Pangs of Love and Longing : Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature [1 ed.] 9781443869737, 9781443847636

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Pangs of Love and Longing

Pangs of Love and Longing: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature

Edited by

Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Anders Hallengren and Mats Malm

Pangs of Love and Longing: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature, Edited by Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Anders Hallengren and Mats Malm This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Anders Hallengren and Mats Malm and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4763-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4763-6

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Anders Hallengren and Mats Malm Conceptualizations of Desire The Configurations of Ancient Greek Desire ............................................ 16 Eva-Carin Gerö The Cauldron of Concupiscence................................................................ 26 Anders Hallengren The Trauma of a Hungry Heart: Augustine, Žižek, and (Pre)Modern Desire......................................................................................................... 41 Ola Sigurdson “A Movement of the Spirit Never Resting”: Aspects of Desire in Dante’s Comedy .................................................................................... 60 Anders Cullhed “Thorn in the flesh”: Pain and Poetry in Petrarch’s Secretum ................... 74 Unn Falkeid Discourses of Desire The Division of Love and Feminine Desire: Christine de Pizan and Marguerite de Navarre ........................................................................ 92 Carin Franzén Negotiations of Renaissance Desire ........................................................ 110 Johanna Vernqvist Divisive Desires in The Two Noble Kinsmen .......................................... 130 Marcus Nordlund

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Linguistic Desire and the Moral Iconography of Language in Early Modern England ........................................................................ 144 Mats Malm Sighs of Desire: Passionate Breathing in Medieval and Early Modern Literature ................................................................................................. 157 Kristiina Savin In Response to Charming Passions: Erotic Readings of a Byzantine Novel ....................................................................................................... 176 Ingela Nilsson Figures of Desire Desire in Hrotsvith’s Hagiographical Legends........................................ 204 Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed The Rhetoric of Desire in Ovid’s Amores 1.5 and some Medieval Texts from the Carmina Burana to Tirant lo Blanc ................................ 216 Ulf Malm Mastering Desires: Images of Love, Lust and Want in FourteenthCentury Vadstena .................................................................................... 235 Mia Åkestam Petrarch on Desire and Virtue.................................................................. 253 Erland Sellberg Erotic Desire, Spiritual Yearning, Narrative Drive: The Vida of St Teresa of Ávila................................................................................ 267 Sofie Kluge Sex and the Self: Simon Forman, Subjectivity and Erotic Dreams in Early Modern England ........................................................................ 281 Per Sivefors Contributors............................................................................................. 293 Index........................................................................................................ 296

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Savin Figure 1. Heinrich Müller, Himmelsk Kärleks-Kyss, Eller En Sann Christendoms Öfning, Härflytande af Guds Kärlek. Calmar, 1808. Figure 2. Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria. Antverpiae, 1676.

Nilsson Figure 1. Les amours d’Ismène & Isménias. Figure 2. Les amours d’Ismène & Isménias, 97. Figure 3. Première leçon d’amour, 127. Figure 4. Première leçon d’amour, 185.

Åkestam Figure 1. The Effects of Carnal Desire. Detail from murals illustrating Birgitta’s revelations, Book V. Knutby, Uppland (Sweden), c. 1500. Photo: Lennart Karlsson. Figure 2. Les trois/trez estaz de bones ames, (The three steps for the good soul), Illumination, La Sainte Abbaye, France, c. 1330. British Library MS Add. 39843, fol 29. © British Library. Figure 3. Herr Engelhardt von Adelnburg, illumination, 1304–1340. Codex Manesse (Cod. Pal. germ. 848), fol. 181v. © Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. Figure 4. Annunciation, detail from altarpiece, tempera on wood, Hohenfurt master, c. 1350. Originally from Vyssí Bród monastery, now in National Gallery, Prague. © National Gallery, Prague. Figure 5. Annunciation, detail from murals, Nun’s chapterhouse, Vadstena Abbey, Östergötland. 1384/90. Photo: Mia Åkestam. Figure 6. Annunciation, Linköping Cathedral, Östergötland. Altarfrontlet, c. 1400. Enbroidery with pearls, Cathedral museum, Linköping. Photo: Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm.

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Figure 7. Annunciation, winged altarpiece from Norra Fågelås, Västergötland, c. 1400. Originally from Vadstena, now in National Historical Museum, Stockholm. Photo: SHM, Stockholm.

INTRODUCTION ANDERS CULLHED, CARIN FRANZÉN, ANDERS HALLENGREN AND MATS MALM

A challenge for every critical analysis of the historical manifestations of human desire is the complex relation between psychic structures, social norms, and aesthetic representations. The anthology Pangs of Love and Longing: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature tries to provide a deeper understanding of this relation by an assessment of the linguistic and artistic configurations of desire in European literature, covering a broad time span up to the seventeenth century. Although we had to draw the non plus ultra line at about 1650, it is our hope that these inquiries into bygone attitudes towards sexuality, pleasures and illumination (mystical or metaphysical), as represented in a variety of cultural forms, might also give fresh perspectives on our present reality. In his classical work on Marguerite de Navarre, Lucien Febvre states that “a man from the sixteenth century must be understood not in relation to us, but to his contemporaries”. Inspired by such an assumption the authors of this volume attempt to trace or approach an alterity that tends to slip away from our modern horizon. Nevertheless, it is evident that knowledge about the history of desire and love might enrich our understanding of the present. Moreover, our interest in digging up the past is necessarily coloured by our own engagements, theoretical inclinations and fantasies. Consequently, another main conviction shared by the contributors to this volume would be that the modus operandi of history is constituted by continuities and discontinuities. On closer inspection, the theoretical framework of this volume provides a combination of aesthetic, historical, and genealogical approaches, to the effect that premodern configurations of love and desire are explored from diachronic as well as synchronic perspectives. Following this line of enquiry, the authors cover a rich gamut of symbolic, sensual, aesthetic and meta-aesthetic manifestations—or explorations—of desire, taking their common basis in the learned or popular culture of antiquity and the medieval and early modern periods into account. Typically, the writers and

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artists under scrutiny in this volume are studied against the backdrop of certain conflicting social norms and values characteristic of European civilization during these centuries, concerning reason and faith, tradition and innovation, decorum and individual expression, containment and subversion. The humanities in recent years have seen an increasing attention towards discourses of desire, eroticism, and the body, for example, in classical Greek, medieval French or Elizabethan culture. In the wake of New Historicism, past representations of the body and of corporeal expressions have to a wide extent been assessed in terms of constructions, transgressions, self-fashioning, and rhetorical manipulations. This methodology has been especially productive within gender studies, queer studies, and cultural studies—disciplines that are all relevant to several of the authors in this volume. Desire tends to conceptually breach the boundaries between representation, corporeality, love, eroticism, and the divine. Thus, the authors’ exploration of how desire was articulated in a variety of premodern texts and conceptions cuts through the whole encyclopaedia of disciplines such as theology, rhetoric, arts, music, medicine, and philosophy. Configurations of desire can be detected in theories of the human body, of power, and of politics, as well as in speculations on grammar (Alain de Lille’s allegorical work in verse and prose The Complaint of Nature from the late twelfth century is a famous example of the latter). Finally the authors of this anthology want to abrogate the view of desire, still underlying widespread popular conceptions of sexuality, as a universal or ahistorical phenomenon: desire is not a timeless or unchanging category but takes its shape from constraints imposed by political, religious, aesthetic, and economic discourses. However, while one of our main hypotheses is that all versions of desire depend heavily on their historical context, they should not be reduced to the mere outcome of institutional repression. In order to steer away from such simple paradigms of cause and effect, we propose to see these configurations of desire as intricately intertwined with various epistemological paradigms and power relations. Accordingly, a number of the following articles bracket the rather narrow, modern-day conception of desire as sexuality in favour of a manifold range of notions connected to human lack and longing for love or understanding, many of them with different or even opposite significations and functions. Premodern literary artefacts frequently articulate an ambiguous preoccupation with issues of passion and eroticism that we today tend to see in a more unequivocal way. As in literature, this multiplicity of perspectives is also evident on the stage, in liturgy or in the visual arts. That is why a

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broadly intermedial outlook has been of vital importance to our aims. Images were generally considered to have a more direct impact on the human sense than texts, and there was always a possibility—or risk—of unintended interpretations on the part of the audience. The texts, performances or works of art treated in this volume all display this ambivalence to a greater or lesser extent, most explicitly in their fundamental division of desire into two apparently opposite categories, one ennobling and one destructive or immoral. This Janus-faced configuration is observable, we argue, throughout the wide time span covered on the following pages. It ultimately derives from Plato’s Symposium, which distinguished between two goddesses of love (one heavenly, one common or vulgar) and was subsequently rephrased in Stoicism, Neoplatonism and, in another tenor, in Augustine’s promotion of divine love paired with his rejection of carnal desire, a mighty paradigm for Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. According to Augustine, bodily desires corrupt the rational human soul and prevent its liberation from the corporeal prison. During the High Middle Ages, on the other hand, the troubadours or Minnesänger would treat the philosophers’ vulgar love in terms of (sometimes ill-fated) unrestrained passion, or fol amour, while they transformed heavenly love into the polyvalent fin’amors, or bonus amor. Finally, the Renaissance treatises of love would update the Neoplatonic concepts amor divinus versus amor bestialis for their own purposes. Notwithstanding, the premodern configurations of desire explored in this book, while in many respects continuing this conspicuous mind-body dualism, simultaneously challenge and modify it, as testified by hagiography, the actual manipulations of fin’amors in romances of chivalry and troubadour lyrics, the suggestive representations of the animated body in Renaissance poetry, and the ambiguity of aesthetic or moral Baroque figurative language. To be sure, the general pattern we want to trace from ancient Greece to Golden Age Spain might seem intricate and labyrinthine but, hopefully, our readers will perceive a set of recurrent nodes and tropes along the way. Desire frequently introduces a breach in time, dividing it into a beforehand and an afterwards: “the desire for imaginary blessings often involves the loss of present blessings” (the old Greek story teller Aesop in his fable “The Kites and the Swans”, from the early sixth century BC). It is difficult to handle, and it tends to absorb its subject—or victim—in unforeseeable ways: “It is hard to fight against desire: whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul” (the old Greek philosopher Heraclitus, some hundred years later). Moreover, as desire frequently is generated out of a lack (or

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absence), it tends to cooperate with imagination, whereupon it frequently turns addictive and habit-forming, progressive even when hampered or shackled, as observed by Shakespeare in his comedy (or “problem play”) All’s Well That Ends Well, 5.3: “All impediments in fancy’s course / Are motives of more fancy”. The Spanish seventeenth-century moralist Baltasar Gracián conceptualized this insight along his own Baroque (metaphorical and paradoxical) lines: “The energy of desire promises more than the inertia of possession. The passion of desire increases with every increase of opposition” (The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 1647). Last but not least, to quite a few of the writers, philosophers, and artists analysed in this volume, desire constitutes a fundamental drive in life, and some of their works stand out as virtual “desire machines”, to borrow a label from the French twentieth-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Consequently, where there is no desire, the realm of death appears as an imminent reality. For all his lucid warnings against unbridled desire’s perilous ways with men, Gracián knew very well that they are inevitable, because they provide a rather dreary or desolate existence with meaning or at least an illusion of content: “If there is nothing left to desire, there is everything to fear, an unhappy state of happiness. When desire dies, fear is born.” If Gracián’s intuition is true, if we virtually live by desire, this anthology hopefully presents a series of approaches to the vulnerable and multifarious human condition as it was perceived by a selection of writers and artists from long ago. * Even if the ancient Greeks would have experienced desire—eros—in much the same way as we do today, their conceptualizations of lack, love and longing were radically different from our present ways of thinking. In her chapter, Eva-Carin Gerö maps the ancient Greek notions belonging to the semantic field of desire. She looks into concepts—or sometimes rather the lack of concepts—for hetero-, homo-, or bisexuality, and even for sexuality and love itself, focusing our attention upon the ancient Greek interest in the juvenile body and persona, linguistically manifested in words such as meirakion or meirax. Gerö attempts to give a typology of the ancient Greek ideas relevant to love and desire, including the somewhat idiosyncratic terms kinaidos (unmanly debauchee) and tribas (unwomanly lesbian). In addition, Gerö presents a snapshot of later Western interpretations and representations of Greek desire: at times, “Greek love” has had the meaning of Platonic love devoid of sex, while in other periods the same term denoted male homosexual eroticism without restrictions.

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This interest in cultural reception and transformation is shared by Anders Hallengren, who demonstrates the essential role played by pagan myth in the medieval and early Renaissance understanding of love. The fact that Christian ideas of love and desire had overshadowed the philosophical conceptions of eros and epithumía by no means dethroned the ancient god with the bow, whose poisonous arrows never lost their sting. In late Roman and medieval love poetry, the conception of love as a toxic syndrome survived and lived on, in love potions, philtres, which helplessly bind the lovers together, as in the great works of the high and late Middle Ages—the legends of Tristan and Iseult or the Roman de la Rose. The Spanish Baroque poet Francisco de Quevedo, in his Canta sola a Lisi, covets a beloved whose force of attraction is described as venenosa, identifying the amada with the sierpe, the Serpent proper, whose power is biblical and equivalent to Satan. In all similar cases, the bewitchment, the spell, the obsession, the folly or the inebriant served the purpose of exculpation and perfect innocence, guiltlessness. So too did the world of dreams, more indulgent than wakefulness, and accordingly dream visions, fantasy and dreamlike moods and atmospheres set their mark on tribulations and temptations as well as on the great poetry of love in premodern Christian Europe. One of the key figures in this long and winding conceptualization of desire is Saint Augustine. In a more philosophical perspective Ola Sigurdson’s chapter traces the Slovene thinker Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytic concept of desire and subjectivity to Augustine, and especially Augustine’s rendering of desire in his Confessions. The essay takes its cue from the curious silence of the Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher with regard to Augustine, given the position of Confessions in Western history of ideas and the influence of medieval thought on one of Žižek’s masters, Jacques Lacan. Moreover, the common interest in desire as a disruptive force, shared by Augustine and Žižek, makes this silence remarkable, something more than sheer omission. Proceeding through an interpretation of Augustine and Žižek on desire, Sigurdson shows that their respective understandings have more in common than is allowed by Žižek’s Hegelian vein or his scarce, negative comments on the ancient and medieval traditions of the production of desire. Their differences are to be found in the account of subjectivity that they give as a ground for their understanding of desire: Augustine’s liturgical self, rooted in a Trinitarian God, versus Žižek’s Cartesian or Schellingian disjunctive self, rooted in an absolutely free but paradoxical choice. Despite these differences, however, their descriptions of subjectivity should not be understood as mutual opposites. After a critical discussion of their respective understanding of sub-

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jectivity, Sigurdson returns to the initial question, with a suggestion that Žižek’s curious silence is explained by the fact that Augustine’s account of desire would destabilize the neat distinction between premodern and modern which Žižek, in the tradition of Hegel, wishes to uphold. Premodern desire is variegated, and in Dante’s Comedy it appears under three main aspects, expressed in a rich gamut of words. It could be articulated as an erotic urge, still—even after death—besetting the unhappy lovers punished in Hell’s second circle. Their great mistake was to have made “reason subject to desire”. Nevertheless, the most genuinely Dantesque version of desire is perhaps the longing for knowledge which is one of the main forces behind the Comedy itself. Dante is eager to learn, and that is why—or at least partly why—he makes his journey through the beyond. He is an explorer of a realm never before charted or mapped by any living human being. Thirdly, Dante includes several levels of communication in his work. Quite a few of the dead souls, lost in Hell, long for news from earthly life, and others burst with a need to express their frustration, aggressions or hatred in the presence of a living being. This desire for contact or even interaction holds sway throughout Paradise, where the animated lights dance, twinkle and sing in their yearning to communicate their state of being, their identities and their messages to the overwhelmed pilgrim. In his article on Dante, Anders Cullhed shows how all these manifestations of desire in the Comedy cooperate to establish a view of man as essentially an offspring of the Neoplatonic Eros, reformulated for Christian purposes by Augustine. The usual scholastic distinctions (between reason and faith, or between knowledge and revelation) are still valid but prove insufficient to understand the work’s uninterrupted emphasis on concepts such as disio, disire or ardore. Nowadays, the Secretum is one of the most widely read texts by Petrarch. Still, the interpretations of this autobiographical work are surprisingly uniform. The fictive dialogue between Augustine and Francis of Assisi, in the presence of the silent figure of Truth, is usually read as a psychomachia, an internalized battle between the author’s own contrasting viewpoints. In “Thorn in the Flesh: Pain and Poetry in Petrarch’s Secretum,” Unn Falkeid argues that the discussions of lust, pain and salvation may be related to a broader contemporary context: Francis’ exposal of his weakness is an imitation of Christ in which customary boundaries between vices and virtues disappear, and where thinking is reconnected to bodily experiences. The thorn in the flesh, warned of by Augustine in the middle of the text, is not only a reminder of life, of the existence of the individual body within the limits of time and space. The pain is also a transcending experience, which connects the individual to the universal and the human

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to the divine. In this way Secretum may be read as a dialogue between conflicting theologies of the fourteenth century—between an Augustinian dualism and a Franciscan aesthetics. Moreover, Falkeid maintains that the dialogue touches on profound questions concerning the epistemology of pain, that would be part of a European discourse in the centuries to come. One of the more salient features of the medieval discourse on the relation between desire and virtue is the transformation of the object of desire into configurations of idealization and debasement, as is made clear in Petrarch’s Secretum: “I think that love can be called either the most loathsome passion or the noblest deed, depending on what is loved”, making clear that the former kind of love is tied to an immoral (infamis) woman while the latter is dedicated to the rare (rarus) model of a virtuous woman (specimen virtutis). Furthermore, when female writers change the object of desire into a subject, one can observe that this divided configuration is maintained but critically assessed. By looking closer at the configuration of courtly love in works by Christine de Pizan and Marguerite de Navarre, Carin Franzén argues in her study on the division of love and feminine desire, that medieval and early modern women writers redefine the legacy of courtly love in ways that serve their own purposes in the interplay of power relations. Franzén makes use of Foucault’s description of a historical event (such as women’s emergence on the literary scene) as a “reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it”, showing that this reversal becomes a specific strategy in works by premodern female writers. Johanna Vernqvist takes the gender perspective one step further by focusing on the Neoplatonic philosophy of love. In his Commento (1486) the Florentine philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola strongly disagrees with his master—the most influential of all Renaissance Neoplatonic thinkers, Marsilio Ficino—on the notion that ideal love could admit erotic desire between men. A few years later the Portuguese poet and philosopher Leone Ebreo wrote his Dialoghi d’amore (c. 1510), where this kind of love—the dominating Renaissance version of Eros—seemed to have turned exclusively heterosexual. Consequently, woman has a more central and active role to play in Ebreo’s seminal work. Moreover, Vernqvist focuses on the performances of love in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (published posthumously in 1558). She shows how Marguerite appropriates the Neoplatonic philosophy through a powerful and repeated construction of heterosexuality. This is exemplified by a closer look at novella 47, where the devisant Dagoucin tells the story of a parfaicte amytié between two men. This perfect relationship is challenged when one of them marries

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a woman. The men’s conflicting desires demonstrate how the categories of love, gender and sexuality are put under stress in these short stories. Where early modern England is concerned, Marcus Nordlund examines in his chapter, “Divisive Desires in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” a reworking of Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, written by William Shakespeare in collaboration with the up-and-coming dramatist John Fletcher. The Two Noble Kinsmen (c. 1613) was possibly the last play that Shakespeare ever wrote. It has previously been interpreted in terms of a conflict between love and reason; between sexual and non-sexual love; between love and friendship; or between friendship and marriage. Nordlund explores the play’s insistent concern with love as something divisive and divisible. Shakespeare and Fletcher, he argues, remind their audience repeatedly of love’s tendency not only to join people together, but also to divide them from each other and from themselves. The dramatists also explore the tendency of human beings to conceptualize or experience love in quasimathematical terms as something that can be divided up, counted, or measured. What unites these two strands of dramatic inquiry, the article argues, is a fearful suspicion that love might not be the synergetic, renewable life force we would like it to be, but more like a desperate zero-sum game based on limited resources. One reason why the play can be so disconcerting and hard to act is that this erosive drive towards disillusionment comes up forcefully against, and seriously undermines, a tragicomic structure that moves inexorably towards social integration and cohesion, much like in the so-called problem plays. It is well known that beside the flowering literary production of early modern England, the period saw a widespread severe mistrust and critique of poetry. However, there are more facets to this sceptical current than the ones usually pointed out. In “Linguistic Desire and the Moral Iconography of Language in Early Modern England”, Mats Malm identifies one aspect of the antipoetic sentiment that is easily overlooked, since it in essence concerns notions of rhetoric and language rather than of poetry. What is common to most discussions on the dangers of poetry is that they focus on content: poetry in itself consumes time that could have been used for better things, but above all it is considered mendacious, setting forth bad examples of persons who let their passions dominate them et cetera. Certainly, these aspects are the most obvious ones, but they should be supplemented with a view of the dangers not of content but of language itself. Such dangers concern the problem of linguistic desire, the urge for hedonistic sensations not of the body proper, but of language. This aspect is much less debated in the material—but the reason may be that it was taken for granted at the time, in ways not obvious to the modern scholar.

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Configurations of desire are often tied to corporeal expressions. In many ways, sighing is a signal typical of premodern times. Texts from Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period abound with interjections such as, in the case of Latin, vae! heu! proh! In sixteenth and seventeenth century devotional literature, one finds a particular kind of prayers called sighs (suspiria). In the pastoral novel, intense sighing, accompanied by blushing and tears, is an idealized expression of erotic desire. Diverse physiological and medical peculiarities of breathing were treated in books of physiognomy. Sighs were also discussed in several academic disciplines dealing with the emulation and dissemination of feelings: homiletics, rhetoric and poetics—as well as in art forms like painting and the opera. Despite their importance in past discourses, sighs have not received due attention in historical research. In her chapter on “Sighs of Desire: Passionate Breathing in Medieval and Early Modern Literature,” Kristiina Savin investigates sighing from both a theoretical and a performative perspective, pointing out time-specific strategies for mobilizing psychological resources and manipulating bodily expressions. In the broad repertoire of sighs, those of longing and of love—both heavenly and earthly—are explored. In the mid twelfth century, the so-called Komnenian novels were written in Constantinople. They were composed as careful but independent imitations of the ancient novels written many centuries earlier by Achilles Tatius and Heliodoros. By the early sixteenth century, both ancient and Byzantine novels were printed and distributed from Venice, the city where many Greek manuscripts ended up after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The novels by Heliodoros and Tatius were now read as stylistic models along with Homer and Virgil, but the destiny of the Byzantine novels in Western Europe is less well known. They were printed, spread and translated into a number of languages from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, but their reception and influence have not yet been studied. Ingela Nilsson, in her contribution “In Response to Charming Passions: Erotic Readings of a Byzantine Novel”, analyses a series of early modern translations into French of the Byzantine twelfth-century novel, Hysmine and Hysminias. Taking as her point of departure the concepts “discourse of desire” and “erotics of reading”, Nilsson wishes to show how the successive translators of the text (as readers and interpreters) often act on their literary imagination, influenced by cultural and literary values of their own time. The original text’s implicit eroticism—however subtle—thus has an effect on its readers: an effect which may turn out to be crucial, since it results in new discourses of desire, depending on the individual desire (textual and perhaps also sexual) of the translator. A Greek novel of the

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twelfth century may in this way be turned into a libertine novel of the eighteenth century, and then later into something rather different. It is a question of how the reader responds to the “charming passions” of the text. The essay of Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed treats the sexual and spiritual configurations of desire found in the hagiographical works of Hrotsvith (c. 935–1002), canoness at the monastery of Gandersheim. Her work consists of eight saintly legends elaborately framed by various paratexts in which the author comments on her work. The plot typically centres on a beautiful virgin who arouses desire in others, a desire, however, characterized as deranged, carnal, ugly, unlawful and vain. But the virgin remains pious through her even stronger and sweet desire for God, becoming even more appealing. In this way desire becomes the driving force of the narrative that sets the events in motion. Schottenius Cullhed argues that the configurations of desire—often represented as a burning sensation that sets its subject on fire—constitute a fundamental part of the poetics, ethics and narrative construction of Hrotsvith’s legends. It has previously been suggested that the “passionate language” of the legends expresses the “inner need” of the poet, but Schottenius Cullhed rejects this hypothesis. Hrotsvith’s language in fact seems vital to her literary strategy of authorizing and transferring the legends of her cycle into a “high style” hagiography, by which she addresses and empowers the Ottonian aristocracy of the late tenth century. In his chapter on “The Rhetoric of Desire,” Ulf Malm undertakes a study of the premodern erotic genus demonstrativum, with a focus on what traditional rhetoric used to call descriptio feminae. The texts illustrating this descriptio are drawn mainly from medieval secular Latin songs, especially the Carmina Burana, Occitan and Galician-Portuguese troubadour poetry, a specimen of Old French fabliau (the description of Roseite in “Trubert”), and, finally, the erotic portrait of the princess Carmesina in the Valencian knight Joanot Martorell’s romance Tirant lo Blanc. Like many scholars Malm insists on the importance of Ovid to medieval authors, not only to those writing in Latin but also to vernacular poets, primarily the troubadours. He also views the descriptiones puellae in “Trubert” and Tirant lo Blanc as parts of the Ovidian tradition within the grammar and rhetoric of the seven artes liberales taught in Western schools since Antiquity. The fabliaux were to a great extent composed by clerics, but this is not the case of Joanot Martorell, who was a warrior and knight. However, the very fact that he was literate in the vernacular (Tirant lo Blanc was written in the Valencian variety of Catalan) does at least point to a certain familiarity with the Latin of the trivium.

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Premodern painters and sculptors were struggling with similar problems as philosophers and poets in regard to bodily desires. But what should we do with a concept like desire when it comes to the interpretation of images? It is not a motif of the kind that iconography has been engaged in. In “Mastering Desires: Images of Love, Lust and Want in FourteenthCentury Vadstena,” Mia Åkestam focuses on the ambivalent relationship between bodily desires and the religious desire for God, highlighting the complex connection between text and image. Scholars in the fields of image rhetoric, semiotics and reception theories have addressed a number of problems within this field in the last few decades. Following their example, Åkestam emphasizes the beholder’s perspective and the historical context. Her point of departure is Saint Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations. Birgitta embraced the conviction that the individual’s spiritual efforts to overcome desire were an intellectual and physical struggle. To master temptation was one side of the coin; the other was how to visualize the sublime desire for beauty and salvation. Birgitta had various reasons for pondering these issues, not only from her own private perspective, but also because her Revelations formed the basis of an international monastic order. Petrarch, Birgitta’s great contemporary, is well known for his life-long wrestling with the problem of an obvious incompatibility between being a good and virtuous Christian on the one hand, and displaying a desire for human love—or for ancient and pagan ideas—on the other. In what way could it be justifiable for a Christian to strive for other goals than spiritual ones? What about the desire for carnal pleasures and worldly things? Among ancient philosophers there are numerous examples of a renunciation of any kind of pleasures as well as an outspoken accentuation of the importance of virtue. Yet the differences between these philosophers and their medieval Christian successors are very obvious. Petrarch was among the first to express agony over this dilemma but there were many to follow. Soon it became a common theme among humanists. In his chapter, “Petrarch on Desire and Virtue,” Erland Sellberg looks more closely at the ways in which Petrarch dealt with the problem of desire and virtue. In her chapter “Erotic Desire, Spiritual Yearning, Narrative Drive” Sofie Kluge discusses Teresa of Ávila’s “aesthetic Christology” as it unfolds in her Vida (1562, published 1588). To be more precise, Kluge analyses the autobiography’s reconciliation of transcendental spirituality and worldly sensuality through a daring yet delicate development of Christian theological aesthetics into an at once highly spiritual and deeply sensual kind of writing. Teresa’s autobiography is based on an allegorical view of flesh and of words—the “body” of language—as mystical images of the divine

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and, concretely, on the mediation of the spiritual and the sensual through the development of an idiosyncratic religious-cum-aesthetic idiom. This Teresian discourse is traditional in its basic concepts (e.g. in its exposition of the stages of mystical life) and conventional in the choice of motifs (the limits of language and of human perception; “from sinner to saint”; humility), but innovative in the choice of rhetoric (extreme eroticization of religious discourse; use of cancionero metaphors) and in the radicalism of its Christology (hyper-devotion to its “sacred Humanity”). To the extent that this aesthetic Christology is characterized by an arguably extreme interpretation of the already quite eroticized rhetoric of the Christian mystical tradition, it is traditional in essence yet imbued with a sensibility that may be qualified as modern: even if the Vida essentially remains within the confines of the Christian allegorical worldview that fostered it, it does take the eroticism contained in the concept of unio mystica to new and as yet unseen heights. In “Sex and the Self: Simon Forman, Subjectivity and Erotic Dreams in Early Modern England” Per Sivefors proposes a new reading of the physician and astrologist Simon Forman’s dream of Queen Elizabeth, recorded in 1597. While previous criticism has examined this dream for its political implications and its connections to other literary texts, Sivefors contextualizes it from the point of view of early modern dream theory and subjectivity. His basic argument is that Forman’s dream both invests dreams with predictive value and anticipates a more distinctly modern, individualizing, anti-metaphysical tendency in dream interpretation. This is crucially reinforced by an emphasis on sexuality—male, hetero, “normal”—as a defining characteristic of the individual. Forman’s dream is in line with a general tendency for dreams to lose in epistemological prestige in the seventeenth century—a tendency that increasingly puts the emphasis on the individual’s inner life rather than on implications of angelic messages or general predictions of the future. What is more, the individual’s sexuality and sexual orientation are at the focus of this change, thus in important ways foreshadowing later developments in, e.g., Freudian psychoanalysis. Sivefors hence maps a complex series of changes in attitudes to dream interpretation as well as to sexuality in the early modern period. By a simultaneous re-contextualization and re-actualization of these representations of human desire, the contributors to Pangs of Love and Longing have looked into the past not only in its own right but as a way of problematizing present stereotypes and conceptions. Exploring articulations of eros, cupido or fin’amors in their historical specificity is an undertaking that is likely to produce new perspectives on contemporary notions of love and eroticism, which are often taken for granted—if not considered

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absolute or universal. Hence, our continuing interest in ancient, medieval and early modern configurations of desire is, when all is said and done, an attempt to understand ourselves and our present state of being. * This book is the outcome of the Swedish academic network “Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature” 2010–12. The network gathered eighteen scholars from Sweden, Norway and Denmark with the purpose of detecting, analysing and comparing certain typical or otherwise instructive literary (and artistic) expressions of desire in premodern Europe, from Classical Antiquity to the seventeenth century. This interdisciplinary project was sponsored by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, an independent foundation with the goal of promoting and supporting research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Foundation also financed the language editing process, which was performed by Alan Crozier.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF DESIRE

THE CONFIGURATIONS OF ANCIENT GREEK DESIRE EVA-CARIN GERÖ

We may assume that the Ancient Greeks, men and women, young and old, experienced desire, love and passion more or less in the same way as we do today. However, as many have observed after having studied art, literature and other cultural manifestations of the Ancient Greeks, there seem to have been quite a few differences, as far as their ways of conceptualizing these matters are concerned,1 as well as to how they defined ideals and norms connected with love and sexuality.2 This article, which will deal with these matters in broad outline, has as its main purpose the introduction of a typology of “Greek love” by means of a more than hitherto explicit definition of the concepts of relevance to this topic, such as they are manifested through the Greek language and literature. Also the often quite vivid Nachleben of Ancient Greek Eros in terms of later times’ interpretations and often idealizations will be touched upon. As is well known, the Greeks were early with their expressions of what later times have considered to be the very essence of being a human being—our joys, fears, our being caught in the “labyrinth of here and now” with all its pleasures, pains and sorrows. Their literary treatment of love and desire is no exception to this: here we often feel that essentially nothing has changed between then and now. A good illustration is the following epigram attributed to the philosopher Plato, where the (probably) first kiss of the “ego” of the text (presumably the author) and his beloved, Agathon, is at issue: “When I kissed Agathon, I did not let my heart pass my lips. For my poor soul had reared and wished to leave me for him.” Nonetheless, there are also important alterations, at least as regards habits, social conventions and attitudes, between the Greeks and us. In terms of expression of passion, the text below, written by the English writer William Hazlitt (1778–1830), is indeed very similar to Ancient Greek poetry, most closely to that of Sappho: I was stung by scorpions; my flesh crawled; I was choked with rage; her scorn scorched me like flames; her air (her heavenly air) withdrawn from

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me, stifled me, and left me gasping for breath and being. […] my feelings were marble; my blood was of molten lead; my thoughts on fire. (Liber Amoris, Part III)

When Eros is expressed so passionately in ancient Greek texts, the object of the sentiment is often of the same sex as the person in love.3 And he (or she) is regularly much younger than the person in love. The pederasty of the Ancient Greeks has by later readers and interpreters of their texts, where this trait is often very obvious, sometimes been “overlooked”, i.e. explained as unphysical Platonic love or even ignored or denied.4 More generally, the attitudes to and interpretations of Greek homosexuality have also varied through time. Indeed, “Greek love” could be seen as an illustration of how ethical and aesthetic values of later times colour and determine the understanding of cultural artefacts of older times—how norms are social constructions and not naturally given, therefore not per se “good” or “bad”.5 Generations of classicists, school teachers, authors and other interpreters of Ancient Greek culture defined male homosexual pederasty rather prudently as “pedagogical Love”—a kind of passionate mentorship typically prevailing between an (older) “teacher” and a (younger) “pupil”. The classicist Paul Brandt (1875–1929), sometimes writing under the pseudonym Hans Licht, went a bit further, however. Not only was he quite explicit about the physical side of Greek pederasty—he even described it (here following Bethe6) as the very source of Greek love poetry and of the high quality of the cultural achievements of the Greeks more generally.7 Quite interesting in this context is Brandt’s view of ancient Greek eroticism as something “generically” (or conceptually) different from our way of thinking about such matters.8 Another classicist, Kenneth Dover, and, in his footsteps, Michel Foucault, rather interpreted Greek homosexuality in terms of the roles of an “active” (penetrating) lover, erastês, relating to a “passive” (penetrated) beloved, erômenos. It has been argued that this interpretation reminded (perhaps too much) of tendencies and ideals within gay culture in the 1970s. James Davidson, on the other hand, makes a “radical reappraisal of Greek homosexual love”, almost turning back, as it seems, to the older type of interpretation focusing on (mostly) nonsexual relationships, which he looks upon as an expression of “homobesottedness” (men’s allpervading fascination with other men).9 Turning to the concepts of Greek desire, many scholars, especially in the footsteps of Foucault, have observed a lack of certain concepts that have been important to modern thinking about love and sexuality. In Ancient Greek there is simply no other denomination of sexuality than erôs,

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which covers a much wider semantic field than the corresponding English word.10 Furthermore, the Ancient Greeks had no words and maybe no concepts, which is more interesting, for hetero-, homo- and bisexuality or for pederast sexual orientation, although some literary examples seems to point in another direction, for example, the following epigrams from Book XII (the Musa Puerilis) of The Greek Anthology: Drink deep, boy-lover. Bacchus, bringer of | Oblivion, will soothe your hopeless love (sou floga tan filopaida). | Drink deep, and as you drain the wine-filled bowl, | Purge the bitter anguish from your soul. (Meleager, Hine XLIX) The love of women leaves me cold; desire | For men, though, scorches me with coals of fire (pursoi arsenes […]). | As women are the weaker sex, my yen | Is stronger, warmer, more intense for men. (Anonymous, Hine XVII) Unhappy pederasts (Gr. paidofilai), cease your insane | Exertions! All your hopes are mad. As vain | As dredging up sea-water on dry land | or numbering the grains of desert sand | Is a yen for boys (Gr. paidôn stergein pothon), whose indiscreet | Charms are to mortals and immortals sweet. | Just look at me! My efforts heretofore | Have all been emptied on the arid shore. (Anonymous, Hine CXLV)

It has been quite convincingly argued, however, that such expressions of erotic direction are rather indications of “taste” and “preference”, comparable to that of food and drink (in terms of desire: epithymiai of the same kind), i.e. not indications of sexual identity, perceived as such. Nevertheless, there are in Ancient Greek concepts and expressions belonging to the semantic field of desire and ready to be interpreted in their literary context—which is not always an easy task. It is often the Old Comedy that affords the most interesting approach to Greek desire, providing a keyhole to “real life” as well as a checklist of established values. Here are some concepts of interest, if we want to understand the configurations of “Greek love” (the translations are approximate) in its historical context: 1) erôs “love”, “desire” 2) erastês “lover” 3) erômenos “(male) beloved” 4) kinaidos “(unmanly) debauchee”, “lewd fellow” 5) tribas “(mannish) lesbian” (from tribô “rub”) 6) meirax/meirakion “juvenile being”

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7) sôfrosynê “soundness of mind”, “moderation”, “self-control” 8) hybris “wantonness”, “wanton violence or insolence”, “lewdness” (opp. to sôfrosynê) 9) akolasia “licentiousness”, “intemperance” 10) aidôs “respect for the feeling/opinion of others for one’s own behaviour/conscience”, “shame”, “sobriety”, “moderation” 11) nemesis “distribution of what is due”, “retribution”, “righteous anger aroused by injustice”

Erôs, “desire”, is a rather general concept used with direction towards various objects but always defined through a lack of the person or the thing desired.11 Ancient Greek erotic desire and “love” has a component that separates it from ours, at least normatively, i.e. an accepted and, as far as values are concerned, fairly unproblematic lack of reciprocity. This feature is adequately illustrated by the well-known anecdote recorded by Plutarch where a man is teased because the woman he makes love to is not interested in him. The man’s answer is: “When I eat fish at a tavern, I also do not care what the fish thinks of me”. The concepts of erastês and erômenos, as well as that of kinaidos, are closely related, albeit in opposite terms. At least normatively and as an ideal, an erastês is always active, a “hunter”, but also a “sucker” in his relationship to a same-gendered, generally much younger, erômenos, “beloved”. Related to this norm, the concept of anterôs—“love in return”— is of a certain interest. Ideally, the erômenos should not feel or at least not show signs of anterôs when approached by the erastês. However, if we want to understand ancient Greek sexual desire in a more thorough way, beyond ideals and norms, we have to allow for both a definition of concepts, stricto dicto, which gives an understanding of the normative “mode of life” as well as intersections of concept, which help us understand the Greeks’ real, sometimes normatively transgressing, and at the same time “everydayish” sexuality. This objective concerns mainly concepts 1–6, whereas concepts 7–10 are most interesting in terms of lack or abundance, especially in comedy, which as already been mentioned is especially revealing of the “real life” sexual mores of the ancient Greeks as well as of their norms and social conventions. If we now allow for an intersection between the two concepts erastês and erômenos, or maybe between erastês and kinaidos, we get a “mixed” concept with a denotation in the fictional world of Aristophanes’ comedies according to the norms surrounding sexuality in ancient Greece, i.e. as a set of grown-up, bearded and sexually “offensive” men, on the surface “penetrators” and “predators”, who in a homosexual relationship, behind the surface of “decorum”, enjoy playing the weaker sex, including being

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anally penetrated. To be sure, if we assume that only “unmixed” denotations through intersection of concepts are valid to the Ancient Greek mentality and lifestyle, much of the jokes of the Old Greek comedy would not make any sense at all. The following two examples from Aristophanes can serve as a demonstration: And I hear that Cleisthenes’ son | is in the graveyard, plucking | his arsehole (Gr. prôkton tillein) and tearing his cheeks; | all bent over (Gr. engkekyfôs), beating his head, wailing and weeping | for Humpus of Wankton (Gr. Sebinon […] Anaflystios), whoever that may be.12 (Frogs, 422 f.) And Callias, we are told, | that son of Hippocoitus (Gr. ton Hippookinou) | fights at sea (Gr. naumachein) in a lionskin made of pussy (Gr. kysthon leontên enêmmenon).13 (Frogs, 425 f.)

The concept of a kinaidos poses a somewhat special problem. What is actually an (unmanly) debauchee—or rather—what did this concept denote for the ancient Greeks? Do we have a comparable concept with a comparable denotation today or is the understanding of the kinaidos only possible to us through guesses and approximation, i.e., are we dealing with a conceptual (and denotational) “extinct species”? Skinner even argues that a kinaidos has never existed—in other words: that it is a generic concept with an empty set as its denotation.14 Semantically expressed, this would mean that kinaidoi belong to the same category as unicorns and tragelafoi (“goat-stags”). In terms of comedy and humour an empty set of kinaidoi as the denotation of the concept in question would most probably be quite useless. Skinner compares the Greek kinaidoi with modern vampires, seen as a denotationally unreal, fictional “empty set” category created in order to scare (and de facto fascinate). It is, however, in the intersection between the denotation of a concept such as kinaidos (in its extreme version) and that of erastês (“active lover”) or simply anêr (“(real) man”) that the humour takes place—and this is because the intersection has a reference in real life. For the concept of tribas, a similar analysis would probably be possible. To sum up, in my view the semantic field(s) of Greek love and sexual desire, between norm and praxis, may be most properly understood by combining concepts such as the above-mentioned 1–6 as well as using the denotational categories of sets/classes and, finally, relations between sets/classes such as intersection, overlapping, inclusion and exclusion. In addition, of great relevance to love and sexuality as well as to all other

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areas of Greek mentality and lifestyle, concepts 7–11 should also be allowed to play a distinctive role in the definitions of the concepts of “erotics” as well as in determining their denotational status in terms of “real world” or (various types of) “possible worlds”. Eros, erastês, erômenos, kinaidos, tribas and meirax/meirakion defined in their most “pure” (or “strict”) way, where the other concepts contribute to the definition in their due or expected measure, may, in the extreme case, not have had any realworld denotation at all. That would lead us to the conclusion that “Greek love” was supposed to be unreciprocal and oriented towards a same-sex, much younger object, but aside from “decorum” and ideals it was probably something quite different (reciprocal, oriented towards the “wrong” type of object, etc.). This would, ex hypothesi, leave us with (a) “possible world” denotations without (b) “real world” denotations, which in their turn may be most properly understood as sets in intersection. Without any relevance to the real world, again, the concept of e.g. the kinaidos would hardly be possible to understand, nor be of any use in the joke-making of comedy. It is (a) the “real life” intersection between erastai/andres and kinaidoi and (b) the existence of “pure” or “extreme” concepts without “real world” denotation which make jokes about kinaidoi funny. Again, it would hardly be perceived as funny in e.g. Clouds (v. 1099 f.) that the majority of the (male) audience is referred to as euryprôktoi (“wide-arsed”, i.e. pathics),15 if none of the men present had ever (or even often, which is what is implied), at least in his youth but probably even as an adult, been penetrated anally (and enjoyed it). The importance of “ethical” concepts for the culture of Ancient Greece, such as those of 7–11 above, should never be overestimated—love and sexuality are no exceptions to this. Indeed, Greek tragedy as well as the jokes of Old Comedy cannot be properly understood without them. In Peace v. 289 ff., for example, the fun is, as it seems, about a person’s lack of aidôs and, probably also, of sôfrosynê: Now may I sing the ode that Datis made, | The ode he sang in ecstasy at noon, | “Eh, sirs, I feel pleasure (hêdomai), and I gladden myself (chairomai), and make myself merry (keufrainomai)”.16

Also, in the well-known (and very funny) lêkythion passage in Frogs (1198–1248), where Euripides’ solemn prologues, and thereby their heroes, are ridiculed through the repeated addition of the phrase lêkythion apôlese(n) (“he lost his little bottle of oil”), it can be argued that the joke is crucially about lack of sôfrosynê (cf. Gerö and Johnsson 2002). Furthermore, in Greek love epigrams we find the thought of Nemesis being a central one, above all as a “punishment” for arrogant, beautiful

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young erômenoi, who one day will grow up to hairy, no longer attractive men “past their prime”: A peach was Heraclitus when—don’t scoff!—| Still Heraclitus; now he’s past his prime | His hairy hide puts all assailants off. | On your cheeks (Gr. gloutois, lit. ‘buttocks’) too the curse (Gr. Nemesis) will come in time. (Meleager, Hine XXXIII)

And where we find nemesis, needless to say, the concept of hybris is usually close at hand: Somebody said when snubbed, “is Damon so beautiful he doesn’t say hello? Time will exact revenge when, bye and bye, Grown hairy, he greets men who won’t reply.” (Diocles, Hine XXXV)

In discussions of the history and lifestyle of Greek (and Roman) Antiquity it is not uncommon that modern interpretations include some kind of judgement, however brief or implied, of the phenomena discussed, in terms of “good” or “bad” with reference to our contemporary ideals. Aside from usually being anachronistic, such viewpoints tend to hide the real value, to my mind, of historical studies—that what makes them, with Thucydides’ words, a ktêma eis aiei (“a possession of all times”), viz. the lesson that it is essentially human to conceptualize and idealize in different ways at different times, not least in the domain of Eros.

Notes 1 Much of value for the reader interested in the concepts of sexuality, and more generally of obscenity, is found in empirical and language-oriented studies such as Jeffrey Henderson’s seminal work The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy [1975] (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For a detailed discussion of the concept of Eros, cf. James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007). A semantically explicit analysis of the conceptual “map” of Greek sexuality is presented in Eva-Carin Gerö, Grekisk Eros: Det antika Greklands syn på kärlek och erotik (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, forthcoming). 2 Norms and ideals surrounding love and sexuality in Ancient Greece have hitherto been more thoroughly treated than the concepts, “the way of grasping and mapping”, of this semantic field. Much about norms and ideals, aesthetics etc. may be studied in the pictorial material of Greek vase paintings, cf. Andrew Lear and Eva

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Cantarella, Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods (London & New York: Routledge, 2008). 3 In Hellenistic literature, above all in the Greek novel, a more vivid interest in romantic heterosexual love can be noted. Heterosexual relationships are also described as more reciprocal and symmetric than hitherto. Cf. Marilyn B. Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 171 ff.. 4 But then, indeed, how could this obvious trait be overlooked? Cf. testimonia in various types of texts, such as Plato, Charmides 154 a ff. and Aristophanes, Peace vv. 11–12. 5 Which is at least one way of looking at such matters within practical philosophy and other related disciplines, e.g. within the framework of the so-called error theory. 6 Erich Bethe, “Die dorische Knabenliebe”, Rheinisches Museum 62 (1907). 7 Cf. Hans Licht, “Vorwort”, Lukian Erotes – ein Gespräch über die Liebe von Lukian, übersetzt und eingeleitet von Hans Licht (Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1920), 40: “Was die Pädophilie sonst noch für Griechenland Großes und Schönes gebracht hat, wir können es hier nicht erschöpfen, ja nicht einmal andeuten, wir müßten sonst die gesamte griechische Kultur einer eingehenden Musterung unterziehen. Soviel ist jedenfalls gewiß, daß im Mittelpunkte der hellenischen Kultur das innige Verhältnis von Mann zu Mann steht, der intime Verkehr mit der männlichem Jugend, und daß die Pädophilie eine der Wurzeln, vielleicht die stärkste Wurzel war von Hellas Größe und Schönheit.” 8 Licht, “Vorwort”, 1: “Den berühmten Ausspruch ‘Alles fließt’, mit dem der große Philosoph Herakleitos von Ephesos die Veränderlichkeit aller menschlichen Dinge bezeichnen wollte, kann man auch auf die Anschauungen von der Moral und vom Wesen der Liebe anwenden. So gewiß es ist, daß die Liebe zu allen Zeiten eine der stärksten Triebfedern, wo nicht die stärkeste für alles menschliche Tun gewesen ist, so gewiß ist es auch, daß die Liebe im griechischen Altertum in ganz anderer Weise in Erscheinung trat und sich in Formen kundgab, die von den heutigen völlig abweichen.” 9 Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love. 10 Cf. Eva-Carin Gerö, Grekisk Eros: Det antika Greklands syn på kärlek och erotik. 11 Cf. Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love, 14–15. 12 “Sebinus of Anaphlystus”, (suggesting binein “fuck” and anaphlan “masturbate”) is an obscene fictitious name, which reoccurs in Assemblywomen 979–80). 13 Callias (c. 450–c. 366) is repeatedly ridiculed in comedy for extravagance and debauchery. His father’s name Hipponicus is here distorted for a pun on kinein “screw”. Henderson, (The Maculate Muse, 163) interprets this passage correctly, I think, reading kustôi instead of kusthou, with Bothe and Radermacher: “kusthô naumachein would then mean binein as an image like diakôpein and elaunein, although more fantastic, with its suggestion of mighty vessels circling and colliding. The lionskin further suggests the traditional role of Heracles, trivialized by contrast with the sexual ‘combats’ the debauched Callias wages.”

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14 Marilyn B. Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 124 ff. 15 WORSE ARGUMENT: “[…] Just look and see which make up the majority of the spectators. […] Well, what do you see?” BETTER ARGUMENT: “Gods above, the great majority are wide-arsed (tous euryprôktous)!” 16 According to the scholiasts the Datis referred to here was a Persian commander immortalized through his defeat at Marathon. Some have argued that the joke here is about the incomplete mastery of the Greek language demonstrated in the “ode of Datis”, viz. in the verb form chairomai (in the middle), where it correctly would have been chairô (in the active). I think the correct interpretation is to be found in the semantics of the middle voice itself (“action performed by the subject oriented towards the subject”), here with a suggestion of unrestrained pleasure connected with masturbation, i.e., to the Greek mind, of laughter-provoking lack of sôfrosynê. In his commentary on this passage M. Platnauer writes: “Ar. himself is not above coining false middles, but he does so deliberately for the sake of paronomasia: e.g. rhengketai [Eq. 115] to echo perdetai and chesaito [ib. 1057] to rhyme with machesaito.” I think a further look into the semantics of these passages would reveal something much funnier than what Platnauer suggests.

Bibliography Aristophanes. Frogs, Assembly Women, Wealth, edited and translated by Jeffrey Henderson, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA/London, England: Harvard University Press, 2002. —. In Three Volumes with the English translation of Benjamin Bickley Rogers, II. The Peace, The Birds, The Frogs. 1924 with later reprints. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA/London, England: Harvard University Press. —. Peace, edited with an introduction and commentary by Maurice Platnauer. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1981. Bethe, Erich. “Die dorische Knabenliebe.” Rheinisches Museum 62 (1907): 438–75. Brandt, Paul [Hans Licht]. Die Homoerotik in der Griechischen Literatur: Lukianos von Samosata. Bonn: Marcus & Weber, 1920/21. Davidson, James. The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007. Dover, Kenneth James. Greek Homosexuality [1978]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Uses of Pleasure [1984], translated by R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

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Gerö, Eva-Carin. “Classical Urges.” In From Embracing Globalisation to the Limits of Tolerance: Themes from Axess Magazine. Stockholm: Axess Magazine, 2006. Gerö, Eva-Carin. Grekisk Eros: Det antika Greklands syn på kärlek och erotik. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, forthcoming. Gerö, Eva-Carin and Hans-Roland Johnsson. “A Comment on the Lekythion-scene in Aristophanes’ Frogs.” Eranos 100 (2002): 38–50. Hazlitt, William. Liber Amoris: or The New Pygmalion, part III. 1823 (www.gutenberg.org/files/2049/2049-h/2049-h.htm). Henderson, Jeffrey. The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy [1975]. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Hine, Daryl (trans.). Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of the Greek Anthology. Princeton University Press, 2001. Lear, Andrew and Eva Cantarella. Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys were their Gods. London & New York: Routledge, 2008. Licht, Hans. Lebenskultur im alten Griechenland. Zurich & Berlin: Paul Aret, 1925. Licht, Hans. “Vorwort.” Lukian Erotes: Ein Gespräch über die Liebe, übersetzt und eingeleitet von Hans Licht. Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1920. Lukian Erotes: Ein Gespräch über die Liebe, übersetzt und eingeleitet von Hans Licht. Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1920. Skinner, Marilyn B. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

THE CAULDRON OF CONCUPISCENCE ANDERS HALLENGREN

On Defining Desire—with Corollaries In the epics attributed to “Homer”, written down in the eighth century BCE after a long oral tradition, the word thumós (șȣȝȩȢ) is used to denote passionate desire, and thus Eros (which is not personified in these lively epics) is signified by the ardent desire that prompts Paris to seek Helena, attracts Zeus—the Father of gods and men proper—to Hera, and is the force that makes the suitors of Penelope tremble in this primordial world of mythic history (the Iliad 3.442, 14.295; the Odyssey 18.212). Hesiod, outlining the genealogy of the gods in his Theogony (120 ff.), was in a later century to personify Eros as a divine power that has a hold over body and soul, and the playwright Euripides would equip him fatefully, and fraught with momentous consequences, with bow and arrows, attributes that represent the irresistible erratic game with human fortune and fate played by the gods; humans being “puppets” in seminal Platonic terms (Laws 644d). Since then, “Eros, the golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow […]” (Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, l. 549 ff), loading two arrows in a sinister act of ambiguous bittersweet cruelty, levelling at mortals: one aimed at happiness, the other at confusion.1 Fatalism regarding love affairs was a die-hard perennial outcome. Eros, alias the Roman Amor alias Cupido, falls upon us in spite of ourselves, cannot be controlled and geared by will and reason. This image reappears in literature for many centuries to come, and would survive the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, as a resort or regression. The Roman citizen Virgil’s familiar and habitually misconstrued phrase omnia vincit amor (Bucolica [Eclogues] 10.69), written a few decades before the Christian era, merely states clearly that love vanquishes all resistance and is an invincible superior force that demands unconditional surrender and submission; otherwise things are against you and your disobedience will find you out. That is what the Augustan poet tries to make his doubtful lovelorn friend Cornelius Gallus realize. There is simply no choice and there is no helm in the course of events. You just have to acquiesce, yield and submit. “Amor conquers all, so let us surrender to

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Amor”: “Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori.” Contrary to any joyful and jubilant gospel of love and the universal power of Goodness, this might be almost as ominous and fateful as another well-known line in these Eclogues, “a snake lurks in the grass”: Latet anguis in herba (Bucolica 3.93).2 Then the predicament seems ineludible. But it is bad anyway. One of the basic and most influential texts on Eros, Plato’s Symposium, written in the fourth century BCE, calls attention to the fact that there is both a good and an evil Eros, which could, from the point of view of ethics, point forward to a future conception of affection. However, in search of the essence of our subject, I find a passage in the discourse between Socrates and Agathon (199c–201d) particularly enlightening. Socrates wants Agathon to explain what love (eros) is. He therefore surprises him by asking if a brother is the brother of anyone or of nobody. The answer is obvious. He then puts his attendant question in the following way: Then, what about love? Is it directed toward anything or nothing? This is as self-evident and self-explanatory: towards the object of one’s love. Then Socrates emphasizes: does not love desire or want that which it is craving for? And this Agathon cannot deny either. This is the cutting edge. The very verb is the keyword: epithumeín (elsewhere in Plato boulesthaí). This epithumía (‫ۂ‬ʌȚșȣȝȓĮ) craves its object of attraction. The cardinal point is not Eros but an aspect of its force. Desire, epithumía, is the crucial factor. That force of Eros demands something it does not have, or is not even entitled to, forbidden fruit or something beyond our reach.3 Then a conclusion of profound moment can be inferred: the superhuman power connected with desire focuses on a lack, an absence that may leave us wanting and regretting in a deeply felt void, Socrates concedes. That is a logical effect of its nature. Eros was described by the adjective “sweet-bitter” (glukupikron) in one of woman lyricist Sappho’s ancient fragments, because its sweetness is made out of absence, and was accordingly also designated “mythmaker”, or “a weaver of fiction”, mythoplokos. The very word eros denotes “want”, “lack”, a “desire for what is missing”. Then the irrational dilemma within eros, which troubled lovers as much as philosophers, reads as follows, according to Anne Carson in her essay Eros the Bittersweet: “The lover wants what he does not have. It is by definition impossible for him to have what he wants if, as soon as it is had, it is no longer wanting.”4 Thus, the longing is perpetuated. This emptiness and yearning was eventually to become a central theme in the literature of a later age, even more so since the propelling force behind this urge was a power that could not be mastered rationally, and at the

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same time incessantly tended to transgress prohibited territories. The main problem is that we are dealing with affections or inclinations that may be poles apart from will-power and reason, and are of different origin. And Eros/Amor/Cupid and other gods of Classical Antiquity were to be challenged by a monotheistic creed while the powers they represented persisted. Then the apparent problem with desire is, as Socrates depicted it, its very nature. “The nature of desire is such as to place it between instinct and volition”, the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics accordingly observes on the psychology of desire.5 This means that it is beyond intent or purpose and partly out of conscious control. Intellection and conation compose the domain of will, and desire exceeds the limits of rational choice. In Plato’s terms, it belongs to the appetitive part of the soul, tò epithumetikón. Platonists as well as Greek and Roman Stoics had considered that the flesh and the passions of the soul might be causes of vices and had extolled cardinal virtues. Nevertheless, Aristotelian Peripatetics and most of the other philosophical schools of Classical Antiquity accepted concupiscence for those who could control and moderate its demands. From the days of Cleoboulos of Lindos and Solon of Athens, and on to Horace, Ovid, and the Golden Age of Roman literature, moderation or the golden mean, métron (ȝȑIJȡȠȞ) and aurea mediocritas, were the rule. The next age would reconsider and pass more strictures on the appetitive part of the soul and the quality and faculty of desire, more unrelentingly associating “desire”, appetitus, with voluptuousness, voluptas.6 The motive of desire, as outlined above, including a claim, a need and a yearning for what we are missing and want, thus would make desire (Lat. desiderium, It. desiderio, Fr. désir, Sp. deseo) double-edged, since it verged on deadly sins and cardinal vices (“lust”: luxuria, fornicatio) as defined and brought to the fore already in early Christianity, albeit of complex origin and meaning. What is more, Desire included covet, which is addressed by the last Commandments of the Decalogue in the English version, which begin “You shall not covet …”. The English word covet, corresponding to the French convoiter, stems from medieval English coveite, related to cobeitar in Provençal, the Italian cubitare, Catalan cobejar, Old French cuveitier, from the Roman cupiditare, Cupid himself being a personification of the Latin noun cupido, “love, desire” from the verb cupere, to desire/long for: to covet. Consequently, “desire” is also named after Cupid, and so it remained in the Christian world. And it cannot be told from “covet”. Nor can it be dis-

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tinguished from concupiscence, vehement desire or libidinous desire, of the Latin concupiscentia—which in the Vulgate is used to translate the Greek epithumía. Curiously enough, this answers to Socrates’ pagan analysis of this human characteristic and predicament.

A Matter of Will-power The complex nature of desire, a quality and faculty in borderlands flanked by conation and natural impulse, and the array of meanings connected with its denominations, were to have profound implications. Let us return to the Versio Vulgata for a bearing, and choose only one example out of many (Matthew 6:10). The natural aspects of desire were not only surrounded and enveloped by commandments and dogmas, closing in upon them. They were also challenged in daily prayer, oratio and precatio. The institution of the Lord’s Prayer is probably one of the most puissant performative proclamations of our civilization, decreeing Thy Will Be Done!, which reads, in St. Jerome’s seminal version, “Fiat voluntas Tua.” These words were to be repeated every day, everywhere in Christendom, and the law of prayer became regarded as the law of belief: “lex orandi, lex credendi.” The singular power in this single utterance, repeated at all hours in the medieval church, was due to the ambiguity of the very word voluntas (corresponding to the original Koiné Greek șȑȜȘȝĮ, thélƝma). Over and above “will” it comprises “wish” and “choice”, but likewise (heartfelt) “desire”, “inclination”, “want”—and with “affection”, “preference” and “delight” in the sizeable and expansive sphere of its denotations and connotations. There is nothing wrong with the translation. The problem is the vastness of the ambiguity in this Decree of the Lord, making the range and compass of its demand for observance and submission catholic. The “I want you” of innamorati falls under this jurisdiction and cognizance. Encompassing involuntary, unintentional inclinations makes the entreaty and claim easier said than done, since your wish and desire must conform to its divine counterpart, theologically defined and interpreted, or fade into obscurity, obsession, perversion or oblivion. Thence comes also that “obsession with the flesh” which Charles Freeman in A New History of Early Christianity (2009) derives from St. Jerome and his times.7 This is certainly one of the numerous reasons for the charged, tenacious, and effervescent relationship between religion and literature (in the longer view as tense as intense) as observed by Sergej Averincev († 2004) and other universally learned medievalists and mythologists.8 In Patristic times, says Katherine Heinrichs in The Myths of Love, the gods of classical

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antiquity were demoted to demons and the loving heroines to meretrici.9 Nevertheless, these tragic lovers, which in classical times served to embellish both marital love and lover’s plaints, were ubiquitous in medieval literature: Pyramus, Thisbe, Narcissus, Orpheus, Eurydice, Echo, Phyllis, Myrrha, Ariadne, Dido, Deianira, Phaedra, Hypsipyle, Lucretia, Oenone, Pasiphaë, Philomela … principally to serve in didactic contexts as colourful voluptuous exempla in accounts of the difference between good and evil, virtues and vices, between carnal and celestial love, amor stultus and amor legitimus.10

The Perpetual Psychomachia, and Its Cures For this reason the battle between the old world and the new became a battle of the soul, from the Numidian Doctor Ecclesiae St. Augustine († 430) to the Tuscan poet and churchman Petrarch nine hundred years later. This was archetypically expressed in the Psychomachia of Aurelius Prudentius Clemens († c. 410), who was, like Augustine of Hippo, aptly enough both a Roman citizen and a Christian believer, describing the war raging between the old Pagan and the new Christian world, a poetic account that would be justified by its happy ending, and was accordingly accepted in the authorized library canon and school curriculum for a millennium. The turbulent era of these 400s is the focus of Giusto Traina’s 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire picturing a civilization in the midst of enormous change as Christianity takes hold in rural areas across the empire, revealing a world already more like the medieval period than ancient times, with Christian bishops arguing over heresy, and ascetic monks in deserts or perched atop columns.11 However, the importance of Classical Antiquity could be viewed much differently, from the other side, as it were. Heinrichs and other scholars who have shown the use of polytheist myth as warning examples and lessons in medieval times, tend to overlook the ancient power of attraction under the cloak of religion; that is to say, the exact opposite. Mythology was advantageous, stretching limits as always, invisibly transgressing dividing-lines and treading upon sacred grounds. The Renaissance and Classicist cult of Greek and Roman mythology would eventually pave the way for nude painting in the Christian world. This great usefulness of the pagan world, which is part of a much larger context, in the high and late Middle Ages served the purpose of legitimizing a yielding to the romantic and amorous, and allowed writers and readers to wallow in the craving desire of classical myth, while no rules were violated.

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Sometimes, perhaps, the past was only there to legitimate consolation; mourning so often bound up with desire as yearning with distance. A consequence of this perennial longing was the amount of desiring voices, to take a cue from Mary B. Moore’s book on Gaspara Stampa, Louise Labé, Lady Mary Wroth and other silver-tongued women sonneteers from the sixteenth century on. There was a wealth of examples of creative strategies formed in the context of a doctrinal flight from desire in Saint Augustine, through to Abelard and Marie de France, in whose Lais love is suffering. Other productive and resourceful expedients in premodern Christian Europe were pious and edifying pilgrimages of desire and the elevating embodiment of desire in music, hymns, and liturgies as in Hildegard of Bingen in twelfth-century Germany.12 In the monastic world, want could sometimes be fully sublimated and transformed into metaphysical desire, as in the tangibly physical craving for the heavenly Spouse expressed in poetry by the beautiful virgin Saint Clare of Assisi in thirteenth-century Umbria: I will run and not tire, until You bring me into the wine-cellar, until Your left hand is under my head and Your right hand will embrace me happily and You will kiss me with the happiest kiss of Your mouth.13

The concept of voluntas, its denotation in practice, and contrary to creed, secretly sharing a subset with the signifier voluptas, had driven many laymen and common people considerably more afar and astray: the restriction of desire making the decree of the Lord a bane or a cause of great distress, even though it had its cures. Love affairs in the church, chaste or as if blessed, would become a common motif in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and far beyond, from Beatrice’s legendary Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi in Florence, Petrarch’s Métropolitaine Sainte-Claire in Avignon and Boccaccio’s Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Naples, to the ironic mirror in anti-Petrarchan sonneteers and on to the reiterative reflection and pangs of love in Kierkegaard’s pensive Vor Frue Kirke in Copenhagen in more modern times (Gjentagelsen, 1843).

Dreamscapes—Passion and Possession There were other subterfuges and expedients, other safety valves, release mechanisms, inducements, pretexts and means of redemption: the dream (=nightmare!), involuntary obsession and intoxication, or madness,

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trance and possession, seductive male and female spirits spellbinding lonely yearning sleepers and slipping into their beds (incubi, succubi); sirens, elfs, priapic fiends, or the fairy king himself, many of these phenomena and measures of ancient origin. Not all victims of these onslaughts and assaults got away with it, however. In the late Middle Ages the church began to take notice, doctor angelicus Thomas Aquinas authoritatively keeping a keen eye on those evil erotic spirits, and in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII would promulgate his fateful and calamitous bull Summis desiderantes affectibus against persons of both sexes mixing with demons, with violent consequences.14 The publication of the Malleus Maleficarum a couple of years later, the iniquitous mallet against female malefactors brought out by appointed inquisitors, was a heavy blow in an era of suppressed sexuality, misogyny and religious terror, when the ideal of chastity perverted both the rulers and the ruled.15 In this context there is one more thing to remember regarding the classical heritage. In the Middle Ages, desire was not considered natural, in a positive philosophical sense, but merely within certain limits. That was a major change. Nevertheless, the fact that the Christian idea of love had overshadowed the ancient conception of eros by no means dethroned the god with the bow, whose poisonous arrows never lost their sting. The conception of love was shaped by ancient beliefs in Fate, provisionally translated into Providence, whereas the Poison Label remained. In late Roman and medieval love poetry, the conception of love as a toxic syndrome lived on, in love potions, philtres, which helplessly bind lovers together, as in the great works of high and late Middle Ages—the legends of Tristram and Iseult, the Roman de la Rose—and on to the magic and spell of Renaissance works such as the Spanish drama La Celestina. Analogously, or in a similar fashion, writers regarded carnal desire as the result of the primeval snakebite. The Spanish baroque poet Francisco de Quevedo, in his Canta sola a Lisi, covets a beloved whose power of attraction is described as venenosa, identifying the amada with a sierpe ponzoñosa, a poisonous snake, which in effect is the Serpent proper, and whose power is Biblical and equivalent to Satan.16 In Italy, Petrarch began his fourteenth century Canzoniere by asking forgiveness for having been the victim of an infatuation in the world of delights, which is just a brief dream (è breve sogno). There, the only fruit is shame (vergogna): “I hope to find mercy and forgiveness …” (spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono …).17 This means that erotic poetry then appears in an ingenious guise of penitential confession of sins, in view of absolution. Splendid!

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In all these cases, the bewitchment, the spell, the folly or the inebriant have served the purpose of exculpation and perfect innocence, guiltlessness. Likewise with the world of dreams, more attractive than wakefulness, and not by poor chance dreams, dream visions, fantasy and dreamlike moods and atmospheres set their mark on tribulations and temptations as well as on the great poetry of love: the Roman de la Rose; Dante’s Vita Nuova, Petrarch’s Trionfi, the dream visions of Chaucer, and so forth in a thousand nights.

Vae victis—Woe to the Vanquished Studious and diligent men and women of God in the high Middle Ages at times found their competing attempts at summarizing Scripture a relief, and obviously entertaining as well. As observed by Charles Homer Haskins, writing about the Renaissance of the twelfth century, a certain poet Hugh, canon of Orléans, excelled in this genre and outdid the rest in encapsulating the two Testaments in two parallel and skilfully assonant hexameter lines, reading the Novum Testamentum as an antiviral antidote to the primordial Fall in the Garden of Eden: Those whom the serpent’s venom ravaged with dismal sweetness Were tenderly purified in the wonderful blood of Christ. Quos anguis tristi virus mulcedine pavit Hos sanguis Christi mirus dulcedine lavit.18

Not all were that convinced about the effects of the antidote, however. As pointed out by Donald Taylor, the old Hebrew Scriptures did not in fact have a word really corresponding to the central Christian concept of “evil”, the single word ra’ usually translated as “evil” primarily denoting worthlessness or uselessness—and there is no heading or main entry on Evil in the Encyclopaedia Judaica. The Mexican Nobel Laureate poet Octavio Paz, in La llama doble, observed that contempt of the body and the cult of chastity were quite unique Christian inventions in the world of religion because love here developed as a cult outside religion, and desire thus became associated with transgression and fall.19 Victims of this vehement and irresistible desire were pictured in a classical martial context in the Triumphus Cupidinis (an epic poem in Italian written in Divina Commedia’s terza rima, c. 1340) by Petrarch, who from experience saw the resemblance and parallel between the conquering expeditions and ravaging advances of Cupid, and the ancient Capitoline Ro-

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man processions of triumph after great victories of war, with hordes of poor captives and slaves in their wake, and untold fatalities: Around were innumerable mortals, some of them taken in battle, some were slain and some were wounded by stinging arrows. d'intorno innumerabili mortali, parte presi in battaglia e parte uccisi, parte feriti di pungenti strali. (Trionfi: Triumphus Cupidinis, I)

In a chariot drawn by white horses, the triumphant Cupid heads this heartrending procession of victims, including a classical parade (Paris, Helen, Aeneas, King Massinissa and his betrothed suicidal Sophonisba), a Biblical (David, Samson), and finally a medieval row—Sir Lancelot and the queen consort Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, Dante and Beatrice, (Paolo’s) Francesca, Cino da Pistoia and his beloved Selvaggia, Guittone of Arezzo, and many others, including Occitan poets, all companions of misfortune. The narrator is not himself in the long line, but at the end he suddenly happens to catch sight of his beloved in the crowd of spectators and realizes that she is free while he is not, and then he surrenders and has to join the disheartened throng of captives marching along through the ages. This is not a triumphal procession but a retreat of the defeated and a funeral cortège of ramshackle beat-up doyens and veterans; a profane medieval martyrologium. This Italian epic on the captives of Cupid, wounded by the godly winged amoretto who is more powerful than Jupiter, all pierced by his arrows, is ostensibly relating what the poet’s alter ego had beheld in a dream—a dream truer than real life, or in a life more dreamlike than dreams.20 This dream motif, established at the beginning as a basic device of the work, permeates all four parts of the Trionfi, and also the Rime.21

From Psychomachia to Hypnerotomachia A case in point is the conspicuous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in an extravagant and costly illustrated edition that was printed by the famous Aldus Manutius in the last month of the fifteenth century (December, 1499). The author was an anonymous monk in Venice, a pining sensual aesthete, who in this work materialized his dreams at his own expense, ruining himself and his creditors, as the legend has it. In this re-

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markable book, everything is concealed in different layers of meaning and reference. Written in an unconventional mixed language that is hard to penetrate, at times multi-layered, mannered and fraught with meaning and odd vocabulary as a work of culteranismo—the esoteric Latinized style of Spanish baroque poetry, crammed with classical allusion and archaic syntax and usage—occasionally even in the nature of the riddles and multilingual puns of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, this work was conceivably not meant to be construed or deconstructed too far by contemporary readers. A coffee table book of sorts today, to be sure, not only considering that a copy was sold for £313,250 at Christie’s on 7 July 2010, but because it is a picture book and conveniently unreadable (the critical Editrice Antenore edition, reissued in paperback 1980, gives more value for £142, though). A number of scholars have written about this author and his work, and many of them seem to disagree about the attribution. But the gorgeous initial letters, although presumably the invention of the artful Teobaldo Mannucci, together form a revealing summary: POLIA FRATER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT, which tells us what it is all about: “the friar Francesco Colonna dearly loved Polia”; or, Francesco + Polia = true. This is a confession, not under oath but in secrecy: a declaration of love for a woman, and for many other beautiful things of the world (poly-philos). The book is brimful of exuberant desire. The struggle that is fought in the dream, the hymnerotomachia proper, is to win the beloved’s heart, and Polia’s languishing “Polia-phile” admirer in the monastery enters a mythical sensual world where Cupid is an active party, along with Venus, Diana, Priapus, and all the welcome pagan gallery of characters. The polyphile Poliphilo, eager to see the goddess of love naked, borrows one of Cupid’s darts to penetrate the veil that hides her body, but pricks himself and is then properly in for the power of lust, under the heavenly spell of the poisoned shaft of love. After chasing the object of his most fervent desire, he finally succeeds and his feelings are reciprocated, and they are united under divine protection. They share everything. They enter Cupid’s boat, rowed by singing nymphs, and behold the triumphs of Amor. Then she tells the story of her life, which is a story within the story, and she tells about her dreams, which are dreams within the dream. And they live happily ever after, until the protagonist finally wakes up from dreamland to his gloomy lonely everyday life and realizes that it was all an illusion. The wonderful world of hot sensual delights, balsamic odours and heavenly images horribly and inexorably dissolves and evaporates like a mist, and the protagonist merely discerns his beloved’s tender and aching

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farewell in a rapid flight away forever: “Poliphilo, caro mio amantine, vale.” With a start he wakes up from his dream, sighing his groaning response: “Vale ergo, Polia.”22 Like the Old French Roman de la Rose, this visionary book about an inward strife of love illustrates several of the customary elements of necessitated escapism which I have mentioned: the dream, the poisoning, the kismet, the irresistible might of desire, the inward struggle, the use of pagan myth and of fantasy itself, facing cet obscure objet du désir.

Notes 1

Floyd A. Spencer, “The Literary Lineage of Cupid”, The Classical Weekly, Vol. 25, No. 17 (March 7, 1932), 129–34. See further the main entry on “Eros” in Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979), Vol. 2, 361 ff. 2 Virgil, Eclogues; Georgics; Aeneid I–VI, edited and translated by H. R. Fairclough and G. P. Goold, [Loeb Classical Library 63] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press; 1999), Vol. 1. 3 Plato in Twelve Volumes, 3, Lysis; Symposium; Gorgias, with an English translation by W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press; 1983), [Loeb Classical Library 166]. Cf. Alan Soble, Eros, Agape and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love (Paragon House: St. Paul, MN, 1989), section II. 4 Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 3, 10, 33, 111, 170. 5 “Desire; 1. Psychology of Desire”, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings (Edinburgh: Clark, 1908–1926), vol. 4, 663. 6 In an inquiry into the nature and status of concupiscence, François-Joseph Thonnard, and after him Robert R. Edwards (The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) observed a rough approximation among terms as voluntas, appetitus, cupiditas, and amor in St. Augustine, which scholastics were later to define precisely. Discussing appetites (desire of temporal goods) in general, St. Augustine maintained that desire, used in an absolute sense, normally refers to sexual arousal (Edwards, 15, 173). 7 Charles Freeman, A New History of Early Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), Ch. “An obsession with desire: Jerome and the temptations of the flesh”. Cf. Freeman’s critical outline in his earlier book, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (London: Heinemann, 2002). 8 S. Averincev, Religija i literatura (Ann Arbor, MI: Hermitage, 1981); Mifologicheskij slovar’, eds. E. M. Meletinskij and S. S. Averincev (Moscow: Sov. enciklopedija, 1991). Averincev’s huge “Dictionary of Christianity in three volumes” was also imbued with this understanding (Christianstvo: énciklopedicheskij slovar’ v 3 tomach, Moscow 1993–95).

