem that commentators such as Durán and Zazo also ignored: that the father of men is not omnipotent. Despite holding the keys to eternity and space, the deity in Mora’s creationist scenario is revealed as being subject to a higher will. The poet asks, Tú, que en divina Esencia Gozábaste, llenando La augusta inmensidad con tu presencia Velada en Gloria, cuando Llegado el plazo de inmortal decreto, De tu excelso palacio, Salir hiciste del tiempo y el espacio. Revelóse el altísimo secreto De tu saber inmarcesible entonces Y las puertas de bronce De Eternidad se abrieron Y los años nacieron.26 [You, who enjoyed being divine essence / with your presence filled the august immensity / veiled in glory when the immortal decree came to pass / from your exalted palace you birthed time and space / the highest secret of your

Figure 9.2 La eternidad y el espacio Source: Reproduced with permission from Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

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knowledge was revealed / the bronze doors of eternity were opened / and the years were born] Mora described the “father of men” in a solipsistic relation with his divine essence, “llenando / La augusta inmensidad con tu presencia” [filling / The august immensity with your presence], in an uninterrupted projection of eternal being. This state of godlike self-sufficiency ends with “Llegado el plazo del inmortal decreto,” [the arrived time of the immortal decree]. Significantly, it is not the creator who issues the decree but rather it “arrives” through unknown means, and the comma clearly separates it from the following action – the father’s creation of earthly time. Thus the “father of men” is himself subject to a higher power, recalling Jupiter and Demogorgon in Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Mora’s lexical affinities with Shelley in words such as “abismo,” [abysm] “la Nada,” [the void] “diamantino,” [diamond-like] “leyes,” [laws] “imperio” [empire], and “Eternidad” [eternity] furthermore suggest his acquaintance with Shelley’s work, and it is not improbable that he would have known it.27 His collaborator and mentor, Blanco White,28 was an admirer of Shelley and Prometheus Unbound in particular.29 Though Shelley’s intense study and love of Calderón was not openly known at the time, readers of Calderón like Blanco and Mora – who was critical of Calderón in the aforementioned querella calderoniana – might have gravitated towards this text given Shelley’s “Calderonizing” of images.30 In effect, Mora’s enthronement of Eternity next to the father of men at the end of the poem, which Weisinger noticed suggests more than a passing acquaintance with Shelley’s play. Mora wrote, Conmovidos los sólidos cimientos De la creación, tras lid encarnizada, Caerán los elementos Cual piedra de los montes desprendida, En el oscuro abismo de la Nada. De Eternidad el inflexible imperio De nuevo empezará, y en la escondida Región del alto misterio, Junto al trono divino Se fijará su cetro diamantino. Jamás, dirán en cánticos sonoros, Los celestiales coros; Y bramando Jamás, en grito eterno, Repetirá el Averno. [The firm foundations of creation will be loosened / The elements will fall after the voracious battle / Like boulders falling from mountains into the abyss of nothingness / The inflexible empire of eternity will again begin / and in the hidden region of the highest mystery / next to the divine throne / She will fix her diamantine throne. Never, in sonorous song / will the celestial choir sing / and roaring never in an eternal cry / will Avernus answer.]

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life 153 The “lid encarnizada” that disturbs creation is not a Christian apocalypse but rather resembles the struggle between Jupiter and Demogorgon, in which Jupiter ends “sunk to the abyss . . . to the dark void.”31 In Mora, the “Deidad Suprema” [Supreme Deity], along with the elements, end “En el oscuro abismo de la nada” [In the dark abysm of Nothingness or the void]. Eternity, which is also Demogorgon’s name, establishes her reign at the end of Mora’s poem just as in Shelley’s Prometheus. But whereas the presence of the human does not disappear entirely from Shelley’s text, nothing human remains in Mora’s reign of eternity – the only live beings are a celestial choir and the Avernus, who by turn sing and bellow the word “never” from the heavens and the earth. Even the “father of men” has been eclipsed. This initial disavowal of religion in the Meditaciones as Mora’s prospective readers conventionally understood it is perhaps what led Andrés Bello to write in his review of the work in 1827, Puede decirse que ofrecen una imitación bien ejecutada y apropiada a la poesía castellana . . . según el tono de los mejores poetas castellanos que han pulsado la lira sagrada: objeto que el Sr. Mora ha tenido muy presente, que ha desempeñado con laudable acierto aun en los muchos pensamientos originales que ha introducido [It might be said that they offer a well executed imitation of Spanish poetry according to those poets who have written sacred verse: a goal Mr. Mora has had before him, and which he has achieved even in the original thoughts he has introduced].32 Among these “pensamientos originales” [original thoughts] was the possibility of a world where even the deity was subject to laws beyond himself and one whose destiny was also bound up with the destiny of humankind – both faced the same implacable “inflexible imperio” [inflexible empire]. Vicente Lloréns reminded readers that Mora did not want to alienate his Roman Catholic audience, and “the religiosity of a deist like Mora was preferable to the heretical, Calvinist or Anglican impasse.”33 But the Spanish poet’s suggestion in the initial poem of the Meditaciones that the human and the divine share a destiny subverts even the religious hierarchy that informs traditional Protestantism. This idea becomes a leitmotif that develops in tension with what appear to be more traditional presentations of the Christian order. In another poem, “El Valle de la Muerte,” [The Valley of Death], generations are born to die in an endless cycle, and death awaits them as a final exterminator. But death itself appears to obey the will of the unnamed consciousness of eternity who controls destiny. At the poem’s closing, Mora wrote, “Otras mil nacen / Para hundirse también, que así el decreto / De alto saber lo pronunció, en lo oscuro / De excelsa eternidad, y así el destino / Con férrea mano los decretos cumple” (20) [Other thousands are born / to also die as the decree from eternity on high pronounced / and thus destiny with iron hand obeys]. The poem does not even present the prospect of an afterlife for those who are dying. “La separación” [The Separation] offers a similar materialist resolution to the afterlife. The soul returns to “la altura desconocida / más allá del éter” [an unknown altitude /

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beyond the ether] to a place that while cosmic cannot easily be identified as the Christian heaven or hell. By contrast, “La muerte del justo” [The Death of the Just Man], draws on traditional Christian structures through its invocation of the “Padre Omnipotente,” [Omnipotent Father] and the return of the soul to the “Mansión sagrada” [sacred mansion]” . Notwithstanding these and other gestures towards traditional Christianity, Mora’s implicit questioning of the omnipotence of the deity elsewhere in the Meditaciones indexes a subterranean sympathy with those who questioned the absolutist divine right of kings. This questioning finds political expression in his outcry against tyrants, “Quien las naciones oprime” [Whosoever oppresses nations], in poems such as “El sepulcro” [The Tomb]. Mora’s singling out of tyrants as a type and enthroning of death as a power that levels their aspirations is not only evocative of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” but also of Byron, who became a major inspiration for Mora, leading to his own version of Don Juan (1844). Both Mora’s Don Juan and Leyendas españolas (1840) reflect his appropriation of Byron’s iconoclastic spirit and satirical style, but they are not the first poems where he harshly condemned despotic rulers or specifically criticized the political situation in Spain. Even in a work primarily concerned with death and the aftermath like Meditaciones, Mora used poetry to express his scathing political views, as in the poem “El juicio,” which contains a caustic denunciation of Ferdinand VII (Figure 9.3). Mora undeniably alluded to the king of Spain when he mentioned a wicked and sanguinary oppressor who had been unfairly crowned by a deluded people, thus referring to the patriotic reaction against the Napoleonic troops during the Peninsular War that while defeating Buonaparte secured the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814: Y más que todas, tú, mortal protervo Sanguinario opresor que el hado injusto Sobre esplendente púrpura coloca; Tú, azote de los pueblos, humillados Ante el solio execrable que maldicen, Tú a quien dio el adulterio Culpable vida, y usurpado imperio. Ven que te aguardan los que en rabia ciega De luto, y llanto, y perdición cubriste, Cuando ilusos, por ti, por ti que gozas En muerte y destrucción, los no vencidos Aceros empuñando, a fiera lucha Corrieron animosos, Y rompieron tus vínculos odiosos.34 [And above all, you, mortal fiend / Sanguinary oppressor that unfair fate / Placed on the imperial purple;/ You, the scourge of peoples, who humiliate themselves / Before the execrable throne that they curse. / You, to whom

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life 155

Figure 9.3 El juicio Source: Reproduced with permission from Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

adultery granted / a sinful life and a usurped empire. / Come, for those your blind fury / Covered with grief and tears and ruin / Are waiting for you, / Those who delusively gripped the undefeated swords / And fought bravely and fiercely to liberate you, / Who relish death and destruction.]

