Master’s Degree in English and American literary studies
Final Thesis
The Emblematic Imagination of Anthony Hecht Worldly and Religious Icons and Rituals
Supervisor Ch. Prof. Gregory Dowling
Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Gabriella Vöő
Graduand Elena Valli Matricolation number 871686
Academic Year 2019/2020
Index
0. Introduction ...... 1
1. The Seven Deadly Sins: Anthony Hecht and the Emblematic Tradition ...... 3 1.1. Emblematic Poetry ...... 3 1.1.1. Hecht’s Emblematic View of Nature ...... 3 1.1.2. Hecht’s Emblematic Practice...... 4 1.1.3. A Definition and History of Emblems ...... 5 1.1.4. Metaphysical Poetry and the Emblematic Tradition ...... 8 1.2. The Seven Deadly Sins ...... 10 1.2.1. “Pride” ...... 13 1.2.2. “Envy” ...... 20 1.2.3. “Wrath” ...... 25 1.2.4. “Sloth” ...... 32 1.2.5. “Avarice” ...... 37 1.2.6. “Gluttony” ...... 41 1.2.7. “Lust” ...... 48
2. The Emblematic Representation of Saints ...... 56 2.1. The Emblem as Religious and Artistic Medium ...... 56 2.2. “Gorgeous emblems of salvation”: Relics, Ex-Votos and Church Decorations ..... 60 2.3. “Dim shapes enacting hobbled stones”: Speaking Pictures and Statues...... 83 2.4. “A riddle beyond the eye’s solution”: Paintings and Mirrors ...... 98 2.5. “The visible counterpart of branched polyphony”: Painting, Words and Music .. 113 Bibliography...... 137 Primary Sources ...... 137 Interviews ...... 139 Secondary Sources ...... 139 Background Sources ...... 144 Appendix ...... i 1. The Seven Deadly Sins: Anthony Hecht and the Emblematic Tradition ...... i 2. The Emblematic Representation of Saints ...... xii
0. Introduction
The feature which is most consistently praised in the poetry of Anthony Hecht is the dialectical dialogue which characterizes each of his poems – a dialogue between form and content, between opposing concepts or poetic styles. This dichotomy allows for the interpretation of his pieces as media which account for the contrasts and comparisons of a given topic, as a middle-ground where the mind can behold the contemplated object fully, and within a system of interrelations. Looking further into Hecht’s macro fields of interest – religion, history, violence, art – there is strong evidence of how such a habit is articulated after the example and employing the specific conventions of emblems. Emblems are considered in this analysis as both a cultural and a poetic practice, consisting in the correlation of an image and a short poem with a didactic or moral intent, but more generally recalling the anagogic viewpoint exemplified in the Bible and common in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which interpreted each object as the meaningful part of a whole, God’s universe, and wished to unite signifier and signified, in an attempt at regaining prelapsarian knowledge. Many elements suggest Hecht’s acquaintance with the form: he developed his poetic practice alongside a career as professor of Renaissance literature; he furthermore combined within his ars poetica a strong curiosity for biblical stories, anthropological rituals and iconology, and has often been inspired by the work of poets, like John Donne and George Herbert, who introduced this practice into poetry. Chapter I offers a brief history and definition of emblems, and points out the numerous emblematic characteristics in his poems through a detailed analysis of his first collection of emblems, The Seven Deadly Sins. These epigrams present many metaphysical echoes, and tweak the emblematic form to fit the modern viewpoint. Hecht builds upon the duality of picture and poem the controversies embodied within the mediating figure of Christ, the subject of each poem, to articulate a comparison between the human and the divine condition in relation to different moral issues. This confers a satirical quality to emblems, also employed to meditate upon several themes connected to the practice, such as the law, morality and hermeneutics, as well as the Old and New Dispensation and the relationship of man with God – in a new way, devoid of the canonical zeal originally applied to these compositions. The mediating value of emblems, mixing the realms of the spiritual and profane, is arguably further applied to Hecht’s ekphrastic poems, some of his most popular, in which its triggers a meta-reflection on the artistic process of poet and artisan. Taking under observation the poetic description not only of paintings but of a wider range of artistic objects, chapter II
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evaluates the relevance and meaning of votive objects and representations of religious figures in Hecht’s production. These recur quite often throughout his career, and present the same characteristics of emblem collections, featuring a medium (the poem) which in turn gives shape to a further medium (a religious figure, mediating between Heaven and Earth) cast in yet another medium, the artistic one. The chapter first analyzes the practices and rituals connected with ex-votos and relics, featured in some of Hecht’s early poems and later in “The Venetian Vespers”, in which the poet reflects on the value of simulacra and on their role as catalysts of the worshippers’ spiritual and bodily burdens. Section two discusses the active role of statues and church decorations, another frequent feature in Hecht’s poetry, in triggering a discussion on the relationship between man and divinity and on the meaning of allegory and iconology. Section three shifts the discussion to the issue of iconoclasm and the topic of the ineffability of God, compensated for in human terms through the emblematic practice, and reflected in certain paintings by Giovanni Bellini, an artist much appreciated by the poet. The correspondence and synergy present in Renaissance paintings, relating man to God and to nature through perspective and geometric correspondences returns in the final section, which discusses the way art can achieve a meditational value, adding further meaning to painted, false objects and turning emblematic as a result. This section moreover shows how the artistic process is compared by Hecht to a search for, in turn, the meaning of human experience and the essence of God. Overall, Anthony Hecht developed, throughout his poetic career, an emblematic imagination which is reflected in the structure of his poems; this habit insists on the projection of human qualities on a spiritual value made concrete, embodied in an objective form. The supposed dialogue between God and man, articulated through biblical references or in objects of worship, however, ends up being an endless monologue on the side of man, a way to objectify and sometimes mystify the tragedy of his own imperfect state, but also a continuous commentary on his need to gain knowledge of all that is perceived but unseen.
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1. The Seven Deadly Sins: Anthony Hecht and the Emblematic Tradition
1.1. Emblematic Poetry
1.1.1. Hecht’s Emblematic View of Nature
In his essay on “The Pathetic Fallacy”, Hecht notes that there was “an anagogic, emblematic view of nature in the Middle Ages until the 17th century, typically religious, wishing to see God in every aspect of creation, found in biblical texts and theological arguments, as well as in poems by Donne and Herbert”1. This emblematic view of nature refers to the cosmological perspective which characterized a time of profound change, a time ignited by the desire to make sense of the world through the association of objects, the comparison of the particular to the universal, and the accommodation of all aspects of knowledge into an organized whole, in which everything found correspondences through hierarchies, symbolical groupings and numerology. The epistemological mode of the Renaissance, as identified by Foucault2, was partly inherited by Modernism in another time of historical upheaval – Eliot was much concerned, as Tradition and the Individual Talent reminds us, with the idea of culture as a cohesive and ever adapting universe – and later followed by a poet who defines his work as “Governed by laws that stand for other laws,/Both of which aim, through kindred disciplines,/At the soul’s knowledge and habiliment”3. Hecht began his poetic career “after World War II, when the New Criticism defined the expectations of readers of poetry, when Donne, the metaphysical, and Hopkins were at the apogee of their influence, and the preeminent modernist poets were Eliot, Yeats, Stevens and Auden, formalists all”4. His poetry extended this canon into an age where the confessional fashion was asserting itself as the new standard; at the basis of his views was the early modern-inspired conviction that poetry, just like art or architecture, or even music, aims, through form, not only at the completion of a whole, but also at clarification through resemblance – according to the same logic that makes Leonardo’s Vitruvian man fit perfectly into a circle5.
1 “The Pathetic Fallacy”, Hecht: 1986, p.11. 2 This thesis is exposed in The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, published in 1966. 3 “Peripeteia”, Hecht: 1998, p. 140, from Millions of Strange Shadows. 4 Hoffman in Lea:1989, p. 42. 5 “Poetry and Music”, Hecht: 1995, p. 51.