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Katherine Heinrichs, The Myths of Love: Classical Lovers in Medieval Literature (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 53. 10 Ibid, 104. 11 Giusto Traina, 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire [428 dopo Cristo], trans. Allan Cameron (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 12 Mary B. Moore, Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2000); Robert R. Edwards, op. cit; F. C. Gardiner, The Pilgrimage of Desire: A Study of Theme and Genre in Medieval Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); Bruce W. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001). 13 Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, trans. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. CAP., and Ignatius C. Brady, O.F.M. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), 205. 14 “Possession (Semitic and Christian)”, in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, Vol. 10, 138. Supernatural intercourse was a universal European phenomenon (as was the demonization of the female sex), which can be seen from, for instance, surveys of seventeenth-century Swedish incidences: Mikael Häll, “Den övernaturliga älskarinnan: Erotiska naturväsen och äktenskapet”, in Catharina Stenqvist and Marie Lindstedt Cronberg, eds., Dygder och laster: Förmoderna perspektiv på tillvaron (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2010), 135–53; and Rudolf Thunander, Förbjuden kärlek: Sexualbrott, kärleksmagi och kärleksbrev i 1600-talets Sverige (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1992), Ch. “Övernaturlig beblandelse”, 123–34. 15 Consider, for example, Walter Stephens’s analysis in Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 16 Pues tus ojos también con muerte hermosa miran, Lisi, al rendido pecho mio, templa tal vez su fuerza venenosa; desmiente tu veneno ardiente y frío; aprende de una sierpe ponzoñosa: que no es menos dañoso tu desvío. “Exhorta a Lisi a efectos semejantes de la víbora” (Soneto), in Francisco de Quevedo, Un Heráclito cristiano, Canta sola a Lisi y otros poemas, edited by Lía Schwartz and Ignacio Arellano (Barcelona: Crítica, 1998), 211. Cf. Alejandro Urrutia’s account of this persistent fear of the female sex, interpreted in terms of misogyny, in his dissertation Hacia una lectura ideológica del Canta sola a Lisi, de Francisco de Quevedo (Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet, 2005), 144–52. 17 Rime sparse (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta), I. Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere: Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, edited by Rosanna Bettarini, 2 vols. (Torino: Einaudi, 2005), 1. (Nuova raccolta di classici italiani annotati, 20.) For a reliable English translation of this pregnant proem of the Canzoniere, see Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics, translated and edited by Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 36–37. Petrarch’s confession

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of trespasses, serving as apology and pretext, answered to the rhetorical exordium, and a similar “prohemium” in terms of excusatio is found in most of his Latin works. 18 Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955 [1927]), 180; Alf Härdelin, Från hymn till skröna: Medeltida litteratur i ny belysning (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1989), 101. 19 Donald Taylor, “Theological Thoughts about Evil”, in The Anthropology of Evil, edited by David Parkin (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 26–41; Octavio Paz, The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism, trans. Helen Lane (San Diego, New York, and London: Harvest, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996), Chs. 1–2 (“The Kingdoms of Pan”, “Eros and Psyche”), 1–52. For an opposed and positive view of the concept of “desire” in Christian thought, see: Saving Desire: The Seduction of Christian Theology, edited by F. LeRon Shults & Jan-Olav Henriksen (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011). 20 Cf. Thomas Hyde’s perceptive explanation of the power of Petrarch’s Cupid and why Amore is labelled amaro (bitter) in The Poetic Theology of Love: Cupid in Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 58–71. 21 Francesco Petrarca, Rime, Trionfi e poesie latine, edited by F. Neri, G. Martellotti, E. Bianchi and N. Sapegno. Vol. VI in the series La letteratura italiana, storia e testi (Milano 1951). Dream visions became an established genre in the Middle Ages, and visions of love reached a climax after the French Roman de la Rose in the thirteenth century. 22 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, edited by Giovanni Pozzi and Lucia A. Ciapponi, Vol. 1 (Testo), 458–59.

Bibliography Carson, Anne. Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Edited by Giovanni Pozzi and Lucia A. Ciapponi. Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1964, 2 vols. Clare of Assisi. Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Translation and Introduction by Regis J. Armstrong, O. F. M. CAP., and Ignatius C. Brady, O. F. M. Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982. Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979. Edwards, Robert R. The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. Edited by James Hastings. Edinburgh: Clark, 1908–26, 13 vols. Freeman, Charles. A New History of Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

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Gardiner, F. C. The Pilgrimage of Desire: A Study of Theme and Genre in Medieval Literature. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971. Häll, Mikael. “Den övernaturliga älskarinnan: Erotiska naturväsen och äktenskapet.” In Dygder och laster: Förmoderna perspektiv på tillvaron, edited by Catharina Stenqvist and Marie Lindstedt Cronberg, 135–53. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2010. Härdelin, Alf. Från hymn till skröna: medeltida litteratur i ny belysning. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1989. Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955 [1927]. Heinrichs, Katherine. The Myths of Love: Classical Lovers in Medieval Literature. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990. Hesiod. Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most. [Loeb Classical Library 57.] Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Holsinger, Bruce W. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Homer. The Iliad. Translated by A. T. Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1924–25, 2 vols. [Loeb Classical Library 104–105]; and The Odyssey. Translated by A. T. Murray, revised by George E. Dimock. [Loeb Classical Library 170–71.] Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, 2 vols. Hyde, Thomas. The Poetic Theology of Love: Cupid in Renaissance Literature, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986. Mifologicheskij slovar’ [Ɇɢɮɨɥɨɝɢɱɟɫɤɢɣ ɋɥɨɜɚɪɶ]. Edited by Eleazar M. Meletinskij and Sergej S. Averincev. Moscow: Sovetskaja enciklopedija, 1990. Moore, Mary B. Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Paxson, James J, and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds., Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1998. Paz, Octavio. The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism. Translated by Helen Lane. San Diego, New York, and London: Harvest, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996. Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere: Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Edited by Rosanna Bettarini. Torino: Einaudi, 2005. 2 vols.

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—. Rime, Trionfi e poesie latine. Edited by F. Neri, G. Martellotti, E. Bianchi, and N. Sapegno. Vol. VI in the series La letteratura italiana, storia e testi. Milano: R. Ricciardi, 1951. Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, 3, Lysis; Symposium; Gorgias. Translated by W. R. M. Lamb. [Loeb Classical Library 166.] Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Quevedo, Francisco de. Un heráclito cristiano: Canta sola a Lisi y otros poemas. Edited by Lía Schwartz and Ignacio Arellano. Barcelona: Crítica, 1998. Shults, F. LeRon & Jan-Olav Henriksen, eds., Saving Desire: the Seduction of Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011. Soble, Alan. Eros, Agape and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love. Paragon House: St. Paul, MN, 1989. Spencer, Floyd A. “The Literary Lineage of Cupid”. In The Classical Weekly, Vol. 25, No. 17 (March 7, 1932), 129–34. Stephens, Walter. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex and the Crisis of Belief. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Taylor, Donald. “Theological Thoughts about Evil”. In The Anthropology of Evil, edited by David Parkin, 26–41. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Thunander, Rudolf. Förbjuden kärlek: Sexualbrott, kärleksmagi och kärleksbrev i 1600-talets Sverige. Stockholm: Atlantis, 1992. Traina, Giusto. 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire [428 dopo Cristo]. Translated by Allan Cameron. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Urrutia, Alejandro. Hacia una lectura ideológica del Canta sola a Lisi, de Francisco de Quevedo. Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet, 2005. Virgil. Eclogues; Georgics; Aeneid I–VI. Edited and translated by H. R. Fairclough and G. P. Goold. [Loeb Classical Library 63.] Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1999, Vol. 1.

THE TRAUMA OF A HUNGRY HEART: AUGUSTINE, ŽIŽEK, AND (PRE)MODERN DESIRE OLA SIGURDSON

Žižek almost never discusses Augustine.1 This might not be very surprising, given that the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek is so immersed in the traditions of German Idealism as well as Lacanian psychoanalysis that he rarely finds the time and effort to comment on any comparable philosopher or theologian from the time before modernity. In fact, Žižek has almost said so himself, in the suggestion that the “pre-Kantian universe”, unlike the Kantian or post-Kantian, revolves around the idea of the divine as a transcendent object in contradistinction to the human subject, thereby, by implication, positioning a thinker such as Augustine in—from a modern perspective—a hopelessly surpassed metaphysics.2 And something similar occurs when Žižek lauds Hegel for passing over, in his philosophical reconstruction of history, a thinker such as Thomas Aquinas, “flatly denying [him] any historical greatness” or an age such as the Middle Ages as “one big regression”.3 To be sure, Augustine is not Aquinas, but still, Augustine likely seems uninteresting for Žižek for very much the same reason. To Žižek, then, not much seems to be gained by a lengthy discussion of Augustine. Nevertheless, there are reasons why a more profound discussion of Augustine by Žižek would have been interesting and also, perhaps, would have questioned some of Žižek’s assumptions about “pre-Kantian” thinkers. The thesis of this chapter is that in Augustine Žižek would have found a congenial interlocutor on the question of desire, one that, moreover, does not conform to the quite stark contrast between premodernity and modernity that Žižek wants to pursue. Indications of this he could have had by his own preferred interlocutor Jacques Lacan and his testified interest in medieval narratives of desire as well as medieval theology (which, in the Western tradition, means Augustinian theology, although there are several versions of Augustinianism in the Middle Ages). Julia Kristeva has famously asked, in an article, “Lacan a Thomist?”4 A Thomist without God,

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to be sure, but still a Thomist not only when it comes to developing his theory about the structure of desire but also regarding his belief (motivated by a Thomistic balance between faith and reason) in the existence of the unconscious. Such inquiries have also been taken up by, for instance, Erin Felicia Labbie, who suggests, in a book aptly titled Lacan’s Medievalism, that Lacan developed his theories of desire in response to an interpretation of medieval texts and that it follows along with a lot of what they have to say.5 Given the centrality of premodern traditions for Lacan, then, how come Žižek is adverse to discussing any of them in a little more depth? Given also, in Žižek’s own words, that “for Lacan, the goal of psychoanalytic treatment is not the patient’s well-being, successful social life or personal fulfilment, but to bring the patient to confront the elementary coordinates and deadlocks of his or her desire”, how can he not see the proximity—in all dissimilarity—to that great work about confronting the coordinates of one’s desire, the Confessions of Augustine from 397–98?6 As anyone who has read Žižek can tell, he is, indeed, no stranger to theology, so the reason cannot be that Augustine is too much of a theologian whereas Žižek has a more philosophical interest in desire (this distinction does not make much sense for a premodern thinker such as Augustine anyhow).7 Moreover, in much the same way as Lacan and Žižek, Augustine regards human beings as desirous creatures. In one of his homilies on 1 John, Augustine says explicitly that “the entire life of a good Christian is a holy desire” (tota vita christiani boni, sanctum desiderium est).8 So, there are certainly some incentives for a discussion of Augustine by Žižek (and vice versa, if possible, would of course be as interesting). This chapter will explore the theme of desire in Augustine and Žižek with the initial aim of showing that there is a certain structural similarity, despite their differences, between their respective accounts. The significant difference between Augustine and Žižek is rather to be found in how they conceive of subjectivity. This difference, however, does not legitimize Žižek’s neat separation between premodernity and modernity that keeps Augustine away from his account. Consequently, there is reason to think that the distinction between the two eras is less rigid than Žižek wants to suggest. It needs to be said, before I embark on the presentation of their respective accounts of desire, that the interpretation of Augustine on desire as well as Žižek on Lacan on desire is a highly complex maze; I have no pretensions of offering a strikingly original version of either, nor do I suggest that Žižek necessarily offers the most authentic interpretation of Lacan on desire; my interest in this chapter lies, as already mentioned, in destabilizing a too neat dichotomy between premodern and modern accounts of desire.

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Augustine on Fire One of Žižek’s major reasons for discarding premodern thinkers is that they, or so he says, posit the divine as a transcendent object in contradistinction to the human subject. But is this true of Augustine? And what are the consequences of this for Augustine’s understanding of desire? To begin with, it is certainly true that anything Augustine has to say about desire is centred on the question of God. God, to Augustine, is the creator of everything, including human desire. Especially his most famous book, Confessions, is a narrative about the desire that makes Augustine into the kind of being he is as a human being. I shall return to the question about Augustine’s understanding of God in relation to desire, but to do this I shall first follow his narrative about desire in Confessions. Confessions is an example of what Martha Nussbaum has called a “therapy of desire,” that is, a theoretical and practical attempt to understand how a human person could untangle her confused and mixed passions and instead of being adrift in the stormy sea of the emotions take charge of her own life.9 Among ancient philosophers, there was debate as to whether the problem lies with the passions as such, or whether it was just the passions that led human beings astray that were the problem, and Augustine tended to side with the latter option, although with an important modification that I will come to. So, for instance, Augustine could speak of, in book three of Confessions, how he, as a young man coming to Carthage, was overwhelmed by wayward passion—“I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves” (veni Carthaginem, et circumstrepebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum; III. i. 1)10—but then in book ten could describe his own longing for God in terms that are highly erotically charged: you were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours […]. fragrasti, et duxi spiritum et anhelo tibi; gustavi et esurio et sitio; tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam […]. (Confessiones X, xxvii, 38)

According to Augustine, human desire was indeed a guide to God, but a guide that needed to be properly schooled to not lead astray, as the only true telos of human desire could be found in God, as in the famous quotation from the very beginning of Confessions: “our heart is restless until it rests in you” (inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te; I, i, 1).

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Since God has created human beings, only God could sate our hunger, the hunger that compels us to move forward. In a way, then, it is God that is the very source of the infinite restlessness of human beings. But why, if God only could satisfy our hunger, do we not turn to God, according to Augustine? The answer is sin. Augustine writes: “But while I pass from the discomfort of need to the tranquillity of satisfaction, the very transition contains for me an insidious trap of uncontrolled desire” (sed dum ad quietem satietatis ex indigentiae molestia transeo, in ipso transitu mihi insidiatur laqueus concupiscentiae; X, xxxi, 44).11 What, then, is sin? The three major forms of sin, at least on the level of phenomena, according to Augustine, are the longing for power, for what the eye desires and for the lust of the flesh. These are a parallel to the “triad of desire” found in the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry: pride, curiosity and lust or superbia, curiositas and libido. Not an insignificant part of Confessions is really about Augustine’s own pride, curiosity and lust. One example that illustrates the phenomena of sin as acquisitiveness comes from book two, where Augustine tells how he, as a young boy together with some friends, steals pears from a garden. The reason Augustine recounts this story is most likely not to suggest that stealing pears is a serious crime, but to show how senseless this theft really was. He writes: I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality. My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong […]. […] nam id furatus sum quod mihi abundabat et multo melius, nec ea re volebam frui quam furto appetebam, sed ipso furto et peccato […]. (Confessiones II, iv, 9).

The beauty of the pear excited Augustine’s desire, but instead of letting himself be satisfied by the pear it could not sate his hunger, so he stole more pears than he could eat, and threw the abundance to the pigs. Augustine steals the pears primarily out of a lust for stealing. The actions was in other words senseless; he enjoyed it because it was forbidden. What is most grotesque in Augustine’s theft is that it is a perverted imitation of the freedom of God. The very essence of sin, according to Augustine, is that human beings in an inexplicable way try to imitate God in a perverse way through disobedience and pride. The source of evil, in the end, is not evil things, but rather an abuse of what is good through the free will of human beings.

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It is hard not to react against the scruples with which Augustine seems to depict everything that belongs to an ordinary, human life. He took up company with a woman, he went to the theatre and got himself an education in which he had some ambition. What is the trouble with that? Are these activities and ambitions really so deplorable? Is the hunger for God really the only true hunger, according to Augustine? I think we need to be careful not to read into Augustine a later, life-denying interpretation of him, when he was really trying to convey something else. Even if there are such traits in the reception of his thought, Augustine’s problem is not the lesser value of what is created and therefore finite as such.12 It is only when what is finite usurps the place of the infinite, a place that it cannot answer up to. What Augustine sought, in Confessions, was not the extinction of desire, not even the extinction of desire for worldly goods—even if he, personally, wished that some of his desires would disappear (cf. X, xxx, 41)—but to cultivate these desires so that their interrelationship would become harmonious and ordered, which means desiring them in the context of God. As Margaret R. Miles puts it: The Confessions is, among other things, a narrative deconstruction of what is ordinarily thought of as pleasurable, and a reconstruction of “true” pleasure. Augustine’s criterion for the adequacy of various orientations and organizations of human life was which kind of life provides the most intense and lasting pleasure.13

The desire for finite things should move on to the hunger for the infinite and let itself be embraced by this infinite hunger. This can only be achieved if the desire for God is not confounded with the desire for finite things. When Augustine came to Carthage, he writes that he “bubbled up” with “unholy loves”. The word for “bubbled up” (sartago) is, according to Maria Bettetini, an expression that signifies a frying pan and that stands for an assembly of carnality, excess and sensuousness.14 We can imagine the young Augustine in Carthage bouncing around like a drop of oil in a hot pan. It is the image of a person ruled by his or her lusts that Augustine wishes to convey in book three of his Confessions. The question whether Augustine’s confessions of the excesses of his adolescence is a form of self-dramatization is, of course, pertinent, but without refuting this question, I would like to state that the point of Augustine’s Confessions is not to assess the intensity of his individual desires as such, but to show his journey to God as a way of cultivating his desires.

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Augustine on Undergoing Divine Things This far, even though he has given a decidedly Christian version of the therapy of desires, there is not much that differs from similar accounts in other, non-Christian philosophers of Augustine’s time. What makes Augustine unique is that to him, the possibility for human beings to turn to God is not a possibility that human beings have in themselves, but a possibility that is given as a gift by God. In books eight and nine of Confessions we meet a version of Augustine’s persona who does not want to live with pride, curiosity and lust any longer, but who does not, by himself, have the strength to release himself from the power of these phenomena of sin. He writes that “the law of sin is the violence of habit by which even the unwilling mind is dragged down and held” (lex […] peccati est violentia consuetudinis, qua trahitur et tenetur etiam invitus animus; VIII, v, 12). Augustine gives the image of being shackled by the chains of a habit that had become a compulsion. What then was the solution? For Augustine to be able to break free from the chains of sin an external impulse was needed, an impulse that made him move in the right direction. This impulse could not be given by anyone other than God. This is a recurring theme in the Confessions; that it is always God who has the initiative, not Augustine himself. Already in the first paragraph of book one Augustine addresses God, saying that “You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (tu excitas ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te; I, I, 1). This is the core of grace: God causes us to delight in the good, in his law. Such appeals to God flow through the entire Confessions, and not least in books nine and ten we read how Augustine willingly speaks of how his heart is pierced by the arrow of charity (cf. IX, ii, 3; X, vi, 8). The emphasis continually falls on God’s initiative. As we notice in the quotation from book one, the human person is in one way “prepared” for God. Since God has created human beings it is only in God that we could find our true destination, according to Augustine, and move from anxiety to rest. But at the same time, this is nothing we as human beings can achieve by our own power, as we are entangled in the chains of sin. It is up to God to bring about this emancipation. In his description of the journey to God, Augustine builds upon the Platonic tradition as the Neoplatonists, especially Porphyry, have mediated it.15 The paradigmatic account of this journey is found in Plato’s Symposium, where Socrates as his eulogy of erotic love reproduces a conversation he has had with a woman from Mantinea, Diotima.16 She has taught

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him how eros is related to both wisdom and to folly, how it is intermediate between mortality and immortality, an interpreter between gods and human beings that has beauty as a mother and poverty as a father. Eros or love is a desire to always own the good. This is achieved through an ascent from a lower form of beauty to a higher. In the entire Confessions, but especially in book ten, Augustine describes how his love goes from what is lower to what is higher, from what is sensual to the intellectually comprehensible and further to what is the presupposition of this journey, his own self, and then finally to God. To journey from anxiety to rest is, quite simply, to move from what is lower to what is higher or from what is sensuous to what is intellectual and further to what is divine, as the highest good; in this sense, it is the “journey within”. Augustine is persuaded that Christian faith holds the answers to the questions that the philosophers, especially the Neoplatonists, discuss, but also to the longing they express. At the same time, he is deeply in disagreement with those from whom he has learnt so much. Their biggest failure, according to Augustine, is that they do not recognize that the telos is a gift rather than a human achievement. The goal of the Neoplatonists is to become self-sufficient, independent of circumstances in time and space, but for the Christian person, says Augustine, there is no question of giving up the world she lives in. Christian faith, according to Augustine, is not only or even primarily about how the soul ascends towards God, but first and foremost about how God descends to human beings—“Lord God, ‘you have inclined the heavens and come down’” (o domine, domine, qui inclinasti caelos et descendisti; VIII, ii, 4; cf. VII, xviii, 24)—in Christ. The kind of therapy of desire that Augustine suggests for human desires does not mean the extinction of desire, but the ordering of them. And the right ordering is dependent upon the recognition of human dependence upon God: if we recognize God alone as God, and as the supreme good, then our desires will be ordered. As Martha C. Nussbaum has pointed out, Augustine’s account of the therapy of desire does not suggest that human beings shall be liberated from their desires and no longer be in need of a doctor. On the contrary, it is good to remain the patient of such a doctor forever. Thus, the hunger, the thirst and the longing that Augustine describes as part of the human relation to God are nothing that we should overcome. Nussbaum writes: “What is appropriate to this life is not erotic union but erotic longing, distance, incompleteness.”17 Instead of, like Plato and the Neoplatonic philosophers, describing the ascent of love as a flight from time, Augustine in Confessions tells the story about the pilgrimage in time. The doctrine of the incarnation, God’s unique presence in Jesus Christ, has led Augustine to value time and history as well as sociality in a new way.

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It is here we can return to Žižek’s claim about the premodern tradition. Is not Augustine’s Confessions precisely an example of the positing of the divine as a transcendent object in contrast to the human subject, something that, according to Žižek, distinguishes a premodern from a modern tradition? Is this, then, not the reason that Žižek hardly discusses Augustine? The answer must be no, this is not the way that Augustine understands God. In book three of Confessions, Augustine famously says to God that “you are more inward than my most inward part and higher than the highest element within me” (tu […] eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo; III, vi, 11). This is certainly a more complex view of the relationship between immanence and transcendence than a mere positing of a transcendent object somehow influencing Augustine’s innermost self. As little as God is supposed to be an external, transcendent object, the self that Augustine is, is indeed not a form of self-possession in any transparent way; it is the confrontation with God that occasions the questioning of the subject by itself: “In your eyes I have become a problem to myself, and that is my sickness” (in cuius oculis mihi quaestio factus sum, et ipse est languor meus; X, xxxiii, 50). The introspection of Augustine before the eyes of God does not end in the discovery of a simple, clear and stable identity, but rather the opposite, in an increase of its mysteriousness: “What then am I, my God? What is my nature? It is characterized by diversity, by life of many forms, utterly immeasurable” (quid ergo sum, deus meus? quae natura sum? varia, multimoda vita et immensa vehementer; X, xvii, 26). Especially the “utter immeasurability” of the self is interesting here, as it tells of a self that cannot be contained by any external measure. At the same time we understand, from the first quotation by Augustine in this paragraph, that the innermost being of the self is not the self itself but something other than the self, God. Indeed, Augustine, together with the entire premodern Christian theological tradition, is convinced that God is not an object of any sort but rather, just to mention another imperfect similitude, the horizon or context for all human thought, action and so forth. To be sure, to a human person, narcissistically curved in on himself, God is experienced as an alien force, but this is because this traumatic encounter forces him out of her- or himself; as the innermost of the human person, the traumatic encounter with God is at the same time a (re)turn to a more original standing. For Augustine, God is different from a human being, but different in a different way and not in the same way that a particular person differs from another particular person. God’s transcendence is not at all a contrast to (human) immanence, in Augustine’s account, as the relationship between God and human beings cannot be accounted for in contrastive terms, since this would presume some kind of measure that

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would encompass both of them. Nor can they be understood as, ultimately, identical. In Lacanian terms, Augustine’s concept of God could in some ways be characterized in a productive way as “ex-timate”, meaning “a nonassimilable foreign body in the very kernel of the subject”.18 God is present, according to Augustine, as the enabling source of human knowledge and freedom. This means, finally, that if Confessions is a discourse on the fantasy through which human beings hide from this immeasurability in the midst of self—about, in more traditional theological terms, sin—there is a sense in which it is the sinful self that is unaware of its own complexity, thus taking itself for a simple, clear and stable identity. It is unwilling to accept its own dependence. The excess of the self over itself becomes visible only to the eyes of faith, as for Žižek as we shall see. But unlike Žižek, for Augustine, the ground of this excess is ultimately benign to human concerns. The traumatic encounter with God, for Augustine, consists in a liberation from narcissism; God stops the circling around self that is a main characteristic of sin, opening up the self to new possibilities.

Žižek on Desire and Drive: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction One would expect, turning now from theology to psychoanalysis, that there is a vast difference between their respective accounts of desire, and indeed, such differences do exist. But as I have already hinted at in my introduction, it might be the case that the theological and the psychoanalytical discourse on desire are closer to one another than what might be supposed at first glance. I shall here only give a brief account of Žižek’s understanding of desire, as the purpose is only to highlight some proximity to Augustine. Central to Žižek is the distinction between desire and drive. Desire, to Žižek, is essentially part of the symbolic order. This means that it is the symbolic order which teaches us what to desire and so produces our desire. A central quotation for Žižek from Lacan is “Man’s desire is the other’s desire.”19 The birth of our desire is then not what I myself desire but what the other desires. I do not ask, first, “What do I want?” but “What do others want from me?”20 As the other’s desire is utterly impenetrable to me, however, there is no straightforward answer to this question, but I have to fantasize about what others want from me and, consequently, who I am. Žižek takes the example of a small child who, embedded in a complex network of relations, is the object of the conflicting desires of his parents and relatives, and has to fantasize about what this means for who he or she

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is. In other words, desires are not fixed or natural but produced, they are constructed rather than found. This means that the subject needs to learn how to desire, and this education of desire takes place through fantasy: “through fantasy, we learn how to desire”.21 It is through fantasy that the “object-cause” of our desire is given, the objet petit a as Lacan calls it—in short, the unattainable object of our desire. At the same time, however, the contingent character of desire’s object-cause cannot be exposed to the subject, but objet petit a must appear as given or found, even necessary, if it is to function as an object-cause of our desire. One example of this that Žižek often returns to is the function of the king: the king is treated as such by his subjects because they believe he has some inherent property that makes him a king, but in reality the king is a king just because his subjects treat him as one.22 But why must the arbitrariness of the object-cause of our desire be hidden from the desiring subject? The desires we experience in ordinary dayto-day existence are really there to hide the sheer nothingness of our pure desire from us. The Rolling Stones’ song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is, to Žižek’s psychoanalytical account, literally true: there is no possibility of actually getting what we think we want, because every possible concretization of what I think I want (a new car, a new home, a new television set) will never be it, it will just lead me to relocate the object of my desire in something else (another car, another home, another television set). The motor that keeps our desire going is in reality not any particular thing at all, but the eternity of desire as such. The objet petit a functions as a kind of place-holder for this void that desire is, and as long as we can go on thinking that it is a particular object that we really want, we are basically fine, much like in the “pear tree episode” above, where Augustine’s spiritual hunger is not sated by the pears. The aim of psychoanalysis, according to Žižek, is to pull the ground from under our feet by dissolving the fantasy that structures our desire and expose us to the drive. The limit of desire brings us to the drive. The drive is a psychoanalytical concept that has its origin in Sigmund Freud’s notion of the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle from 1920.23 In Žižek’s version of it, the drive is something that goes beyond every conscious wish or desire; the drive is “an uncanny excess of life, […] an ‘undead’ urge which persists beyond the (biological) cycle of life and death, of generation and corruption”.24 The purpose of the drive is not satisfaction, but its own continuation, and so Žižek could aptly illustrate the drive with the image of Sisyphus, endlessly rolling his stone up the hill. If we want to distinguish between desire and the drive, we could always ask, for any particular desire, whether this is really what we desire or if we desire something else

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through it. Desire is always ready to be caught up in a dialectical structure, such as language, where it is endlessly translatable into different forms. This is not possible in the case of drive: “Drive […] persists in a certain demand, it is a ‘mechanical’ insistence that cannot be caught up in dialectical trickery: I demand something and I persist in it to the end.”25 Drive is something that is ubiquitously thematized by contemporary culture, and Žižek mentions, among other things, such different phenomena as the first Terminator movie, Robocop, zombies, the femme fatale in hard-boiled detective stories as well as in films noirs.26 What is common to them all, however, is an emphasis on the monomaniac persistence with which all of these examples pursue their aim, as for instance in the example of the zombies’ hunger for human flesh with no regard whatsoever to their own existence and well-being outside of this “pure desire”. This striving is, according to Žižek, senseless in that it can be given no ulterior meaning within a symbolic system, but could be likened to an empty gesture. At the same time, to recognize this senselessness of the drive within oneself is also the ultimate subjectification; by accepting that this strange drive within ourselves and “traversing the fantasy” is really the ultimate truth of ourselves, we lose all narcissistic pretensions of being in charge of our actions and their consequences or having a given place in the symbolic edifice. To assume this drive as one’s own, accepting that one is the “object” of this senseless drive, is, paradoxically, at the same time to gain one’s true subjectivity and therefore one’s ultimate freedom.27 The breaking free from the symbolic order is described by Žižek in terms of a conversion, which is what brings him in the proximity of Augustine. This act, however, is not just an action that “I” perform, but more radical, as it changes the very coordinates by which I make sense of my “I”; after it, “I” am not the same as before.28 By means of the act I become “dead to the world”, to use a Pauline phrase, in that I become a stranger to its ways. This act, however, is not a sacrifice, as sacrifice presupposes an addressee (the big Other), but it is rather a sacrifice in reverse or even a “sacrifice of sacrifice” where all that remains is the subjective act of release from the big Other.29 There is a complication in the account of the passage from desire to drive, such that there is, according to Žižek, no straight way of getting from the one to the other; this is only possible through a detour. The subject is always already, as it were, “predestined” in the sense that it is primordially responsible for its original choice. The act through which we can break free from the symbolic order is thus a repetition of the primordial act whereby the symbolic order has been posited.

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The parallels to Augustine should be obvious. The conversion from perverted desire to authentic desire or from desire to drive is described as a traumatic turning of the subject, a turning, moreover, that is impossible without something that is posited as an “outside” to the subject. To be sure, according to Žižek, this conversion means a liberation from the big Other, but Augustine’s concept of God is hardly equal to the big Other in any case. In fact, Augustine is insistent, as mentioned already along with all other monotheistic thinkers in antiquity and the Middle Ages, that God is not some kind of object at all, and therefore God can, without dissolving the distance between God and human beings, be closer to Augustine than Augustine is to himself. The effect of the conversion is a thorough reconstitution of subjectivity for both Augustine and Žižek; as Žižek is fond of putting it, it involves not only a mere reorienting on the part of the subject, but something more radical, a change of the coordinates by which I make sense of my own existence. And even if there is a sense in which we will ultimately find rest in God, according to Augustine, this rest cannot be incompatible with an infinite, erotic seeking, since God is not a thing— which means that human existence will remain incomplete and not achieve final closure. It is indeed the case that for Žižek, “God” is a “vanishing mediator” that needs to be thrown away as soon as it has filled its function, but even here there are affinities between the two perspectives, since Augustine is wary of the possible idolatry of any concept of God.

Desire and the Subject at the End of History The most distinct difference between Augustine and Žižek is found in their accounts of human subjectivity. To Žižek, the result of the traumatic conversion is the subjective destitution of the subject. This is, says Žižek, the quintessence of modern, Cartesian subjectivity, and this is what really distinguishes Žižek’s understanding of subjectivity from Augustine’s. The Lacanian subject is a blank, barred subject, “a substanceless point of selfrelating (the ‘I think’) which is not ‘part of the world,’” but constitutive of the (symbolic) world.30 This means that the subject as such can never be identified with any positive attributes, but only as the void of a pure cogito, and thus there always remains a split between the subject as an empirical person and the transcendental subject. The subject can never “become himself” because it can never become identical to itself—the dream of subjective reconciliation and wholeness is the attempt to cover up the fact that we are always “out of joint” with the world as a symbolic system, which means that every concrete subjectivization must appear contingent. In the end, “the relationship between subject and subjectiviza-

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tion [is] an antagonistic one.”31 The Lacanian subject is “correlative to the anal object, the excrement which is the leftover of every subjectivization”.32 Žižek even refers in this context to one extreme statement by Martin Luther via Lacan, that human beings “are that waste matter which falls into the world from the devil’s anus”, to illustrate the objective status of subjectivity, but this quote is neither representative of Luther nor of the theological tradition as a whole, including Augustine.33 Even if Augustine’s understanding of human subjectivity has been understood as proto-Cartesian by, among many others, Charles Taylor, I would suggest that this is a mistaken interpretation of it.34 Rather, Augustine’s self is a relational or perhaps even liturgical self, which means among other things that there is no human subjectivity before or independent of the divine love that both constitutes and calls upon this subjectivity. A human being is a subject only in so far as he or she is related to the other; and the primary relationship is to an incomprehensible other that can never be part of any order that can be contained by the subject. Even if this means that a human being, except through sin, cannot identify her- or himself with the fallen world, and so is out of joint with the world, there is still a solidarity with everything else that is created so far as the world is viewed as creation. To Žižek, this relationship is thoroughly antagonistic, whereas for Augustine there is always a double relation to the world as fallen and as created. Another way of expressing this difference is through their different interpretations of the homelessness of human existence: even if there is no such thing as completion for human existence, and even if completion really is the effect of fantasy or sin, for Augustine the infinity of desire is not identical to eternal drifting; desire will never cease because there is always more to love. There is a sense in which homelessness is constitutive of human existence and there is a sense in which it is not. So, even if God very well might be described as an “abyss” in the tradition that Augustine belongs to, this abyss is ultimately more benign to human concerns than Žižek’s late romantic infinite sadness. Yet another way of putting the difference could be taken from Terry Eagleton who suggests that the desire that is found in human longing is a “dim foreshadowing” of God in Augustine but of death in psychoanalysis.35 There is then, perhaps to no-one’s surprise, a difference between Augustine and Žižek, but the main question for this chapter is whether this difference really warrants the stark dichotomy between premodernity and modernity that Žižek posits, up to the point that there is no need for Žižek to mention Augustine. I would suggest that it does not, but that Žižek’s contrast between the two has more to do with a certain kind of interpretation of history than something that is necessary by judging from the differ-

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ences in the discussions of desire itself. Žižek has, of course, repeatedly denied that there is any necessary teleology hidden in his Hegelian account of history, effectively denying the contingency of history. Rather, any progression could only be understood as such retroactively, from our standpoint after a certain event. At the same time, however, there are some problematic aspects of, for example, Žižek’s interpretation of the history of religion, where Judaism supersedes paganism, Christianity Judaism and finally atheism Christianity, a progression that leaves what is superseded behind in what is, at most, a ghostly historical existence. Such a perspective is possible, however, only from the perspective of the end of history, as one of the most influential twentieth-century interpreters of Hegel, Alexandre Kojève, has made clear. According to Kojève, “absolute Knowledge, which reveals the totality of Being, can be realized only at the end of History, in the last World created by Man”.36 It is from the position at the end of history that Hegel, according to Kojève, is able to understand that religion is just an “ideological superstructure” dependent upon the “real substructure” of historical evolution and consequently also is able to “overcome” theology. This is very similar to what Žižek wishes to achieve in his philosophy, at least in terms of modernity’s absolute precedence before premodernity. Or is it? Certainly, there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery in Žižek’s philosophy, all the while he is highly critical of any idea of a final reconciliation, but at the same time there is, indeed, a “qualitative break with all history hitherto” through capitalism, where everything is experienced as contingent; the very experience of existence as historically determined and therefore not inevitable makes all the difference.37 The point of Žižek’s apocalypticism, however, is that there is always the possibility of reaching beyond the end, so to speak, through a social upheaval similar to the destitution that the subject undergoes in psychoanalysis, thus breaking free from the symbolic order of liberal capitalism and its utopia of living at the end of history. This is not the time and place to discuss Žižek’s political philosophy, but what I wish to suggest at this point is that it becomes problematic, to say the least, if Žižek wants to state that we, living on this side of the revolution, are nevertheless able to draw clear lines of demarcation between premodern and modern thinkers. In fact, some of Žižek’s pronouncements on surpassed thinkers or thoughts, such as most of the antique and medieval traditions—theological or not—are highly generalizing notions whose source can hardly be found in the careful exegesis of the material in question but rather in some preconceived idea of where history must be going, as is the case with his silence on Augustine. Even though he denies that his perspective is a perspective from the end of history

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where true knowledge finally is achieved, he acts, at times, as if he inhabited such a position. A more nuanced exegesis and comparison between, for example, Augustine’s and his own account of desire reveals that the relation between theology and psychoanalysis is much more complex than Žižek allows for. My argument here is not that Augustine necessarily has the more convincing account of desire nor that his theology is more convincing than Žižek’s psychoanalysis; this would require quite another argument. It is only a way of saying that it is harder than Žižek seems to think to declare something as finally surpassed, and that the relation between premodernity and modernity needs to be understood in a more intertwined, less teleological way. In other words: a more thorough discussion of Augustine on Žižek’s part would most likely have as its consequence a less rigid distinction between premodernity and modernity. What would be gained is an access to a richer horizon of conceptions of human subjectivity, one that Žižek’s main interlocutor Lacan once tapped into. In his critique of the supposedly self-evident views of our age, there is one more frontier that Žižek needs to cross. In this, of course, he is far from alone.

Notes 1 The “almost” is justified by two pages on Augustine’s De nuptiis et concupisentia in Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London/New York: Verso, 1989), 222–23, one mention in Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan (London: Granta, 2006), 36, and no less than four in Slavoj Žižek, Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London/New York: Verso, 2012), 95, 114, 278, 315. One may, of course, suggest that this is actually a lot, given that Žižek rarely discusses any thinker outside of German Idealism or Lacanian psychoanalysis at length. 2 Cf. Žižek, How to Read, 47. 3 Slavoj Žižek, “Preface: Hegel’s Century,” in Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, edited by Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston Davis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), xi. 4 Julia Kristeva, “Ratio Diligendi, or the Triumph of One’s Own: Thomas Aquinas: Natural Love and Love of Self,” in Tales of Love, translated by Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 183. 5 Erin Felicia Labbie, Lacan’s Medievalism (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 3. Cf. also Michel de Certeau, Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction (Paris: Gallimard, 1987) and Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 6 Žižek, How to Read, 4. 7 On Žižek’s use of theology, see my book Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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Augustine, In epistolam Ioannis ad parthos tractatus decem, Patrologia Latina, vol. 35, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, 1841), 4,6; English translation by Boniface Ramsey as Homilies on the First Epistle to John (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008), 4, 6. 9 Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), passim. 10 All references noted in the text to Augustine, Confessions, edited by James J. O’Donnell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); I use the English translation by Henry Chadwick: Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 11 Concupiscentia often only means “desire” as such, but in Augustine’s vocabulary (for the most of it, at least) it takes on the meaning of “disordered desire”. 12 Cf. Margaret R. Miles, Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine’s Confessions (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 12, 98–99. 13 Miles, Desire, 20. 14 Maria Bettetini, “Augustinus in Karthago: gleich einem Roman,” in Die Confessiones des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpretation zu den dreizehn Büchern, Forschungen zur Europäischen Geistesgeschichte 1, edited by Norbert Fischer and Cornelius Mayer (Freiburg: Herder, 1998), 135, n. 10. 15 Porphyry was the student of his more well-known mentor Plotinus. On Plotinus, see Margaret R. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-century Rome (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). 16 Plato, Symposium, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 2, translated by Reginald E. Allen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 201D–212C. 17 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Augustine and Dante on the Ascent of Love,” in The Augustinian Tradition, edited by Gareth B. Matthews (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1999), 72. 18 Slavoj Žižek, The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World, Slavoj Žižek and Friedrich Schelling (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 45. 19 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, Second ed., translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1998), 235. 20 Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, 1992), 49. 21 Žižek, Looking Awry, 6. 22 Ibid., 33. 23 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Standard Edition, translated and edited by James Strachey (New York/London: W. W. Norton, 1989). 24 Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes (London/New York, 2008), 54. 25 Žižek, Looking Awry, 21. 26 For a more thorough discussion of Žižek’s understanding of the drive in relation to zombies, see my article “Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies: A Theological Account,” Modern Theology, forthcoming. 27 Žižek, Looking Awry, 63–66.

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28 Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out, second ed. (New York/London: Routledge, 2001), 44. 29 Žižek, Enjoy, 59. 30 Ibid., 137. 31 Ibid., 186. 32 Ibid., 184. 33 Ibid., 178. I quote from the English translation of Jacques Lacan’s The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960, translated by Dennis Porter (London: Routledge, 1992), 93. 34 For different interpretations of Augustine on subjectivity, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989), 127–142 and Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (London/New York: Routledge, 2003). 35 Terry Eagleton, The Event of Literature (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2012), 214. 36 Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, translated by James H. Nicholas (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1980), 32. 37 Žižek, Defense, 405.

Bibliography Augustine. Confessions. Edited by James J. O’Donnell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. —. Confessions. Translated into English by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. —. Homilies on the First Epistle to John. Translated by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008. —. In epistolam Ioannis ad parthos tractatus decem, Patrologia Latina, vol. 35. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris, 1841. Bettetini, Maria. “Augustinus in Karthago: gleich einem Roman.” In Die Confessiones des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpretation zu den dreizehn Büchern, Forschungen zur Europäischen Geistesgeschichte 1. Edited by Norbert Fischer and Cornelius Mayer. Freiburg: Herder, 1998, 133–64. de Certeau, Michel. Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction. Paris: Gallimard, 1987. Eagleton, Terry. The Event of Literature. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2012. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Standard Edition. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York/London: W. W. Norton, 1989.

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Hanby, Michael. Augustine and Modernity. London/New York: Routledge, 2003. Holsinger, Bruce. The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Translated by James H. Nicholas. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1980. Kristeva, Julia. “Ratio Diligendi, or the Triumph of One’s Own: Thomas Aquinas: Natural Love and Love of Self”. In Tales of Love. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, 170–87. Labbie, Erin Felicia. Lacan’s Medievalism. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960. Translated by Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. —. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by Alan Sheridan. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1998. Miles, Margaret R. Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine’s Confessions. New York: Crossroad, 1992. —. Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-century Rome. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. —. “Augustine and Dante on the Ascent of Love.” In The Augustinian Tradition, edited by Gareth B. Matthews. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1999, 61–90. Plato, Symposium. In The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 2. Translated by Reginald E. Allen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Sigurdson, Ola. Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. —. “Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies: A Theological Account.” In Modern Theology, forthcoming. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989. Žižek, Slavoj. The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World. Slavoj Žižek and Friedrich Schelling. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. —. Enjoy your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. Second edition. New York/London: Routledge, 2001. —. How to Read Lacan. London: Granta, 2006. —. In Defence of Lost Causes. London/New York, 2008.

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—. Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London/New York: Verso, 2012. —. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, 1992. —. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London/New York: Verso, 1989. —. “Preface: Hegel’s Century.” In Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic. Edited by Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston Davis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, ix–xi.

“A MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRIT NEVER RESTING”: ASPECTS OF DESIRE IN DANTE’S COMEDY ANDERS CULLHED

One important aspect of medieval representations of desire is suggested by their generally strong links to the conception of man’s fallen state of being. In their prelapsarian condition Adam and Eve did not necessarily experience desire. They might feel tenderness, they might observe consideration, or they might love each other. But if desire is understood according to Saint Augustine, as it usually was during the Christian Middle Ages, that is, as a consequence of mankind being relegated to what the Church father (along with the Platonics) would call the “realm of dissimilitude” (regio dissimilitudinis)—a state of abandonment and restlessness— then they did not desire anything, because they disposed freely of everything they could wish for, including each other.1 In this sense Adam and Eve shared their existential predicament with the angels: where there is no lack or deficiency, there is no desire. Sometimes even linguistic communication was regarded as a symptom of human imperfection and, hence, a manifestation of desire. The angels had no use for speech. They understood each other intuitively, while postlapsarian mankind was left with the sole option of—fragile, ambiguous, sometimes deceitful and (after Babel) confusing—words in order to express its elusive intentions and purposes. That is why erotic and linguistic desire or, alternatively, epistemological and discursive forms of desires were frequently conflated in poetical and artistic works all through this long period of Western cultural history.2 The key text, or even the paradigm, of this development is Augustine’s Confessions. The keynote is famously struck on the very first page of the book: “our heart cannot be quieted till it may find repose in thee” (inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te; 1.1.1). As a young man, Augustine is constantly haunted by a restless longing for something or someone he feels is lacking in his life but which he still cannot conceptualize or identify. That is why he, an adolescent student in Carthage, wanted to love even in the absence of an object for his love: “I was not in love as yet, yet I loved to be in love” (nondum amabam, et amare amabam; 3.1.1).

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Consequently, his fascination with pagan fiction, the love he felt to his nameless concubine, his attraction to various schools of philosophy are all to be—retrospectively—understood as different aspects of the only desire which really counts, directed towards God, deeply perceived by the thirtytwo-year-old convert in the eighth and ninth books of Confessions and long since recognized as such by the autobiographical writer a decade later. Augustine’s influence proved decisive for later medieval configurations of desire. One of the great intermediaries between his groundbreaking work and the High Middle Ages was the Irish monk and schoolmaster at the court of Charles the Bald in the middle of the ninth century, John Scotus Eriugena, the translator of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the author of the seminal treatise Periphyseon (or De divisione naturae), an ambitious attempt to articulate a coherent Christian philosophical system infused by Neo-Platonic ideas. To John, God actively encourages man to investigate the reasons for things, and his perspective on fallen man is brighter than Augustine’s, probably because his synthetic outlook tended to contain a philosophical sense of human dignity within his overall soteriological scheme of things. In the third book of Periphyseon he envisages, in short, a man who even after sin, post delictum, retains something of his former grandeur, since “there remains in him an impulse of the reason to seek the knowledge of things” (Manet enim in eo rationabilis motus, quo rerum notitiam appetit; 723CD).3 Sheldon-Williams’ translation “impulse” could well be changed into “desire”. This short and simple passage is, in fact, symptomatic of a common way to conceptualize desire in the Middle Ages: while Modernity would prefer to locate all kinds of “appetite” in irrational or psychosomatic strata within human beings, medieval auctoritates—particularly those inspired by Calcidius’ Latin version of Plato’s Timaios and Neo-Platonism—were inclined to accept reason’s indefatigable search for knowledge as a manifestation of desire.

Blowing in the Wind (Erotic Desire) This broad conception of desire, nuanced and ambivalent at the same time, is quite salient in Dante’s Comedy. Throughout this canonical work, composed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, desire appears under three main aspects, expressed in a rich gamut of words. In the first place it could mean an erotic urge, still—even after death—besetting the unhappy lovers punished in Hell’s second circle. This talento or disio is, of course, a far cry from Eriugena’s rationabilis motus: it represents, in fact, a challenge to reason’s (or intellect’s) superiority within the human soul, sub-

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stantiated with many examples from medieval didactic or philosophical literature. The lovers’ great mistake was to have made “reason subject to desire” (che la ragion sommettono al talento; 5.39).4 In scholastic philosophy, reason indicated a divine capacity or rather potentiality within humans, implying a readiness to separate right from wrong, to discern what is divine and what is subversive (and hence forbidden). Human beings, though, often act against their own good, contrary to their better judgement and to God’s great salvation plan. They are, in that precise sense, irrational. This tension between ragion and talento is generally smoothed out in Dante’s Purgatory and Paradise, where the dead souls might regret or even feel embarrassed over their former mistakes. In Inferno, however, many sinners rave against or sneer at the earthly passer-by while sometimes stubbornly, sometimes proudly, retaining their sinful attitudes. With them there is no regret. Francesca, the most notorious of all the Comedy’s peccator carnali (5.38), hovering in the breeze of Hell’s second circle, still—and forever—entwined with her lover, deviates from this infernal pattern. She explicitly feels pain when thinking of her past happiness, and she weeps bitterly after having told Dante about her sin, but it is an open question whether she really repents. Later in the work, her kindred spirits on Purgatory’s highest terrace form a procession of weeping penitents, confessing their beastly desire which had run contrary to human dignity and institutions—in the words of the soul of Guido Guinizzelli, Dante’s admired precursor in the vernacular: “Hermaphroditic was our sin. / Because we did not follow human law, / but ran behind our appetites like beasts” (Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito; / ma perché non servammo umana legge, / seguendo come bestie l’appetito; 26.82–84). Francesca for her part delivers a hymn to Love permeated with such a rhetorical force that her audience (the reader and perhaps Dante himself) might easily get the impression that she would after all commit the same sin again, if only she had the opportunity. This whole passage of Inferno 5 is permeated by desire. The scenery is a windy place, resounding with sighs, weeping and cries, bellowing “as the sea in tempest” (che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta; 29). There is no doubt about the seriousness of the sinners’ pernicious acts: this is a place inhabited by spiriti mali (42). Still, after having heard of Cleopatra, Helen, Tristan and their likes, Dante feels strangely sad or even pitiful (72). His compassion is heightened when he listens to Francesca recalling her unhappy destiny and final moments in one of the most famous scenes of the Comedy. Significantly, she literally desires to speak or to communicate with Dante. As he calls on her and Paolo, they immediately respond to him, hovering close to him and his venerable guide, likened to “doves,

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summoned by desire … borne by their will to the sweet nest” (Quali colombe dal disio chiamate … dal voler portate; 82–84). This is a beautiful instance of the desire to communicate in The Comedy, to which I shall return at the end of this essay. Francesca eloquently defines the force that determined her destiny as Love (repeated as a threefold anaphor), and she is very clear about its irresistible influence: she and Paolo were (and are) subjected to Love, ambiguously adduced as a concept or as a god, which/who seizes in turn her lover and herself. The verb is the same in both cases: Love “seized this man” … “seized me” (prese costui … mi prese del costui). Finally, “Love brought us to one death” (Amor condusse noi ad una morte). It is as if Love/Cupid were the sole responsible power here, and as if the lovers were reduced to its/his helpless objects (100–106). This was typically the case in the vernacular stilnovista tradition which is behind these words: the “Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart” (Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende; 103) is obviously (by allusion) the same passion that haunts Guido Guinizzelli in his most famous poem, “Al cor gentile rempaira sempre amore”, much admired by Dante.5 And just as his precursor did in his canzone, Dante introduces a tone of boldness here: there appears a glimpse of pride or at least of a defiant selfconsciousness in Francesca’s words: love has not left her yet (ancor non m’abbandona; 105), not even in Hell. The difference between Guinizzelli and Dante’s lovers is none the less striking: the stilnovista’s proud (male) ego defends his amanza in front of God, while Francesca insinuates her self-assertion in a monologue pervaded by guilt and sadness. Her attentive listener Dante is immediately impressed: “Oh, / how many sweet thoughts, what great desire, / have brought them to this woeful pass!” (Oh lasso, / quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio / menò costoro al doloroso passo!; 112–14). This is a disio closely associated with death and disaster, vaguely reminiscent of another precursor to Dante, the Florentine Guido Cavalcanti, who frequently linked Amore to Morte.6 Dante had once been very close to Guido, and his compassionate reaction to Francesca’s words has understandably tempted many commentators to establish a more or less implicit connection, or even identification, between him and his heroine. That might be true for the compassionate pilgrim but not necessarily for the—perhaps not so empathetic—author of the Comedy, writing from the standpoint of what John Freccero has labelled “conversion”.7 Even the inquisitive pilgrim of Inferno 5, however, seems vacillating in this respect. He does not rule out the concept of love, boldly proclaimed by Francesca, but he prefers disio or disiri, as if to emphasize the irrational force, the pain and the tragic qualities of the infernal lovers’ fate. Unful-

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filledness is perhaps the hallmark of this irrational Eros, just as close to Thanatos as in Cavalcanti’s poetry (and, of course, as in the courtly romances and in the strands of religious mysticism that are behind all stilnovista poetry): a hunger that can never be satisfied, a thirst impossible to quench. This becomes doubly evident in the Francesca episode, where the lovers appear locked in an eternal embrace, pervaded by despair or, at best, sad nostalgia, and where Francesca tells the pilgrim about her discovery of the “hesitant desires” (i dubbiosi disiri; 120), which were to lead her and her lover to death and destruction.

Pursuing Virtue and Knowledge (Epistemological Desire) On closer inspection, the expression “hesitant desires” seems congenial with Dante’s enterprise. Desire is at the root of the Comedy itself, and it is from the very start inseparable from doubts and hesitation. Apart from personal or idiosyncratic circumstances, this vacillation (counterbalanced by an unprecedented formal and structural discipline) might probably be considered a Neo-Platonic and, more specifically, an Augustinian residue in Dante. To the author of The Confessions, as we have already observed, desire is primordial in human life, marked by a disquiet, a concern or an anxiety haunting man until he comes to rest in faith. This desire might even, albeit anachronistically, be labelled existential as far as it lacks a definite object: in this Augustinian version, homo desiderosus is only vaguely, if at all, conscious of what he misses or longs for. A painful urge drives him through life. At times it might seem cured by experiences of love, family life, social success or philosophical insights, but in the long run its sole lasting remedy is to be found, according to Augustine, in God. Dante was to all appearances sensitive to the great Church Father’s understanding of desiderium, which he replicated at the end of Purgatorio 17, where Virgil explains the nature of love and the structure of Purgatory (17.127–29): Everyone can vaguely apprehend some good in which the mind may find its peace. With desire, each one strives to reach it. Ciascun confusamente un bene apprende nel qual si queti l’animo, e disira; per che di giugner lui ciascun contende.

The most genuinely Dantesque version of this Augustinian desire is perhaps the curiositas or longing for knowledge which is one of the main

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forces behind the Comedy itself, and which basically runs parallel to love or, more precisely, represents another aspect of the same fundamental yearning in human life. This appetite might be labelled an eroticism of knowledge or, inversely, a conceptualization of sex. The human mind, explains Virgil to Dante in Aristotelian language at the opening of Purgatorio 18, is ready to love from the very beginning of its existence. It is moved towards everything which pleases it and thus “achieves desire, / a movement of the spirit never resting / as long as it enjoys the thing it loves” (entra in desire, / ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa / fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire; 18.31–33). From this characteristically Augustinian as well as Aristotelian perspective, philosophical investigation and natural affection are both part of one and the same inherent instinct, prima voglia, in human beings.8 Dante is eager to learn, and that is why—or at least partly why—he makes his journey through the beyond. He is an explorer of a realm never before charted or mapped by any living human being, with the possible exceptions of Aeneas (whom Dante probably granted historical authenticity) and Saint Paul (cf. Inferno 2.32). He constantly asks his guides—first Virgil, then Beatrice—about the meaning of the strange things he witnesses along his way, and he consistently describes his inquiring mind in terms of hunger, thirst or desire. This is evident from another famous episode: his meeting with Ulysses in Inferno 26. This time, his interlocutor is not visible: Ulysses only appears as a voice from inside a trembling tongue of fire in one of the ditches of Hell’s eighth circle, Malebolge. When Virgil reveals the identity of this particular flame’s inhabitants to Dante, the pilgrim becomes irresistibly eager to get to know it. According to his own words directed to Virgil, his desire literally bends him towards the fire: vedi che del disio ver ’lei mi piego (69)! What follows in this canto is one long narrative told by Ulysses (from within the flame), a retrospective tale expressing his inextinguishable longing for knowledge or, more precisely, for an “experience” hitherto unavailable to man. This version of the ancient hero has very little in common with the astute Homeric fighter and seafarer. After having returned to Ithaca he cannot settle down and recover his former peace of mind. Instead he summons his old shipmates to set out on a final voyage on the Mediterranean sea, heading for the Strait of Gibraltar. On approaching this liminal site, in medieval times frequently considered the non plus ultra of the Western world, he urges his men to sail on in order to know what lies beyond, “the world where no one lives”. Ulysses’ key word here is “experience”: back home on Ithaca he had felt the desire or fervour, ardore, to gain experience of the world (a divenir del mondo esperto), and now

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he tempts his ageing shipmates with the prospective of l’esperïenza … del mondo sanza gente (97–98, 116–17). Ulysses’ worldwide enterprise is just as hopeless and doomed to disaster as Francesca’s domestic love affair. This is, in fact, another instance of desire unchecked by reason. Ulysses did not see it as such while he was on his way across the Mediterranean. On the contrary, he designed his last adventure as an endeavour to restore dignity to himself and to his comrades. They were not born to live like animals, he reminds them, “but to pursue virtue and knowledge” (per seguir virtute e canoscenza; 120). This might, prima facie, seem a praiseworthy enterprise, but it is probably not. The pilgrim’s silence here is surely significant. While he registered Francesca’s story with an exhortation, a question and even a fainting-fit, he recedes completely in the background while Ulysses is speaking. Furthermore, when the hero’s flame returns to silence, at the beginning of the following canto, Dante abstains completely—as he will after poor Pia de’ Tolomei’s short but dramatic retrospect in Purgatorio 5—from any comment whatsoever. We have, then, good reasons to infer this conclusion: even such a noble purpose as Ulysses’ must, from the author’s and possibly from the pilgrim Dante’s point of view, respect divine order, more precisely in its scholastic version, where human experience has to be controlled by reason and faith. Virgil makes this very clear at the beginning of the work’s second cantica, teaching his new companion about the material state of the dead souls (including his own) after their arrival at the mountain of Purgatory. The souls’ “aerial bodies” might seem enigmatic, but this is a mystery inaccessible to human reason. No one, indeed, not even the souls in Limbo, Hell’s first circle, the abode of the ancient philosophers and poets (including Virgil himself), can have his desire for knowledge completely satisfied (Purg. 3.40–42): and you have seen the fruitless hope of some, whose very longing, unfulfilled, now serves them with eternal grief– e disïar vedeste sanza frutto tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato, ch’etternalmente è dato lor per lutto.

Nevertheless, Dante’s Ulysses sets a bold literary example or precedence for centuries to come. He certainly defies what another Ulysses, much more willing to compromise, some three hundred years later would call “degree, priority, and place” (in Shakespeare’s problem play Troilus

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and Cressida, 1.3.89) or what Goethe quite simply in the title of one of his poems would label “the limits of mankind”, Grenzen der Menschheit.9 The hero of Inferno 26 refuses to acknowledge any such confines. His ardore makes him an impressive forerunner to the numerous versions of Icarus in Renaissance and Baroque poetry, right down to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Furthermore, it makes him—potentially at least—a double or projection of his own creator, Dante Alighieri, another case of an epistemological transgression, whose “high flight” (alto volo) through the beyond (Par. 15.54) closely corresponds to his fictional hero’s “mad flight” (folle volo) across the Atlantic sea (Inf. 26.125). This specular relationship between poet and character (frequently remarked upon in modern Dante scholarship) might also, however, be interpreted as a telling internal contrast, especially since Par. 15 introduces another flame as the pilgrim’s interlocutor: the star which “seemed a flame” (parve foco; 24), that light (lume) which once was Dante’s ancestor Cacciaguida. This meeting in the heaven of Mars marks one of the Comedy’s concluding climaxes, when Dante feels he is finally approaching the goal of his enterprise and longing: Beatrice’s eyes grant him such a glowing smile that “I thought that with my own [eyes] I had attained / my ultimate bliss, my final paradise” (tal, ch’io pensai co’ miei toccar lo fondo / de la mia gloria e del mio paradiso; 35–36). The divergence from the Ulysses episode’s gloomy Malebolge setting could not be more radical. At this late stage of the Comedy, the contours of the heavenly pilgrim are already merging with the poet of conversion: his desire for knowledge as well as for poetical closure, which in the long run must merge into his desire for God, is close to fulfilment. Ulysses’ bold project is, by contrast, destined to failure. His noble yearning for self-realization and for discovering the unknown must, as long as it disregards divinity, remain unsatisfied. Dante himself perceives this state of things in the fourth canto of Paradiso, where he expresses his joy after having been enlightened by Beatrice on the structure of Paradise and on the problem of the free will (4.124–29): I now see clearly that our intellect cannot be satisfied [non si sazia] until that truth enlighten it beyond whose boundary no further truth extends. In that truth, like a wild beast in its den, it rests once it has made its way there—and it can do that, or else its every wish [disio] would be in vain. Io veggio ben che già mai non si sazia nostro intelletto, se ‘l ver non lo illustra

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Aspects of Desire in Dante’s Comedy di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia. Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra, tosto che giunto l’ha; e giugner puollo: se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra.

Words Burning to be Expressed (Linguistic Desire) The Comedy’s numerous expressions of the need to communicate is in itself an excellent index of Dante’s (and the Middle Ages’) remarkably diversified set of interconnecting discourses of desire. The work depicts conspicuous cases of the urge to interrelate, to speak, to signify by means of oral expression (as manifested by quite a few of the dead souls in Inferno), of written words (Dante’s own means of communication), by gazes (Beatrice’s and Dante’s preferred language in Paradise) or by song, pyrotechnical means, movements and gestures (used by the multitudes of light in Paradise). We have seen that Francesca and her lover were “summoned by desire … borne by their will” towards the inquisitive newcomer, and Dante himself was bent towards Ulysses’ flame by his desire, del disio, to hear the hero speak. This yearning for communication permeates the whole Comedy. The reasons behind it are, on the other hand, divergent. Dante himself is naturally driven by curiosity at the prospect of getting into contact with the souls of famous men, not least his own countrymen such as Farinata. As early as in Inferno 6 he asks Ciacco for the abode of this great Ghibelline and other Florentines: “For great desire presses me to learn / whether Heaven sweetens or Hell embitters them” (ché gran disio mi stringe di savere / se ’l ciel li addolcia o lo ’nferno li attosca; 6.83–84). Four songs later, Dante asks Virgil for information about the sinners of the sixth circle (“speak to me and satisfy my wishes” (parlami, e sodisfammi a’ miei disiri; 10.6), whereupon his guide tells him of the heretics and, moreover, promises him that “the wish you hide from me” (10.18, the wish, that is, to meet Farinata), his “disio ancor che tu mi taci”, will be satisfied. On the other hand, the pilgrim might himself burst with desire to communicate with the renowned dead, a disio or voglia which is ultimately indistinguishable from his need to know and understand, as when he encounters the light of Adam in Paradiso 26: after being awestruck on learning who this lume is, he was “restored to confidence / by the words that burned in me to be expressed (mi rifece sicuro / un disio di parlare ond’ ïo ardeva; 89–90). Many dead souls in Hell, for their part, long for news from earthly life, since they cannot cease to live in time. As Erich Auerbach puts it in his famous essay on Farinata and Cavalcanti from Mimesis: Dante “took over

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earthly historicity into his beyond”.10 For the same reason, quite a few of their fellow-sufferers rage with a need to express their frustration, aggressions or hatred in the presence of a living being. A great number of the spirits in Purgatory have another cause for their wish to get into contact with the passing wanderer: they beg him that, after his return to the world of the living, he remind their relatives to include them in their prayers in order to shorten the time-span needed for their ascent of the mountain. On approaching the top of the mount of Purgatory—on the terrace reserved for the lecherous souls—Dante meets a group of shades, one of which (the Occitan troubadour Arnaut Daniel) particularly arouses his curiosity: “I edged forward a little toward the other / who had been pointed out and said that my desire / prepared a place of welcome for his name” (Io mi fei al mostrato innanzi un poco, / e dissi ch’al suo nome il mio disire / apparecchiava grazïoso loco; 26.136–38). These lines are based upon a powerful metaphorical construction: the protagonist’s desire as a lord on his throne, generously providing a space for his interlocutor’s name to resound. This noble force holds sway throughout Paradise, where the animated lights dance, twinkle and sing in their yearning to communicate their existence, identities and messages to the enthralled pilgrim. The Comedy was meant to depict a common human predicament, or rather the human predicament, by narrating the poet’s personal experience of the hereafter, frequently projected upon contemporary or historical circumstances and events. The pilgrim Dante is in many ways, with all his idiosyncrasies, represented as an instance of homo viator, so no wonder he is tempted to generalize his hopes and fears: his readers were supposed to share them. This applies, of course, to his disio as well. The pilgrim’s yearning for explanations and interaction is in many cases designed as a vicarious desire, epitomizing (or, performatively, triggering) a corresponding curiositas in his readers. This is perhaps most manifest in one of Dante’s addresses to his audience, delivered in the heaven of Mercury (Paradiso 5), where a multitude of lights—righteous souls (mostly ancient Romans) who strove for legitimate glory on earth—approaches him from below, likened somewhat playfully to fishes heading for the surface of a pond (5.109–14): Merely consider, reader, if what I here begin went on no farther, how keen would be your anguished craving to know more. But you shall see for yourself what great desire I felt to hear about their state from them as soon as they appeared to me.

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Aspects of Desire in Dante’s Comedy Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia non procedesse, come tu avresti di più savere angosciosa carizia; e per te vederai come da questi m’era in disio d’udir lor condizioni, sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti.

As is clear from these terze rime, Dante’s wish to obtain information about (and from) these emerging souls is projected upon the readers’ hunger for a continuation of the poet’s work. This process could also be articulated inversely: the readers are supposed to judge or estimate the degree of Dante’s curiosity by considering their own. Its expression in terms of anguish, lack and shortage, angosciosa carizia, is symptomatic of the Comedy in its entirety, where desire is frequently conveyed by words for hunger, thirst and painfully urgent needs. Finally, these manifestations of desire in Dante’s Comedy cooperate to establish a view of man as essentially a remote offspring of the NeoPlatonic Eros or anabasis (ascent), transformed and passed on to the Middle Ages by the agency of Augustine. The usual scholastic distinctions (between reason and faith, or between knowledge and revelation) are still valid but prove insufficient to understand the work’s uninterrupted emphasis on concepts such as disio, disire or ardore. These notions imply a thirst for knowledge which, in the long run, is inseparable from an erotic or even transgressive impulse. There is, of course, an overwhelming medieval ideological (and literary) paradigm behind this theme, already hinted at above: Augustine’s Confessions, where the writer’s persona throughout the first eight chapters is troubled by a restless desire, the object of which was long unknown to him. Nevertheless, at the moment of writing this desire seems at last to have come to rest. What the small child looked for in his parents, what the adolescent boy yearned for in Virgil’s fictions or in his mistresses’ arms, what the young man sought in Manichaeism or other branches of philosophy, the thirty-two-year-old convert eventually found in God. This broad Augustinian conception of desire sets Dante apart from a forerunner such as Guido Cavalcanti or from a successor such as Petrarch: both of them recast and refined, each in his own way, Francesca’s conflict between reason and desire.11 The Comedy’s configurations of desire are much more varied and ambiguous, partly due to Dante’s creative absorption of the Confessions. His narrative strategy, however, differs quite strikingly from Augustine’s. The Church Father had built his story more or less as Virgil had built his Aeneid, starting with the hero’s or the subject’s quest, long without any knowledge of its goal, culminating in a crisis and a

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peripeteia, terminating in a calmer mood of elucidation and imminent victory. After the Confessions’ ninth book, in short, the work’s narrative has to yield to philosophy and devotion. The Italian poet, on the other hand, depicts a journey (partly modelled on medieval romances) which does not end until his work ends. His heart maintains its restlessness until the poem’s final lines, where the pilgrim’s “desire and will” (il mio disio e ’l velle; 33.143) are finally absorbed in divine love’s greater (cosmic) movement. This is, I believe, very much in agreement with Dante’s view—or perhaps handling—of language. His literary works and words seem from the very start, with the libello (“little book”) of his youth, Vita nuova, motivated by desire.12 Where and when his ardore is extinguished and his disio quiet, his Comedy must end: no yearning means no writing. In this case, the “rest” in all the senses of the word—the repose as well as the remainder—really is silence.

Notes 1

In the seventh book of his Confessions, Augustine accounts for his reading of “certain books of the Platonists” (7.9.13), quidam Platonicorum libri. They helped him to perceive his huge distance from God “in the region of utter unlikeness” (7.10.16). I quote from the Loeb edition of the Confessions, trans. William Watts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 2 For a short survey of “the means whereby Augustine links what he has to say about language with what he has to say about beings who ’mean’ and about the fundamentally desirous nature of those beings”, see Rowan Williams’ article “Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” Journal of Literature & Theology 3 (1989), 138–50. 3 Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, apud J.-P. Migne editorem, 1844–55), vol. 122. English translation by Inglis Patrick Sheldon-Williams (revised by John J. O’Meara) in Periphyseon (The Division of Nature), Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial, vol. 3 (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1987), 357. 4 Throughout this essay I quote Dante’s Comedy from Robert and Jean Hollander’s translation of Inferno, Paradiso, and Purgatorio (New York: Anchor Books, 2002, 2004, and 2008 respectively). All citations in the original are from La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, edited by Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1967). 5 Guido Guinizzelli, Poesie, edited by Edoardo Sanguineti (Milan: Mondadori, 1992), 22–24. Dante had already picked up Guinizzelli’s cor gentil in the incipit of his sonnet “Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa”, where he additionally alludes to his predecessor as “the wise man” (il saggio; 20.3), Vita nuova, edited by Manuela Colombo (Milan: Feltrinello, 1999).

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6 One example (out of many) would be Cavalcanti’s Rime XII [XIII], the sonnet “Perché non fuoro a me gli occhi dispenti”, edited by Marcello Ciccuto (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), 92. 7 Cf. Freccero’s essays in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, edited by Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). Jacoff comments on “Freccero’s ongoing elaboration of the centrality of conversion” in her Introduction, xiii. 8 Virgil continues his lesson on the doctrine of love in Purgatorio 18, systematically juxtaposing “our knowledge / of first principles” with “the inclination / to universal objects of desire” as manifestations of one natural “primal inclination” (18.55–60): “Però, là onde vegna lo ’ntelletto / de le prime notizie, omo non sape, / e de’ primi appetibili l’affetto, / che sono in voi sì come studio in ape / di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia / merto di lode o di biasmo non cape.” 9 The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William James Craig (London: Oxford University Press, 1914), Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Gedichte, edited by Stefan Zweig, Universal-Bibliothek 6782 [3] (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 69. 10 Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 193. 11 For Cavalcanti, see his most famous poem “Donna me prega”, line 31, where love is located in our sensitive soul as opposed to reason: “non razionale, – ma che sente, dico” (Rime, p. 119). Petrarch makes his version of Augustine – the unsurpassable Christian auctoritas as well as his fictional superego in the dialogue Secretum – envisage a man happily able to subject his desires to reason, “Siquem videris adeo ratione pollentem ut secundum eam vitam suam instituerit, ut sibi soli subiecerit appetitus” (52), Secretum, edited by Enrico Fenzi (Milan: Murcia, 1992). 12 Dante applies the term “libello” to his work on its very first page, Vita nuova, 1.1.

Bibliography Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Augustine, Confessions. Translated by William Watts. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Cavalcanti, Guido, Rime. Edited by Marcello Ciccuto. Milan: Rizzoli, 1989. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Paradiso, and Purgatorio. Translated by Robert and Jean Hollander. New York: Anchor Books, 2002–08. —. La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. Edited by Georgio Petrocchi. Milan: Mondadori, 1967. —. Vita nuova. Edited by Manuela Colombo. Milan: Feltrinello, 1999.

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Freccero, John, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Edited by Rachel Jacoff, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Gedichte. Edited by Stefan Zweig. UniversalBibliothek 6782 [3]. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981. Guinizzelli, Guido, Poesie. Edited by Edoardo Sanguineti. Milan: Mondadori, 1992. John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (The Division of Nature). Translated by Inglis Patrick Sheldon-Williams (revised by John J. O’Meara). Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial, vol. 3. Montreal: Bellarmin, 1987. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: apud J.-P. Migne editorem, 1844–55. Petrarch, Francesco, Secretum. Edited by Enrico Fenzi. Milan: Murcia, 1992. Shakespeare, William, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by William James Craig. London: Oxford University Press, 1914. Williams, Rowan, “Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana.” Journal of Literature & Theology 3 (1989): 138–50.

“THORN IN THE FLESH”: PAIN AND POETRY IN PETRARCH’S SECRETUM UNN FALKEID

Secretum, together with the lyrical collection Canzoniere, is one of the most widely read texts by Petrarch. A reason for this popularity is the celebration of the solitary and uncertain self that we meet in both of these Petrarchan texts—a subject that stumbles and vacillates through a world of fragments and phantasms, and which has probably become the most characteristic trait of the self to appear in Western literature. Despite the popularity of Secretum, however, the interpretations of the book are surprisingly uniform: The fictive dialogue between Augustine and Francis, with the presence of the silent figure of Truth, is usually read as a psychomachia, an internalized battle between the author’s own contrasting viewpoints.1 I would argue though that the discussion of lust, pain and salvation may be related to a broader contemporary context: Francis’ exposal of his weakness can be seen as an imitation of Christ, in which boundaries between vices and virtues disappear, and where thinking is reconnected to bodily experiences. The thorn in the flesh warned of by Augustine in the middle of the text is not only a reminder of life, that is, of the existence of the individual body within the limits of time and space. The pain is also a transgressive experience that connects the individual to the universal and the human to the divine. In this way Secretum may be read, as I intend to do in the following essay, as a dialogue between conflicting theologies of the fourteenth century—between an Augustinian dualism and an aesthetic theology articulated in the wake of the Franciscan friars. I will further argue that the dialogue touches on some profound questions that would be part of a European discourse in the centuries to come, questions concerning the epistemology of pain.