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Implicitly supporting the emancipation of the Spanish American colonies, where Meditaciones was to be distributed, Mora referred to Ferdinand’s “usurped empire” and by doing so denied the legitimacy of his rule overseas. He questioned the legitimacy of his reign as he suggested that his birth was the result of his mother’s adultery – a remark that was probably motivated by a feeling of resentment against the king.35 (This personal animus also pervades his Memoirs of Ferdinand VII (1824)). Mora had both personal and political reasons for this change of opinion. Around 1819 and 1820, he had been apparently trusted by the king and his camarilla, and he had participated in two secret diplomatic missions in Italy and France.36 His criticism against the monarch in “El juicio” is consequently aimed at his person and tyrannical rule and established a connection between politics and morality. Throughout the poem, he associated despotism with evil, on the one hand, and virtue with liberalism, on the other, thus placing Ferdinand VII and his “turba imbécil” [imbecile mob] among those who would be condemned. A sense of poetic justice pervades the poem: those whom Ferdinand VII persecuted and those who promoted freedom and knowledge will be eventually rewarded. Mora’s ideas about political virtue encompass both liberty, thought, and reason in stark opposition to the despotic tendencies of the restored monarchy. Mora thus encouraged a hermeneutics that, like Blake’s and Percy Shelley’s, provokes the reader’s imagination into the apprehension of the truth of the relation of things rather than what is presented as a fixed image. Blake’s images in the Meditaciones poéticas become a prism through which Mora exercises an interpretive freedom in relation to the Romantic and Christian archives.37 Mora’s Blakean Meditaciones thus interrogate the category of the human and its place in the existential and cosmic order as the poet draws on not only Blake but also other British Romantic era authors, such as Shelley and Byron. Such a questioning animated the ontological, epistemic, historicist, political, and materialist dimensions of the work of the period’s writers. Mora ignited the dawn of Romanticism’s pan-Atlantic life, remediating not only Blake and Romanticism for Latin America but asking us to rethink our place with regard to our mapping of the Romantic understanding of America beyond the shores of the Anglophone world. As Blake himself wrote in America, a Prophecy: “I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love, / In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru.” Mora’s work reminds us that we are still catching up with his vision.

Notes Research for this chapter was supported by the LHIBRO project, “Hispanic Literature in the British Romantic Periodical Press (1802–1832): Appropriating and Rewriting the Canon” (Ref. RTI2018-097450-B-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. 1. Andrew Stauffer, “The First Known Publication of Blake in America,” Notes and Queries 46, no. 1 (1996): 41–43.

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life 157 2. José Joaquín de Mora, Meditaciones poéticas (London: Ackermann, 1826). The authors would like to thank Professor María Eugenia Perojo for her generous suggestions and Professors Orrin Wang and Alexander Regier for their comments on an earlier version of this piece. 3. Juan Goytisolo’s pioneering translation of Blanco White ended a century of critical neglect. See Goytisolo, Obra inglesa de José María Blanco White (Madrid: Formentor, 1972). Since then, an extensive bibliography on both sides of the Atlantic continues to grow. See Martin Murphy, Blanco White: Self-Exiled Spaniard (Yale: Yale University Press, 1986); Diego Saglia, Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000); Joselyn M. Almeida, Reimagining the Transatlantic, 1780–1890 (Aldergate: Ashgate, 2011); Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, “Wilberforce Spanished: Joseph Blanco White and Spanish Anti-Slavery, 1808–1814,” in Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, eds. Christopher Schmidt-Nowara and Josep Fradera (New York: Berghan Books, 2013), 158–175; Lisa Surwillo, Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). In a Hispanophone context, besides Goytisolo, see also André Pons, Blanco White y España (Oviedo: Instituto Feijoo, 2002), and Pons, Blanco White y América (Oviedo: Instituto Feijoo, 2006). 4. See Eugenia Roldán Vera, The British Book Trade and Spanish American Independence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), and Fernando Durán López, Versiones de un exilio: los traductores españoles de la Casa Ackermann (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2015). 5. Joselyn M. Almeida, “London’s Pan-Atlantic Public Sphere: Luso-Hispanic Journals, 1808–1830,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Atlantic Literary Studies, eds. Leslie Eckel and Clare Elliot (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 45–59. 6. Diego Saglia and Ian Haywood, Spain in British Romanticism, 1800–1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 8–9. 7. Gerald Eades Bentley, Stranger from Paradise: a Biography of William Blake (Yale: Yale University Press, 2003), 308. 8. See Robert Essick and Morton Paley, eds., The Grave by Robert Blair (London: Scolar Press, 1982), 35. 9. Ibid., 38–39. 10. Mora, “Advertencia,” Meditaciones, ii. 11. See Roldán Vera, British Book Trade, 47–53, Durán López, Versiones, 24–31; Almeida, Reimagining the Transatlantic, 124–126. 12. Durán López, Versiones, 150, 152. 13. Nina Lee Weisinger, “José Joaquín de Mora’s Indebtedness to William Blake,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 28, no. 110 (1951): 104. (103–107). 14. Despite his active involvement in the political and cultural spheres of the Hispanic world, Mora has not attracted major scholarly attention, even if there has been a renewed interest in his figure in recent years. The seminal study of Mora’s activities in Spanish America written by Luis Monguió Don José Joaquín de Mora y el Perú del ochocientos (Madrid: Castalia, 1967) has been complemented by Medina Calzada’s examination of his Anglophilia (“Britain and the Regeneration of the Hispanic World: A Study of José Joaquín de Mora’s Anglophilia” [PhD dissertation, Universidad de Valladolid, 2017]) and the collection of essays edited by Salvador García Castañeda and Alberto Romero Ferrer (José Joaquín de Mora o la inconstancia: periodismo, política y literatura [Madrid: Visor Libros, 2018]). 15. For Fernando’s account of his captivity, one of the few extant by a Spanish prisoner of war, see A Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon’s Empire: Fernando Blanco White’s Flight to Freedom, ed. Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2018).

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16. See Alberto Gil Novales, El trienio liberal (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980), and Emilio La Parra López, Los cien mil hijos de San Luis: el ocaso del primer impulso liberal en España (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2007). 17. Alberto Zazo Esteban, “José Joaquín de Mora, protestante ante la muerte,” Castilla. Estudios de Literatura 7 (2016): 131–132. 18. Clavijero’s Storia antica del Messico circulated in English and Italian before it did in Spanish. The first Spanish translation, Historia antigua de México: sacada de los mejores historiadores espannoles y de manuscritos y pinturas de los indios, dividida en diez libros, y adornada de carts geógráficas y de varias figuras y disertaciones sobre la tierra, animales, y habitadores de México, trans. Diego Troncoso y Buenvecino, was published in Madrid in 1809. For further discussion of Clavijero and his impact on Romanticism’s public sphere, see Almeida, Reimagining, xx. 19. Sara Medina Calzada, “Extravagancias literarias: Mora y la literatura inglesa en la Crónica Científica y Literaria (1817–1820),” in José Joaquín de Mora o la inconstancia: periodismo, política y literatura, eds. Salvador García Castañeda and Alberto Romero Ferrer (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2018), 227–254. 20. Carol Tully, Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber (1770–1836). A German Romantic in Spain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 101–170. 21. Mora, Meditaciones, ii. 22. Gabino Fernández Campos, Reforma y contrarreforma de Andalucía (Sevilla: Editoriales andaluzas, 1986), 204. 23. Zazo Esteban, “José Joaquín de Mora,” 135. 24. Homer, The Illiad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), VIII.51, XV.52. 25. Weisinger, “José Joaquín de Mora’s Indebtedness,” 105. 26. After considering the levels of linguistic distortion by Ackermann’s printers, we have modernized the spelling of Mora’s text in Spanish. 27. Mora’s experimentation with enjambment in “El sepulcro” furthermore recalls Shelley’s use of this manipulation of the poetic line in “Mont Blanc.” 28. Mora can be regarded as a continuator of Blanco’s literary activities for Ackermann, and he certainly followed Blanco’s line of thought, reiterating many of his ideas on politics and literature. His assimilation of Blanco’s views was the result of their intellectual affinity and mutual admiration, even if in the 1820s Blanco still resented the fact that Mora never paid him back the money that he had lent him during the Peninsular War, when both Mora’s and Blanco’s brothers were prisoners of war in France. See Vicente Lloréns, Liberales y románticos: una emigración española en Inglaterra (1823–1834) (Madrid: Castalia, 1968), 413. 29. For Blanco and Shelley, see Joselyn M. Almeida, “The Shelleys and Spain,” in Spain in British Romanticism, 1800–1840, eds. Diego Saglia and Ian Haywood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 157–173, 173. 30. For the verb Calderonize and its meaning for Shelley, see Percy Shelley, Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 2: 150, and Mary Shelley, Selected Letters of Mary Shelley, ed. Betty T. Bennet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 1: 116. 31. Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound: The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mary Shelley (London, 1839), 3.2.10. Reference is to act, scene, and line. 32. Obras completas de Andrés Bello, Temas de crítica literaria, ed. Arturo Uslar Pietri, vol. 9 (Caracas: La Casa de Bello, 1981), 337. 33. Lloréns, Liberales y románticos, 228–229. 34. Mora, Meditaciones, 27. 35. Rumors about the queen had reached even Robert Southey while he was traveling through Madrid decades prior. He wrote, “[The king’s] wife is a topic of general censure. . . . What must that Woman be who is detested or her depravity in