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His creative work developed alongside his academic career as professor of Renaissance poetry, and was continuously enriched by the interest in all forms of art and in their intersection – a Baroque quality, which he celebrates in his Mellon lectures. He began in fact his education as a music student, and in time became known especially for his ekphrastic poems, inspired by his admiration for deeply emblematic artists, in the words of Praz6, such as Leonardo, Mantegna, Bellini, Durer and Vasari, as well as many others. Most importantly, the characteristic that mostly reveals the Renaissance quality of his poetry is his dialectical mode, which brought him to measure himself against values as opposite as the spiritual and the physical, religious preoccupation and bodily presence, in a balancing of objective and subjective7. Even from a formal standpoint, two opposing qualities define his poetry and come together in it: a delight in the sensuous apprehension of life, expressed through a Baroque sensibility, and an incessant investigation of the divine and philosophical, conducted with a strict moral sense and given voice through plain style, the simple, concise and sober style preferred by Puritan writers and exemplified in the Bible. It is the kind of opposition which also animated 16th- and 17th-century audiences, and which finds its way into emblems and their derivatives, such as the metaphysical conceit.
1.1.2. Hecht’s Emblematic Practice
His background and his treatment of opposite tensions are enough to establish the presence of an emblematic quality in his poetry, but, more specifically, Hecht also had a life- long experience as a writer of emblems and similar exercises. His first attempt dates back to 1958, with the Seven Deadly Sins, and was immediately followed by A Little Cemetery (1960), an unpublished collection of epitaphs. Struwwelpeter and A Bestiary, two collections inspired by folk-tales, were published respectively by Gehenna and Kanthos press in 1958 and 1962. Aesopic, along the same lines, came out with Gehenna Press in 1967, accompanied by engravings by Thomas Bewick and later transposed into “Improvisations on Aesop” in The Hard Hours. The collaboration with Baskin, the engraver who illustrated some of these works, continued in 1995 with The Presumptions of Death – the most widely discussed among the emblem sequences – and A Gehenna Florilegium, in 1998. This production was developed, contingently, in his private life: examples of this wordplay are also traceable in his correspondence, through epigrams and pattern poems, to friends like William McDonald and
6 Praz:1975, p.24. 7 This is his definition of the poetic practice in “The Pathetic Fallacy, 1986, p. 16.
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colleagues like Christopher Wallace Crabbe8; he was even asked by John Benson, editor at Gehenna, to consider writing lapidary inscriptions9 in 1978. These poems, written over a period of 40 years, are little known, mostly due to their limited circulation in print, although some of them have made their way into Hecht’s poetry books. Most of them are accompanied by wooden engravings, following the traditional rules of the genre. Even beside these specific attempts, Hecht’s production is constellated with animal poems as well as biblical, parabolic stories. While later poems focus their vision on ampler paintings, The Hard Hours can be defined, as Sacks has done, as a “Book of Hours”10 featuring characters and illustrations to a didactic effect; its original table of contents, reported by Post11, shows two prominent categories: “animal” – including “Pig”, “The Song of The Flea”, “Tarantula”, “Improvisations on Aesop” – and “religion” containing poems like “The Seven Deadly Sins” and “Ostia Antica”. Even “Ex voto: To a Madonna”, his translation from Baudelaire, fits well into this stream, and is echoed in his later production in poems like “Exile” and “The Feast of Stephen”. Overall, this poetic form revisits icons and cultural remnants through wit, the ability which “confronts hurt and holds a balance that deserves to be called wisdom”12. This allows Hecht to achieve a synthesis, and to meditate on universal themes through objects and anecdotes.
1.1.3. A Definition and History of Emblems
This exercise is the more fitting as it brings together many of the interests mentioned above: an indefatigable curiosity for tradition and popular culture, as found in Biblical parables, children’s folk-tales and riddles13, a taste for light verse, wordplay and satire expressed through formal competence – confirmed by Jiggery-Pokery, his book of double- dactyls – giving the poet the chance of “saying one thing and meaning another”14 and a more serious attempt at conjugating the physical and supernatural through extended conceits.
8 Letter to Crabbe on September 13, 1995, in Post:2013, p.271; Letter to McDonald on August 7, 1969, in Post: 2013 pp. 143-144. 9 Letter to John Benson, February 10, 1978, in Post:2013, p. 168. 10 Sacks in Lea: 1989, p. 68. 11 Post:2015, pp. 87-88. 12 Heaney’s commentary on Bishop’s wit, in “Seamus Heaney’s Prose”, Hecht: 2003, p. 211. 13 This consideration appears in several essays, but is stated in “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson”, Hecht:1986, pp. 85-117. 14 From Robert Frost’s “Education by Poetry” (1931) in Public and Private Art, Hecht:1995, p 101.
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Emblems were, traditionally, hybrid compositions relating an icon to a short, epigrammatic poem; Praz defined them as “simple allegorical designs accompanied by an explanatory motto and destined to teach in an intuitive form a moral truth”15. They usually had a religious, military, amorous, moral or didactic aim, and were constituted of three parts: an inscriptio, meaning a short motto above the pictura; the pictura, or picture illustrating the story, and finally the subscriptio, a short poem which explained the scene reported in the image and associated it with a certain behaviour, clarifying its exemplary nature. This explanation resulted in a moral teaching, given in the motto – a laconic reminder of proper behaviour, like those of Aesopic fables and parables. In short, they portrayed a scene (or thesis) its interpretation (its antithesis) and application of the moral (a synthesis of the two elements). As Hecht mentioned, emblems were mostly popular in the Middle Ages and went on to influence the Renaissance and Baroque mentality. Medieval theologians had developed an allegorical reading of the Bible: as Daly notes, St. Thomas Aquinas had distinguished, in the Summa Theologica, the sensus historicus, or a literal reading, from the sensus spiritualis, or the possibility of reading its passages in a symbolical way. This last mode of interpretation allowed in turn for three levels of meaning: the sensus allegoricus (a typological reading of the Old and New Testament), the sensus tropologicus (seeing biblical episodes as moral lessons), and the sensus anagogicus (reading passages as prophecies for the future). This mindset extended quickly among all social classes, encouraging instruction and resulting in a vast production of bestiaries, lapidaries, Biblia Pauperum and church decorations. Quoting Jöns, Daly16 remarks on how exegetical interpretation extended from the scriptural world to everything in nature. This resulted, in time, in the all-encompassing mentality of the Renaissance. This age, an age of change from allegorical to scientific thinking, saw the universe as ordered and meaningful, a net of interrelated concepts, an ever-growing cohesive system, based on specularity. In the words of Alan de Lille: “omnis mundi creatura/quasi liber et pictura/nobis est in speculum/nostrae vitae, nostrae sortis/nostrae status, nostrae mortis/fidelis signaculum”17. The interpretative ambition of the Renaissance man, who tried to categorize objects to retrieve a sort of prelapsarian knowledge, brought about the view of the spiritual interpretation of objects as an act of salvation. A similar technique is perhaps revealed in