The Allurements of Life “I have often wondered how I came into the world and how I would leave it” (Attonito michi quidem et sepissime cogitanti qualiter in hanc vitam intrassem, qualiter ve forem egressurus).2 These are the opening

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words of Secretum, and they raise the fundamental question of being: What is life, and how is my transitory stage on earth connected to the universal play of time? While Francis is speculating on the mysteries of his existence, not in a dream, he says, but with a clear and anxious mind, a woman of rare beauty appears, radiant with an indescribable light surrounding her. He understands immediately that she is Truth, Veritas, and he lowers his eyes in fear. Do not be afraid, the woman says. “I saw your steps had gone astray, and I felt compassion for you and have come down from afar to bring you help, which you clearly needed” (Noli trepidare, neu te species nova pertubet. Errores tuos miserata, de longinquo tempestivum tibi auxilium latura descendi, 44, 45). The allusion is of course to Boethius’ Philosophia, the allegorical figure who comes to the afflicted author’s aid because of his unreasonable imprisonment by King Theodoric. But unlike Boethius’ woman, who comes alone, Petrarch’s Truth is accompanied by another figure. And unlike Lady Philosophy, Petrarch’s virgin disappears as an interlocutor as soon as she has presented her companion. But before she falls quiet, she asks Augustine to help the half-dead Francis, both because of the younger man’s devotion to him, and because of the older man’s experience as a curator passionum, curer of sufferings. As the reader immediately understands, the prologue establishes two models for Petrarch’s self-examination, models that recall the two main Western autobiographies from the past—Augustine’s Confessions and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Both of them concern imprisonment and freedom of the self, but where the first tells an exemplary story of conversion in which his own life takes place in a providential drama of sin and redemption, the second attempts to extrapolate himself from the blows of blind Fortune. Petrarch, however, seems to combine these two contrasting models of historiography that Augustine and Boethius offer by asking how the unique and unrepeatable can have a universal significance. Where are the boundaries between the contingent and the order, between the finite bodily existence and the structures of the infinite universe? The silent Truth as a third dramatis figurae in the dialogue may be interpreted in this way. As Brian Stock has argued, in contrast to Philosophy that would direct Boethius in a quest for truth, the Truth herself, which is the idealized goal of an ancient inquiry, has come directly to Francis.3 The Truth, however, entrusts the guiding responsibility to Augustine, and stays silent during the entire conversation, something that conveys the idea, according to Giuseppe Mazzotta, that truth is not to be found within the finite horizon of words.4 Francis is presented from the very beginning as a patient who suffers from a dangerous and persistent sickness, and the physician’s prescription,

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which is repeated throughout the entire conversation at regular intervals, is the Stoic-Platonic advice of meditatio mortis. In order to calm his soul, the patient must disdain the allurements of this life. Francis, for his part, reveals his miseries as a problem of the will: He would gladly come out of his unhappiness, but he cannot. He has been thinking of death several times, but in vain: “I tell you I know, and you yourself are a witness to this, how often I have ‘wanted’ but ‘was not able’ to act, how many tears I have shed, and they have profited me nothing” (Scio quidem, et tu testis es michi, quotiens volui nec potui; quot lacrimas fudi, nec profuerint, 66, 55). By referring to his own experiences described in Confessions, Augustine explains that Francis has not willed enough. I was also tormented, he argues, but whatever I did, I remained the same man, until a deep meditation on death heaped up before my eyes all my misery: “And then after I desired completely to change, I was also instantly able, and with miraculous and most welcome speed I was transformed into another Augustine” (Itaque postquam plene volui, ilicet et potui, miarque et felicissima celeritate transformatus sum in alterum Augustinum, 66, 55–66).5 According to Augustine, the main hindrance to the salvation of the soul is the body, for as the soul is carried towards heaven by its own nobility, so it is pulled down with equal force by the weight of the body. Francis recognizes the stoic arguments. Shapes and images enter through the bodily senses and weigh down or even poison the soul (94, 68). This plague of apparitions (“pestis illa fantasmatum”) rips and mangles the human thinking, something that is carefully expounded in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which Augustine also is referring to: “They could see nothing with the soul; they interpreted everything through the eyes. For only great intellects can recall the mind from the senses and direct their thinking away from the commonplace” (Nichil animo videre poterant, ad oculos omnia referebant; magni autem est ingenii revocare mentem a sensibus et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere, 96, 69).6 Augustine says that Francis will find this idea, which in its origin is Platonic, in his book De vera religione. Although this is only partly true because Augustine actually never directly quotes this passage from Tusculan Disputations, I would argue that the contempt of the body expressed by Augustine still has some affinities with the church father’s contemptus mundi. More to our immediate concern, however, is how Petrarch’s Augustine discards aesthetics, which in the Greek etymology of the word (aesthesis) involves the insight that comes through the bodily senses. Like Plato and also the Stoics, Augustine proposes spiritual perfection by establishing a harmonic balance within the soul through the control of ratio. The bodily senses corrupt the soul by creating disturbing passions—“that four-headed monster so opposed to

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humankind”, as Augustine says (quadriceps illud monstrum nature hominum tam adversum, 94, 68).7 The passions must be held in control by the bridle of reason: Only he who lives in accordance with reason deserves to be called by the name of human.

Which Direction? Through a confessional itinerary Francis in the second book proposes an examination of the patterns of the soul. Augustine analyses the seven deadly sins that dominate Francis’ life—pride (superbia), envy (invidia), greed (avaritia), ambition (ambitio), gluttony (gola), anger (ira) and lust (cupiditas). Some of them he goes free from, others have stronger dominion over his life, above all lust, which will also be the theme for the third day of the dialogue, together with glory. During the examination of the sins Augustine reminds Francis once again of the stoic advice to scorn the passions in order, as he says, “to completely root out the diseases from the soul” (ut si stoicorum promissa non attingis, qui morbos animorum radicitus se vulsuros spondent, 132, 86). But as both Bartolo Martinelli and Giuseppe Mazzotta have argued, Francis seems to reject the Stoic-Platonic ideas by claiming that for a human being the vices and the virtues have the same origin; the attempt to uproot the vices will unavoidably involve also the extirpation of the virtues.8 This becomes clear, in my opinion, during the third day of the conversation, while Augustine is examining what he calls the two chains of Francis—love (amor) and glory (gloria). Augustine blames Francis’ love for a deadly woman, claiming that this passion has turned his desire from the Creator towards a mere creature: “And this is the one sure way leading down to death” (Que una quidem ad mortem pronior fuit via, 186, 112). Francis, however, maintains the ambiguity of his passion. By referring to Lactantius’ comparison of human life with the Pythagorean letter Y, in which everyone during their journey comes to a crossroads where fundamental choices must be made, he chose the left road, he says, which went downward, instead of the path upwards to the right (190, 113). The image of the crossroad is a recurrent theme in Petrarch’s texts, as for instance in the famous letter about the ascent of Mont Ventoux (Familiares IV, 1), where his younger brother, the Carthusian monk Gherardo, went straight to the top, while he himself was erring downhill.9 In this case, however, the letter Y demonstrates that both branches are derived from the same root, as also the two brothers are, something which may be interpreted as a simple fact of being. A condition of being able to choose is the singular event of birth, and thus having a body. A human being’s pas-

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sions, which have their origin in his body, may always lead in several or even opposite directions. To know which of them is the right one is only possible when one knows the end of his journey. Though polite to his conversational partner, Francis is not willing to give up his two chains of passions: love and glory. He maintains the ambiguity of his love for a mortal woman, and when Augustine encourages him to look at his unfinished poem Africa from an eternal perspective in order to discover its insignificance, Francis answers that he knows this old and trite fable of the philosophers: They say that the whole earth is like a small speck, that a single year consists of an infinite number of years, but that the fame of men does not fill either a speck of a single year. I know this and other stories of this kind, which aim to discourage souls from love of glory. That said, if you have any arguments that are more persuasive, I’d like to hear them. I have found all these tales to be more specious than efficacious. Intelligo istam veterem et tritam iam inter philosophos fabellam: terram omnem puncti unius exigui instar esse, annum unum infinitis annorum milibus constare; famam vero hominum nec punctum implere nec annum, ceteraque huius generis, quibus ab amore glorie animos dehortantur. Sed, queso, siquid habes validius profer. Hec enim relatu magis speciosa quam efficacia sum expertus. (Africa 238, 137–38)

As has been done by David Marsh, the following discussion about the cosmographical doctrines may be read as a discussion about the possible tensions between philosophy and poetry.10 Nevertheless, I would argue that a far more serious question is at stake here: When Francis claims at the end of the dialogue that he is unable to restrain his desire for the world, he is articulating a strong critique of Augustine’s view: What is lurking behind the Augustinian arguments presented in Secretum, and which Francis finally resists, is a dark nihilism, a nihilism that is stretched out through the cosmographic point of view as a prolongation of his dualistic theology. The temptation of Augustine’s arguments is an unbridgeable distance between God and man as a result of the scorn of the earth that the cosmographic perspective invites. From a heavenly point of view, the earth appears as nothing, as a speck, as a piece of dust. The same concerns, of course, all earthly activities and worldly cares. But the risk when a human being takes such a perspective is to act and judge like God. Therefore, what is presented by Augustine as a virtue and as a final strike to convince Francis is suddenly changed into the worst sin according the Christian record, namely that of pride. Nonetheless, Francis seems to carve his way

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out of this trap, not by a repudiation of Augustine, but by introducing an alternative interpretation of distance. The distance between the Creator and his creation may also be emphasized from an opposite point of view— from below—which is articulated at the end of the second day of the dialogue. What Francis’ arguments mark here is a way out of nihilism by a profound acceptance of his nothingness or of his status as being defeated.

Stimulus Carnis Let me return to the second dialogue: During the examination of the seven deadly sins, Augustine makes an allusion to Saint Paul. Francis complains that he highly respects Plato’s and the Stoics’ authority in that the soul must be kept away from bodily desires, but that he continually relapses because of the weight of his body. Augustine explains that he must pray for divine help, and that he must pray with more gravity than he has thus far done: Trust me, something was always missing when you were praying. Otherwise, the supreme Giver would have granted your prayer, or, as was the case with the apostle Paul, he would have denied it, only to allow you to undergo the experience of your infirmity and to attain to perfection of virtue. Crede michi: aliquid semper defuit oranti, alioquin, vel annuisset Largitor ille supremus, vel, quod Paulo fecit apostolo, ad profectionem virtutis et infirmitatis experientiam denegasset. (138, 88)

The allusion to the apostle is the story about Saint Paul’s vision described in 2 Corinthians 12. Here, Paul tells that he knows a man who was carried off to Paradise, where “he heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell”. In order not to be proud of such a revelation, God has given him a thorn in the flesh (stimulus carnis): Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

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“Thorn in the flesh”: Pain and Poetry in Petrarch’s Secretum et ne magnitudo revelationum extollat me datus est mihi stimulus carnis meae angelus Satanae ut me colaphizet propter quod ter Dominum rogavi ut discederet a me et dixit mihi sufficit tibi gratia mea nam virtus in infirmitate perficitur libenter igitur gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi propter quod placeo mihi in infirmitatibus in contumeliis in necessitatibus in persecutionibus in angustiis pro Christo cum enim infirmor tunc potens sum.11

The pain, or the thorn in the flesh that causes bodily pain, is described here as God’s correction of human pride. Petrarch’s Augustine obviously interprets the thorn in the flesh as man’s profound distance to God, a distance caused both by the natural distance between the Creator and the creation, and by humans’ sinfulness. Although we must distinguish between Petrarch’s Augustine and the historical figure, as Klaus Heitmann strictly made clear decades ago, the fictive interlocutor’s reading of the biblical passage does not differ much from Saint Augustine’s own interpretation of it.12 In Enarrationes in Psalmos Augustine writes that ductile trumpets are drawn out by hammering, by being beaten, just as the Apostle in 2 Corinthians 12 was beaten with the hammer by his Maker in order to transform him into a perfect trumpet. Augustine then explains that to be a perfect trumpet, one must rise above the flesh: “He who wishes to be a horn trumpet, let him overcome the flesh. What means this, let him overcome the flesh? Let him surpass the desires, let him conquer the lusts of the flesh” (Qui vult esse tuba cornea, superet carnem. Quid est, superet carnem? Transcendat carnales affectus, vincat carnales libidines).13 In other words, humans’ sinfulness, the poison of pride, may be cured by another poison, the pain with another pain, in order to control the passions of the body. As such, the thorn in the flesh is exposed as a reminder of human mortality, an instrument of meditatio mortis, and thus as something that emphasizes the profound separation of the human from the divine. I would argue that such an interpretation of the apostle’s thorn is not only confined to Augustine. It also points forward to Calvin’s and Luther’s explanation of human pain as profoundly different from the pains of Christ. The Protestants did not only downplay the importance of Christ’s physical suffering. They also denied the value of pain in the salvation of man by attacking the idea that humans, who by definition are sinful, can take part in the sufferings of the divine Christ.14 With this emphasis on the distance, on the insurmountable gap between the human and the divine, a dualistic view was reintroduced in the Reformation, a dualism that has very much in common with the Stoics’ general ignorance of bodily pains and emphasis on the reason over bodily affects. Petrarch’s Francis, however, opens for another interpretation of pain in which distance, in contrast

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to the Augustinian model, creates a bond between the Creator and the creation, and which does not necessarily end with contempt for the body. Rather, the alternative view articulated in Secretum defends the soteriological efficacy of human passions, as well as the importance of the earthly city and the physical world in the economy of history. In the dialogue on Severe Pain in the second book of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque Fortune, which is a dialogue between Reason and Sorrow, Reason takes a position similar to Augustine in Secretum. When Sorrow complains about the pains that are afflicting him, Reason offers stoic advice about strengthening the mind. “Truth [Reason says] must be sought by thinking and inquiring, not by sensing”.15 However, by the end of the dialogue, when Sorrow is still in doubt, Reason admits his own limits, confessing his powerlessness when confronted with the threshold experience of pain. But in the end, there seems to be one remedy for pain, a remedy which obviously lies outside philosophy’s rational discourse, and which is held up for Sorrow: Believe the noblest [Reason says]! You may find help in this, remembering the greatest and most exalted glory of the world—Him, to be sure, Who in Himself united the nature of God and man, and suffered for you so many excruciating pains, compared to which whatever you may have to bear must appear easy, even sweet, and altogether gratifying. Consider carefully this, the most potent remedy of all, of which the philosophers know nothing.16

Augustine’s defence of the philosophers in Secretum is clearly rejected here, and it is also rejected by the allegorical figure of Reason itself. The philosophers’ maxims, which Augustine described as true and healthful remedies, are without any efficacies. On the contrary, the logical paradox, the mystery of the Word that became flesh, is raised as a cross for Sorrow. What the cross dramatizes is the unity of the human and the divine that sufferings or pains made possible, an idea that is deeply rooted in Franciscan spirituality. In the following, I will briefly dwell upon the Franciscan understanding of pain before I return to my last argument—the aesthetic outcome of the revaluation of the human passions.

The Franciscan Solution The figure of Christ that Reason is depicting has little in common with the stoic saviour of the early Middle Ages, who transcended sufferings and was victorious over death.17 Instead, the description recalls the crosses of Christus Patiens that were so common in Petrarch’s own time, and in

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which Christ was figured as a suffering human being with his eyes closed, with his head bowed in sorrow and pain, and with a sagging body in the typical posture of a gothic S. As the art historian Anne Derbes has shown, the replacement of Christus Triumphans with Christus Patiens, in addition to the entire narrative programme around the cross, is closely connected with the Franciscan order, and took place on a large scale from the last decades of the thirteenth century into the century that followed.18 The Franciscan order was not only an eager sponsor of art, it also played a decisive role in the development of Italian painting. Above all, the Franciscans favoured above all narrative paintings of Christ’s Passion to such a degree that Franciscan spirituality became virtually synonymous with the veneration of Christ’s suffering on the cross.19 A narrative that entails the sense of time, plot, and events embodied exactly the Franciscan immersion into the daily physical and historical thickness of reality. As Hans Belting and Hendrik Willem van Os have suggested before her, Derbes traces this new sensibility back to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and to the ideological needs that followed in the wake of the Council. The doctrine of the Transubstantiation promulgated by the Council insisted upon both the physical presence of Christ on the altar at the consecration of the Host, and that the body of Christ was to be visually experienced. Derbes explains that “this doctrinal focus on Christ’s corporeal presence encouraged meditation on the body of Christ and on the physical reality of the Passion, and it privileged the role of sight in Eucharistic devotion.”20 The veneration of Corpus Christi that the doctrine demanded affected of course the general spirituality of the 13th century, thereby creating a great need for altarpieces and crosses. But the Christocentric piety became particularly strong among the Franciscans, whose founder’s intense suffering in his imitation of Christ gave him the marks of the Lord’s own passion, the stigmata. The Italian painting from Duecento and Trecento shows the centrality and privileged status of the Passion for the Franciscans, and not seldom were scenes from the life of Saint Francis, or the Alter Christus as he was called, juxtaposed with Passion scenes such as in the basilica of San Francesco at Assisi. In other words, an intellectual context for Petrarch’s Secretum is a broad meditation on the Passion of Christ, in figural art and in literature, and above all in Franciscan paintings and writings. It was the suffering rather than the stoic Christ that was emphasized: the betrayal, the trial, and the mocking of Christ, the way to the Calvary, the stripping, and the ascent of the Cross. And it was Christ’s flesh, his bodily, human pains that were to be visually contemplated. I would argue that Petrarch’s Francis must be regarded as a figure with strong bonds to this Franciscan spirituality. His

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weakness, his doubts, his lacking rational strength, his love for a deadly woman and his desire for glory, are not so much part of a narcissistic mentality, which many readers have suggested. Instead, Francis’ traits all take part in a new interpretation of man and man’s communion with God, which were upheld above all by the Franciscans of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. There are similarities between Secretum’s Francis and his namesake, and I will above all call attention to the title. Petrarch entitles his book and gives an explanation of it already in the prologue of Secretum: That this conversation, so intimate and deep, should not be lost, I have written it down and made this book. I would not, however, classify it with my other works, nor do I desire any credit from it. My thoughts aim higher. What I desire is that through reading it, I may be able to renew as often as I wish the pleasure I took in the conversation itself. So, little book, I bid you flee from public places. Be content to stay with me, true to the title that I have given you. For you are my secret, and thus you are titled. And when I think about profound subjects, speak to me in secret what has been in secret spoken to you Hoc igitur tam familiare colloquium ne forte dilaberetur, dum scriptis mandare instituo, mensuram libelli huius implevi. Non quem annumerari aliis operibus meis velim, aut unde gloriam petam (maiora quedam mens agitat) sed ut dulcedinem, quam semel ex collocutione percepi, quotiens libuerit ex lectione percipiam. Tuque ideo, libelle, conventus hominum fugiens, mecum mansisse contentus eris, nominis proprii non immemor. Secretum enim meum es et diceris; michique in altioribus occupato, ut unumquodque in abdito dictum meministi, in abdito memorabis. (Secretum 50, 47)

As has been made clear by Bartolo Martinelli, the title Secretum is not very original. It was broadly used in the Middle Ages by various disciplines such as philosophy, medicine and alchemy.21 I would argue that there is another source that may have been of importance for Petrarch, but which nevertheless is not referred to by modern readers of Secretum, namely Saint Francis’ ascent of Mount La Verna, where he received his stigmata. In Bonaventure’s description of the saint’s ascent in Legenda Major, the expression secretum, or its derivations as secreti and secrete, is mentioned several times, and a mystical atmosphere hovers over the entire event. On the top of the mountain Francis opens the Gospels three times, and on all three occasions he opens it to the descriptions of the Lord’s Passion. After a subsequent vision of the crucifixion of Christ in the form of a Seraph, he is himself transformed into the image of the crucified, with

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marks on his hands, feet and on his right side, all of which are described as the Lord’s sacrament. Bonaventure then makes a direct reference to Saint Paul’s story of the thorn in the flesh: “We can only conclude from this that the message given him by the Seraph who appeared to him on the Cross was so secret that it could not be communicated to any human being” (Credendum sane tam arcana illa fuisse sacri illius Seraph in cruce mirabiliter apparentis eloquia, quod forte non liceret hominibus ea loqui).22 Like Saint Paul, Francis has a heavenly vision. He is not allowed to speak of the secrets he has been witnessing, and he is pierced in his flesh as by nails or thorns. Still, these marks of pain do not separate him from Christ. Instead, they change him into his image. The secrecy of the experience is utterly stressed by the end of the story. Francis returned from the mountain carrying the image of the Crucified Man etched in his bodily flesh, and he sought to keep the signs hidden: “Kings have their counsel [sacramentum Regis] that must be kept secret” (Tob 12, 7), and so Francis who realized that he shared a royal secret [secreti regalis] did his best to conceal the sacred stigmata. However, it is for God to reveal his wonders for his own glory; he had impressed the stigmata on St. Francis in secret, but he publicly worked a number of miracles by them, so that their miraculous, though hidden, power might become clearly known. Et quoniam sacramentum Regis abscondere bonum est (cfr. Tob 12,7), ideo secreti regalis vir conscius signacula illa sacra pro viribus occultabat. Verum, quia Dei est ad gloriam suam magna revelare, quae facit, Dominus ipse, qui signacula illa secrete impresserat, miracula quaedam aperte per ipsa monstravit, ut illorum occulta et mira vis stigmatum manifesta pateret claritate signorum.23

The burden of this passage shows the bond, both etymologically and theologically, between the “secret” (secretum) and the “sacrament” (sacramentum): What is revealed at Mount La Verna is the human nature of God— the sacrificed and defeated man. From this lowly perspective, ironically experienced on the top of a mountain, Francis’ own marks of death, and his own pain and thorns, reflect Christ’s suffering. The body becomes a sacrament, and the secret is nothing other than the mortality, the pettiness and the sufferings that may unite as well as divide the human and the divine. In Bonaventure’s description of Saint Francis’ stigmata, the definition of a human being given by Augustine in Secretum and by Reason in De remediis utriusque Fortune is turned upside down: Rather than corrupting the soul, the bodily senses may ennoble it. It is the passions—the desire and the pain, the hopes and the failures—that lead man to truth, more than his thinking. As we are reminded at the beginning of the dialogue between

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Reason and Sorrow, the word “human” derives from “humus” (“homo ex humo”), a thought partly taken from Genesis 2, 7: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground” (formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae).24 A long medieval tradition, conveyed above all by Lactantius’ expositions in Divinarum Institutionum (II.10), and later by Isidore in his Etymologiae (XI.1.4), etymologically connected “homo” (man) to “humus” (earth), and as Petrarch’s argument shows, he was most familiar with this tradition. In a Franciscan perspective, which is even more important for Petrarch’s interpretation, man’s earthliness is regarded as the way to man’s salvation: Humility marks the distance to the eternal God, but still mirrors his likeness in the images of his suffering, as venerated in the representations of Christus Patiens. Hence, instead of considering the thorn in the flesh as moments for meditatio mortis, the suffering is transformed into a meditatio vitae, a reminder of life and of history, in all its contradictory demands and challenges, that accompanies Francis’ love and veneration of the creation.

Conclusion Let me conclude: The body is crucial in Franciscan thought and constitutes the heart of its Trinitarianism. Love and pain, which are rooted in the body, contain seeds of charity and compassion that bring the finite and infinite together as breezes between two horizons. That Petrarch’s Francis is familiar with this notion is shown by his rather cheerful expression towards the end of the second day of the dialogue: “Truly, I love the number three with my whole being, not so much because of the three graces, as because it is held to be the number that is most akin to the divine” (Ego vero numerum ipsum ternarium tota mente complector: non tam quia tres eo Gratie continentur, quam quia divinitati amicissimum esse constat, 166, 102). What Francis clearly understands is that one thing is to know virtue and another thing to will it, or better, to love it. True wisdom is humility. Reason must be supported by passions, in the same way as words, music and images are essential compasses in a human quest. As parables of our doubts and our deep longings, images and poetry may incite love and transform the passions into virtuous actions. This is how aesthetics and politics are strongly connected in Franciscan spirituality, and how the figure Francis opposes the dualism and the contemptus mundi of Augustine in Petrarch’s Secretum.25

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Notes 1 A long tradition within Petrarchan scholarship regards the two figures as two stages of the author’s alter ego. This is sustained by scholars such as Francesco Tateo (1965), Francisco Rico (1974), Bartolo Martinelli (1982), Hans Baron (1985) and Marco Santagata (1993). By contrast, Lentizia A. Panizza (1991) turns away from the biographical aspects of the discussion, instead emphasizing the stoic technique of psychomachia in the dialogue, as is also done by Giuseppe Mazzotta (1993)—see the bibliography at the end of this article. 2 I first quote the English translation of Carol E. Quillen, “The Secret” of Francesco Petrarch (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), and then the Latin text of the Secretum from Francesco Petrarca, Opere Latine, edited by Antonietta Bufano (Turin: U.T.E.T., 1975). 3 Brian Stock, “Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and His Forerunners”, New Literary History 26 (1995): 720. 4 Giuseppe Mazzotta, The Worlds of Petrarch (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 56. 5 The scene of Augustine’s conversion takes place in Confessiones VIII. 6 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationis, I, 16, 37–38. 7 The description is a reference to the Aeneid, VI, 730–34, in which Virgil describes the fourfold passions, fear (metus), desire (cupido), grief (dolor), and joy (gaudium), that hold sway over man. 8 Bartolo Martinelli, Il ”Secretum” contesto (Naples: Loffredo, 1982), 37–39; Mazzotta, The Worlds of Petrarch, 56. 9 In my article “Petrarch, Mont Ventoux and the Modern Self”, Forum Italicum, Vol. 43, No 1 (2009), 5–28, I discuss how Petrarch’s erring and apparently failed imitation of Augustine result in a fundamentally different interpretation of the self than that of the Church Father. 10 David Marsh, “The Burning Question: Crisis and Cosmology in the Secret (Secretum)”, in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, edited by Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 211–17. 11 2 Corinthians 12. The quotations are from Biblia Sacra Vulgata and The Bible. New International Version, BibleGateway.com (http://www.biblegateway.com/). 12 Klaus Heitmann, “Augustinus Lehre in Petrarcas Secretum”, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 22 (1960): 34–53. 13 Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalmos, 97, 7, Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana, http://www.sant-agostino.it/nba.htm. The English translation is by J. E. Tweed. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8, edited by Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801098.htm. 14 See The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture, edited by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl A. E. Enekel (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009).

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15 In the absence of any modern critical edition of the Latin text of De remediis utriusque fortune, I quote only the English translation: Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, Book II, Remedies for Adversity. A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune, by Conrad H. Rawski (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), volume 3, 273. 16 Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, 279. 17 As Judith Perkins has discussed, the same can be said about the Christian martyrs. The descriptions of the martyrdoms from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in, e.g. Legenda Aurea, show that the martyrs displayed firmness and selfcontrol in the encounter with torture, and as such acted victoriously in their faith. In the late Middle Ages this obviously changed by the fact that fortitude no longer meant concealing one’s pain. Esther Cohen argues instead that the public exhibition of suffering now became a new virtue. See Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self. Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 104–23; Esther Cohen, “The Animated Pain of the Body”, American Historical Review 105 (2000): 63. 18 Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in the Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Paintings, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 19 Two other classical studies of Franciscan art that are worth mentioning and which play a decisive role for Derbes’ study are Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1990, German ed., 1981), and Hendrik Willem van Os, Sienese Altarpieces, 1215–1460: Form, Content, Function (Groningen: Forsten, 1984). 20 Derbes, Picturing the Passion, 18. 21 Martinelli, Il ”Secretum” contesto, 55. 22 II Cor. 12, 4. Bonaventure, Legenda major, XIII, 4, 8, The Franciscan Archive (www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/). English translation, “Lives of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure”, in St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, edited by Marion A. Habig, Franciscan Press: Quincy University, 1972, 732. 23 Bonaventure, Legenda major, XIII, 5, 3–4; Habig, 732. 24 Quotations from Biblia Sacra Vulgata and The Bible. New International Version, BibleGateway.com (http://www.biblegateway.com/). 25 At an early stage the essay was given as a lecture at the Italian department during my stay as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Yale University in 2010–11. I want to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Giuseppe Mazzotta for generously inviting me, for his warm encouragement, and for the enduring and close collaboration over the last few years.

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Bibliography Augustine. Enarrationes in Psalmos. Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana. http://www.sant-agostino.it/nba.htm. Belting, Hans. The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1990. Bonaventure. Legenda major. The Franciscan Archive. http://www. franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/. Cohen, Esther. “The Animated Pain of the Body.” American Historical Review 105 (2000): 36–68. Derbes, Anne. Picturing the Passion in the Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Paintings, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Dijkhuizen, Jan Frans van, and Karl A. E. Enekel, eds. The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009. Falkeid, Unn. “Petrarch, Mont Ventoux and the Modern Self.” Forum Italicum 43 (2009): 5–28. Habig, Marion A., ed. St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis. Franciscan Press: Quincy University, 1972. Heitmann, Klaus. “Augustinus Lehre in Petrarcas Secretum”. Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 22 (1960): 34–53. Marsh, David. “The Burning Question: Crisis and Cosmology in the Secret (Secretum).” In Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, edited by Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi, 211–18. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Martinelli, Bartolo. Il “Secretum” contesto. Naples: Loffredo, 1982. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. The Worlds of Petrarch. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. Os, Hendrik Willem van. Sienese Altarpieces, 1215–1460: Form, Content, Function. Groningen: Forsten, 1984. Perkins, Judith. The Suffering Self. Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London and New York: Routledge, 1995 Petrarch, Francesco. Opere Latine. Edited by Antonietta Bufano. Turin: U.T.E.T., 1975. —. Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, Book II, Remedies for Adversity. Translated by Conrad H. Rawski. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991. —. “The Secret” of Francesco Petrarch. Edited with a translation by Carol E. Quillen. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

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Schaff, Philip, ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1888. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/ 1801098.htm. Stock, Brian. “Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and His Forerunners.” New Literary History 26 (1995): 717–30.

DISCOURSES OF DESIRE

THE DIVISION OF LOVE AND FEMININE DESIRE: CHRISTINE DE PIZAN AND MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE CARIN FRANZÉN

One of the more salient features of medieval and early modern discourses of love as well as of its object of desire is division. Petrarch formulates a revealing example in the Secretum (c. 1347): “I think that love can be called either the most loathsome passion or the noblest deed, depending on what is loved” (Pro diversitate subiecti amorem vel teterrimam animi passionem vel nobilissimam actionem dici posse censeo). He makes clear that the former is tied to an immoral (infamis) woman while the latter dedicates itself to the rare (rarus) model of a virtuous woman (specimen virtutis).1 This divided configuration of the object of desire is by all evidence a reflection of the classical and Christian evaluation of carnality as bad and spirituality as good. The hierarchy between the body (and what is supposed to belong to the body) and the soul (logos, spirit, etc.) determines the kinds of love that are displayed in Western cultural and literary history. The higher evaluation of spiritual love over corporeal love can furthermore be related to the biopolitics of early Christianity. It has been argued that the promotion of asceticism and other form of control of the body, desire, and passion was used as a method to empower the Church against the Roman and feudal order.2 The designation of celibacy as a virtue, and virginity as an ideal, as well as the regulation of marriage, can partly be understood as strategies securing property and capital for churches and monasteries. In this process it has been noted that women came to play roles as agents. As Howard Bloch points out, they “endowed nunneries and monasteries, paid for pilgrimages, supported scholarly enterprises, and sustained the charitable undertaking of those who ministered to the poor”.3 The Christian ideology of asceticism could hence serve as a ground for a female subject position in a patriarchal order, and scholars have even claimed that it promoted women’s liberation.4 In this article, however, I want to point to another kind of freedom, the one we find in a discursive

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practice.5 I will try to show that premodern women writers in spite of a patriarchal order demonstrate a liberty as enunciating subjects. By looking more closely at works by Christine de Pizan and Marguerite de Navarre, this article argues that they make use of dominant configurations of love and desire, freeing them in ways that serve their own desire and interests in the interplay of power relations.6

Elementary Structures When what is loved (subiecti amorem) begins to talk in women writers’ texts from the medieval period on, one can note that the divided configuration of love is maintained, but used in a different manner. Women writers such as Christine de Pizan and Marguerite de Navarra appropriate the idealized or elevated form of love with its concomitant debasement of corporeal love, in ways that differ from a passive reception of male desire, which nevertheless can be said to determine the configuration as such. It is no doubt a fundamental structure in a variety of dominant discourses in the classical and Christian legacy,7 but also in more modern forms. It seems to have a correspondence to a specific psychic structure described in psychoanalytic theory. In his article “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love”, Freud argues that a culturally imposed impediment to the sexual union increases the value of love and its object, and vice versa: “It can easily be shown that the psychic value of erotic needs is reduced as soon as their satisfaction becomes easy.”8 More generally he claimed that the phenomenon could be related to the cultural configuration of earthly and heavenly love.9 One of the more obvious articulations of this division and its different conjugations is to be found in courtly literature.10 As Jean-Charles Huchet points out, in the Occitan troubadour lyric at the beginning of the twelfth century the woman became a literary object in a masculine discourse of desire, where she was either worshipped or denigrated according to the literary genre’s bipolarity.11 In the lyrics of fin’amors the Lady is idealized and unattainable; in the misogynistic counter-text, she becomes the incarnation of all the vices or reduced to an object of possession, as the first troubadour William IX (1071–1127) articulates it: “Tant las fotei com auziretz: / Cen e qatre vint et ueit vets!” (“How often I screwed them you will now hear: One hundred and eighty-eight times!”).12 Even though Freud never talked about courtly love, psychoanalytical followers such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Slavoj Žižek have shown a sustained interest in the phenomenon.13 According to Sarah Kay, Lacan “sees modern subjectivity as deriving from the erotic configurations

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of medieval courtly love poetry”.14 This subjectivity must be regarded as masculine or at least based on a theory of the male (loving) subject. As Kristeva puts it, the configuration of the Lady is “simply an imaginary addressee, the pretext for the incantation” that is the courtly lyric.15 In Seminar XX Lacan describes courtly love as “an altogether refined way of making up for the absence of sexual relations by pretending that it is we who put an obstacle to it”, and he makes clear that the “we” he is referring to is male: “For the man, whose lady was entirely, in the most servile sense of the term, his female subject, courtly love is the only way of coming off elegantly from the absence of sexual relation”.16 In this view the configuration of the Lady in courtly literature as well as her counterpart in courtly counter-texts is regarded as a solution to what is taken to be a fundamental lack or impossibility in the constitution of the subject and hence for its desire.17 Huchet describes the psychoanalytic logic of desire in fin’amors in the following way: If the sexual act does not function as a fusion, but instead reveals an insurmountable solitude à deux, i.e. a radical insufficiency, one must renounce it by giving the illusion of an absolute control of renouncement, feigning that it is oneself that creates the obstacle.18

Žižek draws on the same idea when he claims that the troubadour is a man who “pretends that his sweetheart is the inaccessible Lady”.19 In order to keep desire intact—in order to sublimate desire into fin’amors—the Lady must remain inaccessible, if she were to “step down from her pedestal, she would turn into a repulsive hag”, which is also in accordance with Freud’s observation about “the universal tendency to debasement in the sphere of love”.20 Idealization and debasement of the object of desire are hence two sides of a discursive configuration related to masculine subjectivity. Scholars interested in an articulation of a desiring female subject in the courtly discourse have contested the courtly paradigm, as Burns puts it, “by moving women from the position of embodied, absent, and distanced object of desire into the role of subjects in a number of ways that expand and subvert the conventional romantic love story”.21 The “conventional romantic love story” with its idealized configuration of women is hence regarded as misogynistic; to quote Burns once again: “the courtly lady’s putatively central position within the ideology of courtliness actually displaced and marginalized her.”22 My approach is close to Burns in that it will “see oppressive structures, however monolithic they may seem or claim to be, as necessarily fragile, permeable, and open to resistance”.23 I do not however reduce idealization

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in courtly literature to a mere masculine convention used to keep women subordinated in a social order, even if it by all evidence also has that function.24 By defining this specific configuration and its concomitant facet, debasement, as a discursive element in the hegemonic structure, I argue that it can be used in many ways. In other words, I regard the legacy of courtly literature as a play of discursive relations and as something that is still undergoing different appropriation, not least by literary critics trying to assess its value and scope. This is probably due to the variegated manipulations of the code’s ambiguity in troubadour lyrics, romances of chivalry and its continuations through different social and cultural contexts over time. Here I look more closely at two of those writers that take the legacy of courtly love further by making its discourse unstable (Christine de Pizan), and polyvalent (Marguerite de Navarre).

Christine de Pizan and the Process of Misogyny In the closing chapter of the Livre de la Cité des Dames from 1405 the author warns women to engage in the domain of passionate love: Oh my ladies, flee, flee the foolish love they [the flatterers] urge on you! Flee it, for God’s sake, flee! For no good can come to you from it. Rather, rest assured that however deceptive their lures, their end is always to your detriment. O! mes dames, fuyez, fuyez la fole amour dont ilz vous admonnestent! Fuyez la pour Dieu, fuyez, car nul bien ne vous en peut venir, ains soiés certaines que quoyque les aluchement en soient decevables que tousjours en est la fin a voz prejudice.25

The negative attitude towards what is called fole amour, simply put a concept of love as sex, constitutes a principle in the medieval discourse of love, and it is certainly an important issue in Christianity. What is perhaps not evident at first sight, is the quotation’s direct reference to the second part of the canonical Roman de la rose, written by Jean de Meun, where Nature gives men her guidance: Fair lords, protect yourself from women […] Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, my children; I advise you […] to fly from such an animal Seigneur, gardez vous de voz fames […] Fuiez, fuiez, fuiez, fuiez, Fuiez, enfanz, fuiez tel beste26

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In an openly misogynous vein Jean de Meun represents women as the incarnation of the sexual aspect of love.27 They are said to be animals, which underline the moral debasement of this love. In her turn Christine uses a double strategy, which is neither an acceptance nor a refutation of established models, as Blanchard puts it, “Christine plays the game with perfect bad faith because the authors who speak against women are at the same time the very ones who will inspire her.”28 Already in her first texts Christine engages in this playful and critical dialogue with the dominating discourse of love.29 In her debate poem Le Livre du Debat de deux amans, written five years earlier than the Cité des Dames, she uses the same phrase as in her allegory, but here expressed by a “courteous and gentle knight” (courtois chevalier amiable), and directed towards any kind of love: No matter how it begins, Love always ends badly Fly, fly, This love, young people! Quieulx que soient d’amours les commençailles Tous jours y a piteuses deffinailles. Fuyez, fuyez, Yceste amour, jeunes gens!30

In the poem the knight’s speech is however scrutinized by a Lady who questions its seriousness: “For my part, gather that it’s not customary to speak of love in that way if not in jest” (Love Debate, 107; Et quant a moy, tiens que ce n’est que usage / D’ainsi parler d’amours par rigolage). She sustains her view by an explicit reference to “le Rommant de la Rose” (108). Given Christine’s refutation of the misogyny of Jean de Meun, she is indeed using a double strategy here, which dismantles the work’s authority. As Altmann points out, the reference goes to Reason, who “stresses the contradictions and the many dangers of passionate love”.31 The motive for Jean de Meun is however, as Strubel points out, a criticism of “amours fines”, which he wants to reveal as a euphuism hiding the presence of sexual desire.32 If we consider that “amour fines”, or fin’amors, as the troubadours called it, opposes love as sex, the Lady’s words in the love debate poem can be understood as a generalized argument against this specific understanding of the courtly code from a woman’s point of view. Simply put, because of men’s falseness women risk losing their idealized position if they acquiesce to passionate love.

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Also the warning against men’s false speech aiming at seduction is an “appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it”, as Foucault puts it.33 For women are depicted in the misogynistic tradition as sophisticated seducers bringing men to their end, as in these lines in the Lamentation de Matheolus: I would have done better to shield my eyes The day I first saw her And so esteemed her beauty And her sweet angelic face Covering sophisticated woman Mieulx me venist mes yeux bander Au jour que premier l’avisay Et que sa beauté tant prisay Et son doulx viaire Angelique Dessoubs la fame sophistique34

One could even say that this view on women sparked the project of writing the Cité de Dames considering that the opening scene of the allegory refers to the Lamentation de Matheolus.35 Reading it, the narrator Christine discovers however a paradigmatic example of misogyny revealing to her that none of the other books she was studying previously contradicts its defamatory language. And she begins to wonder How it happened that so many different men—and learned men among them—have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many devilish and wicked thoughts about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two and not even just this Mathéolus (for this book had a bad name anyway and was intended as a satire) but more generally, judging from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators—it would take too long to mention their names—it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Qu’elle peut ester la cause ne don’t ce peut venir tant de divers hommes, clercs et autres, ont esté et sont si enclins a dire de bouche et en leurs traictiez et escrips tant de deableries et de vituperes de femmes et de leurs condicions, et non mie seulement un ou .ij., ne cestui Matheolus, qui entre les livres n’a aucune reputacion et qui traicte en maniere de trufferie, mais generaument auques en tous traictiez, philosophes, poetes, tous orateurs desquielx les noms dire seroit longue chose, semble que tous parlent par une mesme bouche et tous accordant une semblable conclusion, determinant les meurs feminins enclins et plains de tous les vices. (Cité 42, trans., 4)

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This opening scene in Christine’s allegory illustrates the female subject’s meeting with the objectification of her identity—the misogynistic representations of women in medieval canon—that will be refuted by the construction of a city of Ladies using the configuration of the idealized Lady in the courtly legacy as one her prime strategies.36 According to Kristeva the very possibility of idealization disappears when the representation of women is transformed from an inaccessible reference in courtly lyric to an object of knowledge and possession in the allegory of the rose.37 This is a suggestion that can be sustained by Christine’s critique of the work’s misogyny.38 At the same time she shows in her own allegory that this possibility can be put to use anew, not as a masculine configuration of love and women, but as an aspect of feminine desire. In her allegory she deplores that the “ladies and all valiant women” have for long time been exposed like a field without surrounding hedge, without finding a champion to afford them an adequate defence, notwithstanding those noble men who are required by order of law to protect them, who by negligence and apathy have allowed them to be mistreated. It is no wonder then that their jealous enemies, those outrageous villains who have assailed them with various weapons, have been victorious in a war in which women have had no defence. delaissees, descloses comme champ sanz haye, sanz trouver champion aucun qui pour leur deffence comparust souffisemment, nonobstant les nobles hommes qui par ordenance de droit deffendre les deussent, qui par negligence et nonchaloir les ont souffertes fouler, par quoy n’est merveille se leur envieux ennemis et l’oultrage des villains, qui par divers dars les ont assaillies, ont eu contre elles victoire de leur guerre par faulte de defence. (Cité 54, trans., 10)

The defence Christine will offer in her turn is a reworking of a medieval canon where women (mythical as well as historical) are represented as incarnations of vices or virtues depending on the author’s mode and purpose. Strategically she often celebrates what legitimate tradition condemns, as Quilligan puts it.39 As a writing woman she is nevertheless part of a cultural elite and hence of the hegemonic order, but she articulates a strategy and a desire to counteract the constructions that debase or denigrate women, which calls into question the divide itself. As in courtly love we are dealing with a discursive desire (a fantasy and a configuration) but in Christine’s writing the dualistic representation of woman as either idealized or debased is put into a process where

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idealization shows its violent roots. On the one hand, Christine’s catalogue of women are idealized incarnations of virtues, they are “noble dames” described with epithets from the courtly tradition, even though they are pagan or Christian, mythical or historical, and all are assimilated to the Virgin Mary.40 On the other hand the stories about these honourable ladies are also in a fundamental manner connected to war or death, from the incestuous warrior queen Semiramis and the amazons to the Christian martyrs.41 Christine’s most effective argument against the misogynistic representations of women in canonical texts could be described as an upheaval of the dialectical movement of idealization of women into debasement by destabilizing the hegemonic discourse, but without giving up the division of love into amours fines and fole amour. To be sure, it was not Christine’s purpose to de-idealize the medieval representation of woman. At the end of the Cité des Dames she presents a virtue ethics where the object of medieval allegory—the woman—is addressed and represented as subject: My most dear ladies, it is natural for the human heart to rejoice when it finds itself victorious in any enterprise and its enemies confounded. Therefore you are right, my ladies, to rejoice greatly in God and in honest mores upon seeing this new City completed, which can be not only the refuge for you all, that is, for virtuous women, but also the defence and guard against your enemies and assailants, if you guard it well. Et mes tres cheres dames, chose naturelle est a cuer humain de soy esjouyr quant il se treuve avoir victoire d’aucune emprise, et que ses ennemis soient confondus. Si avez cause orendroit, mes dames de vous esjouyr vertueusement en ieu et bones meurs par ceste nouvelle Cité veoir parfaicte, qui peut estre non mie seulement le refuge de vous toutes, c’est a entendre des vertueuses, mais aussi la deffence et garde contre voz ennemis et assaillans, se bien la gardez. (Cité 498, trans., 237)

The ethical attitudes required to live in the Cité des Dames do not challenge the medieval social order where woman’s virtue is determined by a patriarchal feudal order. But Christine’s strategy, which releases and transforms the other side of the medieval idealization of women, i.e. the motives of their debasement, into new symbolic representations, dismantles the power of the enemies’ attacks. This is perhaps to add fuel to the war of the sexes, but it is also a remedy against misogyny and a reason why Christine at the end of her book can enjoin all women to rejoice. In this way Christine also makes it evident that the discursive order is

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unstable, possible to be reworked and reshaped in accordance with a female desire.

Marguerite de Navarra and the Polyvalence of Love Marguerite de Navarre’s some seventy stories that constitute the Heptaméron (1559) tell us a lot about the dominant ideas of love— Christian, courtly, and Neoplatonic—during the Renaissance. It is well known that the period’s predominant love code was motivated by an interpretation of Plato through a Christian discourse. As a discursive element it appears at various places in the Heptaméron, as in the discussion in novella 19 when Parlamente, often considered as a representation of Marguerite herself, gives her definition of a perfect lover: “‘Those whom I call perfect lovers,’ replied Parlamente, ‘are those who seek in what they love some perfection’” (J’appelle parfaict amans, lui respondit Parlamente, ceux qui cherchent en ce qu’ils aiment qulque perfection) and she explains what she means by perfection, “For the soul, which was created solely that it might return to its Sovereign Good, ceaselessly desires to achieve this end while it is still within the body” (Car l’ame, qui n’est creée, que pour retourner à son souverain bien, ne fact tant qu’elle est dedans le corps, que desirer d’y parvenir).42 It is made clear that the “Sovereign Good” is nothing but the Christian God. The Christian configuration of “Platonic love” is nevertheless only one element among others in Marguerite’s Symposium. If we take a look at the character that is usually supposed to incarnate the Neoplatonic attitude towards love, Dagoucin, one can easily see that he has more in common with the courtly love code. In the discussion after the novella 70, which is a transposition of the medieval poem “La chastelaine de Vergi”, Dagoucin points out the loyalty to a Lady as a condition for the courtly chevalier. If there were no Lady to love and be rewarded by, “then instead of following the profession of arms, we should all turn into mere merchants, and instead of winning honour, seek only to pile up wealth” (Heptaméron 583, trans., 533; il faudroit au lieu d’hommes d’armes, faire des marchand: et en lieu d’acquerir honneur, ne penser qu’à amasser du bien). It is hence not Platonic love that is the object here but a reminiscence of a “feudalism’s ethics of ‘nonproduction’”, and its courtly love code.43 This courtly legacy is also the topic in the often-commented novella 10, which is told by Parlamente. In brief, it is the story of a knight— Amador—who decides to love a Lady that he knows he cannot marry because of social differences. He nevertheless shows her all the signs of

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perfect love and the Lady in turn makes him his “amy”. Yet the point of the story is Amador’s betrayal of the code and his “folle amour” (146). When his real intention becomes clear the Lady Florida asks what it is that drives him “to seek that which can give you no satisfaction, and to cause me the greatest sorrow anyone could ever cause me?” (Heptaméron 152, trans., 147; de chercher une chose dont vous ne sçauriez avoir contentement, et me donner un ennuy le plus grand que je sçaurois avoir). In the novella the courtly code and the Lady’s position are clearly opposed to the “warrior-gallant ethic” represented by the knight’s behaviour and further on defended in the discussion by Hircan.44 In other words there is in the story as well as in the discussion a combat between perfect love and sexual fulfilment that, from the Lady’s point of view, will be the beginning of her degradation from an idealized object of desire worthy of love into an object of consummation and possession. The Lady, who has been forced to marry a man that she does not love because it was a good affair in the context of courtly politics, knows very well what the lover’s desire implies: “you have clearly demonstrated to me that I would have been building not upon the solid rock of purity, but upon the shifting sands, nay, upon a treacherous bog of vice” (Heptaméron 146– 47, trans., 143; Amadour, en un moment m’avez monstré, qu’en lieu d’une pierre nette et pure, le fondement de cest edifice est assis sur un sablon leger et mouvant, ou sur la fange molle et infame). The foundation of their love relations was hence an avoidance of the sexual act that in part also has an economic dimension insofar as it intercepts a social order where women are men’s property. This is obviously the order which the lover takes for granted when Amador in his turn defines courtly love as a sexual relation outside marriage, and more important, that he has the right to possess his beloved: “now you are a married woman. You have a cover and your honour is safe. So what wrong can I possibly be doing you in asking for what is truly mine?” (Heptaméron 145, trans., 141; maintenant que vous estes mariée, et que vostre honneur peult estre couvert, quel tort vous tiens je de demander ce qui est mien?) Florida’s perseverance is met by Amador’s transgression of the courtly code when he attempts to rape her.45 The end of the story could be seen as an endorsement of Florida’s attitude. When both her husband and her lover die—they are both engaged in the wars in Spain against the Moors—Florida decides to end her days in a convent: “Thus she took Him as a lover and as spouse who had delivered her from the violent love of Amador and from the misery of her life with her earthly husband” (Heptaméron 157, trans., 153; prenant pour mary et amy celuy qui l’avoit delivré d’une amour si vehemente que celle

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d’Amadour, et de l’ennuy si grand que de la compaignie d’un tel mary). Florida’s vocabulary, which uses the mystic discourse of love, or more generally the early Christian configuration of the “Bride of Christ”, making earthly relations images of a heavenly order, nevertheless point to a social reality.46 To love God instead of an earthly lover or husband is a way for women to be more than objects of possession in feudal patriarchy, which becomes evident in the following discussion of this novella. Hircan, who represents the view of the feudal lord, argues that Amador only tried to fulfil his duty when he attempted to rape Florida, whereupon Lady Oisille, the oldest and most authoritative storyteller, asks: “Do you call it duty when a man who devotes himself to a lady’s service tries to take her by force, when what he owes to her is obedience and reverence?” (Heptaméron 158, trans., 153; Appellez-vous faire son devoir à un serviteur, qui veult avoir par force sa maistresse, à laquelle il doit toute reverence et obeissance?) However, it is not at all a given that Oisille, the group’s spiritual leader, should defend the courtly code. Later on it becomes clear that she advocates Christian marriage, which also has been seen has as “the most highly praised” by Marguerite.47 At all events the different voices constitute a discursive battlefield, which is revealing of the power relations not only between the Christian and Platonic, or courtly versions of love, but also between the sexes. The “warrior-gallant ethic” is not a simple opposite of the Christian, Platonic or courtly love, and Parlamente even suggests that Florida’s defence of her virtue may be exaggerated, begging the women in the group to “be less harsh” (Heptaméron 158, trans., 152; diminuer un peu de sa cruauté). What one can say is that the author invites to an open discussion. On one hand we have Florida’s defence of her virtue represented as a protection of her own integrity as well as of her honour. On the other hand this traditional subject position for a woman in the feudal order is represented as a pure convention or a symbolic game, as Saffredent explains it: When our ladies are holding court and sit in state like judges, then we men bend our knees before them. […] However, in private it is quite another matter. Then Love is the only judge of the way we behave, and we soon find out that they are just women, and we are just men. The title “lady” is soon exchanged for “mistress”, and her “devoted servant” soon becomes her “lover”. Hence the well-known proverb: “loyal service makes the servant master”. quand noz maistresses tiennent leur rang en chambre ou en salles, assises à leur aise comme noz juges, nous sommes à genoulx devant elles […]. Mais

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quand nous sommes à part, où l’amour seul est juge de noz contenances, nous sçavons tresbien qu’elles sont femmes, et nous hommes, et à l’heure le nom de maistresse, est converty en amye, et le nom de serviteur en amy. C’est de là où le proverbe est dict: “De bien servir et loyal estre, de serviteur on devient maistre.” (Heptaméron 158–59, trans., 153)

In this perspective love is represented as an arena where power relations are acted out. Through sexual fulfilment the lady’s servant becomes master, as parfaicts amans she is his maitresse, and power is just about giving or not giving her love (which is her honour) away. In other words the lady has the power as long as she masters its forces. If she lets love be “the only judge” she loses that power, and her position is degraded according to the social rules of the feudal order. Through this social and courtly game Marguerite demonstrates the ritual but at the same time unstable character of the power relations among the storytellers. This is also a strategy which undermines the stability of the discursive order, creating a real polyphony.

Coda Medieval and early modern discourses of love no doubt reflect a patriarchal order. Love as such, however, appears to be a word that can be used to maintain or deconstruct its dominant configurations. In female writers’ texts we see how the dream of pure love (fin’amors) as well as that of sexual union (folle amour) reveal social power relations as well as the lack that is constituent of desire, which in a male hegemonic order configures the woman as both its cause and promise of completion. A feminine desire can in this context not be sought in the interior of a presupposed female psyche, it can only to be traced in the movement of discourse itself.

Notes 1 Francesco Petrarca, Prose, edited by Guido Martellotti (Milan: Storia e testi, 1955), 132; The Secret, edited by Carol E. Quillen, trans. William Draper (New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2003), 104. 2 For a summary of this research see R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 81–91. See also George Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre: Le mariage dans la France féodale (Paris: Hachette, 1981). 3 Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, 88.

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See Bloch’s summary ibid., 86. See also Régine Pernoud, La femme aux temps des cathédrales (Paris 1980), 25. 5 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002), 32. Foucault is indeed discussing the critic’s liberty (his own) “to describe the interplay of relations” within and outside “the space in which discursive events are deployed”. I think that this position is applicable to the writers studied in this article too. 6 Even if there is a misogynistic grounding of the medieval division of love and of its object into idealized or debased forms, and that its “function was from the start, and continues to be, the diversion of women from history by the annihilation of the identity of individual women”, I argue that this function is effaced by medieval and early modern women writers who by all evidence play a role in history if we read them. Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, 196–97. 7 A classical example at the beginning of Plato’s Symposium is the story of the two goddesses, who are both named Aphrodite, the Heavenly and the Popular. In the Christian tradition Eve stands for earthly, sinful love while Mary bears the promise of man’s salvation. See Bloch’s critical assessment of the contradictory configuration of love and of its object in the western history of sexuality in Medieval Misogyny. 8 Sigmund Freud, “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,” Standard Edition, edited and translated by James Strachey, vol. 11, (London: Hogarth, 1957), 183. 9 Ibid., 184. 10 For a definition of courtly literature, see Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 36–37. 11 Jean-Charles Huchet, L’amour discourtois: La “Fin’amors” chez les premiers troubadours (Toulouse: Privat, 1987), 13. I agree with Huchet on the point that it is important for the understanding of courtly love not to confuse it with love as such (what ever that is) but to regard it as a discourse: “sortir de cette confusion entre l’amour tel qu’il fut vécu par les hommes et les femmes du XIIe siècle et le discours sur l’amour qu’une minorité éclairée a articulé à la même époque”, Huchet, L’amour discourtois, 16–17. 12 Cited in Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, 158. See also Pierre Bec, Burlesque et obscénité chez les troubadours: Le contre-texte au Moyen Age (Paris, 1984), 7–22. Bec underlines that the “contre-text” is always within the literary code but with different types of relations to its paradigm. In this sense he also defines some twenty texts by women troubadours as counter-texts. What I am concerned with here is the dialectical movement between veneration and misogyny in the masculine texts and counter-texts. 13 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Book VII, trans. Dennis Porter (London: Routledge, 1992), Le Séminar XX: Encore (Paris: Seuil, 1975); Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality (London: Verso, 1994, 2005). They all take the term “courtly love”

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at face value. As “a fictive construct of Gaston Paris’s nineteenth-century medievalism” it has been vividly debated among medievalist during the last few decades. See Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), 88. 14 Kay, Courtly Contradictions, 26. 15 Kristeva, Tales of Love, 287. 16 Lacan, Séminar XX, 65, trans., Jacqueline Rose, in Feminine Sexuality, edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, (London: Macmillan, 1982), 141. 17 From a Lacanian perspective it is the child’s introduction into the symbolic (language and culture) that constitutes this lack, or as Judith Feher-Gurewich puts it, the determining factor is the constitution of the subject through “a net of signifiers, whose function is to define a limit, or lack, from where desire for what is radically other than oneself can emerge,” “Lacan and American Feminism: Who is the Analyst?” in Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981–2001, edited by Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 244. 18 Huchet, L’amour discourtois, 104. 19 Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment, 91. 20 Slavoj Žižek, On Belief (London: Routledge, 2001), 40. 21 E. Jane Burns, “Courtly Love: Who Needs It?”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (2001): 28–29. See also E. Jane Burns, Sarah Kay, Roberta L. Krueger, and Helen Solterer, “Feminism and the Discipline of Old French Studies: Une Bele Disjointure,” in Medievalism and the Modernist Temper, edited by R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 252. 22 Burns, “Courtly Love”, 39. 23 Ibid. 24 See Burns et al., “Feminism”, 229. I rather consider idealization in courtly literature as a statement drawing on Foucault’s definition of that which “circulates, is used, disappears, allows or prevents the realization of a desire, serves or resists various interests, participates in challenge and struggle, and becomes a theme of appropriation or rivalry,” in Archaeology, 118. 25 Christine de Pizan, La Città delle Dame, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Rome: Carocci, 2004), 502; The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York: Persea Books, Revised Edition, 1998), 256. 26 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, edited by Armand Strubel (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1992), 868; The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 279. The intertext for the Meun in this passage is some “vers de Virgile” where the woman is alluded to as the serpent in the grass, hiding under fresh fruit and flowers. 27 Started c.1230 by Guillaume de Lorris and completed c. 1270 by Jean de Meun, the Roman de la rose incorporates a radical change from courtly love and its idealization of the Lady to an openly misogynistic attitude towards women.

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Joël Blanchard, “Compilation and Legitimation,” in Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards et al. (London: The University of Georgia Press, 1992), 232. Alluding to Baudelaire, Richards claims that “Christine does well and truly transform the mud thrown at women into gold”, in Virtue Ethics for Women 1250–1500, edited by Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (London: Springer, 2011), 93. 29 On a discursive level I think it is fruitful to understand Christine’s dialogical technique as reflective of scholastic disputation based on the belief that “it is not the truth which brings an end to the confrontation of languages, but merely the force of one of them”, with Roland Barthes’ formula. Cited in Holsinger, The Premodern Condition, 179. But she also used the dialectical movement in order “to transcend the limitations of dialectic—itself so central in medieval philosophy”, as Richards suggests in his introduction to Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, 8. 30 The Love Debate Poems of Christine de Pizan, edited by Barbara K. Altmann (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 1998), 104. 31 Ibid., 145, note 961. 32 Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, 273. 33 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Countermemory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 154. 34 The quotation and translation are from Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, 51. 35 Christine de Pizan, La Città delle Dames, 40. 36 The common argument that Christine disapproved of courtly love is, as far as I can see, a simplification and a misunderstanding of Christine’s discursive strategies. See for example Charity Cannon Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Work (New York: Persea Books, 1984) 59–70. 37 Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, 296. 38 It seems clear that the courtly love code as a moral and social control form loses its discursive impact in late medieval courtly culture: “Toutes bonnes coustumes faillent,” says Christine in a letter to her tutor Eustache Deschamps. Christine de Pizan, Œuvres poétiques, edited by Maurice Roy, vol. 2 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1886), 298. 39 Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 73. 40 As Sarah Kay points out, “the Lady addressed (or constructed) by courtly rhetoric is, like Mary, ‘alone of all her sex’”, and that the medieval cult of Mary is “both influencing, and influenced by, that of the courtly Lady”, in Courtly Contradictions, 180. 41 See Monique Niederoest, “Violence et autorité dans la Cité des Dames,” in Au champs des escriptures, IIIe Colloque international sur Christne de Pizan, edited by Eric Hicks (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), 400–401. 42 Marguerite de Navarre, L’Heptaméron, edited by Nicole Cazauran (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 242–43; The Heptameron, trans. Paul Chilton (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 229.

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43

See Holsinger, The Premodern Condition, 45. See Robert W. Bernard, “Platonism—Myth or Reality in the Heptameron?”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 1 (1974): 4. 45 Patricia F. Cholakian claims that this episode is based on Marguerite’s own experience. What is sure is that rape still is a reality in many sexual relations, but the novella is clearly situated in a discussion of true love, in Marguerite de Navarre, Mother of the Renaissance, (New York 2006), 21. 46 As Bernard points out, “her tales do not constitute a theoretical treatise on love but rather a realistic portrayal of its various aspects”, “Myth or Reality,” 4. 47 Bernard’s claims that “we find in the Heptameron an accurate account of the demise of the Platonic ideal and in its place not only an apology for marriage but also a witty and malicious parody of Platonic love,” “Platonism—Myth or Reality in the Heptameron?”, 4. 44

Bibliography Altmann Barbara K., ed. The Love Debate Poems of Christine de Pizan, Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 1998. Bec, Pierre. Burlesque et obscénité chez les troubadours: Le contre-texte au Moyen Age. Paris: Stock/Moyen Age, 1984. Bernard, Robert W. “Platonism—Myth or Reality in the Heptameron?” The Sixteenth Century Journal 1 (1974): 3–14. Blanchard, Joël. “Compilation and Legitimation.” In Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards et al. London: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Cicago Press, 1991. Burns, E. Jane. “Courtly Love: Who Needs It?” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (2001): 23–57. Burns, E. Jane, Sarah Kay, Roberta L. Krueger, and Helen Solterer. “Feminism and the Discipline of Old French Studies: Une Bele Disjointure.” In Medievalism and the Modernist Temper, edited by R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols, 225–66. Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Cholakian, Patricia F. Marguerite de Navarre, Mother of the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Christine de Pizan. Œuvres poétiques, edited by Maurice Roy, vol. 2. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1891. —. La Città delle Dame. Edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards. Rome: Carocci, 2004. —. The Book of the City of Ladies. Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards. New York: Persea Books, Revised Edition, 1998.

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Duby, George. Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre: Le mariage dans la France féodale. Paris: Hachette, 1981. Feher-Gurewich, Judith. “Lacan and American Feminism: Who is the Analyst?” In Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981–2001, edited by Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron, 239–46. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, 2002. —. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Countermemory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, 139–64. New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. Freud, Sigmund. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love.” In Standard Edition, edited and translated by James Strachey, vol. 11, 179–90. London: Hogarth, 1957. Green, Karen and Constant J. Mews, eds. Virtue Ethics for Women 1250– 1500. London: Springer, 2011. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le roman de la rose. Edited by Armand Strubel. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1992. —. The Romance of the Rose. Translated by Charles Dahlberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Holsinger, Bruce. The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005. Huchet, Jean-Charles. L’amour discourtois: La “Fin’amors” chez les premiers troubadours. Toulouse: Privat, 1987. Kristeva, Julia. Tales of Love. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Book VII. Translated by Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. —. Le Séminar XX: Encore, Paris: Seuil, 1975. —. Feminine Sexuality. Translated by Jacqueline Rose. Edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. London: Macmillan, 1982. Marguerite de Navarre. L’Heptaméron. Edited by Nicole Cazauran. Paris: Gallimard, 2000. —. The Heptameron. Translated by Paul Chilton. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Niederoest, Monique. “Violence et autorité dans la Cité des Dames.” In Au champs des escriptures, IIIe Colloque international sur Christine de Pizan, edited by Eric Hicks. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Pernoud, Régine. La femme aux temps des cathédrales. Paris: Stock, 1980.

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Petrarca, Francesco. Prose. Edited by Guido Martellotti. Milan: Storia e testi, 1955. —. The Secret. Edited by Carol E. Quillen. Translated by William Draper. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2003. Plato. Symposium. Edited by Kenneth Dover. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980. Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1991. Richards, Earl Jeffrey. Introduction to Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan. Edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno, 1–9. London: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Work. New York: Persea Books, 1984. Žižek, Slavoj. The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. London: Verso, 2005. —. On Belief. London: Routledge, 2001.

NEGOTIATIONS OF RENAISSANCE DESIRE JOHANNA VERNQVIST

Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (1559) has been seen as a French version of Plato’s Symposium, since the main topic for the frame, the novellas, as well as the discussions following each novella, is love.1 In this article I will assess how the classical and traditional configuration of perfect love, determining desire in the homosocial relationship between men, is challenged through a repeated construction of heterosexuality. As many scholars have pointed out, Marguerite was inspired by Marsilio Ficino’s platonic philosophy, and Marguerite herself commissioned a translation of his De amore (1474).2 Ficino is however not the only source of her Neoplatonic views on love and desire, and she most definitely makes out a great contrast to the view Ficino presents. In fact, her view is closer to that of Leone Ebreo, who presents a heterosexual desire as the highest form of love and who puts the woman in what was, for the time, a rather transgressing position in his Dialoghi d’amore or Dialogues of Love (1535). Hence, the dialogue is, as we will see, more or less driven by the active Sophia. Before we proceed to the analysis of the Heptaméron and Marguerite’s appropriation of the Neoplatonic love we will discuss how the classical and traditional configuration of desire changes between these two philosophers, beginning with Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium On Love or the De amore.

From the Platonic Family According to Sears Jayne, the English translator of the De amore, most scholars agree on Ficino’s fundamental importance “for shifting the emphasis in treatises on love from an Aristotelian (and medieval) emphasis on the physiology and psychology of love to a Platonic (and Renaissance) emphasis on love as desire for ideal beauty”.3 This is probably a correct description of the philosophic shift Ficino managed to accomplish. However, we should also be aware of the symphony of voices from this very lively period in history, and I argue that his shift was not so clean-cut as

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Jayne says. Ficino is, for instance, using theories from the very mentioned Aristotle to which I will return. John Charles Nelson points out that “Ficino does not share all the stilnuovo motives adopted by Dante—for example, the theme that love is intensified by the death of the loved one. Neither does Ficino employ the troubadour theme of exalting the lady with praise and service. In fact, male friendship rather than love of women remains the basis of moral love”.4 This notion of homosociality can however be traced back, not only to Plato but also to Aristotle, who thought that the male sex was the complete and fulfilled human whereas the female sex was an incomplete and not fully developed version of the same. Men stood for morality, intellect and sense of control—women for immoral, unintellectual and uncontrollable feelings, especially erotic ones. The theory of Aristotle had been repeated in different contexts during the Middle Ages, as in Thomas Aquinas, and had also found its way into the Renaissance and into Ficino’s works.5 According to Plato, love is a desire for beauty, and Ficino agrees on that. In chapter four of the first speech he says: “When we say ‘love’, understand ‘the desire for beauty’”. (Quando noi diciamo amore, itendete desiderio di bellezza).6 But the question is, as Unn Irene Aasdalen puts it, “could love in the form of friendship between men be defined as ‘desire for beauty’”?7 Love is also connected to erotic desire—a desire that was defined as ‘vulgar love’ representing the low and the body in contrast to the heavenly, Platonic love which was high and striving from the soul towards God. This separation of high and low is nothing Ficino invents, but goes back to Plato’s Symposium as well. Nevertheless, Ficino takes it a step further when he says that where the body is certainly beautiful but the soul is not, let us love the body very little if at all, as a shadowy and fleeting image of beauty. Where the soul alone is beautiful, let us love this enduring beauty of the soul ardently. But where both beauties occur together, let us admire them vehemently. And in this way we shall show that we are truly from the Platonic family. e dove non l’animo ma solo el corpo fussi bello, quello come ombra e caduca imagine della bellezza appena e leggermente amiamo; dove solamente fussi l’animo bello, questo perpetuo ornamento dell’animo ardentemente amiamo; e dove l’una e l’altra bellezza concorre, vehementissimamente piglieremo admiratione. E così procedendo dimostreremo che noi siamo in verità famiglia platonica […]. (De amore Orazione I, iv, 38, trans., 43)

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Thus, Ficino brings the erotic desire into the highest form of love, i.e. the Socratic—the one between a young male and an older male—uniting the body and soul on the terms that both of them are beautiful, or as Aasdalen describes it: In the second speech, Ficino makes Giovanni Cavalcanti explain that Pausanias in the second speech of the Symposium had divided love into two kinds, lower and higher Aphrodite, or as Ficino names her, Venus. These two loves are mirrored not only in process of the coming to be of the world (the two Venuses understood as the two first hypostases in emanation, the Intellect and the World Soul) but also in human lives, as a choice between a higher and a lower love. All the way through Ficino’s banquet-fiction, he advocates the choice of higher Venus or love, and the earthly form of this higher love, is a Socratic friendship, in which the two friends contemplate beauty and strive to ascend to the higher.8

It is not only love that is divided in two. The human soul is also split, a thought that Ficino has developed from the Platonic division of the human body in two represented in the speech of Aristophanes in the Symposium. Plato’s view is furthermore directly erotic since the human bodies seek each other and are drawn to each other due to a desire for physical reunion. Hence, the reunion that is regarded the highest, is the one between men. Ficino keeps the male relationship as his ideal, but he present a movement, starting with the physical desire and then progresses to the soul’s desire for completion: When souls, already divided and immersed in bodies, first have come to the years of adolescence, they are aroused by the natural and innate light which they retained (as if by a certain half of themselves) to recover, through the study of truth, that infuses the divine light, once half of themselves, which they lost in falling. This once recovered, they will be whole, and blessed with a vision of God. Poi che furono divisi, el mezzo tirato fu al mezzo; l’anime già divise e immerse ne’ corpi, quando giungono agli anni della età discreta, pe ’l lume naturale che riserborono quasi per uno mezzo dell’anima sono svegliate ad ripigliare, con studio di verità, quel lume sopra naturale che già fu l’altro mezzo dell’anima, el quale cadendo perdettono. E ricevtuto questo saranno intere e nella visione di Dio beate. (De amore Orazione IV, ii, 12, trans., 73)

As we have seen, the woman is never mentioned as part of the Socratic or Platonic friendship that Ficino presents, and when she is mentioned it is only in connection with the “lower Venus”. As we have seen, this lower

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love is for souls without insight into the true origin of beauty—namely God and philosophy. In other words, women are not capable of philosophical insight and are driven by physical desires. Men, on the other hand, do not only have the ability to strive for the “higher Venus”, but also to combine this love with desire for physical beauty, as Ficino writes: Certainly in the intellect of man there is an eternal love of seeing the divine beauty, thanks to which we pursue both the study of philosophy and the practice of justice and piety. There is also in the power of procreation a certain mysterious urge to procreate offspring. This love too is eternal; by it we are continuously driven to create some likeness of that celestial Beauty in the image of a procreated offspring. These two eternal loves in us are daemons which Plato predicts will always be present in our souls, one of which raises us to things above; the other presses us down to things below. […] [T]he second is called evil because, on account of our abuse, it often disturbs us and powerfully diverts the soul from its chief good, which consists in the contemplation of truth, and twists it to baser purposes. Certamente nella mente dello huomo è uno eterno amore di vedere la bellezza divina, e per gli stimoli di questo seguitiamo gli studi di philosophia, e gli ufici della giustitia e della pietà. È ancora nella potenza del generare uno occult stimolo a generar figliuoli, e questo amore è perpetuo, dal quale siamo continuamente incitati a scolpire nella effige de’ figliuoli qualche similitudine della superna bellezza. Questi due amori in noi perpetui sono. Quegli dua demoni e quali dice Platone sempre all’anime nostre esser presenti, de’ quali l’uno in su e l’altro in giù ci tiri […]. Ma la cagione perché el secondo amore si chiama mal demonio, è che pe ‘l ostro uso disordinato egli spesso ci turba e divertisce l’animo a’ ministeri vili, ritrahendolo dal principale suo bene el quale nella speculatione della verità consiste. (De amore Orazione VI, viii, 4–10, trans., 119)

Reading this we can see that women certainly have a place in the world, since procreation of the offspring is an eternal love and part of the human soul. Nevertheless, if man gives in to this kind of love he will be misled and “disturbed” in his “contemplation of truth”. Hence, the seduction of the female body is a danger, but how is it with the bodies of other men? Ficino explains and defends a desire of sorts in speech six, where he says that the love which rules and governs the body tries to […] procreate handsome offspring by a beautiful woman. Similarly, the love which pertains to the soul tries to imbue it with most elegant and pleasing learning, and to spread knowledge like its own […] and to reproduce it, by teaching, in some very beautiful soul […] which is pure, intelligent, and excellent.

114

Negotiations of Renaissance Desire L’uno e l’altra amore ricerca cose belle: certamente quello che regge el corpo desidera nutrire el proprio corpo di nutrimenti dilicatissimi, suavissimi e spetiosissimi, e desidera generare belli figliuoli di bella femmina; e l’amore che s’appartiene all’animo s’affatica di riempier l’animo di ornatissime e gratissime discipline, e scrivendo con ornato e bello stilo publicare scientia alla sua simile, e insegnando generare la medesima scientia, per similitudine, in qualche animo bello. Bello dico quello animo che è acuto e optimo. (De amore Orazione VI, xi, 17, trans., 131f.)

But since the soul is not visible to us we rely on the body’s beauty as the image of the soul. Ficino says Certainly we cannot see the soul itself. And for this reason we cannot see its beauty. But we can see the body, which is the shadow and image of the soul. And so, judging by its image, we assume that in a beautiful body there is a beautiful soul. That is why we prefer to teach men who are handsome. Noi non veggiamo esso animo e però non veggiamo sua bellezza, ma veggiamo el corpo che è imagine e ombra dello animo, sì che per questa imagine coniecturando stimiamo che in un formoso corpo uno animo spetioso sia; e di qui adviene che noi più volontieri insegnamo a’ belli. (De amore Orazione VI, xi, 19 trans., 132)

I will leave Ficino at this point and continue with a discussion of the Neoplatonic view on love that Leone Ebreo presents, a view that is rather in opposition to Ficino.

Heterosexual Desire and a Woman in Charge It is mainly the third and last dialogue, “On the Origin of Love”, that discusses the definition of love in a deep and outlined way in Leone Ebreo’s work Dialoghi d’amore. The dialogue between Philo and Sophia starts when Philo walks by Sophia in the street without noticing her. He claims that he was in such deep contemplation of her beauty that he couldn’t see what happened in the real world my mind, as it often is, was withdrawn in contemplation of the beauty formed in you, whose image is impressed upon it, and which is always desired. This caused me to take leave of my perception of what is outside me

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ti dico che la mente mia, ritirata a contemplar, come suole, quella formata in te bellezza, e in lei per immagine impressa e sempre desidetata, m’ha fatto lassare i sensi esteriori).9

The argument gives rise to a number of questions in Sophia, which then leads to the long dialogue where not only the Christian and the Jewish (Kabbalistic) traditions are discussed, but also the Platonic and Aristotelian works—both the origins and their interpreters such as Ficino and Pico della Mirandola.10 According to John C. Nelson, Ebreo takes the reader to new views developing the theory of love: The dialogues of Leone Ebreo […] are from beginning to end an exhaustive treatise on love. Leone’s book is consequently more comprehensive than Ficino’s work in its consideration of love, treating of cosmic questions about love which did not occur in Plato’s Symposium or in Ficino’s commentary upon it. Leone himself declares that Plato in the Symposium spoke only of human love and not of God’s love, whereas he is discussing universal love.11

Ebreo is also very down to earth in his treatise on love and he does claim the world to be a creation bound together by heterosexual and highly dynamic relationships. The love for the beautiful (and the good) results in an urge to reproduce that beauty, just as Ficino so far but, as Kodera says, “in order to become meaningful, love [in Ebreo’s view] has to result in sexual intercourse and in the begetting of a child”,12 and that “Leone’s focus on heterosexual acts as universal, creative forces entails that love occurs exclusively between partners who are different.”13 This view opposes the Neoplatonists’ ideal friendship between men, the love for one who is like oneself, which not only, as we have seen in Ficino, includes an intellectual relation but also has rather obvious homoerotic connotations. So Ebreo presents a rather different view on love than Ficino when he highlights the heterosexual love between man and woman, but what about his thoughts of male and female attributes? Does Ebreo follow his predecessors’ misogyny or does he negotiate a transgression of the traditional views of sex and gender characteristics? Well, Ebreo’s treaty does present a relation between woman and man that differs from the theories of his time regarding the notion of men as active and women as passive. Ebreo shifts his time’s gender roles, making Sophia the active participant in the conversation and Philo the passive, yet instructive one. The two speakers also discuss this notion in relation to lovers. Sophia asks: “But what will

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you tell me of the meaning of the terms, which have deceived me, where ‘lover’ means active and ‘beloved’ passive?” and Philo answers: This is true because the lover is active in his service of love, but not in its generation, and the beloved is the recipient of the service of the lover, but is not passive in the causation of love. And if I ask you which is worthier, the one who serves or is served, the one who obeys or is obeyed, and the one who respects or is respected, you will assuredly answer that the servant, though active, is lower than him who receives his services. And such is the relation of lover and beloved, for the lover serves, obeys, and respects his beloved. (SOFIA:) “[…] ma che mi dirai de la significazione de’ vocabuli, qual mi ha ingannato, che amante vuol dire agente, e amore paziente?” (FILONE:) “Così è il vero: perché l’amante è l’agente de la servitù de l’amore, ma non de la generazione sua, e l’amato è recipient del servizio de l’amante, ma non de la causalità de l’amore; e [se] io ti dimandarò qual è più degno, o il servitore o il servitor, l’obediente o l’obedito, l’osservante o l’osservato, certo dirai che questi agenti sono inferiori a questi suoi recipient. Così è l’amante verso l’amato, però che l’amante serve, obedisce e osserva l’amato.” (Dialogues III, 229–230, trans., 222)

So, active and passive are not reduced to man and woman in Ebreo’s view, but to lover and beloved, and do not seem to constitute a strictly dialectic pair. Hence, the (male) lover is not the only one active but also the (female) beloved, and the value of being loved by someone is higher than being the mere “servant” as a lover. Kodera also points out, regarding the man and woman, that “[i]t is characteristic of the Dialoghi that the woman wants to be recognized as human, as a thinking and real being.” She is further not to be “reduced to one of Philone’s obsessive mental constructions nor is her body a mere container for male semen.”14 I find this claim for recognition in the following where Sophia says regarding Philo’s contemplation of her beauty: “Yes, I complain that the image of my person has more sway over you than my person itself.” (Dialogues III, 197, trans., 193; Pur mi lamento che possi e vagli in te, più che mia persona, l’immagine di quella.) She wants to be regarded for what she is in reality, not as Philo’s “mental construction”. They also argue about what they actually are supposed to do, where Sophia holds strictly to what was said from the beginning; Philo will teach her about the origin of love. But Philo himself is more interested in other activities. Sophia says: “would you not understand that what I want from

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you is the theory of love, and what you want from me is its practice?” and she continues And you cannot deny that knowledge of the theory should always precede application in practice, since it is reason that rules man’s work. […] So, without further delay, you must perfect what you have already begun and satisfy my remaining desire. Non vedi tu [che] ciò ch’io voglio da te è la teorica de l’amore, e quel che tu vuoi da me è la pratica di quello? Non puoi negare che sempre debbe precedere la cognizione de la teorica all’uso de la pratica, ché negl’uomini la ragione è quella che indrizza l’opera; […] sì che senza ponervi intervallo déi dar perfezione al già cominciato da te e porger satisfazione a questo residuo del mio desiderio. (Dialogues III, 200–201, trans., 196)

A woman should not, in the traditional view on women, be the one to speak these words. Thus, Sophia speaks of reason, theory and knowledge— strictly male virtues and interests—and she thereby opposes the thoughts of women as ruled by the body and the “lower love”. And of course, “Sophia” is the very personification of wisdom, “Philo” the love for her and together they make “Philosophia”, the love of wisdom. But it is through Sophia’s negotiations of Philo’s desire she makes this possible, convincing him to “perfect what you have already begun and satisfy my remaining desire” (perfezione al già cominciato da te e porger satisfazione a questo residuo del mio desiderio). In the Dialoghi we have seen an obvious heterosexual norm be presented, as well as a more female-friendly approach in contrast to Ficino’s work on Neoplatonic love. In the next part of this essay we will see how Marguerite de Navarre makes use of and reinterprets these Neoplatonic views in her Heptaméron, an appropriation that indicates a negotiation of desire that resembles the one we find in the Dialoghi.