Romanticism’s Pan-Atlantic Life 159 a metropolis where the Cortejo system is so universal? About two years ago the washerwomen of Madrid were possessed with a spirit of sedition, and they insulted her majesty on the streets, ‘You are wasting your money upon your finery and your gallants—while we are in want of bread.’” Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (London, 1797), 169. 36. Alberto Gil Novales, Diccionario biográfico del Trienio Liberal (Madrid: Ediciones El Museo Universal, 1991), 447. 37. Milton’s Paradise Lost, which had been circulating in Spain since 1747, might have also been a source for Mora, as he was for Blake, Byron, Percy, Mary Shelley, and other Romantics. See John T. Shawncros, “John Milton and His Spanish and Portuguese Presence,” Milton Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2007): 41–52; Luis Pegenaute, “La recepción de Milton en la España Ilustrada: Visiones de El Paraíso perdido,” in La traducción en España (1750–1830): lengua, literatura, cultura, ed. Francisco Lafarga (Lleida: Universidad de Lleida, 1999), 321–334. Milton was also a source for Mora’s Iberoamerican contemporaries; see Mario Murgia, “Milton in Revolutionary Hispanoamerica,” Milton Studies 58 (2017): 203–222.

Bibliography Almeida, Joselyn M. Reimagining the Transatlantic, 1780–1890. Aldergate: Ashgate, 2011. ———. “London’s Pan-Atlantic Public Sphere: Luso-Hispanic Journals, 1808–1830.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Atlantic Literary Studies, edited by Leslie Eckel and Clare Elliot, 45–59. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. ———. “The Shelleys and Spain.” In Spain in British Romanticism, 1800–1840, edited by Diego Saglia and Ian Haywood, 157–173. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Bello, Andrés. Obras completas de Andrés Bello. Temas de crítica literaria. Edited by Arturo Uslar Pietri, Vol. 9. Caracas: La Casa de Bello, 1981. Bentley, Gerald Eades. Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake. Yale: Yale University Press, 2003. Durán López, Fernando. Versiones de un exilio: los traductores españoles de la casa Ackermann (Londres, 1823–1830). Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2015. Essick, Robert, and Morton Paley, eds. The Grave by Robert Blair. London: Scholar Press, 1982. Fernández Campos, Gabino. Reforma y contrarreforma de Andalucía. Sevilla: Editoriales andaluzas, 1986. García Castañeda, Salvador, and Alberto Romero Ferrer, eds. José Joaquín de Mora o la inconstancia: periodismo, política y literatura. Madrid: Visor Libros, 2018. Gil Novales, Alberto. El trienio liberal. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980. ———. Diccionario biográfico del Trienio Liberal. Madrid: Ediciones El Museo Universal, 1991. Goytisolo, Juan. Obra inglesa de José María Blanco White. Madrid: Formentor, 1972. Homer. The Illiad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. La Parra López, Emilio. Los cien mil hijos de San Luis: el ocaso del primer impulso liberal en España. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2007. Lloréns, Vicente. Liberales y románticos: una emigración española en Inglaterra (1823–1834). Madrid: Castalia, 1968. Medina Calzada, Sara. “Britain and the Regeneration of the Hispanic World: A Study of José Joaquín de Mora’s Anglophilia.” PhD diss., Universidad de Valladolid, 2017.

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———. “Extravagancias literarias: Mora y la literatura inglesa en la Crónica Científica y Literaria (1817–1820).” In José Joaquín de Mora o la inconstancia: periodismo, política y literatura, edited by Salvador García Castañeda and Alberto Romero Ferrer, 227–254. Madrid: Visor Libros, 2018. Monguió, Luis. Don José Joaquín de Mora y el Perú del ochocientos. Madrid: Castalia, 1967. Mora, José Joaquín de. Meditaciones poéticas. London: Ackermann, 1826. Murgia, Mario. “Milton in Revolutionary Hispanoamerica.” Milton Studies 58 (2017): 203–222. Murphy, Martin. Blanco White: Self-Banished Spaniard. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Pegenaute, Luis. “La recepción de Milton en la España Ilustrada: Visiones de El Paraíso perdido.” In La traducción en España (1750–1830): lengua, literatura, cultura, edited by Francisco Lafarga, 321–334. Lleida: Universidad de Lleida, 1999. Pons, André. Blanco White y España. Oviedo: Instituto Feijoo, 2002. ———. Blanco White y América. Oviedo: Instituto Feijoo, 2006. Roldán Vera, Eugenia. The British Book Trade and South America. London: Ashgate, 2003. Saglia, Diego. Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Saglia, Diego, and Ian Haywood. Spain in British Romanticism, 1800–1840. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. “Wilberforce Spanished: Joseph Blanco White and Spanish Anti-Slavery, 1808–1814.” In Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, edited by Christopher Schmidt-Nowara and Josep Fradera, 158–175. New York: Berghan Books, 2013. ———, ed. A Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon’s Empire: The Diary of Fernando Blanco White’s Flight to Freedom. Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Shawncross, John T. “John Milton and his Spanish and Portuguese Presence.” Milton Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2007): 41–52 Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Shelley. Edited by Betty T. Bennet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Shelley, Percy. Prometheus Unbound: The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mary Shelley. London: 1839. ———. Letters. Edited by Frederick L. Jones. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964. Southey, Robert. Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal. London: 1797. Stauffer, Andrew. “The First Known Publication of Blake in America.” Notes and Queries 46, no. 1 (1996): 41–43. Surwillo, Lisa. Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Sweet, Nanora. “Hitherto Closed to the Spanish Enterprise: Trading and Writing the Hispanic World circa 1815.” European Romantic Review 8 (1997): 139–147. Tully, Carol. Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber (1770–1836): A German Romantic in Spain. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007. Weisinger, Nina Lee. “José Joaquín de Mora’s Indebtedness to William Blake.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 28, no. 110 (1951): 103–107. Zazo Esteban, Alberto. “José Joaquín de Mora, protestante ante la muerte.” Castilla. Estudios de Literatura 7 (2016): 127–143.

10 ‘Make Visible’ Paul Klee’s Dictum and Wallace Stevens and José Ángel Valente’s Essays on Poetry Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan Paul Klee (1879–1940) remains one of the most mysterious and most attractive painters of the twentieth century. He was the author of such enchanting works as “Landscape with Gallows” (1915), “Presentation of the Miracle” (1916) and the famous “Angelus Novus” (1920), owned by Walter Benjamin and said to be the angel that the philosopher mentions in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” A poet himself and a member of the Bauhaus, where he taught some courses, Klee also authored some essays on painting that were central to other artists’ aesthetics. Among the authors who were attracted to Klee’s painting, I want to focus on Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) and José Ángel Valente (1929–2000), two poets who, despite their temporal and geographic distance, attempted to answer the problems of artistic representation that had been opened at the beginning of the twentieth century with Modernism. Both Stevens and Valente were much interested in painting. Edward Ragg recounted Stevens’ relish for painting.1 He liked major painters such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso or Klee, as well as other minor artists, such Pierre Tal-Coat, Dufy, Gromaire or Cavaillès. In the last decade of his life, he wrote the essay “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting” that he would later collect in The Necessary Angel (1951). In this essay, Stevens discussed the topic of ekphrasis without mentioning the subject as such. Valente showed a similar concern for the arts in his poetry. His long friend with painter Antoni Tàpies and sculptor Eduardo Chillida are testimony of his search for new ways of representing reality. Valente wrote both poems and essays that may be regarded as ekphrastic, such as the collection of essays Elogio del calígrafo [Praise for the Calligrapher] (2002) or the poems devoted to Tàpies. Some critics have argued that literary essays on painting and sculpture may be included within the group of ekphrastic works.2 For the purpose of this chapter, I am particularly interested in the term “critical ekphrasis,” used by Bernadette Fort in “Ekphrasis and Art Criticism: Diderot and Fragonard’s ‘Coresus and Callirhoe.’” In her essay, she defined it as a hybrid type of art criticism . . . in which the literary devices of ekphrasis are used at the same time to call up a visual image and to offer a means of disclosing, not just the effect of the painting on the viewer, but the artistic principles underlying the production of these effects.3

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It is my contention that Klee’s work, both essayistic and pictorial, worked as a recognition of intuitions that both Stevens and Valente had and that through the reading and contemplation of Klee’s work, they gave existence to their poetic insights. Klee thus functioned not as an influence but as a Socratic master who helped them find their path. I am by no means implying that Stevens and Valente are poets of a similar poetics or personality. They are very different in their temperaments, traditions and historical contexts. To a large extent, that is the main reason I want to analyze their responses to Klee’s aesthetics. I propose to explore what issues Klee helped them discover that were important for their poetry. For that purpose I will take as my starting point Klee’s axiom: “art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible.”4 It is this dictum that Stevens and Valente explored somewhat in their essays and poems. I am going to focus on their essays since they provide a theoretical foundation that may be expanded later to their poetry. It must be noted that both poets felt an urge to theorize on poetry. Stevens compiled his essays written between 1941 and 1951 in The Necessary Angel in 1951. Valente had a more prolific career as an essayist, as his six books of essays published between1955 and 2000 attest. In any case, both poets were persuaded that a commitment to theory was a necessary part of their task as poets. Whether it was about other poets, about the visual arts or about rhetorical figures, they would use the essay as a means to theorize on poetics. The essays provided them with an outlet for reflection on the many facets of poetry. By analyzing their essays, I hope to explore the theoretical dimension of their concern with Klee’s work.