15 Praz: 1975, pp. 14-15. 16 Jöns in Daly: 1979, p. 41. 17 Daly:1979, p. 48.
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Hecht by Joseph Brodsky: “While this poet sees, he speaks, and the word makes his eye linger on an object. The simultaneousness of this process animates the object and promotes it from the status of reality into a category, indeed into a state of mind”18. The diffusion of emblems between the 15th and 17th century was caused by a renewed interest of the age in classical and ancient culture: emblems were mainly inspired by epigrams, short poems at first meant as lapidary inscriptions with a satirical or funereal aim, after the elegy. These were transmitted to the Early Modern period through the Anthologia Palatina cum Planudeis, and became a regular exercise for religious poets such as Donne and, most importantly Crashaw – even Pope and Coleridge, later on, followed their path. Another source was the Horapollo, a collection which portrayed hieroglyphs as symbols standing for meanings rather than mere sounds, and establishing once again a correspondence between image and word. These elements feature in the first collection of emblems by Alciatus (1531), an Italian lawyer, which presented an array of mixed themes, such as popular anecdotes, mythological material and scientific observations from both the contemporary and classical world. Animals were a very popular subject, and later in time, especially in Holland, an erotic tradition flourished around the heart icon. Emblems quickly spread through Europe, with a volume by La Perrière (1544) and the first English anthology, Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes (1601). As the interest in this genre grew, emblems became more and more specific, and inclined towards didacticism. In 1611 the Emblemata Saecularia was published. Many of the emblems were based on Proverbs, and this initiated, especially around the northern area of Europe, a religious application of the form. Emblems were a general category outside of Italy, so that biblical pictures, illustrations of the lives of saints and of passion were included in it19. The apotheosis of this religious habit occurred in 1615 with Otho Vaenius’ Amoris Divini Emblemata, which tweaked secular and mythological themes to fit them to religious purposes. Profane love becomes sacred in these volumes, and there is much allusion to real martyrdom, as well as to the idea of Christ as nourishment and lover of humanity. The embodiment of Christ in objects – trees, rocks with water gushing from the side, hills – was also promoted through the typological reading of the Old Testament. This had so much success that in 1624 Hugo published another collection, called Pia Desideria, which contains elements from the Song of Solomon and the Psalms. In the words of Clements, “by the 17th century the clerical
18 Brodsky in Lea:1989, pp.49-50. 19 Praz:1975, p. 170.
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writers [were] crowding out the humanists”20. These emblems, as has been noted21, encouraged the Ignatian technique of “the application of the senses” to religious themes, in order to visualize and thus meditate more mindfully on “Hell and the delights of a pious life”. This stream of religious poems had a fundamental impact on Puritans, through the diffusion of Wither’s and Quarles’ emblems in England, often featuring the two characters “Amor and Anima”22. As Lederer explained, “Quarles’ Emblemes supplied the wider public with a cheap substitute for that metaphysical wit which authors like George Chapman and John Donne provided for a more refined audience; he fluttered the multitude with the illusion of getting the hand of the difficult metaphysical poetry”23.
1.1.4. Metaphysical Poetry and the Emblematic Tradition
The same debate between carnality and the spirit characterizes the production and thought of the Metaphysical poets, made popular again after Grierson’s edition24 by Eliot and his contemporaries, and appreciated by Hecht from his youth. The interest in this duality was partly still indebted to the Renaissance view of man – as a microcosmic reflection of the universe, and as a creature whose soul, imprisoned in the body, was approached as concrete matter – and partly caused, in most cases, by their role in the church: Herbert and Donne, in particular, looked for objects and situations that would make spiritual truths more concrete for their communities, the way Christ had done in the parables. This was well suited to the new- found scientific outlook of the time, which encouraged observation, and was particularly relevant in a world still very much burdened by the practical side of life, through physical work and illnesses. Furthermore, this practice aligned with the tradition of “dialogues between soul and body”, trying to achieve a synthesis between these two, started by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians and famously found among Marvell’s poems25. The same operation was attempted by the structural parts of the emblem, as the pictura and subscriptio were called, respectively, its body and soul26.
20 Clements:1960, p. 100. 21 Praz:1975, p. 170. 22 Freeman:1941, p. 152. 23 Lederer (1946) in Praz:1975, p. 163. 24 Grierson, Herbert J.C. ed. Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17thcentury, 1921. 25 Hecht mentions the antagonism between soul and body in relation to Paul (Galatians 5:17), in “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History” (2003), p. 62. Marvell’s poem referred to is “A Dialogue between The Soul and The Body”. 26 Lederer:1946, p.182.
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Although the term “Metaphysical poets” has been accused of labelling as equal a heterogeneous group of poets27, they all partake in the emblematic tradition to some degree. Crashaw and Donne began their poetic career by writing sacred epigrams, and later referred to actual emblems in their poetical production; Donne even seems to have owned several emblem books, and Crashaw was instructed in the Jesuit emblem tradition28. Other than using word-emblems, meaning images and words commonly found as emblems, their entire poems could be structurally and thematically emblematic. Herbert is considered by Praz and Freeman29 the most successful in this respect. As Daly notes, he is able to remove the picture creating a verbal structure which parallels the emblems at all points – picture, interpretation and application – visible in poems such as “The Collar” and “The Pulley”30. Emblematic poems could be contracted, when a word is hinted at as containing the key to the explanation of the metaphor, or extended, using several images to describe an object through repetition and amplification31. Their compositions anticipate Hecht’s taste for contrariety, for riddles and wordplay, in the form of anagrams, figurative poems and other tricks. Biblical stories provide the basis for their poems, which most often deal with a moral quality – “The Indifferent”, “Virtue”, “Sin”, “On the Prodigal” – present a significant object or animal, which becomes metaphorical – “The Flea”, “The Flower”, “The Widow’s Mites” – or, more generally speaking, portray the physical incarnation of God, Christ, in the most varied situations, details and bizarre angles, in a mannerist fashion, and with a Baroque mixture of sensuality and religion, especially coming from poets – like Donne and Crashaw – who converted to a different faith during their lifetime. As in the case of emblems, typology became a never-ending resource for correspondences, as it notably is in Herbert’s “Bunch of Grapes” or Donne’s “Sonnet XI”. In all of these cases, the unvarying principle is that of association and correspondence between abstract and concrete reality, between soul and body. Praz thus defines emblems and conceits, the characteristic feature of this group, as “fruits of the same tree”32. Although both emblematists and conceitists drew from the same
27 Letter to Ashley Brown, April 18, 1987. in Post: 2013, pp. 170-171. 28 Lederer:1946, p.184. 29 Praz:1975, p. 226. 30 Daly:1979, p. 133. 31 Two examples would be, respectively Crashaw’s “Upon The Bleeding Crucifix” (where “ thy deep digged side/that has a double Nilus going” shows the Nilus standing for sacrificial blood) and Crashaw’s “To The Name Above”, as reported by Daly:1979, p. 116. 32 Praz:1975, p.14.
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Renaissance iconology, the presence of exact emblems in their poetry testifies to a conscious influence of one over the other.