The Neoplatonic Tradition in the Heptaméron As already pointed out, Marguerite de Navarre was familiar with the Neoplatonic philosophers of her time; we know that she read Marsilio Ficino since she commissioned a translation of his Commentary in the very same decade that she wrote her spectacular, though incomplete, Heptaméron, in the 1540s. It is more uncertain how familiar she was with philosophers such as Leone Ebreo, Tullia d’Aragona or Baldassare Castiglione. Allusions to several of them can at any event be found in her work,

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especially Castiglione. She also makes use of, or creates some of the very same, arguments pursued in the love treatises following on Ficino’s comment on the Symposium, where the homosocial relationship is no longer regarded as the highest form of love, but the heterosexual has become norm as in Ebrero’s Dialoghi. In the following I will demonstrate some of the ways in which this is done in the Heptaméron. It is well known that Marguerite’s work differs from her “model author”, Boccaccio (1313–75), in many respects. Her aim is to be true to reality, and where Boccaccio has seven women and three men telling his novellas, the ten devisants of the Heptaméron are equally divided into five women and five men. And she goes even further in pointing out the equality between these characters, and at the same time makes the reader aware of the notion; Hircan, the patriarchal nobleman says: “Where games are concerned everybody is equal” (car au jeu nous sommes tous esgaulx).15 Further, while the Italian “prequel’s” main focus is the short stories, this is not the case in the Heptaméron. There are vivid discussions on the subjects of the stories and the whole literary piece is framed by a more detailed story than Boccaccio’s. The discussion mostly concerns the moral right or wrong regarding love and its definition, and since the various devisants represent different opinions the discussions are often left open without a clear, agreed meaning about this right and wrong. There are furthermore several relationships between the devisants: the married Parlament and Hircan, Simontaut, Dagoucin and Saffredent are serviteurs to some of the women and there are friendships between women, between women and men, and between men. These relationships are often related to love and desire, as Jules Gelernt points out: We may imagine the Queen musing to herself that mankind comprises sensualists and romanticists as well as Platonist and Christians, and all of them are to be taken into account before one can form one’s judgment of love. It is this generosity of mind, this desire, so characteristic of Marguerite, to include rather than exclude, which makes the Heptameron unique among literary discussions of love.16

But the relationships are thus far from being regarded in the same manner. Instead, there is a concern about male-male relationships and over and over again we find the norm of heterosexuality repeated and constructed through various discourses. As we will see, Marguerite’s prefect love is not to be found in homosocial relations. The following quotation is from the discussion on ancient philosophers, Plato is one of them, following novella thirty-four.

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“The philosophers of ancient times […] did not show their feelings, so great a virtue was in their eyes to overcome the self and the passions.” […] “That does not mean they were all men of wisdom” said Saffredent. “On the contrary, it was more a matter of the appearance of sense and virtue than of actual effects.” […] “Have I not read to you this morning,” said Oisille, “of how those who think themselves wiser than other people and who by the light of reason have come to know God, who created all things, only to attribute that glory to themselves […] believing that it is their own effort that has brought them such knowledge, have become more ignorant and unreasonable even than the beasts? For, allowing their minds to go astray […] they have shown their errors by the disorder of their bodies, forgetting and perverting their sex, as Saint Paul has written in his epistle to the Romans.” – Les philosophes du temps passé […] desquels la tristesse et la joye n’estoit quasi point sentie [...] tant ils estimoient grande vertu, se vaincre eux mesmes et leur passions. […]—Il n’est pas dict aussi, respondit Saffredent, qu’ils fussent tous sages: mais il y avoit plus d’apparence de sens et de vertu, qu’il n’y avoit de faict.—Ne vous ay’je pas leu au matin, dist Oisille, que ceux, qui ont cuidé ester plus sages, que les autres hommes, et qui par une lumiere de raison, sont venuz à cognoistre un Dieu, createur de toutes choses […] estimans par leur labour avoir gaigné ce sçavoir, ont esté faicts non seulment plus ignorans et desraisonnables, que les autres homes, mais que les bestes brutes? Car ayans erré en leurs espirts se sont attribute […] ont monstré leurs erruers, par le desordre de leurs corps, oublians et pervertissans l’ordre de leur sexe, comme sainct Paul nous monster en l’epistre qu’il escript aux Romans. (Heptaméron 367–68, trans., 343–44, my italics)

As Gelernt points out, “Neoplatonism reinforced Marguerite’s Christian view. In this sense, the work of the Neoplatonists was of capital importance to the creation of the Heptameron.”17 There is no doubt that Marguerite’s views have a deep Christian foreground which might be one explanation for the repeated construction of heterosexuality that I now will try to assess in more detail. In Gelernt’s interpretation the notion of same-sex relationships, which is so clear in Ficino, and that Oisille so intensely disapproves of in the quotation above, is not once mentioned. There is no doubt that Oisille means relations between persons of the same sex, and the part of the Bible she refers to makes it even clearer, since those who break the natural laws (of heterosexual relations) shall be sentenced to death.18 She is therefore deeply critical of philosophers like Plato who, in her own words, “have shown their errors by the disorder of their bodies, forgetting and perverting their sex” (ont monstré leurs erruers, par le desordre de leurs corps, oub-

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lians et pervertissans l’ordre de leur sexe; Heptaméron 368, trans., 344). Robert D. Cottrell says that Marguerite makes out a great contrast to Ficino and that it is important to point out the two different Neoplatonic views present in France during the sixteenth century. The first is what he calls a Christian view, which would be the one Gelernt has in mind. The other is the Neoplatonism of love, strongly inspired by Ficino. As Cottrell reminds us, Ficino’s philosophy “became increasingly important in French literature from around 1540, the date at which Marguerite seems to have become interested in it”.19 However, there is a specific French reception of Ficino, which Cottrell describes as essentially critical: Marguerite never suggests, as does Ficino, that human love can mutate into love for Christ. On the contrary, throughout her work she stresses that human love […] is an obstacle that must be annihilated before the Christian can arrive at Christ. […] Her positioning of human love within the arena of sinful flesh is a mark of her profound rejection of Ficinian “Neoplatonism”.20

Cottrell’s discussion here is interesting and opposes Gelernt, but he does not consider the same-sex desire in Ficino’s philosophy or the issue of the same in the Heptaméron either. A few scholars have begun, though, to put the spotlight on the issue of homosocial relationships in the Heptaméron, which, as Todd W. Reeser says, seems to result in a wish to “set Plato straight”.21 And Katherine Crawford argues that a central aspect of, not the Heptaméron in particular, but the French take on Neoplatonism “was its role in articulating heterosexual normativity”.22 The issue can be illustrated through the relationships between Dagoucin and Saffredent, who are described at the beginning of the prologue as an inseparable pair, “les gentilzhommes”. There is only one sentence where Dagoucin is mentioned by name in the prologue; everywhere else he is referred to as a part of the “two young noblemen”, as a comrade to Hircan or not mentioned at all.23 The first time he speaks is not until after the discussion that follows novella eight, which I will return to below. Through the frame we can follow a split of these male-male relations and a move towards a stronger individualization, due to differences in the view of perfect love. Saffredent and Hircan believe in men’s right to possess women and that a man categorizes himself when he is an active lover who takes what is “rightfully” his—the female body to satisfy his desire. Showing weakness can, in their view, be profoundly dangerous to the order of the sexes, as Jeffrey C. Persels points out: “Any display of impotence in the individual male body threatens impotence in the body politic.”24 Dagoucin, on the other hand, represents a type of Neoplatonic and courtly

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view of love, where the lady is to be honoured and loved—not for her physical beauty or youth—but for her soul. We will now have to remind us of what Ficino says about the human soul being split and also read the following on his interpretation of the speech of Aristophanes in the Symposium: Who […] will be so foolish as to attribute the appellation of Man, which is firmly fixed in us, to the body which is always flowing and everywhere changed, rather than to the most stable soul? […] When Aristophanes said men, he meant souls, in the Platonic way. Chi sarà adunque tanto stolto che l’appellatione dell’uomo, la quale è in noi fermissima, attribuisca al corpo che sempre corre, più tosto che all’anima che sta ferma? Di qui può essere manifesto che quando Aristofane nominò gli huomini, intese l’anime nostre secondo l’uso platonico. (De amore Orazion IV, iii, 15, trans., 75)

Ficino has got rid of the body here and emphasizes love in the soul of men, because as we know he still regards the male-male relationship as the perfect one. But what has Dagoucin to say about this? The following discussion takes place after novella eight and illustrates rather clearly both his Neoplatonic and his courtly view, and also his fellow storyteller’s opposing arguments: “But what about people who have not yet found their ‘other half’?” asked Simontaut. “Would you still say it was inconstancy if they seek her wherever she may be found?” “No man can know,” replied Dagoucin, “where his other half is to be found, this other half with whom he may find a union so equal that between [the parts] there is no difference; which being so, a man must hold fast where Love constrains him and, whatever may befall him, he must remain steadfast in heart and will. For if she whom you love is your true likeness, if she is of the same will, then it will be your own self that you love, and not her alone.” “Dagoucin, I think you’re adopting a position that is completely wrong,” said Hircan. “You make it sound as if we ought to love women without being loved in return! “What I mean, Hircan, is this. If love is based on a woman’s beauty, charm and favours, and if our aim is merely pleasure, ambition and profit, then such love can never last. For if the whole foundation on which our love is based should collapse, then love will fly from us and there will be no love left in us. But I am utterly convinced that if a man loves with no other aim, no other desire, than to love truly, he will abandon his soul in death rather than allow his love to abandon his heart.”

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The Neoplatonic view of two halves in need of each other can be found here, and as we see, Dagoucin does not believe in a love based on physical appearance or aims such as profit or “merely pleasure”. These are unstable attributes, and in Ficino’s words again: “always flowing and everywhere changed” (De amore IV, iii, 15, trans., 75; che sempre corre). But the reinterpreted view of Neoplatonic love that Dagoucin argues for does not mention love between men, but a clear heterosexual relation to a worshipped woman. Therefore it can be claimed that Marguerite’s view is more like the one represented in Ebreo’s Dialoghi, where love is unquestionably a desire between male and female, not in “the like for the like”.25 But Katherine Crawford reminds us that Ficino’s homosocial love is narcissistic. She says that “[w]hile men could be attracted to women (despite the fact that they are lesser beings), beauty is between men.” But since beauty is narcissistic in this sense it “opened up space to admit women into Neoplatonism because they could reflect and reproduce one’s self-love.”26 I suggest that Marguerite uses this notion to her advantage in her negotiation for a heterosexual desire. As mentioned, we find a representation of courtly love through Dagoucin’s words, where expression of or acts of sexual desire have no place. He claims that death is a better option than letting the perfect love for the worshipped become untrue. He claims further that one never can know where to find one’s other half, but if you believe you have found her “then it will be your own self that you love, not her alone”. (Heptaméron 113, trans., 113; ce sera vous que vous aimerez et non pas elle.) This claim echoes Ficino’s narcissistic take on love discussed above, and these opinions dif-

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fer strongly from the views of other male devisants, not the least the other half of the “two noblemen”, Saffredent. For example, Dagoucin says to him: “Ah, Saffredent, the trouble is that you desire your love to be returned, […] and men of your opinions never die for love. But I know of many who have died, and died for no other cause than that they have loved, and loved perfectly.” (Heptaméron 115, trans., 114;—Ha Saffredent […] voulez vous donques ester aimé, puis que ceux de vostre opinion n’en meurent point? Mais j’en sçay assez bon nombre, qui son morts d’autre maladie, que d’aymer trop parfaictemnet.) This, in Todd W. Reeser’s words, shows how “the Heptaméron represents a move away from a relationship reminiscent of a Neoplatonic male-male androgyne toward heterosexuality” and the separation of the two young noblemen Dagoucin and Saffredent “put[s] Dagoucine through the split he will later recount to his fellow storytellers” in his choice of short stories.27 Novella 47 is one of these stories, and to wrap up I will demonstrate how it exposes the failure of Neoplatonic male-male relationship and instead repeats the construction of heterosexuality.

They Were One in Heart and Mind Novella 47 tells us about a perfect relationship between two men, and Dagoucin appropriately tells the story. This is the very beginning: Not far from Perche there were once two gentlemen who had from their childhood grown up together as such good and true friends that, as they were one in heart and mind, so in house, bed, board and purse they were as one. For a long time they lived together in this state of perfect friendship, and never once was there a word or wish any sign in difference between them. They were even more than brothers. They lived as if they were one man. Auprés du païs du Perche y avoit deux gentls-hommes, qui des le temps de leur enfance avoient vescu en si grande et parfaicte amitié, que ce n’estoit qu’un cueur, une maison, in lict, une table, et une bourse d’eux deux. Ils vesquirent long temps continuans ceste parfaicte amitié, sans que jamais il y a eust entre eux deux une seule volonté ou parole où l’on peust veoir difference des personnes, tant que non seulmen ils vivoient comme des frères, mais comme un homme tout seul. (Heptaméron 448, trans., 410)

But then one of the men gets married. The two friends nevertheless continue to live as before, sharing everything, although the husband chooses to sleep in the middle between his wife and his comrade. But soon

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the husband starts to get suspicious. He accuses his wife of having an affair with his friend, but he does not speak to his friend about this. The wife, who is surprised about her husband’s accusations since she has done nothing, explains that he is wrong. She also tells the friend about her husband’s suspicions and he gets frustrated over the husband’s secrecy. He finds it important to talk about everything, just as they have done in the past, and he is really disappointed. Even so, he assures his friend that the wife is telling the truth—nothing is going on between them—but emphasizes that the worst thing a friend can do to another friend is keeping secrets or lie: I shall not criticize you for it [his jealousy], because you cannot help it. But there is one thing that you could help, and which I can legitimately complain about, and that is that you have tried to cover up your sickness, when never before have you hidden your ideas, your feelings and your opinions from me. [J]e ne vous en donne point tort: car vous ne vous en sçauriez garder. Mais d’une chose, qui est en vostre puissance, aurois-je occasion de me plaindre, c’est que me vouissiez celer vostre maladie, veu que jamais passin au opinion, que vous ayez euë, ne m’a esté cachée. (Heptaméron 449, trans., 411)

He then goes on to say that in the same way he would have been the worst of friends if he were to hide amorous feelings towards the wife from his friend. If he were in love with her, he could not help the feelings, but he would have to stay honest to his friend and tell him about them. But, to assure his friend he says: However, I can assure you that although she is a good and honest woman, I never saw anyone less likely, even if she were not your wife, to arouse amorous thoughts in me. However, even though there is no cause for concern, I urge you to tell me if you have the slightest suspicion, so that I may set the matter right and so that we do not permit our friendship to be destroyed for the sake of a woman. De ma part je vous asseure bien, que combine qu’elle soit honneste et femme de bien, c’est la personne que je vey oncques (encore qu’elle ne fust vostre femme) où ma fantasie s’adonneroit aussi peu. Mais jaçoit qu’il n’y ait point d’occasion, je vous requires, que si en avez le moindre sentiment de soupçon, qui puisse ester, que vous me le dictes, á celle fin, que je y donne tel ordre, que nostre amitié, qui tant duré, ne se rompe pour une femme […]. (Heptaméron 449–50, trans., 411, my italics)

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As we see here, the male relationship is unquestionably regarded more highly than a relationship to a woman in the eyes of the friend. There might even be an ambiguity in his form of desire here, since the woman is not capable of awakening his “amorous thoughts”, which is marked by italics above. This can be interpreted as a homoerotic notion underlying the novella. However, it is certain that a woman should never be capable of ruining the friendship the two men share. So, at the beginning of the story, the homosocial relationship between the two men is described as a perfect love, since the men live as one in every possible way. The problem does not start until heterosexual desire is brought into the picture; hence there is not a problem with the marriage per se since the three of them lived happy together for a while. It is due to the husband’s suspicion of an affair between the friend and the wife that the very notion of sexual desire is introduced. We then also get to know that the wife has been told to act towards the friend as to her husband, “in all things but one” (Heptaméron 449, trans., 410; en toutes choses, hors mis une). The husband’s choice to sleep between his wife and friend can be seen as one way of hindering desire from blossoming between them, but not necessarily; the choice is actually made from the very beginning, before the argument has started. Nevertheless, the husband gets sick of jealousy. But who is he really jealous of? And what relationship is at stake here: the marriage or the friendship between the men? Well, let’s see how the story develops. The husband continues to suspect the wife and friend and once again he speaks to his wife about this, forbidding her to even talk to the friend. The wife notifies the friend again and he gets furious with his married friend. He has broken the promise to be honest with him and therefore he decides to end the friendship, splits their belongings in half and then moves out of the house with a promise not to be satisfied with himself until he has done to the wife exactly what the husband has accused him of: “[A]nd as he had promised, the unmarried gentleman did not rest till he had cuckolded his friend.” (Heptaméron 451, trans., 412; en sorte que le gentil-homme, qui n’estoit point marié, ne cessa jamais qu’il n’eust faict son compagnon coqu, comme il luy avoit promis.) Now, at the end of the story we know that the relationship that fails is the male friendship—and that in a rather brutal way. The wife’s function in the story seems to be to ignite the conflict of the definition of perfect love and also to act as the object of heterosexual desire. Reeser also points this out and says that “[m]asculine oneness must be fractured to make room for, or to create, heterosexuality in the text”.28 So it seems that, just as the distrusted friend did not rest until he had had his way with the wife,

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Marguerite does not rest her case until she has repeated heterosexual relationships to the point where it becomes the normalized relationship. Homosociality must be destroyed, even if it is at the cost of intercourse with a married woman. But, my point is that Marguerite’s appropriation of Neoplatonism not only aims to normalize heterosexuality, it also negotiates women’s value in a homosocial world. Clearly, the wife in the novella has both a strong position and a strong voice, even if she is more or less under the power of her husband and, later, of the friend. In the discussion following the novella we find, as always, different voices and opinions. But the topic in question is not the male-male relationship but the right or wrong in the wife’s behaviour. Oisille makes it clear that it “is not a reasonable excuse for a woman to take vengeance for her husband’s suspicions at the expense of her honour” (Heptaméron 451, trans., 412; n’est-ce pas excuse raisonnable […] à une femme, de se venger du soupçon de son mary à la honte de soy-mesme) but the younger Ennasuite argues that if “more women acted in the same way their husbands would not be as offensive as they are” (Heptaméron 452, trans., 413; beaucoup de femmes faisoient ainsi, leurs mariz ne seroient pas si outrageux qu’ils sont). Longarine tries to end the discussion by saying that it is “chastity which makes them [women] worthy to be praised” (Heptaméron 452, trans., 413; la chasteté loüable, et fault que là nous nous arrestions). Clearly, the desire is between man and woman and the woman is in charge, hence the devisants are all referring to a wife who chooses to be with another man (even though it is the friend in the story who is determined to get revenge on the husband). The opinions of the devisants differ widely and the question of which behaviour is right or wrong for a woman is of course left open, but nevertheless they all put the nail in the coffin of homosociality in the negotiation of desire.

Notes 1

Jacques Lacan, Le transfert, Séminaire VIII [1960–1961] (Paris, 1991), 35. See also Carin Franzén, “Kärlekens mångfald” in Jag gav honom inte min kärlek (Stockholm; Ersatz, 2012), 83–117. 2 Jacob Vance refers to Marsilio Ficino, Commentaire de Marsile Ficin, Florentine, sur le banquet d’Amour de Platon: fait Francois par Symon Silvius, dict. Jean de la Haye […] (Poitiers, 1546). Jacob Vance, “Humanist Polemics, Christian Morals: A Hypothesis of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron and the Problem of Self-Love,” MLN 120, 1 (2005): 181–195, reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Vol. 167 (Detroit: Gale, 2010), Literature Resource Center, Web, 10 August 2012, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1420091290&v= 2.1&u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w.

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Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, trans. Sears Jayne (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1985), 3. 4 John Charles Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love: The Context of Giordano Bruno’s Eroici Furori (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 83. 5 See for example Aristotle, History of Animals, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. 6 Ficino, Commentary, 40; Ficino, Marsilio, El libro dell'amore, a cura di Sandra Niccoli (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki editore, 1987), Orazione I, iv, 9. All page references throughout this paper will be to these editions. 7 Unn Irene Aasdalen, “A Question of Friendship,” in Rhetoric and the Art of Design, edited by Clare Guest (Oslo: Novus, 2008), 336–50; 336. 8 Aasdalen, “A Question”, 341. 9 Leone Ebreo, Dialogues of Love, trans. Cosmos Damian Bacich and Rosella Pescatori (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 117; Dialoghi d’amore, edited by Santino Caramella (Bari: Gius, Laterza & Figli, 1929), III, 172. All page references throughout this paper will be to these editions. 10 Sergius Kodera, “The Idea of Beauty in Leone Ebreo,” in The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, edited by Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2009), 301–29, 306. 11 Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love, 87. 12 Kodera, “The Idea of Beauty,” 307. 13 Ibid., 307. 14 Ibid., 328. 15 Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, trans. Paul A. Chilton (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 70; L’Heptaméron, edited by Nicole Cazauran (Gallimard, 2000), 67. All page references throughout this paper will be to these editions. 16 Jules Gelernt, World of Many Loves (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1996), 56. 17 Ibid., 60. 18 The Bible, Rom 1: 32. On the discussion of norms and normalization, see Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York & London: Routledge, 2004) in which she points out that “[a] norm operates within social practices as the implicit standard of normalization [...], discernible most clearly and dramatically in the effects that they produce.”, 41, italics in original. 19 Robert D. Cottrell, “Inmost Cravings,” in Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture, edited by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 9f. 20 Ibid., 10. 21 Todd W. Reeser, “Fracturing the Male Androgyne in the Heptaméron,” Romance Quarterly 51, 1 (Winter 2004): 15–28, reprinted in Short Story Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, Vol. 85 (Detroit: Gale, 2006), Literature Resource Center, Web, 20 August 2012, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH142 0067829&v=2.1&u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w.

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Katherine Crawford, “Neoplatonism and the Making of Heterosexuality,” in The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 112. 23 Marguerite de Navarre, Heptaméron, 62; 58. 24 Jeffrey C. Persels, “‘Qui sommes tous cassez du harnoys’ or, the Heptaméron and Uses of the Male Body,” in Heroic Virtue, Comic Infidelity: Reassessing Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, edited by Dora E. Polachek (Folsom: Hestia Press, 1993), 90–102, reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, Vol. 61, Detroit: Gale Group (2001), Literature Resource Center, Web, 20 August 2012, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE %7CH1420035480&v=2.1&u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w. 25 Kodera, “The Idea of Beauty,” 307. 26 Crawford, “Neoplatonism,” 124–25. 27 Reeser, “Fracturing”. 28 Ibid.

Bibliography Aasdalen, Unn Irene. “A Question of Friendship”. In Rhetoric and the Art of Design, edited by Clare Guest. Oslo: Novus, 2008. Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender. New York & London: Routledge, 2004. Cottrell, Robert D. “Inmost Cravings.” In Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture, edited by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Crawford, Katherine. “Neoplatonism and the Making of Heterosexuality.” In The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Ebreo, Leone. Dialogues of Love. Translated by Cosmos Damian Bacich and Rosella Pescatori. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. —. Dialoghi d’amore. Edited by Caramella Santino. Bari: Gius, Laterza and Figli, 1929. Ficino, Marsilio. Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. Translated by Sears Jayne. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1985. —. El libro dell’amore. Edited by Sandra Niccoli. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki editore, 1987. Franzén, Carin. Jag gav honom inte min kärlek. Stockholm: Ersatz, 2012. Gelernt, Jules. World of Many Loves. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Kodera, Sergius. “The Idea of Beauty in Leone Ebreo.” In The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, edited by Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri. Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2009.

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Lacan, Jacques. Le transfert, Séminaire VIII [1960–1961]. Paris, 1991. Marguerite de Navarre, L’Heptaméron. Edited by Nicole Cazauran. Paris; Gallimard, 2000. —. The Heptameron. Translated by Paul A. Chilton. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Nelson, John Charles. Renaissance Theory of Love: The Context of Giordano Bruno’s Eroici Furore. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. Jeffrey C. Persels. “‘Qui sommes tous cassez du harnoys’ or, the Heptaméron and Uses of the Male Body”. In Heroic Virtue, Comic Infidelity: Reassessing Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, edited by Dora E. Polachek, 90–102. Folsom: Hestia Press, 1993. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, Vol. 61. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web 20 August 2012 http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH14200 35480&v=2.1&u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w. Reeser, Todd W. “Fracturing the Male Androgyne in the Heptaméron.” Romance Quarterly 51, 1 (Winter 2004): 15–28. Reprinted in Short Story Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, Vol. 85. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web, 20 August 2012 http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1420067829&v=2.1& u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w. Vance, Jacob. “Humanist Polemics, Christian Morals: A Hypothesis of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron and the Problem of Self-Love.” MLN 120, 1 (2005): 181–195. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web, 10 August 2012, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE %7CH1420091290&v=2.1&u=link&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w.

DIVISIVE DESIRES IN THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN MARCUS NORDLUND

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 48.” No one can make us love as much as Shakespeare, and no one can make us despair of it as effectively as he does. —Allan Bloom, Shakespeare on Love and Friendship (2000).1

The Two Noble Kinsmen (c.1613)2—a reworking of Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale,3 written in collaboration with John Fletcher—was one of the last plays that William Shakespeare wrote. It tells the story of two virtuous cousins, Palamon and Arcite, whose bond of eternal friendship and loyalty is compromised when they are taken prisoners of war by Duke Theseus and fall head over heels in love with the Duke’s sister-in-law, the beautiful and chaste Amazon Emilia. Once the valiant cousins have regained their freedom they resolve to settle this ménage à trois by means of a chivalric duel. Their plan is intercepted at the last minute by Duke Theseus, who replaces it with a singularly contrived, if not mildly sadistic, dilemma for his sister-in-law. Emilia must choose one of the cousins for her husband while the other must be executed, and failure on her part to reach a decision within a month’s time will mean that Palamon and Arcite must still fight it out for the exact same stakes. Emilia, understandably, cannot make up her mind about which cousin to wed and which to kill indirectly, and it is Arcite who finally prevails in the resulting duel. Palamon prepares for death at the hands of the executioner but a final twist of the plot sees Arcite crushed under his horse, suddenly leaving Palamon as the sole contender for Emilia’s hand. A consternated Emilia can only contemplate how her new spouse-to-be has gained her hand at the cost of his best friend’s life: “Is this winning?” (5.4.138). In a subplot without precedent in Chaucer, Fletcher and Shakespeare also describe how the Jailor’s Daughter’s unrequited passion for Palamon leads to her social isolation, madness, and eventual reabsorption into society by means of marriage to another man.

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It is a critical commonplace that Fletcher and Shakespeare extended the pessimism in their literary source by painting a dismal picture of the amorous passions: “Where Chaucer is concerned with the subtle workings of Fortune, The Two Noble Kinsmen lays its emphasis on the destructive power of love.”4 Some, like Eugene Waith, have seen Kinsmen as a play where love “does not score very high”,5 while others have studied it in terms of a conflict between love and reason,6 between sexual and nonsexual love, between love and friendship,7 or between friendship and marriage.8 Many, if not most, critics have also noted its indebtedness to classical models of ideal friendship, including Montaigne’s rather forceful distinction between friendship and marriage (the former an idealized merger and the latter an amalgam of socially prescribed duties and intemperate biological necessities).9 Using this critical nexus as its general point of departure, the present essay will explore The Two Noble Kinsmen’s insistent concern with love and desire as something divisive and divisible.10 Throughout their play Shakespeare and Fletcher remind us of love’s tendency, not only to join people together, but also to divide them from each other as well as from themselves. The play also explores how human beings conceptualize or experience love in quasi-mathematical terms as something that can be divided up, counted, or measured. What unites these two strands of dramatic inquiry (like two sides of a single coin) is a fearful suspicion that love might not be the synergetic life force we would like it to be but more like a desperate zero-sum game based on limited resources. Such a love will sunder in the very act of joining together; it will produce misery in the very act of producing happiness, and even getting what you want will make you self-divided through the act of foregoing something else. This, at least, seems to be the gist of one of the play’s central thematic statements: O, cousin! That we should things desire, which do cost us The loss of our desire! That nought could buy Dear love, but loss of dear love! (5.4.109–12)

One reason why the play can be so disconcerting and hard to act is that an erosive drive towards dissonance, disillusionment, and division comes up forcefully against, and seriously undermines, an essentially comic movement towards social integration and cohesion, much as in the socalled problem plays.

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My more specific purpose will be to explore how Shakespeare and Fletcher develop this concerted motif of divisive and divisible desire by means of interacting thematic, structural, and formal elements—most notably, the employment of structural contrast effects and the use of particular types of dramatic speech and rhetorical tropes. Since The Two Noble Kinsmen is a collaborative work where the individual contributions of each dramatist can now be identified with some conviction, specific references to individual passages as “Shakespeare’s” or “Fletcher’s” will reflect my acceptance of a broad critical consensus about their individual contributions to the play.11 * In 2006, Paula Blank contended that Shakespeare’s plays voice a sceptical concern with the ways that humans measure—or, more likely, mismeasure—themselves and other people.12 Her argument was perhaps influenced to some extent by modern-day neuroses that would have been quite alien to Shakespeare, who happily uses economic or mathematical language in contexts where most of us would find it cynical or crass. As I hope to show a little further on in this essay, an excessive suspicion of measurement per se on the part of literary scholars may also preclude interesting insights into the texts they study. But Blank clearly points to something central in Shakespeare, as evidenced by numerous passages or speeches where questions about love and desire also become questions of measurement. Some of these are among the most memorable in the Shakespeare canon. The same author who gave us Cleopatra’s insistence that “[t]here’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned” (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.1.15) also had Cordelia remonstrate the lovesick and domineering Lear as follows: “Haply when I shall wed, / That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry / Half my love with him, half my care and duty” (King Lear 1.1.100–102). Cordelia describes a love that can be portioned out, much in the same way that her father is now dividing an entire kingdom. But what if love is in limited supply and there’s not enough to go around? That would make it a painfully paradoxical phenomenon that sunders in the very process of joining together, as witnessed by Othello’s tragic refusal to “keep a corner in the thing I love / For others’ uses” (Othello 3.3.276–77). Othello’s craving for romantic exclusivity is only one of the many forces that conspire against the democratic distribution of affection that many idealists and ideologues have proposed over the years.13 An even more fundamental constraint results from the linearity of time, which fuels the

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crass intuitions of very small children that their siblings are also somehow their rivals for parental attention.14 A third factor is the seemingly inveterate urge among humans to construct hierarchies of love around its hyperbolic tendencies: to love truly and deeply is, notoriously, to love as no-one else ever did. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, the process of associating love and desire with divisiveness is set in motion before the action has even begun. Fletcher’s Prologue enters the stage, looks around, and nervously asserts that new stage plays and virginities have one important thing in common: they command a high initial price but then quickly lose their value. This intermingling of the sexual anxiety of the lover with the artistic and economic performance anxieties of the theatrical company is wedded to an acute sense of literary inferiority and vulnerability. Unlike Chaucer, whose story they are reworking, Fletcher and Shakespeare can only hope to offer a trifle that will be “[w]orth two hours’ travel” by keeping “a little dull time” from its audience. The play ends the same way it begins, with a fusion of amorous and economic disappointment, this time expressed in the Epilogue’s remarkable scripting of the audience’s presumed reactions to the play: I would now ask ye how ye like the play, But, as it is with schoolboys, cannot say. I am cruel fearful! Pray yet, stay a while, And let me look upon ye. No man smile? Then it goes hard, I see. He that has Loved a young handsome wench, then, show his face— ’Tis strange if none be here—and, if he will, Against his conscience let him hiss, and kill Our market. (Epilogue, 1–8).

This is of course false modesty on Fletcher’s part: as Lois Potter observes, a speech of this kind would be “unthinkable unless the authors had confidence both in the play and in the speaker”.15 But the Epilogue and Prologue combine into a formal and thematic framing device that brings home the impermanence and divisiveness of love and the concomitant fear of abandonment. Even the Epilogue’s improvised plea that the memory of love might provoke some moral concern for the poor players is undercut effectively by love’s assignation to the past. Someone who “has loved a young handsome wench” is, presumably, not in love with her any more.

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The rest of the play is so full of references to the divisiveness of love and desire that we can only touch upon some of the more salient examples here. The many references to the divisiveness of desire are not restricted to the conflict between attachment or love and sexuality. The problem is a far more fundamental one: that any desire, whether sexual or otherwise, including the moral desire to do the right thing, tends to divide people from each other as well as from themselves. One important means for Shakespeare and Fletcher to bring home their point is the deployment of ironic contrasts through juxtaposition, and the irony is sometimes so heavy that it borders on the heavy-handed. No sooner have Theseus and Hippolyta begun their nuptial rites in act 1, scene 1 when they are interrupted by the widows of three kings who now lie rotting on the battlefield. The widows confront Theseus with a difficult moral and emotional dilemma: will you express your love for Hippolyta by going ahead with the rites, or will you show your love for us by reclaiming the battlefield so that our dead husbands may be interred? In the next scene, Palamon and Arcite are introduced as true exemplars of temperance, and right reason, and ideal friendship. They are planning to flee the morally corrupt city of Thebes so that they will not be become corrupted or have to serve the tyrant Creon, but when Theseus declares war on Creon they end up fighting for the very ruler they despise against a ruler they admire (1.2.107–11). The notion of univocally pursuing one’s desires–including the desire to do the right thing–falls apart once again, even if the whole mess is given some form of coherence by two references to Fate (1.2.101–102, 113–16) and the martial code of honour. When they are taken prisoners of war, Palamon and Arcite’s initial chagrin at the bleak prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison is soon countered with a brave attempt to embrace the self-sufficiency of male friendship. It is hoped that their monastic existence will spell release from the conflicted and divisive nature of sexual passion and other worldly cares (2.2.88–91). Like most lovers, they think of their love for each other as deeply special: PALAMON Is there any record of any two that loved Better than we do? ARCITE Sure there cannot. (2.2.111–12)

This valiant attempt to hoist their love out of the crowded marketplace by means of the measuring rod echoes another scene earlier in the play.

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When Queen Hippolyta cannot decide if she is loved more deeply by her fiancée Theseus than the latter loves his friend Pirithous, her sister Emilia reassures her that “Doubtless / There is a best, and reason has no manners / To say it is not you” (1.3.47–49). But as Shakespeare had illustrated with searing clarity some ten years earlier, in Troilus and Cressida, such comparing and measuring of love objects is not only erosive of human bonding and even identity; it is also very hard to stop once the ball has been set in motion.16 This becomes evident when Emilia next embarks on a highly lyrical account of her youthful same-sex passion for Flavinia. The moral of this story, as Emilia sees it, is markedly different from the reassuring words she has just offered Hippolyta: “That the true love ’tween maid and maid may be / More than in sex dividual” (1.3.78–82). Fletcher delivers another ironic example of divisive love when Emilia visits the prison. The kinsmen predictably fall head over heels in love with her, immediately replacing their ideal friendship with mortal enmity. It is not long before Arcite is suddenly released from jail and banished from the kingdom, only to find that his unexpected freedom has become a curse and that he actually envies his cousin who remains imprisoned in the relative proximity of Emilia (2.3.1317). At this point in the play, love’s irony is piling up very rapidly indeed: we have just watched the Jailor discuss the terms of his daughter’s impending marriage with her Wooer, only to find that her eyes are now set entirely on the two kinsmen, and Palamon in particular (2.1). The Jailor’s Daughter deserves special attention here for two reasons: she is not only the play’s most salient example of love’s divisiveness but also constitutes an unusual structural experiment on Fletcher’s and Shakespeare’s part. When she breaks Palamon out of prison she knows that this amounts to a death sentence for her unknowing father (yet another instance of love that divides as it seeks to join together). But the desire for amorous unity is frustrated when Palamon does not meet her at the designated place. In an uncommon move, quite unheard of in the rest of the Shakespeare canon, Fletcher and Shakespeare effectively separate the Daughter from the rest of the action by means of four soliloquies (scenes 2.4., 2.6., 3.2., and 3.4) that run parallel to the main action as they chart her intensifying depression and eventual loss of sanity. This cordoning off of a character in quasi-choric fashion from the rest of the action is an effective formal correlate of the thematic plight we have been exploring. Unrequited and unsanctioned love has driven the Daughter into the wilderness, into a loneliness so profound that she finally loses her mind, and even into a parallel theatrical space that is not occupied by another fictional soul. Even the fearful Prologue and Epilogue, who are similarly

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separated from the rest of the action, have someone to talk to (the audience).17 The unusual nature of the Daughter’s soliloquies is best understood as part of a broader tendency in the play’s deployment of insides.18 As I use it here, the “inside” serves as an umbrella term for two familiar forms of stage discourse: the soliloquy (which is uttered in solitude) and the monological aside (where a character guards his speech from other characters present on the stage).19 These two types of speech can be combined heuristically because their most fundamental characteristic is shared: they are both instances of speech which is not intended to be heard by other characters on the stage.20 This makes the inside absolutely central to the construction of dramatic interiority as it conveys “inside information” about a character’s point of view to the audience. A systematic comparison between the insides in The Two Noble Kinsmen and in Shakespeare’s complete plays yields some striking results. Kinsmen ranks among the most “inward” plays in the Shakespeare canon, quantitatively speaking, in that its percentage of insides (14%) is twice that of the average Shakespeare play (7%, with a standard deviation of around 4). It is outstripped only by Cymbeline (17%) and rivalled by two other plays, Macbeth and 3 Henry VI. This formal aspect of the play’s inwardness can be described more precisely. The Two Noble Kinsmen is one of only eight Shakespeare plays that have no unmistakeable monological asides: that is, it has no speeches that are spoken in the presence of other characters but guarded from their hearing. We can therefore conclude that the stage characters in The Two Noble Kinsmen are more solitary—in the literal, objective sense that the actors who play them deliver more of their lines alone on the stage—than their counterparts in most other Shakespeare plays. This measure of solitary speech is clearly relevant to the problem of love’s social and emotional divisiveness in The Two Noble Kinsmen, but it actually looks almost trivial in comparison with the play’s exceptional gender ratio. In the average Shakespeare play, the women characters speak only a meagre twelve per cent of the total insides and there are no fewer than eleven plays that fail to scrape together a single female inside. The Two Noble Kinsmen makes a striking departure from this Shakespearean norm since its women speak no less than 75 per cent of the play’s total insides: Arcite 15%

Daughter 50%

Emilia 25%

Palamon 9%

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(To this figure we could add the Epilogue, which was almost certainly spoken by a boy actor playing a woman, and most likely the Prologue, too). The only other play where Shakespeare gives his women characters more than half of the insides is All’s Well That Ends Well (58%), closely followed by Romeo and Juliet at 43%. Even if we were to bracket the Daughter’s significant contribution to Kinsmen, the remaining 25% spoken by Emilia would still be evenly weighed against the 24% spoken by Palamon (9%) and Arcite (15%). A reasonable suspicion that this female dominance might be Fletcher’s rather than Shakespeare’s doing is easily disproven, since their male-female ratios are almost equal: Shakespeare wrote 75% female insides in Kinsmen and Fletcher 76%. The Jailor’s Daughter’s and Emilia’s soliloquies are motivated by very different circumstances: one cannot have the object of her love while the other cannot choose between two objects of affection. The common denominator between them is self-division through desire. The Jailor’s Daughter’s chorus-like soliloquies can thus be described as a particularly innovative and urgent example of a deeper focus in The Two Noble Kinsmen on female inwardness and the tendency of desire to separate people from themselves. A close consideration of the rhetorical language employed by the Daughter can throw even further light on the formal means by which Fletcher and Shakespeare invest her expressions of desire with a sense of profound loneliness. One of the most important figures of speech employed by early modern playwrights was the apostrophe, by which characters expressed powerful feelings to persons or entities that could not hear them. When used in insides, apostrophes had the additional advantage of enlivening self-addressed speeches—especially long speeches, which could easily become tedious—by investing them with a quasi-dialogical dimension. Another important reason for this intrusion of quasi-dialogical address into monological speech was surely psychological, a reflection of the social and dialogical nature of the human self.21 The Two Noble Kinsmen may not be the most apostrophe-laden play in the Shakespeare canon22 but the Daughter uses it frequently enough in her soliloquies: she addresses her absent father as well as abstractions like Love, the State of Nature, her own life, and finally a hallucinatory vision of a shipwreck. What sets her speeches apart from the dramatic discourse of love in this period, however, is the complete absence of any apostrophes addressed to Palamon, her love object, who is consistently referred to in the third person. This stylistic anomaly works towards intensifying the audience’s sense of the Daughter’s social and emotional deprivation as she gradually unravels in her loveless theatrical space. It also sets her

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soliloquies apart from those of the other characters, such as Arcite’s long soliloquy where he apostrophizes both his beloved Emilia and his newfound enemy Palamon (3.1.1–30); Palamon’s returning the favour by apostrophizing Arcite in 3.6; and Emilia’s apostrophes to both kinsmen in her long self-divided soliloquy (4.2.1–54). When the Daughter finally returns to society in Act 4, the audience finds her speaking into thin air, wrapped up in an imaginary dialogue about hellfire that presumably has come to serve as a horrible substitute for real human intercourse. It takes a bed trick involving the Wooer—whom her deranged mind already takes for Palamon, so that the standard strategy of luring an unsuspecting victim into a dark bed with the wrong person becomes quite unnecessary—to bring her back into the social fold. One can only wonder what a seventeenth-century audience would have made of this emphatic affirmation of the healing power of sexuality. In terms of plot, the Daughter’s trajectory is that of separation from the community through unlawful desire and reintegration by means of marriage. But in 1613 Shakespeare had long since outgrown the formulaic requirements of the romantic comedies, whose endings were rarely completely harmonious anyway, and whose structure proved woefully incapable of containing the complexity and tonal dissonance of his mature vision. In the problem plays he had actively interrogated the comic form with such single-minded intensity that he sometimes produced plays that became hard to stage. In the romances, a darker, more disillusioned view coexists with the hope for grace. There is much painful pathos in the Jailer’s Daughter’s words when she finally stands at the crossroads between a beautiful lie and a fatal truth: DAUGHTER But you shall not hurt me. WOOER I will not, sweet. DAUGHTER If you do, love, I’ll cry. Exeunt. (5.2.111–12)

On the basis of this ominous exit line (still addressed to an imaginary Palamon), the audience is likely to predict two futures for the Daughter: one where she lives alongside her husband in her own parallel universe, forever entranced by the illusion that he is actually Palamon, and one where the spell breaks and she is destroyed. As it turns out, the formal conventions of comedy are stretched painfully but ultimately hold, leaving the audience to ponder the moral status of this pragmatic deception. There are many critics who give Two Noble Kinsmen the same unfair treatment commonly afforded to All’s Well That Ends Well (arguably one of the most heavily ironic titles in English literature); that is, they explain

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its tonal dissonance and lack of emotional resolution with reference to hasty plotting and an untroubled appeal to the comic convention known as the bed-trick. These scholars will do well to consider the closing words that Shakespeare gives Theseus: O, you heavenly charmers, What things you make of us! For what we lack We laugh, for what we have are sorry, still Are children in some kind. (5.4.131–34)

If “[g]ood comedy is tragedy narrowly averted”, as Jonathan Bate puts it succinctly,23 then Shakespearean tragicomedy can perhaps be defined as tragedy averted too late. The Two Noble Kinsmen is an unnerving play because it sinks its teeth relentlessly into all the unfulfilled and conflicting desires that human flesh is heir to. Shakespeare and Fletcher conjure up a cluster of generally admirable individuals who strive very hard to live in accordance with their idea of the good, even as they buckle under incompatible or unacceptable desires and negotiate impossible dilemmas. It is a world where people do not know what they want; where they want too many incompatible things at the same time; where they do not get what they want; or where they pay so dearly for what they actually get that the victory leaves a bitter aftertaste. We will probably never know how this bitter draught was received at the Globe. Did the Epilogue’s fear of abandonment by the audience turn out to be justified? Perhaps Shakespeare had simply reached a point where his celebrated double vision had grown so pervasive and endemic that it defeated his intuitions as a popular entertainer. Perhaps there is even something to Theodore Spencer’s wry speculation about an increasingly obscure and periphrastic dramatist who teamed up with the younger, slicker, and savvier Fletcher for one of his final instalments: “One can even imagine a deputation calling on Shakespeare—it is not an agreeable thought—to suggest that, all things considered, it would be wise to go home and write no more.”24

Notes 1

Allan Bloom, Shakespeare on Love and Friendship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 141. 2 All further references will be made to the Third Arden edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Lois Potter (London: Thomson, 2002).

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3 For a comparison between Chaucer’s and Shakespeare/Fletcher’s version of the story, see E. Talbot Donaldson, The Swan at the Well: Shakespeare Reading Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1985), chapter 3, 50–73. 4 G. R. Proudfoot, introduction to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), xxi. 5 Eugene M. Waith, “Shakespeare and Fletcher on Love and Friendship,” Shakespeare Studies 18 (1986), 235–50: 248. 6 Proudfoot, introduction, xxii. 7 Mary Beth Rose, The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 8 Barry Weller, “The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Friendship Tradition, and the Flight from Eros,” in Shakespeare, Fletcher, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Charles H. Frey (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 93–108. Compare Laurie J. Shannon’s forceful, if slightly overstated, rejoinder to previous accounts of the play as a journey towards the maturity of marriage: that these scholars “fail to grapple with the astonishingly negative conception of marriage the drama involves” (“Emilia’s Argument: Friendship and Human Title in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” ELH 64:3 (1997): 657–82, 662). See also Shannon’s Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002). 9 See Michel de Montaigne, The Essays, translated by John Florio (1603), edited by W. E. Henley (New York: AMS Press, 1967, esp. vol. 1, chapter 27, and vol. 3, chapter 5. For a view of early modern and Shakespearean friendship as the chief “arena” where men “make themselves meaningful,” see Tom MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 10 The “biocultural” account of love that informs my reading of The Two Noble Kinsmen must remain implicit here for reasons of space. Suffice it to say that it weds historical perspectives from the early modern period to a modern evolutionary-neuroscientific view of sexuality and attachment as functionally independent but overlapping systems, on the assumption that this inclusive framework can make some theoretical sense of two things: love’s historical, cultural, contextual, and individual diversity and the messy relationship between sexuality and attachment. For the functionally independent and overlapping view, see Lisa Diamond, “What Does Sexual Orientation Orient? A Biobehavioral Model Distinguishing Romantic Love and Sexual Desire,” in Psychological Review 110: 1 (2003): 173– 92; for its potential relevance to Shakespeare’s social context, and, indirectly, his works, see Marcus Nordlund, Shakespeare and the Nature of Love: Literature, Culture, Evolution (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), esp. 36– 37. 11 See especially Brian Vickers, Shakespeare, Co-Author (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). It is now commonly accepted that Fletcher made the following contributions to The Two Noble Kinsmen: Prologue, 1.5, 2.2–6, 3.3–4.2, 5.2, Epilogue. Any shorthand identifying “Shakespearean” and “Fletcherian” passages must not be interpreted too literally, of course. Two dramatists may agree on a

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rigid division of labour in the actual writing of different scenes or parts and still collaborate closely on overriding levels such as plot, character, and theme. 12 Paula Blank, Shakespeare and the Mismeasure of Renaissance Man (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 13 The anthropologist Helen Harris lists “exclusivity” among the integral components of romantic love in a useful synthesis of previous research; see “Rethinking Polynesian Heterosexual Relationships: A Case Study on Mangaia, Cook Islands,” in Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? edited by William Jankowiak (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 95–127, 102–103. For an idealistic view of love as a faculty that does not discriminate between different love objects, see Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving (1957. London: Allen & Unwin, 1979); for a feminist critique of the romantic merger, see Marilyn Friedman, “Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy,” in Autonomy, Gender, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 115–39. 14 On the biological substrates of sibling rivalry in different species, see Douglas W. Mock and Geoffrey A. Parker, eds., The Evolution of Sibling Rivalry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). For literary perspectives on the subject, read King Lear. 15 Lois Potter, note to Fletcher and Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen, 328. 16 See Marcus Nordlund, The Dark Lantern: A Historical Study of Sight in Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton (Gothenburg: Gothenburg Studies in English, 1999), chapter 4. 17 I am following Jim Hirsh’s contention (see note 20 below) that the dominant historical convention governing the performance of Shakespeare’s soliloquies was self-address rather than audience address. It obviously makes a world of dramatic difference if the Jailor’s Daughter talks to herself or addresses the audience in these soliloquies that chart the effects of social and emotional deprivation. 18 This discussion draws upon my research project “Shakespeare’s Insides” (supported by the Swedish Research Council, 2010–12) which applies a novel combination of quantitative methods and close readings to the soliloquies and monological asides in Shakespeare’s complete plays. A précis of the project’s overriding purpose, methodology, and some preliminary results will be offered in “Shakespeare’s Insides,” forthcoming in a special issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, guest-edited by Brett D. Hirsh and Hugh Craig (Ashgate). 19 Monologue is here understood not as an extended, uninterrupted speech by a single character but as the opposite of dialogue (i.e. speech which is not addressed to another character on the stage). 20 For this negative criterion I am indebted to the brilliant literary-historical work of James D. Hirsh, especially the groundbreaking Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003: now sadly out of print). My choice of a different terminology for the same thing—“inside” for what Hirsh terms “soliloquy”—reflects my view that Hirsh’s inclusive definition of “soliloquy” (speech which is not intended to be heard by any other character on the stage) clashes too forcefully with the most widespread usage (an extended

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speech uttered in solitude). Hirsh’s definition makes even a one-word quip a soliloquy as long as it is guarded from others’ hearing. 21 This idea did not originate with modern theories like Mead’s symbolic interactionism or Bakhtin’s dialogism; see, for example, Shakespeare’s extended treatment in Troilus and Cressida (3.3.94–123) of a proverbial idea which may ultimately derive from Plato. 22 The average percentage of words devoted to apostrophe in Shakespeare’s insides is 21% while The Two Noble Kinsmen contains 14%. 23 Jonathan Bate, introduction to William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC Shakespeare, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2008), 4. 24 Theodore Spencer, “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” Modern Philology 36 (1939): 255–76, 276.

Bibliography Bate, Jonathan. “Introduction to William Shakespeare.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC Shakespeare), edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Houndmills: Macmillan, 2008. Blank, Paula. Shakespeare and the Mismeasure of Renaissance Man. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Bloom, Allan. Shakespeare on Love and Friendship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Diamond, Lisa. “What Does Sexual Orientation Orient? A Biobehavioral Model Distinguishing Romantic Love and Sexual Desire.” Psychological Review 110: 1 (2003): 173–92. Donaldson, E. Talbot. The Swan at the Well: Shakespeare Reading Chaucer. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1985. Friedman, Marilyn. “Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy.” In Autonomy, Gender, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 115– 39. Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving, 1957. London: Allen & Unwin, 1979. Harris, Helen. “Rethinking Polynesian Heterosexual Relationships: A Case Study on Mangaia, Cook Islands.” In Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience?, edited by William Jankowiak. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 95–127. Hirsh, James D. Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. MacFaul, Tom. Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Mock, Douglas W. and Geoffrey A. Parker, eds. The Evolution of Sibling Rivalry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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Montaigne, Michel de. The Essays, translated by John Florio (1603), edited by W. E. Henley. New York: AMS Press, 1967. Nordlund, Marcus. The Dark Lantern: A Historical Study of Sight in Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton. Gothenburg: Gothenburg Studies in English, 1999. —. Shakespeare and the Nature of Love: Literature, Culture, Evolution. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007. Proudfoot, G. R. Introduction to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen. London: Edward Arnold, 1970. Rose, Mary Beth. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Shakespeare, William. The Two Noble Kinsmen (Arden Shakespeare), edited by Lois Potter. London: Thomson, 2002. Shannon, Laurie. “Emilia’s Argument: Friendship and Human Title in The Two Noble Kinsmen.” ELH 64:3 (1997): 657–82. —. Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002. Spencer, Theodore. “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Modern Philology 36 (1939): 255–76. Vickers, Brian. Shakespeare, Co-Author. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Waith, Eugene M. “Shakespeare and Fletcher on Love and Friendship.” Shakespeare Studies 18 (1986): 235–50. Weller, Barry. “The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Friendship Tradition, and the Flight from Eros.” in Shakespeare, Fletcher, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Charles H. Frey. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989. 93–108.

LINGUISTIC DESIRE AND THE MORAL ICONOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND MATS MALM

For very natural reasons, the emerging vernacular cultures of early modern Europe contain an immense discussion of language. The profound interest in the classical languages was mirrored by rapidly developing examinations of the vernaculars, and even more rapidly developing experiments aimed at expounding, manifesting and extolling the mother tongue. While the deliberations on language, not least in England, can hardly be overlooked, one aspect that particularly deserves further attention is the question of the morals of language. This question is connected to the suspicion about poetry, but in evasive ways. It is well known that beside the flowering literary production of early modern England, there was also severe mistrust and critique of poetry. This denouncement of poetry was closely associated with the attacks on the theatres, and the two have often been understood in the same way. During the past few decades, it has become increasingly evident that the anti-theatrical and anti-poetical critique was to a great extent based on a particular fear of desire: theatre and poetry were not only hedonistic and inciting all kinds of desire, but also effeminating. As Laura Levine pointed out, Stephen Gosson’s 1579 pamphlet The School of Abuse formulated an image of theatre and poetry as emasculating, an image that would be intensely repeated in a critical strand with its most exaggerated but certainly not last proponent in William Prynne’s Histrio-mastix: The Player’s Scourge or Actor’s Tragedy, 1633.1 Levine’s pointing out the fear of an unstable, potentially monstrous or even void self was followed by a line of studies focusing on disorderly sexuality and its implications for various parts of society. So, Frances E. Dolan connected the critique of poetry’s feminine ornamentation and apparel with the contemporary debate on women’s embellishing themselves, Mary Ellen Lamb dissected Philip Sidney’s method of arguing through female images in his Defense of Poesie, and Peter C. Herman used the issue of poetry’s gender to expand on how Sidney,

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Spenser and Milton in their theoretical writings as well as poetry not only defend poetry but also, at the same time, question it.2 As a whole, the scholarly discussions of the “war against poetry” can be said to have focused on content. Poetry in itself consumes time that could have been used for better things, but above all it is mendacious and sets forth bad examples of persons who let their passions dominate them, thus inspiring the receivers.3 Certainly, these aspects are the most obvious ones, but they should be supplemented with a view of the alluring dangers not of content but of language itself. I propose that in order to understand the foundations of the whole discussion, we must look into the question of language itself and a notion of linguistic desire that was transmitted within the rhetorical tradition. As the debate has naturally revolved around Gosson’s pamphlet and Sidney’s defence, I will primarily focus on them.

Linguistic Desire: Gosson In Herman’s study, the pervasive suspicion about imagination, not least within Protestantism, is sketched as a general background to the “antipoetic sentiment”: the critique of theatre and poetry concerned the “fomenting social disorder through the representation, and hence the encouragement, of vice”.4 This is a very relevant issue: throughout history, but especially at this time, imagination, being judged a lower faculty positioned between the senses and reason, has in various ways been considered a producer of deluding images and illusions, and a dangerous passage for sensual impressions and enticements to enter man’s mind, which should instead be directed towards the spiritual. To Gosson, not even Virgil is acceptable and consequently, Herman summarizes Gosson’s three most obvious objections to poetry and theatre: (1) “the representation of immoral acts encourages immorality in others”; (2) it “endangers the realm because it draws young princes ‘to the schooles of their owne abuses’”; (3) “poetry is evil because poets do not follow tradition”. Under the third point, Herman comments that Gosson particularly refers to musicians but that his critique is valid also for poetry.5 In fact, the mention of music here and elsewhere is of great importance, and the reason is that the comparison of poetry to music implies another aspect than that of content and imagination, namely sound and form. Gosson admits that music originally was good and wholesome, but maintains that it has come to be misused: When the Sicilians, and Dores forsooke the playnsong that they had learned of their auncestours in the Mountaynes, and practised long among

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Linguistic Desire and the Moral Iconography of Language theyr heardes, they founde out such descant in Sybaris instrumentes, that by daunsing and skipping they fel into lewdnesse of life. Neither staied these abuses in the compasse of that countrey: but like vnto yll weedes in time spread so far, that they choked the good grayne in euery place. For as Poetrie & Piping are Cosen germans: so piping, and playing are of great affinity, and all three chayned in linkes of abuse. (Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse 10v–11r)

The sound of music parallels poetry’s acoustic delights, such as rhymes and alliteration, rhythms and moods. But these detrimental delights are also connected to the “Theaters, which rather effeminate the minde, as pricks vnto vice, then procure amendement of manners, as spurres to vertue.” The theatre becomes a whorehouse, and it all started with the enticement of sound: “Maximus Tyrius holdeth it for a Maxime that the bringing of instruments to Theaters and plaies, was the first cup that poisoned the commen wealth. (11r)” Gosson’s adherence to Plato’s negative view of poetry and theatre in the Republic has often been commented on, but here, the focus on sound and delightful linguistic representation is strongly underlined as Gosson goes into dialogue with Plato’s critique of what we may term linguistic desire in the Gorgias. There, Socrates criticizes oratory by way of comparison: cookery serves instant pleasure and not that which is best for human beings, whereas medicine may involve unpleasant treatment but is beneficial. The dichotomy is expanded to several areas, the short-sighted ingratiating and pleasure-seeking pole constantly associated with sweetness, flattery, cosmetics and dissemblance: So pastry baking, as I say, is the flattery that wears the mask of medicine. Cosmetics is the one that wears that of gymnastics in the same way; a mischievous, deceptive, disgraceful and ill-bred thing, one that perpetrates deception by means of shaping and colouring, smoothing out and dressing up, so as to make people assume an alien beauty and neglect their own, which comes through gymnastics. (Plato, Gorgias 465b)6

This contrast is also applied to philosophy as opposed to rhetoric, and in the end poetry. It is against this background that Gosson proposes that Cookes did neuer shewe mor crafte in their iunckets to vanquish the taste, nor Painters in shadowes to allure the eye, then Poets in Theaters to wounde the conscience. There set they abroche straunge consortes of melody, to tickle the eare; costly apparel, to flatter the sight; effeminate gesture, to rauish the sence;

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and wanton speache, to whet desire too inordinate lust. Therefore of both barrelles, I iudge Cookes and Painters the better hearing, for the one extendeth his arte no farther then to the tongue, palate, and nose, the other to the eye; and both are ended in outwarde sense, which is common too vs with bruite beasts. (Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse 14v–15r)

Just as in Plato, the discussion concerns alluring representation: musical and verbal, as well as visual apparel and gesture: all directed to the lowly sensuality.7 Poetry or suggestive oratory of Gorgias’s kind, music and painting all offer hedonistic representation. This is also the case when Gosson speaks of “The Syrens song”, sentences “written by Poets, as ornaments to beautifye their woorkes, and sette theyr trumperie too sale without suspect”: it is the verbal allurement, not the fiction or imaginative content, that is questioned here. Verbal representation is here, as elsewhere, also described as ornamental deceit and raiment.8 This is not to say that imagination and content are not important parts of Gosson’s critique, but it means that the scope of his critique entails an important element that should not be overlooked: linguistic desire. Gosson need not have read Plato in the original: this argument was repeated not least in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, which was part of basic rhetorical education in England at the time.9 The question, now, is how Sidney handled the question of linguistic desire in his Defense of Poesie.

Denouncing Voluptuous Language: Sidney Gosson dedicated his pamphlet to Sidney, who responded with the well-known Defense of Poesie or Apology of Poetry, first published in 1595.10 This treatise offers a complex line of reasoning. As Margaret Ferguson has pointed out, “Sidney, like Plato in Book 10 of the Republic, sees the threat that poetry poses as an erotic one”, as poetry entices to love but is untruthful.11 Dolan particularly has demonstrated how Sidney ties art to power, masculinity and divinity as a retort to the accusation of effeminacy. Determining nature as feminine, Sidney has the poet cooperating with nature but also definitely surpassing her. This comes to pass through the inventions of the poet, Dolan stresses, which again directs attention towards the poet’s imagination and poetry’s content.12 While it certainly is the case that Sidney stresses imagination, invention and content, however, the issue of representation as such is of great weight. When describing the poet’s superiority to nature, Sidney speaks in terms that rather evoke form and representation:

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Linguistic Desire and the Moral Iconography of Language Nature neuer set foorth the earth in so rich Tapistry as diuerse Poets haue done, neither with so pleasaunt riuers, fruitfull trees, sweete smelling flowers, nor whatsoeuer els may make the too much loued earth more louely: her world is brasen, the Poets only deliuer a golden. (Sidney, The Defence of Poesie C1r)

And it appears that Sidney’s dominating argumentative method is actually focused on representation, on disassociating poetry from form and linguistic desire. It is by this manoeuvre that he is able to rid poetry of effeminacy. To be sure, poetry still in Sidney’s description is gendered and thereby at least potentially effeminating, but he renegotiates poetry’s feminine appearance in communication with a long and forceful tradition. As Lamb demonstrated, “to the explicit charges against which Sidney’s Apology defends poetry—that it lies, it promotes immorality, it was banished from Plato’s ideal republic, and that it serves no useful purpose—can be added an implicit charge, that the pleasures offered by poetry rendered it dangerously effeminizing.”13 The threat of effeminizing poetry implied that schoolboys would be made useless for administering power and authority, thus threatening society.14 How, then, was poetry thought to effeminize? Largely through its linguistic pleasures, which are usually considered vital but which are also threatening. One justification of Sidney’s is that insight must be conveyed with beauty, and thus “the Philosophers of Greece durst not a long time apear to the world but under the masks of poets”.15 Gosson’s “nurse of abuse” is thus turned into part of the pedagogical project, and in Sidney’s words, we should “not say, that Poetrie abuseth mans wit, but that mans wit abuseth Poetrie”.16 Now, while the claim that poetry shall convey insight through pleasure is a standard topic, the problem is when poetry is accused of being overly pleasurable: voluptuous. As is apparent, the deliberations about poetry’s gender and character are laden with female images such as Poesie, Nature, the nurse of abuse (or, in Sidney, instruction), and the sweet siren, and the discussion consequently involves cosmetics and garments. In fact, one might say, the arguments are built upon the female images, constantly negotiating them but also to a very large degree depending on the images of tradition. M. J. Doherty demonstrated how Sidney established Poetry-Poesie as the “mistressknowledge”, related to the allegorical representations of Philosophy in Boethius, the City of God in Augustine and the Bible’s wisdom, Sophia: The sexual and social tension implied in the engendering of self-knowledge appears figuratively in language; conversely, the gender allegory of language affects the concept of epistemological and social order so that deco-

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rum and didacticism cooperate. Thus Sidney’s poet, or man of inward light, exercises his androcentric mind by joining powers. Two figures, male and female united in an androgynous bond, constitute the power of the poet in Sidney’s moral coupling of Lady Poesie and the statesman-architect whose “erected wit” is lifted up in the vigor of invention.17

Poetry’s invention certainly is essential in Sidney’s Defense of Poesie, but Sidney’s manoeuvre not only implies stressing invention: it also entails removing linguistic desire, incarnated in voluptuous language, from poetry. This might sound paradoxical, but the reason is that his personifications of poetry and poet draw on an established iconography where one part is missing. The male traits in Sidney’s female Poesie are an essential part of this denouncement of linguistic desire.

The Iconographic Argument A very natural and pervasive way of thinking rhetoric was by personifications: these could be masculine, as the “Hercules Gallicus”, but as a rule, they were feminine. The association of rhetoric with political power results in frequent mention of rhetoric as a queen, but also as a woman in armour. While rhetoric is readily legitimized through such imagery, it is also readily criticized through parallel feminine imagery which portrays rhetoric as a harlot, painted and adorned in the rhetorical ornaments.18 The argumentative force of these images is especially apparent as they were employed in connection with the ancient discussion of virtuous Atticism versus lustful Asianism, most influentially handled by Quintilian. In this tradition, desire is distinctly associated with the feminine, but importantly, it entails a battle between content and form which takes a very special guise. The female icons of antiquity can provide a much deeper understanding to the issue of sixteenth-century England.19 Quintilian’s project was of course to convey the powers and possibilities of language, but he was also as suspicious of voluptuous discourse as Plato. Fear of the prospect of schoolboys being effeminized by the contagion of voluptuous language goes back to him: they “must not fall for the prettiness of modern self-indulgence, and grow soft with its depraved pleasures, so as to fall in love with that luscious sweetness which is all the more attractive to boys because it is closer to their natural instincts”, and he even speaks of castration in these terms.20 Above all, Quintilian presents a forceful rendering of the different female icons of rhetoric, two very separate objects of desire to the orator:

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Linguistic Desire and the Moral Iconography of Language Healthy bodies, with sound blood and strengthened by exercise, acquire good looks by the same means as they acquire strength; they are tanned, slim, and muscular. On the other hand, if one feminizes them by plucking the hair and using cosmetics, the very striving for beauty makes them disgusting. Again, decent and impressive apparel lends men authority, as the Greek verse bears witness, but a womanish and luxurious dress, instead of adorning the body, exposes the mind within. In the same way, the translucent and many-coloured style [elocutio] of some speakers emasculates subjects which are clothed in this kind of verbal dress. […] Eloquence should be approached in a higher spirit; if her whole body is healthy, she will not think that polishing her nails or styling her hair has anything to do with her well-being. Corpora sana et integri sanguinis et exercitatione firmata ex isdem his speciem accipiunt ex quibus vires, namque et colorata et adstricta et lacertis expressa sunt: sed eadem si quis vulsa atque fucata muliebriter comat, foedissima sint ipso formae labore. Et cultus concessus atque magnificus addit hominibus, ut Graeco versu testatum est, auctoritatem: at muliebris et luxuriosus non corpus exornat, sed detegit mentem. Similiter illa translucida et versicolor quorundam elocutio res ipsas effeminat quae illo verborum habitu vestiuntur. [...] Maiore animo adgredienda eloquentia est, quae si toto corpore valet, unguis șpolire et capillum reponere non existimabit ad curam suam pertinere […]. (Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 8.Pr.19–22)

Probably, it is here that Plato’s critique of rhetoric’s and poetry’s representation and the whole tradition’s uneasiness is most efficiently delineated. Quintilian explicitly refers to Plato’s critique, and Plato had spoken of poetry as inciting to love—a love best overcome just as an ordinary misdirected love.21 The image of healthy and noble Eloquence is juxtaposed with painted Elocution in her enticing verbal raiment and cosmetics: all voluptuous language and insubstantial, deceptive representation. Eloquentia represents rhetoric as a whole, including argument, invention, morals, societal use and adjusted form; Elocutio represents lustful and detrimental form: the object of, and enticer to, linguistic desire. In tradition, these counterparts are repeated again and again, and it appears obvious that the image of voluptuous language is an absolute foundation of the critique of poetry that we meet in the English sixteenth century, so well known that it does not really have to be formulated.22 Gosson repeatedly touches upon it, but interestingly, Sidney practically avoids the image of Elocutio and voluptuous language. Instead, he labours to establish a female image of poetry, which in every respect corresponds to Quintilian’s Eloquentia, and connects to philosophy. What, then, happens with

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detrimental Elocutio? In his Defense of Poesie, Sidney does mention her23—only to debar her from poetry. Towards the end, he states: Now for the outside of it [Poesie], which is words, or (as I may tearme it) Diction, it is euen well worse: so is it that hony-flowing Matrone Eloquence, apparrelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtisanlike painted affectation. One time with so farre fet words, that many seeme monsters, but must seem straungers to anie poore Englishman: an other time, with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary: an other time with figures and flowers, extreemly winter-starued. (Sidney, The Defence of Poesie I3r)

What Sidney does is to adjust the traditional iconography: his mistress Poesie is built on virtuous Eloquentia, while wanton, detrimental Elocutio (Diction, as Sidney stresses that he terms it) is discarded as not belonging to poetry. This, again, serves to underscore the importance of form: it is the raiment and cosmetics of words that are the problem.24 Sidney actively (and consistently) defines it as the “outside” of poetry, not really relevant to the discussion of poetry as such, and he continues by stating that such bad diction is to be found also among scholars and preachers: that is to say, even though it concerns rhythm and rhyme and connects to music, it can be misused by all. Importantly, and rather originally, he underlines that this voluptuous language must not be confused with poetry, must not even be associated with poetry: “But what? methinks I deserue to be pounded for straying from Poetrie, to Oratory.”25 This critique of poetry’s linguistic desire was apparent, although not explicitly elaborated, in Gosson, and Sidney does not explicate it either when he summarizes the points of critique against poetry. But it is very distinctly there, as Sidney relates Gosson’s nurse of abuse: “infecting vs with many pestilent desires, with a Sirens sweetnesse, drawing the minde to the Serpents taile of sinful fansies”, sweetness forwarding fancies.26 It has been remarked that Gosson’s The Schoole of Abuse was written in a highly euphuistic style, that is, despite its moral critique itself indulging in pleasurable language. One might first take this as an indication that he was not concerned by the issue of linguistic desire, but rather, the contrary is the case. The standard definition is that philosophical and moral truth can be fruitfully conveyed in a sugared coating, and this is precisely what Gosson attempts, even in the subtitle remarking that his attack is a “pleasaunt inuectiue”. As he followed up the issue with Playes Confuted in fiue Actions in 1582, he chose the opposite style, now writing a terse, attic prose.27 In this way, on the title page stressing not “pleasaunt” but instead “not eloquent, but powerful” (Non diserta, sed fortia), Gosson demon-

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strates his intimacy with and versatility within traditional notions of moral and immoral, Attic and Asian style such as pronounced by Quintilian. It is true that much of Sidney’s defence is based on his definition of Poesie as belonging to fiction, content, invention and knowledge. But besides his modelling of this female character, the female character who is usually associated with rhetorical and linguistic vice is equally important, only the importance lies in disassociating her from poetry. As Wayne Rebhorn concluded, “the ‘body’ of rhetoric is always double, imagined as both a harmonious, well-proportioned entity and a perverse and monstrous one”.28 These images do not exclude each other, but in important ways complement one another: the good body belongs to rhetoric as a whole, Eloquentia, while the bad body belongs to the voluptuous language of Elocutio. When the bad body is used for rhetoric as a whole, precisely those associations of wane deception and linguistic desire are exploited to cast suspicion on rhetoric as a whole. Realizing fully the argumentative force of feminine iconography, Sidney simply redefined voluptuous language in such a way as to remove it from poetry. By this fairly noticeable manoeuvre, he appears to confirm the overwhelming power not of rhetoric, but of its visual representations. The iconography of rhetoric is one of the elements structuring Renaissance understanding of language. The notions of language’s morals and linguistic desire are of a very wide scope: they connect directly to the selfdefinitions of Protestantism versus Catholicism, and they form part of the self-definition of rising early modern nations as they attempt to define, delimit and authorize their vernacular culture and language. In the end, the at times very significant tension that results from the ambivalent attraction to voluptuous language—and representation—appears to be one integral part of that which we usually label Baroque.29

Notes 1 Laura Levine, “Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-theatricality and Effeminization from 1579 to 1642,” Criticism 28 (1986). 2 Frances E. Dolan, “Taking the Pencil out of God’s Hand: Art, Nature, and the Face-Painting Debate in Early Modern England,” PMLA 108:2 (1993); Mary Ellen Lamb, “Apologizing for Pleasure in Sidney’s ‘Apology for Poetry’: The Nurse of Abuse Meets the Tudor Grammar School,” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 36:4 (1994); Peter C. Herman, Squitter-wits and Musehaters: Sidney, Spenser, Milton and Renaissance Antipoetic Sentiment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996). Cf. Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property (London: Methuen, 1987).