Paul Klee Paul Klee’s career encompassed the aesthetic upheaval of the Modernist period. O.K Werckmeister focused on the period from 1914 to 1920 since these are the years of his learning process that matched the learning process of German society to adapt to inflation and shape the course it took.5 Besides, 1920 was the year when “Creative Credo,” his aesthetic manifesto, came out. In “Creative Credo,” he wrote his famous dictum: “Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible,”6 which was, as Werckmeister explained, derived from Theodor Däubler’s maxim: “No escape from reality, but a visualization of the transcendent.”7 Thus Klee’s theoretical axiom intends to use art to explore the reality that transcends the factual world to reveal it to the spectator or reader. It comes as no surprise that Däubler himself had asserted that art was the new metaphysics. The shift from the artistic expression of the artist’s subjectivity to an attempt to explain the world in terms that might be generally understood was an attempt to make art meaningful and useful to contemporary society. Art was no longer a concern of dilettantes but an endeavor to explain a world in which transcendence and mystery had been lost for some time. This idea had a Romantic resonance that had been an undercurrent through the final years of the nineteenth century to spring up again at the beginning of the twentieth.

‘Make Visible’ 163 Klee strove to find an artistic expression that could serve as an answer to the necessities of his age. For him to ‘make visible’ was an exploration of the possibilities of abstract art since this artistic mode, unsuited to the realistic representation of visible things, in Klee’s words, may help reveal the visible by putting the emphasis on the formal elements.8 In the beginning of “Creative Credo,” Klee stated an idea that clearly resembled the gospel when he said, “In the beginning was the word, as Luther translated it.”9 The idea – or the word – becomes the absolute beginning of any work of art in a process in which the work of art becomes a genesis: “The work of art, too, is first of all genesis; it is never experienced as a result.”10 Thus the genesis is an active process. In this process, the artist deals with the unknown, or as Klee put it, “Art plays in the dark with the ultimate things and yet it reaches them.”11 In the end, the work of art is a process of unveiling and recognition. During this process, Klee put the emphasis on the artist’s experience since it is through creation that he learns to recognize the world, as Giulio Carlo Argan argued.12 It is the artist’s mind that relates his experiences to the work of art, establishing a union between reality and the work of art that is mediated by the artist’s personality that manages to cover the never-ending metamorphosis that is reality, as Argan defined it,13 into the process that the work of art becomes. The reader, however, must not take existence as a complete, unified whole; rather, it is fragmentary, dissociated and enigmatic.14 It is through creation that the artist learns to recognize the world since he makes it visible. For the artist to make the world visible, he must be in a mood in which he is not a rational being any longer. This mood is what Argan called the point of prefiguration15 – i.e., a state in which the unconscious prevails over the conscious. In this state, the artist can perceive the nascent forms of art. At this point, the question of the meaning of form, matter and function becomes fundamental for the artist since the abstraction out of which the work of art emerges is a matter of pictorial relations.

Wallace Stevens and Klee On May 4, 1948, Stevens wrote to José Rodríguez Feo: “As you know, I pay just as much attention to painters as I do to writers because, except technically, their problems are the same.”16 The quotation attests to the importance that Stevens gave to painting during his life. An art collector who was greatly impressed by the Exhibition of avant-garde European painting at the Armory in 1913, he saw in painting, and more in particular in the work of Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso or Tal-Coat, a path to express the demands of the new times, no doubt included in what he termed “the pressure of reality.”17 As Daniel R. Schwarz pointed out, Imagism and its stress on the visual influenced him in his preference for the visual arts.18 The issue of the relations between poetry and painting in Stevens’ work has been explored by a large number of critics. Stevens himself devoted an essay to this subject, “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting” delivered in 1951

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at the Museum of Modern Art. Following his exposition on the topic, Bonnie Costello wrote “Effects of an Analogy: Wallace Stevens and Painting”19 and “Stevens and Painting.”20 Alan Filreis and Daniel R. Schwarz dealt with abstract painting in Stevens’ poetry, and Joseph Riddel discussed the notion of decreation. Charles Altieri published his groundbreaking book Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism, in which he devoted a chapter to Stevens.21 More recently, Edward Ragg wrote Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction.22 They all acknowledge and explore the influence that modern painters from Cézanne to Picasso had over Stevens and the ways painting served him to write poetry. However, their analysis of Klee’s influence has, to my view, not been properly explored. In a letter he wrote to Paule Vidal in 1948, Stevens discussed Tal Coat and mentioned the metaphysical as a result of painting abstractly. This metaphysical painting is modern in a sense, according to Stevens, who then mentioned Klee for whom he had “the greatest liking.” Then he explained the sense of ‘modern painting’ for him: “The work of a man of intelligence sincerely seeking to satisfy the needs of his sensibility.”23 Klee was a modern painter who, through abstraction, conveyed a metaphysical painting. As Ragg argued, Stevens knew that painters such as Klee thought that abstraction was the pathway toward the spiritual domain.24 It is well-known that, etymologically, metaphysics refers to everything that goes beyond the physical, and in that primary sense as Aristotle used it, it is a branch of philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Klee’s painting may have been interpreted philosophically, as Walter Benjamin did in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Though there have been some attempts to link Benjamin’s angel of history with Stevens’ poetic angels, as Sarah Kennedy argued in her recent article “‘We Reason of These Things with Later Reason’: Plain Sense and the Poetics of Relief in Eliot and Stevens,”25 I have serious doubts that Stevens had in mind Benjamin’s philosophy, which he probably did not know or knew only too superficially. Rather, Stevens may have thought of metaphysical in a different sense: as related to Simone Weil’s ‘decreation.’ Though not a philosopher properly speaking, Weil was the author of essays that comprised philosophical reflection of religious issues. In that sense, her use of decreation, which has a religious sense, was interpreted by Stevens as a poetic concept: “Decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness,” as he wrote in “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting.”26 To pass from the created to the uncreated is to pass from reality to abstraction in the first step of creation in which nothingness stands as prerequisite of poetic creation. Decreation helped Stevens to abstract reality or, as Lindroth wrote, to “strip created reality of all illusions.”27 This reduction of reality to its essential elements implies an abstraction that attracts the poet towards the noumenal – the being such as it is – while at the same time, it is a shift toward the spiritual reality of what has not been yet created.28 Thus Stevens associated decreation with abstraction in the sense that it permits to make visible facets of reality that had not been visible until that moment.

‘Make Visible’ 165 Before ending the essay with his notion of decreation, Stevens wrote about the essence of modern painting and of modern poetry, as well as the effect that modern painting creates in the museums. His time was a time of search for a supreme truth through reality – a truth that may be a supreme fiction. For Stevens, modern poetry, as well a modern painting, was a substitute for religion,29 as Stevens wrote, In an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost.30 It makes sense that Stevens wrote, almost at the end of the essay, “The pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance.”31 He mentioned immediately Klee to conclude that Klee had “helped to create a new reality, a modern reality, since what has been created is nothing less.”32 Klee’s search for a new reality is associated with the supreme fiction and with Stevens’ understanding of Weil’s decreative impulse. This drive toward abstraction creates a reality that is spiritual in the sense that it sheds new light on factual reality. The “prodigious search of appearance” reveals the manifold possibilities abstraction offers to make visible a new reality. In this sense rather than a teleologically created reality by the poet, Stevens, following Klee’s ideas exposed in “Creative Credo,” suggested the possibility of a creation that is an exploration of the unknown. As I have argued in “The First Stage of the Creative Process in the Work of Wallace Stevens and José Ángel Valente,” decreation is a movement toward the moment previous to the poetic creation. The poet recedes toward a stage in which nothingness is the only essence of poetry.33 This nothingness is the absolute genesis of the poem. In this mood of nothingness, which is a mystical mood, the poem is not a result but a process that reveals itself and reveals a reality that is not yet visible. In a similar fashion, Ragg took Delmore Schwartz’s contention that Stevens’ poetry is concerned with “how one saw that poetry and how such verse actuates readerly vision” to argue that Stevensian poetry is abstract because it invokes “the ‘in-visible.’”34 This ‘in-visible’ is not what cannot be seen but what has not yet been seen and art makes visible. In “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” Stevens argued that abstraction is not only of reality but also of the poet: “His own measure as a poet . . . is the measure of his power to abstract himself, and to withdraw with him into his abstraction the reality on which the lovers of truth insist.”35 The abstraction of the poet is the process that strips the poet of all his particularities. At first sight, there is a contradiction between this abstraction and what he wrote at the end of “The Idea of Order at Key West”: “Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,/ And of ourselves and of our origins,/ In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.”36 This speech of the place can only be apprehended in those ‘ghostlier demarcations,’ a domain that is connected to decreation, as Pearce argued when he wrote that decreation is “living by learning the speech of the