1.2. The Seven Deadly Sins
“But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.” Galatians 2:1733
In the light of this long-standing tradition The Seven Deadly Sins34, Hecht’s first attempt in the field, follows the emblematic structure – and perhaps yearns for the fulfilment it promises – but challenges its aim. In a letter to Donald Hall dated around 1959, he writes that he has “just finished a collaboration with an artist here, a wood engraver named Leonard Baskin, on a small emblem book called The Seven Deadly Sins”. The intent of the poems, however, goes decisively against the tradition: “the poems intend to justify the sins, not by making them attractive, but by showing that the alternatives are perhaps just as sinful or pointless; the rationale behind this being that the sins are not really deadly till they’re really persuasive”35. These emblems, later transposed into music by Beaser, who praised their “irony, drama and elliptical wit”36, keep up with the Baroque tradition even in their superposition with different forms of art. The religious subject, in line with Hecht’s interests and moral preoccupations, is also partly a medium to discuss more fundamental, universal themes; as Brodsky recounted, Hecht had told him “something to the effect that all [t]hat we do in our profession is essentially a commentary to – ‘making sense out of’ you’ve said – the Holy Book”37. Given his – and Baskin’s – Hebrew origins, it may seem puzzling to discover this interest in Christianity; still, Hecht recognized that the culture he lived in and the literary canon he engaged with had made him aware of Christian culture38, and his interest in the subject always transcends the mere application of the cult for a more anthropological and
33 All biblical quotations are taken from the King James Version, the one mostly employed by Hecht himself (see
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literary insight: he himself explained that “the parts of the Bible that are especially resonant to me and that I assume resonate for many other people as well, carry an enormous kind of authority and power, not authority as truth but authority as a vital kind of language”39; he also appreciated its images, “by nature near to the heart of the metaphor, implying or challenging relation, correspondence”40. As in the case of the Metaphysical poems, the dialogue between body and soul which is decisive to the subject and engrained into the inscriptio/pictura/subscriptio structure finds its solution, ideally, in the motto and in the one who exemplifies it, the word of the spirit made flesh, the “emblem” Christ. He is an intermediate figure between God and man: as Hecht has noted in his essay on Emily Dickinson, “Christ himself has been seen as that human manifestation of the Godhead which allows all men to look upon that Truth which would otherwise be blinding”41. In this modern twist, however, the conventional dialogue between man and the son of God, founded on both guilt and love and projected towards the worship of the saviour of humanity, is questioned. The sinners become the focus of each poem, the true martyrs and sacrificial lambs, and the word of Christ, quoted from the Bible, becomes misleading and controversial when out of context. The spirit acquires corporeity in a satirical attempt to signal the paradox of a God who has given us a life-supporting body but requires us to ignore its compulsions and needs, by following the example of someone who is never, in practice, fully human – in other words, the question repeats itself throughout his career: “O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue/To cry to thee,/And then not hear it crying!”42. Overall, the approach to these emblems is perfectly described by the poet in a much later critical text, The Hidden Law, through a quote by Guy Davenport on Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy:
The air around Jesus and Paul was full of devils. It is easy to see these for what they were: we call them viruses, bacteria, epilepsy, depression, phobias, obsessions, blindness, lameness, scleroses. And something subtler: meanness, cruelty, selfishness. We see Jesus healing both disease and the ungenerous heart, scarcely making a distinction between them, as if the wounded body and the wounded mind were the same kind of hurt crying out to heaven to be healed. Evil is in the mind, in the will. Evil is the power one person has over another, in governments, and
39 Hecht, Anthony. Interview with Bomb Magazine,1998. 40 “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson”, Hecht:1986, p. 105. 41 “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson”; Hecht:1986, p. 110. 42 George Herbert, “Denial” (1945, pp.79-80). Hecht quotes the lines in “Rites and Ceremonies”, a poem which anticipates the emblem collection in the book (Hecht:1998, pp.38-47, from The Hard Hours).
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especially in official views of virtue which conceal ill will, jealousy, and a great fear of the flesh and the world43.
Remarkably, as the poet wrote to Eleanor Cook44, he met Baskin at Smith in 1956, while the engraver’s “interest in mortality was pronounced” as he was assisting his terminally ill wife. Even their next big collaboration years later, The Presumptions of Death, was somehow carried through under the shadow of propagating illness: Hecht explained in the letter that he had in mind, while writing, the AIDS epidemic. These poems, therefore, purposefully insist on the reality and unavoidable effects of corporeal suffering, as well as expanding the psychological dimension contributed by the Metaphysicals to the genre. Generally speaking, moreover, and in line with the effect of the atrocities he witnessed during the war, he also confessed in an interview, to “A kind of very strong, almost embarrassing, Puritan streak in myself which feels that it’s impossible to look at existence, even at its most joyful, without remembering that there are other people who are suffering at the same time – and keeping that double vision is difficult”45. The typological tradition embraced by the poetic and emblematic early modern writers is furthermore challenged, as the proverbs and moral indications given against each fault offer him a chance to discuss a topic very dear to him, that of the law46 and to denounce certain disqualifying comparisons between Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Finally, from a structural point of view, mirroring the union of the human and religious which characterizes the whole project, he encloses in concise, plain, and even colloquial lines – taken from the scriptures, and organized in epigrammatic couplets – a baroque infusion of sensuality and piety, which hints through symbolic images at the extratextual tradition described and therefore makes the texts rich in contradictions, both literal and moral. To combine the two styles, the poems present metaphors over conceits, or rather imply conceits by simply referencing them. This makes them “deliberately enigmatic ... dense, pointed, puzzling”47,
43 The quote is employed to describe the association between body and psyche, also turned into the realm of religion in some of Auden’s poems in On This Island. in Hecht:1993, p. 51. 44 Letter to Eleanor Cook on January 9, 1997, in Post:2013, p.281. 45 Baer: 2004, p. 73. 46 After Moses, Christ is the giver of the laws against the same Deadly Sins, and several passages from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels are quoted in the emblems. It is furthermore interesting to note that Alciatus, one of the first ever emblematists, applied to the components of emblems (especially the pictura, defined as “pictura falsa”) some concepts pertaining to the legal field. This is reported by Knapp (Caporicci, Sabatier: 2020) after the words of Goodrich (1996). 47 Post:2015, pp.230-231.
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although the moral is often betrayed by the correspondence of repetitive sound and meaning – as Herbert wrote in “Jordan I”, so Hecht can speak “plainly” without “loss of rhyme”48. A key concept for emblematic artists and poet-priests writing for their churchgoers, the Seven Deadly Sins are not featured under this name in the Bible – although they are deduced from it – but were assembled in books such as the Biblia Pauperum, and developed up to the Middle Ages in relation to exempla taken from the natural world and everyday life to teach morals to the poor in iconic, impactful ways, through a systematic approach49. The first attempts are Evagrius’ (d. 399) and John Cassian’s (d. 435), although the first widespread effort was Gregory the Great’s account of the sins, drawing from the Book of Job, later on followed by Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. As the tradition grew, the representation of the Deadly Sins became an important feature in the works of Dante, Chaucer, Gower, Langland and Spenser; even Auden, Hecht’s mentor, dedicated himself to the topic50. Mirroring the preoccupation of Donne and Herbert, specifically signalled by Schoenfeldt, these works often associated sins with specific wounds perpetrated against Christ during the Passion, portraying immorality as a disease that deforms a person’s interior the way physical disease deforms their exterior51. In the words of this author, then “these writers confront the excruciating paradox of a religion of love whose central symbol is an instrument of torture and death”52.
1.2.1. “Pride”
The sequence opens appropriately with “Pride”, considered to be the source of all other sins and the worst one altogether, both according to the tradition – starting with John Cassian, whose placement of the sins Hecht and Baskin replicate – and to the author himself. Pride is the cause of Satan’s fall and of man’s perdition, and in an interview with Philip Hoy, he described it as “the most radical, pervasive, and nearly ineradicable of the sins [...] capable of so many ingenious and unlikely disguises” as “Pride can disguise itself as humility”53.
48 George Herbert, “Jordan I”, pp.56-57, 1945. 49 A history of the Deadly Sins is traced in Newhauser; Ridyard: 2012. 50 He contributed an essay to The Seven Deadly Sins: Cyril Connolly, Angus Wilson, W. H. Auden, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Christopher Sykes, Evelyn Waugh, Akadine Press, 2002. 51 Newhauser; Ridyard: 2012, p.107-108. 52 Schoenfeldt, Michael. “The Spectacle of Too Much Weight”: The Poetics of Sacrifice in Donne, Herbert and Milton, in Chaplin; Rumrich:2006, p.891. 53 Hoy: 1999, p. 66.