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3 Russell Frazer, The War Against Poetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Robert Matz, Defending Literature in Early Modern England: Renaissance Literary Theory in Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hazard Adams, The Offense of Poetry (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007). 4 Herman, Squitter-wits and Muse-haters, 15. 5 Ibid., 26. 6 John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson trans., Plato: Complete Works, Edited, with Introduction and Notes (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 791–869, 465b; cf. 501–503. See Jacqueline Lichtenstein, The Eloquence of Color: Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age [1989], trans. Emily McVarish (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 37–54. 7 Earlier references to Gorgias are made pp. 4r–v; 13v. 8 “pul off the visard that Poets maske in, you shall disclose their reproch, bewray their vanitie, loth their wantonnesse, lament their follie, and perceiue their sharpe sayings to be placed as Pearles in Dunghils, fresh pictures on rotten walles, chaste Matrons apparel on common Curtesans. These are the Cuppes of Circes, that turne reasonable Creatures into brute Beastes; the balles of Hippomenes, that hinder the course of Atalanta; and the blocks of the Diuel that are cast in our wayes, to cut off the rase of toward wittes. No marueyle though Plato shut them out of his Schoole, and banished them quite from his common wealth, as effeminate writers, vnprofitable members, and vtter enimies to vertue.” (Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse 2v–3r.) 9 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, I–V, edited and translated by Donald A. Russell (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 2.15.24–26. On the use of Quintilian, see T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, 1–2 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944), and Miriam Joseph Rauh, Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947). 10 On the genesis and title of the treatise, see Sir Philip Sidney, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 371. 11 Margaret W. Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 146. 12 Dolan, “Taking the Pencil out of God’s Hand”, esp. 225–27. 13 Lamb, “Apologizing for Pleasure in Sidney’s ‘Apology for Poetry,’” 499. 14 Lamb, “Apologizing for Pleasure in Sidney’s ‘Apology for Poetry,’” 503, referring much to Richard Helgerson, The Elizabethan Prodigals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 128–29. 15 Sidney, The Defence of Poesie B2r. Later, Sidney formulates the idea in terms of body and raiment (“Wher the Philosophers as they think scorne to delight, so must they be content little to mooue; sauing wrangling whether Virtus be the chiefe or the onely good; whether the contemplatiue or the actiue life do excell; which Plato and B[P]oetius well knew: and therefore made mistresse Philosophie verie often borrow the masking raiment of Poesie.” Sidney, The Defence of Poesie E2v.

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Sidney, The Defence of Poesie, G2r. M. J. Doherty, The Mistress-Knowledge: Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie and Literary Architectonics in the English Renaissance (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1991), e.g. 1–28, 53–58, 104–105, quotation p. 186. 18 See the overview in Wayne Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 64–79; 133–39, and Heinrich F. Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 501–52. 19 Dolan ties the “erotic threat in poetry” which is tangible in Sidney and others to a tradition from antiquity to seventeenth-century France described by Jacqueline Lichtenstein (“Taking the Pencil out of God’s Hand”, 227. In the article Dolan refers to, Lichtenstein mentions the vivid portrayal by Dionysius of Halicarnassus as oratorical Asianism, opposed to the virtuous and sparse style of Atticism, but in The Eloquence of Color, Lichtenstein gives a fuller survey of the tradition. 20 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 2.5.22–23; 5.12.17–20. 21 Plato, Republic 607a–608b; cf. Ferguson, Trials of Desire 146; Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 2.15.24–26; and Plato’s juxtaposition of cosmetics, fake, gluttony, flattery, rhetoric and poetry in Gorgias 465–503. On these discussions in Quintilian see especially Lichtenstein, The Eloquence of Color, 91–113. See also in a context more directed towards literary analysis Mats Malm, Voluptuous Language and Poetic Ambivalence: The Example of Swedish Baroque (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011), 29–40. 22 See Heinrich Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1975), 144–54, and Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds, 64–72, 133–96. 23 See Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte, 144, and Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds, 142. 24 In the following, Sidney consequently speaks of “sound style” (247), connecting to the old debate’s contrasting cosmetics to health. 25 Sidney, The Defence of Poesie I4r. As pointed out to me by Erland Sellberg, Sidney’s limiting rhetoric to diction should in all probability be understood in connection with his engagement in Ramistic theory, which classified invention, disposition and memory as dialectics, leaving only diction and delivery to rhetoric proper (cf. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500– 1700 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), 223; 248; Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 302–302. 26 Sidney, The Defence of Poesie F4v. Thus, it is not correct to ascribe to Sidney a profeminist ”contention that masculinity is improved rather than undone when delighted, softened, and ravished by femininity” (Kent Russell Lehnhof, “Profeminism in Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie”, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 48:1 (2008), 32). Rather than adhering to opposite poles, the discussion constitutes a continuous negotiation of different kinds of femininity: the virtuous one as opposed to the voluptuous one. 17

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27 Cf. Arthur F. Kinney, Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974), 57–64. 28 Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds, 17. 29 On the relation between linguistic desire and the Baroque as well as the religious and ideological implications, see Malm, Voluptuous Language and Poetic Ambivalence.

Bibliography Adams, Hazard. The Offense of Poetry. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007. Baldwin, T. W. William Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke 1–2. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944. Doherty, M. J. The Mistress-Knowledge: Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie and Literary Architectonics in the English Renaissance. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1991. Dolan, Frances E. “Taking the Pencil out of God’s Hand: Art, Nature, and the Face-Painting Debate in Early Modern England.” PMLA 108:2 (1993): 224–39. Ferguson, Margaret W. Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. Frazer, Russell. The War Against Poetry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970. Gosson, Stephen. The Schoole of Abuse, Conteining a plesaunt inuectiue against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Iesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Comonwelth. London, 1579. —. Playes Confuted in fiue Actions, Prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale, by the waye both the Cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the Play of Playes, Written in their defence, and other obiections of Players frendes, are truely set downe and directlye aunsweared. London, 1582. Helgerson, Richard. The Elizabethan Prodigals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Herman, Peter C. Squitter-wits and Muse-haters: Sidney, Spenser, Milton and Renaissance Antipoetic Sentiment. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Howell, Wilbur Samuel. Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956. Kinney, Arthur F. Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974.

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Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Apologizing for Pleasure in Sidney’s ‘Apology for Poetry’: The Nurse of Abuse Meets the Tudor Grammar School.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 36:4 (1994): 499– 519. Lehnhof, Kent Russell. “Profeminism in Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie”, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 48:1 (2008): 23–43. Levine, Laura. “Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-theatricality and Effeminization from 1579 to 1642.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 28:2 (1986): 121–43. Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. The Eloquence of Color: Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age [1989], trans. Emily McVarish. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Malm, Mats. Voluptuous Language and Poetic Ambivalence: The Example of Swedish Baroque. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Matz, Robert. Defending Literature in Early Modern England: Renaissance Literary Theory in Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ong, Walter J. Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. Parker, Patricia. Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property. London: Methuen, 1987. Plato. Gorgias, trans. by Donald J. Zeyl, in John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson trans., Plato: Complete Works, Edited, with Introduction and Notes. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997, 791–869. Plett, Heinrich. Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1975. —. Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, I–V, edited and translated by Donald A. Russell. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. Rauh, Miriam Joseph. Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947. Rebhorn, Wayne A. The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Sidney, Philip. The Defence of Poesie. London: William Ponsonby, 1595. Sir Philip Sidney. Edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

SIGHS OF DESIRE: PASSIONATE BREATHING IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN LITERATURE KRISTIINA SAVIN

Among various bodily expressions of desire, sighing was one of the most celebrated during the Middle Ages and the early modern era. In the Christian devotion, sighs expressing the soul’s yearning for God and Heaven became a part of prayer and contemplation. In medicine, in physiognomic and courtly amatory doctrines, ardent sighs were canonized as signs of love, signa amoris, having a noticeable impact on erotic literature. The first canto of Petrarch’s Canzoniere presents the whole collection of poems as “the sound of sighs” (il suono di … sospiri); later on the Italian terms sospiro and sospirare occur 132 times, that is, more than in every third poem. The emotional states causing this intensive respiratory activity are described with the expressions desio, spe and amor, desire, hope and love.1 This intimate relation between sighing and longing, clearly prevailing in premodern sources, has not been confirmed by modern psychological research. Today people tend to regard sighs as signs of “negative, lowintensity and deactivated emotional states”.2 This difference hints at a historic change in the interpretation of sighs, and perhaps even a shift in emotional expression itself. Sighs of exhaustion, weariness and dejection, of course, are also present in Petrarch and other premodern authors, but the connection between intense sighing, hopeful longing and desire, certainly is a commonplace that merits investigation. Although sighing seems to be a universal physiological phenomenon, its occurrences—at least to some extent—are defined by varying cultural conditions, communicative habits and emotional standards. In written sources, representations of desire are regulated by changing literary models and vocabularies of predominant discourses. My aim here is to reconstruct the medieval and early modern topics of sighs of desire in order to explore their theoretical foundations and literary configurations: How was the connection between longing and sighing established? Finally I will make an attempt to clarify why sighs of longing received more attention in the past than today. What follows is not

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an exhaustive treatment, but an initial survey—despite the explosively growing interest in the history of gestures and emotions during recent decades, the history of sighing still seems to be a relatively uncharted area.3 What is a sigh? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “A sudden, prolonged, deep and more or less audible respiration”, providing convincing evidence of the historical significance of the word field with more than a few derivations: sigher, sighful, sighingly, sighingness, sighless.4 This article focuses on the Latin word suspirium, in medieval and early modern sources usually defined as “infrequent respiration” (respiratio rara), a definition found in Galen’s On respiration, an authoritative text up to the seventeenth century.5 However, no clear-cut distinction from other kinds of inarticulate sounds can be made—in many contexts sighs are described as gemitus, which also can be translated as groan, a breathing with murmur.

Diagnosing Desire In early modern medical theory diagnoses of desire formed a veritable catalogue, in which sobs, tears, groans, moans, sighing and other inarticulate sounds were listed as symptoms of different ailments. Some earlier researchers have made a medical diagnosis for Petrarch’s lyric ego, suggesting that the Canzoniere illustrates the characteristic suffering of a lovesick person, tormented by amor hereos. Indeed, the most significant symptoms of this serious condition—sighs, tears, extraordinary eye movements, loneliness, solitary strolling in the nature—are present in the Canzoniere.6 In Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) sighs are said to indicate a broad spectrum of melancholic states, among them love-melancholy and jealousy.7 But why do we sigh? The workings of sighs in human body are elucidated in several works on physiognomic and love-rhetoric. Rota Veneris, an epistolary for lovers by Boncompagno da Signa (c. 1165–after 1240) exposes the close bond between human anatomy and psychology. Sighs emerge “from suspension of breath” (ex spirituum suspensione) because the soul “forgets” breathing when strong emotions are aroused by memories of past events or imaginations of the future. During this process the heart is contracted and the respiration stops until the dilatation of the heart finally produces a deep breath: But a sigh derives its name from the suspension of the breath, since, when the soul relates to memory the happiness it once had or the immensity of its grief, or the immeasurable joy, or the contrary, or troubles to come, the breathing is suspended, because the heart is fettered by the fact that the

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soul forgets its operative capacity. Thus, when the heart gradually begins to dilate again, the breath returns to its original state, and from this very return a certain sound arises, which is called a sigh. Dicitur autem suspirium a spirituum suspensione, quoniam cum anima reducit ad memoriam felicitatem quam habuit aut doloris immensitatem vel immensum gaudium seu contrarium vel futurum incomodum, suspenditur spiritus, quia constringitur cor ex eo, quod anima obliviscitur virtutis operative, unde quando cor incipit postmodum dilatari, revertitur spiritus ad principalem sedem, et ex ipsa reversione oritur quidam sonus, qui suspirium nominatur.8

The physiological explanation of sighing as a result of contraction and expansion of the heart provoked by emotional changes was proved by medical authors. In the predominant medical theory of the times, humoral pathology, two additional parameters—heat and cold—were applied. The main function of sighs is to chill the high temperature of the heart, burning with vehement passion. Consequently, the air passing the respiratory organs gets warm; two common epithets describing sighs in literature are ardent and burning. Petrarch’s “hot sighs” (caldi sospiri) are well known. Thus, the ardent sighs emitted from a burning heart, were not just a metaphor—in premodern medicine these expressions could be regarded as correct descriptions of what is going on in a loving and longing body. The physiological origin of sighs usually is not located in the lungs, but in the heart: “my heart will sigh”; “heart, / why sigh’st thou without breaking?” one can read in the plays of William Shakespeare.9 The human emotions are embodied and linked to changes of the physical world: fluctuations of fluids and vapours in the inner microcosm of the body cooperate with the continual alterations of the macrocosm, both literally and metaphorically.10 Tears are depicted as rain, and sighs transform into winds: “A bitter rain of tears pours down my face / blowing with a wind of anguished sighs” (Piovonmi amare lagrime dal viso / con un vento angoscioso di sospiri), as Petrarch puts it.11 In Dante’s Divina commedia the sound of sighs is the main acoustic feature of the Inferno. Sighs of condemned souls make the air tremble and the water bubble. As a sign of punishment sighing corresponds to the symptom of sin, “the sweet sighs” emitted out of “dubious desires” (dolci sospiri […] dubbiosi disiri).12 In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet we read that “love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs”, and in The Tempest winds are sighing back to the man’s sighs, whereas Cleopatra’s boisterous passions exceed the expressive capacity of the mightiest of meteorological similes: “We cannot call

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her / winds and waters sighs and tears. They are greater / storms and tempests than almanacs can report.”13 In some plays, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare suggests that sighs consume blood: “sighs of love, that cost the fresh blood dear.”14 This observation is not endorsed by medical authorities, but it nicely refers to the general wearing effect ascribed to sighing, possibly in analogy to the effects of tears, which were thought to dry out the brain and weaken the physical condition.15 On the other hand, the consequences of sighing were not necessarily considered exhaustive; in some situations sighs were described as nourishment of the heart, which is the case in Petrarch’s much-echoed canto 1. An authoritative work from 1586, De humana physiognomonia of the Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta connects sighing to tears and blushing, referring to the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum, a widely spread mirror of princes, here quoted in an early sixteenth-century English translation: Yf thou seest a man that smyleth lyghtly, and whan thou beholdest hym he wyll loke shamfastly and wyl blusshe in his face and sygh, with teeres in his eyes yf thou blame hym for ony thynge, surely he feareth the and loveth thy persone.16

This particular configuration of signs and emotional states—blushing, tears, sighs, a bashful gaze, mixture of love and fear—was widely acknowledged due to the authority of Aristotle. These single elements are amalgamated in a compound in love literature, e.g. in the Byzantine erotic novel.17 The lover’s vacillating between hope and fear, indicated by tears and sighs, is commonplace in medieval love lyrics. Carmina Burana exposes “groaning and sighs, these new signs of Love” (planctus et suspiria / nova signa Veneris), suggesting that the long-lasting ambiguous state of hope, being mixed with fear, finally will burst out in sighs (Longa spes et dubia / permixta timore / solvit in suspiria).18 Although sighs frequently occur accompanied by tears, there is an important difference in their psychological and physiological foundations. Both medieval and early modern theories of passion couple sighing with the affect of hope. In his innovative psychophysiology, presented in Les Passions de l’Âme (1649) René Descartes explains how sighs emerge in lungs, heart and arteries, driven by desire to attain some object of joy, something that clearly distinguishes the physiological causes of sighing from these producing tears:

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The cause of Sighes is very different from that of tears, though it, like them, presupposes Sadnesse. For whereas a man is excited to Weep, when the lungs are ful of blood; he is incited to sigh when they are almost empty, and when some imagination of Hope or Joy opens the Orifice of the venous artery which Sadnesse had contracted; because then the smal remainder of blood in the lungs, falling all together into the left side of the heart through this venous artery, and driven on by a Desire to attain this Joy, which at the same time agitates all the muscles of Diafragma and breast, the air is suddenly blown through the mouth into the lungs, to fill up the vacant place of the blood. And this is called sighing.19

According to Descartes, desire and hope are the original reasons of sighing. Similarly, love is the foremost cause of sighs for Boncompagno da Signa; other possible reasons are treated as being secondary: “But in fact, there are many who sigh out of bad manners or illness,” he admits.20

Communicating Desire Sighs are understood as symptoms of emotional states, rather than conventional signs, in modern semiotic terminology indexes rather than symbols. An index indicates authenticity, a true emotion rooted in a psychosomatic process and revealed by involuntary facial, vocal and respiratory characteristics. This assumption about the authentic and spontaneous action of the affected soul is essential for the medieval and early modern interpretation of sighs, but on the other hand, there also is a manifest awareness of the fact that sighs may be performed voluntarily. Boncompagno da Signa declares that sighing is a node (nutus), an indication (indicium) and a sign (signum).21 Thus the context of amatory rhetoric renders sighs as signs in a non-verbal language of desire. Interestingly enough, the communicative functions of sighing have been disregarded in modern psychology.22 Early modern books of manners mention sighing while treating love conversation. Advising young men in The Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldassare Castiglione emphasizes the great communicative potential of sighs. Sometimes sighing is a better means of communication than language: Therefore in my opinion the way that the Courtier ought to take to make his love known to the Lady, seems to me to be by showing it to her in manner rather than in words;—for verily more of love’s affection is sometimes revealed in a sigh, in reverence, in timidity, than in a thousand words [...].

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Sighs of Desire […] però (secondo me) quella via che deve pigliar il Cortegiano, per fa noto l’amor suo alla donna, parmi che sia il mostrarglielo co i modi piu presto, che con le parole; che veramente tal’ hor più affetto d’ amòr si conosce in un sospiro, in un rispetto, in un timore, che in mille parole […].23

Here Castiglione seems to draw on the Secretum secretorum, where, as we have seen above, the mixture of fear, respect and love was prevalent. The role attributed to a lover by love rhetoric is that of a supplicant, timidly indicating his passion and anxiously fearing the possible rejection. Robert Burton lists a range of literary advice for young men: in order to evoke a maid’s affection one should “take her by the hand, wring her fingers hard, and sigh withal”, and then, kiss her neck and talk to her, as did Leander with Hero according to Musaios: “And in the dark he took her by the hand, / And wrung it hard, and sighed grievously, / And kiss’d her too, and woo’d her as he might, / With pity me, sweetheart, or else I die.” The efficiency of this procedure, Burton adds, is proved by several literary authorities: in Apollonius’ Argonautica between Jason and Medea, in Eustathius’s novel about Hysminias and Hysmine, Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe, Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, and others.24 While stressing the communicative significance of sighs in arousing and nourishing feelings, several authors also show a serious concern about simulated sighs, without correspondence to the real movements of the heart, uttered to pretend desire in order to gain some favour. This kind of false representation is generally condemned, as are other depravities of style, exaggerations of ornament in elocutio and actio. As tools of deception sighs are said to appear in women, especially in whores and other deceitful ladies, but also in treacherous male lovers.25 In the final aria of the Venetian opera Messalina (1680) by Carlo Pallavicino, the figure of Messalina, modelled as a courtesan longing for erotic adventures, exhorts the audience: “If you sometimes pretend to love, / Make an effort / To sigh.”26 As one could expect, lovesick men were a suitable object for satire and critique. “They accompany every word with triple sighs,” notices Castiglione.27 In his Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare lets the figure of Mercutio burst out in an ironic invocation to his friend Romeo, addressing all the familiar stereotypes of a lover—driven into madness by his humours, rhyming love and dove, sighing “Ay me!”, and being a sigh himself: Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh, Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied. Cry but “Ay me!” Pronounce but “love” and “dove”.28

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It is plausible that sighing played a crucial role in dramatic performance—“the lover shall not sigh gratis,” says Hamlet, promising to reward the play.29 In early modern musical theory and practice, especially opera, the terms suspirium and figura suspirans were elaborated and used to express and incite emotions. Also certain verbal expressions, as interjections, occur frequently, e.g. in the beginning of the madrigal Ohimè, ch’io cado, based on a sonnet of Petrarch (Monteverdi 1624), and Ohimè, se tanto amate (compositions by Guarini and Monteverdi), where thousands of sweet sighs of love are contrasted to the final mortal sigh. In early pornographic literature sighing words like “ohimè” indicate the characteristic breathing patterns of la petite mort. In Sonetti lussuriosi of Pietro Aretino (1524), sighs are not mentioned on the discursive level, but in several sonnets with dialogic composition, sexual arousal is expressed and elicited by passionate inhalation and exhalation, marked by frequent exclamations and interjections, such as “Dammi tutta la lingua, ai! ohimè!” or “oh! che dolcezza estrema!”30 An affective passage of Alessandro Piccolomini, Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (1539) describes the sweet air of breath passing from a mouth to be inhaled by the other: “Oh! So sweet they are, Margarita, these whisperings, [...] and the wind of sighs in the one’s mouth entering into the other’s! Oh, divine sweetness! Oh what a unique pleasure in this world!”31 A similar description is found in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata: “He parted his lips and with eyes still closed he mingled his sighs with hers.”32 The commonplace of lovers mingling their breath might also be formed as an analogy of the meeting of lovers’ eyes emitting spirits (spiritus animales) that enter in the body of the beloved through the eyes.33 The Neoplatonist writer Cesare Trevisani suggests in his L’impresa, a commentary on Plato’s Symposium from 1569, that kissing someone on the mouth, “we give away our breath or spirits (‘spirito’) but receive breath from the other’s mouth.” Trevisani categorizes sighs according to intensity: there are single, double and triple sighs, of which the triple sighs are the fieriest and most distinctive for lovers.34

The Theology of Hyperventilation The particular breathing patterns of desire can also be observed in the Bible. In an English translation from 1535, compiled by Myles Coverdale, one reads: ”I ope my mouth & drawe in my breth, for I desyre thy commaudementes” (Ps 119:31).35 The word of God is depicted as an object of desire. In his commentary on the Psalter, Saint Augustine stresses: “if you

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want to be a lover of God, then devote Him with your truest heart and chaste sighs, love Him, burn for Him, breathe for Him [...].”36 Although sighs were never an ordinary topic in Christian dogmatic, intricate elaborations on their theological significances were congregated in the margins of the Scripture—annotations and commentaries on the Psalter, the Song of Songs, epistles to the Romans and Galatians. From the early Middle Ages on, several attempts were made to incorporate sighs in Christian prayer, meditation and contemplation. Sighing, like tears, played a crucial role in the practices of penitence, especially the repentance of the heart (compunctio cordis). The main workings of sighs in the Christian soul are described in terms of purification and consummation of love. A medieval author says that sins make the heart thick, so it is swelling, until the fire of penitence is blown up by sighs.37 Saint Bonaventura integrates sighs in his eight degrees of heavenly contemplation (octo gradus contemplationis caelicae): the initial degree is the desire (desiderium), the second one sighing (suspiria) for a mystical union of love (unio amoris), which is followed by an ecstatic degree, heavenly consolation, and finally, the eternal rest in Christ.38 As pointed out in earlier research, Christian mystic doctrines flourished along with those of courtly love in the worldly literature. The intriguing question, how this contemporaneousness could be explained, has been a topic for a debate: Is the presence of the two discourses a mere coincidence or can it be described in terms of influence, analogy or reversal?39 When it comes to sighing as a part of corporeal performance of desire— the ardent sighs addressed to the beloved—the influence appears to be an appropriate model of explanation. Regardless of the pervasive differences between the ideologies of mundane and heavenly longing, the physical and affective expressions of both are strikingly similar. This, of course, could be due to the common observations about the universal functioning of the human body. Nevertheless, there is a range of conventional features indicating underlying common ideas about how sighs emerge, and what they have to tell about the condition of the soul affected. Theological texts predominantly draw on the rich imagery of the Psalter, but some of them also make use of notions that lack evident support in the Bible. In the mysticism of the abbess Hildegard of Bingen, deeply embedded in the teachings of humoral pathology, the windy microcosm of human body echoes the meteorological phenomena of the vast macrocosm of the universe. In the middle of this cosmos she locates the lungs and the heart of the man—the very organs of faith and yearning—and “the sigh panting towards God” (suspirium ad Deum anhelans).40 References to sighs function here mainly as metonymies for praying and longing of the

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human mind, which must always be directed towards God. Consequently, an exemplary Christian soul, relentlessly yearning for the heavenly grace of its beloved Creator, is constantly out of breath. In Christian religious texts suspiria is often used as a metaphor—or rather metonym—for prayer and longing. In vernacular translations sighing tends to disappear, the Latin suspiria is replaced by other words that do not refer to sighs directly. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: “ad te suspirat omne desiderium meum” translates: “For all my desire crieth to Thee” (1556).41 Since the boundaries between analogies, metaphors, metonymies and literal expressions are vague, singling out references to the actual respiratory activity is a tricky task. This difficulty is addressed in commentaries on Paul’s epistle to the Romans 8:26, where the apostle shows how the Spirit regulates the human affects and influences our hearts to pray. In the Geneva Bible we read: Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we knowe not what to pray as we ought: but the spirit it selfe maketh request for us with sighes, which cannot be expressed.42

The original Greek word is stenagmós, transmitted by the Vulgate as gemitus. The latter can be translated as sigh or groan. Those inarticulate modes of expression are very close to each other, and John Calvin stresses that the apostle does not mean “that the Spirit actually prays or groans, but he excites in us sighs, and wishes, and confidence, which our natural powers are not at all able to conceive.”43 In a sudden moment of weakness the Holy Spirit supports the man, not able to utter anything but sighs, and thus renews his desire, as poetically depicted by Marguerite de Navarre: By his own will he makes a groaning in my heart so ineffable that it postulates the gift whose very meaning is well beyond my understanding. And at present this mysterious sigh produces a new longing44 Par son Esprit faict vn gemissement Den mon cueur grand inenarrabelement : Qui postule le don, dont le sçauoir Est incongnue à mon foible pouoir. Et à l’heure, cest ignoré souspir Me r’apporte vng tout nouueau desir :45

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The ineffable (inenarrabelement) sigh or groaning (gemissement) of the heart exceeds the intellectual powers of the praying human, producing a new longing. Erasmus of Rotterdam notices that “often silent sighs and tears obtain more than loud cries.”46 In the theology of Martin Luther the words of Paul are used to legitimate a powerful mystical anti-rhetoric of inarticulate sounds and exclamations like “O Father!”—a kind of eloquence that Virgil and Cicero did not know.47

Voicing the Heart Numerous texts from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period abound with interjections. This kind of oral traits, marking the presence of the human voice and breathing in the scripture, are preserved in the written discourse up to the eighteenth century, at which time they would be replaced by graphic symbols as marks of exclamation. Similarly, it is assumed that reading aloud dominated over silent reading. In contrast to the latter, the loud vocal reading was thought to arouse stronger feelings that “nurture” the heart. This dietetic effect was not only metaphorical: according to the holistic approach of humoral pathology the vocal reading raises the temperature of the heart, and thus promotes the health of the body. In the metaphorical imagery of Augustine, Gregory the Great and Jean de Fécamp, the heart is depicted as a mouth.48 This mouth is eating, drinking, desiring and inhaling the words of Scripture. Here the sighs of the heart (suspiria cordis) could be interpreted both metaphorically and literally at the same time. As suspiria and aspirationes became generic terms for prayers, they lost the original close connection to actual respiratory activity, but traces of particular breathing patterns are usually still recognizable in their linguistic construction. In the devotional literature, a wide repertoire of sighs, sobs, groaning, and moaning is represented through a variety of rhythms, tonalities and modalities of expression, structured by grammatical peculiarities and rhetorical devices: plenty of interjections, exclamations, onomatopoetic expressions, aposiopesis, apostrophes and a particular shortness in phrasing. In different languages sighing interjections may differ, but usually they include aspirated sounds as in the German interjection Ach! and in other kinds of sounds that are created by strong exhalation, sometimes inhalation, as the Italian Ohimè! O! Ah! or the English O! Alas!

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Figure 1. Heinrich Müller, Himmelsk Kärleks-Kyss, Eller En Sann Christendoms Öfning, Härflytande af Guds Kärlek. Calmar, 1808.

The importance of interjections is illustrated on the frontispiece of a widely spread lyrical prayer-book, Pia Desideria (1624) of the Dutch Jesuit Hermann Hugo, demonstrating a praying soul emitting small arrows with the words “Ah!”, “Utinam!”, “Heu!” to the ears and the eye of God (fig. 2). An English translation from 1702, Divine addresses, translates these utterances as “Ah Lord!”, “Oh that!”, “Alass!”, attesting that the arrows are sighs and groans: To him each secret sigh, each silent groan, To him the bottom of my Soul is known. And my thick SIGHS a mystick language prove, Unknown to all but me and Him I love.49

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Figure 2. Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria. Antverpiae, 1676.

Unlike laughter and tears, which act upon the rules of social conventions (portrayed as a theatre mask lying on the ground in the frontispiece), sighs represent the soul’s authentic voice originating from the love and longing for God. The sighs depicted here seem to refer to a certain kind of prayers—plangent prayers, preces iaculatoriae (iaculum is Latin for ‘arrow’) containing sighs and short vocal sounds. “A sigh, that comes from the heart, is like the sharpest arrow directed to God from the bow of desire,” a Jesuit states.50 Another Jesuit, Ludovicus de Ponte Vallis, explains that a prex iaculatoria can be uttered in one breath, praying “through the

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breathing and affects so that the prayers correspond to the movements of the body.” For the life of the soul, prayers are as necessary as breathing is for the life of body. 51

A Language of Transcendence In his classical study The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (1957) Jean Leclercq stresses that in striving to attain eternal life “the literature must be continually transcended and elevated.”52 The flourishing religious imagery of sighs was rooted in a complex cluster of metaphorical, metonymical and literal interpretations depicting the soul’s relation to God, partly deriving from the Bible, insinuating that sighs constituted a language of transcendence, enabling a transgression of earthly limits: sighs elevate the soul, uniting it with God, they transcend the limits of written texts in order to involve affects and bodies, sighs passing from mouth to mouth transgress the bodies of lovers, unarticulated voices of respiration represent desires beyond language. Why, then, has the commonplace of sighs as an expression of longing been forgotten in modern times? The causes should be sought in the radical changes of the main factors sustaining their existence and promoting their transmission: the oral traits that were present in the textual culture of premodernity, the Christian devotional practices and courtly amatory doctrines, supported by a range of underlying medical assumptions about the functioning of sighs as an expression of hope and desire. However, sighs have an amazing ability to transcend the characteristic emotional styles and literary restrictions of historical eras. Around 1800 they became a favourite topic of romanticism; and, admittedly, many of expressions configured in premodern literary sources still can be found in modern texts.

Notes 1 Petrarch, The Canzoniere or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, trans. Mark Musa (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), cit. no. 1. 2 Karl Halvor Teigen, “Is a Sigh ‘Just a Sigh’? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task,” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 49 (2008): 49. 3 Several interesting reflexions are made by Carla Mazzio, The Inarticulate Renaissance: Language Trouble in an Age of Eloquence (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2009), 52, 130, 142, 143, 153, 158. 4 The Oxford English Dictionary, edited by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, vol. XV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 443. 5 Petrus Vascus Castellus, Exercitationes medicinales ad omnes thoracis affectus (Lugduni: Sumptibus Joannis Petri Charlot, 1616), 717, 813.

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Joachim Knüpper, “(H)er(E)os: Petrarcas Canzoniere und der medizinische Diskurs seiner Zeit,” Romanische Forschungen 111 (1999): 217, note 138. 7 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by Holbrook Jackson (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1972), II, 133ff. 8 Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Strassburg Incunabulum with Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Josef Purkart (Delmar & New York: Scholar’s Facsimiles & Reprints, 1975), 94–95; trans. 66. Purkart translates spirituum suspensio as “the suspension of the mind”, an expression which here has been replaced by “the suspension of the breath”. 9 William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 3.1.175; King Richard the Second, 1.3.263; Troilus and Cressida, 4.4.17. For sighs in Shakespeare see Martin Spevack, A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, vol. 6 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 2903–2904. 10 Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearian Stage (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 6–10. 11 Petrarch, The Canzoniere, no. 17. 12 Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia, edited by S. Jacomuzzi (Torino: Societá editrice internazionale, 1990), Inferno: IV.25–27, VII.118–20, V.118–20. 13 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 1.1.190; The Tempest, 1.2.149; Antony and Cleopatra, 1.2.148. Quoted after The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001), 125. 14 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 3.02. Quoted after Spevack, A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, 2904. 15 Cf. Marjory E. Lange, Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996), 18–54. 16 Translation by Robert Copland in ed. M. A. Manzalaoui, Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 379. The Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum is a translation of a tenth-century Arabic treatise on government, Kitab sirr al-asrar. 17 Cf. Ingela Nilsson’s chapter in this book. 18 P. G. Walsh, ed., Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), no. 35 (113) and no. 53 (163). 19 René Descartes, The Passions of the Soule (London: A.C., 1650), II, art. 135. 20 “compluresque ex prava consuetudine sive morbo suspirant”, Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris, 66, 95. 21 Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris, 94–95; cf. 66. 22 Cf. Teigen, “Is a sigh ‘just a sigh’?”, 49–50, who quotes the phenomenologist Erwin Straus: “Sighing expresses an intolerable situation; it does not intend to change it.” See E. W. Straus, “The Sigh: An Introduction to a Theory of Expression,” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 14 (1952): 674. 23 Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Leonard Eckstrin Opdyke (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929), 229 (book 3, chap. 65). Baldassare Castiglione, Il cortegiano (Venetia: Bernardo Basa, 1584), 157–158. 24 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 112–13.

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Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris, 95. Cesare Ripa and Giovanni Zaratino Castelli, Iconologia (Venetiis: Cristoforo Tomasini, 1635), 585. 26 Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Ewing: University of California Press, 2003), 294. 27 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, introduction, chap. 10. 28 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.1.7–10. Quoted after Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, 1116. 29 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.322. Quoted after Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, 306. 30 Giulio Romano and Pietro Aretino, I Modi ed i Sonetti lussuriosi: Secondo l’edizione clandestina stampata a Venezia nel 1527, edited by Riccardo Braglia (Mantova: Sometti, 2000), nos. 1.16, 2.6. 31 “Oh! Quanto son dolci, Margarita, quei bisbigli, [...] e entrar il vento de’ sospiri in bocca l’un dell’ altro! Oh, divnissima dolcezza! oh piacere unico in questo mondo!”, Alessandro Piccolomini, La Raffaella ovvero della bella creanza delle donne (Milano: G. Daelli e Comp. editori, 1862), 73. 32 Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, 9.108–9: “aprí le labra e con le luci chiuse/ un suo sospir con que’ di lei confuse.” Quoted in Marion A. Wells, The Secret Wound: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 173. Cf. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 111. 33 For literary implications of the theory about spiritus see Massimiliano Chiamenti, “The ‘Spiriti’ in Cavalcanti, Dante and Petrarch”, Neophilologus 82 (1998): 71–81. 34 Armando Maggi, ”On Kissing and Sighing: Renaissance Homoerotic Love from Ficino’s De Amore to Cesare Trevisani’s L’impresa (1569),” Journal of Homosexuality 49:3–4 (2005): 334. 35 Cf. Vulgate: “os meum aperui et respiravi quia mandata tua desiderabam.” Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), Ps 119:31. 36 Augustinus Hipponensis, Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps 85:8: “si ergo amator dei esse uis, sincerissimis medullis castisque suspiriis ipsum dilige, ipsum ama, illi flagra, illi inhia [...].” Quoted after Library of Latin Texts Online. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2012. 37 Petrus Chrysologus, Collectio sermonum, sermo 167. Library of Latin Texts Online. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2012. 38 Bonaventura, Sermones de tempore, sermo 150, 216. Library of Latin Texts Online. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2012. 39 See the discussion in Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. L. S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 152–54. 40 Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias 2.1.2; Liber divinorum operum 1.4.47, 1.4.73, 1.4.98. Library of Latin Texts. Cf. Markus Enders, “Das Naturverständnis Hildegards von Bingen,” Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst: Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), edited by Rainer Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 463, 497. 41 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Richard Whitford (Mt. Vernon N.Y.: Peter Pauper Press, 1965), 149 (book 3, chap. 48:4).

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42

The Bible: Translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke (London: Christopher Barker, 1589), 567. 43 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 566 (III.20.5). 44 The English translation follows (with some alterations) Marguerite de Navarre, Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 81. 45 Le miroir de l’âme pécheresse, vv 81–88. Paula Sommers, Celestial Ladders: Readings in Marguerite de Navarre’s Poetry of Spiritual Ascent (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1989), 54. 46 Hilmar M. Pabel, Conversing with God: Prayer in Erasmus’ Pastoral Writings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 64. 47 Martin Luther, “In epistolam S. Pauli ad Galatas Commentarius”, Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 40:1 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1911), 582– 586; cf. Heiko Oberman, “Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik”, Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natürliche bei Luther: Vorträge des Dritten Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung, Järvenpää, Finland 11.–16. August 1966, edited by Ivar Asheim (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 41. 48 Erich Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder Die Verwandlungen des Lesers: Mentalitätswandel um 1800 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 107–109. 49 Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria or, Divine Addresses in Three Books, trans. Edmund Arwaker (London: Henry Bonwicke, 1702), 3. 50 Iosephus Speranza, Scripturae selectae (Lugduni: Laurentius Anisson, 1650), 135–136: “Suspirium, quod a corde exit, est seu vel occissima sagitta, quae ab Arcu desiderij in Deum dirigitur.” 51 Ludovicus de Ponte-Vallis, Meditationes de praecipuis fidei nostrae mysteriis (Coloniae Agrippinae: Ioannes Kinchius, 1619), 30: “Tertius orandi modus est per modum aspirationum, & affectuum, qui corporis respirationibus respondent ita, ut inter unam, & alteram corporis respirationem affectus aliquis plus, aut gemitus spiritus, aut brevis iaculatoria oratio ex intimo animae nostrae erumpat.” 52 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire of God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 53.

Bibliography The Bible: Translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in diuers Languages. London: Christopher Barker, 1598. Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. Boncompagno da Signa, Rota Veneris: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Strassburg Incunabulum with Introduction, Translation, and Notes by

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Josef Purkart. Delmar & New York: Scholar’s Facsimiles & Reprints, 1975. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Edited by Holbrook Jackson. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1972. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008. Castellus, Petrus Vascus. Exercitationes medicinales ad omnes thoracis affectus. Lugduni: Sumptibus Joannis Petri Charlot, 1616. Castiglione, Baldassare. Il cortegiano. Venetia: Bernardo Basa, 1584. —. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Leonard Eckstrin Opdyke. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929. Chiamenti, Massimiliano. “The ‘Spiriti’ in Cavalcanti, Dante and Petrarch.” Neophilologus 82 (1998): 71–81. Dante Alighieri. La divina commedia. Edited by S. Jacomuzzi. Torino: Società editrice internazionale, 1990. Descartes, René. The Passions of the Soule. London: A.C., 1650. Enders, Markus. “Das Naturverständnis Hildegards von Bingen.” In Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst: Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179). Edited by Rainer Berndt, 461–502. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001. Heller, Wendy. Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice. Ewing: University of California Press, 2003. Hugo, Hermann. Pia desideria. Antverpiae, 1676. —. Pia Desideria or, Divine Addresses in Three Books. Translated by Edmund Arwaker. London: Henry Bonwicke, 1702. Kern Paster, Gail. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Knüpper, Joachim. “(H)er(E)os: Petrarcas Canzoniere und der medizinische Diskurs seiner Zeit.” Romanische Forschungen 111 (1999): 178–224. Kristeva, Julia. Tales of Love. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Lange, Marjory E. Telling Tears in the English Renaissance. Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996. Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire of God: A Study of Monastic Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. Library of Latin Texts Online. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2012. Ludovicus de Ponte-Vallis. Meditationes de praecipuis fidei nostrae mysteriis. Coloniae Agrippinae: Ioannes Kinchius, 1619. Luther, Martin. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 40:1. Weimar: Böhlau, 1911.

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Maggi, Armando. ”On Kissing and Sighing: Renaissance Homoerotic Love from Ficino’s De Amore to Cesare Trevisani’s L’impresa (1569).” Journal of Homosexuality 49:3–4 (2005): 315–39. Manzalaoui, M. A. Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Marguerite de Navarre. Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition. Edited and translated by Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Mazzio, Carla. The Inarticulate Renaissance: Language Trouble in an Age of Eloquence. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2009. Oberman, Heiko. “Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik.” In Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natürliche bei Luther: Vorträge des Dritten Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung, Järvenpää, Finland 11.–16. August 1966, edited by Ivar Asheim, 20–59. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967. The Oxford English Dictionary. Edited by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, vol. XV. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Pabel, Hilmar M. Conversing with God: Prayer in Erasmus’ Pastoral Writings. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Petrarch, Francis. The Canzoniere or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Translated by Mark Musa. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. Piccolomini, Alessandro. La Raffaella ovvero della bella creanza delle donne. Milano: G. Daelli e Comp., 1862. Ripa, Cesare, and Giovanni Zaratino Castelli. Iconologia. Venetiis: Cristoforo Tomasini, 1635. Romano, Giulio, and Pietro Aretino. I Modi ed i Sonetti lussuriosi: Secondo l’edizione clandestina stampata a Venezia nel 1527. Edited by Riccardo Braglia. Mantova: Sometti, 2000. Schneider, Joh. “stenázo, stenagmós, sustenázo.” In Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, edited by Gerhard Friedrich, 600– 603. Stuttgart: Kolhammer Verlag, 1933–79. Schön, Erich. Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder Die Verwandlungen des Lesers: Mentalitätswandel um 1800. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987. Shakespeare, William. The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001. Sommers, Paula. Celestial Ladders: Readings in Marguerite de Navarre’s Poetry of Spiritual Ascent. Genève: Librairie Droz, 1989. Speranza, Iosephus. Scripturae selectae. Lugduni: Laurentius Anisson, 1650.

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Spevack, Martin. A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, vol. 6. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970. Straus, E. W. “The Sigh: An Introduction to a Theory of Expression.” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 14 (1952): 674–95. Teigen, Karl Halvor. “Is a Sigh ‘Just a Sigh’? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task.” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49 (2008): 49–57. Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. Translated by Richard Whitford. Mt. Vernon N.Y.: Peter Pauper Press, 1965. Walsh, P. G., ed. Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana, Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Wells, Marion A., The Secret Wound: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007

IN RESPONSE TO CHARMING PASSIONS: EROTIC READINGS OF A BYZANTINE NOVEL INGELA NILSSON

Two aspects of literary desire will be considered in this essay, related to the text and the reader respectively: “discourse of desire” and “erotics of reading”. The first aspect refers to the characteristics of the text itself, in most cases to be described as “erotic” (as in the Greek erǀtikos logos) and in all cases aimed at raising desire in the reader.1 The second aspect— erotics of reading—refers to the attitude or tendency of the reader.2 It is understood here as the potentially erotic pleasure that a reader takes in a text, whether that text is explicitly erotic or not. In order to examine the workings of these different kinds of literary desire I shall look at a series of translations into French of a Byzantine twelfth-century novel, Hysmine and Hysminias by Eumathios Makrembolites. The translations range from 1729 to 1950, and my aim is to show how the successive translators (as readers and interpreters) often acted on their literary imagination (or in some cases perhaps sexual longing), influenced by cultural and literary values of their time.3 The original text’s implicit eroticism thus had an effect on its readers that resulted in new discourses of desire, depending on the individual desire (textual and physical) of the translator.

Hysmine and Hysminias—Byzantine Eroticism In twelfth-century Constantinople, the ancient Greek novel was “revived” in a series of works composed by writers working in the literary and intellectual environment associated with the court of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. Four Komnenian novels have come down to us, of which only one written in prose.4 This prose novel, Hysmine and Hysminias by Eumathios Makrembolites, was modelled on the ancient novel Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, but it also contained several new features on both thematic and stylistic levels.5 One significant feature in the Byzantine novel is the implicit eroticism that appears in the characterization of both male and female protagonists, which stands in stark contrast to the more explicit but rather playful puns on sexuality in the ancient

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model.6 In the ancient Greek novel, love at first sight is a commonplace and the hero is usually in charge of making the first advances. In Hysmine and Hysminias, we find a heroine who makes open advances, and a hero who initially laughs at her because of his innocence. This situation creates a comic effect, but it also creates an erotic tension between the protagonists that is unique in the Greek novelistic tradition.7 This tension gradually builds up, starting with the first meeting between hero and heroine at a dinner party. Hysminias is a guest in Hysmine’s family, a chaste herald of Zeus sent as a representative from his own city, and Hysmine is put in charge of serving the wine. Her immodest behaviour is striking, as she secretly presses her ankle against the herald’s foot under the table, touches and presses his hand as she serves the wine, and eventually tickles and kisses his feet as she washes them during a ceremony. Hysminias, proud of his virginity in honour of Zeus, finds her behaviour odd, whereas his friend Kratisthenes teases him about the girl’s obvious interest. The hero then learns about Eros from a painting, interpreted by Kratisthenes, but he still denies having any feelings for Hysmine, in spite of her continued flirting. This all changes as Hysminias experiences a series of dreams in which he first encounters Eros himself, enrolling the terrified hero as his slave, and then has his first erotic experience as he dreams of making love with Hysmine and then seems to climax. Let us look at this crucial event in order to better understand how it has been adapted and manipulated in later translations and interpretations. In the first dream, Eros is furious at Hysminias for spurning Hysmine and claiming that the gods love chastity in men. As Hysmine herself intervenes and asks Eros to spare Hysminias, the god agrees and hands the hero over to the heroine: “Then saying to the lovely Hysmine, “You have your lover,” the emperor Eros flew away from my eyes and plunged deep into my heart.” (ՓİպȖįIJțȝıւȣԪȢȧȣʍȢրȣijռȟȜįȝռȟաIJȞȔȟșȟıԼʍȬȟ’qԪȥıțȣ ijրȟ ԚȢįIJijռȟr ԐʍȒʍijș ȞȡȤ ij‫׭‬ȟ ՌĴȚįȝȞ‫׭‬ȟ Ցȝȡȣ ʍıȢվ ȞȒIJșȟ ȞȡȤ ijռȟ ȜįȢİȔįȟʍıIJȬȟHysmine and Hysminias 3.1.6).8 Hysminias wakes up and calls for his friend Kratisthenes: I am ruined, Kratisthenes. Hysmine destroys me, Hysmine saves me. Eros has emptied his entire quiver into my soul, he has burnt up my entire heart. If you had been there to see it, you would have seen him, penetrating my soul with his sword, his quiver, with all his fire. I am no longer herald of the Diasia, I am no longer Zeus’s attendant, I am no longer chaste. War has broken out in my heart because of Eros and Zeus. Zeus thunders loudly from the heaven, as it were, and this thunder re-echoes; Eros raises up his siege engines on the earth, as it were, and assaults my citadel; the one hurls down lightning from the clouds, the other kindles craters of fire against me

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In Response to Charming Passions from the earth. I am a city, a city of Zeus, but Eros lays siege to me and draws everything towards himself. I am the fountain of Zeus, full of the graces of chastity, but Eros diverts me towards the fountain of Aphrodite. qհȝȬȝıțȟrıՂʍȡȟqȁȢįijȔIJȚıȟıȣ’աIJȞȔȟșȞpԐʍȪȝȝȤIJțȟաIJȞȔȟșȞıIJ‫׬‬Șıț’ ՑȝșȟĴįȢȒijȢįȟԪȢȧȣԚȠıȜȒȟȧIJȒȞȡȤȜįijոȦȤȥ‫׆‬ȣՑȝșȟȞȡȤijռȟȜįȢİȔįȟ ԚȟȒʍȢșIJıȟ ǽՀ IJȡț ʍįȢ‫׆‬ȟ Լİı‫ה‬ȟ ıՂİıȣ į՘ijրȟ IJւȟ į՘ijȡ‫ה‬ȣ ԤʍȢșIJıȟ ǽՀ IJȡț ʍįȢ‫׆‬ȟ Լİı‫ה‬ȟ ıՂİıȣ į՘ijրȟ IJւȟ į՘ijȡ‫ה‬ȣ Ցʍȝȡțȣ IJւȟ į՘ij‫ ׇ‬ĴįȢȒijȢֹ IJւȟ Ցȝ‫׫‬ ʍȤȢվ ijռȟ ԚȞռȟ ıԼIJİȫȟijį ȦȤȥȓȟ Ȇ՘ȜȒijț ǼțįIJȔȧȟ ȜȓȢȤȠ ԚȗȬ ȡ՘ȜȒijț ȚıȢȑʍȧȟ ǼțȪȣ ȡ՘ȜȒijț ʍįȢȚȒȟȡȣ ȇȪȝıȞȡȣ ʍıȢվ ijռȟ ԚȞռȟ ԚȢȢȑȗș ȜįȢİȔįȟ ԚȠԪȢȧijȡȣȜįվǼțȪȣՓȞպȟȡ՞ȟİռǾıւȣթȣԚȠȡ՘Ȣįȟȡ‫ף‬ȞıȗȑȝįȖȢȡȟijּȜįվ ȜįijįȖȢȡȟijּ’ՍİpթȣԐʍրȗ‫׆‬ȣՑȝįȣԛȝıʍȪȝıțȣȜțȟı‫ה‬ȜįվȜįijįIJıȔıțȞȡȤijռȟ ԐȜȢȪʍȡȝțȟՓȞպȟթȣԚȜȟıĴ‫׭‬ȟԐIJijȢįʍșȖȡȝı‫ה‬ՍİpՑȝȡȤȣȜȢįij‫׆‬ȢįȣʍȤȢրȣ թȣ Ԑʍր ȗ‫׆‬ȣ ՙʍįȟȑʍijıț Ȟȡț ȇȪȝțȣ ԚȗȬ Ȝįվ ʍȪȝțȣ ǼțȪȣ’ Ԑȝȝp ԪȢȧȣ ʍȡȝțȡȢȜı‫ ה‬Ȟı Ȝįվ ʍȢրȣ ԛįȤijրȟ Ցȝȡȟ ȞıȚȒȝȜıijįț Ǽțրȣ Ԛȗք ʍșȗռ ȞıIJijռ ȥįȢȔijȧȟʍįȢȚıȟțȜ‫׭‬ȟ’ԐȝȝpԪȢȧȣʍȢրȣʍșȗռȟԘĴȢȡİȔijșȣȞıijȡȥıijıȫıțȞı (Hysmine and Hysminias 3.2.3–6)

Thus expressing his feelings of being trapped between the duties of chastity (as a herald of Zeus) and the attacks of desire (enslaved by Eros), Hysminias complains about his situation to his friend, who instead congratulates his good fortune: “What you have experienced”, he said, “is nothing out of the ordinary. You are in love; you are not alone in this but share the experience with many mortals. And you are fortunate in matters of love, for your beloved is so beautiful and so completely responsive, and you have Eros at your service. It was good that you were able to sleep; for eyes that are wakeful from love reveal a soul that is in love and, just as the sarcastic tongue cannot keep a secret, so eyes that are deprived of sleep betray love.” ՓİpqȆ՘İպȟȜįțȟրȟrĴșIJվqʍȒʍȡȟȚįȣԦȢּȣ’ȡ՘ȞȪȟȡȣԐȝȝոIJւȟʍȡȝȝȡ‫ה‬ȣ ȖȢȡij‫׭‬ȟ’ Ȝįվ ijո ʍȢրȣ ԤȢȧijįȣ ı՘ijȤȥı‫ה‬ȣ ԚȢȧȞȒȟșȟ Ԥȥȧȟ ȡ՝ijȧ Ȝįȝռȟ Ȝįվ Ցȝșȟ ԚȢ‫׭‬IJįȟ Ȝįվ ՙʍșȢȒijșȟ ijրȟ ԪȢȧijį ȁįȝրȟ İȒ IJȡț Ȝįվ ՝ʍȟȡȤ ijȤȥı‫ה‬ȟ’ ՌĴȚįȝȞրȣ ȗոȢ ԚȠ ԤȢȧijȡȣ ԐȗȢȤʍȟȓIJįȣ ԚȝȒȗȥıț ȦȤȥռȟ ԚȢ‫׭‬IJįȟ’ Ȝįվ խIJʍıȢ ȗȝ‫׭‬IJIJį ĴțȝȡȜȒȢijȡȞȡȣ ȡ՘Ȝ ȡՂİı ȜȢȫʍijıțȟ ȞȤIJijȓȢțȡȟ ȡ՝ijȧȣ ՌĴȚįȝȞրȣ ՝ʍȟȡȤIJijıȢșȚıվȣĴįȤȝȔȘıțijրȟԤȢȧijįr (Hysmine and Hysminias 3.3.3)

Kratisthenes goes back to sleep, snoring, but Hysminias cannot really go back to sleep—a proof of what the more experienced Kratisthenes has just said about sleepless lovers. Eventually he dozes off and since Eros is now in his heart (not only in his eyes, cf. Hysmine and Hysminias 3.1.6 cited above), the dreams that follow are clearly erotic, ending up in a sexual

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struggle as Hysmine is now—in contrast to her previous behaviour— resisting his embraces. The war metaphor employed by Hysminias after the first dream, depicting Zeus and Eros as two warring forces within his heart, like a citadel fired at from two sides, is sustained throughout the erotic dreams and now used as an image of Hysmine’s resistance: I touch her hand and, although she tries to withdraw it and conceal it in her tunic, nevertheless I draw it up to my lips, I kiss it, I nibble it incessantly; she pulls away and curls up on herself. I clasp her neck and set my lips on hers and fill her with kisses and exude passion. She pretends to withdraw her lips but bites my lip passionately and steals a kiss. I kiss her eyes and suck all passion into my soul, for the eye is the source of love. Then I find myself at the girl’s chest; she puts up a stout resistance, curls up completely and defends her breast with her entire body, as a city defends a citadel, and fortifies and barricades her breasts with her hands and neck and fists and belly; and further down she raises her knees as she shoots off a tear from the citadel of her head, all but saying, “Either he loves me and will be softened by my tears, or he doesn’t love me and will shrink from battle.” I am rather ashamed to be defeated and so I persist more violently and at length I am almost victorious but find defeat in my victory and am utterly undone. For the moment my hand got to the girl’s breast lassitude invaded my heart. ԟʍijȡȞįțij‫׆‬ȣȥıțȢȪȣԭİpԚʍțȥıțȢı‫ה‬IJȤȟȑȗıțȟijįȫijșȟȜįվʍıȢțȜįȝȫʍijıțȟıԼȣ ijրȥțijȬȟțȡȟ’ԐȝȝpՑȞȧȣȜԐȟijȡȫij‫׫‬ȟțȜ‫׭‬ԦĴȒȝȜȡȞįțijįȫijșȟʍıȢվijրȥı‫ה‬ȝȡȣ ȜįijįĴțȝ‫׭‬ȜįվȜįijįİȑȜȟȧʍȤȜȟȑ’ԭİpԐȟijıĴȒȝȜıijįțȜįվՑȝșIJȤIJijȒȝȝıijįț ȇıȢțʍijȫIJIJȡȞįțȜįվijրȟijȢȑȥșȝȡȟȜįվijոȥıȔȝșijȡ‫ה‬ȣȥıȔȝıIJțȟԚʍțijȔȚșȞțȜįվ ĴțȝșȞȑijȧȟ ʍȝșȢ‫ ׭‬Ȝįվ ȜįijįIJijȑȘȧ ijրȟ ԤȢȧijį’ ԭ İp ՙʍȡʍȝįijijȡȞȒȟș IJȤȟȑȗıțȟį՘ijոİȑȜȟıțȞȡȤijր ȥı‫ה‬ȝȡȣԚȢȧijțȜ‫׭‬ȣȜįվՙʍȡȜȝȒʍijıțijրĴȔȝșȞį Ȋȡւȣ ՌĴȚįȝȞȡւȣ ȜįijıĴȔȝșIJį Ȝįվ Ցȝȡȟ ıԼȣ ijռȟ ȦȤȥռȟ ԐȟțȞșIJȑȞșȟ ijրȟ ԤȢȧijį’ ՌĴȚįȝȞրȣ ȗոȢ ԤȢȧijȡȣ ʍșȗȓ ĬȔȟȡȞįț Ȝįվ ʍıȢվ ijր IJijȒȢȟȡȟ ij‫׆‬ȣ ȜȪȢșȣ’ԭİpԐȟijȒȥıijįțȞȑȝįȗıȟȟįȔȧȣȜįվՑȝșIJȤIJijȒȝȝıijįțȜįվՑȝ‫׫‬IJȬȞįijț ʍıȢțijıțȥȔȘıț ijրȟ ȞįIJijրȟ թȣ ʍȪȝțȣ ԐȜȢȪʍȡȝțȟ Ȝįվ ȥıȢIJվ Ȝįվ ijȢįȥȓȝ‫ ׫‬Ȝįվ ʍȬȗȧȟț Ȝįվ ȗįIJijȢվ ijȡւȣ ȞįIJijȡւȣ ȜįijįĴȢȑijijıț Ȝįվ ʍıȢțĴȢȑijijıț’ Ȝįվ ȜȑijȧȚıȟ Ȟպȟ ԐȟȒȥıț ijո ȗȪȟįijį թȣ ԚȠ ԐȜȢȡʍȪȝıȧȣ İպ ij‫׆‬ȣ ȜıĴįȝ‫׆‬ȣ ԐȜȢȡȖȡȝȔȘıțijրİȑȜȢȤȡȟȞȡȟȡȟȡւȝȒȗȡȤIJį’qԶĴțȝ‫׭‬ȟȞįȝįȥȚ‫ׇ‬ȞȡȤijȡ‫ה‬ȣ İȑȜȢȤIJțȟ Ԯ Ȟռ Ĵțȝ‫׭‬ȟ ՌȜȟȓIJıț ijրȟ ʍȪȝıȞȡȟr Ԧȗք İպ Ȟֻȝȝȡȟ ijռȟ Գijijįȟ įԼİȡȫȞıȟȡȣ ԐȟijȒȥȡȞįț ȖțįțȪijıȢȡȟ Ȝįվ ȞȪȝțȣ ȟțȜ‫ ׭‬Ȝįվ ȟțȜ‫׭‬ȟ ԭijij‫׭‬Ȟįț Ȝįվ Ցȝȡȣ ԐȞȖȝȫȟȡȞįț ԟȞį ȗոȢ ԭ ȥıվȢ ʍıȢվ ijրȟ ij‫׆‬ȣ ȜȪȢșȣ ȞįIJijȪȟ Ȝįվ ȥįȤȟȪijșȣՑȝșʍıȢվijռȟԚȞռȟȜįȢİȔįȟԚʍȒȢȢıȤIJıȟ (Hysmine and Hysminias 3.7.1–5)

The war metaphor, suggestive of erotic combat,9 thus leads up to Hysminias’ imaginary intercourse and eventual sexual release:

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In Response to Charming Passions I was in pain, I was in anguish, a strange trembling came over me, my sight was dimmed, my soul softened, my strength weakened, my body grew sluggish, my breath choked, my heart beat faster and a sweet pain poured over my limbs with a kind of tickling sensation and an ineffable, unspeakable, inexpressible passion took possession of me. And I experienced, by Eros, what I had never experienced before. ԸȝȗȡȤȟ ԬȚȫȞȡȤȟ ȜįțȟȪȟ ijțȟį ijȢȪȞȡȟ ԤijȢıȞȡȟ ԬȞȖȝȤȟȪȞșȟ ijռȟ ՐȦțȟ ԚȞįȝȚįȜțȘȪȞșȟijռȟȦȤȥȓȟijռȟԼIJȥւȟԚȥįȤȟȡȫȞșȟԚȟȧȚȢıȤȪȞșȟijրIJ‫׭‬Ȟį ԚʍıȔȥıijȪ Ȟȡț ijր ԔIJȚȞį ʍȤȜȟրȟ ȜįijıʍȑȝȝıijȪ Ȟȡț ijր ʍıȢțȜȑȢİțȡȟ ȜįȔ ijțȣ ՌİȫȟșȗȝȤȜȑȘȡȤIJįȜįijıʍȒİȢįȞȒ ȞȡȤijոȞȒȝșȜįվȡՃȡȟՙʍıȗįȢȗȑȝțIJıȜįվ ՑȝȡȟȞıȜįijȒIJȥıȟԔȢȢșijȡȣԤȢȧȣԐȟıȜȝȑȝșijȡȣԔĴȢįIJijȡȣ’ȜįȔijțʍȒʍȡȟȚį ȟռijրȟԪȢȧijįȡՃȡȟȡ՘İȒʍȡijıʍȒʍȡȟȚį (Hysmine and Hysminias 3.7.6)

This wet dream may be seen as the beginning of the love story between Hysmine and Hysminias, because after this event the hero responds to the heroine’s advances with increasing frenzy until she decides to protect her virginity and backs off.10 They still decide to elope together in order to escape Hysmine’s marriage to another man, and so end up in the traditional series of adventures associated with the Greek novel (shipwreck, separation, pirates, and slavery). The sexual tension between the protagonists is thus temporarily postponed due to their separation, but Hysminias encounters new problems as he becomes a slave and his owner’s wife makes sexual advances. He does not fall for the temptation, but the episode reminds the reader of the hero’s virginity and enhances the impression of a world filled with sexually aggressive women.11 It also anticipates Hysminias’ final trial, because when a year or so has passed his master is sent as herald to another city. Hysminias is now slave instead of herald, but he gets to travel with his master, and among the slaves of the household where they are hosted he finds a girl who looks like Hysmine. It is indeed her, and they try to meet as much as possible. This is both assisted and complicated by the fact that Hysmine’s mistress Rhodope is falling in love with Hysminias, and demands that Hysmine acts as her mediatrix. The tension now consists in the lovers kissing one another, but only because Rhodope allows and demands it. The situation is solved as the parents of Hysmine and Hysminias appear looking for their lost children. They return home, after Hysmine has undergone a virginity test in the spring of Artemis (she is indeed still a virgin), and celebrate their wedding. Since I have now focused almost exclusively on the sexual features of the novel, it may seem as if Hysmine and Hysminias is a highly erotic text, but it must be underlined that the erotic experiences of Hysminias are de-

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scribed only in rhetorically suggestive language, often open for interpretation and mostly confined to dreams.12 The novel is marked by a dreamy fairytale atmosphere, achieved by means of the strictly egocentric perspective (Hysminias tells the entire story from his perspective), the fictional setting (a vaguely ancient or late antique world, but with the protagonists visiting only fictional places), and a poetic language filled with repetitions and metaphors. This makes it very different from the other Greek novels and has led to various allegorical interpretations, as well as assumed connections with Western allegorical romance such as the Roman de la Rose. However, no Byzantine allegorical readings of the novel have come down to us, and the question of the Komnenian novel’s relation to Western twelfth-century romance remains open.13 For the time being we might settle for seeing Hysmine and Hysminias as a literary composition by a twelfth-century writer with a firm grasp of the Greek tradition, using an ancient “erotic” novel as his model and based on that staging a rather explicit depiction of a young man’s sexual awakening. There are certainly comical elements in the novel, such as the initial confusion of the hero, but such aspects also contribute to the erotic tension of the text and they are sustained by rhetorical devices and elaborate metaphors. The effect is a sexy playfulness in the Platonic vein, rather than the Lucianic parody that seems to mark the literary model Leucippe and Clitophon. I shall argue that the particular discourse of desire that the author of Hysmine and Hysminias achieved—suggestive, but never offensive—was part of the novel’s subsequent popularity in Western Europe, triggering various erotic readings depending on the readers’ intellectual context and personal predilections. .

Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias—a Libertine Novel Whereas modern scholars from the nineteenth century onwards have delighted in condemning Hysmine and Hysminias for being an inferior imitation of an ancient novel and a silly product of a decadent society, it was certainly one of the most popular Greek novels in premodern and early modern Europe. It has come down to us in 43 manuscripts, of which only nine can be considered Byzantine.14 The rest are rather late Western manuscripts, the majority of which date to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the same period we find the first printed translation into Italian (Florence 1550, repr. 1560, 1566) and a little later the first edition (Paris 1617). A series of translations into French and other languages followed, and in eighteenth-century Paris the interest in the love story of Hysmine

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Figure 1. Les amours d’Ismène & Isménias.

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Figure 2. Les amours d’Ismène & Isménias, 97.

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and Hysminias seems to have exploded, perhaps as a result of a new translation by Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps (1729).15 Thanks to previous translations of the novel into French (1559, 1582, 1625) and the strong interest in Greek literature, the novel was already known when Beauchamps’ translation appeared, which seems to have helped promote his version of the story. Because we are certainly dealing with a new version here, a sort of translation of the Byzantine novel into eighteenth-century taste. The author-translator announces this in his introduction, as he addresses his reader as follows: Do remember, please, that you have not at all subjected me to the dry exactitude of a literal translation. I use the liberty that you have given me: I change, I add, I omit; I avoid mistakes, I make new ones; you will gain on the one hand, you will lose on the other. The learned will be scandalized at it: they will not—should they by chance take pains to read me—shun from accusing me of injured antiquity16 for not finding at all in my Amourous adventures of Hysmine and Hysminias those of Eustathios. Souvenez-vous, s’il vous plaît, que vous ne m’avez point assujéti à la seche exactitude d’une traduction litterale : j’use de la liberté que vous m’avez donnée ; je change, j’ajoûte, je retranche : j’évite des fautes ; j’en fais de nouvelles : vous gagnerez d’un côté, vous perdrez de l’autre. Les Sçavants s’en scandaliseront : ils ne manqueront pas, si par hazard ils se donnent la peine de me lire, de me faire un crime de leze-antiquité de ne point trouver dans mes Amours d’Ismine & d’Ismenias celles d’Eusthathe.17

Beauchamps is far from unique in his method of literary adaptation; he just takes the opportunity to comment on it in a rather playful manner while, at the same time, defending himself against any learned men who might want to criticize him for not finding the original Greek text in his translation. In fact, we cannot be sure that Beauchamps actually translated the original Greek text into French, even though it is probable that he knew at least some Greek. He might have based his adaptation on any previous translation,18 but in spite of some crucial differences the adaptation has been performed with great attention to detail.19 From our perspective of literary desire, two aspects of Beauchamps’ translation are of particular interest. First, what has happened to the erotically charged passages in his translation? Second, who was Beauchamps, and why was he interested in translating this Byzantine novel in the way he did? Let us begin by looking at the crucial passage of Hysmine and Hysminias, the series of dreams presumably resulting in Hysminias’ first orgasm. First of all we must note that the painting of Eros that triggers Hysminias’

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dreams and makes him realize he is in love with Hysmine has been removed by Beauchamps. The artful and detailed ekphrasis of the Byzantine novel has been replaced by a much briefer and more suggestive description of a series of paintings, referred to as emblèmes—riddles to be solved. Hysminias’ confusion before the images has been retained, and so has Kratisthenes’ greater knowledge and experience. However, in Beauchamps’ version Kratisthenes does not explain the paintings to Hysminias but rather warns him: “Do you know”, said Kratisthenes, pulling my arm, “do you know that all this is not at all made for you? These paintings could undermine this indifference that seems to be so dear to you.” Sçavez-vous, me dit Cratisthene, en me tirant par le bras, sçavez-vous que tout ceci n’est point fait pour vous? Ces peintures pourraient donner atteinte à cette indifférence qui paroit vous être si chere. (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 17)

Hysminias still understands that they represent love: “I had, however, seen enough of them, so as having no doubts that they were made to the glory of Eros” (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 18: J’en avois pourtant assez vû, pour ne pouvoir douter qu’elles ne fussent faites à la gloire de l’Amour).20 The behaviour of Kratisthenes and Hysminias seems to imply that the paintings are indecent, perhaps even pornographic. Whereas the painting of Eros in the Greek text functions as a way of educating the young hero, here the paintings are not yet for him. In line with the transformation of the passage in which Hysminias learns about Eros, also the following discussion with Kratisthenes has been changed. Instead of pondering upon questions of desire and chastity, Hysminias offers a long praise of Kratisthenes and friendship; Kratisthenes laughs and says that love for Hysmine has inspired these feelings: What you are imagining that you are feeling for me, it is for her that you feel it. You have cherished illusions: you though you were praising friendship, but you have praised, you have depicted only love—one does not speak so well about it without feeling it. Ce que vous vous imaginez sentir pour moi, c’est pour elle que vous le sentez. Vous vous êtes fait illusion; vous avez cru louer l’amitié; vous n’avez loué, vous n’avez dépeint que l’amour: on n’en parle pas si bien sans le sentir. (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 22–23)

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There is accordingly an interesting confusion of love and friendship, probably inspired by contemporary friendship rhetoric but possibly also hinting at the sexual confusion (and subsequent tension) that a young person may experience. At the following dinner, Hysminias manages to stay calm since Hysmine is not present, but after dinner she enters the room together with some other girls for a musical performance which completely enchants the hero.21 Afterwards Hysminias cannot sleep, and suddenly Eros appears before him, terrifying in his plans for revenge. Hysmine comes to save him, and after the vision has disappeared Hysminias is torn between hope and fear. Awoken by my cries, by my tears, Kratisthenes enters my room. “My friend”, I tell him, sighing, Eros has taken revenge: he has just emptied against my heart all the arrows of his quiver, all the fires of his torch! I love, what need is there to tell you? These roses tell you enough, and my alarm tell you even better. I love, I continued, stuttering. O Jupiter! O Venus! O Hysmine! Eveillé par mes cris, par mes sanglots, Cratisthene entre dans ma chambre. Ami, lui dis-je en soupirant, l’Amour s’est vengé: il vient d’épuiser sur mon coeur toutes les fléches de son carquois, tous les feux de son flambeau; j’aime, qu’est-il besoin de vous l’apprendre? Ces roses vous le disent assez, & mon trouble vous le dit encore mieux; j’aime, continuai-je d’une voix entrecoupée. O Jupiter! O Venus! O Ismene! (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 29)

Kratisthenes once more laughs at him and asks him to go back to sleep: “Finally”, replied Kratisthenes, “there you are exactly where I wanted you: you love, and your passion is dear to you; you are absorbed by it, it is the only thing you speak of. I will listen to you tomorrow—sleep overcomes me, goodbye.” Enfin, repondit Cratisthene, vous voilà au point où je vous désirois: vous aimez, & votre passion vous est chére; vous en êtes occupé, vous ne parlez que d’elle. Je vous écouterai demain; le sommeil m’accable, adieu. (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 29)

From now on, Beauchamps follows more closely, though not exactly, the Greek original. Hysminias falls asleep and dreams, since even sleep respects the laws of Eros: “the obedient dreams take all forms that you want them to take; they become true in the imagination of those to whom you send them” (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 30: les songes obéissans prennent toutes les formes que tu veux les donner; ils se réalisent dans

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l’imagination de ceux à qui tu les envoie). The series of dreams ends with the erotic struggle between the lovers, very similar in wording to the Greek text but for once expanded and with a particular emphasis on the sexual combat. We may note that the first part of the carefully constructed war metaphor (Hysminias being trapped between Zeus and Eros, Hysmine and Hysminias 3.2.3–6) has been removed, which draws attention from the rhetorical (and slightly playful) form of the text to the content—the erotic struggle of the dream. Whereas the first part of that passage (the sexual combat) has been expanded, the depiction of the orgasm is fairly short: My vision is obscured, I look for you and I find you no more: I remain without voice and without strength; there are unknown motions rising in me; my heart beats; my body trembles. I wake up. Gods! If the delusion of a dream holds such charms, what is then the sweetness of real pleasures? Come back, delicious illusion! Mes yeux s’obscurcissent, je vous cherche, & ne vous trouve plus: je reste sans voix & sans force; il s’éléve en moi des mouvements inconnus; mon coeur palpite; mon corps frémit. Je m’éveille. Dieux! Si l’erreur d’un songe a tant de charmes, quelle est donc la douceur des véritables plaisirs? Revenez, delicieuse illusion! (Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias 31)

The core of the passage remains: the unknown motions that the virgin hero experiences (heart beating, body shivering). The events that lead up to his climax are, however, different in the French version. Whereas the Byzantine novel describes the sexual awakening of a young man in a manner that could be described as psychologically correct (he meets a girl who seems interested, understands nothing but is instructed by a friend who explains the power of desire, falls asleep and dreams about the things he has seen and heard22), the French translation has a more suggestive series of events (he meets a girl who seems interested, looks at confusing— possibly pornographic—paintings that his friend will not explain, experiences sexual confusion and has erotic dreams23), creating a different kind of sexual tension.24 In order to understand Beauchamps’ translation of Hysmine and Hysminias we need to consider his authorship and the cultural context in which he worked. Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps (1689–1761) was known above all as a dramatic writer and theatre historian, but he was also a libertine novelist and a translator.25 Two novels are securely attributed to him (Histoire du prince Apprius, 1728, and Funestine, 1737), while one is attributed alternatively to him and to -pro‫ޛ‬me Richard (Hipparchia,

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1748).26 The contradictory character of the first two novels—one focusing on chastity, the other being a partly obscene priapic allegory—may seem strange, but this ambiguity is not exceptional in the libertine context. Beauchamps, who in 1730 embarked upon his career as royal censor of books, rather seems to have enjoyed his change of positions, moving between moral extremes while implicitly criticizing contemporary “gallant” behaviour.27 The rather subtle eroticism of Hysmine and Hysminias may thus reflect a phase of his career that was marked by an (allegedly?) chaste attitude (1729), followed by the pronounced focus on chastity in the 1737 Funestine. In light of the securely attributed production of Beauchamps (the libertine novels and the translations), it is not unlikely that he was the author also of Hipparchia, presented as a “gallant story, translated from Greek” (histoire galante, traduite du grec). Histoire du prince Apprius too was presented as a translation, but from a Persian manuscript.28 Both Histoire du prince Apprius and Hipparchia are allegories: erotic on the level of story, critical on the level of hidden content.29 In this way they are both typical representatives of libertine eroticism.30 Hipparchia tells the story of Hipparchia of Maroneia, cynic philosopher and wife of Crates of Thebes, in her own words. According to legend she fell in love with Crates and married him against the will of her parents, living a life of cynic poverty on the streets on Athens. The libertine novelist has turned the story into an erotic tale, focusing on Hipparchia’s philosophy of pleasure;31 her devotion to physical pleasure turns her into a courtesan with numerous rich (and poor) lovers. But the novel is also an allegory, describing the “gallant” adventures of some contemporary characters associated with the Versailles court.32 If Beauchamps was indeed the author of Hipparchia, he thus continued in the same ambiguous and typically libertine vein in the 1740s, criticizing contemporary court culture but at the same time producing a titillating novel, much in the same style as his translation of Hysmine and Hysminias.33

“Many Things Inconsistent with the Principles of Morality” In the light of Beauchamps’ other works, his translation of Hysmine and Hysminias may accordingly be understood as a typical product of the libertine environment in which the translator worked. And so, I would argue, may its subsequent popularity during the rest of the eighteenth century. The translation appeared in no less than twelve different editions between 1729 and 1797.34 It inspired an opera (a tragédie lyrique with

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libretto by Pierre Laujon and score by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde) performed before the royal court in 1763 (restaged in 1771).35 It may also have influenced the discussions by the libertine philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie (L’Art de jouïr, 1751).36 The translation of Beauchamps was also, in turn, translated into other languages, such as the English Ismene and Ismenias, a novel translated from the French by L. H. Le Moine (London, 1788).37 Here we have the opportunity to study yet another transformation of the Byzantine novel, as this translator too has adapted it according to his own taste and that of his time and context. Just like Beauchamps, Le Moine states his principles as a translator in his preface. He is aware, he says, that the novel has already been translated many times into French, Italian, “and perhaps into English also”, and continues: but that consideration has not deterred me from making this translation: as it is likely to be very different from any that may have preceded it, for tho’ this novel has many beauties in it, nevertheless by frequently reading it, I became sensible of their being disparaged by many things inconsistent with the Principles of morality established among the Greeks so that I have changed, omitted and added many passages in it. I have besides inserted here and there some verses from the best English Poets, which seem adapted to the subject […]. (Ismene and Ismenias v–vi)38

This announcement makes one assume that the translator has removed or rewritten supposedly immoral passages, so that they no longer disturb “the beauties” of the novel. Let us therefore return to the passage we previously examined, the erotic dream ending with Hysminias’ first orgasm. The end of the passage here reads as follows: Unknown emotions work within me, my heart pants; I wake shivering. Ye Gods! if a dream has such powerful charms, what then must be the extacy of real pleasures? Come again delicious illusions. (Ismene and Ismenias 59–60)

It is, in fact, a more or less verbatim translation of the French version (cited above), making no attempt to change or omit the erotic discourse. The same goes for other erotic sequences, so one may wonder why the translator implied such a change in his preface. Was it a way of defending himself against possible accusations of immorality? Or was it, on the contrary, a way of stimulating the erotic imagination of the reader, by implying that the novel was, in fact, more erotic than his translation showed? There is no definite answer to that question, but the translator’s strategy may be seen as a transitional phase between the novel’s popularity in

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the eighteenth century and its extremely low standing in the nineteenth century onwards. The qualities that had been appreciated in libertine circles (the “libertinage” of the heroine, the emotions of the hero, the rhetorical eroticism of the text) now became the novel’s greatest problems. There are numerous examples of depreciating comments from scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and no reason to repeat them here. Suffice it to note that the next French translation, by Philippe Lebas published in 1828, neglects the popularity of the previous century and focuses only on enumerating all negative statements possible, beginning his note on the author with the programmatic “On ne sait rien de positif sur Eumathe.”39 Lebas is thus the first translator of Hysmine and Hysminias to explicitly announce the contemporary disdain for the text he himself has translated, driven only by a sense of duty—certainly not by the possibly exciting quality of the text.40

Hysmine—idéale figure féminine I would like to conclude by considering the apparent attraction that Hysmine and Hysminias has had on generations of readers—the erotics of reading that seems to have marked its transmission history. We have seen how the suggestive and dreamy sequences which depict the hero’s erotic experiences have been picked up by subsequent translators and transformed according to their own cultural and literary preferences, and the story has sometimes been partly rewritten with regard to the sexual development of the male protagonist. Something that has not been changed in any version is, however, the behaviour of the heroine, Hysmine. She is always the same free spirit that she is in the original version, coming on to the hero and thus awakening his slumbering sexuality. It is obvious that such a character fits perfectly within the libertine context, where female liberty was discussed and appreciated.41 While such a woman was certainly not praised in the following century, Hysmine was undeniably a crucial part of the novel and any translator was forced to follow her emotional and physical impulses. In no case was the novel bowdlerized, either due to the subtle wording of the original or simply because the novel was less known than the other Greek novels. A sort of subverted form of bowdlerization is, however, used in yet another adaptation of Hysmine and Hysminias that appeared in 1950 under the title Première leçon d’amour (Roman grec d’Eumathe Macrembolite adapté par José Germain).42 What we find here is a pornographic adaptation of the Byzantine novel, published in a series of “ancient” erotica and provided with illustrations.43 Interestingly, the adaptation has been made in a libertine style, using de-

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vices that we associate with, for instance, the works of the Marquis de Sade. The basic storyline remains the same, but the relation between the loving couple is marked by sadomasochism and their sexual actions go way beyond those of the original (or any previous translations).44 Implicitly erotic passages have been exaggerated and expanded, such as the dream sequence we have already discussed. The hesitation of Hysmine has been mixed with more excitement on her part, so that her nibbling and kissing in Hysminias’ dream is now part of a climax: “In order not to cry out her pleasure, she’s amourously biting my lips” (Première leçon d’amour 50: Pour ne pas crier son plaisir, elle mord amoureusement mes lèvres).45 The final orgasm of Hysminias has been maintained, though expanded: The same moment that I launch my final attack on a modesty that consents, that surrenders and summons me with delight, my heart fails, all my limbs tremble, my sight is obscured, a sweet weakness diffuses in my soul, my strength abandons me. I don’t know what delicious pain makes my limbs shiver …, an ineffable love takes possession of all my senses, a mixture of pain and pleasure that I had never felt before … Au moment même où j’entreprends la suprême attaque d’une pudeur qui consent, qui se livre et m’appelle avec joie, mon coeur défaille, tous mes membres tremblent, ma vue s’obscurcit, une douce langueur se répand dans mon âme, mes forces m’abandonnent. Je ne sais quelle douleur délicieuse fait tressaillir tous mes membres …, un amour ineffable s’empare de tous mes sens, un mélange enfin de douleur et de volupté que je m’avais encore jamais ressenti … (Première leçon d’amour 52–53)

However, the crucial device used for triggering the reader’s imagination consists of the translator’s notes, allegedly excluding the original for being too dirty. For instance, Hysminias’ in the original rather innocent visit to Hysmine’s bedroom (book 5) has been turned into an elaborate description of the hero performing oral sex on the heroine, interrupted by the note “Here the text of Eumathios becomes so precise that I think I have to moderate it” (Première leçon d’amour 80: Ici le texte d’Eumathe devient si précis que je crois devoir l’attenuer.). In spite of this, the text goes on to describe Hysmine’s orgasm, whereupon Hysminias under threats demands that she reciprocates the act. Another note later on in the book explicitly refers to the reader’s imagination as a means of supplying what is left out by the prudent translator:

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Figure 3. Première leçon d’amour, 127.