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place, itself uncreated, just perdurably there.”37 There is something unmistakably American in Stevens’ work that surfaces in his poetry from time to time to remind us that he was concerned with the possibilities of American art, as Buelens and Eeckhout pointed out in their article on James’ and Stevens’ artistic Americanness.38 The association of decreation with the uncreated speech of the place, in Pearce’s words, is one of those occurrences. The contradiction disappears when the reader thinks of the ‘ghostlier demarcations’ as the decreative moment in which the poet stands in a mood of nothingness to reveal the not yet seen reality that is American. Thus Stevens’ idea of creation is not dependent on the Romantic notion of originality but on the revelation of the reality that surrounds the poet. As he put it in “Of Modern Poetry,” “It has not always had/ To find: the scene was set; it repeated what/ Was in the script.”39 Decreation is a revelation in Stevens’ poetics, or as he wrote, “poetry is a revelation in words by means of words,”40 a revelation that is meant to make reality visible and that has to work against the pressure of reality, as Stevens asserted in “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,”41 and that is brought about by “the angel of reality . . ./ the necessary angel of earth” as he wrote in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans.”42

Valente and Klee José Ángel Valente wrote extensively on painting and sculpture. He collected a large number of articles and some interviews in Elogio del calígrafo, to which other newspaper articles and lectures not collected until 2008 have to be added. He also produced poems based on Tàpies’ work. Mayhew argued for the similarities that Valente found in Tàpies paintings, while López de Castro stated that Tàpies was a late discovery in Valente’s career that took the form of a recognition.43 Valente was very fond of Luis Cernuda, whom he regarded as one of his models at a very early stage in his career. In his essay “Luis Cernuda y la poesía de la meditación” [Luis Cernuda and the Poetry of Meditation], first published in 1962 and collected in Las palabras de la tribu [The Words of the Tribe] in 1971, he quoted a sentence that Cernuda had included in “Historial de un libro” [History of a Book], his biographia literaria: “No me buscarías si no me hubieras encontrado” [You would not search for me if you had not found me].44 The sentence suggests a movement toward a self-discovery in the work of the others – i.e., a recognition of something that has been latent for some time. Guillermo Aguirre stands very close to my argument since he analyzed Valente’s use of form, among which he included the colors and related some of the uses to Klee’s theorization.45 Aguirre linked the form with the sacredness – a notion that I will use in my argument since it is my contention that sacredness is related to the revelation Valente proposed in his poetics. Similarly, though the concern with sacredness is absent, Julian Palley analyzed the figure of the angel in Valente’s poetry, alongside the figure of Lazarus.46 Alejandro Piña

‘Make Visible’ 167 examined Klee’s angel in Valente’s No amanece el cantor [The singer does not rise] (1992), an analysis that established the moment when Valente concentrated on the figure of the angel in his poetry; however, he did not mention the appearance of Klee’s angel in Valente’s essays and its role in his poetics.47 Margaret Persin’s concept of trans-textuality is also related to Valente’s interpretation of the angel.48 However, an analysis that takes into account the results of her investigation would lead me far from the main objective of this chapter – i.e., the discussion of Klee’s dictum ‘make it visible’ in Valente’s essays. It is my thesis that Valente regarded Paul Klee’s work as another instance of recognition. In an interview of 1988, Valente asserted that Klee had been a deep influence in his poetry.49 Klee’s work does not appear in Valente’s essays until Elogio del calígrafo; however, Valente had already quoted Walter Benjamin in his early essays. Benjamin bought Klee’s “Angelus Novus” and used the angel as a powerful symbol in the ninth thesis of his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Valente’s interpretation of these theses, and in particular of the ninth thesis, is part of a larger design on poetics. In 1969, Valente published “Literatura e ideología. Un ejemplo de Bertold Brecht” [Literature and Ideology: An Example of Bertold Brecht], later collected in Las palabras de la tribu, in which he discussed poetry as communication and poetry as a means to acquire knowledge. He first used Brecht’s verse to argue for a poetry that, following P. B. Shelley’s example, reveals the new relations between things and people.50 Valente also referred to Theodor Adorno’s ideas on poetry, in particular to “Discurso sobre lírica y sociedad” [Discourse on Lyric and Society]. Adorno argued that the masterworks are regarded as such because they reveal what ideology hides, as Valente discussed.51 Poetry is the manifestation of what is hidden.52 As such, poetry is a means to access reality. It is an invention or a discovery of the hidden work of art since it operates in the realm of experienced reality that is not yet known.53 In this essay, Valente already framed a core idea of his poetics – i.e., the importance of poetry to reveal a part of the experience that had been veiled until then. Since the very beginning of his career, Valente was concerned with poetry as an act of revelation. The ideas that he expounded in “Literatura y comunicación” [Literature and Communication] are a first, albeit mature, approach to this idea that only later in his career would be matched with Klee’s dictum. Quite curiously, Benjamin plays what at first sight seems a minor role in this essay. Valente brought up the German philosopher to attack politicized literature in the discussion of Benjamin’s notions of politicized literature and aestheticized politics in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility” (1935). This opposition allows Valente to criticize political literature as an exponent of a kind of literature that is merely instrumental to ideology. This political literature invalidates the margin of indeterminacy that is present in poetry, according to Valente, what he called “el margen sobreintencional del conocimiento poético” [The overintentional margin of poetic knowledge].54 This was not the first time that Valente mentioned Benjamin. In another essay, also collected in Las palabras, “El sueño creador” [The Creative Dream], originally published

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in 1966, Valente alluded to Benjamin in his review essay of María Zambrano’s essays España, sueño y verdad [Spain, Dream and Truth] and El sueño creador. Zambrano was a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, who developed a philosophical system based on existentialism and phenomenology, which brought her close to Martin Heidegger’s philosophical ideas. In the review, Valente discussed the sacredness of profane texts that become part of the long chain of myths. The process of turning a profane text into sacred text is parallel to Benjamin’s similar process, which, in this case, starts with the Kabala.55 Benjamin and Zambrano are associated in another essay: “Del conocimiento pasivo o saber de quietud” [On Passive Knowledge or the Knowledge of Stillness], originally published in 1978 and then collected in La experiencia abisal [Abyssal Experience] (2004). Once again, Valente dealt with the sacredness of the profane text and added a new idea, the blurring of the limits between literature and philosophy as a means to justify Zambrano’s philosophical essays as fully literary.56 This sacredness is also linked to Benjamin’s concept of aura. In an interview that he held with Tàpies in 1995 and was collected in Elogio del calígrafo,57 he remembered a summer course in which he talked about Benjamin and read his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility.” The loss of the aura seems to be one of the main characteristics of modern works of art. Valente went against the grain to argue that the work of art has achieved a larger auratic space. As soon as the work of art is deprived of any instrumental function, it becomes auratic and, to a certain sense, sacred because it reveals a region of experience that remained veiled. There is a line of thought that links these uses of Benjamin’s philosophy in Valente’s poetics. The sacredness is an integral constituent of what Valente himself called the margin of indeterminacy of poetry. As such, the knowledge that comes from poetry is associated with the sacredness, provided we do not limit the term to any religious manifestation. The auratic work of art is sacred because it reveals an experience previously hidden. In this sense, the work of art is a way to acquire a kind of knowledge about reality that is based on experience. As such, poetry becomes a means to know about the world that surrounds the poet. By disclosing his experience, the poet himself reveals a part of reality that had been disguised until that moment. This type of knowledge is hugely similar to the ecstatic knowledge of mystics, as Valente would assert in La piedra y el centro [The Stone and the Center], originally published in 1982.58 In 1987, he gave a talk that he later published, entitled “Modernidad y postmodernidad: el ángel de la historia” [Modernity and Postmodernity: the Angel of History].59 The title itself refers to Benjamin’s Angelus Novus. The ninth thesis is a place of ‘querencia’ – i.e., a place in which the self is revealed. In Valente’s reading, this thesis is a dwelling place that is inhabited by an angel. As a consequence, the dwelling place gives way to the revelation. For Benjamin Klee, representation of the angel is the representation of his hidden self.60 The particularity of the angel is that it dissolves as soon as his objective is