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The poem follows the basic structure of an emblem, limiting its lines to two sets of iambic pentameter couplets in monorhyme AAAA, reminiscent of the peremptory cadence of Latin epigrams. All of the texts, as a matter of fact, follow the epigrammatic structure, and, with one intended exception, are constituted by an even number of lines with rhyming or alternate couplets. In relation to his and Baskin’s next emblematic sequence, Hecht wrote to Eleanor Cook: “You are astute and right in noticing my habitual recourse to six-line stanzas ... It probably has something to do with rhyming patterns. A quatrain is too predictable, whether ABBA or ABAB. A quatrain with an added couplet is no more than simply that”54. Such predictability, then criticised, is here a key element to keep the fast pace and memory- inducing magic of rhyme; on this basic scheme, sound and semantic modulations mark distinctions in tone between poems. The pictura (fig.1), cast within a circular frame in the fashion of devices, is inspired by the iconology typically associated with pride, and brings together many emblematic symbols: a peacock with female features stands at the centre of the circle instead of Leonardo’s Vitruvian subject, its skinny legs providing all the support, and on top of it is a man, leaning on the opposite side, as to create a visual split in the top part of the representation. The two figures diverge both in colouring and placement, but converge in the axis of the bodies, which merge as one. The peacock is a traditional icon of pride (fig. 1.a.), as is femininity: many Medieval and Renaissance emblems feature in fact a lady on top of an animal, usually a lion55, in the act of elevating herself through what is merely a beastly self-love. The starkness of the engraving, with its lack of details, almost divests the peacock of its majestic plumage to reveal a chicken body underneath, with a markedly different connotation. In spite of the independent work of artist and poet, suggested by Avery56, the quatrain replicates, following the tradition of the emblem, the false duality represented in the pictura. The poem in fact is built as a brief anecdote which reaches an ambiguous moral lesson through demonstration, the way a parable works. Such a demonstration is achieved by the opposition of two modes of behaviour exemplified in corresponding statements. the two statements occupy the first and third line, and are placed in reverse chronological order. The first, counter-intuitively, represents the negative example: “For me Almighty God Himself has died”. The object, in central position, is exhibited through excessive use of capital letters and reiteration (“Himself”) and is then killed off (“has died”). This triggers a
54 Letter from January 9, 1997 concerning the rhyme scheme of The Presumptions of Death, in Post:2013, p.282. 55 Hassig:1999, pp. 57-59. 56 Avery:2012, pp.112-113.
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series of structural antitheses: the main verb, “said”, half-rhyming internally with all the endings, is placed before the subject, “one”, mimicking the focus-oriented tone of an Aesopic fable (“It was a tortoise aspiring to fly that murdered Aeschylus...”)57. The monosyllabic subject contrasts with the line-long object to which it is related, and is put into focus through its ambivalent actions, introduced in the second line through the relative pronoun “who”. The two time adverbs, “formerly” and “here”, follow the same chronological order and are each accompanied by a verb, “rebuked” and “denied”, sharing the same /d/ ending as well as a negative meaning which annuls the previous statement; in turn, these verbs inform objects with an inherently, as well as contextually opposed meaning: mercy and pride. This intricate architecture betrays a fundamental hypocrisy in the speaker, who is compelled throughout the poem by the same feeling of pride, so that such complex lines are made equal, on first impact, by the repetitive cadence of the rhyme. At the same time, the use of verbs with a negative function (“died”, “rebuked”, “denied”) allows for the sin never to be admitted directly – the word only appears in relation to a chronologically previous phrase and in an act of denial (“formerly rebuked”) – showing that even the narration presents traces of pride – another monitory reminder that it is easily disguised. Throughout the chiastic structure a “Father” figure has become “God Almighty”; as pride is the original sin, it contains all others, and is also extended from “one” to “each of us” in the same way, as Post notes58, that mankind has reversely become “[for] me”. It is worth noting the presence of two sets of rhymes working within the poem: an internal one, with ending in /y/, in the words “Almighty”, “formerly”, “worthy”, “Mercy”, semantically opposed to “died”, “said”, “rebuked”, “pride”, “denied”, “tried”, accompanied by the harsher and more definitive sound /d/. In the musical directions, Hecht defines the piece as “brief and forthright”, saying that “accents punctuate the line to give added bite to individual syllables and indicate glottal attacks on vowels when appropriate”59. The sound of the closed /j/ and of the voiceless plosive /d/ thus add musical texture and significance to this pattern. The tripartite division common to emblems is partly changed in this collection: the moral motto is in fact substituted by the title, the sin discussed, and the inscriptio is usually merged with the subscriptio and located, as in the case of the sonnet, in the last couplet or sentence. This adds to the impression that there is no clear moral to be found in the text,
57 Anthony Hecht, “Improvisations on Aesop”, p.61, 1998, from The Hard Hours. 58 Post:2015, p. 231. 59 Hecht;Beaser:1979.
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where evident images betray blurred interpretations. In this case, the notion that the sin “denied/The Mercy by which each of us is tried” brings about a paradoxical message: pride seems to annul a benefit which in itself measures the insufficiency of human behaviour, and is, as perhaps is suggested in another emblem, “Wrath”, as worthless and inconsistent. As Post has written, then “The sentiments here might be said to fall into the category of damned if you do or damned if you don’t”60. The indecisive nature of the inscriptio is mirrored in the contradictory sources which inspire the two sentences. The second one may have two possible sources, both from the Gospels: the parable of the centurion in Matthew 8:5-13 (also in Luke 7:1-10) and the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. The first describes a centurion sending some friends to Jesus to ask him to save his servant:
And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
The centurion stands as a type for humbleness: he is a pagan, but still accepts his subordination to the power of Jesus and selflessly invokes him to save a mere servant, while being in a position of great prestige. His prayer reveals a complete trust in the performative power of a simple word by Christ, as well as a lack of self-aggrandisement, to the point where he does not even feel worthy to physically share the same ground by asking him to his house. In this view, the soldier moves from self-concerned pride to generosity. His example is so iconic that it has been inserted into Catholic mass to describe the appropriate attitude to be observed in the act of communion. The centurion’s following explanations are also crucial (9- 10): “For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it”. While this man makes a comparison between Christ and himself in regard to their position of authority only to extend Christ’s authority above all, the speaker of the first phrase does the opposite, comparing Christ to himself on the ground of their mutual mortality and implying, through the complement “for me”, which specifies a service received and which is placed in first position, his own predominance in the hierarchical order.
60 Post:2015, p. 231.
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The completing sentence for the celebration of Eucharist goes: “but only say the word and my soul shall be healed”. The oppositional conjunction introduces a request which implies a deep conviction of one’s worthiness. A similar exchange happens between the son and the father in the second parable. This one tells of a young man who wastes all of his father’s money around the world, and, finding himself poor, decides to seek his help once again:
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry.
The story betrays a premeditated intention of the son, and hints at the possible exploitation of the father, showing how the conception of one’s worthiness, although apparently innocent, could be used cunningly to one’s advantage. This favourable treatment towards the sinful son, moreover, triggers the anger of his brother, who lays claim on more advantages in the name of his faithfulness – another example of pride disguised as self- congratulation. Both excerpts, interestingly, deal with the theme of slavery; this datum is particularly significant when associated with a potential source for the first statement. If we take the centurion’s prayer as the source for the claim pronounced “formerly”, it is possible to assume that the speaker of the second may be an altogether different character, related to the previous through common faith. A chronological succession also candidates another converted Pharisee, St. Paul, in a sort of reinvented typological convention between his words and the New Testament – Paul himself introduced this habit. Paul has always been associated with pride and arrogance in Hecht’s career: he is hinted at in “Green”, a poem which admittedly refers to these sins61, and is the protagonist of a later poem, “The Road to Damascus”, although, as a letter to Philip Hoy testifies, this topic
61 Hecht explained to Hoy that “Green is about the disguises of Pride” (1999, p.66) while the holy text which the child has to put away at the end of the poem is “of course Saint Paul’s”, according to Ostriker (Lea:1989, p.104). The poem’s full title is “Green: an epistle” (Hecht:1998, pp. 117-121, from Millions of Strange Shadows).