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Figure 4. Première leçon d’amour, 185.

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In Response to Charming Passions Here again the original text of Eumathios defies any translation and even any adaptation. The intelligence of the reader will compensate for my discrete reserve. Ici encore le texte original d’Eumathe défie toute traduction et même toute adaptation. L’intelligence du lecteur suppléera à ma discrète réserve. (Première leçon d’amour 152).46

We may compare this device to the introduction of Le Moine’s translation of Beauchamps, where he implied that he would exclude immoral passages but then did not. His readers’ imagination may thus have been triggered by the idea that they might miss out on erotic passages. In the pseudo-libertine version by Germain, the reader is made to believe that the original was even more explicit than is the translator, thus further enhancing the erotic effect of the text. If we turn to the introduction to Première leçon d’amour (signed by les éditeurs and not the translator) we learn about the attraction of this story: Hysmine. The Byzantine author is praised for creating this story, for noting “the advances in the subtle art of pleasure that the virgin adolescents accomplish really quickly as the fresh arrows of Eros incite them” (Première leçon d’amour 8: les progrès qu’accomplissent bien vite dans l’art subtil du plaisir les adolescents vierges lorsque les aiguillonnent les flèches neuves d’Eros). He has created the young Hysminias, but above all he has accomplished “the radiant young girl named Hysmine” (la jeune fille radieuse qui s’appelle Hysminé), “the passionate mistress” (l’amante passionnée), “this ideal female character” (cette idéale figure féminine) (Première leçon d’amour 9–10). The translator is finally praised for rendering “in all her grace, and with her fresh scent, the remote image of the beautiful Hysmine” (Première leçon d’amour 10: dans toute sa grâce, et avec son frais parfum, l’image lointaine de la belle Hysminé). The heroine is clearly the protagonist of the novel, as she was in the libertine context of Beauchamps, and perhaps also in the original Byzantine milieu in which she was conceived. She was seen as unique, “a character above the average—an equal mixture of passion, timidity and discretion,” as an unidentified reader has noted at the back of my copy of Beauchamps’ translation. In this capacity Hysmine was probably one of the main reasons for the great interest in the novel, because the shaping of her character was so clearly aiming at both the novel’s discourse of desire and the erotics of reading, by triggering the imagination of the reader and accordingly various erotic readings of the novel. The successive translations, varying from literal to suggestive and even wildly explicit, bear witness to this interpretative practice. The original Greek text with its subtle wording and rhetori-

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cal structure gradually got lost in translation, but Hysmine and certain key passages were kept throughout the ages. I would like to end this essay by citing the closure of the Byzantine Hysmine and Hysminias, which for some reason has been reworked by all translators discussed above, but which in hindsight sounds almost prophetic: Whatever in mankind is most responsive to passion will appreciate all the charming passion in this story; whatever is chaste and virginal will respond to its restraint; whatever is more inclined to sympathy will pity our misfortunes, and so memory of us will be undying. We will grace this story and adorn this book with erotic charm and everything else that decorates books and beautifies words. And the title of this book will be “The Adventures of Hysmine and me, Hysminias”. ՗IJȡȟ Ȟպȟ ȡ՞ȟ Ԛȟ ԐȟȚȢȬʍȡțȣ ԚȢȧijțȜȬijıȢȡȟ ij‫׭‬ȟ ʍȡȝȝ‫׭‬ȟ ԚȢȧijțȜ‫׭‬ȟ ȥįȢȔijȧȟ ԭȞֻȣ ԐʍȡİȒȠıijįț Ȝįվ ՑIJȡȟ ʍįȢȚıȟțȜրȟ Ȝįվ IJıȞȟȪijıȢȡȟ ij‫׆‬ȣ IJȧĴȢȡIJȫȟșȣ ʍȑȝțȟ ԐȗȑIJıijįț’ ՑIJȡȟ İպ IJȤȞʍįȚȒIJijıȢȡȟ ԚȝıȓIJıț ij‫׭‬ȟ İȤIJijȤȥșȞȑijȧȟԭȞֻȣȜįվȡ՝ijȧȣԭȞ‫ה‬ȟԤIJijįțijոij‫׆‬ȣȞȟȓȞșȣԐȚȑȟįijįԵȞı‫ה‬ȣ İպ ȜįijįȥįȢțijȬIJȡȞıȟ ijռȟ ȗȢįĴռȟ Ȝįվ Ցȝșȟ ȖȔȖȝȡȟ ȜįijįȜȡIJȞȓIJȡȞıȟ Ȝįվ ȥȑȢțIJțȟԚȢȧijțȜį‫ה‬ȣȜįվijȡ‫ה‬ȣԔȝȝȡțȣՑIJįȖȔȖȝȡȤȣȜȡIJȞȡ‫ף‬IJțȜįվijȡւȣȝȪȗȡȤȣ ȜįijįȜįȝȝȫȟȡȤIJț’ Ȝȝ‫׆‬IJțȣ İp ԤIJijįț ij‫ ׇ‬ȖȔȖȝ‫ ׫‬ijր ȜįȚp աIJȞȔȟșȟ İȢֻȞį Ȝįվ ijրȟաIJȞțȟȔįȟԚȞȒ (Hysmine and Hysminias, 11.23)

As Makrembolites was writing up his novel in twelfth-century Constantinople, he was most probably writing for a small circle of cointellectuals associated with the Komnenian court. He adapted the preface to Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe for his own closure in order to show off his literary and rhetorical skills,47 but he presumably had no idea how right Hysminias’ last words would turn out to be. Whatever in mankind is most responsive to passion has indeed appreciated all the charming passions of this story.

Notes 1

For this term, see e.g. Linda S. Kauffman, Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). Cf. Steven G. Kellman, Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text (Hamden, CT.: Archon Books, 1985). 2 Cf. Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), and also his The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill and Young: 1975). First published in French as Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1977) and Le plaisir du texte (1973).

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All translators I discuss here are male, which is symptomatic of any early translations of Greek texts. I therefore speak of the reader and translator as “he”, even though we cannot exclude female readers of early modern or modern translations. They have, however, left no trace in the tradition of this particular novel. 4 All four novels recently appeared in English translation with useful introductions on questions of dating, authors and cultural context: Elizabeth Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels (Theodore Prodromos, Rhodanthe and Dosikles; Eumathios Makrembolites, Hysmine and Hysminias; Constantine Manasses, Aristandros and Kallithea; Niketas Eugenianos, Drosilla and Charikles) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012). 5 On the name of Makrembolites (Eumathios or Eustathios), see Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 159–60. For an analysis of Hysmine and Hysminias and its relation to Leucippe and Clitophon, see Ingela Nilsson, Erotic Pathos, Rhetorical Pleasure: Narrative Technique and Mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2001). 6 For a good introduction to this novel, see the translation by Tim Whitmarsh (with introduction by Helen Morales), Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and Helen Morales, Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For recent studies of sexuality and gender in Leucippe and Clitophon, see Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Marilyn B. Skinner and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds., Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex and Gender in the Ancient Novel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012). 7 We may compare to the situation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, but in Longus both hero and heroine are innocent and struggle together towards an understanding of love. For a recent study, see Melissa Funke, “Female Sexuality in Longus and Alciphron,” in Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex and Gender in the Ancient Novel, edited by M. P. Futre Pinheiro, M. B. Skinner, and F. I. Zeitlin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 181–96. For similar situations in later Byzantine romance, see Margaret Alexiou, “A Critical Reappraisal of Eustathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 3 (1977): 23–43, esp. 34. 8 Here and below I cite the translation by Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels. For the Greek text I cite the edition used by Jeffreys: Miroslav Marcovich, Eustathius Macrembolites, De Hysmines et Hysminiae amoribus libri XI (Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001). 9 First noted in Alexiou, “A Critical Reappraisal,” 38. 10 On the wet dream, see Alexiou, “A Critical Reappraisal,” 41; see also Nilsson, Erotic Pathos, 196, with further references. 11 On women in the Komnenian novels, see e.g. Corinne Jouanno, “Women in Byzantine Novels of the Twelfth Century: An Interplay Between Norm and Fantasy,” in Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience 800–1200, edited by Lynda Garland (Ashgate, 2006), 141–62. 12 First noted in Alexiou, “A Critical Reappraisal.” 13 For a summary of the discussion of possible links with the West, see Roderick Beaton, The Medieval Greek Romance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996,

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2nd ed.), 219–20. On allegorical readings of novels in Byzantium, see Nilsson, Erotic Pathos, 31. 14 See Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 166. On the manuscript tradition in further detail, see Annaclara Cataldi Palau, “La tradition manuscrite d’Eustathe Macrembolitès,” Revue d’histoire des textes 10 (1980): 75–113. 15 On the eighteenth-century interest in Hysmine and Hysminias, see Ingela Nilsson, “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias, ‘roman très connu’—The Afterlife of a Byzantine Novel in 18th-century France”, in The Reception of Byzantium in European Culture 1500–2000, edited by Przemyslaw Marciniak and Dion Smythe (Ashgate, forthcoming). 16 A wordplay on lèse majesté (laesa maiestas), injured majesty—the crime of violating a majesty. 17 Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps, Les amours d’Ismène & Isménias (Paris, 1743), vi–vii. I cite the 1743 reprinted edition throughout and have kept the eighteenth-century spelling; the English translation here and in the following is my own. The introduction addresses a mysterious Madame L. C. D. F. B., the real or implied commissioner of the translation. The novel was in this period most often attributed to Eustathios rather than Eumathios; see Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 159–60. 18 Jean-Pierre Dubost argues that Beauchamps adapted the translation by Guillaume Colletet (Paris, 1625); see Jean-Pierre Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” in Romanciers libertins du XVIIIe siècle, I, edited by Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2000), 1035–39 (with bibliography 1040–42), 1035, n. 2. 19 For a description of changes in the intrigue and structure, see Nilsson, “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias”. 20 In spite of the rather drastic changes of this passage, the description that follows closely mirrors the description of Eros in the Byzantine original, there represented as a painting on the wall of the garden (Hysmine and Hysminias, 2.7–11). 21 In contrast to the original, in which Hysmine never sings or performs; cf. Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, where the heroine performs for the hero, thus awakening his desire. 22 The psychology of the dream sequences in Makrembolites may be explained by a Byzantine twelfth-century interest in Aristotle; see Suzanne MacAlister, Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire (London: Routledge, 1996), 33–43. 23 Dreams that are results not of what he has experienced, but of what he (or rather his desire) wants to see (Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias, p. 30, cited above). 24 Cf. the closure of Beauchamps’ translation, ending with the wedding night and thus on a sexual note. 25 On the life and career of Beauchamps, see Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1036–42. 26 Not included in the list in Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1040. For an attribution to Beauchamps, see Robert L. Dawson, Additions to the Bibliographies of French Prose Fiction 1618–1806 (Oxford: The Alden Press, 1985), 69–71. -prôme

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Richard was the translator of e.g. the courtesan letters of Alciphron, a late antique work related to the ancient novels and sometimes seen as “erotic” or even pornographic; see David Konstan, “Alciphron and the Invention of Pornography,” in Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, edited by Stephen D. Lambert (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2011), 323–35. 27 See Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1038–9, offering the example of Claude de Crébillon as a similar case. Cf. George Saintsbury on Godard de Beauchamps: “He translated the late and coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of Hysminias and Hysmine, as well as that painful verse-novel, the Rhodanthe and Dosicles of Theodoros Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of course, a naughty Histoire du Prince Apprius to match his good Funestine”; George Saintsbury, A History of the French Novel, vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1800 (London: Macmillan & co, 1917), 243. 28 The full title runs as follows: “manuscrit persan trouvé dans la bibliothèque du roi de Perse, détrôné par Mamouth, en 1722. Traduction française par M. Esprit, gentilhomme provençal, servant dans les troupes de Perse.” On the use of this topos in eighteenth-century France, see Jan Herman and Fernand Hallyn, eds., Le topos du manuscrit trouvé: Hommages à Christian Angelet (Leuven: Peeters, 1999). 29 On Histoire du prince Apprius, see Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1042–57. 30 On libertine eroticism and literary style, see Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1048–50. 31 Cf. Julien de la Mettrie, L’art de jouir (1751), on which Nilsson, “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias.” 32 The reader is offered a key “pour l’intelligence de la Préface & de l’Ouvrage,” announcing the names of the characters; see the page preceding p. i (not paginated). 33 We may note that Beauchamps’ career as a book censor seems to have derailed at about this time, as he was accused of not doing his job, e.g. in a report of 1751; cited in Dubost, “Godard de Beauchamps,” 1039. 34 It is interesting to note that one of the late manuscripts of the Greek text, produced in spite of the apparent availability of printed editions and translations, originates from Paris of the late eighteenth century, possibly as a result of the longterm interest in Hysmine and Hysminias that the century had seen; see Alexiou, “A Critical Reappraisal,” 25, n. 12 (who describes it as “recently acquired by the University of Birmingham, MSS 7/i/4”) and Cataldi Palau, “La tradition manuscrite”, 85, citing B. S. Benedikz: “It bears all the marks of an eighteenth-century French provenance, in the hand, the paper and the binding. A quick check against Gilbert Gaulmain’s edition (Paris, 1618) suggests that it is a direct copy of the printed text.” 35 On Pierre Laujon and his dependence on Beauchamps’ translation, see Nilsson, “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias.” 36 See Nilsson, “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias.”

Ingela Nilsson 37

199

A Russian translation is noted in Sofia V. Polyakova, Evmafij Makrembolit: Povest’ ob Isminii i Ismine (Sankt-Peterburg, 2008), 100–101. We should not exclude the possibility of translations into other languages. 38 The preface (Advertisement) of Le Moine is, in fact, partly a reworking of the preface by Beauchamps. For the inclusion of English poets, see e.g. the closing passage (pp. 198–99) citing John Dryden (“Love is a passion / which kindles honour into noble actions”). Beauchamps too inserted poems into his translations, see Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias 5 and 32. 39 Philippe Lebas, Aventures de Hysminé et Hysménias, par Eumathe le Macrembolite, traduction du grec avec remarques (Paris, 1828), vii. 40 In doing so he certainly followed the philological trend of the time; cf. e.g. Émile Legrand’s 1890 translation of the Byzantine “Iliad” by Hermoniakos, where he states in his preface that “if there is one book in the world that no one will ever read, it is certainly this one” (s’il est au monde un livre que jamais personne ne lira, c’est bien celui-ci), thus regretting having had “the hardly enviable privilege to be the only person having read [this book] three or four times” (le peu enviable privilège d’être le seul à avoir lu trois ou quatre fois [ce livre]); Émile Legrand, La guerre de Troie, poème du XIVe siècle en vers octosyllabes par Constantin Hermoniacos (Paris, 1890), vi. 41 Cf. Peter Cryle, “Codified Indulgence: The Niceties of Libertine Ethics in Casanova and His Contemporaries”, in Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 48–60, 51–52. At the same time, Hysminias follows the pattern of the typical libertine hero: he is gradually initiated into the mysteries of love, until he himself has the knowledge to become the teacher; see Patrick Wald Lasowski, “Préface”, in Romanciers libertins, xlvii. 42 José Germain, Première leçon d’amour, published in the series “L’amour aux temps anciens” (Paris: La couronne littéraire, 1950). A first version was published in 1948, but I have only had access to the 1950 edition. José Germain (a pseudonym for Jean-Germain Drouilly, 1884–1964) was the author and translator of more than 200 titles (quite a few of which suggest an erotic content) according to the database Opale of Bibliothèque nationale de France. 43 The translation is probably an adaptation of a previous translation, perhaps the one by LeBas (1828), who followed the original Greek text closely and maintained the division into 11 books (omitted by Beauchamps). 44 The translation also contains orientalistic traits that may be understood from the same perspective, e.g. the black slave (Première leçon d’amour 27–28), Istanbul and the Turkish serail (Première leçon d’amour 187–88). The libertine style may derive from the translator’s experience of such texts, hinted at by the editors in the introduction, Première leçon d’amour, 10. 45 The English translation here and in the following is my own. 46 Cf. also a sadomasochistic scene in which Hysminias forces Hysmine to anal sex (in order to save her virginity), ending with the note “Here the text of Eumathios becomes so free and so precise and enters into such details that my adaptation refuses to follow; suffice it to hint that contrary to the proverb the worse orien-

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tal torment may end better than it started” (Première leçon d’amour 108: Ici le texte d’Eumathe devient si libre et si précis et entre dans de tels détails que mon adaptation se refuse à le suivre; qu’il me suffise d’insinuer qu’à l’inverse du proverbe le pire supplice oriental peut mieux finir qu’il n’a commencé.). A suggestive illustration on the right hand page complements the translator’s hint. 47 Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, prooem. 3: “[…] and something for mankind to possess and enjoy. It will cure the sick, comfort the distressed, stir the memory of those who have loved, and educate those who haven’t.” (țIJ‫ݨ‬ȝĮ į‫ ܘ‬IJİȡʌȞ‫ܞ‬Ȟ ʌ‫ݙ‬ıȚȞ ‫ڲ‬ȞșȡȫʌȠȚȢ, ۱ țĮ‫ ܜ‬ȞȠıȠ‫ޅ‬ȞIJĮ ۞ȐıİIJĮȚ, țĮ‫ ܜ‬ȜȣʌȠȪȝİȞȠȞ ʌĮȡĮȝȣșȒıİIJĮȚ, IJ‫ܞ‬Ȟ ‫ۂ‬ȡĮıșȑȞIJĮ ‫ڲ‬ȞĮȝȞȒıİȚ, IJ‫ܞ‬Ȟ Ƞ‫ۺ‬ț ‫ۂ‬ȡĮıșȑȞIJĮ ʌȡȠʌĮȚįİȪıİȚ.); translation by Christopher Gill in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, edited by Bryan P. Reardon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), 285–348. On the closure of Hysmine and Hysminias, see Nilsson, Erotic Pathos, 74–78.

Bibliography Alexiou, Margaret. “A Critical Reappraisal of Eustathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 3 (1977): 23–43. Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. —. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Beaton, Roderick. The Medieval Greek Romance. London and New York: Routledge, 1996 (2nd ed.) Beauchamps, Pierre-François Godard de, trans. Les Amours d’Ismène et d’Isménias. Paris: 1943 (first printed 1729). Cataldi Palau, Annaclara. “La tradition manuscrite d’Eustathe Macrembolitès.” Revue d’histoire des textes 10 (1980): 75–113. Cryle, Peter. “Codified Indulgence: The Niceties of Libertine Ethics in Casanova and His Contemporaries.” In Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell, 48–60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Dawson, Robert L. Additions to the Bibliographies of French Prose Fiction 1618–1806. Oxford: The Alden Press, 1985. Dubost, Jean-Pierre. “Godard de Beauchamps.” In Romanciers libertins du XVIIIe siècle, vol. I, edited by Patrick Wald Lasowski, 1035–39 (with bibliography 1040–1042). Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2000. Funke, Melissa. “Female Sexuality in Longus and Alciphron.” In Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex and Gender in the Ancient Novel, edited by M. P. Futre Pinheiro, M. B. Skinner, and F. I. Zeitlin, 181–96. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.

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Futre Pinheiro, Marília P., Skinner, Marilyn B. and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds. Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex and Gender in the Ancient Novel. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Germain, José, trans. Première leçon d’amour: Roman grec d’Eumathe Macrembolite adapté par José Germain. Paris: La couronne littéraire, 1950. Gill, Christopher, trans. “Longus: Daphnis and Chloe.” In Collected Ancient Greek Novels, edited by Bryan P. Reardon, 285–348. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. Herman, Jan, and Fernand Hallyn, eds. Le topos du manuscrit trouvé: Hommages à Christian Angelet. Leuven: Peeters, 1999. Jeffreys, Elizabeth, trans. Four Byzantine Novels. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. Jouanno, Corinne. “Women in Byzantine Novels of the Twelfth Century: An Interplay Between Norm and Fantasy.” In Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience 800–1200, edited by Lynda Garland, 141–62. London: Ashgate, 2006. Kauffman, Linda S. Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Kellman, Steven G. Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text. Hamden, CT.: Archon Books, 1985. Konstan, David. “Alciphron and the Invention of Pornography.” In Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, edited by Stephen D. Lambert, 323–35. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2011. Lebas, Philippe, trans. Aventures de Hysminé et Hysménias, par Eumathe le Macrembolite, traduction du grec avec remarques. Paris, 1828. Legrand, Émile, ed. La guerre de Troie, poème du XIVe siècle en vers octosyllabes par Constantin Hermoniacos. Paris, 1890. MacAlister, Suzanne. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire. London: Routledge, 1996. Marcovich, Miroslav, ed. Eustathius Macrembolites, De Hysmines et Hysminiae amoribus libri XI. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001. Morales, Helen. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Nilsson, Ingela. Erotic Pathos, Rhetorical Pleasure: Narrative Technique and Mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2001. —. “Les Amours d’Ismène & Isménias, ‘roman très connu’—The Afterlife of a Byzantine Novel in 18th-century France.” In The Reception of

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Byzantium in European Culture 1500–2000, edited by Przemyslaw Marciniak and Dion Smythe. London: Ashgate, forthcoming. Polyakova, Sofia V. Evmafij Makrembolit. Povest’ ob Isminii i Ismine. Sankt-Peterburg, 2008. Saintsbury, George. A History of the French Novel, vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1800. London: Macmillan & Co., 1917. Wald Lasowski, Patrick, ed. Romanciers libertins du XVIIIe siècle, vol. I. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2000. Whitmarsh, Tim, trans. Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon (with introduction by Helen Morales). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

FIGURES OF DESIRE

DESIRE IN HROTSVITH’S HAGIOGRAPHICAL LEGENDS SIGRID SCHOTTENIUS CULLHED

Burning Desire Sexual and spiritual desires may at first appear to be conflicting forces in the hagiographical legends of the Saxon poet and canoness Hrotsvith of Gandersheim (c. 935–1002), but they are organized in similar literary patterns. Arrows of passion, spicula amoris—originally associated with the Greco-Roman god Eros or Cupid—occur twice. The first time, it pierces the chest of a household servant whose “mad desire” (demente amor, Basilius, 36), caused by the arrow, compels him to enter a pact with the devil, who sent the arrow, in order to obtain his object of desire.1 The second arrow of passion transfixes the chest of the Roman Sophronius after he has heard the Christian martyr Agnes’s passionate speech about her love of Christ (Agnes, 111). This arrow operates in the opposite way since the growing love of the young pagan eventually makes him convert to Christianity. This very ancient symbol of desire—the arrow of passion—is thus utilized to awaken both erotic and divine desire. Furthermore, pious martyrs as well as sinful victims of “mad”, “illicit” and “vain” forms of desire are almost always filled with metaphorical fire and flames. When the wife of the pious Gongolf falls in love with another man, her heart is filled with a “secret fire” (calore secreto, Gongolfus, 359) for this man who himself “burned with a more than allowed passion for his mistress” (Ardebat propriam plus licito dominam, Gongolfus, 356). Since the wife was touched by flames of erotic passion in life and went as far as to kill her husband together with her lover, we are told that she deserved “mighty flames” (nimis flammis, Gongolfus, 543). This language of flaming passion defines the emotional life and fate of the martyrs and saints as well. In the vita of Pelagius, followers of Christ “are inflamed with the fire of love of Christ” (ignis Christi succensit amoris, Pelagius, 63), and when the martyr Pelagius dies, he goes to the right side of God and receives the martyr’s palm and the crown of immor-

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tality, which Hrotsvith names “crown of ardent love” (ferventis bravio amoris, Pelagius, 305). As soon as he is buried, miracles start to occur at the tombstone and the head of the local monastery decides to put the holiness of the remains to the test with fire (Pelagius, 392–98). After an hour in the furnace, the fire has not spoiled his relics and their holiness is confirmed.2 The lesson learnt—if you do not give in to sexual passion your body will not be harmed by fire—repeats itself in the legend of Agnes. By keeping away from erotic love, she is given divine support all through the hardships that she must endure after having denied the advances of Sophronius (Agnes, 238–40). A Roman priest decides to punish Agnes by burning her, but the young woman is not caught on fire, since she has not been touched by “ardour of carnal love” (ardor carnalis amoris, Agnes, 361). Instead, a divine power redirects it towards her executioners and the crowds that stand by watching the event (Agnes, 363–68). The legend of Agnes, sometimes entitled the Saint of Fire, emblematically ends Hrotsvith’s cycle where fire metaphors run through all representations of passion, both sexual and spiritual, thus uniting them in a shared configuration.

Poetry of Passion and Empowerment Hrotsvith’s saints are more graceful, eloquent and beautiful than they are in the Latin sources.3 These features distinguish them from the other characters in the narratives and enable them to influence and convert them: The young Pelagius is released from prison because of his eloquence and beauty (Pelagius, 199–203), and Agnes’s orations have a strong effect on others as well. When she rejects the courtship of Sophronius and he falls deeper in love with her because of the passion of her speech, she transgresses the limits between erotic and spiritual desire in her dream of the bridal chamber of Christ: I will love him through the secret affection in my heart, I suffer no loss of virginity; but when I by chance deserve to enjoy his embrace and be led to his bright bridal-chamber, I remain a chaste virgin without blemish. Affectu quem secreto [cum] cordis amabo, Nulla puellaris pacior detrimenta pudoris; Ast ubi forte sui merear complexibus uti Eius in thalamum sponsarum more coruscum Duci, permaneo virgo sine sorde pudica. (Agnes, 104–108)

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Again, the language of spiritual and sexual desire is assimilated: sensual and physical desire is not featured as a “low” force in itself. On the contrary, the strong passion of Agnes makes her more perfect in her love of Christ and more desirable for her audience. Agnes’s spiritual desire assists her in exercising God’s power, since the “strong passion” (fortis amor, Agnes, 124) that it awakens in Sophronius is sublimated into Christian desire. Agnes and Pelagius stand out because of their physical beauty, which also results in an infringement of the limits between physical and spiritual love. Because of his attractiveness (Pelagius, 143–48), Pelagius unwillingly becomes the object of desire of Caliph Abdrahamen. The desire aroused in the Caliph will eventually make Pelagius a martyr, since he steadfastly rejects Abdrahamen with risk for his life and even reaches the point when he slaps him in the face. In these examples, Hrotsvith elevates sensuality and beauty into a central criterion for heroic martyrdom, since the desire that the charismatic saints arise in others can be redirected and sublimated into Christianity and thus eventually even lead to their sainthood. It has been suggested that the attractiveness of the martyrs is designed to awaken the desire, not only of characters in the plot, but also of the audience.4 This audience would primarily have consisted of the nuns and canonesses who lived in the abbey of Gandersheim, many of which originated from the Ottonian aristocracy.5 They lived according to the Benedictine rule but did not take the monastic vow of poverty, which meant that they could keep their own books, have guests and live quite freely.6 The canonesses did not necessarily live in solitude and some of them only stayed in the monastery for a limited period of time before marriage. Hence, the abbey was quite open to the outside world, and was well suited for the formation of young aristocratic women. It has been suggested that Hrotsvith’s “finest intellectual intuition” was that she realized that monasticism was changing, and that its “ivory tower contemplation”7 was being replaced with questions of love of mankind: “Hrotsvitha perceives man as love, even though she is unable to show the love between man and woman openly.”8 These kinds of observations concerning Hrotsvith’s innovation are not uncommon, and she has even been called the first real “love poet” in medieval Latin poetry.9 Peter Dronke suggests that this was a side-effect of the edifying purpose of her writings: she had to portray sexual love and love-talk, however embarrassing to do so, for the sake of her greater aim—to show the workings of redemption. In order to value chastity, one must first know what love-madness is and not be so shocked by the very idea that one fails to understand it. Only by

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showing love, “wickedly sweet”, in all its attractiveness, and lovers in all their lunacy, will the heroic nature of repentance become clear.10

This statement demotes the importance of human desire in these texts, since it is an essential element in Hrotsvith’s narration, and not only pernicious: Sophronius “desired” Agnes (cupivit, Agnes, 408), but she managed to convert his desire into love of God. The devil describes the affections of the servant of Proterius in terms of desire when he gives him the conditions of their pact (cupias, Basilius, 67), but he eventually repents and turns his ardent love to God. There are certainly no signs of embarrassment in these descriptions. To my mind, Dronke’s reading forces the text into a predetermined moralist paradigm that finds little support in the text itself. Furthermore, the “sexual love and love-talk” appear in Christian configurations of desire as well, as we have seen in the legend of Agnes. Another suggestion is that the passionate language shows that Hrotsvith’s composition of legends “rises out of a psychological need she had as a medieval woman to escape, artistically at least, the inferior subject position to which women were usually assigned”.11 But can we really assume that Hrotsvith experienced her subject position as inferior? She was after all a court poet, assigned to write the history of the Ottonians, a reigning family that regularly assigned prominent positions to women.12 Furthermore, since Gandersheim was a centre of learning for women with a more or less autonomous infrastructure, it would have allowed women a certain amount of freedom from any oppressive patriarchal system in their day-today life.

Byzantine High-style Hagiography and Authorization The abbey of Gandersheim stood in close connection with the Saxon court, which was influenced by Byzantine culture in the second half of the tenth century, partly as a result of the marriage in 972 between the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and Theophano from Constantinople, who was the niece of the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes.13 Shortly after the early death of her husband in 983, she acted as the ruler of the Ottonian empire in the place of her young son Otto III. Rosamund McKitterick argues that there is “little evidence” that Theophano actually participated in the intellectual culture, but finds that the marriage in itself represents “a culmination of the attraction Byzantium had in some western eyes at so many levels”.14 The fascination for the eastern culture might also have affected the cultural environment of Gandersheim, where Theophano’s daughter, Sophie I, became abbess in 1001. Katharina Wilson argues that the Byzan-

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tine hagiography had an impact on Hrotsvith’s writings, and suggests that four of her legends (Maria, Ascensio, Theophilius, Basilius) are rooted in this literature.15 Her poetics of desire has affinities with the Byzantine cultural context. The cycle begins with the vita of Virgin Mary, based on a lost Latin translation of the second-century apocryphal Gospel of James and the sixth-century Latin Infancy Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, texts that were not sanctioned by the Western Church, but widely spread in the Byzantine Empire since early on.16 The poet explains and justifies this choice in the preface: When, however, the charge is raised—or at least by some so appraised— that parts of this work’s discourses are based on apocryphal sources, then I must reply and hereby testify that it was not a misdeed of presumption but the innocent error of flawed assumption, because when I first started to weave the strands of these works, I was not aware that some of my sources met with doubt; and when I did find this out, I still decided not to suppress them because what appears to be false today may perhaps be proven true another day. Si autem obicitur quod qu‫ؚ‬dam huius operis ǜ iuxta quorundam estimationem sumpta sint ex apocrifis ǜ non est crimen presumptionis inique sed error ignoranti‫ ؚ‬quia quando huius stamen seriei ǜ ceperam ordiri ǜ ignoravi dubia esse in quibus disposui laborare ǜ At ubi recognovi pessumdare detrectavi quia quod videtur falsitas ǜ forsan probabitur esse veritas […]. (Liber primus, Praefatio, 10–16, trans., 19)

Hrotsvith undercuts her own initial apology by evoking the instability of human knowledge and defending her use of the apocryphal source. She furthermore legitimizes the Protevangelium of James by placing this legend at the head of her hagiographical collection. With its 903 verses in elegiac couplets and leonine hexameters,17 the vita of Mary stands out as the longest story in the cycle and in a sense it prefigures later events in the collection where Mary will reappear as a key-figure.18 Her appearance is passed over in silence in the Protevangelium of James, but she is particularly beautiful in Hrotsvith’s account: “they say that Mary’s face shined with a snowy whiteness, exceeding the burning rays of the sun and surpassing every human sight completely” (Ipsius faciem niveo candore nitentem | Tradunt ardentis radios precellere solis | Necnon humanum penitus devincere visum, Maria, 348–50). She is also graceful and eloquent: “Always gentle and pleasant to all, and indeed whatever speech flowed from her lips was flavored with supernatural nectar” (Semper erat mitis necnon gratissima cunctis, | Et, que nempe suo profluxit ab ore lo-

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quela, | Nectare gratiole fuerat condita superne, Maria, 340–42). In the story of Theophilus, Hrotsvith describes how this unfortunate man is struck by “the sweetness of her honeyed tongue” (melliflue dulcedine lingue, Maria, 274). This kind of worship of a charismatic and eloquent Mary had long since formed part of the Byzantine hagiography.19 In Hrotsvith’s cycle, it results in amplification and deepening of Mary’s religious authority that fits the overall tendency to give women prominent positions in the narratives.20 At first sight, this consistent celebration of women appears as a contrast to the self-derogatory rhetoric of Hrotsvith’s preface:21 However difficult and arduous and complex metrical composition may appear for the fragile female sex, I, persisting with no one assisting still put together my poems in this little work not relying on my own powers and talents as a clerk but always trusting in heavenly grace’s aid. Quamvis etiam metrica modulatio femin‫ ؚ‬fragilitati difficilis videatur et ardua- solo tamen semper miserentis supern‫ ؚ‬grati‫ ؚ‬auxilio non propriis viribus confisa ǜ huius carmina opusculi dactilicis modulis succinere apposui […]. (Liber Primus, Praefatio, 13–16, trans., 19)

Except for the legend entitled The Martyrdom of Blessed Gongolf and the invocation introducing the vita of Mary, which is composed in elegiac couplets, Hrotsvith writes in leonine hexameters. She thus transposes unembellished apocryphal writings and anonymous hagiographical texts into the highest of stylistic registers, continuing a process initiated by the Carolingians,22 and paralleled by a similar development in the Greek-speaking world from the end of the eighth century until the middle of the eleventh century. Byzantinists have noted that an important aspect of this kind of metaphrastic process was the act of providing the material with an authorial name; it sealed them and protected them from being further redacted.23 Yet Hrotsvith repeatedly encourages her reader to correct her texts: Therefore, reader, whoever you may be, if you live rightly and are wise in God, don’t withhold the favour of your benign goodwill from these flawed pages that are not built on the authorities of precedent or the wisdom of sages. Unde quicumque lector, si recte et secundum deum sapias ǜ egenti pagin‫ ؚ‬ǜ que nullius praeceptoris | munitur auctoritate opem tue rectitudinis ne pigriteris adhibere […]. (Liber Primus, Praefatio, 23–25, trans., 20)

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Desire in Hrotsvith’s Hagiographical Legends

Despite these concessions, Hrotsvith’s selection, organization and poetization of the eight stories entails an authorization process. Trained as she was in the liberal arts and in rhetoric, as demonstrated by Wilson,24 Hrotsvith manages to undermine her initial captatio benevolentiae and draw attention to her talents.25 Through a veil of humility she establishes her authority as a writer of legends: Thus, I first began to compose in secret, all alone struggling to write, then destroying what was poorly done, trying to the best of my ability, and with all my might to put together a text—be its merits ever so slight—using the writings I was able to gather here, in our Gandersheim Abbey. I was first taught by Riccardis, the wisest and kindest of teachers, and by others thereafter, who continued my education and then, finally, by my lady of high station Gerberga of royal blood, my merciful abbess, under whose rule I now live. She is younger in years than I, but as befits the Emperor’s niece, more advanced in learning. It was she, who, other authors concerning continued my instruction offering me an introduction to the works of those writers whom she herself studied with learned men. Unde clam cunctis et quasi furtim ǜ nunc in componendis sola desudando nunc male composita destruendo satagebam ǜ iuxta meum posse licet minime necessarium aliquem tamen conficere textum ex sentenciis scripturarum ǜ quas intra aream nostri Gandeshemensis collegeram c‫ؚ‬nobii ǜ Primo sapientissim‫ ؚ‬atque benignissim‫ ؚ‬Rikkardis magistrat‫ ؚ‬aliarumque suae vicis instruente magisterio ǜ deinde prona favente clementia ǜ regi‫ ؚ‬indolis Gerberg‫ ؚ‬cuius nunc subdor dominio abbatiss‫ ؚ‬ǜ qu‫ ؚ‬aetate minor ǜ sed, ut imperialem decebat neptem ǜ scientia provectior aliquot auctores quos ipsa prior a sapientissimis didicit me admodum pie erudivit. (Liber Primus, Praefatio, 2:1–12, trans., 19)

At first self-effacing, she gradually turns the account to her favour,26 informing her readers about the sophisticated education that allowed her to improve her work; it is generally believed that the “learned teachers” she mentions were key figures of the Ottonian renaissance, such as Bruno the Great (c. 925–65) and Rather of Verona (c. 890–974).27 Hrotsvith thus strategically builds up an authorial position by indirectly converting the traditional humility topos. Besides the stylistic transferral of the hagiographic material, the authorization in the prefaces and the worship of Mary, Hrotsvith’s hagiography shares another feature with contemporary Byzantine hagiographical writers. In this literature, a new social dimension was often added to the saints and their martyrdom, and they were represented as individuals from the higher social classes. This transformation of hagiographical literature

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into rhetorically polished texts with upper-class heroes served to corroborate the power and status of the social and economic élite.28 Similarly, in Hrotsvith’s version of Basil, one of the characters, Proterius, whose daughter falls in love with her servant through the agency of the devil, is described as a “very famous man” (vir satis illustris), “respected by all people” (cunctae plebi venerandus), “of powerful nobility” (nobilitate potens) and “equally so because of his wealth” (opibus rerum quoque pollens, Basilius, 20-22). The status of Proterius’ daughter is also stressed; she was “of mighty stock” (magna de stirpe, Basilius, 104). These statements are lacking in the source, which is believed to be Ursus’s Latin translation of this vita.29 The social fall that the liaison entails is underlined by Proterius, who complains that his daughter has fallen in love with a servant: “And you burn with passion for a wilful slave!” (Et tu lascivi fervescis amore famelli! Basilius, 119). Ursus, on the other hand, does not stress the problem in that the young man is from a much lower social class.30 There is a similar focus on the rank and noble splendour of the protagonist in her legend about Theophilus, where she deviates from her source, which is believed to be a text ascribed to Paul the Deacon.31 Nobility distinguishes the leading characters and saints whose spiritual, physical and verbal force is not only a result of their religious dedication but also connected to their position in society. This socio-political dimension of the legends is underlined in passages where love across class boundaries is forcefully rejected. The sexual and spiritual desires form the driving force behind the actions and events in these “high-style” legends, and its configurations are connected to cultural empowerment of a social élite.

Notes 1

All the Latin quotations are from Walter Berschin, Hrotsvit: Opera Omnia (Leipzig: Saur, 2001). Translations are from Gonslava M. Wiegand, The Non-dramatic Works of Hrosvitha: Translation and Commentary (Saint Louis: MO, 1936). 2 This episode is unique for Hrotsvith’s narrative and is not found in the priest Raguel’s version, entitled “Martyrdom of St. Pelagius”, translated by Jeffrey A. Bowman in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, edited by Thomas Head (New York/London: Routledge, 2000), 231–35. 3 Cf. Katharina M. Wilson, “The Saxon Canoness: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim,” in Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 37. For the charismatic culture of the tenth and eleventh centuries see Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

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4 Ronald Stottlemyer, “The Construction of the Desiring Subject in Hrosvit’s Pelagius and Agnes,” in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Contexts, Identities, Affinities and Performances, edited by Phyllis R. Brown, Katharina M. Wilson and Linda A. McMillin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 98. 5 The abbey was founded in 852 by Duke Liudolf of Saxony and his wife Oda, who sent five of their daughters to live there. In 947 the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great (c. 912–73) made it independent of royal regulation, which meant that it had its own court, army, coinage of money, and its own seat in the imperial assembly. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 55, n. 3. 6 Katharina M. Wilson, “The Saxon Canoness: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim,” 31. Cf. also Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, 55–56. 7 Claudio Leonardi, “Intellectual Life,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 900–c. 1024, edited by Timothy Reuter and Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 201. 8 Leonardi, “Intellectual Life,” 201. 9 Gustavo Vinay, Alto Medioevo Latino: Conversazioni e no (Naples: Guida ed., 1978), 554: “[…] in realtà Rosvita è il primo poeta d’amore del medioevo latino.” 10 Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, 70. 11 Stottlemyer, “The Construction of the Desiring Subject in Hrosvit’s Pelagius and Agnes,” 104. 12 Otto II commissioned Hrotsvith to write the Chronicle of the Ottonian royal house and she dedicated it to his niece and her teacher Gerberga. Cf. Reto R. Bezzola, Les origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en occident (500– 1200) vol. 1 (Paris: Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études. Science historiques et philologiques, 1944), 252. 13 Rosamond McKitterick, “Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century and the Role of Theophano,” in The Empress Theophano: Byzantium and the West at the Turn of the First Millennium, edited by Adelbert Davids (Cambridge 2002), 183. 14 McKitterick, “Ottonian Intellectual Culture,” 186–89; 170. 15 Katharina M. Wilson, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of her Works (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), 7–9, esp. 9. 16 Cf. Katharina M. Wilson, “The Saxon Canoness: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim,” 32; Averil Cameron, “The Mother of God in Byzantium: Relics, Icons, Texts”, in The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images, edited by Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), 1–6, esp. 3–4. 17 Hrotsvith composes the invocation preceding the legend of Mary in elegiac couplets. 18 In the subsequent narrative The Ascension she addresses Christ and his disciples at the Mount of Olives and in The Fall and Conversion of Theophilus she helps the sinful protagonist to return to a pious life.

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19

Evangelos Chrysos, “Preface”, in Images of the Mother of God: Perception of the Theotokos in Byzantium, edited by Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), xxi–xxii. 20 Based on the story falsely attributed to Ambrosius, edited in Johannes Bolland, Acta Sanctorum, Jan. 21 vol. 2 (Paris 1863), 715–18. Cf. M. Gonslava Wiegand, The Non-dramatic Works of Hrosvitha: Translation and Commentary (Saint Louis: MO, 1936), 263. 21 See Charles Nelson, “Hrotsvit von Gandersheim: Madwoman in the Abbey,” in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An Anthology of Feminist Approaches to Middle High German Literature, edited by Albrecht Classen (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991), 55: “The library provided all the patristic misogyny she needed to be aware of that (sic). And here perhaps we can locate […] an irony […] conspire silently and powerfully toward subverting her efforts to write out the wrongs and write in the right of women.” 22 Cf. Walter Berschin, “Is there such a thing as a Latin epochal style?,” in Latinitas Perennis: Appropriation and Latin Literature, vol. 2, edited by Yanick Maes, Jan Papy and Wim Verbaal (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 183. 23 See Christian Høgel, Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), 46–47. 24 See Katharina M. Wilson, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: The Ethics of Authorial Stance (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 143. 25 Stottlemyer, “The Construction of the Desiring Subject in Hrosvit’s Pelagius and Agnes,” 100. 26 On the humility topos see Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 83–85, 407–13. 27 Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, 56–58. 28 Høgel, Symeon Metaphrastes, 52–53. 29 Wiegand suggests that a ninth-century Vita, composed in prose by the subdeacon Ursus is the source here. Wiegand, The Non-dramatic Works of Hrosvitha, 209. Cf. also Helene Homeyer, Hrotsvithae Opera: Mit Einleitungen und Kommentar (Munich, 1970), 174. 30 Cf. Stephen L. Wailes, Spirituality and Politics in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2006), 89–90. 31 Wailes, Spirituality and Politics in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, 80.

Bibliography Berschin, Walter. “Is there such a thing as a Latin epochal style?” In Latinitas Perennis: Appropriation and Latin Literature, vol. 2., edited by Yanick Maes, Jan Papy and Wim Verbaal, 181–200. Leiden: Brill, 2009. —. Hrotsvit: Opera Omnia. Leipzig: Saur, 2001.

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Bezzola Reto R. Les origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en occident (500–1200) vol. 1, Paris: Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études. Science historiques et philologiques, 1944. Bolland, Johannes. Acta Sanctorum, Jan. 21 vol. 2, 715–18. Paris, 1863. Bowman, Jeffrey A., trans. “Martyrdom of St. Pelagius.” In Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, edited by Thomas Head, 231–35. New York/London: Routledge, 2000. Cameron, Averil. “The Mother of God in Byzantium: Relics, Icons, Texts.” In The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images, edited by Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham, 1–6. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011. Chrysos, Evangelos. “Preface.” In Images of the Mother of God: Perception of the Theotokos in Byzantium, edited by Maria Vassilaki. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Høgel, Christian. Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002. Homeyer, Helene. Hrotsvithae Opera: Mit Einleitungen und Kommentar. Munich: Schoningh, 1970. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Leonardi, Claudio. “Intellectual Life.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 900–c. 1024, edited by Timothy Reuter and Rosamond McKitterick, 181–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. McKitterick, Rosamond. “Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century and the Role of Theophano.” In The Empress Theophano: Byzantium and the West at the Turn of the First Millennium, edited by Adelbert Davids, 169–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nelson, Charles. “Hrotsvit von Gandersheim: Madwoman in the Abbey.” In Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An Anthology of Feminist Approaches to Middle High German Literature, edited by Albrecht Classen, 43–55. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991. Stottlemyer, Ronald. “The Construction of the Desiring Subject in Hrotsvit’s Pelagius and Agnes.” In Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Contexts, Identities, Affinities and Performances, edited by Phyllis R. Brown, Katharina

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M. Wilson and Linda A. McMillin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Vinay, Gustavo. Alto Medioevo Latino: Conversazioni e no. Naples: Guida ed., 1978. Wailes, Stephen L. Spirituality and Politics in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2006. Wiegand, M. Gonslava. The Non-dramatic Works of Hrosvitha: Translation and Commentary. Saint Louis: MO, 1936. Wilson, Katharina M. Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of her Works. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998. —. Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: The Ethics of Authorial Stance. Leiden: Brill, 1988. —. “The Saxon Canoness: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim.” In Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, 30–63. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984

THE RHETORIC OF DESIRE IN OVID’S AMORES 1.5 AND SOME MEDIEVAL TEXTS FROM THE CARMINA BURANA TO TIRANT LO BLANC ULF MALM

“La bellezza è nell’ ornamento delle parole” (Beauty is in the ornament of words) (Dante, Il Convivio, II, II 4.)

As is well known, medieval rhetoric concentrates on elocutio and ornatio, more or less disregarding inventio and the other partes, as codified and discussed in the rhetoric of antiquity. Handbooks on poetria were created by authors like Mathieu de Vendôme and Geoffroi de Vinsauf, for example. They are not notably interested in the moral aspects and ethics of rhetoric so important to Cicero and Aristotle, or in the role of language in society so crucial to classical Roman rhetoric and codified in its handbooks. What systematization there is now primarily centres on expression. Thus, the only partes to remain are dispositio and elocutio, especially the latter. Mostly, to medieval rhetoricians inventio seems rather equivalent to amplificatio and stylistic variation, i.e. how a given text de facto relates to the concept of the rota Vergilii and the relation to the three levels of style: “Sunt igitur tres styli, humilis, mediocris, grandiloquus [more often related to as gravis].”1 When, if at all, dispositio is treated, different ways of opening a poem (i.e. the exordium) are placed in focus. Amplificatio seems to be the most important concept, both in theory and in practice. In Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (VIII.iv), for example, it meant enhancement, exaggeration, climax. In the treatises of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries amplificatio rather comes to mean augmentation by means of description, metaphor, repetition and paraphrase, i.e. aspects belonging within the inventio of classical rhetoric. In both Geoffroi and Mathieu this becomes clearly visible, especially as regards description. Ornamentation is described in terms of ornatus difficilis, the use of tropes, and ornatus facilis, figures of repetition, assonance, etc.

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All of this is of course found in medieval poetriae, but is it to be found in actual medieval poetry, both in Latin and in the vernacular? Scholars such as Curtius, Dronke, Walsh, Scheludko, Lazar, Smith and Dragonetti, to mention but a few, have amply proven this to be the case, very much so in Latin, less so in the vernacular, especially when density of ornamentation is considered. Always the supreme craftsman and with his strong penchant for describing sensual pleasures and passion, Ovid must have stood out as a role model to a medieval poet writing erotic poems in Latin. Here, in the Amores, Ovid describes incomparable female beauty when depicting Corinna, the object of the protagonist’s desire: Ecce, Corinna venit, tunica velata recincta candida dividua colla tegente coma, qualiter in thalamos formosa Semiramis isse dicitur et multis Lais amata viris. Deripui tunicam—nec multum rara nocebat, pugnabat tunica sed tamen illa tegi. Quae cum ita pugnaret, tamquam quae vincere nollet, victa est non aegre proditione sua. Ut stetit ante oculos posito velamine nostros, in toto nusquam corpore menda fuit. Quos umeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos! Forma papillarum quam fuit apta premi! Quam castigato planus sub pectore venter! Quantum et quale latus! Quam iuvenale femur! Singula quid referam? Nil non laudabile vidi, et nudam pressi corpus ad usque meum. Cetera quis nescit? Lassi requievimus ambo Proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies. In came Corinna in a long loose gown, / Her white neck hid with tresses hanging down; / So to her many lovers came Lais, / Or in her bedroom fair Semiramis. / I snatched her gown; being thin the harm was small, / Yet strove she to be covered therewithal, / And striving thus as one who wished to fail, / Was simply beaten by her self-betrayal. / Stark naked as she stood before mine eye, / No blemish on her body could I spy. / What arms and shoulders did I touch to see, / How apt her bosom to be pressed by me! / Belly smooth below the breasts so high, / And waist so long, and what fine young thigh. / Why detail more? All perfect in my sight; / And naked as she was, I hugged her tight. / And next-all know! We rested, with a kiss; / Jove send me more such afternoons as this!2

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No doubt, this is an instance of descriptive inventio, where Ovid makes use of the locus amoenus of erotic bliss. He pictures a scene, almost cinematic in character, where the protagonist lies dozing on his bed. Ecce femina: Corinna enters. Ovid moves rapidly to the description of her nipples and breasts, then moves on down her body. She embodies physical perfection, but is faceless. Thus, individuality is reduced, transforming Corinna into a figura of female beauty and sexuality, further enhanced by references to the Semiramis and Lais of myth. The poem is quite panegyric in character, the bodily attributes of an idealized mistress being foregrounded; but we also find, more pointedly than in most elegiac idealizations, the attributes of a goddess, with the stress on her height and faultless looks. Thus Corinna rather evokes Venus, the ultimate praise of female beauty and attraction. This proves to be paradigmatic. The poets behind the medieval secular love song in Latin very often clearly follow Ovid in their effictio and so, to a lesser extent, do those writing in the vernacular. Ovid explicitly mentions Corinna’s shoulders, arms, teats, bosom, belly, waist, hips and thighs and this is, to a varying degree, true also of his medieval colleagues. The descriptive exemplification of how this is done in some texts would then be the aim of this study. No doubt “Sevit aure spiritus” by Pierre de Blois is probably one of the most striking songs in the Carmina Burana. It depicts an erotic locus amoenus of intense bliss structured on a pattern of descriptio puellae which adheres to a model well-known at least since Ovid and constitutes a conspicuous example of epideictic rhetoric in the shape of amplificatory effictio: Sevit aure spiritus, et arborum Come fluunt penitus vi frigorum; silent cantus nemorum. nunc torpescit, vere solo fervens, amor pecorum; semper amans sequi nolo novas vices temporum bestiali more. Refl. Quam dulcia stipendia et gaudia felicia sunt decore nostre Flore!

Ulf Malm Nec de longo conqueror obsequio; nobili remuneror stipendio. leto letor premio. dum salutat me loquaci Flora supercilio, mente satis non capaci gaudia concipio, glorior labore. Refl. Michi sors obsequitur non aspera; dum secreta luditur in camera, favet Venus prospera. nudam fovet Floram lectus caro candet tenera; virginale lucet pectus, parum surgunt ubera modico tumore. Refl. Hominem transgredior et superum sublimari glorior ad numerum, sinum tractans tenerum, cursu vago dum beata manus it, et uberum regionem pervagata descendit ad uterum tactu leviore. Refl. A tenello tenera pectusculo distenduntur latera pro modulo; caro carens scrupulo levem tactum non offendit. gracilis sub cingulo umbilicum preextendit paulum ventriculo tumescentiore

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The Rhetoric of Desire in Ovid’s Amores 1.5 Refl. Vota blando stimulat lenimine pubes, que vix pullulat in virgine tenui lanuguine. crus vestitum moderata tenerum pinguedine, levigatur occultata nervorum compagine, radians candore. Refl. O, si forte Jupiter hanc videat, timeo ne pariter incaleat et ad fraudes redeat; Si vel Danes pluens aurum imbre dulci mulceat, vel Europes intret taurum, vel Ledeo candeat rursus in olore. (Walsh, 85–87) The wind’s breath is harsh, and the foliage of the trees is totally disappearing under the violence of the cold. The songs in the groves are silent. Now love between cattle grows sluggish, for it is in heat only in spring. But I am always in love, and I refuse to follow the new changes of the seasons as beasts are wont to do. / Refrain. / How sweet are the wages and blessed joys bestowed by my lovely Flora! / I do not complain of my long service, for I am recompensed with notable payment, I rejoice in my happy reward. As Flora greets me with eyebrows that speak volumes, I cannot take in the joy for my mind, cannot contain it, and I glory in the toil. / Refrain. / It is no harsh lot that attends me. As we sport in our sequestered room, Venus is well-disposed and favourable. The couch hugs my naked Flora. Her youthful flesh gleams white, her maiden’s bosom is aglow, her breasts rise slightly with modest swelling. / Refrain. / I transcend mere humanity and boast that I am raised to the number of gods as I fondle her soft bosom, and as my blessed hand in wandering course roams over the region of her breasts, and with lighter touch reaches down to her belly. / Refrain. / From her small, soft bosom her delicate flanks harmoniously extend. Her unblemished flesh does not irritate the gentle touch. Beneath her girdle her slender form makes her navel protrude just slightly, with her small belly’s modest swelling. / Refrain. / Her lower parts, barely sprouting with a maiden’s soft hair, fire my desire with their alluring softness. Her soft

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limbs with their restrained covering of flesh feel smooth as they conceal the line of her sinews, and shine with their whiteness. / Refrain. / If Jupiter happened to lay eyes on her, I fear that he would become as passionate as I, and return to his deceits; for he would either rain down Danaë’s gold and soften her with that sweet shower, or masquerade as Europe’s bull, or turn white once more as Leda’s swan.” (trans. Walsh).

In a striking manner Pierre combines the Natureingang and the erotic hortus conclusus so paradigmatic to medieval erotic literature, both Latin and vernacular. In his reversal of the Natureingang Pierre stresses the fact that “human love transcends the sexual urges of animals, which are in heat with the onset of summer”.3 Always the skilled craftsman, he thus manages to combine the image of harsh winter contrasted with the warmth of a hortus conclusus/locus amoenus, albeit a modest one: the sequestered room of “Flora” at an inn. The Natureingang as a feature of the exordium of the poem/song is standard both in medieval Latin poetry and in the vernacular, e.g. in Occitan troubadour poetry, where it is so frequent as to become a cliché. In this context Pierre is rather original when observing that “love between cattle grows sluggish, for it is in heat only in spring” would no doubt be unthinkable to the ordinary Occitan troubadour, who shuns “uncourtly” animals when describing fin’amors. This might be a furtive tongue-in-cheek reference to his contemporary colleagues so often using the theme of the spring so necessary for both animal heat and human erotic passion. Also, this might be interpreted as an intentional contrast to the scene in Amores 1.5 (“Aestus erat …). However, at the same time the heat in Flora’s room corresponds to the one in Ovid’s text creating similarity and contrast at the same time. The likely aim (and result) of this elegant imitatio would be the captatio benevolentiae of his fellow clerici. Apart from the reference to the Semiramis and Lais of myth, Ovid concentrates on the strict descriptio of Corinna’s body, whereas Pierre uses a direct reference to Venus to embellish his effictio. The use of the (pseudo-) religious is further underlined by the use of “blessed” combined with the reference to the erotic Jupiter of classical religion and mythology, an instance of amplificatio used to further stress Flora’s charms as well as his own learning and poetic skill, something that Ovid probably did not find necessary! In his descriptio puellae Pierre centres on Flora’s enticing breasts. Notable here is the next to unique reference in medieval literature to the protagonist’s fondling of the young woman’s breasts. And a description of how the hands of the “blessed” protagonist, elevated to the number of gods (a hyperbole to say the least), wander from her bosom to her belly and below is nowhere to be found when Occitan troubadours talk of lo plus

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(“the rest of it”). When there is genital detail in Occitan poetry, the context is always that of obscene diction (mal parlar), which bars all mention of “a maiden’s soft hair” and instead concentrates on crude references to the con. Pierre is less precise than Ovid when describing Flora’s hips and legs, but more direct when referring to her pudenda. Here Ovid opts for cetera, which covers both anatomy and action. Besides, to a cleric like Pierre the Bible is never far away, and Proverbs 5:19 together with the description of the Bride in The Song of Songs constitutes a likely intertext. This would constitute yet another example of the customary “secularization” of the Biblical intertext within the erotic hortus conclusus of medieval erotic poetry and epic, both in Latin and in the vernacular. This would mean a combined intertext, Ovid and the Bible, which is a commonplace feature of medieval Latin erotic poetry, even if Pierre is in no way as audacious or complex as the poet of “Si linguis angelicis” (Carmina Burana 77) with its scriptural exordium, its descriptio of the locus amoenus, of the pulchra “on conventional lines punctuated with biblical and liturgical evocation”.4 The Ovid encoding unfettered lust in Amores 1.5, then, is a most likely model for Pierre’s imitative inventio. As stated above, to Walsh this is very clear: “In this uninhibited description of the girl’s physical attributes, Ovid Am 1.5. 17ff is doubtless in Peter’s mind.”5 Likewise, Walsh also finds that Pierre’s almost clinical description of the girl’s body closely resembles Mathieu de Vendôme’s Ars Versificatoria 1.57 in his prescription for the deliciosus auditor: Respondent ebori dentes, frons libera lacti, Colla nivi, stellis lumina, labra rosis. Artatur laterum descensus ad ilia, donec Surgat ventriculo luxuriante tumor. Proxima festivat loca cella pudoris, amica Naturae, Veneris deliciosa domus. Quae latet in regno Veneris dulcedo saporis, Judex contactus esse propheta potest. Pes brevis, articuli directi, carnea crura, Nec vacua fluitat pelle polita manus. (Faral, 130) Her teeth resemble ivory, her noble forehead like milk, / Her neck like snow, eyes like stars, lips like roses. / Her sides narrow as her waist up to the place where / The luscious little belly rises. / The abode of modesty makes festive adjoining areas, / Friend of Nature and sweet home of Venus. / The sweetness of savor that lies hid in the realm of Venus / The judg-

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ing touch can foretell. / Her foot is small, limbs straight, legs full and / Her hand does not shake with flabby flesh. (Trans. R. P. Parr, 38)

Of course, Walsh might be right, even if Pierre might be writing within Ovidian tradition and with direct or indirect knowledge of Mathieu’s Ars Versificatoria, but to us Pierre’s reduction of descriptive components is striking and very important for the character of the poem. Compared to both Ovid and Mathieu he is reductive in his approach. He skips Flora’s countenance and teeth and starts with her bosom to land at her sex. He is much more direct when describing the latter (“a maiden’s soft hair”), whereas Mathieu speaks of “the abode of modesty”, both thus deviating from Ovid’s cetera. Both authors use similar phrasing when describing Flora’s and Helen’s bellies, “her small belly’s modest swelling” and “luscious little belly rising”, respectively. Pierre is more to the point than Mathieu—the latter probably being more interested in creating an exemplum than writing a poem. Evidently they use the same conceptual and stylistic pattern/figuration, possibly varying the pattern of an identical source, maybe Ad Herennium. More importantly, they both adhere to the top-to-toe principle of effictio, so characteristic of medieval description of physical appearance: “Thus let beauty descend from the top of the head to the very root”, E. Gallo quoting Geoffroi’s Poetria Nova 614–15.6 The paradigm is of course the effictio of the Bride and Bridegroom in The Song of Songs. We have seen that Pierre stresses Flora’s bosom and so does the remarkable monk of the twelfth-century Ripoll collection (l’anònim enamorat) when describing the snow-white body and, especially, the enticing breasts of his puella: nec papillae sunt tumentes sed sunt quasi nix candentes, […] Et tuarum papillarum forma satis parvula non tumescit, sed albescit nives magis candida […] quod nivee papille dure sunt atque puxille […] tractare papillam,

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The Rhetoric of Desire in Ovid’s Amores 1.5 hoscula iungendo (Lazar, 1989: 254) her teats, not fully grown, / but shining like snow […] And your teats / small shaped / not fully grown / but shining like snow […] her snow-white teats / are firm and yet so small […] caress breasts, mouth to mouth […]. (Trans. Lazar).

This definitely smacks more of Ovid than of The Song of Songs, otherwise so paradigmatic not only to priests, monks and nuns (e.g. Hildegard von Bingen describing the Immaculate Conception in spectacular eroticizing terms) with its well-known metaphors of nature, etc. In this context the remarkable Marie l’Égyptienne (an instance of female hagiography) constitutes an interesting exception since the anonymous author opts for the Ovidian pattern rather than the Biblical one when describing Marie’s stunning beauty in striking detail. This author also stresses her breasts: “les mameles de cele dame / N’estoit pas menrres d’une pome”.7 It is difficult here not to think of the apple that seduced Adam! Thus, this instance of genus demonstrativum/effictio is much different from that of the Ripoll monk celebrating female beauty and attraction, whereas the hagiographer actually denounces it. His goal is to show how Marie, a true “prodigal daughter”, scorns God, his design and gifts, and it is tempting to believe that the hagiographer, being a very severe theologian, chooses to fuse the paradigm of The Song of Songs (here inverted!) with the Ovidian pattern so bound to sexuality and sin. In Amores 1.5 Ovid uses cetera for sexual union. So do the anonymous poet in “nil proponens temere”:8 “iam tumescunt ubera; / iam frustra complacuit / nisi fiant cetera” (“her breasts are now swelling. / The pleasure she awarded me is now in vain / unless the remaining course ensues”), the Ripoll monk, again in combination with a reference to the beloved’s snowwhite breasts, “Nec vetuit niveas post me tractare papillas, / Quas tractare mihi dulce nimis fuerat. / Venimus ad lectum, conectimur insimul ambo; / Cetera, que licuit sumere, non piguit” (“neither did she deny me then caressing her snowy teats / whose touch was the sweetest thing for me. / We went to bed, both our bodies intertwined; / and the et cetera, offered for my taking was not unpleasant”,9 and Gautier de Châtillon, one of the identified clerici vagi of The Carmina Burana, who does the same in his song “Declinante frigore”. Here are the two final lines of the song: “Sed quis nescit cetera? / predicatus vincitur” (“But who ignores the et cetera / It surpasses every expectation” (Lazar 1989, 253). Surprisingly, Walsh does not note the cetera, when commenting on Ovid and “Nil proponens temere”.10

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To Faral it is obvious that Mathieu considers descriptio to be the supreme object of poetry. Actually both the descriptio found in Mathieu and in Geoffroi’s Poetria Nova might be classified as an expansion of the pattern defining descriptio in Amores 1.5. Also, Geoffroi’s exemplification of effictio works as an amplification of Mathieu’s! Geoffroi is more verbose than is Mathieu but the principle of top-to-toe effictio is the same. He starts with head and hair and stops at her “dainty feet”, the principle being “And thus let beauty descend from the top of the head to the very feet, and let all be adorned alike to the smallest detail”. When talking about the breasts and pudenda he actually shuns detail: Pectus, imago nivis, quasi quasdam collaterales / Gemmas virgineas producat utrimque papillas. / Sit locus astricus zonae, brevitate pugilli / Circumscriptibilis. Taceo de partibus infra: / Aptius hic loquitur animus quam lingua. Sed ipsa / Tibia se gracilem protendat; pes brevitatis / Eximiae brevitate sua lasciviat. (Gallo, p 45). Let the snowy bosom present both breasts like virginal gems side by side. Let the waist be slim, a mere handful. I will not mention the parts beneath: here the imagination speaks better than the tongue. But let the leg show itself graceful; let the remarkably dainty foot wanton with its own daintiness. (Trans. Gallo).

It is quite clear that descriptio also determines the design of medieval poetry in the vernacular as shown by Leube-Fey and Dragonetti, for example, especially as regards the panegyrics of the lady, i.e. effictio (LeubeFey, 26–106, Dragonetti, 15–303, esp. 248–79). That there is no shortage of physical description of the domna in the Occitan troubadour corpus is well known, but Ovid is hardly as important to the trobadors as he is to the clerici vagi.11 Usually detailed descriptio is avoided in the panegyrics of the lady in the courtly corpus as shown by C. Leube-Fey (39–49). Typically, the trobador speaks in generalizing terms (plump white body etc.) and the verbal code of fin’amors refuses any reference to the pudenda whatsoever. Importantly, this is true also of the troubadours who describe the protagonist’s strong desire to have intercourse (lo plus, lo mielhs) with his domna: Guilhem de Peitieus, Bernart de Ventadorn, et alii. Actually, Bertran de Born goes further than most of his colleagues when he explicitly mentions the firm breasts of the domna: “coude mol ab dura tetina” (“tender arms and firm breasts”).12 Of course, Bertran de Born would not have needed first-hand knowledge of Amores 1.5 for his “ab dura tetina”: familiarity with tradition and contemporary paradigms would certainly have sufficed. To A. Jeanroy erudition was not

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important for the trobadors.13 Nevertheless, some of them, at least, were clerics or had clerical training.14 When we turn to the fabliau there is very little gen parlar and it is strikingly outspoken as regards expressed sexuality, primarily male genitals and copulation.15 Also, there is no shortage of references to female genitals (the con). The most remarkable example of this genre, Trubert, is representative. This is how the very young Roseite and her damsels are described: “Les damoiseles vont couchier; / devant leur lit sont desvestues / et Trubert les vit toutes, / voit les conez bufiz, sans barbe” (“The damsels go to bed and undress in front of their beds and Trubert sees them all naked. He sees their fleshy and hairless little cunts”).16 The result is reductive effictio, a principle governing most fabliaux, as it were.17 However, there is not much reference to [attractive] breasts in the fabliau, the most striking exception being “La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre”. We readily recognize the effictio of courtly romance or troubadour poetry when the young damsel is described: et Daviez s’ala gesir en la chanbre o la damoiselle qui mout ert avenanz e bele: blanche ot la char com flor d’espine: s’ele fust fille de raïne, si fust ele bele a devise. (Rossi & Staub, 98) and, in the chamber, David went to bed with the damsel who was very sweet and beautiful. Her flesh was white like a hawthorn flower; she was beautiful enough to be the daughter of a queen […]. (Trans. Malm).

Interestingly, the fableor uses “flor d’espine” to depict the young woman’s flesh. The same does Bertran de Born (“flor d’espina”), a likely instance of paradigmatic effictio. However, the text immediately turns to the directness of the standard fabliau pattern: “Davïez li a a sa main mise / sor les memeletes tot droit, / et demand ce que soit” (“Davïez put his hands directly on her small breasts / and wondered what that might be”). The courtly attitude briefly reappears in the young girl’s answer: “Ce sont mes memeles, / qui mout par sont blanches et beles: / n’en i a nule orde ne sale” “(Those are my breasts / which are very white and beautiful:/ there is nothing sordid or dirty about them”). Now the young lovers turn to talking about her sex:

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Et Davïez sa main avale droit au pertuis desoz lo vantre, par o li viz el cors li entre, si santi les paus qui cressoient: soués et coiz encor estoient. Bien taste tot o la main destre, puis demande que ce puet estre. – Par foi, fait ele, c’est mes prez, Daviët, la ou vos tastez, mais il n’est pas encor floriz. – Par foi, dame, ce dit Daviz, n’i pas d’erbe encor planté. Et que est ce en mi c’est pré, ceste fosse soeve et plaine? – Ce est, fait ele, ma fontaine, qui ne sort mie tot adés. (Staub & Rossi, 100) And David moves his hand straight down to the hole beneath the belly, through which the prick enters the body, then he feels the hairs that have already started to grow, they were still soft and tender. He touches it with the right hand and he asks what this might be. On my faith, she says, this is my meadow, David, there where you touch, but it is not yet in blossom. – On my faith, lady, said David, there have not been any herbs planted on it, yet. And what is that in the middle of this meadow, this ditch, nice to touch and open? – That is she says my fountain, which has not yet sprung forth.

There is nothing like this blunt reference to “the hole” where the “prick” enters the female body in Ovid or for that matter in the Carmina Burana (note, however, the reference to the maiden’s soft pubic hair shared with the effictio in “Sevit aure spiritus”) or courtly troubadour poetry. In fact, this genital directness is typical of the effictio of the fabliau, or for the matter, obscene troubadour poetry. Actually, the description here works as an instance of genital amplificatio. The tension created between blunt body language and courtly metaphor is highly efficient in this particular context. In an anonymous fourteenth-century Catalan text, we find the following lines decidedly built on Amores 1.5 stressing the enticing breasts made for “pressing”: Los altes membres de les vestidures eren coberts, mas bé podia hom devinar que ço que era cobert esa assats bell e gentil per ço que hom veïa descobert. En lo seu pits se pits se llevaven dues coses redones, ço és dues mamelles, que paria que desijassen ésser premudes de dolços abraçaments. (Cristobal, 243).

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The Rhetoric of Desire in Ovid’s Amores 1.5 The rest of her body was covered with the dress, but it was possible to guess that what was hidden was really beautiful and fine-looking considering what could be seen. On her breast there were two rounded shapes, that is to say, the two breasts, which seemed to be longing to be pressed by sweet embraces.

This so close to the “forma papillarum acta premi” of Amores 1.5:20 that, to us at least, it is hard to imagine this to be anything but a direct reference to Ovid and one in the vernacular, at that. Of course, there might be a mediating text, either in Latin or in the vernacular, but to our knowledge there is none. In Tirant lo Blanc the passages of interest to us here all concern the physical charms of the princess Carmesina and imply a knowledge of traditional [Ovidian] effictio. Here is the description of the hero, Tirant, meeting the princess Carmesina, the love of his life: Dient l’Emperador tals o semblants paraules les orelles de Tirant estaven atentes a les raons, e los ulls d’altra part contemplaven la gran bellesa de Carmesina. E per la gran calor que feia, perquè havia estat ab les finestres tancades, estava mig descordada mostrant en los pits dues pomes de paradís que crestallines parien, les quals donaren entrada als ulls de Tirant […]. (Riquer, 374) As Tirant was all ears to these or similar words by the emperor, his eyes, on the other hand, were fixed upon Carmesina’s great beauty. Because of the considerable heat – the windows had been closed – she had unbuttoned her blouse half way showing her breasts to be like two crystalline apples from Paradise. They allowed Tirant’s eyes the entrance […].