‘Make Visible’ 169 achieved. As such, it is not the angel of the future but of the past toward which he looks.61 In a quite orthodox interpretation, Valente regarded the angel of the ninth thesis as the angel of oblivion and of those people who have been denied a voice. It represents the disruption of totality and progress. This is the turning point in Valente’s appreciation of Benjamin’s angel. In this talk, Valente showed that he was fully acquainted with the current interpretations of Klee’s angel in Benjamin’s philosophy. The year 1993 was when Valente engaged himself in a more personal discussion on the role of Benjamin’s angel. He mentioned again Benjamin’s ninth thesis to interpret the angel as the angel of history that goes against progress.62 In fact, it is not an innovative view since he simply paraphrased Benjamin’s thesis. However, that same year, he published the essay “Sobre la unidad simple” [On Simple Unity], later collected in Elogio del calígrafo, in which he mentioned Klee.63 Elogio del calígrafo is a book that compiles his essays on painting. The reference to calligraphy must be understood in terms of aesthetics. Oriental painting, equated to calligraphy, is the type of painting that Valente valued above the rest because of its reduction to the simplest expression and form and its indeterminacy on the canvas. The reduction of art to its simplest form, as interpreted by Valente, is effected by a process of retraction (retracción) – i.e., a movement toward the originary moment of art in which everything is yet possible since nothing has yet been revealed.64 This originary moment is also that in which the angel appears for the first time to make the world visible. Klee was regarded as a modern artist because he pondered about his works of art, and his writings have been instrumental in discovering new ways of considering the work of art.65 Valente became familiar with Klee’s aesthetics because he discussed Klee’s writings in greater depth, though he never alluded to these writings directly. For example, in “La pintura de José Manuel Broto” [José Manuel Broto’s Painting], published in 1997 and then collected in Elogio del calígrafo, Valente stated that painting is fundamentally a means to make visible what is invisible, as Klee pointed out, “El arte . . . es fundamentalmente un medio de hacer visible lo invisible. Klee precisó con extrema claridad esa función de la pintura” [Art is . . . primarily a medium to make visible what is invisible. Klee defined clearly that function of painting.]66 The determination to make visible what is invisible must be contextualized in Valente’s poetics. As I indicated earlier, the knowledge that poetry – or in general any artistic work – provides is a knowledge that reveals what had been hidden until that moment. Making it visible is, first of all, a reflection that Klee elaborated on in a theoretical piece of writing, which Valente never mentioned but which functions as a meditation on Klee’s work and as a commentary on modern art. This revelation is achieved in a work of art that shares a central characteristic of Oriental art – i.e., the void. In the void, the artist and the reader may exercise their contemplative powers. The canvas is not the surface on which the painter places the result. Instead, it is the arena where the artistic process is performed, as I argued in “Ekphrasis in American Poetry: Wallace Stevens, Harold Rosenberg and Action Painting.”67 In one of his later writings on painting, “Sobre la invisibilidad de lo

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invisible” [On the Invisibility of the Invisible], Valente wondered how to paint the act of not seeing and how to talk of images from the void of the sight.68 Not seeing has a secret nature, as he asserted, it is an act of tentativeness in which everything is a discovery.69 The creative act is an act of discovery; in fact, it is making visible what is invisible. Klee wrote “Creative Credo” to expound his aesthetic ideas at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the second half of the century, Stevens and Valente found Klee’s writings inspiring enough to adopt the idea of revelation as a central tenet of their poetics. While Stevens scarcely mentioned Klee and adapted the painter’s idea of making visible to his notion of decreation, Valente showed a wider knowledge of Klee’s aesthetics, much mediated by Benjamin’s interpretation of Klee’s Angelus Novus, and developed during his career an understanding of Klee’s angel that is more nuanced than Stevens’s.

Notes 1. Edward Ragg, Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 211-ff. 2. Michael Riffaterre, “L’illusion d’ekphrasis,” in La Pensée de l’image: Signification et figuration dans le texte et dans la peinture (Vincenne: PUV, 1994), 211–229. 3. Bernadette Fort, “Ekphrasis and Art Criticism: Diderot and Fragonard’s ‘Coresus and Callirhoe,’” in Icons – Texts – Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality, ed. Peter Wagner (Berlin: Walter de Gruyte, 1996), 62. 4. Paul Klee, The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I. The Thinking Eye, ed. Jürg Spiller and trans. Ralph Manheim (San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013), 76. 5. Otto Karl Werckmeister, The Making of Paul Klee’s Career 1914–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 3. 6. Klee, Notebooks, 76. 7. Werckmeister, The Making, 210. 8. Klee, Notebooks, 76. 9. Ibid., 78. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 80. 12. Giulio Carlo Argan, “Preface” to The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I. The Thinking Eye, ed. Jürg Spiller and trans. Ralph Manheim (San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013), 13. 13. Ibid., 14. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 16. 16. Wallace Stevens, Letters of Wallace Stevens, selected and ed. Holly Stevens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 593. 17. Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, eds. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson (New York: The Library of America, 1997), 650. 18. Daniel R. Schwarz, “‘The Serenade of a Man Who Plays a Blue Guitar’: The Presence of Modern Painting in Stevens’s Poetry,” The Journal of Narrative Technique 22, no. 2 (1992): 70. 19. Bonnie Costello, “Effects of an Analogy: Wallace Stevens and Painting,” in Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, ed. Albert Gelpi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 65–85. 20. Bonnie Costello, “Stevens and Painting,” in The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens, ed. John N. Serio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 164–179.

‘Make Visible’ 171 21. Alan Filreis, “‘Beyond the Rhetorician’s Touch’: Stevens’s Painterly Abstraction,” American Literary History 4, no. 2 (1992): 230–263; Schwarz, “Serenade of a Man,” 65–83; Joseph N. Riddel, “Interpreting Stevens: An Essay on Poetry and Thinking,” Boundary 2, no. 1 (1972): 79–97; Charles Altieri, Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 22. Ragg, Aesthetics of Abstraction. 23. Stevens, Letters, 595. 24. Ragg, Aestehtics of Abstraction, 212. 25. Sarah Kennedy, “‘We Reason of these Things with Later Reason’: Plain Sense and the Poetics of Relief in Eliot and Stevens,” The Wallace Stevens Journal 42, no. 1 (2018): 99–116. 26. Stevens, Collected Poetry, 750. 27. James Lindroth, “Simone Weil and Wallace Stevens: The Notion of Decreation as Subtext in ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,’” Religion and Literature 19, no. 1 (1987): 45. 28. Ibid., 45. 29. For a more in-depth exploration of the topic, see Milton J. Bates’s chapter “Stevens and the Supreme Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens, 48–61. 30. Stevens, Collected Poetry, 748. 31. Ibid., 750. 32. Ibid. 33. Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, “The First Stage of the Creative Process in the Work of Wallace Stevens and José Ángel Valente: ‘Notes on a Supreme Fiction’ and ‘Cinco Fragmentos Para Antoni Tàpies,’” Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 16 (2012): 109–111. 34. Ragg, Aesthetics of Abstraction, 19. 35. Stevens, Collected Poetry, 657. 36. Ibid., 106. 37. Roy Harvey Pearce, “Toward Decreation: Stevens and the ‘Theory of Poetry’,” in Wallace Stevens: A Celebration, eds. Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 288. 38. Gert Buelens and Bart Eeckhout, “Always a Potent and an Impotent Romantic: Stylistic Enactments of Desire in Henry James’s the Ambassadors and Wallace Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of the Jar,’” The Wallace Stevens Journal 34, no. 1 (2010): 37–63. 39. Stevens, Collected Poetry, 218. 40. Ibid., 663. 41. Ibid., 656. 42. Ibid., 423. 43. Jonathan Mayhew, “Valente/ Tàpies: The Poetics of Materiality,” Anales de la literatura española contemporánea 22, nos. 1–2 (1997): 92; Armando López Castro, “Tàpies y Valente: Hacia una visión de la materia interiorizada,” in José Ángel Valente, ed. Claudio Rodríguez Fer (Madrid: Taurus, 1992), 295. 44. José Ángel Valente, Ensayos, ed. Andrés Sánchez Robayna (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg; Círculo de Lectores, 2008), 134. 45. Guillermo Aguirre Martínez, “Forma y abstracción en la poesía de José Ángel Valente,” RILCE 32, no. 1 (2016): 5–31. 46. Julian Palley, “The Angel and the Self in the Poetry of José Ángel Valente,” Hispanic Review 55, no. 1 (1987): 59–76. 47. Alejandro Piña, “La mirada de un poema: Paul Klee en No amanece el cantor de José Ángel Valente,” 1616: Anuario de Literatura Comparada 6 (2016): 255–263. 48. Margaret Persin, “José Ángel Valente’s Blindness and Insight: Rewriting as Discovery,” Hispania 90, no. 3 (2007): 431–442.