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preoccupied him “for a long time”62. Most importantly, he dedicated an essay to the Epistle to the Galatians in Melodies Unheard. In the essay, he discusses the dangers of Paul’s self- assuredness as a receiver of the Law of God, behaviour which brings him to justify a personal vision, as well as to condemn divergent views, deliberating on the extent to which the Mosaic Law should be followed by Gentiles. While Peter proclaims “the universal embrace of Christian salvation”63, Paul argues that the sacrifice of Jesus has made Mosaic Law worthless, making love the only requirement. Disregarding the reverence which stands behind the observance of the Law, Paul turns his greatest weakness (lack of corporeal knowledge of Christ) into his main strength, becoming “divinely appointed to be the apostle of the Gentiles”64. He also initiates a typological reading of the Bible, which only sees in the Old Testament a premonition of redemption to come (in the form of trees, poles or significant characters) rather than as a base for the New Testament – from which Jesus recalls the commandments. The main point of the essay is that Paul reads Christ’s sacrifice as an act of liberation from the slavery of the Law. Hecht quotes some telling passages: Christ came “to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons...wherefore thou art no more a servant but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (4:5-7). This recalls almost literally the story of the prodigal son, and suggests a sort of cunning behaviour behind his pious mask: not following the Law is turned into an occasion for arrogance. As a matter of fact, in the very same letter (2:20), he echoes the words found in “Pride”: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Similarly, in Romans 5:8, he says: “But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. The passage from the role of servant to the role of son permitted by Mercy can thus be seen as supposed advancement towards godhead, making man bolder. This way, the crisis of the Fall is never recovered and healed into circularity, but tends to worsen instead. The proud behaviour of these lines, which put man and God on the same plan, partly mimics the 17th century tradition of the dialogue with God. Donne and Herbert engage with the creator in conversations which range from biblical commentary to intimate confessions, often through
62 Letter to Philip Hoy on June 18, 1999. Post: 2013, pp. 302-303.The poem is published in The Darkness and The Light, Hecht:2005, p.221. 63 In Acts 15, as mentioned by Hecht in the essay. 64 “St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians”, Hecht:2003, p. 242.
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desperate pleas and angry passages, which perhaps betray a proud expectation: in “To Christ”65, invokes the deity saying: “Swear by thiself that at my death thy sun/Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore”; in a similar rebuking tone, Herbert notes:
Lord, what is man to thee, That thou shouldst minde a rotten tree? Yet since thou canst not choose but see my actions; So great are thy perfections, Thou mayst as well my actions guide, as see66.
Most importantly, however, the supreme value of Mercy brings about a sense of guilt towards Jesus which is partly triggered by the fear of punishment and which is at times met with scorn. This is evident in “The Sacrifice”67, a poem by Herbert which has received much critical attention and was the topic of a long-standing debate between Tuve and Empson, two of Hecht’s sources. As Tuve notes68, the poem is based on the medieval and liturgical tradition of the “Complaints of Christ to his people”, in which a series of paradoxes are portrayed. These are similar to the one identified in “Pride”, but denounced by Jesus himself. Any equation between the son of God and man is denied by the recurrent refrain “Was ever grief like mine?” a rhetorical question which leaves no room for debate. The poem follows the passion of Christ, showing man’s enactment of godhead throughout the crucifixion, in an inversion of roles: “The Princes of my people make a head/Against their Maker: they do wish me dead,/Who cannot wish, except I give them bread;”. The “head” is the part of the body traditionally associated with pride; instead of being humbled by this act of redemption, man turns it into a sign of his own importance, an act of prevarication: “They use that power against me, which I gave”. The rhymes “denied/tried” in the emblem are echoed here, among many other examples, by the sentence “In healing not my self, there doth consist/All that salvation, which ye now resist;”. The same oppositions recur: the prospect of “healing myself” is denied by the negative, and equated with the “salvation” of “ye” which is however resisted. “Consist” is opposed to this verb: the particles “con-” and “re-” suggest in turn addition and subtraction: the way salvation builds through sacrifice and is resisted, mercy is triggered by the fact that “God has died”, and is immediately “denied”.
65 Donne:2010, pp.575-579. 66 George Herbert, “Obedience”, pp.104-105, 1945. 67 Herbert:1945, pp. 26-34. 68 Tuve: 1952, p.30. The author challenges some of Empson’s views in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
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As previously noted, mercy saves man, but also menaces him with the promise of a trial. In the same way, the tortured Christ warns: “There they deride me, they abuse me all:/Yet for twelve heav’nly legions I could call”. The poem, according to Empson69, seems to betray mixed feelings, both from the deity towards man and from man towards God. This is made particularly emphatic by the closing stanza:
But now I die; now all is finished. My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head. Onely let others say, when I am dead, Never was grief like mine.
The change of the refrain from rhetorical question to statement brings about ambiguity. Schoenfeldt70 suggests that this last sentence may be a promise of equal pain to proud men, or, on the contrary, a claim of their impossibility of reaching such levels of goodness. In any case, it implies a mistrust which is perhaps similar to that of “The Thanksgiving”71, a poem in which Herbert uselessly attempts to make Christ’s pain his own – “how shall I grieve for thee,/Who in all grief preventest me?”. This feeling of concern and admiration slowly turns into frustration at the need to connect with someone who is human and yet always above: as Bell explains72, to “prevent” does not only mean to “anticipate”, but to “forestall, baffle, preclude”, the act of an enemy.
1.2.2. “Envy”
The next poem in the sequence (fig. 2) explores the sin of envy. The habit of comparison typical of the feeling which the poem describes is immediately made visible in the rhyme scheme, a sestet formally alternating pentameter and trimeter, which creates an evident disparity between one line and the other. The longer lines, specifically, do not form exact pentameters, but are looser and often show divergence between metrical accent and word accent. Even in the music sheet, Hecht highlights the presence of “modal note groups”, opposing “soft but appropriately sinister overtones” and “uneven groups of notes which ...
69 In Schoenfeldt in Chaplin; Rumrich:2006, p.901. 70 Schoenfeldt in Chaplin; Rumrich:2006, p.901. 71 Herbert:1945, pp. 35-36. 72 Schoenfeldt in Chaplin; Rumrich:2006, p.902.
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enhance the sardonic wit of the text delivered with deceptive sweetness in its Brechtian economy” against “the strictly rhythmic passage beginning ‘Establishing in Tissue’”73. At the same time, no line forms a complete sentence, forcing the reader to fall into an obsessive loop of anticipation with an unexpected ending, which works as a moral motto in more than one way. The switch in register is also signalled by the rhyme scheme, ABCBDE which breaks the continuity of even lines in the last couplet. More precisely, the last line forms a slant rhyme with the other trimeter ones, almost offering correspondence and ultimately refusing it to surprise the reader, the way Herbert’s “Denial” does74. The whole poem is constituted of a single clause, with five verbs: two coordinates (“coagulate”, “establishing”) describing a subordinate phrase with temporal value (“when”) and the main verb (“shalt”) in the final line, supporting the iconic biblical infinites “toil” and “spin”. In between action, described in lines 2, 3 and 6, there are no pauses, but rather several asides placed strategically to specify while lengthening the conclusion of the thought. This same practice recalls the typical behaviour triggered by envy of dwelling on still unattained particulars, and of giving life to perspective situations through an over-reaching, and exaggerated, imagination, also remarked upon in emblems (fig. 2.a.). In the first line the aside separates the conjunction “when” from its verb and subject; in the third, the complement “in tissue” further specifies the action, and more complements follow in the next line. The climax is finally reached in the penultimate line, which ditches asyndeton for a list-like repetition of the conjunction “and” and is opposed by the last line which, by employing the same number of verbs of the previous five lines, creates a brief, definitive statement. One of the most interesting aspects of this poem, as pertaining to the tradition of the Deadly Sins, is the idea of a material constitution of abstract values, such as “God’s Mercy and Justice”. This is, once again, reminiscent of Christ, and coming full circle, from his sacrifice in “Pride”, to his return on the Day of Judgment, where mercy also meets deliberation. The “popular tune” to which the poet refers may be the one found in “Wrath”, as all the poems are interrelated. Coagulation is the process in which blood cells converge to heal a wound, and perhaps, metaphorically, to repair an injustice or loss. Hecht may have been recalling Donne’s “Anniversary”75, or perhaps Bishop’s “The Man-moth”, a poem he analyzed in later years76,