In this descriptio puellae the focus is on Carmesina’s breasts (“paradise apples”) which transfix the helpless Tirant. The implicit intertext is probably Adam being seduced by Eve. The Church Fathers described the Fall as an instance of seduction leading to the expulsion from Paradise, but here “the apples” instead promise bliss, i.e. in accordance with the Ovidian tradition but in direct contrast to Marie l’Égyptienne, where “the apples” threaten to lead to damnation. Carmesina has as her most remarkable maid-in-waiting Plaerdemavida, who is instrumental in the erotic game of Tirant and his beloved. Her role becomes most conspicuous when Martorell’s descriptive audacity and fictive voyeurism culminate. Thus, she allows Tirant, hidden in a chest with a hole in it, not only for breathing, but also large enough for him to peep through it, to catch a glimpse of Carmesina’s naked splendour:

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Plaerdemavida, en excusa de traure un drap de lli prim per al bany, obrí la caixa e deixà-la un poc oberta e posà roba dessús perquè neguna de les altres no ho vessen. La Princesa se començà a despullar, e Plaerdemavida li parà lo siti que venia en dret que Tirant la podia molt ben veure. E com ella fon tota nua, Plaerdemavida pres una candela encesa per fer plaer a Tirant: mirava-li tota la sua persona et tot quant havia filat e deia-li: – A la fe senyora, si Tirant fos ací, si us tocava ab ses sues mans així com jo faç, jo pens que ell ho estimaria més que si el faïen senyor del realme de França. – No cregues tu això – dix- la Princesa – que més estimaria ell ésser rei que no tocar-me així com tu fas. – Oh Tirant senyor, e on sou vós ara? Com no sou ací prop perquè poguésseu veure e tocar la cosa que més amau en aquest món ni en altre? Mira, senyor Tirant, vet ací los cabells de la senyora Princesa; jo els bese en nom de tu, qui est dels cavallers del món lo millor. Vet ací los ulls e la boca; jo la bese per tu. Vet ací les sues cristallines mamelles, que tinc cascuna en sa mà: bese- les per tu: mira com són poquetes, dures, blanques e llises. Mira, Tirant, vet ací lo seu ventre, les cuixes e lo secret. (Riquer, 698) With the excuse of taking out a fine linen cloth for the bath, Plaerdemavida opened the chest and left it slightly ajar. Then she put some clothes to prevent anybody else from noticing. The princess started disrobing and Plaerdemavida arranged things for Tirant to see her very well standing right in front of him. When she was all naked, Plaerdemavida took a burning candle in order to make Tirant’s delight even greater. She looked the princess all over up and down and said: “On my faith, my lady, if Tirant were here, if he touched you with his hands the way I do with mine, I think he would appreciate it more than if he had been made king of France.” The princess said: “Don’t you think that he would appreciate more to be king than to touch me like you do?” “Oh lord Tirant, where are you now? Why are you not here to see and touch what you love most in the world and in the other one? Look, lord Tirant, here you see my lady’s hair. I kiss it in your name, you who are the best knight in the world. Here you see her eyes and mouth. I kiss it for you. Here you see her crystalline breasts, I hold them and kiss them, one in each hand, and I kiss them for you. Look how small, firm, white, and smooth they are. Look Tirant, behold her belly, her thighs, and her sex.

Arguably, this constitutes the culmination of medieval [voyeuristic] descriptio feminae and this particular locus amoenus is striking not only in descriptive detail both also in its touch of sodomy. Plaerdemavida, playing Tirant’s role, caresses Carmesina herself, kisses her hair, her eyes, her lips, and mouth while enumerating them. She even takes Carmesina’s small, firm, white and smooth breasts in her hands and kisses them and tells hidden Tirant to behold Carmesina’s belly, thighs, and sex. Note that Mar-

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torell chooses the same word as the Ripoll monk when referring to the beloved’s sex: “lo secret”, “secretum”. Probably, tradition is speaking here.18 This scene points toward much pornography to come, e.g. the initiatory scene in Fanny Hill, a landmark of pornographic rhetoric, and is certainly much more daring than the descriptio in “Sevit aure spiritus”. * What these texts from Amores 1.5 onwards have in common, then, is an erotic inventio founded on top-to-toe effictio technically based on amplificatio working as variations on one given theme: the panegyrics of female physical beauty. This [Ovidian] pattern is at times reinforced by that of The Song of Songs so self-evident not only to all these clerici vagi and monks who all possessed an erudition based on theology and the septem artes liberales, but also to the troubadours and fableors living in the Christian context of medieval Western Europe. The basic pattern follows a top-to-toe paradigm: head, hair, eyes, neck, arms, breasts, waist, hips, [sex] legs, feet, and the different texts discussed supra all constitute variations on this pattern. Important here to single out are the fabliaux, the pseudo-courtly “demoiselle” being an exception, and the obscene troubadour texts, which display a reductive effictio focusing on the genitals. Ovid’s Corinna and the trobadors’ domna are no doubt to be seen as young, but grown women (the domna is invariably married), whereas the desired object in Pierre et consortes normally is a young girl and this is true also of the princess Carmesina in Tirant lo Blanc.19 To Sarah Spence the vernacular as used in troubadour poetry (and in the fabliau, we must add) is the language of the body, thus implying linguistic deviance when compared to Latin texts. 20 To us, however, there is no difference between Ovid in the Amores 1.5, Pierre de Blois, the Ripoll monk and the texts in the vernacular discussed in our study: they all have the same linguistic corporeality in common. Thus, the texts discussed in this study focus strictly on female sexual attraction and the authors studied here all rely on the principles of effictio brought to use in Amores 1.5 and onwards. The anonymous Catalan quoted above comes closest to the master, whether he used Ovid directly or from a secondary source when paraphrasing him. We may also rest assured that Pierre and the Ripoll monk with their clerical training knew their Ovid very well, whereas the case of Martorell is more uncertain. Be that as it may, he was most literate, which implies traditional training (i.e. knowledge of Latin). Anyway, the descriptio of Carmesina clearly works as a

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remarkable instance (and culmination, as it were) of the amplificatory effictio so vividly brought to use in all the texts studied above.

Notes 1 Geoffroi de Vinsauf, quoted from Edmond Faral, ed., Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1924), 312. 2 Ovid, The Love Poems, trans. A. D. Melville, edited by E. J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 3 Patrick Gerard Walsh, Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 87. 4 Walsh, Love Lyrics, 68. 5 Walsh, Love Lyrics, 88. 6 Ernest Gallo, The Poetria Nova and its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 182. 7 Simon Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 217. Actually the entire descriptio follows the pattern of top-to-toe effictio in remarkable detail, as the hagiographer pictures Marie’s round, white ears, bright and smiling eyes, black and comely eyes, perfectly small mouth, sweet gaze, and rosebud-like complexion. Her nose, cheek and neck were ermine white, her hair blonde. Her arms and hands were white; she had beautiful fingers and soft flanks and belly. It seems more than likely that our hagiographer was familiar with Amores 1.5! 8 Carmina Burana 167, Walsh, Love Lyrics, 189. 9 Moshé Lazar, Amors courtois et “fin’amors” dans la littérature du XIIe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque française et romane, 1964), 254. 10 Walsh, Love Lyrics, 189. 11 Dmitri Scheludko, however, insists on Ovid’s importance for the Occitan troubadours. Cf. “Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der altprovenzalischen Lyrik,” Archivum Romanicum 11 (1927): 273–312, and 15 (1931): 137–206. 12 Lazar, Amors courtois et “fin’amors”, 65, Ulf Malm, Dolssor Conina: Lust, the Bawdy, and Obscenity in Medieval Occitan and Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poetry and Latin Secular Lovesong (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Litterarum 22, 2001), 162 (trans.). Lazar has an interesting discussion on the precise sense of the stanza. 13 Alfred Jeanroy, Poésie lyrique des troubadours (Toulouse: Privat, 1934), 76–77. 14 Cristiane Leube-Fey, Bild und Funktion der Dompna in der Lyrik der Trobadors (Heidelberg: Studia Romanica, 1971), 61. Leube-Fey cites Folquet de Marselha and the Monje de Montaudon as clerics and Marcabru, Cercamon, Peire Cardenal and Arnaut de Maruelh as having at least clerical training. Personally, I find it most likely that all the trobadors possessed some knowledge of at least the seven liberal arts, which were taught in Latin. Cf. Scheludko. However, Lazar seems less enthusiastic when considering the impact of Ovid on the

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troubadours. According to him, they hardly belong to the aetas ovidiana, 12 et passim. 15 The standard reference would be Charles Muscatine, The Old French Fabliau (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 105–51. 16 Luciano Rossi and Richard Staub, Fabliaux érotiques (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1992), 498. This is chiefly an anthology of texts and as such it works very well together with Charles Muscatine and Philippe Ménard, Fabliaux français du moyen âge (Genève: Droz, 1979). 17 This reductive effictio seems not to determine only the fabliau, but also the mal parlar of obscene Occitan troubadour poetry as well as the cantiga d’escarnho e mal dizer, and demands a study of its own. 18 Cf. also Geoffroi de Vinsauf, 587 (“Ex cristallino …”), and Gallo, The Poetria Nova and its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine, 44–45. 19 Lazar refers to the five steps of the gradus amoris, when comparing Occitan troubadour poetry with the Carmina Burana and the Ripoll monk: “i.e. to contemplate the physical beauty of the lady; converse according to the courtly rhetoric; caress the body’s erotic zones; kiss passionately her lips; and do it [far lo] to crown the amorous game, if and when the lady grants the cetera, lo al, del plus”, “Carmina Erotica, Carmina Iocosa: The Body and the Bawdy in Medieval Love Songs,” in Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages, edited by Moshe Lazar and Norris J. Lacy (London: George Mason University Press, 1989), 257–58. Actually, there is practically no conversation in the genres discussed here; the words spoken by Plaerdemavida supra are a possible exception but they are addressed to Carmesina, although meant for Tirant! In the Roman Breton, etc, however, there is much conversation to be found, and this no doubt accounts for the dialogue in “la demoiselle” with its parody of the courtly code. 20 Sarah Spence, “Rhetoric and Hermeneutics”, in The Troubadours: An Introduction, edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 164–81, especially 175, Sarah Spence, Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 185–99. To us, the addition of the fabliau is crucial to the understanding of the erotic code in the vernacular.

Bibliography Crístobal, Vicente. “Ovid in Medieval Spain.” In Ovid in the Middle Ages, edited by J. G. Clark, F. T. Coulson, and K. L. McKinley, 231–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Dragonetti, Roger. La technique poétique des trouvères dans la chanson courtoise: Contribution à l’étude de la rhétorique medievale. Brugge: Rijksuniversitet te Gent, 1960. Faral, Edmond. Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris: Champion, 1924.

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Gallo, Ernest. The Poetria Nova and its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Gaunt, Simon. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Jeanroy, Alfred. Poésie lyrique des troubadours. Toulouse: Privat, 1934. Lazar, Moshé. Amour courtois et “fin’amors” dans la littérature du XIIe siècle. Paris: Bibliothèque française et romane, 1964. — “Carmina Erotica, Carmina Iocosa: The Body and the Bawdy in Medieval Love Songs.” In Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages, edited by Moshe Lazar and Norris J. Lacy, 248–76. London: George Mason University Press, 1989. Leube-Fey, Cristiane. Bild und Funktion der Dompna in der Lyrik der Trobadors. Heidelberg: Studia Romanica, 1971. Malm, Ulf. Dolssor Conina: Lust, the Bawdy, and Obscenity in Medieval Occitan and Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poetry and Latin Secular Lovesong. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Litterarum, 2001. Muscatine, Charles. The Old French Fabliau. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Muscatine, Charles, and Philippe Ménard eds. Fabliaux français du moyen âge. Genève: Droz, 1979. Ovid. The Love Poems, translated by A. D. Melville, edited by E. J. Kenney. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Parr, Roger P., trans. Matthew of Vendôme: Ars versificatoria. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981. Riquer, Martí de, ed. Joanot Martorell: Tirant lo Blanc. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1982. Rossi, Luciano and Richard Staub, eds. Fabliaux érotiques. Paris: Librairie générale française, 1992. Scheludko, Dmitri. “Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der altprovenzalischen Lyrik.” Archivum Romanicum 11 (1927): 273–312, 15 (1931): 137–206. Smith, N. B. “Rhetoric.” In A Handbook of the Troubadours, edited by F. R. P. Akehurst and J. M. Davis, 400–20. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Spence, Sarah. “Rhetoric and Hermeneutics.” In The Troubadours: An Introduction, edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, 164–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. —. Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Walsh, Patrick Gerard. Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

MASTERING DESIRES: IMAGES OF LOVE, LUST AND WANT IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY VADSTENA MIA ÅKESTAM

Lady Birgitta Birgersdotter (c. 1303–73), Saint Birgitta of Sweden, was born and lived in an environment with noble ideals and with extensive international contacts. She was a wife and mother of eight, and a lady at the court of king Magnus Eriksson and Magistra to Queen Blanche of Sweden. Lady Birgitta was a traveller and a pilgrim. As a widow, she chose the spiritual life not by retreating to a nunnery, but by leaving the country with the aim of founding a new monastic order. Birgitta and her large entourage began the journey to Rome in 1349. Her background in the highest nobility, a courtly culture that she highly esteemed, is reflected in her revelations. I will argue that this courtliness is also communicated in the use of imagery in Vadstena monastery in the years around 1400. But pictures were not without their problems, as will become apparent in another example in the very same context. The revelations were written down in Latin and in Old Swedish from the 1340s, in Sweden, until her death in Rome in July 1373. Saint Birgitta had reason to reflect on issues like desire not only from her own private perspective, but also because her revelations in the end formed the basis of an international monastic order. On the one hand there were bodily desires that should be mastered, on the other there was a religious desire for God. During the canonization the revelations were widely spread to an elite among the clergy, kings and noblemen, and later they were used in the Birgittine convents, quoted in innumerable sermons and spread to cathedrals and the parish churches. Therefore, they can be used to illustrate the function of imagery and devotional life in the Middle Ages. These texts reached far beyond the scholarly and monastic environment. This chapter focuses on expressions of the ambivalent relationship to desire. My intention is to analyse the often-complex relation between text and image, including the one between secular and spiritual imagery in the discussion. As desires involve feelings, I will pay attention to expressions of the senses. The question is whether and how the presumed ambivalence

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between worldly and spiritual desire is evident in the revelations and imagery in Vadstena. What visual codes were used? How was imagery used, and what attitudes towards imagery can we trace through text and images?

Figure 1. The Effects of Carnal Desire. Detail from murals illustrating Birgitta’s revelations, Book V. Knutby, Uppland (Sweden) c. 1500. Photo: Lennart Karlsson.

It is common to assume an iconographical 1:1 relationship between text and image, as in the image in Knutby parish church that connects to the actual wording of Birgitta's revelations (Book VI: 52) and shows a woman’s torments of hell, a total despair and pain that drives her to madness (Fig. 1). The eyes, which led to her destruction, are hanging out in their threads and her teeth rattle in her mouth. Of all the bodily torments mentioned in the text, a serpent is predominant in this picture. It stands out from the top of her stomach to the lower parts and swing around like a wheel within her, it wreathes inside her and is the punishment for her disordered desires and lustful life. Such a reading is helpful when a picture shall be identified, but this is seldom sufficient. Pictures taken as signs provide additional information in their social context. Colour, shape and size provide further information. The actual room and space, and the image's original location, are factors that help to shed light on the actual beholder and the use of imagery. This is in line with the ideas that scholars

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like Meyer Schapiro, Jean Claude Schmitt and Wolfgang Kemp have formulated concerning image rhetoric and reception theory.1 Images were communicative, they were made to communicate and create affection. Here I will rely on the art historian Michael Camille’s definition of the term “intervisuality”. Just as meaning in literary texts is often generated by intertextuality, so images generate meaning. Camille understands the term intervisuality “as a process in which images are not the stable referents in some ideal iconographic dictionary, but are perceived by their audiences to work across and within different and even competing value-systems.”2 Other scholars use the term intervisuality to emphasize that pictorial conventions work by themselves, apart from textual sources. Pictures, once painted and displayed publicly, are open to unintended interpretations. Hence the beholder’s perspective and the historical context are crucial to statements about significance.

On Religious Desire, Senses and Imagery Desire is a longing for something that can never be satisfied.3 Desire itself can in this context be of many kinds: erotic desires of course, but also desire as deadly sins when the craving for food, drinks or beautiful things is limitless. But there was also another kind of desire, a sublime desire for beauty and salvation that was elaborated in the monastic cultures.4 For Gregory the Great, as for many of the medieval writers that followed him, desire is about a constant progress in religious life and therefore becomes more and more intense. It is in order to reach God that one must love, desire and wish for death, which does not eliminate the suffering or fear of death, as Jean Leclercq summarizes this position.5 When Hugh of Saint-Victor defines love, he describes it as both desire and pleasure. “It is desire in seeking, and delight in thoroughly enjoying: it runs by means of [per] desire; it rests by means of delight.”6 He does not write about the foul love, cupidity or amor. The love of things that should be loved is better called caritas or dilectio. Hugh characterizes love as a flame, which both consumes and purifies, or as a stream through the heart that can either be directed to worldly things or to internal matters. “In the first case desire draws the heart; in the second the heart directs desire.”7 Desire takes two forms according to Richard of St. Victor in The Four Degrees of Violent Love: appetite (appetitus) and feeling (affectus). Both are closely related to the senses (sensualitas). Appetite is a drive for pleasure, while feeling can at the same time be connected with the highest spiritual activities, as Hugh Feiss underlines.8

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For Bernard of Clairvaux man is a loving subject, and love emanates from affection and desire.9 He also compares the burning desire of the patriarchs in more ancient times with today’s “lukewarmness and frigid unconcern”, according to Stephen Jaeger.10 During the Middle Ages it was the eye that aroused desire in human beings. This idea followed the Aristotelian theory that linked the eye directly to the desire and desire in its turn to the heart. The hierarchy of the five senses prevailed further through the Middle Ages, and sight was ranked first. Sight served as a metaphor for intellect and provided a measure of the other senses. Often quoted is Andreas Capellanus’ De Amore (1186–90) where, among many requirements for the lover, he argues that blind people could not experience desire. But even if seeing was regarded as the superior sense, all five senses were involved when it came to spiritual and bodily desires. The sense of touch was considered the most basic. The tactile sense was where man surpassed animals in precision, making him the wisest living being. Without the sense of touch, according to Aristotle in De Anima, living beings have no other sensations either. The sense of touch is needed just to exist. It is the most intimate sense, the least distant, and it is not conceptually separable from the body.11 Hearing, smell and taste were placed between these two. The emphasis on vision and senses is of particular interest when it comes to images. Images were considered communicative and intended to arouse feelings. The use of images and their ability to arouse desires were the subject of intellectual discussion throughout the Middle Ages. The tensions and transference between virtues and the legacy of ancient and pagan conceptions of desire and pleasure was a recurring issue in medieval writing. In medieval art this tension was visualized in images of Venus and Virgin Mary. How could one determine why one picture was sacred and another an idol, when they looked exactly the same? The question was posed by the Carolingians, and highlighted in Libri Carolini through a discussion between a man and a painter. The painter responds by putting captions on them: one is Venus and one is Mary. The Carolingians shared the iconoclast’s belief that the divine can not be reproduced in the image. Pictures were not considered sacred but instructive, useful and helpful.12 As an example, in the Apologia that Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to William, Abbot of Saint-Thierry in 1125, he attacked the numerous pictures inside the monasteries and churches; images and decorations affect the mind of brothers who should know better and care for their inner contemplation and spiritual training. Others, among them Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, argued instead that the beautiful pictures were needed as tools for meditation.13

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The ambivalence between the bodily desires and the desire for God was a target for the iconoclasts in the debate on images. In a discussion of Lollards, Wycliffites and iconoclasm in fourteenth-century England, Sarah Stanbury argues that medieval use of imagery is even close to fetishism.14 For his part, Jeffrey Hamburger underlines that, in the case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans, images were not regarded only as tools for meditation, but as indispensable support in the struggle against worldly desires and temptations.15 It is worth mentioning that Suso was among the writers that Birgitta probably had read herself, while the knowledge of the Church Fathers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of Saint-Victor probably was mediated by her confessors.16

Devotional Practice The steps toward a spiritual life can be illustrated with the illumination from a meditation guideline with advice to a spiritual daughter from a Dominican father. The illumination Les trois eztas de bones ames, the three steps of good souls, shows the steps from the confessor’s oral instructions to spiritual vision (Fig. 2). The illumination is divided into four scenes. Initially the pupil listens to the spiritual advisor’s instructions. The first step to follow is prayer before the devotional picture on the altar, the coronation of the Virgin. In the second stage the pupil meditates upon the Eucharist and how Christ’s sacramental blood is caught in the chalice. The last step is the spiritual vision, and a symbolic image of the Father with his crucified son (Gnadenstuhl or mercy seat) that she can experience with her inner eyes. The architecture and overall setting of the scenes underline the degree of abstraction. It starts with images of women in the lunettes, a helping angel with a scroll and God’s hand. In the second scene three angels appear. In the third and fourth scenes cloud formations indicate abstraction and the heavenly realm is underlined by cosmic symbols of the sun and the moon. It is a visualization of the idea of imageless devotion.

On the Love of Images Book V of the Revelations, also called “The Book of Questions” or the “Liber Questionum”, consists of sixteen interrogations divided into questions and answers with interwoven revelations. Denis Searby and Bridget Morris have recently suggested that the interrogations in Book V can be read as a criticism of existing orders, while the interposed revelations are proposals for a new order according to Birgitta’s ideas.17

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We can assume that it was an important text to those who founded Vadstena and who were the spiritual leaders of the first sixty brethren and sisters. Book V, Liber Questionum, was often mentioned by Birgitta and her confessors, testifies Alfonso Pecha. The book was received in one revelation that lasted for more than an hour during a ride on horseback to Vadstena. A noble but evil monk that stands on a ladder between heaven and earth asks the questions, and the answers are given by the lord Jesus Christ, in a most chivalric way. The questioning is interrupted by revelations in some instances, as in revelation 4, to which I will return below, where the theme is the incarnation and Divinity’s love for the Virgin. Book V: Intr. 8 treats questions on invisible phenomena, and a great deal of care is taken to explain the differences between this world and the higher reality. Here, Birgitta elucidates her position on the issue of images and their use. The first issue is why God permits man-made things in the temple. In short, the answer is that the Creator is opposed to imagery and adornment of his temple. But still, the important thing is man’s love in the heart. It happens, says the Creator, that an owner of a temple or people in general can love images and things more than him, and they seek worldly success rather than to live with God. If he were to destroy the things that people love and make them adore him against their will, “then I certainly would do them an injustice by taking away their free will and desire from them […] I reasonably permit them to produce externally what they long for in their minds.”18 At the end of the answer, the tone becomes harder, and the forgiving attitude is contradicted. Because people love things more than the Creator that they know through signs and deeds, and because they are blind, their creations and their idols are accursed.19 This gives the impression that the veneration and love of images is regarded as a difficult question. The language is straightforward and simple but Birgitta is highly aware of the philosophical position that condemns images and things and at the same time she has a great sympathy for the use of beautiful pictures and things in cult and devotion. It is an ambivalent answer, from a philosophical point of view. But it is realistic, and it concerns the devotion of mystics and lay people. This statement gives the possibility both to condemn images and to accept people’s love of them. The condemning attitude was apparently not followed by the letter in Vadstena monastery, at least not when it came to lay brethren, as the following example shows.

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Brother Ingolf’s Love for the Virgin In the middle of the night on 16 June 1388, the Vadstena convent suffered a horrible fire. Barely a month earlier their first formal abbess had been consecrated. Her name was Ingegärd Knutsdotter and she was granddaughter of Saint Birgitta. St. Katarina, the monastery’s first leader, had died four years earlier, and was buried in a wooden chapel. Construction work was proceeding on the church, the canonization process was under way, and three years later, in 1391, Birgitta was canonized by the Pope.20 Diarium Vadstenense, the brethren’s memory book, records the event: DV 47, 2 Further, around midnight the day before the martyrs Vitus’ and Modestus’ feast occurred a dangerous and very violent fire. Almost all of the wooden chapel and both of the stone houses with a large part of the sisters’ home were destroyed. 3 In this fire one of the lay brothers, named Ingolf, was entirely burnt. 4 His love for the Holy Virgin was great, and as he loved the image of her that he had had with him at his entry into the monastery, he threw himself straight into the flames of the burning chapel and grabbed the picture. But when he would get out he was swept in flames. 5 It is our pious belief that the Holy Virgin has taken up his soul to heaven, as he died of his love for her. 2 Item, in profesto Viti et Modesti martirum, circa mediam noctem, incendebatur ignis periculosus et nimis impetuosus, qui combussit totam capellam ligneam et ambas domus lapideas cum magna parte habitacionis sororum. 3 In quo eciam incendio quidam de fratribus laycis, Ingolphus nomine, totaliter est combustus. 4 Hic multum dilexit beatam Virginem, nam, quando capella comburebator, ob amorem ymaginis illius, quam secum attulerat, dum claustrum intravit, in mediis flammis se iniecit arripiensque ymaginem [et] in reditu involutus est flammis. 5 Cuius animam pie credendum est beatam Virgenem, cuius amore mortuus est, ad celos deduxisse.21

The fire is raging, and it is not enough that the sisters’ home and their wooden chapel with Katarina’s grave are in flames. In the bright summer night, the monastery’s members see lay brother Ingolf throwing himself into the flames of the burning chapel to save his picture of Virgin Mary. The pious belief that the Virgin Mary will take up his soul shows that the Birgittines were aware of the theological considerations and the spirit of the words in Book V:8, and of course they were in this establishment phase. They had a God Father who in a responsio had made clear that he understood that images meant different things to different people.

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Can we talk about desire in Ingolf’s case? In accordance with writers such as Gregory the Great, Hugh and Richard of Saint-Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux, mentioned above, it should be possible. The violent love and burning desire come to mind. We may assume that Ingolf, after four years as a lay brother, had developed his spiritual and devotional training and that the image of the Virgin served as a vehicle for this.

Divine Desire Desire is not only directed toward God. God himself is a desiring subject. It is an idea that Bernard of Clairvaux proposes.22 Birgitta was familiar with this tradition through Master Mathias and the Cistercians in Alvastra. Revelation 4 in book V describes Mary’s beauty, and it echoes the Song of Songs, as well as coming close to courtly love poetry. This is a song of love and desire, and I want to focus only on some parts that treat the senses. The son, Jesus, recalls how the father sees the Virgin. He describes how her head was like gleaming gold and her hair like sunbeams, and how he thereby loved her virginity and her control over every illicit desire. The father gets closer: “8 Your eyes were so bright and clear in my Father’s sight that he could see himself in them […] the Father saw your entire will, namely, that you desired nothing but him and wished for nothing except as according to his will.” (8 Oculi tui fuerunt in conspectus Patris mei sic lucidi, quod se speculabatur in eis, […] Pater omnem voluntatem tuam, quod nichil volebas nisi ipsum et nichil desiderabas nisi secundum ipsum.) God rejoices in her beauty and he never takes his eyes away from her. Then the Father hears the Virgin speak, and the divinity is drawn to the Virgin by her voice and her words, “that were sweeter than honey and honeycomb” (13 quia verba tua dulcia sunt super mel et fauum),23 a reference to Psalm 18:10. Touch follows: “17 Your bodily hands touched my humanity, and I rested in your arms with my divinity. Your womb was as pure as ivory and was like a space made out of gems.” (17 Ideo corporales manus tue tractauerunt humanitatem meam et quietus fui inter brachia tua cum deitate mea).24 Finally he smells the scent of fragrant herbs. It is not the angelic salutation to the little Virgin Mary that absorbs Birgitta, rather the visions are concerned with the Incarnation. In a metaphor sight and hearing are equated: “9 your ears were as pure and open as the most beautiful windows when Gabriel laid my will before you and

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when I, God, became flesh in you”, (9 Aures tue fuerunt mundissime et aperte tamquam fenestre pulcherrime, quando protulit tibi Gabriel velle meum et quando ego Deus factus sum in te caro).25 Thus, Birgitta connects to the idea that the incarnation took place through Mary’s ear. Virgin Mary’s memory of the Annunciation is from Book 1:10: I am the Queen of heaven, the Mother of God […]. 8 I saw three wonderful sights. I saw a star, but not the kind that shines from the sky. I saw a light, but not the kind that glows in the world. I sensed a smell, not of herbs or anything like that, but indescribably sweet, which quite filled me up so that I felt like jumping for joy. Right then I heard a voice, but not from a human mouth. I was quite afraid when I heard it and wondered whether it was an illusion. 9 An angel of God then appeared before me in the fairest human shape, although not in the flesh, and he said to me: ‘Hail, full of grace!’ 1 Ego sum regina celi, mater Dei [...] 8 Et cum hec mirarer, vidi tria mirabilia. Vidi namque sydus, sed non quale fulget de celo. Vidi lumen, sed non quale lucet in mundo. Sensi odorem, sed non qualis herbarum vel aliquid tale, sed suauissimum et vere ineffabilem, quo tota replebar et pre gaudio exultabam. Inde statim audiui unam vocem, sed non de ore humano. Et ea audita satis timui, reputans, ne forte esset illusio. 9 Et statim apparuit ante me angelus Dei quasi homo pulcherrimus, sed non carne vestitus, qui dixit ad me: Aue gracia plena!26

Loans, Overlaps and References This revelation on the Incarnation and Annunciation relate to courtly poetry, and quotes the Song of Songs. Such loans, overlaps and references are obvious in terms of lyrics, but the images have not been interpreted along the same lines. I mean that one both can and should analyse images in respect of visual codes and intervisuality in the culture in which they are used as communicative agents. It seems that the Annunciation image to a greater extent than other motifs actually came to portray the courtly and humble ideals that characterize the fourteenth century. A comparison of the knight depicted in the Codex Manesse, Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift, (Fig. 3) and a contemporary Annunciation scene from Vyssí Bród monastery in South Bohemia (Fig. 4) provides a clear example of how visual codes, gestures, glances and body language display general good qualities while it is symbols and attributes that specify the context as earthly or heavenly.

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Figure 4. Annunciation, detail from altarpiece, tempera on wood, Hohenfurt master, c. 1350. Originally from Vyssí Bród monastery, now in National Gallery, Prague. © National Gallery, Prague.

There is a chivalrous genuflection, which is distinctly masculine, with the forward leg standing steady at 90 degrees. The knight stands with an upright torso, head held high and one hand raised, while the other rests on his knee. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo puts genuflection in connection with the medieval court culture and means that by using it in Annunciation scenes it gave a reference to the royal presence in churches and monasteries.27 The courtly culture ideals have, therefore, according to Valdez del Alamo, directly influenced representations of the Annunciation. The overall shape of a genuflecting man and an enthroned lady connects the two motifs. Contrasting colours, reds and blues, and the use of

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similar costumes underline the connection. It is mainly through the attributes we can identify the content of the paintings. The sword through the heart of the lover can be compared to the angel’s scroll. The coat of arms in the Codex Manesse mirrors the Father in the sky in the A. The haloes behind the angel and the Virgin signify the celestial sphere. One is an image of courtly, erotic desire, the other is not. The illumination in the Codex Manesse shows a hurt and enamoured man by depicting a dramatic and fatal bodily injury. The sword goes through his chest, causing a gaping wound and hits his heart. The man genuflects and shows his injury to his lady sitting on a raised throne. The lady may be interpreted as woman whom the man is violently in love with, but she can also represent love itself: Frau Minne. The sword and the wound illustrate the power of love and what it has done to him. The meeting between the archangel Gabriel and Virgin Mary is a picture of the encounter of the heavenly and earthly realms. The scrolls carry the angelic salutation: Ave Maria gracia plena and Mary’s answer Ecce ancilla domini as it is told in Luke 1:26–38. It was understood as the image of the Lord’s promise. One can well imagine an Annunciation staged in a perfectly courteous environment. The Annunciation can be seen as an excellent metaphor for enlightened, unselfish love and good will. Similar ideals were embraced by the chivalrous literature. The male, genuflecting angel and the refined, collected Regina celi were inspired by the notion of chivalry. The elegant yet friendly figures, as well as the lifelike details and surroundings, depicted a both heavenly and earthly presence. The Annunciation with a crowned Virgin and a chivalric angel was used in a Birgittine context. This context is narrow; the inner circle near Saint Birgitta and the convent in Vadstena elaborated the motif and used it for some years at the end of the fourteenth century. The earliest representation of the Annunciation with a chivalric angel and crowned Virgin is found in the murals in the Järstad parish church, near Vadstena, dated to 1360–70. According to the coat of arms, one of the donors was Katarina Bengtsdotter of Aspenäs, Saint Birgitta’s aunt. Similarities to the murals in the sisters’ chapterhouse of Vadstena are obvious both in their style and content (Fig. 5). The genuflecting angel and Virgin Mary as a queen are part of the same visual language as we have seen above. The murals in the chapterhouse were probably made in 1384. There is no doubt that an image in this prominent place was presented according to the Birgittine Order’s ideology at this early time. On an altar frontlet made in Vadstena for the cathedral in Linköping, the chivalric Annunciation is repeated (Fig. 6). This altar frontlet is dated 1400 and is the earliest

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known textile work from the convent in Vadstena. According to the coat of arms, two of the donors were relatives of Saint Birgitta: Sten Bosson (Natt och Dag), and his brother bishop Knut Bosson in Linköping.28 Thus, worldly and religious patterns of desire merged. Saint Birgitta’s main targets for the revelations were knighthood and royal families, her own class. Chivalry stood for ideals that went beyond the court and the knightly poem. It stood for good qualities such as kindness, temperance, faithfulness and humility, that is, fundamental Christian virtues, and as such, they were supposed to apply to all people. When the Birgittine project started in Vadstena, it was a matter for the knighthood, the ecclesiastical elite and royal power in the kingdom. During the years between 1360 and 1400 Birgitta’s daughter Katarina Ulfsdotter, her confessors, sons and entourage frequently travelled back and forth between Rome and Vadstena. The route went through Bohemia and Northern Germany. It was also in the Universities of Prague and Germany the Birgittine brothers and priests in Linköping diocese were educated. As mentioned initially, it was Birgitta’s daughter Katarina who led the monastery until her death in 1384, and the first formal abbess was Birgitta’s granddaughter. It was during this time that the Birgittine visual culture emerged.

Virgin Mary on a Pedestal Birgitta’s text, the iconoclastic discussions and Ingolf’s violent death raise the question of devotional image, idols and likeness.29 The Annunciation on the winged altarpiece shows a crowned, courteously greeting Regina celi, simply and humbly dressed (fig. 7).30 The angel seems to have landed at this very moment. His wings and scroll are still streaming in the wind. Irrespective of the scroll as an ordinary attribute of the Archangel Gabriel and the roses as symbols of both Christ and the Virgin, the image rhetoric directs the beholders’ eyes and evokes their senses: to see the event, to feel the wind, to smell the roses. Furthermore, they both stand on small pedestals. This elevates Mary a little from the ground, and the angel has just landed on his podium. Thus they can meet—deity can come to earth, but humanity must rise to be worthy. But the low podiums are not unproblematic. In medieval art an image standing on a podium or a pedestal was understood as a sign of idolatry, literally and symbolically. Images of the idols falling from pedestals during the exodus from Egypt were a well-established convention. In the medieval courtly culture, women came to be placed on a pedestal, in images

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as an elevated Venus. When the child or virgin were reproduced standing on a pedestal, it meant that they had conquered the pagan idols.31 Another way to use the pedestal as a visual code was to denote “image”: an image of an image is indicated in this manner. It is evident in illustrations to the Pygmalion myth, and in manuscripts where people are depicted praying before images.32 The Annunciation scene is a remarkable picture. The pedestals indicate that this is a picture of a picture––perhaps a special picture of Mary with unique properties? Caroline Walker Bynum argues that the power and holiness that had been ascribed to relics changed towards “holy matter” and images in a broader sense. Devotional objects inspired visions and there was a growing sense, even in learned circles, that material objects were unstable and even alive. At the same time, this led to a growing hostility toward images.33 Following this argument, the painting could then, instead of being a special image of Virgin Mary, underline the difference between the real object of devotion and the image thereof. For Saint Birgitta, and for the people of Vadstena, the power of seeing was well known. When the evil monk challenges the Lord with malicious questions in book V, he asks: “You gave me eyes. May I not look at what I like with them?” The Lord’s answer is short: “No––I gave you eyes that you might see the evils you must flee and the healthful things you must preserve” (4 Questio secunda. Tu dedisti michi oculos; numquid non debeo loqui michi placencia? 9 Responsio secunde questionis. Secundo dedi tibi oculus, vt videas mala fugienda et salubria tibi custodienda).34 This is a truly medieval conception of how desire works.

Conclusion Vision and gaze are about images, and pictures of the beloved could enchant the lover. Birgitta’s revelations and the Birgittine examples show how closely desire and imagery were interrelated. If we look at them as signs of a visual, oral and devotional culture, they give glimpses of how imagery can uncover aspects of desire. By taking notice of the five senses in texts as well as in details and fragments in imagery it is possible to draw a more complete picture of the anxiety concerning how to master bodily desire and enhance the desire for God. The often assumed dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, corporeal and spiritual in the Middle Ages is a view that is contradicted by the medieval belief that the world was a creation of God as declared through the Bible. People regarded themselves as a religious individuals

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and it was in a religious context they manifested themselves and their family. Instead of taking extreme positions pro and contra of image use, Saint Birgitta and the Birgittines had an attitude that acknowledged that different people have different needs. This is evident in the reaction to love for an image. It also shows in the staging of the Annunciation scene in Vadstena, which connects to an idea of chivalry that is at the same time a spiritual ideal. These scenes furthermore communicate Saint Birgitta’s and the Birgittines’ social identities at the time when Vadstena monastery was established.

Notes 1 See e.g. Wolfgang Kemp, “Medieval Pictorial Systems,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, edited by Brendan Cassidy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 121–33, Meyer Schapiro, Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (New York: Georges Braziller, 1996), and Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). 2 Michael Camille, “Gothic Signs and Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral,” Yale French Studies 80 (1991), 151. 3 See Anders Cullhed in this volume. 4 See Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). 5 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 31. 6 Hugh Feiss, ed., On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St Victor (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), 5, 144. 7 Ibid., 139. 8 Ibid., 83–85. 9 See e.g. Michael Camille, “Gothic Signs,” 158, and Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 152. 10 C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 185. 11 See Ola Sigurdson, Himmelska kroppar: Inkarnation, blick, kroppslighet (Göteborg: Glänta, 2006), 16–19. 12 Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 220. Libri Carolini, IV, 16 (PL. 98, c. 1219), translated by Władysław Tatarkiewicz in History of Aesthetics: Medieval Aesthetics (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 100. 13 Abbot Suger, “The Book of Suger, Abbot of St.-Denis, on What Was Done under His Administration,” in A Documentary History of Art. Vol. 1: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 30.

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Sarah Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 19–20. 15 Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: the Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans,” Art Bulletin 71, 1 (1989), 20–46. 16 Birgit Klockars, Birgitta och böckerna (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966), 228–29. 17 Denis Searby and Bridget Morris, eds., The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Volume 2. Liber Caelestis, Books IV–V (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 267. 18 Birgitta V, intr 8: 6, 10–11, in Revelaciones. Lib. 5, Liber questionum (Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1971): “Interrogatio octava, Responsio questionis prime: 10 […] et me contra voluntatem eorum adorari permitterem, facerem vtique eis iniuriam, auferendo eis liberum arbitrium et desiderium eorum 11[…] propterea racionabiliter permitto, vt, quod diligunt et appetunt mente, et opere exterius perficiant.” 19 Searby and Morris, eds. Revelations, Book V, intr. 8:6, 12–13. 20 For an overview see Bridget Morris, St. Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999). 21 Claes Gejrot, ed., Diarium Vadstenense, The Memorial Book of Vadstena Abbey: A Critical Edition with an Introduction (Stockholm: Stockholm University, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), 1388 DV n. 47, 2–6. The translation into English is mine, checked by Claes Gejrot. 22 Kristeva, Tales of Love, 160. 23 Searby and Morris, eds. Revelations, Book V, rev. 4,13. 24 Ibid,, rev. 4, 17. 25 Ibid., rev. 4, 9. 26 Denis Searby and Bridget Morris, eds., The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Volume 1. Liber Caelestis, Books I–III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Book I, rev. 10, 8–9. Birgitta, Revelaciones Book 1 with magister Mathias’ prologue, edited by Carl-Gustaf Undhagen (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitetsakademien 1977) I, Libri primi cap. 10, 8–9. 27 Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo, “Triumphal Visions and Monastic Devotion: The Annunciation Relief of Santo Domingo de Silos,” Gesta 29, no. 2 (1990): 175–76. 28 Mia Åkestam, “For a Chosen Few—the Annunciation Motif in a Birgittine Context,” in Santa Brigida, Napoli, l’Italia: atti del convegno di studi italo-svedese, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 10–11 maggio 2006, edited by Olle Ferm, Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese and Marcello Rotili (Napoli: Arte tipografica, 2009): 195–98. 29 Camille, Gothic Idol, 298–337. 30 See Mia Åkestam Bebådelsebilder: Om bildbruk under medeltiden (Stockholm: Runica et Mediaevalia, 2010), 210–232, 349–50. 31 See Camille, Gothic Idol, 198–200. 32 See Camille, Gothic Idol, 220–21. 33 Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011): 25–29.

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Searby and Morris, eds. Revelations, Book V, Intr 1: 4, 9, Birgitta, Revelaciones. Lib. 5, Liber questionum, edited by Birger Bergh (Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historieoch antikvitetsakademien, 1971): 99.

Bibliography Aili, Hans and Jan Svanberg. Imagines Sanctæ Birgittæ, the Earliest Manuscripts and Panelpaintings Related to the Revelations of Saint Birgitta of Sweden, vols 1+2. Stockholm: The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, 2003. Åkestam, Mia. Bebådelsebilder: Om bildbruk under medeltiden. Diss. Stockholm: Runica et Mediaevalia, 2010. —. “For a chosen few—the Annunciation motif in a Birgittine context.” In Santa Brigida, Napoli, l’Italia: atti del convegno di studi italo-svedese, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 10–11 maggio 2006, edited by Olle Ferm, Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese and Marcello Rotili, 191–207. Napoli: Arte tipografica, 2009. Birgitta. Revelaciones. Book 1 = Lib. 1, with Magister Mathias’ Prologue. Edited by Carl-Gustaf Undhagen. Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1977. —. Revelaciones. Lib. 5, Liber questionum. Edited by Birger Bergh. Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1971. —. Revelaciones. Book 6 = Lib. 6. Edited by Birger Bergh. Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1991. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York: Zone Books, 2011. Camille, Michael. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image Making in Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. —. “Gothic Signs and Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral.” Yale French Studies 80 (1991):151–70. Feiss, Hugh, ed. On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St Victor. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011. Garnier, François. Le langage de l’image au Moyen Age, I+II. Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1982–89. Gejrot, Claes, ed. Diarium Vadstenense, The Memorial Book of Vadstena Abbey: A Critical Edition with an Introduction. Diss. Stockholm: Stockholm University, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988. Gejrot, Claes, Sara Risberg and Mia Åkestam, eds. Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena: Papers From a Symposium in Stockholm 4–6 October 2007. Stockholm: Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 2010.

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Gilmore Holt, Elizabeth, ed. A Documentary History of Art, Volume 1. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Hamburger, Jeffrey F. “The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: The Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans.” Art Bulletin 71, 1 (1989): 20–46. Jaeger, C. Stephen. Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Kemp, Wolfgang. “Medieval Pictorial Systems.” In Iconography at the Crossroads, edited by Brendan Cassidy, 121–33. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Klockars, Birgit. Birgitta och böckerna: En undersökning av heliga Birgittas källor. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966. Kristeva, Julia. Tales of Love. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. Malm, Mats. The Soul of Poetry Redefined: Vacillations of Mimesis from Aristotle to Romanticism. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012. Migne, J.-P., ed. Patrologiae cursus completus [PL]. Series Latina. 1–217. Paris: apud J.-P. Migne editorem, 1844–55. Morris, Bridget. St. Birgitta of Sweden. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999. Schapiro, Meyer. Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language. New York: Georges Braziller, 1996. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. Searby, Denis and Bridget Morris, eds. The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Volume 1. Liber Caelestis, Books I–III. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. —. The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Volume 2. Liber Caelestis, Books IV–V. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. —. The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Volume 3. Liber Caelestis, Books VI–VII (e-book), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 (Oxford Scholarship Online: http://www.sub.su.se/sok.aspx.) Stanbury, Sarah. The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Sigurdson, Ola. Himmelska kroppar, inkarnation, blick, kroppslighet. Göteborg: Glänta, 2006. Tatarkiewicz, Władysław. History of Aesthetics. The Hague: Mouton, 1970–74.

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Valdez del Alamo, Elizabeth. “Triumphal Visions and Monastic Devotion: The Annunciation Relief of Santo Domingo de Silos.” Gesta 29, no. 2 (1990): 167–88.

PETRARCH ON DESIRE AND VIRTUE ERLAND SELLBERG

Early scholars of Renaissance studies have frequently regarded Francis Petrarch as the father or the initiator of Renaissance humanism.1 Petrarch collected manuscripts of Greek and Roman literature, he certainly announced a deep fondness for Classical Antiquity and rhetorical culture, and he censured the contemporary scholastic curriculum in harsh words. Considering these three criteria, he certainly was a typical humanist. Notwithstanding, in many ways he was more bound to the Christian and medieval outlook than the Quattrocento humanists were. He never mastered Greek, and he is unlikely to have been able to read extensively the manuscripts of Plato that he acquired for his library with such delight.2 He was not, as his eminent predecessor, Dante, a man with political ambitions but remained all his life a man of letters. This did not signify a lack of interest in political matters: on the contrary, he took part in central political debates of his time. Like Dante he strongly criticized the increasing secular power of the Church, and he also let himself be carried away by the visionary enthusiasm of Cola di Rienzo’s revolt in 1347 in order to restore the ancient Roman republic. However, his main effort was to articulate a new cultural programme uniting a Christian outlook with Classical traditions. So far we can definitely count him among the first generation of humanists. He had to face problems similar to those that generations of medieval theologians had grappled with in their endeavours to reinstate ancient philosophy and culture within a Christian framework. Moreover, the inflow of the whole Aristotelian corpus made it necessary for the scholastics to find ways to handle a completely new philosophical predicament. To be sure, Petrarch was no theologian or scholastic philosopher: he considered the problem from a perspective of literary and rhetorical traditions. Nevertheless, it would be a serious mistake to think that Petrarch’s scholarly life would imply that he disregarded piety or was uninterested in religion. He struggled incessantly to exculpate himself for not making the same decisions as his brother Gherardo, who withdrew to a monastery for a life of contemplation. In De vita solitaria, Petrarch argued for his choice

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by insisting that literary studies actually constituted as contemplative a life as Gherardo’s. Modern scholars have for the last century intensely discussed Petrarch and the impact of his letters and treatises on later Renaissance humanism. Notwithstanding all this, his influence for many centuries was primarily based on his poetry and the way he had exposed his passionate love. Furthermore, apart from all questions concerning his poetry and his love for Laura, and apart from the problems of dating his production, animated discussions have been concentrated on the impact that ancient literature and philosophy had on Petrarch. Depending on the answers to such questions, scholars have emphasized or diminished the influence of theology on his writings. Eminent scholars such as Hans Baron and P. O. Kristeller have stressed the importance of ancient literature and classical legacy for Petrarch’s humanism, while Charles Trinkaus and later Giuseppe Mazzotta have emphasized the Christian core of Petrarch’s humanism. The most important issues at stake have been to decide the full implications of concepts such as virtue, will, desire, vice, grace, glory and so on. The first of these notions can be considered to be all-embracing and therefore more essential than the others. Was this notion of virtue a philosophical idea (in Latin most eloquently formulated by Cicero), or was it a Christian concept, or should we consider Petrarch’s virtus as an amalgamation of the two? In one of Petrarch’s most famous anti-scholastic writings, On his own ignorance and that of many others, he objected to the extensive use of a pagan—in this case Aristotelian—moral philosophy. According to Petrarch, the philosopher’s concept of virtue would never be sufficient for a Christian. Certainly we could learn a lot of morals or responsibility from Cicero’s ethical doctrine—but nothing about the effects of true virtue. Petrarch observes that “it is one thing to know, and another to love; one thing to understand, and another to will” and further on he goes on: “What good is there in knowing what virtue is, if the knowledge doesn’t make us love it? What point is there in knowing vice, if this knowledge doesn’t make us shun it?”3 This passage was written by an ageing Petrarch, but his concern for the meaning of virtue and its consequences went far back in time. As a matter of fact it had bearings on practically all his writings. Of course, as we could see in the quotation above, this constant focus on virtue also has to include its opposite: vice, or other kinds of non-virtuous behaviour. In a letter to a friend, Giovanni Aghinolfi, from his hometown of Arezzo, Petrarch remarked that nothing in life really mattered more than virtue. Virtus was according to him the only substantial force in human beings and, consequently, the absolute dividing line between those who

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could be saved and those who could not but end up in eternal damnation. It was virtue alone that could “make blessed those who embrace her and wretched those who forsake her”. That being so, Petrarch declared his preference for the Stoic definition of virtue: “feeling rightly about God and acting rightly among men”.4

Between Virtue and Desire In 1341 on Easter Sunday, Petrarch was crowned magnus poeta et historicus. In Posteritati (Letter to Posterity), Petrarch describes how he solemnly received the laurel crown at the top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, after having been examined by King Robert of Anjou in Naples. He was rewarded for his magnificent poem Africa, which he wanted to be a new Aeneid. The first line of the long poem asked the Muse to extol the conqueror of the Punic Africa, Scipio Africanus, for his “tremendous feats of war”; here the word “virtue” is missing but the purport is still obvious.5 The story behind Africa was accurately described by Livy and well known to a learned reader like Petrarch who spent considerable time in Avignon working with Livy’s text. He was versed in the early Roman history of the power conflict of the Western Mediterranean, which was a dominant part of the political agenda of Rome. The first Punic War had not solved the problems for the Romans to save their commercial and political interests; accordingly, another war seemed to be inevitable sooner or later.6 The mission of striking the final blow to the Carthaginians fell on Scipio the Elder. In order to do this, he and the Romans had to trust the African allies they had made against the locally dominant Carthage. However, a problem arose that Scipio had to solve unless the Romans were to end up in huge difficulties. One of the most important Roman confederates was the Numidian king Massinissa, who at the outset of the war had supported the Carthaginians but later had switched over to the Roman side, mostly thanks to a close friendship with Scipio. According to the vivid account of Livy, a passionate love story threatened to jeopardize the alliance. It was the Carthaginian princess Sophonisba, a daughter of Hasdrubal, who had aroused Massinissa’s amorous feelings. Livy tells how Massinissa even sent a vial with lethal venom in order to save her from the humiliating and painful captivity of the Romans.7 The episode did not play a significant role in the turnabouts of the Punic War—when Petrarch portrayed Scipio in De viris illustribus he did not even mention this episode, but now he made it a main point of his poem and thoroughly elaborated the consequences of Scipio’s and Massinissa’s

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dalliance. A probable reason was the opportunity it gave him to demonstrate how Scipio’s virtuous disposition saved the king from the clutches of passionate desire. Another motive may have been to make the obvious comparison with the amorous affair between the Carthaginian queen Dido and Aeneas, which according to the Aeneid threatened the latter’s mission to found Rome.8 Even though there are differences, the conflict between virtue and desire is central in both cases. In his poem Petrarch relates how Massinissa promised Sophonisba a marriage and how they fled to an abandoned castle to indulge in their love. Even though Massinissa was tormented with visual pictures of “the purity of heart and lofty spirit of the Roman chief” and could not “doubt that Scipio will oppose his passion”, he spent the night with the princess.9 When Scipio learns of Massinissa’s betrayal, he gathers that it all happened because of Sophonisba’s machinations and because of his friend’s carnal weakness. He immediately looks him up and severely lectures him about the menace of human desire that is threatening virtue, and reminds him of his duty. Massinissa tries to defend himself but finally submits to Scipio’s unrelenting arguing. In a long soliloquy Massinissa tries in vain to put off what has become frightfully obvious. He realizes that his obligation is to stick to virtue, and in this case it means saving the treaty with the Romans; thus he has to rid himself of Sophonisba and the only possible way is to let her die. Hence, he sends her a messenger boy delivering poison and words of farewell that end with the lines: “The Roman chief forbids it [sc. all other solutions than this]. And the gods above have willed and Fortune granted that his power and strength, far mightier than mine, should overcome me.”10 The quotation reveals how Massinissa actually reduces his own ability to act virtuously and instead magnifies Scipio’s capacity. It is apparent how important a role Scipio’s virtue played for the outcome of this unhappy romance and the subsequent Roman victory. Compared to the love story in the Aeneid, the differences are obvious. In Petrarch’s poem the passionate protagonist is the man; in Virgil’s poem it is the woman who succumbs to desire. Furthermore, Massinissa’s virtue was only challenged: he turns out to be truly virtuous by mastering his desire and feelings. But unlike Aeneas, who was hardly devastated by passion—it was Dido who was raving with desire for her lover—Massinissa’s virtue depends on his obedience to the “Roman chief”. Aeneas’s trial was rather the choice between the conflicting feelings of duty to Dido and to his mission.11

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The Importance of Virtue Petrarch had experienced a similar amorous attraction to Laura a few years earlier; indeed he could claim to know the power of passion and desire. Laura played an important part in his endeavours to become poeta laureatus. The verbal similarity between the received laurel and the beloved Laura was manifest already to his contemporaries, and he adamantly repudiated any suggestion that Laura for that reason should be supposed to be fictitious.12 Regardless of Laura’s genuine status in the poet’s life, in his writings Laura represented an unattainable object of desire and admiration; the latter feeling is most evident in his late work Trionfi. Thus most scholars agree in emphasizing the enormous impact of Laura on Petrarch, but Aldo S. Bernardo insists that considering Petrarch’s later expressed deprecation of his love poems, we have to regard Scipio as more important. It is unquestionable that the picture of Laura in a way is contradictory. Certainly Petrarch spent much time extolling and desiring her, but occasionally he also deplored the moment when his eyes fell on her. Such strong feelings Scipio did not arouse. In that respect it was easy for Petrarch to look upon him as a perfect and virtuous man. Nevertheless it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question of which he would have preferred, a virtuous way or a way of desire and passion. Most of his writings were about this difficulty.13 According to Petrarch himself, Africa was his most important work, and an easily drawn conclusion would be that Scipio’s way to demonstrate virtue consequently should be considered most worthy of imitation. However, it is necessary to avoid taking Petrarch’s words too literally. With his poem about Scipio he excellently competed with the most magnificent of the Roman poets and showed that he could match Virgil’s standard. Doing so, Petrarch’s humanist learning was conspicuously put into practice, rather than his Christian notions. In the last book of Africa, where he describes Scipio’s journey back to Rome on favourable waves and with an advantageous wind, Petrarch brings in the Roman poet Ennius (239–169 BC) in the narrative. At the beginning of the poem, in Scipio’s dream where he spoke to his father, the latter had prophesied that Petrarch would actually be the second Ennius and write about Scipio’s achievements.14 In real life Ennius and Scipio were close friends but of course the passage in Africa was a manifestation of genuine poetic imagination. Petrarch made Scipio request Ennius to utter some words of wisdom. Ennius pretended to be puzzled by Scipio’s demand because it seemed so obvious

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“that the years / before us never brought a soul to light / better exemplifying noble worth / than our own age has witnessed and henceforth / no mortal will conceive a great design / who will not, as he loftily aspires, / have on his lips your virtuous name”. And some lines further on, Ennius says that Scipio’s honour would be eternal: “Since Virtue may not further upward rise I fear lest it descend”.15 Ennius expressed a deep regret that he felt himself to be in such want of the verbal instruments needed to sing the praises of Scipio in a way that would do his deeds and his virtue full justice. Instead, he related a meeting in a dream he had had the night before the decisive battle, where he had met no-one less than Homer who had revealed to his Roman poet colleague the outcome of the approaching encounter and also had foreboded that in future ages Petrarch would be born to restore Latin poetry and be able to fully depict the glorious deeds and virtue of Scipio.16 Petrarch was hardly modest in these lines and he also had Homer express his vision that in some remote future even Rome would appreciate him and stop repenting that it had allowed such a magnificent town so close in Tuscany to be founded. Still more important was the passage where Homer actually prophesied that Petrarch, unless he were subjected to all sorts of temptations, would be the poet worthy of the task of describing Scipio’s virtuous and magnificent achievements. We have reason to further reflect on the implication of the nature of the temptations that Homer (or rather, Petrarch) has in mind.17 When Petrarch chose to write his paramount poem on Scipio, it was certainly not by mere chance. Of course he had no intention to outcompete his ancient predecessors, rather he wanted to remind readers of their greatness. They as well as their topics were history. And Petrarch’s opinion of the office of poetry was to elaborate and use history in a way that revealed what had not previously been seen or not completely comprehended, i.e. “to lay down / a firm foundation of the truth whereon / he then may build a cloud-like structure, sweet/ and varied, veiling the foundation”.18 However, Petrarch had problems making his poem absorbing; his protagonist Scipio was too virtuous and one-dimensional to captivate the readers. Nevertheless he made Ennius in his dream foreshadow all the envy and ingratitude that Scipio in spite of all his sacrifices and his virtue, would yet endure back in Rome. However, the illustrious Roman soldier never gave in to feelings of despair or passion. He was presented as a man of unique virtue. Because of his qualities he could fully understand the agonies of passion that tormented Massinissa but still also convince the king to keep to virtue and resist the sweet words of Sophonisba. Eventually, thanks to Scipio, Massinissa also behaved virtuously.

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Desire or voluptas plays a significant and important role in Africa, yet not a positive one. It helps to make the character of the protagonist of the drama clean-cut and explains the importance of the historical drama. Its purpose is to give Scipio an opportunity to show the power and importance of his virtue; the refulgence of it even assisted Massinissa in the fight against his love and desire for Sophonisba. Thereby Scipio eminently confirms what his father, Publius Cornelius, had prophesied in the first dream of the poem where he encouraged his son to be guided by virtue as the only and true way to heaven.19 The concept of virtue in ancient Rome implied that manhood was manifested in courage but also displayed in fidelity to all kinds of commitments and piety to the gods of family and patria. During the Middle Ages virtue was easily enough redressed in a Christian garb. In the case of Scipio, Petrarch could oscillate without any problems between an ancient and a Christian significance. In that respect he gave an example for future humanists to follow.

Desire and Temptations All this has bearing on Petrarch’s own choices, or rather how he handled them afterwards. Owing to Africa and his subsequent coronation in Rome, he attained a leading position in the learned republic. Yet he was certainly aware that he was a man filled with passions and longing for love. He alludes to his potential weakness, as we have already seen when Homer foreboded that only temptations could distract him from his poetic mission. Of course, all this was mostly about his desire for Laura. Laura was enigmatic. We don’t know for sure anything about her, not even if she really existed. Relying mostly on Petrarch’s own words, we have to assume her existence; there is however no question about her impact on Petrarch’s writing. He told of how his eyes fell on her during a morning service in the spring of 1327, and that this moment changed his life. He extolled her qualities in his Canzoniere, but obviously distance was essential. Like Dante before him, he adapted his love poems to the rules of a courtly love genre according to which the poet should verbally praise and desire a lady whose virtuous lifestyle and appearance made her unattainable for anything but admiration at a distance. Dante and Petrarch wrote love poems far better than other court poets, but we do not know the character of Petrarch’s desire for Laura. The fact that it was from a very dear friend of his, whom he used to call his Socrates, that Petrarch was told about Laura’s death from plague in 1348 makes us assume that at least for a time the deceased Laura actually had been the Laura that we meet in

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the poems. However, Petrarch’s affection for Laura never led any further than to a verbal display of all her perfection and his constant longing for her love; after her death he also expressed his happiness at not having given in to temptation but keeping desire within virtuous proportion.20 We know that he had carnal relationships with other women, and that he also fathered at least two children. Yet, it was the love and desire for Laura that he considered to be the tangible temptation of life. Real or imagined, Laura certainly represented love and desire for Petrarch. Aldo Bernardo compares the way Scipio and Laura are described by the poet as virtuous examples, and he also argues for looking on Laura at the end of Trionfi as a spirit leading others to eternal fame and beauty, almost as Beatrice had done. Bernardo, however, also remarks that in contrast to Dante’s way of making a clear distinction between Beatrice and Virgil, Petrarch never revealed any preference of Laura’s more Christian virtue to Scipio’s pagan virtue. Instead Bernardo maintains that Laura for Petrarch was more of an inspiration “that moves poets and men of letters to literary expression” while Scipio rather was depicted as “the very stuff of ‘true’ poetry: the perfect hero of Roman history, valorous and human, realistic and pious, simple and wise, caring for things that are optima et pulcherrima, truly the prototype of ancient virtues”.21 In a humanist perspective, Scipio was naturally a much better prototype of virtue than Laura. Still it could be questioned whether Petrarch’s intention really was to compare the virtue of the ancient Roman soldier and this Christian and extremely virtuous object of the poet’s desires and admiration. The accentuation of Scipio’s moral standard could justify Petrarch’s obvious fascination with ancient culture and literature. Laura raised other problems, but his emphasis on her spiritual leadership could be considered to be a justifying argument. Fundamentally, most of Petrarch’s writings testify not only to his frank approval of ancient literature, but most importantly to his willingness to call in question and also to argue for the choices he had made. It is obvious in De vita solitaria, where he adamantly insists that a contemplative life does not necessarily mean a life in monastic seclusion for prayers and reading of the Holy Script but rather a life of learned studies. To Petrarch, Seneca’s words on the necessity of writing (“otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura”) were important ones and they were often quoted. There could not be a contemplative tranquillity without books; that would have been equivalent to death and to be buried yet still alive.22 In De vita solitaria Petrarch adds that “isolation without literature is exile, prison, torture; supply literature, and it becomes your country, freedom, and delight”.23

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Of still more bearing on Petrarch’s attitude to these questions was his most important philosophical treatise, Secretum meum. Here he is thoroughly engrossed in the complex of problems concerning righteous living. It is always difficult to date manuscripts but probably this one was written around the end of the 1340s and the 1350s. Like Plato, he had chosen to penetrate different aspects of his problem in the form of a dialogue, taking place between himself and St Augustine under surveillance of a personified Truth. There has been an intense scholarly debate about the influence of the famous Father of the Church on Petrarch. Of course it was not by chance that he let Augustine be his interlocutor in the dialogue. Was the Church Father only a kind of alter ego, someone that Petrarch thought he should strive to be like? Or should we look upon Augustine in this case as a symbol or representative of a more or less typical Christian view or should we rather become engrossed in the intricate question of how he influenced Petrarch’s views?24 There is no certain answer. Scholars disagree not so much on the point of Augustine’s influence but rather on the importance of it and what bearing it had on Petrarch’s humanism. Kristeller emphasized the significance of Petrarch’s humanism and his interest in rhetoric, and he considered his attention to philosophical questions of subordinate importance. According to him, Petrarch actually was a forerunner of Renaissance Humanism.25 Alexander Lee, however, most adamantly argues for the opposite conviction, and he also launches an explanation for the obvious contradictions of Petrarch’s Augustine in Secretum. Here the Church Father reproached Petrarch for not really yearning for salvation with all his heart. According to Augustine, he lacked a true will, voluntas, and therefore his lamentations about his sinfulness and his longing for grace were not to be considered serious.26 Lee also argues that Secretum actually reveals an Augustinian rather than a Stoic or Humanist supremacy. Such a view would also change the interpretation of the dialogue at least somewhat. Lee questions whether Secretum really to such an extent was about the author’s agonies when facing the unbridgeable conflict between a humanist learning and a passionate desire for love on one hand and a fideistic perspective on the other, where the only hope would be divine Grace.27 If instead we follow Lee, we would rather focus on what method was available to Petrarch to solve his main problems in order to rescue his soul. All would be a matter of knowledge and will. Obviously the conclusion would be that Petrarch would have to choose between two apparent alternatives, desire and passions on one hand and a virtuous life on the other. The problem, however, could also be put in another way: Was virtue

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something that was deeply founded in one’s soul and character and displayed in will and behaviour, or was it rather a matter merely of knowledge? How should we understand Petrarch when he says that he wants but he isn’t able to? The dilemma according to Augustine in Secretum would be if he really wanted redemption with all his heart. And that was also the theme of the first day’s discussion of the dialogue. Like a number of other scholars, Lee emphasizes the huge impact Augustine had on Petrarch’s humanism. It was among others via the Church Father that the poet found the way to the classical literature of Cicero and Seneca. Another consequence of such an outlook concerns Africa and the evaluation of Scipio’s role for Petrarch. Lee definitely diminishes the pagan strains. The virtue of Scipio would then be depreciated as a faint resemblance of Christian piety.28 Although Lee has some good points, he presses his case too hard. The very passage where Cicero let Scipio the Younger relate his famous dream could easily enough be given such a Christian decoding through Macrobius’ Neoplatonic commentary, which became quite frequent during the centuries before Petrarch. Still the question to be answered is whether these explications are likely and not just possible. Would the lines in Africa—where instead Scipio the elder is told by his father in a dream to “Let piety abide within your hearts” and “a life adorned by practice of this virtue will assure the way to Heaven”—be given such an interpretation? Was Petrarch, also in those and other cases, hinting at a pure Christian virtue?29 It would be difficult to deny a common medieval tradition of giving ancient and pagan reasoning a Christian reading. From such a perspective Petrarch’s way of making virtue resemble Christian piety would be less conspicuous. The question at stake is then whether Petrarch had begun developing a more Humanist decoding of the ancient literature, as Kristeller presumes, and if he was able at will to compare and choose in a more deliberate mode between an Augustinian and a classical outlook. The discussion in Secretum certainly touched the most overwhelming and urgent problems in Petrarch’s life. Since on the first day he allowed Augustine to give Francis a verbal bashing for the lack of real will to get rid of all that hindered his way to redemption, the two other days’ dialogue permanently focuses on learning and fame and eventually on amorous love and particularly of Laura. Soon it becomes obvious that Petrarch’s interest in learning and his inclination to long for glory are just two stumbling blocks in the discussion. These issues are no real obstacles. Augustine soon loses interest in pressing these points and goes for the much more problematic one, Francis’ infatuation with Laura. The Church Father relates Plato’s view that nothing obstructs the way to God as much as carnal

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love and desire.30 We are then back at the ominous words in Africa that only temptations could prevent Petrarch from reaching his destination to display Scipio’s and others’ virtue in the way they should according to the high ancient and humanist standard. Since Late Antiquity, being a good Christian involved a constant struggle between living a pious and virtuous life according to theological demands and at the same time having a desire for carnal love, and an emergent inclination towards ancient, pagan literature and ideas. Should we agree with Burckhardt and consider Petrarch to have been the first modern man? Should his writings and his struggles with Augustine in Secretum be apprehended as a kind of smokescreen, a display of impressive scholarship? Or should all that be taken as an honest exposure of the utmost despair? Such questions are impossible to answer with certainty. The conclusion of Secretum may however give a key or rather a hint. Augustine had attacked Francis vigorously but not seriously damaged his confidence. The latter admitted that he could not earnestly maintain the position that he had been attracted only to Laura’s high moral standards as foreboding a divine light; maybe he even was infatuated by her beauty too. Who could know such things? He admitted that his love for Laura had happened at the same time as his life had turned in a direction not heading toward the goals that the Church Father would have wanted him to choose, and he also admitted that he had shown an interest not only in Laura’s soul but also in her body. Nevertheless he obviously did not surrender in despair. He just observed that it would be good if the internal turmoil ended and he was favoured by Fate.31 It is unlikely that Petrarch did not display a real agony and despair that he at least sometimes had experienced himself, but it would be even more unlikely that his admiration of ancient culture would not have influenced him for good. He turned all readings into literature, making them learned discussions and letters in the same way as the ancient authors and philosophers had done, and by comparing with such high models he rendered himself a reputation, not for piety, or power, but most of all for scholarship.

Notes 1

P. O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 5. Kristeller prefers to call him the first great representative of Renaissance humanism. The scholarship on Petrarch is huge and almost unending but I have the advantage of trusting an excellent outline of Petrarch that unfortunately is in Swedish: Anders Hallengren, Petrarca i Provence: Den stora kärleken och ensamhetens liv (Stockholm: Alpha Omega pocket, 2003). For a presentation

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of modern scholarship on Petrarch’s writings, see Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi, eds. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009). 2 P. O. Kristeller, “Humanism” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 127–128. Petrarch states that there were at least sixteen of Plato’s books in his library. See Francesco Petrarca, “De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia” (finished in 1371), in Invectives, edited and translated by David Marsh (Harvard: The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2003), 329. 3 Petrarca, “De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia”, 315. 4 Francesco Petrarca, Ep. Fam. XI: 3:9–10: “[…] que virtutem esse ait recte sentire de Deo et recte inter homines agere” in Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae: tum quae adhuc tum quae nondum editae familiarum scilicet libri XXIIII; variarum liber unicus nunc primum integri et ad fidem codicum optimorum vulgati Francisci Petrarcae; studio et cura Iosephi Fracassetti (Florentiae: Monnier, 1859–1863). Quotation in English from Aldo S. Bernardo’s translation in Francesco Petrarca, Letters on Familiar Matters: Rerum familiarum libri IX–XVI (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 90. 5 In the English translation it is explicitly declared about Scipio that he was “illustrious in virtue”. Aldo S. Bernardo, Petrarch, Scipio and the “Africa”: The Birth of Humanism’s Dream (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), 21. 6 Silius Italicus’s poem Punicorum libri septemdecim was written at the end of the first century AD and had no influence on Petrarch; it was retrieved by Bracciolini at the beginning of the fifteenth century. 7 Livy, Ab urbe condita, XXX:12–15. 8 Bernardo discusses the role of the episode. See Bernardo, Petrarch, 26–31. Recently Simone Marchesi has discussed the importance of Dido for Petrarch’s plot. See Simone Marchesi, “Petrarch’s Philological Epic (Africa)” in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, edited by Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 113–130. 9 Petrarch’s Africa V: 170–173. Quotation in English according to Petrarch’s Africa, translated and annotated by Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), 89 (verses 229–232). 10 Petrarch, Africa V: 710–712, Bergin and Wilson, 107 (verses 928–931). 11 Marchesi, 119–123; cf. Bernardo, Petrarch, 26 and 143. 12 Bernardo, Petrarch, 48. On Petrarch’s reaction to such suggestions, see Petrarca, Ep. Fam. II:9, 19–20. 13 Bernardo, Petrarch, 5–6. 14 Petrarch, Africa II: 443. 15 Petrarch, Africa IX: 27–28 and 44–45. Bergin and Wilson, 224 (34–40 and 59– 60). 16 Petrarch, Africa IX: 223–289.

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17 Petrarch, Africa IX: 254–267: “[…] et nullo praevertet turbine coeptum impetus alter iter […]”. Bergin and Wilson translate the line “[…] and no new tempest turn him from his course […]” (232 and verse 362). 18 Petrarch, Africa IX: 92–94. Bergin and Wilson, 226 (124–127). 19 Petrarch, Africa I: 485 and 498. 20 The friend’s real name was Lodewijk Heyligen, with whom Petrarch often exchanged letters (See Petrarch, Ep. Fam. IX:9.) and Jan Papy, “Petrarch’s ideal, literary critic ‘Socrates’”, in Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance, edited by Karl A. E. Enenkel and Jan Papy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 26–28. 21 Bernardo, Petrarch, 68–69. 22 Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, 82,3. 23 Petrarch, The Life of Solitude by Francis Petrarch, translated by Jacob Zeitlin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924), 131. 24 Nicholas Mann, Petrarch (Oxford UP, 1984), 13–14. 25 P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper & Row, 1961) 84–85, 98–99 and 102. 26 Alexander Lee, Petrarch and St. Augustine: Classical Scholarship, Christian Theology and the Origins of the Renaissance in Italy (Brill: Leiden, 2012), 30 and 354. Cf. Bartolo Martinelli, Il “Secretum” contesto (Naples: Loffredo, 1982), 33. 27 Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (London, 1970), I: 95. See also Lee, Petrarch, 91–92. 28 Lee, Petrarch, 64–66 29 Petrarch, Africa I: 483–487. Bergin and Wilson, 18 (666–672). 30 Petrarch, Secretum, II: “Unum semper ante oculos habeto Platonis superiorem illam haud spernendam esse sententiam: ab agnitione divinitatis nil magis quam appetitus carnales et inflammatam obstare libidinem” in Petrarch’s Secretum, with introduction, notes and critical anthology by Davy A. Carozza and H. James Shey (New York: Peter Lang, 1989). 31 Petrarch, Secretum: The last lines are: “O utinam id michi contingat, quod precaris; ut et duce Deo integer ex tot anfractibus evadam, et, dum vocantem sequor, non excitem ipse pulverem in oculos meos; subsidantque fluctus animi, sileat mundus et fortuna non obstrepat.”

Bibliography Bernardo, Aldo S. Petrarch, Scipio and the “Africa”: The Birth of Humanism’s Dream. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962. Hallengren, Anders. Petrarca i Provence: Den stora kärleken och ensamhetens liv. Stockholm: Alpha Omega pocket, 2003. Kirkham, Victoria and Armando Maggi, eds. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Kristeller, P. O., Eight Philosophers of the Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964.

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—. “Humanism.” In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. —. Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Lee, Alexander. Petrarch and St. Augustine: Classical Scholarship, Christian Theology and the Origins of the Renaissance in Italy. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Livy. “Ab urbe condita liber XXX.” In Livy, vol. VIII, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1949. Mann, Nicholas. Petrarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Marchesi, Simone. “Petrarch’s Philological Epic (Africa).” In Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, edited by Victoria Kirkham and Armandi Maggi. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Martinelli, Bartolo. Il “Secretum” contesto. Naples: Loffredo, 1982. Papy, Jan. “Petrarch’s ideal, literary critic ‘Socrates’”. In Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance, edited by Karl A. E. Enenkel and Jan Papy. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Petrarca, Francesco. “De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia”. In Francesco Petrarca, Invectives, edited and translated by David Marsh. The I Tatti Renaissance Library. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2003. —. Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae: tum quae adhuc tum quae nondum editae familiarum scilicet libri XXIIII; variarum liber unicus nunc primum integri et ad fidem codicum optimorum vulgati Francisci Petrarcae; studio et cura Iosephi Fracassetti. Florentiae: Monnier, 1859–63. —. Letters on Familiar Matters: Rerum familiarum libri IX–XVI. Translated by Aldo S. Bernardo. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. —. Petrarch’s Secretum. With introduction, notes, and critical anthology by Davy A. Carozza and H. James Shey. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. —. The Life of Solitude by Francis Petrarch. Translated by Jacob Zeitlin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924. —. F. Petrarchæ Africa, quam recensuit, praefatione, notis et appendicibus illustravit L. Pingaud. Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1872. Petrarch’s Africa. Translated and annotated by Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977. Seneca. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1925. Trinkaus, Charles. In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought. London, 1970.