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49. Valente, “El ángel de la creación,” in El ángel de la creación, ed. Andrés Sánchez Robayna (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2018), 355. 50. Valente, Ensayos, 55. 51. Ibid., 55. 52. Ibid., 56. 53. Ibid., 58–59. 54. Ibid., 62. 55. Ibid., 212–220. 56. Ibid., 603–607. 57. Ibid., 535–543. 58. Ibid., 267–364. 59. Ibid., 1355–1361. 60. Ibid., 1358. 61. Ibid., 1360. 62. Ibid., 679. 63. Ibid., 498–502. 64. Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, “First Stage,” 113. 65. Valente, Ensayos, 500. 66. Ibid., 582. 67. Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, “Ekphrasis in American Poetry: Wallace Stevens, Harold Rosenberg and Action Painting,” in Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century, ed. Sandra Lee Kleppe (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 81–99. 68. Valente, Ensayos, 1611. 69. Ibid.

Bibliography Aguirre Martínez, Guillermo. “Forma y abstracción en la poesía de José Ángel Valente.” RILCE 32, no. 1 (2016): 5–31. Altieri, Charles. Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Argan, Giulio Carlo. “Preface” to The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I: The Thinking Eye, edited by Jürg Spiller and translated by Ralph Manheim, 11–18. San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013. Bates, Milton J. “Stevens and the Supreme Fiction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens, edited by John N. Serio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Buelens, Gert, and Bart Eeckhout. “Always a Potent and an Impotent Romantic: Stylistic Enactments of Desire in Henry James’s The Ambassadors and Wallace Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of the Jar’.” The Wallace Stevens Journal 34, no. 1 (2010): 37–63. Costello, Bonnie. “Effects of an Analogy: Wallace Stevens and painting.” In Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, edited by Albert Gelpi. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. ———. “Stevens and Painting.” In The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens, edited by John N. Serio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Filreis, Alan. “‘Beyond the Rhetorician’s Touch’: Stevens’s Painterly Abstraction.” American Literary History 4, no. 2 (1992): 230–263. Fort, Bernadette. “Ekphrasis and Art Criticism: Diderot and Fragonard’s ‘Coresus and Callirhoe’.” In Icons – Texts – Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality, edited by Peter Wagner. Berlin: Walter de Gruyte, 1996.

‘Make Visible’ 173 Kennedy, Sarah. “‘We Reason of These Things with Later Reason’: Plain Sense and the Poetics of Relief in Eliot and Stevens.” The Wallace Stevens Journal 42, no. 1 (2018): 99–116. Klee, Paul. The Notebooks of Paul Klee. Volume I: The Thinking Eye. Edited by Jürg Spiller and translated by Ralph Manheim. San Francisco: Wittenborn Art Books, 2013. Lindroth, James. “Simone Weil and Wallace Stevens: The Notion of Decreation as Subtext in ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’.” Religion and Literature 19, no. 1 (1987): 43–62. López Castro, Armando. “Tàpies y Valente: Hacia una visión de la materia interiorizada.” In José Ángel Valente, edited by Claudio Rodríguez Fer. Madrid: Taurus, 1992. Mayhew, Jonathan. “Valente/ Tàpies: The Poetics of Materiality.” Anales de la literatura española contemporánea 22, nos. 1–2 (1997): 91–103. Palley, Julian. “The Angel and the Self in the Poetry of José Ángel Valente.” Hispanic Review 55, no. 1 (1987): 59–76. Pearce, Roy Harvey. “Toward Decreation: Stevens and the ‘Theory of Poetry’.” In Wallace Stevens: A Celebration, edited by Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Persin, Margaret. “José Ángel Valente’s Blindness and Insight: Rewriting as Discovery.” Hispania 90, no. 3 (2007): 431–442. Piña, Alejandro. “La mirada de un poema: Paul Klee en No amanece el cantor de José Ángel Valente.” 1616: Anuario de Literatura Comparada 6 (2016): 255–263. Ragg, Edward. Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Riddel, Joseph N. “Interpreting Stevens: An Essay on Poetry and Thinking.” Boundary 2, no. 1 (1972): 79–97. Riffaterre, Michael. “L’illusion d’ekphrasis.” In La Pensée de l’image: Signification et figuration dans le texte et dans la peinture. Vincenne: PUV, 1994. Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, Santiago. “The First Stage of the Creative Process in the Work of Wallace Stevens and José Ángel Valente: ‘Notes on a Supreme Fiction’ and ‘Cinco Fragmentos Para Antoni Tàpies’.” Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 16 (2012): 107–123. ———. “Ekphrasis in American Poetry: Wallace Stevens, Harold Rosenberg and Action Painting.” In Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century, edited by Sandra Lee Kleppe. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015: 81–99. Schwarz, Daniel R. “‘The Serenade of a Man Who Plays a Blue Guitar’: The Presence of Modern Painting in Stevens’s Poetry.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 22, no. 2 (1992): 65–83. Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Selected and edited by Holly Stevens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ———. Collected Poetry and Prose. Edited by Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: The Library of America, 1997. Valente, José Ángel. Ensayos. Edited by Andrés Sánchez Robayna. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg; Círculo de Lectores, 2008. ———. “El ángel de la creación.” In El ángel de la creación, edited by Andrés Sánchez Robayna. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2018. Werckmeister, Otto Karl. The Making of Paul Klee’s Career 1914–1920. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Index

Page numbers in italic indicate a figure on the corresponding page. abstraction 102, 164, 165 Achilles’ tomb 17 Ackermann, Rudolph 145, 146 aesthetic education 4, 52–53, 55–57 aesthetics 2; Burkean 55, 62; and gender 51–52 Alberti, Leon Battista 3, 34 allegory/allegorical images 11–12, 100, 108; in Don Quixote 13–19, 28 angel/angels 57, 161, 164, 166–167, 168–169 “Angelus Novus” 161, 167, 168, 170 arrow 23, 25, 28 art and literature, confluence of 3; dialogue between 1–2; paragonal relationship between 2 “Assignation, The” 100–101 aura 168 basin 13–14, 15, 23 Beaumont, Sir George 79, 82–85, 88 beauty/beautiful 38, 51–52, 57, 94, 95, 101; picturesque 96, 97 Benjamin, Walter 164, 167–168 bird of paradise 80–81 Blair, Robert 145, 146, 150 Blake, William 5, 145, 146, 149 blushing 52, 59 “Brigand and His Wife, The” 57, 59 British East India Company 67 Burkean aesthetics 55, 62 butterfly books 53, 62 Byron 146, 148, 154 caricatures (literary) 119–125 Cernuda, Luis 166

Cervantes, Miguel de 3, 11, 19, 28, 33; art of painting in 38–41; see also Don Quixote Cervantes Project 30 Church, Frederic Edwin 97 Comedy (allegory) 26 comic satire 113 compasses 21 conduct book 52 cornucopias 21 Coypel, Charles-Antoine 12–15, 19–20 crane 25 “Creative Credo” 162, 163, 165, 170 critical ekphrasis 161 crown 21, 23 Cupid 15, 17, 19, 57 curiosity 2–3 “Daniel in the Lions’ Den, at Hamilton Palace” 86–87 da Vinci, Leonardo 3, 34 dark humor 113–114 Death of the Just Man, The 154 decreation 164–166 de Mora, José Joaquin 5, 145, 146, 148–156; first London period 148–149; poetic personae 148; see also Meditaciones poéticas Deus Pictor 104 dialogue 3, 4, 5, 6 Discretion (allegory) 20–21 “Domain of Arnheim, The” 94, 96, 99 Don Juan 154 Don Quixote 11–12, 28, 38–39; allegory of Folly 12, 13–15, 17, 19, 22–23, 25, 28, allegory of Love 11, 15, 17, 19 allegory

Index of Prudence 21, 22–23, 25 emblems in 12–17, 23; and Phaeton’s myth 12 Dulcinea 13, 15, 17, 19 Eastlake, Sir Charles Lock 57, 59 Eden, Emily 4, 66–67, 69–71, 73–75; letters from India 73; sketches 66, 73, 74; Up the Country 66, 73 ekphrasis 1–2, 3, 6n3, 6n5, 101; and Cervantes 40; concepts intertwined with 5; critical 161; and Hemans 54; meanings of 79; and Mora 146; notional 80, 83; and Poe 93–94, 96, 97–100, 101, 103, 104, 108; and Shakespeare 35, 37; and Wordsworth 79–88 “Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Crisis of Romanticism” 84 “ekphrastic fear” 6n5, 84, 87 “ekphrastic hope” 6n5, 84, 87 ekpledzis 93, 102 ekplexis 5 “Eleonora” 97–99 “Elk, The” 97, 99 Elogio del calígrafo 161, 166, 167, 168, 169 emblems: emblematical tradition 11; in Don Quixote 12–17, 19, 23, 28 enargeia 3, 5; in Poe’s works 94, 96, 97, 102, 108 enlightenment 130, 134, 135, 138, 149 eternidad y el espacio, La 151 Eternity and Space 150, 152–153 Evening Prayer 54, 55 “Evening Prayer at a Girl’s School” 54 eyes 130 “Fall of the House of Usher, The” 102 Fame 17 Faun 28 Ferdinand VII 148, 154, 156 figurative abstraction 102 fixative capacity of painting 79, 83, 84, 86, 88 Folly (allegory) 12, 13, 14, 19, 28; defeated by Prudence 22–23, 25; and Love 15, 17 Foolishness 14, 25 Forget-Me-Not, The 53, 54 framing 74 freaks 119–122, 123, 124 Friendship’s Offering 57; inscription plate 58 Fuseli, Henry 102