73 Hecht;Beaser:1979. 74 As he notes in On Rhyme, Hecht:2003, p. 263. 75 Donne:2010, pp. 126-129.
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in which he identifies “a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to” with Original Sin. As He reminds us, moreover, “the two primary principles of God’s dealings with nations and individuals are ... Justice and Mercy (which includes Love). These two attributes, according to rabbinic interpretation, are represented respectively by the two divine names, Elohim (God) and YHWH (usually rendered “the Lord”)”77; Christ is thus evoked through his wound. Blood sucking also becomes a metaphor for “those that flatter” and those “that would redress the matter/By publishing their woes” – meaning those who pity themselves and flatter others, the envious in “The Song of The Flea”78, another poem by Hecht in which these sinners, as parasites (another common feature of these emblems) “live upon your blood”. In the same way, the envious wait for the blood of Christ to start flowing again to take possess of its beneficial qualities. The physical process is carried on as Mercy and Justice are seen as “establishing in tissue the True Republic”: the return of Christ on earth will extend his qualities to the whole of humanity, restoring it to its Edenic state. The word “Republic”, in particular, has a significantly ironic connotation in this case. The concept is defined by Augustine in The City of God:
But because this man listens and that man scoffs, and most are enamored of the blandishments of vice rather than the wholesome severity of virtue, the people of Christ, whatever be their condition – whether they be kings, princes, judges, soldiers, or provincials, rich or poor, bond or free, male or female – are enjoined to endure this earthly republic, wicked and dissolute as it is, that so they may by this endurance win for themselves an eminent place in that most holy and august assembly of angels and republic of heaven, in which the will of God is the law79.
While Augustine’s use of the word suggests an equality which transcends one’s earthly condition by virtue of a common spiritual faith, the speaker here transposes the metaphorical concept of incarnation “in tissue” to a decisively material perspective, and associates equality first and foremost with “good looks to all men” – the only rhyming sentence in the poem – followed by “victuals and wit”. The “holy sloth of the lily” refers to Matthew 6:25-34 and Luke 12:22-32; it is a passage which often inspired Hecht (“Behold the Lilies of The Field”80
76 In Two Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Hecht:2003. 77 Isidore Epstein, Judaism: A Historical Presentation, 1959, p. 135, in “Yehuda Amichai”, Hecht:2003, p. 181. 78 The poem (Hecht:1998, p.58) from The Hard Hours is taken from a song by Mephistopheles in Faust I (Goethe) and put to music by Mussorgsky and Beethoven. The poem respects the rhyme scheme of Beethoven’s song, and in its conceit is inspired by Donne (who also wrote “The Flea”). 79 Augustine:1987, p. 72. 80 Hecht:1998, pp. 10-12, from The Hard Hours.
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is the most famous example) and which returns in the emblem dedicated to sloth. The moral lesson behind this example is that man should entrust God with his sustenance, and not worry about his material condition, a message which completely clashes with the lust after food and vanity declared by the protagonist. The idea of the lilies related to indolence will come back in the composition of the poems for the Gehenna florilegium, as explained in a letter to Baskin on October 24, 199781. Nonetheless, although here the “holy sloth of the lily” stands as a contracted emblematic image for peace of mind, it is typical of an envious person to wish for other people’s material goods and at the same time long for an ending to this very self- induced longing. In fact, envy is never explicitly mentioned in the poem, but only emphasized by the repetitive style of the syntax and by the rhyme between “man” and “again”. The image of corporal (rather than spiritual) wholeness brought about by the Day of Judgment is typical of the early modern imagination. It is present in Herbert’s “Doomsday” 82, where the souls “Summon all the dust to rise,/Till it stirre, and rubbe the eyes;/While this member jogs the other”. This process of reincarnation, however, is not as glorious as that of the blameless Christ, and instead of reaching perfect unity, “Man is out of order hurl’d,/Parcell’d out to all the world”. A more similar perspective of physical reconstitution is found in one of Donne’s erotic poems, fittingly titled “The Relic”83, in which the poet, like the envious man in this emblem, fantasizes on his and his lover’s state as they are found after death:
Then he, that digs us up, will bring Us to the bishop, and the king, To make us relics; then Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I A something else thereby; All women shall adore us, and some men;
This kind of fantasy can subsist in the realm of love, but is concretely limited by death, making the lovers still and unable to touch – a limitation that will be stated at the end of this very emblem. The concepts of Justice and Mercy cannot truly be synthesized in the eyes of the envious man, who then denies Christ’s spiritual side. The idea of their final merging, which is implied in the Christian view of redemption from Adam’s curse, is expressed by God’s
81 Post:2013, pp. 288-289. 82 Herbert:1945, pp. 186-187. 83 Donne:2010, pp. 239-242.
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explanatory speech in Book III of Paradise Lost: explaining the logic of free will, and comparing the rebel angels to humans, he says: “The first sort by their own suggestion fell/Self-tempted, self-depraved. Man falls deceived/By th’other first: Man therefore shall find grace,/The other none. In mercy and justice both/Through Heav’n and Earth shall my glory excel,/But mercy first and last shall brightest shine” (vv.130-134). While mercy is the foundation of faith, the envious man, like fallen angels, mainly cares for a selfish kind of justice, and wishes for a reintegration of the two which he himself fails to achieve, by hating those who have “wronged” him with their better state. Justice is also one of the main themes of the Merchant of Venice, and along with Mercy it is the protagonist of Portia’s speech during Shylock’s trial, in act IV scene I. She asks him to be merciful, since it is mercy rather than justice which will bring salvation upon humanity, and to renounce his pound of flesh – perhaps this is where the idea of “coagulation” comes from. As Hecht explains in his essay on the play, Shylock embodies “thrift, careful and prudential”, opposed to the prodigality of Bassanio, willing to give everything away, and in his case “the law, the letter of the law, literally construed, without the aid of mercy or the agency of the New Dispensation, is both nonsense and inoperable. And this is why the Jew ‘must’ be merciful”84. While the play poses the “Book of Love” above the “Book of the Law”, Hecht’s vision of the end of time hints at their reunification, and the envious mind parallels these opposite concepts, while completely disregarding the first. The problem of mercy and justice is furthermore explored in the speaker’s attitude towards the physical sufferings of Christ. The envious man is willing to take reincarnation not as a proof of Christ’s holiness but as an event that will bring about his own satisfaction. He dwells on the physical act of the sacrifice (“coagulate again”) with complete disregard for the sufferings of the son of God. The disparity between man’s egotism and Christ’s generosity is explored in the aforementioned “The Sacrifice”. Tuve notes that this poem “plays variations upon the great theme of ingratitude ... through ingratitude, man rejects not only Christ as sacrifice but Christ as high priest, and the principle of peace with God and harmony with the divine order of the universe”. The restoration longed for, therefore, will not take place; on the contrary, it will get worse, as the next poem shows: as she says of Herbert “A dominant theme...is the sureness of a justice to come. It is as clear and awful as the Dies Irae”85.
84 In “The Merchant of Venice: A Venture in Hermeneutics”, in Hecht:1986, p. 187. 85 Tuve:1952, p. 74.
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Having set up a wishful picture of fulfilment, and tending towards a – even if disillusioned – satisfaction to save us from envy, the result, expressed in a concise sentence, leaves us surprised. In fact, instead of finding a phrase descriptive of the delights of heaven, or filled with promised objects, we are welcomed by a definitive exhortation, becoming a prohibition through the double negation: “thou shalt not toil nor spin”. The original text, associated with the “lilies of the field” mentioned above, is not found in this form in the Bible, but is transformed into a commandment through specific formulation (“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”86). As Hecht mentioned that he wishes to show how the alternative to sin can be pointless, thus making the sin persuasive, the idea of immobility and perfection comes as shocking to the envious man, who thrives on a continuous tension towards what he lacks. In short, this attitude becomes a compulsion, partly extenuating but also endlessly necessary.