EROTIC DESIRE, SPIRITUAL YEARNING, NARRATIVE DRIVE: THE VIDA OF ST TERESA OF ÁVILA SOFIE KLUGE

At one point in her Vida (published 1588), a messy tour de force of autobiographical sketches, confessions, and reflections loosely organized along a mystical ascension-plot, Teresa of Ávila relates how her youthful years were impregnated by an agonizing schism: called on by God to a life of faith, she was indisposed to give up the world and its sensual joys.1 The autobiography then relates how she sought to solve this schism by leading two parallel lives, one secular and one religious, and how this attempt was unsuccessful: when she enjoyed the world, remembrance of what she owed to God pained her; and when she was with God, the world would not leave her be (VIII, 51). Although the Vida relegates these tribulations to a remote time before the saint’s coming into her real self, there is a clear connection between the young girl’s psychomachy and the mature nun’s literary writings (autobiography and poems).2 In the latter, spiritual yearning and worldly desire repeatedly collide yet also occasionally merge into an at once spiritual and sensual writing. In these latter instances, the Vida effectuates the longed-for mediation of the spiritual and the sensual through what may be termed aesthetic Christology: a more or less coherent “doctrine” of how the godhead is perceived and enjoyed through the bodily senses.3 With its substantive eroticism this sensuous spirituality certainly has a secular “modern” touch, yet the modernity of Teresa’s autobiography is not easy to pinpoint. Does it describe the amalgamation of body and soul in the exorbitant flight of transgressive desire, as suggested by the philosopher-critic George Bataille who made Teresa a paragon of his anti-metaphysical and erotic reimagination of mysticism? Does it transform faith into eroticism in order to fill the void left by divine authority when it receded from history at the beginning of modernity, as proposed by the Jesuit psychoanalyst Michel de Certeau? Together with the advances achieved through the recent “rhetorical” turn in Teresian studies,4 the stimulating questions raised by both these pio-

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neers of modern mysticology form the basis of my subsequent discussion of Teresa’s autobiography.

Imagery and the Humanity of Christ A turning point in Teresa’s account of her youth, Vida IX, tells of her initial illumination after a great amount of confusion, illness, and suffering. It begins by relating how a statue of Christ moved her in a very special way. Then it proceeds to a general reflection on the spiritual comfort and benefit of images, physical as well as notional (55). Then it goes on to praise Augustine, another consoling “image”. The train of thought is not as fortuitous as it may appear. The chapter circles around the function and status of the “imago” understood in the broad sense as divine Creation, but also more narrowly as tableaux from the life of Christ, especially the Passion (56). Like her compatriot Ignacio de Loyola (Ejercicios espirituales, 1535),5 Teresa strongly recommends meditation on religious images, which amends the imaginative shortcomings of the novice in prayer: I had so little aptitude for picturing things in my mind that, if I did not actually see a thing, I could not make use at all of my imagination in the way that others do who can induce recollection by calling up mental images. Of Christ as a Man I could think, but never in such a way as to call up His picture in my mind. […] This is why I was so fond of pictures. I pity those who are so wretched as to have lost this fondness, through their own fault. It is very clear that they do not love the Lord, because if they did they would enjoy looking at His picture in the same way as worldly men enjoy gazing on portraits of those whom they love.6 Tenía tan poca habilidad para con el entendimiento representar cosas, que si no era lo que veía, no me aprovechaba nada de mi imaginación; como hacen otras personas, que pueden hacer representaciones adonde se recogen. Yo sólo podía pensar en Cristo como hombre; mas es ansí, que jamás le pude representar en mí […]. A esta causa era tan amiga de imágines. ¡Desaventurados de los que por su culpa pierden este bien! Bien parece que no aman al Señor, porque si le amaran holgáranse de ver su retrato, como acá aún da contento ver el de quien se quiere bien.7

The bodily image of Christ comes to the rescue of the restlessly seeking soul. Unable to imagine his spiritual essence, Teresa holds tight to his physical appearance in the religious imagery whose value she defends to the point of accusing iconoclasts of not loving God. Here, we witness the conversion of the self-professed sinner Teresa, casting herself in the picturesque role of Magdalene for the occasion (55–56). Here, we observe her

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initiation into the universe of prayer through the image. Here, we learn the origin of her religious name, Teresa de Jesús. The scene is set for the depiction of her progressing intimacy with the material image of the immaterial godhead in the early stages of mystical ascension (first to fourth level of prayer). From now on, Jesus is repeatedly presented as a concrete someone whose “sacred humanity” she can fall deeply in love with (XII, 69), and whose physical beauty she can use as a medium for transcendental contemplation. Bridging these early experiences described in X–XXI and the more advanced stages of mystical life that take up the rest of the biography, XXII resumes the Christological lead and the issue of imagery extrapolating how the humanity of Christ is the medium of the highest form of contemplation (121).8 To begin with, Teresa rebukes those who believe that devotion to the humanity of Christ and his physical image impedes the highest forms of contemplation and that any corporeal thing impedes and disturbs the spirit (ibid.). She argues that they—the book-learned theologians— forget that He was both God and man (“Dios y hombre”, ibid.). Looking back she regrets having followed their instructions to eschew all things corporeal, including the physical image of Christ. Not until she unwittingly betrayed the advice given by her superiors and followed her natural visual inclination did she note any spiritual progress. Especially during the Eucharist, she delighted in his image (122). Leaving the details of biography for another general reflection on imagery, Teresa returns to the aesthetic Christology sketched in chapter nine, pondering once again the essential power of Jesus, the human side to Christ, to mediate between the faithful and the incorporeal godhead in the manner of an image: I clearly see […], that if we are to please God and He is to grant us great favours, it is His will that this should be through His most sacred Humanity, in whom His Majesty said He is well pleased. I have learnt this indeed by repeated experiences; the Lord has told it me. I have clearly seen that it is by this door we must enter, if we wish His sovereign Majesty to reveal great secrets to us. (Life, 156) […] veo yo claro […], que para contentar a Dios y que nos haga grandes mercedes, quiere sea por manos de esta Humanidad sacratísima, en quien dijo su Majestad se deleita. Muy muchas veces lo he visto por esperiencia; hámelo dicho el Señor. He visto claro que por esta puerta hemos de entrar, si queremos nos muestre la soberana Majestad grandes secretos. (Vida, 123)

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Until the soul has reached a certain level, the understanding of God through his image is tolerable and necessary (“hasta esto, está claro se ha de buscar el Criador por las criaturas”, 124). Yet, among His physical images, the figure of Jesus—with a somewhat paradoxical turn of phrase designated the “most sacred humanity”—stands out as the essential mediator between the earthly and heavenly realms. A human being, the son of God is a fixed physical point upon which Teresa can project her spiritual yearning. From now on, the autobiography describes her increasing attachment to and intimacy with the “Humanity”, as Jesus is sometimes nicknamed (XXIII, 134), including the many “pleasures”, “joys”, “delights”, and “gifts of love”, which this intimacy brings in the state of mystical union, levitation, rapture, ravishment or simply ecstasy that she experiences more and more often. Driving the traditional apology of religious imagery—the image as the “book of the ignorant”9—to an extreme, Teresa may be seen to flirt with iconoduly. Radicalizing the dogma of Christ’s humanity, she may be seen to personalize and “intimize” devotion or even to eroticize it. This process of intimization culminates with the famous mystical vision recorded in XXIX: It was our Lord’s will that I should see this angel in the following way. He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels, who seem to be all on fire. […] In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul then content with anything but God. This is not a physical, but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share. So gentle is this wooing which takes place between God and the soul that if anyone thinks I am lying, I pray God, in His goodness, to grant him some experience of it. (Life, 210) En esta visión quise el Señor le viese ansí: no era grande, sino pequeño, hermoso mucho, el rostro tan encendido, que parecía de los ángeles muy subidos, que parece todos se abrasan. […] Veíale en la mano un dardo de oro largo, y al fin del hierro me parecía tener un poco de fuego. Éste me parecía meter con el corazón algunas veces, y que me llegaba a las entrañas: al sacarle me parecía las llevaba consigo, y me dejaba toda abrasada en amor grande de Dios. Era tan grande el dolor, que me hacía dar aquellos quejidos, y tan ecesiva la suavidad que me pone este grandísimo dolor, que no hay desear que se quite, ni se contenta el alma con menos que Dios. No

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es corporal, sino espiritual, aunque no deja de participar el cuerpo algo, y aun harto. Es un requiebro tan suave, que pasa entre el alma y Dios, que suplico yo a su bondad lo dé a gustar a quien pensare que miento. (Vida, 165–66)

Immortalized by Gianlorenzo Bernini in L’estasi di Santa Teresa (1647–52), this passage consolidates Teresa as the quintessential “mystic of desire”. Exploring the literary idiom of Spanish courtly poetry as it had been absorbed by the Christian poetic traditions,10 the passage successfully assumes the paradoxes of “sabrosa pena” and “pena y gloria junta” characteristic of this secular poetic tradition (“tan ecesiva la suavidad que me pone este grandísimo dolor”).11 In a sublimely orchestrated three-stage correctio, the relation between body and soul in mystical ecstasy is negotiated as the experience goes from being un-physical (“no es corporal”) over “somewhat” physical (“no deja de participar el cuerpo algo”) to being very physical indeed (“y aun harto”).12 Whereas in other passages the mystic remains “crucified” between heaven and earth (XX, 111) to complain about the soul’s imprisonment in the body (the well-known “Muero porque no muero” and “Vivo sin vivir en mí” of Teresa’s poetry),13 the great vision in XXIX dissolves paradox into a highly strung synthesis, which marks the culmination of Teresa’s aesthetic Christology. Even if the mystic herself did but conceive of this ecstasy as a transitory stage in her ascent towards perfection (the spiritual marriage described in the last chapters of the Vida and treated from a more systematic angle in Camino de la perfección and, especially, El castillo interior 7:2–3),14 the mediation of spiritual yearning and erotic desire implied in this climax stands out as an important spiritual achievement.

The Problem of Knowing and Representing However, Teresa’s mediation of transcendental spirituality and worldly sensuality through aesthetic Christology was not as unproblematic as the preceding presentation may suggest. Even if it served as a vehicle of transcendental contemplation, her extreme devotion to the bodily image of Christ had an undeniable iconodulic flavour. Her assertion that the Humanity appeared to her in person, with its implicit claim to unmediated divine interlocution, had more than a touch of heretic Illuminism. As such an outrageous meeting point of erotic desire and spiritual yearning, Teresa’s “mística teulogía” (XI, 63; XII, 70) was soon impugned by her confessors and superiors, who saw it as the expression of an impious presumption and suspected heretic beliefs. Hence the very existence of the

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Vida, which was written as an apology on their demand. Their worries were probably not diminished when they read the document. Moved by what appears to be an irrepressible narrative drive, Teresa’s biography suggestively bodies forth one vision after another (angels, saints, the Holy Family, Christ) in an intense staccato-like glossolalia reflecting the spasmodic movements of the ecstatic body. Yet, aware of the case mounting against her,15 the author simultaneously seeks to counter the allegations hovering over her head by employing an apologetic strategy well-proven by mystics through the ages: “going meta”. Hence, while compulsively relating her innumerable mystical experiences, she simultaneously emphasizes the vanity of symbolic—noetic, linguistic, iconic—representations and the insecurity of human understanding. The autobiography oscillates between “furor representationis” and an abysmal mistrust of language and perception.16 This Janus-faced strategy serves as a way of simultaneously presenting and disclaiming visions, which might be deemed heretic. Hence, a simple census suggests that the problem of representation comes increasingly to the fore as the intimacy with Christ progresses. Thus, the final chapter XL abounds in renunciatory statements (“no sabré decir”; “quedé de una suerte, que tampoco sé decir”; “no sé decir cómo, no sabré decir”; “Saber escribir esto yo no lo sé”). A similar development is observable with regard to the epistemological issue. Proportional with Teresa’s spiritual progression and, especially, her conceptualization of this process, scepticism increases: is it a dream or is it real?17 How can she describe these visions, whatever they are, if she does not even recognize their true nature? And how can she know that they are not sent by the Evil One? Interestingly, both types of disclaimers cluster heavily around the great vision in XXIX. Thus, the biography’s epistemological scepticism culminates in XXVIII with an extensive passage discussing the ontological status of noetic and iconic imagery: At times it certainly seemed to me as if I were looking at a painting, but on many other occasions it appeared to be no painting but Christ himself, such was the clarity with which He was pleased to appear to me. Yet there were times when the vision was so indistinct that I did think it was a painting, though it bore no resemblance even to the most perfect of earthly pictures, and I have seen some good ones. No, it would be absurd to speak of any resemblance; the vision was no more like a painting than a portrait is like a living man. However well a portrait is painted, it can never look completely natural, for it is plainly a dead thing. […] I have not been trying to institute comparisons, for they are never completely accurate; this is the actual truth. Here there is difference between something living and something painted, neither more nor less. If what I see is an image, it is a living image,

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no dead man but the living Christ, and He reveals Himself as God and man […]. (Life, 199) Bien me parecía en algunas cosas, que era imagen lo que vía, mas por otras muchas no, sino que era el mesmo Cristo, conforme a la claridad con que era servido mostrárseme. Unas veces era tan en confuso, que me parecía imagen, no como los debujos de acá, por muy perfectos que sean, que hartos he visto buenos; es disparate pensar que tiene semejanza lo uno con lo otro en ninguna manera no más ni menos, que la tiene una persona viva a su retrato, que por bien que esté sacado, no puede ser tan al natural, que en fin se ve es cosa muerta; […]. No digo que es comparación, que nunca son tan cabales, sino verdad, que hay la diferencia de lo vivo a lo pintado, no más ni menos; porque si es imagen, es imagen viva, no hombre muerto, sino Cristo vivo; y da a entender que es hombre y Dios […].18 (Vida, 157)

The seminal coining of the—in the Christian tradition—oxymoronic concept of “imagen viva” beautifully presages the synthesis of flesh and spirit of the vision in XXIX, simultaneously devaluing and exalting the physical in a shrewd apologetic gesture. This leads directly to the resumption of the representational issue at the outset of chapter XXIX, where Teresa asks how it is even possible to describe the immense beauty of Christ’s humanity (161), hereby presumably trying to pacify anticipated objections by questioning in advance the legitimacy of her visions as well as of their verbalization. However, as the text progresses the subtle constellation of mystical fury and scepticism intended to safeguard Teresa’s aesthetic Christology from the accusation of heresy is replaced by a depreciative view of language and physical reality, which culminates in the last three chapters.19 As the mystic advances on her religious path, the mediation of spirituality and sensuality proposed at the beginning of the autobiography and culminating with the great vision in XXIX gives way to a depreciation of everything pertaining to the material world and, eventually, to the purification of sensuality through the flames of divine love in the final stage of “spiritual marriage”.20 The autobiography thus ends on a rather traditional religious note that is surely less interesting than the supercharged oxymoronic synthesis of flesh and spirit suggested in chapter XXIX. It is mostly the latter, which has attracted the attention of modern thinkers and mysticologists, who have preoccupied themselves with the link between Teresa’s idiosyncratic form of spirituality and what may be termed the modern spirit. Yet, is her aesthetic Christology modern? And if so, in what sense of the term?

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The Question of Modernity In the fifth “étude” of L’Érotisme (1957), George Bataille criticizes various religious and psychoanalytic approaches to the idea of spiritual marriage, noting that whereas religious interpreters devalue the physical aspect of mystical ecstasy seeing it as a mere circumstantial and passing sign of something more important, psychoanalysts contrarily deny its spiritual aspect, disrespectfully seeing it as a “neurotic conduct” (249). Pondering the paradoxical interrelation of life and death—in the metaphorical sense of loss of self—as the common ground of mysticism and eroticism (the Christian “mourir à soi-même”, 255; “la petite mort” of the orgasm, 264), Bataille launches his own concept of mystical ecstasy as a deathfixated yet life-affirming “perdre pied” (264) or “désir de chavirer” (265) akin to the impulses driving the compulsive anxieties of saints and the nuptial flight of insects (263). Returning to Teresa, a recurring subject of his discourse, the French writer identifies her mysticism as a desire to live by ceasing to live or to die without ceasing to live (265). Thus, according to Bataille, mysticism is a way of disposing of the “normal” mental condition in order to live life more fully, even extremely (“c’est l’état extrême de la vie”); and what links mysticism and eroticism is the common grounding of such richness of feeling in the symbolic death of the self. There is, hence, a notable neo-Nietzschean element in his conception of mystical ecstasy, rooted in a contention with the Cartesian subject, Western metaphysics, and the various philosophical, religious, and aesthetic traditions issuing from here. Secondly, confirming this trend, there is an echo of Lacan’s critique of Hegel’s transcendentally speaking subject:21 behind the self-imposed, repressive despotism of this subject, Bataille intuits the contour of a totally different—unlimited, uninhibited—psychological reality, which he, in accordance with his immediate mysticological model, Jean Baruzi’s phenomenological study of Juan de la Cruz, terms “expérience”.22 Bataille’s concept of mystical experience is positive in outlook and thoroughly profane, yet also marked by a fundamental darkness: “peur” (255), “angoisse” (259), “ravissements violents” (268), and so on. It belongs to a godless and de-subjectivized world that is, however, also a world of intense sensuality and tantalizing spiritual promise: the promise of something deeply meaningful but as yet unseen beyond the repressive symbolic order. Projected onto Bataillan experience through the self-loss nexus, Teresa’s aesthetic Christology is somewhat paradoxically transformed into an imageless cult of transcendental desire moved exclusively by the emancipatory energy involved in the act of transgressing, not by

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any physical or noetic object of desire.23 According to Bataille, it is the very crossing of limits and the entry into a state of repeatedly affirmed freedom from cultural/societal and psychological limitations that drives mystical ecstasy. The intriguing Teresian duality of worldly sensuality and transcendental spirituality consequently becomes the epitome of a modern anti-metaphysical spirituality, which amalgamates flesh and spirit in a restless spiral of aimless and object-less desire—an, as it were, physicalspiritual “plus ultra”. A related notion of sixteenth-century mysticism as erotic desire projected on to a metaphysical void informs Michel de Certeau’s study of early modern mysticism, La fable mystique (1982). However, Certeau’s point of departure is post-metaphysical rather than anti-metaphysical, or, perhaps, most accurately, negative-theological. Thus, the first part of his introduction elaborates a familiar Foucauldian picture of the early postmedieval period as an epoch marked by God’s withdrawal from history— “L’Un n’est plus là” (10)—and the ensuing feeling of nostalgia, melancholia, and loss (25). The period’s multiple mystical “fables” are presented as a way of coming to terms with these epochal conditions through the filling of the epistemological, religious, and existential vacuum produced by the absence of the godhead with multiple figurations of desire (ibid.). Sensuous and melancholy, these fables combine two classic strategies for dealing with the godforsakenness of the modern world: embrace of physicality, or the “Don Juan” model, and mournful reflection (13). According to Certeau, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century “fable mystique” is a reluctant testimony to the very process of secularization (the slow “transformation de la scène religieuse en scène amoureuse, ou d’une foi en une érotique”) that it fights. Mysticism is itself a symptom of the illness that it diagnoses and represents a significant shift away from the—ideal?—unambiguous “parole révélatrice et enseignante” to the equivocal signs impressed by the absent other on the ecstatic body. A weighty aspect of Certeau’s study is thus the underlying discussion of modernity. Yet does sixteenth-century mysticism in fact represent a modern negative-theological or perhaps even post-metaphysical consciousness? Is the physical figuration of desire really rather “une capacité symbolique du corps” than “une incarnation du Verbe”? (14)? Could it not be both at the same time? Although Bataille’s and Certeau’s studies are very stimulating reading indeed, my view of Teresa’s aesthetic Christology deviates, as these questions suggest, from them on at least one important point: the understanding of its modernity. Both thinkers see the contemporary interest of her mysticism as intimately intertwined with its eroticization of metaphysics. What

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distinguishes them is not so much their interpretation of the saint’s modernness as their valorization of it. To both, the Vida’s aesthetic Christology inaugurates the farewell to metaphysics that allegedly characterizes the modern epoch, and this development is then beheld in a utopianemancipatory light (Bataille), or viewed with melancholy frustration (Certeau). Yet, from the evidence of the preceding presentation I think it reasonable to ask whether Teresa’s aesthetic Christology does not in fact challenge rather than inaugurate the atheist conception of modernity imagined by Bataille and Certeau. Although its innovative rhetoric (extreme eroticization of religious discourse; use of cancionero metaphors) and radical Christology (hyper-devotion to the sacred Humanity) certainly approaches modern anthropocentrism, the Vida is undeniably traditional in its mysticology (stages of the mystic life culminating with the anti-worldly spiritual marriage) and conventional in the choice of motifs (limits of language and human perception; “from sinner to saint”; humility).24 An extreme interpretation of the already quite eroticized Christian mystical tradition, Teresa’s aesthetic Christology is thus traditional in essence yet imbued with a “phenomenological” sensibility that may be qualified as modern, though not in the radical sense of Bataille’s and Certeau’s studies. Contrary to these thinkers Teresa does not conceive of erotic desire as something which subverts traditional metaphysics (Bataille) or replaces it when it declines (Certeau). If her aesthetic Christology is modern, it represents a dialectical modernity bridging tradition and modernity through a suggestive amalgam of eroticism, faith, and literature. She insists that the ecstatic body and its stuttering glossolalia are legitimate “signifiants” of an unknown and perhaps unknowable divine “signifié”. In a hitherto unseen manner erotic desire, spiritual yearning, and narrative drive merge into a three-way mysterious communication of the both material and immaterial godhead. Perhaps the sensibility disclosed herein is, as Walter Benjamin argued, best described as allegorical: a sensibility, that is, which emphasizes the role of subjectivity—that of the ecstatic mystic, that of the autobiographical genre—and of the concrete, material human body in the communication of divine truth.25 Needless to say, the paragon of this sensibility was the saint’s spiritual “husband”, the allegorical image par excellence.

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Notes 1 Teresa of Ávila, Su vida (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1943 [orthography and punctuation as reproduced in this edition]), VII, 48. 2 Following the scholarly tradition issuing from Francisco Márquez Villanueva’s “Santa Teresa y el linaje” (in Espiritualidad y literatura en el siglo XVI, Madrid: Alfaguara, 1968) and Victor García de la Concha’s El arte literario de Santa Teresa (Barcelona: Ariel, 1978), I see Vida as a literary text, not as a historical document. 3 Cf. the etymology of the adjective “aesthetic”, from the Greek aisthanomai: “to perceive through the senses”. 4 This turn represents a reaction to the notion of “inspired” writing accompanying the poor-little-dyslexic-beata portrait painted by earlier scholarship (e.g. Américo Castro’s Santa Teresa y otros ensayos, Madrid: Historia Nueva, 1929). The rhetorical approach was anticipated by Ramón Menéndez Pidal (“El estilo de Santa Teresa,” La lengua de Cristóbal Colón y otros ensayos. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1942) and de la Concha (El arte literario), verbalized by Alison Weber in Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990), 3–16, and is epitomized by Carol Slade’s St. Teresa of Ávila: Author of a Heroic Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 5 I cannot enter the question of Ignacio’s influence on Teresa’s conception of the image here, but it is well known that she held the Jesuits in high regard and had a Jesuit spiritual director, Baltasar Álvarez. 6 The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1957), 68. 7 Santa Teresa de Jesús, Su vida (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1943), 56. 8 The linking of the physical, human aspect of Christ to the problem of imagery is a commonplace epitomized in Apologia of John Damascene Against Those who Decry Holy Images (around 730). 9 As formulated by Gregory the Great in Ep. 9:105. 10 See the important Cancionero espiritual (1549) and the Romancero espiritual (1549), a virtual contrafactum of the so-called Romancero viejo, a body of orally transmitted fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances (first published by Agustín Durán in Colecciones de romances antiguos o Romanceros, 1821). See Bruce Wardropper’s edition of the former (Madrid: Castalia, 1954); Angelo J. Di Salvo, “The Ascetical Medieval Literature of Renaissance Spain: An Alternative to Amadís, Elisa and Diana,” (Hispania, Vol. 69, No. 3, 1986, 466–75); and Alexander A. Parker, The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature 1480–1680 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985). Though this tradition shows a rather unambiguous religious appropriation of secular love discourse, the influence was actually two-way: while Teresa’s representation of the soul’s amorous adventures with Christ throve on the vocabulary of secular love poetry, Teresa’s spiritual writing of love in turn inspired the antithetic idiom of profane love poetry (see Emilio Orozco Díaz, Manierismo y barroco, Madrid: Cátedra, 1988, 63–134).

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11 See also XX, 112: “Parécele más siguro porque es camino de cruz, y en sí tiene un gusto muy de valor, a mi parecer, porque no participa con el cuerpo sino con pena, y el alma es la que padece, y goza sola del gozo y contento que da este padecer.” 12 I thank Anders Cullhed for providing me with the term for this fascinating rhetorical manoeuvre. 13 See, for instance, XVI, 91. 14 Even if it is not expressly articulated in Vida, the underlying mystical ascension plot with its reference to the exegesis of the Song of Songs (Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Fray Luis de León, Juan de la Cruz, et al.) thus becomes more and more visible as the text progresses. 15 See Vida, prologue, 20; Slade (Heroic Life), 17–29. 16 Thus, Fray Luis de León emphasized in his editorial letter to the first edition that the revelations recounted in the book were duly subjected to scrutiny as to their orthodoxy by the saint herself (Vida, 17). 17 See XVI, 91; XXXVIII, 225; and XL, 247–8. 18 See also XVI, 91 (“parece que sueño lo que veo”); XXV, 143; XXXIX, 239, et al. 19 Significant examples of this attitude include XXXVIII, 224 and the extensive passage about the “bajezas del mundo” in the preceding chapter (XXXVII, 219– 23). Not simply an expression of Counter-Reformation asceticism, this contemptus mundi refers to the devaluation-exaltation dialectic of the Christian mystical tradition that was the backdrop of Teresa’s writing. See Sofie Kluge, “Ästhetisches Bild und Christliche Mystik im Cántico espiritual des San Juans de la Cruz,” Orbis litterarum, vol. 58/5, 371–96. 20 See XXXVIII, 228: “Esta mesma visión he visto otras veces: […]. Parece que purifica el alma en gran manera, y quita la fuerza casi del todo a nuestra sensualidad. Es una llama grande, que parece que abrasa y aniquila todos los deseos de la vida; porque ya que yo, gloria a Dios, no tenía en cosas vanas, declaróseme aquí bien cómo era todo vanidad, y cuán vano son los señoríos de acá, y es un ensañamiento grande para levantar los deseos en la pura verdad.” 21 Lacan’s Séminaire XX, “Encore: Dieu et la jouissance de La Femme—Une lettre d’âmour” (1972–23), which treats feminine sexuality and includes reflections on mysticism and Teresa, should be mentioned in this context. 22 Jean Baruzi, Saint Jean de la Croix et le problème de l’expérience mystique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1924). 23 This marks a notable change of attitude from Bataille’s anterior interpretation of mysticism in L’Expérience interieure (1954). Here, he criticized Teresa and other “religious mystics” for their iconoduly, viewed as a sign of mental weakness as compared to the more heroic, secular, imageless, but also anxiety-ridden modern mysticism (Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and others). 24 To this peculiar mixture of something very old and something quite new corresponded a particular mixture of orthodoxy and sensitivity to contemporary spiritual trends, which has recently been interpreted as the product of Teresa’s eminent political diplomacy. See notably Gillian Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila and the Politics

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of Sanctity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998) and Weber (Rhetoric of Femininity). Further, Antonio Pérez-Romero, Subversion and Liberation in the Writings of St. Teresa of Ávila (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996). 25 See Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Gesammelte Schriften I/1, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 408: “Im Weltbild der Allegorie also ist die subjektive Perspektive restlos einbezogen in die Ökonomie des Ganzen. […]. Und so wird auch die glühende Ekstase, ohne daß von ihr ein Funke verlorenginge, gerettet, säkularisiert im Nüchternen, wie sie’s bedarf: Die heilige Therese sieht in einer Halluzination, wie die Madonna Rosen auf ihr Bett legt; sie teilt es ihrem Beichtvater mit. ‘Ich sehe keine’, erwidert der. – ‘Die Madonna hat sie ja mir gebracht’, gibt die Heilige zur Antwort. In diesem Sinn wird die zur Schau getragene eingestandne Subjektivität zum förmlichen Garanten des Wunders, weil sie die göttliche Aktion selbst ankündigt.”

Bibliography Ahlgren, Gillian. Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998. Baruzi, Jean. Saint Jean de la Croix et le problème de l’expérience mystique. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1924. Bataille, George. L’Érotisme. Paris: Minuit, 1957. Benjamin, Walter. Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. Gesammelte Schriften I/1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991. Castro, Américo. Santa Teresa y otros ensayos. Madrid: Historia Nueva, 1929. De Certeau, Michel. La fable mystique, 1: XVIe–XVIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1982. Di Salvo, Angelo J. “The Ascetical Meditative Literature of Renaissance Spain: An Alternative to Amadís, Elisa and Diana.” Hispania 69, No. 3 (1986): 466–75. García de la Concha, Victor. El arte literario de Santa Teresa. Barcelona: Ariel, 1978. Kluge, Sofie. “Ästhetisches Bild und Christliche Mystik im Cántico espiritual des San Juans de la Cruz.” Orbis litterarum 58/5 (2003): 371–96. Márquez Villanueva, Francisco. “Santa Teresa y el linaje.” In Espiritualidad y literatura en el siglo XVI, 141–205. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1968. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. “El estilo de Santa Teresa.” In La lengua de Cristóbal Colón y otros ensayos, 145–71. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1942. Orozco Díaz, Emilio. Manierismo y barroco. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988. Parker, Alexander A. The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Poetry 1480– 1680. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985.

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Pérez-Romero, Antonio. Subversion and Liberation in the Writings of St. Teresa of Ávila. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Saint Teresa of Ávila. Interior Castle. Edited by E. Allison Peers. Radford: Wilder Publications, 2008. Santa Teresa de Jesús. Su vida. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1943. Slade, Carol. St. Teresa of Ávila. Author of a Heroic Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself. Translated by J. M. Cohen. London: Penguin Books, 1957. Wardropper, Bruce, ed. Cancionero espiritual. Madrid: Castalia, 1954. Weber, Alison. Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

SEX AND THE SELF: SIMON FORMAN, SUBJECTIVITY AND EROTIC DREAMS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND PER SIVEFORS

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that one of the most frequently discussed dream accounts from the Elizabethan era is the astrologer and doctor Simon Forman’s dream about Queen Elizabeth, recorded in 1597 and telling how Forman walks around with the monarch, saves her from a group of arguing men, makes some sexual jokes to her and, finally, is on more than close terms with her: [I] dreamt that I was with the Queen, and that she was a little elderly woman in a coarse white petticoat all unready. She and I walked up and down through lanes and closes, talking and reasoning. At last we came over a great close where were many people, and there were two men at hard words. One of them was a weaver, a tall man with a reddish beard, distract of his wits. She talked to him and he spoke very merrily to her, and at last did take her and kiss her. So I took her by the arm and did put her away; and told her the fellow was frantic. So we went from him and I led her by the arm still, and then we went through a dirty lane. She had a long white smock very clean and fair, and it trailed in the dirt and her coat behind. I took her coat and did carry it up a good way, and then it hung too low before. I told her she should do me a favour to let me wait on her, and she said I should. Then said I, ‘I mean to wait upon you and not under you, that I might make this belly a little bigger to carry up this smock and coat out of the dirt’. And so we talked merrily; then she began to lean upon me, when we were past the dirt and to be very familiar with me, and methought she began to love me. When we were alone, out of sight, methought she would have kissed me.1

Forman may have been a marginal figure to the Elizabethan establishment, even though he certainly was socially ambitious and had dealings with various members of the political elite in his capacity as a doctor and astrologer. His life and writings—including horoscopes, case books, and

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an autobiography, none of which was published in his lifetime with the exception of a brief text on longitude—have attracted an increasing amount of scholarly interest in recent years, not least because of Forman’s complex relation to science at the time and the fact that he seems to have been what in modern-day terminology would be called a sex addict.2 The dream cited above, which was part of Forman’s case books and hence only intended for himself, has been excavated by critics and historians for its political implications or for its connections to literary texts, most notably Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.3 From the 1980s onwards, then, political allegory or intertextual relations have been the critical cornerstones for the analyses of this dream account. What has perhaps been less examined is the ways in which Forman’s dream deals with issues of subjectivity—what constitutes the individual, what sustains him/her, what defines his/her relation to the world, and so on. Perhaps this is all the more surprising since terms like “subjectivity” have been ever at the focus of attention in criticism at least since the publication of Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning in 1980, which insisted that the subject in the Renaissance was a “manipulable, artful process”. However, the present discussion takes another approach to subjectivity than the “submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self” identified as a New Historicist cornerstone by Greenblatt himself.4 Instead of focusing on Forman’s fashioning of identity in relation to hegemonic power (the Queen), the present discussion will revolve around questions such as: to what extent is sexuality perceived as an integral part of the male self as depicted by Forman? And, more generally, to what extent do erotic dreams in early modern culture deal with issues of selfhood, in the sense of revealing things about the human self rather than about the future or about the outside world? From this context of subjectivity I will focus on the centrality of sexual experience and the insistence with which sexuality is represented as the focal point of Forman’s narrative. Crucially, the present article argues that Forman’s dream establishes the narrator’s individual sexuality as a pattern against which both the women and the other men of the dream are contrasted. In that sense, the dream can even be said to anticipate a Freudian understanding of dreams as wish-fulfilment, of which sexuality constitutes an integral aspect.5 Although my discussion will not engage with psychoanalysis as a theoretical framework or even claim that Forman’s dream can be read strictly in terms of “repression”, my point is that the dream, although based on a belief in predicting the future, bespeaks an interest in the subjective and individual significance of its contents. From this perspective—a “psychologizing” perspective that simultaneously emphasizes

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and makes problematic the individual’s own significance to the process of dreaming—male sexual identity becomes a focal point of the brief narrative rather than a springboard for prophecy or divination. In that sense, Forman’s dream points forward in time: towards an understanding according to which dreams, and their sexual contents, reveal something about the dreamer’s own mind, but also towards the problems in representing such a mind in writing. While thus contextualizing Forman’s dream from the point of view of dream interpretation, the present essay also considers the way in which the dreaming self is made problematic in Forman’s account. Particularly, the dream casts Forman in the positions of both interpreter and interpreted, thus by its very introspection creating a divided self. This is, as I will argue, a point of departure from early dream theory in the direction of more “modern” understandings of selfhood. Needless to say, a claim of this kind will require some contextualization of early modern dream theories, partly because dreams were not usually considered to be sources of self-knowledge (although this did begin to change especially in the seventeenth century), partly because dreams that would appear distinctly erotic at least to twenty-first century, postFreudian readers did not necessarily do so to sixteenth-century ones. Early modern dream theories can be basically said to waver between belief in prophetic content and a wholesale rejection of such belief—in other words, the idea that dreams were (possibly) divinely inspired or the idea that dreams were just the residue of mental activity in the daytime and hence did not have a predictive value.6 In either case, sexuality was rarely at the focus even where we would perhaps be quick to see erotic symbolism or suppressed desire. This difference can be seen especially if we trace the idea of dreams as prophetic or predictive of the future—a direction that seems the more relevant since, as will be discussed, Forman’s dream clearly implies a predictive value. In theoretical works such as Thomas Hill’s The Most Pleasaunte Arte of the Interpretacion of Dreames, even dreams that appear to have a manifest sexual meaning are instead seen in more general terms: “to dreame that hee seeyth a harlotte, or commoneth wyth her, signifieth deception or variances.”7 Thus, dream interpretation may occasionally take sexual themes as its starting-point, but such themes are usually taken to a more general level. This conforms with classical works on the topic such as Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica, in which, as Michel Foucault has pointed out, sexual content in dreams is almost always expressed on the level of signifier rather than signified.8 Sexuality in other words seems only to be significant to early dream interpreters to the extent that it points outside itself.9

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From such a context, Forman’s dream appears both typical and atypical. It is typical because Forman assumes that this and other of his dreams have a prophetic content and can tell him something about the future— generally speaking, not with respect to sexuality. In this he resembles so many other believers in the objective, predictive value of dream prophecies at the time. To Forman, dreams did have a prophetic value. At the same time, as Rowse remarks, Forman “had some idea of the subjective elements in their causation, their connotation and what they meant to him”.10 In fact, Forman’s entire point of view is subjective rather than strictly speaking objective: by contrast to Hill’s extensive set of interpretive solutions, Forman is exclusively concerned with his own experience and what it means to him. This is a clear difference from both Hill and Artemidorus (as well as other works on dream divination), because neither of them mentions having any dreams of his own.11 In this sense, Forman’s dream bears more resemblance, for example, to the mathematician Girolamo Cardano’s extensive recording of his own dreams in the 1570s, all of which are written down because, according to the author, they tell something about himself even while their prophetic element is never denied.12 Subsequently, in the course of the seventeenth century, dreaming— as Mary Baine Campbell puts it—“loses its epistemological prestige like a leaking balloon”, and the focus of recorded dreams increasingly becomes that of one’s inner life, “sensation, worry, pleasure, guilt”, rather than implications of angelic messages or general predictions of the future.13 As previously suggested, then, Forman’s sexual encounter with the Queen could be said to straddle the past and the future of dream interpretation: it suggests both prophetic values and a more “psychologizing” sensibility. Thus, taken at face value Forman’s account seems to hint at the later development of Freudian dream interpretation in its implied idea that “dreams are fulfilled wishes”, and because sex in this dream does seem to be at the focus of interest.14 However, it could be argued that, like Artemidorus but unlike Freud, Forman’s objective in recording his dream is not the sexual content per se—he is not interested in what the dream tells him about repressed sexual desires but in its wider moral significance. At the same time, this conclusion is to some extent belied by the narrative structure of the dream. The episode leads up to the narrator’s sexual encounter and hence suggests that sex is at the thematic focus of the narrative. In that sense, the encounter is also an individual, private experience shared exclusively with the woman figure, who is in turn represented as blending physically and gradually together with the speaker: he grasps her clothes, she leans upon him and finally, safely out of sight, she kisses him. One

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might say the episode is indeed “climactic” even in a blatantly sexual sense. The question is whether this build-up establishes a sense of stable masculine power and dominance. Indeed, the last sentences of the dream account—the Queen leaning on the narrator and actively taking the sexual initiative of kissing him—has been interpreted as a potentially uneasy sign of female dominance. In a brief paper on Forman and male identity, Allison Harl argues that the end of Forman’s dream reverses the traditional roles of active male and passive female, thus creating a sense of unease: “Forman’s erotic vision has ultimately cast Elizabeth in the role of the aggressive pursuer and himself in the role of the passive pursued.”15 True, the figure of the Queen combines characteristics of passiveness and dominance; being after all a Queen she is, as Levin says, “both subordinate and in power”.16 It would be mistaken, however, to underestimate the potential for the dream to fulfil a specifically male fantasy: that of being alone with the desired and powerful woman. Forman’s experience presents precisely such a wish-fulfilment, illustrating as it does the only allowed sexual position as a pun—“to wait upon you and not under you”—that expresses male dominance, which is in turn boosted by the woman’s complicity (“she said I should”). If this sense of male dominance is developed gradually in the narrative, then the final sexual encounter with the Queen is obviously a central aspect of it. However, an analysis that focuses solely on the image of the Queen would risk ignoring the significance of the men present in the dream. As Alexandra Shepard insists, masculinity in the early modern period cannot be understood solely “as a product of relations between men and women”; masculinity also implies distinctions between different categories of men in terms of their different degree of social privilege.17 Notably, therefore, a specific trait of Forman’s representation of masculinity is that it is established in relation to other men. The entire dream can be said to represent successful competition with other males as a crucial element. Indeed, the dream is built up as an individualizing of experience, a series of confrontations between the speaker and the crowd at the “great close”, the speaker and the two quarrelsome men, the speaker and the man with the beard, and, the other men finally overcome, the state of bliss alone with the desired woman. In that particular sense, Forman’s dream can then be said to represent a gradual journey towards masculine individuation, with competitors gradually cancelled out as the narrative progresses. In this context, it is notable that in its representation of male sexuality the dream establishes a set of firm dichotomies between the desirable and the repulsive, between the normal and the abnormal. The dream thematizes

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the distinction between the “dirt” of the lanes and the purity of the Queen’s smock—it even emphasizes that the smock is “very clean and fair” and repeats the word “white” twice. Of course, whiteness symbolizes virginity and as such, Forman’s obsession speaks volumes about the apprehensions of Elizabethan men about the ageing and childless Virgin Queen on the throne.18 As suggested previously, sex is central to this distinction between the fair and the dirty; in fact, the dream represents sex as the very means through which the distinction is achieved (“that I might make this belly a little bigger to carry up this smock and coat out of the dirt”). Moreover, the red-bearded man, who also makes sexual advances on the Queen, is defined as “frantic”, so taken as a whole, the dream can be said to separate normality, whiteness, purity and the successful sexuality of the single narrator from madness, dirt and the vaguely defined crowd (who do not succeed in any advances). The process of individuation is therefore also one of normalization: the two men “at hard words” and the red-bearded weaver “distract of his wits” represent the other end of the scale from Forman, that is, madness and lack of control. Needless to say, this process is also one of power relations and ambition—few other dreams from the time could be said to better illustrate the commonplace that “sex is power”.19 As Levin shows, dreams of monarchs were common enough throughout the early modern period, but few of them show so clearly the desire to strive upwards both by physical proximity to the monarch and by competing—successfully—with other men.20 Indeed, Forman’s tendency towards self-assertion also has strong reverberations on the level of social ambition, which is a more than notable aspect of his life and something that has been discussed especially with respect to Forman’s position vis-à-vis the scientific and scholarly establishment at the time.21 Forman’s own concern with his social and professional status shines through everywhere in his writings; in his one published work, The Groundes of the Longitude (1591), he asserts his own scientific competence in almost Shylock-like terms, suggesting a strong desire to acquit himself of any accusations of “abnormality” and to be acknowledged for his achievement: “Am I a monster degenerated from kind, or am I not a creature, made and formed by his diuine wil, and borne into the world, and do liue to shew forth and speake of his glorie and power as well as others[?]”.22 In the dream of Elizabeth, the desire to climb the social ladder is of course also present. Rowse even suggests that the redbearded man bears a resemblance to the Earl of Essex, who obviously was on a collision course with the real-life Queen Elizabeth at the time when Forman wrote down his dream.23 In that sense, then, the sexual struggle of

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the dream also spells social struggle, and the desire projected in the text intimately links social rank and sexuality. On a textual level, Forman’s dream account could even be said to embody this power struggle in terms of competition for narrative control. Not only does the bearded man resemble the real-life courtier who was Forman’s obvious social superior; he is also a “weaver”, or “textor”, and it is therefore only by rescuing the Queen from the man’s advances that Forman is able to control both situation and text. If so, the “very clean and fair” white smock of the Queen almost becomes a metaphorical empty sheet on which Forman’s wish-fulfilment is inscribed. Virginity—to come back to my previously made point—is embodied both in the untouched woman and on the unwritten paper that represents her. Indeed, the episode even emphasizes the narrator’s urgent desire to keep the smock from being soiled on either side, both “behind” and “before”, and only after having kept both these sides free from interference does the narrator achieve full control, ending on a gratifying “me” that finally enacts the satisfaction of Forman’s desire for unrivalled love. In that sense, then, Forman’s dream can be said to embody a male sexual and textual subject. Like all dreams, Forman’s is a “text” in the sense that it is necessarily embodied in, and only possible to reach through language.24 However, the urgency with which the text embodies the desires and wishes of Forman himself, and the centrality allowed to the sexual experience, invests the dream with a persuasive force of its own. Forman’s tendency to implicate himself in his writing is strongly present in everything he produced; as Traister puts it, “he turned himself into text, recording what his body did and what his brain absorbed, both from encounters with the texts of other men and from his own experience”.25 Again, the sense of competition with “other men” is notable, but Forman’s “experience” in his dream of Queen Elizabeth also posits sexual encounter as a fundamental aspect of his constitution of his self in writing. But this constitution also poses the problem of unifying the different layers of Forman’s self-representation: in his dream account he is both the writing investigator and the written object of investigation. Forman arguably was aware of this problematic—or to return to the quotation from Rowse, he had “some idea of the subjective elements” in the causation of dreams. Indeed, Forman also wrote an autobiography which contains several dream accounts but is in the third person, as if implying a wish to keep interpreter and interpreted neatly apart.26 This explicit separation is not carried out in Forman’s dream of the Queen, which is distinguished by an ambiguity of the self that was also to become a characteristic of psychoanalysis: retelling a dream and analysing its significance inevitably impli-

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cates the interpreter in the interpreted even if the dream is someone else’s.27 In that sense, Forman’s dream, which casts himself both as interpreter and interpreted, can be said to record the process of constructing a self rather than being an “objective” study of an already-established self. In the end, then, the power achieved by the male subject in the dream is forever presented as ambivalent, in the sense that the subject seems divided between the positions of observer and observed. The male subject of the dream appears to be not quite in control as it is after all itself controlled by an observing interpreter, and vice versa the observing interpreter is not quite a detached, controlling self, as it seems implicated in the very events it records. Thus, the quest for power in Forman’s dream appears to have its limits precisely because of the introspective turn of dream interpretation that I discussed at the opening of this chapter: if the dream says something about you, then your very interpretation of it also signals a division of that same self. In this sense, as the present essay has argued, while Forman’s dream represents a traditional project of investing dreams with predictive value it also anticipates an “individualizing” tendency in dream interpretation. This tendency is crucially reinforced by an emphasis on sexuality as a defining characteristic—indeed, in the insoluble entwining of sexuality with social ambition and the quest for control also on the narrative level. Yet, by its very introspective direction Forman’s self is represented as problematic. It is precisely this complex set of relations—in terms of sexuality, social ambition and narrative aspects—that makes his dream of the Queen significant not just to the history of dream theory, but to the origins of present-day notions of subjectivity and selfhood.

Notes 1 Transcribed in A. L. Rowse, Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer (New York: Charles Scribner, 1974), 20. 2 The most exhaustive recent studies on Forman are Barbara Howard Traister, Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) and Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For more specific discussions of Forman’s dream, see the works listed in the next note. 3 See especially Louis Montrose, “Shaping Fantasies: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture,” Representations 1 (1983): 61–94; also, Helen Hackett, “Dream-visions of Elizabeth I,” in Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, edited by Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan and S. J. Wiseman (New York: Routledge, 2008), 54–55 and Carole Levin, Dreaming the

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English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 150–52. 4 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980), 9. 5 For Freud’s view of dreams, see for example Sigmund Freud, “Delusions and Dreams in Jensens’s Gradiva,” in Writings on Art and Literature, edited by Werner Hamacher and David E. Wellbery (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 3–6, and, of course, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Joyce Crick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), passim. 6 For reasons of space and relevance I will not bring up the second, more Aristotelian tradition of seeing dreams as basically residual. A brief discussion of it can be found in my “‘All this tractate is but a dream’: The Ethics of Dream Narration in Thomas Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night,” in Textual Ethos Studies, or Locating Ethics, edited by Anna Fahraeus and AnnKatrin Jonsson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), esp. 163–64. 7 Thomas Hill, The most pleasaunt arte of the interpretation of dreames (London, 1576), sig. E8v. 8 See Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 1997), 26. Artemidorus’s text was published in English in 1606 and reprinted at least three times in the seventeenth century (1644, 1656, and 1690). 9 Peter Burke appears to take this view at face value when he speculates that “in the early modern period repression was more concerned with political and religious temptations and less with sexual ones than is the case today”; see Peter Burke, “The Cultural History of Dreams,” in Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 42. If anything, the aspects Burke lists are intimately linked with each other—something that the present discussion will also show to some extent. 10 Rowse, Sex and Society, 20. 11 For this point, see Peter Holland, “The Interpretation of Dreams in the Renaissance,” in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, edited by Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 141. 12 See Jerome Cardan, The Book of My Life (De Vita Propria Liber), trans. Jean Stoner (New York: Dover, 1960), 156–62. 13 Mary Baine Campbell, “Dreaming, Motion, Meaning: Oneiric Transport in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” in Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, edited by Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan and S. J. Wiseman (New York: Routledge, 2008), 27. This tendency towards a more rationalist, selfanalytical perspective is indeed general in dream analysis in the seventeenth century; see Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance, 44–49. 14 Freud, “Delusion and Dreams,” 4. 15 Allison L. Harl, “Passive, Pursued and Powerful: Construction of the Male Self in Renaissance Autobiography,” Discoveries 22.2 (2005), accessed August 3 2012, http://www.scrc.us.com/discoveries/passive-pursued-and-powerful-constructionof-the-male-self-in-renaissance-autobiography/.

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16

Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance, 151. Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5. 18 Rowse, Sex and Society, 20–21. 19 For the idea that the dream represents a “will to power,” see Montrose, “Shaping Fantasies,” 65. 20 For royal dreams in the period, see Levin, Dreaming the English Renaissance, 127–58. 21 For Forman’s practice as a doctor and the attempts at suppressing his practice, see Kassell, Medicine and Magic, 75–122, and Traister, Notorious Astrological Physician, 81–96. Traister even suggests that Forman’s tendency towards selfassertion, conflict, and, ultimately, isolation extended beyond the merely professional sphere to his entire existence; see Notorious Astrological Physician, 145–72. 22 Simon Forman, The Groundes of the Longitude: With an Admonition to all those that are Incredulous and beleeue not the Trueth of the same (London, 1591), sig. A3r. 23 Rowse, Sex and Society, 21. Levin offers some further support for this hypothesis; see Dreaming the English Renaissance, 151. 24 For this point, see Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 16. 25 Traister, Notorious Astrological Physician, xii. 26 Transcribed in Rowse, Sex and Society, 267–78. 27 As Linda Anderson shows, Freud himself was aware of this problematic and never managed to resolve it: “in order to tell his patient’s story and interpret it, Freud is forced to tell a story of his own, one which necessarily implicates him as narrator/author.” See Linda Anderson, Autobiography, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011), 59. 17

Bibliography Anderson, Linda. Autobiography. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2011. Burke, Peter. “The Cultural History of Dreams.” In Varieties of Cultural History, by Peter Burke, 23–42. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Campbell, Mary Baine. “Dreaming, Motion, Meaning: Oneiric Transport in Seventeenth-Century Europe.” In Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, edited by Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan, and S. J. Wiseman, 15–30. New York: Routledge, 2008. Cardan, Jerome [Girolamo Cardano]. The Book of My Life (De Vita Propria Liber). Translated by Jean Stoner. New York: Dover, 1960. Forman, Simon. The Groundes of the Longitude: With an Admonition to all those that are Incredulous and beleeue not the Trueth of the same. London, 1591.

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Foucault, Michel. The Care of the Self. Vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. 3rd ed. London: Penguin, 1997. —. “Delusions and Dreams in Jensens’s Gradiva.” In Writings on Art and Literature, edited by Werner Hamacher and David E. Wellbery, 3–86. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980. Hackett, Helen. “Dream-visions of Elizabeth I.” In Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night, edited by Katharine Hodgkin, Michelle O’Callaghan, and S. J. Wiseman, 45–66. New York: Routledge, 2008. Harl, Allison L. “Passive, Pursued and Powerful: Construction of the Male Self in Renaissance Autobiography” Discoveries 22.2 (2005). Accessed 3 August 2012. http://www.scrc.us.com/discoveries/passivepursued-and-powerful-construction-of-the-male-self-in-renaissanceautobiography/. Hill, Thomas. The most pleasaunt arte of the interpretation of dreames. London, 1576. Holland, Peter. “The Interpretation of Dreams in the Renaissance.” In Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, edited by Peter Brown, 125–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Levin, Carole. Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Montrose, Louis. “Shaping Fantasies: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture.” Representations 1 (1983): 61–94. Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Translated by Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Rowse, A. L. Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer. New York: Charles Scribner, 1974. Shepard, Alexandra. Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Sivefors, Per. “‘All this tractate is but a dream’: The Ethics of Dream Narration in Thomas Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night.” In Textual Ethos Studies, or Locating Ethics, edited by Anna Fahraeus and AnnKatrin Jonsson. 161–74. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.

292

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Traister, Barbara Howard. Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

CONTRIBUTORS

Anders Cullhed, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University, has published widely on the Latin and Romance literatures from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period. Author of Quevedo. El instante poético (Zaragoza, 2005) and In the Shadow of Creusa. Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature (Berlin, 2014). Unn Falkeid, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oslo, has published widely on Petrarch and Dante, and is currently writing a book on the Avignon papacy as a context for cultural transmissions between different cultures of early modern Europe. She is co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch (2013) with Albert Russell Ascoli, and Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry (2014) with Aileen Astorga Feng. Carin Franzén, Professor of Language and Culture at Linköping University, has published various studies on medieval and Early Modern women. Author of “The Legacy of Courtly Love and the Feminine Position”, (Re)Contextualizing Literary and Cultural History, eds. Claudia Egerer and Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre (Stockholm 2013) and “Christine de Pizan’s Appropriation of the Courtly Tradition”, Theorizing Narrative Genres and Gender, edited by Lieselotte Steinbrügge (Leuven 2013). Eva-Carin Gerö is a Professor of Ancient Greek language and literature at Stockholm University. Her research is focused on the semantics and pragmatics of Ancient Greek, and, more generally, on the relationship between language and thought. Anders Hallengren, Ph.D., is a Fellow of Stockholm University affiliated to the research project “Fiction and Figuration in High and Late Medieval Literature” (www.fictionandfiguration.com). He was the coordinator of the project “Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature” (www.premodern.eu).

294

Contributors

Sofie Kluge holds a MA and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen. She is currently a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Stockholm. She has published articles and books on a range of different historical and theoretical topics, but specializes in the literature of the Spanish Golden Age. Mats Malm is a Professor of Comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg. His main research interests are the uses of Classical and medieval traditions in the building of early modern Sweden, Old Norse literature, and poetics from Antiquity to the 19th century. He leads the digitization project The Swedish Literature Bank (http://litteraturbanken.se). Ulf Malm, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Uppsala, has published books and articles on medieval Occitan and Galician-Portuguese troubadour poetry, medieval Latin erotic poetry, modern Latin-American fiction (Gabriel García Márquez) as well as late nineteenth and twentieth century Swedish poetry. Ingela Nilsson is a Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University. Her research interests concern all forms of narration and literary adaptation, and the tension that such procedures create between tradition and innovation. She is currently working on questions of narrative poetics and authorship in twelfth-century Byzantium. Marcus Nordlund is a Senior Lecturer in English literature at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has previously published The Dark Lantern: A Historical Study of Sight in Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton (1999); Shakespeare and the Nature of Love: Literature, Culture, Evolution (2007); and articles on various literary and literary-theoretical subjects, typically from a historical, philosophical, or biocultural angle. Kristiina Savin is a Doctor of Philosophy in history of ideas and science at Lund University. She wrote her doctoral thesis about the impact of the concept of fortuna in early modern Swedish thinking about risk and accidents. Her special field of interest is the intersection between language, ideas, emotions and literary culture. Currently she is working on a monograph about the history of shyness during 17th–20th centuries.

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Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed is a Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has previously published a handful of articles on premodern women writing and the dissertation Proba the Prophet. Studies in the Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba (2012). Erland Sellberg is a Professor of history of ideas at Stockholm University. His research has been focused on problems concerning early modern time: Renaissance humanism, political culture, Lutheran scholasticism and the impact of the church on the state-building process. Ever since his doctoral thesis he had written articles on problems concerning the French philosopher Petrus Ramus and the impact of Ramism on European education. Ola Sigurdson is a Professor of systematic theology and director of Centre for Culture and Health, both at the University of Gothenburg. He has published more than 15 books in systematic theology, political philosophy and theology of culture, most recently Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek (2012). Per Sivefors is a Senior Lecturer in English at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His research focuses on the early modern period, and his interests include early modern dream narratives, urban culture, and the history of authorship. He is the editor of Urban Preoccupations: Mental and Material Landscapes (2007). Johanna Vernqvist is a Ph.D. student in Language and Culture at Linköping University. In her project “Performances of Love: Representations of Love, Sexuality and Gender in Renaissance Literature” she aims to study the works of Gaspara Stampa, Marguerite de Navarre and Louise Labé. Mia Åkestam is a Senior lecturer at The Department of Art History and at The Center for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. Her doctoral work was published in Bebådelsebilder – om bildbruk under medeltiden (Diss. Stockholm, 2010). Her research centers on medieval art and visual culture with a special interest in historical context and relationships between text and image. She has published on the Annunciation, on Saint Birgitta of Sweden and on illuminated manuscripts.

INDEX

Aasdalen, U. I. 111, 127 Abelard, P. 31 Achilles Tatius 9, 162, 176, 196–7 Adams, H. 153 Aesop 3 Agathon 16, 27 Aghinolfi, G. 254 Ahlgren, G. 278 Åkestam, M. 11, 235, 249, 295 Alain de Lille 2 Alexiou, M. 196, 198 Alfonso Pecha 240 Altmann, B. K. 96 Álvarez, B. 277 Ambrosius 213 Anderson, L. 290 Andreas Capellanus 238 Appolonius 162 Aragona, T. di 117 Aretino, P. 163, 171 Arezzo, G. of 34 Aristophanes 19–20, 23–4, 112, 121 Aristotle 28, 65, 110–1, 115, 127, 160, 170, 197, 216, 238, 251, 253–4, 289 Arnaut de Maruelh 231 Artemidorus 283–4, 289 Ascoli, A. R. 293 Auerbach, E. 68 Augustine, Saint 3, 5, 6, 7, 30–1, 35–6, 41–57, 60–1, 64–5, 86, 70–2, 74–81, 84–6, 148, 163, 166, 171, 261–3, 265, 268 Augustus 26 Averincev, S. 29, 36 Bakhtin, M. 142 Baldwin, T. W. 153

Baron, H. 86, 254 Barthes, R. 106, 195 Baruzi, J. 274, 278 Bataille, G. 267, 274–6, 278 Bate, J. 139, 142 Baudelaire, C. 106 Beaton, R. 196 Beauchamps, P.-F. G. de 184–9, 194–9 Bec, P. 104 Belting, H. 82, 87 Benedikz, B. S. 198 Benjamin, W. 276, 279 Bernard of Clairvaux 238–9, 242, 278 Bernard, R. W. 107 Bernardo, A. S. 257, 260, 264–5 Bernart de Ventadorn 225 Bernini, Gianlorenzo 271 Berschin, W. 211, 213 Bertran de Born 225–6 Bethe, E. 17, 23 Bettetini, M. 45, 56 Bezzola, R. R. 212 Birgitta of Sweden, Saint 11, 235– 6, 239–43, 245–50 Blanchard, J. 96, 106 Blanche of Sweden (queen) 235 Blanchot, M. 278 Blank, Paula 132, 141 Bloch, R. H. 92, 103–6 Bloom, A. 130, 139 Boccaccio, G. 31, 118 Boethius 75, 148 Bonaventure, Saint 83–4, 87, 164, 171 Boncompagno da Signa 158, 161, 170–1 Bothe, F. H. 23

Pangs of Love and Longing Bracciolini, G. F. P. 264 Brandt, P. 17, 23 Browning, E. B. 130 Bruno the Great (archbishop of Cologne) 210 Burckhardt, J. 263 Burke, P. 289 Burns, E. J. 94, 105 Burton, Robert 158, 162, 170–1 Butler, J. 127 Bynum, C. W. 247, 249 Callias 20, 23 Calvin, J. 80, 165, 172 Cameron, A. 212 Camille, M. 237, 248–9 Campbell, M. B. 284, 289 Cantarella, E. 22–23 Cardan, J. 289 Cardano, G. 284 Carson, A. 27, 35 Casanova, G. 199 Castellini, G. Z. 171 Castellus, P. V. 169 Castiglione, B. 117–8, 161–2, 170– 1 Castro, A. 277 Cataldi Palau, A. 197–8 Catherine of Vadstena, Saint 241, 246 Cavalcanti, G. 63–4, 68, 70, 72, 112, 171 Cercamon 231 Certeau, M. de 55, 267, 275–6 Charles the Bald (emperor) 61 Chaucer, G. 8, 33, 36–7, 130–1, 133, 140, 162, 289 Chiamenti, M. 171 Cholakian, P. F. 106 Christine de Pizan 7, 92–3, 95–9, 105–6, 293 Chrysos, E. 213 Cicero 76, 86, 166, 216, 254, 262 Cino da Pistoia 34 Claire of Assisi, Saint 31, 37 Cleisthenes 20

297

Cleoboulos of Lindos 28 Cohen, E. 87 Colletet, G. 197 Colonna, F. 35, 38 Cornelius Gallus 26 Cottrell, R. D. 120, 127 Coverdale, M. 163 Crates of Thebes 188 Crawford, K. 120, 122, 128 Crébillon, C. de 198 Crozier, A. 13 Cryle, P. 199 Cullhed, A. 1, 6, 60, 248, 278, 293 Curtius, E. R. 213, 217 Dante Alighieri 6, 33–4, 56, 60–72, 111, 159, 170–1, 216, 253, 259– 60, 293 Datis 21 Davidson, J. 17, 22, 23 Dawson, R. L. 197 Deleuze, G. 4 della Porta, G. 160 Derbes, A. 82, 87 Descartes, R. 5, 52–3, 160–1, 170, 274 Deschamps, E. 106 Di Salvo, A. 277 Diamond, L. 140 Dijkhuizen, J. F. van 86 Diocles 22 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 154 Dionysius the Areopagite, Pseudo61 Diotima of Mantinea 46 Doherty, M. J. 148, 154 Dolan, F. E. 144, 147, 152–3, 154 Donaldson, E. T. 140 Dover, K. 17 Dragonetti, R. 217, 225 Dronke, P. 206–7, 212–3, 217 Dryden, J. 199 Dubost, J.-P. 197–8 Duby, G. 103 Durán, A. 277

298 Eagleton, T. 53, 55, 57, 295 Edwards, R. R. 36 Elisabeth (queen) 2, 12, 153, 281, 285–8 Enders, M. 171 Enekel, K. A. E. 86 Ennius 257 Erasmus of Rotterdam 166, 172 Essex, 2nd Earl of (Robert Devereux) 286 Euripides 21, 26 Falkeid, U. 6–7, 74, 293 Faral, E. 222, 225, 231 Febvre, L. 1 Feher-Gurewich, J. 105 Feiss, H. 237, 248 Feng, A. A. 293 Ferguson, M. W. 147, 153–4 Ficino, M. 7, 110–5, 117–22, 126– 7, 171 Fletcher, J. 8, 130–5, 137, 139–41 Folquet de Marselha 231 Forman, S. 12, 281–8, 290 Foucault, M. 7, 17, 97, 104–6, 275, 283, 289 Francis of Assisi, Saint 6–7, 37, 74, 81–5, 87 Franzén, C. 1, 7, 126, 293 Frazer, R. 153 Freccero, J. 63, 72 Freeman, C. 29, 36 Freud, S. 12, 50, 56, 93–4, 104, 282–4, 289–90 Friedman, M. 141 Fromm, E. 141 Funke, M. 196 Futre Pinheiro, M. P. 196 Galen 158 Gallo, E. 223, 225, 231–2 García de la Concha, V. 277 García Márquez, G. 294 Gardiner, F. C. 36 Gaulmain, G. 198 Gaunt, S. 231

Index Gautier de Châtillon 224 Gejrot, C. 249 Gelernt, J. 118–20, 127 Geoffroi de Vinsauf 216, 223, 225, 231–2 Gerberga (abbess of Gandersheim) 210, 212 Germain, J. (pseudonym for Drouilly, J.–G.) 190, 194, 199 Gerö, E.-C. 4, 16, 21–3, 293 Gherardo 77, 253–4 Goethe, J. W. 67, 72 Gorgias 36, 146–7, 153–4 Gosson, S. 144–8, 150–1, 153, 155 Grácian, B. 4 Greenblatt, S. 282, 289 Gregory the Great, Saint (pope) 166, 237, 242, 277 Guarini, G. B. 163 Guilhem de Peitieus 225 Guillaume de Lorris 105 Guinizzelli, G. 62–3, 71 Hackett, H. 288 Häll, M. 37 Hallengren, A. 1, 5, 26, 263, 293 Hallyn, F. 198 Hamburger, J. F. 239, 249 Hanby, M. 57 Härdelin, A. 38 Harl, A. L. 285, 289 Harris, H. 141 Haskins, C. H. 33, 38 Hazlitt, W. 16 Hegel, G. W. F. 5, 6, 41, 54–5, 57, 274 Heinrichs, K. 29–30, 36 Heitmann, K. 80, 86 Helgerson, R. 153 Heliodoros 9 Heller, W. 171 Henderson, J. 22, 23 Henriksen, J.-O. 38 Heraclitus 3, 22–3 Herman, J. 198 Herman, P. C. 144–5, 152–3

Pangs of Love and Longing Hermoniakos, C., 199 Hesiod 26 Hildegard of Bingen 31, 37, 164, 171, 224 Hill, T. 283–4, 289 Hipparchia of Maroneia 188 Hipponicus 23 Hirsh, J. D. 141–2 Høgel, C. 213 Holland, P. 289 Holsinger, B. W. 37, 55, 105–7 Homer 9, 26, 65 Homeyer, H. 213 Horace 28 Howell, W. S. 154 Hrotsvith of Gandersheim 10, 204– 214 Huchet, J.-C. 93–4, 104–5 Hugh of Orléans 33 Hugh of Saint-Victor 237, 239, 242, 248 Hugo, H. 167–8, 172 Hyde, T. 38 Ignatius of Loyola, Saint 268, 277 Ingegärd Knutsdotter 241 Ingolf 241–2, 246 Innocent VIII (pope) 32 Isidore of Seville, Saint 85 Jacoff, R. 72 Jaeger, S. 211, 238, 248 Jayne, S. 110 Jean de Fécamp 166 Jean de Meun 95–6, 105–6 Jeanroy, A. 225, 231 Jeffreys, E. 196–7 Jerome, Saint 29 John, Saint (apostle) 42, 56 John I Tzimiskes (emperor) 207 John of Damascus, Saint 277 John of the Cross, Saint 274, 278 John Scotus Eriugene 61 Johnsson, H.-R. 21 Jouanno, C. 196 Joyce, J. 35

299

Juana Inés de la Cruz, sor 67 Kassell, L. 288, 290 Katarina Bengtsdotter of Aspenäs 245 Kauffman, L. S. 195 Kay, S. 93, 104–6 Kellman, S. G. 195 Kemp, W. 237, 248 Kern Paster, G. 170 Kierkegaard, S. 31 Kinney, A. F. 155 Kirkham, V. 264 Klockars, B. 249 Kluge, S. 11, 267, 278, 294 Knut Bosson (Natt och Dag) 246 Knüpper, J. 170 Kodera, S. 115–6, 127–8 Kojève, A. 54, 57 Konstan, D. 198 Kristeller, P. O. 254, 261–5 Kristeva, J. 41, 55, 93–4, 98, 104– 6, 171, 248–9 Krueger, R. L. 105 La Mettrie, J. O. de 189, 198 Labbie, E. F. 32, 55 Labé, L. 31 Laborde, J.-B. de 189 Lacan, J. 5, 41–2, 49–50, 52–3, 55– 7, 93–4, 104–5, 126, 274, 278 Lactantius, L. C. F. 85 Lamb, M. E. 144, 148, 152–3 Lange, M. E. 170 Laujon, P. 189, 198 Lazar, M. 217, 224, 231–2 Le Moine, L. H. 189, 194, 199 Lear, A. 22 Lebas, P. 190, 199 Leclercq, J. 169, 172, 237, 248 Lee, A. 261–2, 265 Legrand, É. 199 Lehnhof, K. R. 154 Leonardi, C. 212 Leone Ebreo 7, 110, 114–5, 117, 127

300 Leube-Fey, C. 225, 231 Levin, C. 285–6, 288–90 Levine, L. 144, 152 Licht, H. see Brandt, P. Lichtenstein, J. 153–4 Liudolf, duke of Saxony 212 Livy 255, 264 Lodewijk Heyligen 265 Longus 195–6, 200 Lucian 23, 181 Luis de León 278 Luther, M. 53, 80, 166, 172, 295 MacAlister, S. 197 MacFaul, T. Macrembolites, E. 162, 176, 184, 190–1, 194–7, 199–200 Macrobius 262 Maggi, A. 171, 264 Magnus Eriksson (king) 235 Malm, M. 1, 8, 144, 154–5, 294 Malm, U. 10, 216, 231, 294 Manasses, C. 196 Mann, N. 265 Mannucci, T. see Manutius, A. Manuel I Komnenos (emperor) 176 Manutius, A. 34 Marcabru 231 Marchesi, S. 264 Marcovich, M. 196 Marguerite de Navarre 1, 7, 92–3, 95, 100, 102–3, 106–7, 110, 117–20, 122, 126–8, 165, 172, 295 Marie de France 31 Marie l’Égyptienne 224, 228, 231 Márquez Villanueva, F. 277 Marsh, D. 78, 86 Martinelli, B. 77, 83, 86–7, 265 Martorell, J. 10 Massinissa (king) 33, 255 Master Mathias 242 Mathieu de Vendôme 216, 222–3, 225 Matz, R. 153 Mazzio, C. 169

Index Mazzotta, G. 75, 77, 86–7, 254 McKitterick, R. 207, 212 Mead, G. H. 142 Meleager of Gadara 18, 21 Ménard, P. 232 Menéndez Pidal, R. 277 Middleton, T. 294 Miles, M. R. 45, 56 Milton, J. 145, 152 Mock, Douglas W. 141 Monje de Montaudon 231 Montaigne, M. de 131, 140 Monteverdi, C. 163 Montrose, L. 288, 290 Moore, M. B. 31, 36 Morales, H. 196 Morris, B. 239, 249–50 Muscatine, C. 232 Müller, H. 167 Nashe, T. Nelson, C. 213 Nelson, J. C. 111, 115, 127 Niederoest, M. 106 Nietzsche, F. 106, 274 Niketas Eugenianos 196 Nilsson, I. 9, 170, 176, 196–8, 200, 294 Nordlund, M. 8, 130, 140–1, 294 Nussbaum, M. 43, 47, 56 Oberman, H. 171 Oda 212 Ong, W. J. 154 Origen 278 Orozco Díaz, E. 277 Os, H. W. van 82, 87 Otto I (the Great, emperor) 212 Otto II (emperor) 207, 212 Otto III (emperor) 207 Ovid 10, 28, 36, 216–8, 221–5, 227–8, 230–2 Pabel, H. M. 172 Pallavicino, C. 162 Panizza, L. A. 86

Pangs of Love and Longing Papy, J. 265 Paris, G. 105 Parker, A. A. 277 Parker, G. A. 141 Parker, P. 152 Paul, Saint 51, 65, 79, 84, 119, 165–6, 172 Paul the Deacon 211 Pausanias 112 Paz, O. 33, 38 Peire Cardenal 231 Pérez-Romero, A. 279 Perkins, J. 87 Pernoud, R. 104 Perpetua, Saint 212 Persels, J. C. 120, 128 Peter Chrysologus, Saint 171 Petrarch 6–7, 11, 30–3, 37–8, 70, 72, 74–7, 80–3, 85–7, 92, 103, 157–60, 163, 169–70, 253–265, 293 Piccolomini, A. 163, 171 Pico della Mirandola, G. 7, 115 Pierre de Blois 218, 221–3, 230 Platnauer, M. 24 Plato 3, 4, 6, 7, 16–7, 23, 26–28, 36, 44, 46–7, 56, 60–1, 64, 70– 1, 76–7, 79, 100, 102, 104, 107, 110–5, 117–123, 126–8, 142, 146–50, 153–4, 163, 181, 253, 261–2, 264–5 Plett, H. F. 154 Plotinus 56 Plutarch 19 Polyakova, S. V. 199 Ponte Vallis, L. de 168, 172 Porete, M. 212 Porphyry of Tyre 44, 46, 56 Potter, L. 133, 141 Prodromos, T. 196 Proudfoot, G. R. 140 Prudentius Clemens, A. 30 Prynne, W. 144 Pythagora 77 Quevedo, F. de 5, 32, 37, 293

301

Quilligan, M. 98, 106 Quintilian 147, 149–50, 152–4, 216 Radermacher, L. 23 Raguel 211 Ramus, Petrus 154, 295 Rather of Verona 210 Rauh, M. J. 153 Rebhorn, W. 152, 154–5 Reeser, T. W. 120, 123, 125, 127 Riccardis 210 Richard of Saint-Victor 237, 242, 248 Richard, J. 187, 198 Richards, E. J. 106 Rico, F. 86 Ricoer, P. 290 Ripa, C. 171 Robert of Anjou (king) 255 Romano, G. 171 Rose, M. B. 140 Rossi, L. 226–7, 232 Rowse, A. L. 284, 286–90 Sade, Marquis de 191 Saintsbury, G. 198 Santagata, M. 86 Sappho 16, 27 Savin, K. 9, 157 Schapiro, M. 237, 248 Schelling, F. W. J. von 5, 56 Scheludko, D. 217, 231 Schmitt, J.-C. 237, 248 Schottenius Cullhed, S. 10, 204, 295 Schön, E. 172 Scipio the Elder 255, 257 Searby, D. 239, 249–50 Sellberg, E. 11, 154, 253, 295 Seneca 260, 262, 265 Shakespeare, W. 4, 8, 66, 72, 130– 142, 153, 159–160, 162, 170–1, 282, 288–9, 294 Shannon, L. J. 140 Sheldon-Williams, I. P. 61 Shepard, A. 285, 290

302 Shults, F. LeRon 38 Sidney, P. 144–5, 147–54 Sigurdson, O. 5–6, 41, 248, 295 Silius Italicus 264 Sivefors, P. 12, 281, 295 Skinner, M. B. 20, 23–4, 196 Skinner, Q. 264 Slade, C. 277–8 Smith, N. B. 217 Soble, A. 35 Socrates 27–9, 46, 112, 146, 259, 265 Solon of Athens 28 Solterer, H. 105 Sommers, P. 172 Sophie I (abbess of Gandersheim) 207 Sophonisba 33, 255 Spence, S. 230, 232 Spencer, F. A. 36 Spencer, T. 139, 142 Spenser, E. 145, 152 Speranza, I. 172 Spevack, M. 170 Stampa, G. 31, 293 Stanbury, S. 239, 249 Staub, R. 226–7, 232 Sten Bosson (Natt och Dag) 246 Stephens, W. 37 Stock, B. 75, 86 Stottlemyer, R. 212–3 Straus, E. W. 170 Strubel, A. 96 Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis 238, 248 Suso, Heinrich 239, 249 Tasso, T. 163, 171 Tateo, F. 86 Taylor, D. 33, 38, 53, 57 Teigen, K. H. 169–70 Teresa of Ávila, Saint 11, 12, 267– 79 Theodoric (king) 75 Theophano (empress) 207

Index Thomas à Kempis 165, 171 Thomas Aquinas, Saint 32, 41–2, 55, 111, 127 Thonnard, F.-J. 36 Thucydides 22 Thunander, R. 37 Traina, G. 30, 36 Traister, B. H. 287, 288, 290 Trevisani, C. 163, 171 Trinkaus, C. 254, 265 Undhagen, C.-G. 249 Urrutia, A. 37 Ursus (subdeacon) 211, 213 Valdes del Alamo, E. 244, 249 Vance, J. 126 Vernqvist, J. 7, 110, 295 Vickers, B. 140 Vinay, G. 212 Virgil 9, 26, 36, 64–66, 68, 70, 72, 86, 105, 145, 166, 216, 256–7, 260, 295 Wailes, S. L. 213 Waith, E. 131, 140 Wald Lasowski, P. 199 Walsh, P. G. 170, 217, 220–4, 231 Wardropper, B. 277 Weber, A. 277, 279 Webster, J. 294 Weller, B. 140 Wells, M. A. 171 Wiegand, G. M. 211, 213 Willard, C. C. 106 William IX (the Troubador) 93 William (abbot of SaintThierry) 238 Wilson, K. 207, 210–3 Wroth, M. 31 Zeitlin, F. I. 196 Žižek, S. 5, 6, 41–3, 48–57, 93–4, 104–5, 295