175

gaze/gazing 52, 54 genius 56–57, 62 gift-book 52–54, 57, 60, 62 “Good Country People” 122–125 Good Lineage 20, 21 Grave, The 146 grotesque 101, 113, 114, 119–123, 125, 125–126n2 Guide to the Lakes, The 80, 81, 84, 88 Hamlet 37 helmet 23 Hemans, Felicia 4, 54–57, 62; “Brigand and His Wife, The” 57, 59–60; “Mother and Child, The” 60 House Made of Dawn 129; Abel 129–131, 132–134, 136–137, 138–140; Angela 130–131, 133, 138–139; broken glass 136–137, 141n45; Catholicism 135, 136, 137; Cochiti Corn Dance 138; ekphrastic writing 137, 141n48; enlightenment 130, 134, 135, 138; Father Nicolás 131–132, 137, 139; Father Olguin 133, 135, 137, 139; Fragua 136, 139; Francisco 131, 133, 136, 137–138; gaps/silences 134, 141n30; good and evil 136; kiva darkness 138–139; light 129, 130, 131, 132, 135; Martinez 136, 139; oil lamp 139; sight/sound/movement 130, 139, 140; Tosamah 135, 137; watching 130–133; windows/glass 132–134 humanism 3, 11 Iconologia 15, 21 idealization 94–95 imagination 5, 51, 60, 80, 81, 83, 102–103, 131–132 imitation 35, 37, 38, 39; of Nature 94; see also mimesis India 66–67, 69–71, 73–75 “inward eye” 2, 5, 66, 81 Italian Renaissance 33, 36 “juicio, El” 154–156 Kantian aesthetics 55, 62 Klee, Paul 6, 161, 162–163; and José Ángel Valente 166–170; and Wallace Stevens 163–166 knight-errantry 25, 26 Knight of the Lions 15

176

Index

“La eternidad y el espacio” 150, 152–153 lamp 20–21 “Landor’s Cottage” 97, 99 landscape 66, 83, 88, 93, 94 landscape-garden 95, 96, 99 “Landscape Garden, The” 94–95, 96, 100 Liberality (allegory) 21–22 “Life in Death” 104–105 “Life You Save May Be Your Own, The” 120–121 light 129, 130, 131, 132, 135 “Lines Suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone” 86, 87 literary annual 53, 60, 62 Literary Souvenir, The 60 Lorrain, Claude 95, 96, 99, 100, 108 Love (allegory) 15, 17, 19 madness 14, 15, 17, 28 Madness (allegory) 17, 27, 28; and Love 15, 19 Marchesa Aphrodite 100, 101 Meditaciones poéticas 145–146, 148, 149–150; “eternidad y el espacio, La” 150, 152–153; “juicio, El” 154, 156; “muerte del justo, La” 154; political expression in 154–156; “separación, La ” 153–154; “Valle de la Muerte, El” 153 memsahib 67, 69 metaphysical painting 164 metempsychosis 103 “Metzengerstein” 103–104 Metzengerstein 105, 106 mimesis 88, 93, 94, 101, 103; see also imitation Minerva 23, 25–26, 60 mirror 25, 26 Momaday, N. Scott 5, 129–132, 134–135, 136, 137 Mora see de Mora, José Joaquin “Morning on the Wissahiccon” 97 Mother and Child, The 61 “Mother and Child, The” 60, 62 “muerte del justo, La” 154 Nature 94–95, 96, 98, 100 Necessary Angel, The 161, 162 Nobility (allegory) 20, 21 “Noble Rider and the Sound of Words, The” 165, 166 nothingness 164, 165 notional ekphrasis 80, 83

O’Connor, Flannery 5, 113, 114, 125; caricatures in short narrative 119–125; engravings 114–116, 117, 118, 119 On the Sublime 5, 102 Orient/Orientalism 68–69, 74, 75 Other 4, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74 otus 14–15 Oval Portrait, The 107 “Oval Portrait, The” 104, 105 Pallas Athena 20, 21, 23, 25, 60 paragone of arts 33, 37, 94, 95, 103 parody 39, 125–126n2 “Peele Castle” 81, 82–83, 84 Persiles 40–41 Phaeton 13 picturesque 66–67, 73–74, 96, 97 piety 54, 62 Poe, Edgar Allan 4–5; 93; “Assignation, The” 100–101; definition of art 94; and ekphrasis 93–94, 96, 97–99, 100, 103, 104, 108; “Fall of the House of Usher, The” 102–103; “Landscape Garden, The” 94–95, 96, 100; “Life in Death” 104–105; “Metzengerstein” 103–104 poetry 103; ekphrastic 79–88; of Felicia Hemans 54–55, 57, 59–60; and painting 3–4, 34, 37, 41, 130, 161–162, 163–164; satirical 28; Wordsworth’s 79–88 Poetry (allegory) 19 point of prefiguration 163 Portraits of the Princes & People of India 71, 72, 73 Poussin, Nicolas 96, 99, 100 Prayer Journal, A 116 Prudence (allegory) 21, 22–23, 25, 26 putti 57 reason/Reason 12, 25 Recklessness 12 “Relations Between Poetry and Painting, The” 161, 163–164 remora 23, 25 Renaissance 3, 4, 38 revelation 6, 166, 167, 168, 170 Ripa, Cesare 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28 Romantic aesthetics 1–2 Romanticism 17, 85, 88, 149 Rosa, Salvator 99–100 sacredness 166, 168 Satire (allegory) 28

Index Satirical Poetry 28 satyr 17, 28 “separación, La” 153–154 “Separation, The” 153–154 Shakespeare, William 4, 33; art of painting in 35–37 Shelley, Percy 146, 148, 154 shining temple 17 sight/sound/movement 130, 139, 140 sister arts 4, 41, 94, 102, 108 sketching 73–74 sonnets 3, 37, 41, 85–86, 88 Southern Gothic literature 113–114 southern humor 113 southwestern humor 113 Spain 146, 148, 154 Spanish Golden Age 3–4, 35, 38 Stanfield, Clarkson Frederick 96, 108 Stanfield, William Clarkson 99 Stevens, Wallace 6, 161, 162; and José Ángel Valente 166–170; Paul Klee 163–166 Stricken Twins 130, 140n4 Stultitia 12, 25 sublime 51–52; and genius 56 sword 23 Sylvan god 28 “Tale of the Ragged Mountains, A” 97 Taming of the Shrew, The 36 tapestry 103–104 “Targets Are Where You Find ‘Em!” 114, 115 “Temple of the Holy Ghost, A” 119, 121–122 text and image, relationship between 1–2, 54 Timon of Athens 37 tomb 17 Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Los 40–41 Tragedy of Numancia 11 True Womanhood 54 Truth (allegory) 25, 26, 27, 28

177

“Upon Seeing a Coloured Drawing of the Bird of Paradise in an Album” 80–81 “Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont” 84–85 Up the Country 66, 73 ut pictura poesis 3, 4, 33, 38; biased interpretations in Spain and England 34–35; and Cervantes 38–41; and Poe 94; and Shakespeare 35–37 Valente, José Ángel 6, 161, 162; criticism of political literature 167; and Paul Klee 166–170 “Valle de la Muerte, El” 153 “Valley of Death, The” 153 Valour (allegory) 19, 20, 21 Vasari, Giorgio 3, 34 Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time 15 “Visionary, The” 100 void 6, 169–170 watch/watching 130–133 Wealth (allegory) 19, 21 White, Joseph Blanco 145, 148 windows/glass 132–134 Wisdom (allegory) 20, 22–23 Women Travellers in Colonial India 74 Wordsworth, William 4, 57, 79–88; Guide to the Lakes, The 80, 81, 84, 88; and Sir George Beaumont 79, 82, 84–85, 88; “Upon Seeing a Coloured Drawing of the Bird of Paradise in an Album” 80–81; Yarrow Revisited 85–86, 88 “Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility, The” 167, 168 Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems 85–86, 88 Young Ladies’ Class Book 55–56 Zambrano, María 168 Zeuxis 94, 95