1.2.3. “Wrath”
The same apocalyptic scenario, with a stronger satirical tone, is found in the following poem, “Wrath”. The pictura paired with the text (fig. 3) once again seems to draw inspiration from several sources: Medusa87, a classical symbol of wrath, may be hinted at by the snake coming out from the woman’s hair, or she may be a representation of Lady Macbeth, overcome by rage, in the act of summoning the demons to her breast. At the same time, the contrasting white of the body with the black background goes well with Hecht’s presentation of the angels, and the serpent sliding between mouth and chest is echoed in their chant and in the exhalations of their hearts. This intermixing of classical and religious themes is commonly found in the emblematic tradition. The poem is solely composed of four lines, and its brevity fits well the crudity of the vision, leaving no space for consolation, as well as the inherent opposition between expectation and reality. Hecht defined this passage as “a very fast movement ... marked ‘con fuoco’, rich in “heavily accented syncopations”88. The rhyme scheme is ABCB; lines 1 and 3 present the two protagonists, witness (“I saw”) and perpetrator (“they sang”) in chiastic
86 Exodus 20:5. 87 Medusa is jokingly connected to wrath in a letter to William Macdonald on March 31, 1984: “You would be wrong to suppose that the two ladies whose seated portraits appear above are maiden aunts of mine. They are nothing of the sort; they are instead allegorical figures. What looks like the fine-feathered hat of one of them is actually a nest of serpents, and she is a Medusa-like representation of Wrath”. Post:2013, pp. 212-213. 88 Hecht;Beaser:1979.
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opposition, while lines 2 and 4 comment on the switch in perspective of the colour – and the concept – dominating the visual scene: pure white. The ending of the first line does not find a correspondent rhyme in line three, and this unexpected variation signals the pivotal moment in the action. Overall, the poem exemplifies all of the qualities which Hecht noted in Herbert: “the carefully balanced rhetorical and syntactical structure [...] topic phrases each followed by an opposite noun [or concept, in this case]; there is intricacy of form and an intimacy of address constricted into a quatrain”89. It may also be worth noting that this is the only poem in the sequence where Hecht employs the first person, while others present an exemplary character or an impersonal form. The vision opens with a sensorial verb (“I saw”) followed by the setting of the scene and, finally, the subject of the vision. The “stalls of pearl” recall the description of Jerusalem, the wife of Christ, coming down from the sky on the Day of Judgment in the Book of Revelation (9,10; 21):
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
The twelve gates were twelve pearls: each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.
The atmosphere of the scene is deceptive in the beginning: pearls, rare and precious formations with an innate “light from within”, seem the perfect object to describe the pure and graceful nature of angels, but are here related to “stalls”, which may hint at both a homely and military context. The expression “heavenly hosts” immediately turns the angels into fighters united in an army, the one that fought the War in Heaven: as Hecht noted “there is battle. The Old Testament is full of it; post-biblical history is full of it, as is modern history [...]”90. This characterization as opponents of the rebel angels only seems to add to their innocence an attribute of faithfulness and solemnity. At the same time, the distance between sublunary and spiritual seems to shorten telescopically in this last day, where the reign of God is pictured in material terms (not very differently from Milton’s Pandemonium, and equally raised from music) and even the angels engage in such contentions. Interestingly, an emblem by Quarles
89 In “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson”, in regard to Herbert’s poem “Love”, in Hecht:1986, p. 98. 90 Essay on “Yehuda Amichai”, in Hecht:2003, p. 182.
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describing the Day of Judgment shows much affinity with these lines, and with the poem in general (fig. 3.a.). The next line introduces a sort of angelic anatomy: the “down” which remarks their gentleness reminds the reader of their feathers, and therefore becomes incarnate in their persona; it furthermore ties in with the quality of pearliness, forming a sort of objective correlative. The lack of sexuality, added to the description at last, further strengthens the atmosphere of candour and levity which surrounds these figures. The aforementioned materiality of the context counteracts their own lack of humanity, which up to this point only contributes to make them divine and worthier than man. It is with the third line, swerving away from the rhyming pattern of the first, that the whole scene is overturned. The positional switch of verb and subject at the beginning of the line surprises us with the real purpose of the vision: “Dies Irae”, the Day of Wrath. Human senses, the recipients and perpetrators of sin, define here the roles of the two parties: while the spectator witnesses the scene with his eyes, passively, the angels sing the Day of Judgment into reality. The song mentioned recalls the medieval tradition of religious litanies which certainly inspired the imagination behind emblems. Dies Irae was written in the 13th century by a Franciscan priest, Thomas of Celano, and is usually sung as the requiem during funereal mass91. It announces God’s punitive act on the Last Day, describing the destruction that his coming will cause; thus, through an extratextual reference, Hecht brings into his concise epigram the whole context which sets the scene at large, and which echoes the title of the piece. The situation is also made the more chilling by the association of angels’ chants - the sweetest melody, the force which moves the nine spheres of the universe – with an occasion for revenge. Hecht uses harsh sounds to reinforce even more this puzzling divergence, and notes: “Apart from a brief moment of respite at the start of the ‘Dies Irae’ section, the ferocity of the attack has to be maintained right up to the shouted ending”; he also insists on “percussive consonants”. This effect is achieved through the use of the stark “’h’ on hearts”92, but also through the recurring voiceless fricatives /s/ (“saw”, “stalls”, “sang”, “smell”), /φ/ (“phosphorus”) (and /χ/ (“heavenly hosts”, “heart”) and, to a lesser extent, of the plosives /t/ and /d/ throughout the lines. This makes the song a mixture of snake-like hissing and
91 It is interesting to note that Crashaw translated the song and gave a version of it in his poems, (Crashaw:1872, vol.I, pp.166-169). 92 Hecht;Beaser:1979.
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implosions of controlled anger: more than the others, this emblem follows the “mixture of crude realism and ecstatic mysticism” of Jesuit emblems93. As soon as this is realized, the enchanting parade becomes an assembly in the tribunal where our sins will not simply be judged, but punished. Differently from the expectations in “Envy”, that “Christ is the substance offering himself on the cross to appease God’s wrath”94, man becomes the victim in this case, as Christ’s role is made vane. The positive qualities of the angels are now reversed, and seen under a different light: their whiteness no longer suggests purity, but blankness, indifference; the lack of private parts, opposed to the prosperous figure in the plate for “Lust”, does not convey innocence or a superior, non- beastly nature – rather, a lack of humanity and compassion. These are not creatures belonging to the nature of both man and God, as the merciful figure of Christ would be: they are not mediators, but executors. It is significant in this respect to observe that this is the only emblem in the collection which never mentions the human figure of the son of God, leaving man alone in a world inhabited by alien creatures. As Brodsky later observed: “The writer is bound to find flaws ... in angels, if only because angels are inferior to humans since they are not created in God’s own image”95. Against their asepsis, sensitivity and perception belong entirely to the human observer: he is the subject of all sensory verbs (“I saw”; “I could smell”) whose experience is amplified by the fear triggered by supernatural wrath. Given the supposed excellence of angels, their physical lack of human attributes also betrays, to the instinctive perception of smell, a covered insensitivity contingent to it, as the rhyme “without private parts”/“sacred hearts” suggests. The idea that angels do not feel emotions is here taken to its absolute extent, inferring that being unable to feel pain or amazement also results in the complete absence of empathy. The revelation, both personal and biblical, finds its culmination in the last line, breaking the suspense created by the enjambment. The colour of down and pearl is no longer reminiscent of light, but is rather a “dead-white”, the colour of the phosphorus which paints their “sacred hearts”, an oxymoron in itself. This is significant on several levels: their hearts are not made of flesh and blood but of a rare substance, a volatile one; this would be coherent with the ethereal nature of their bodies, but also betrays the notion that such hearts are either inconstant or made of stone. Phosphorus, furthermore, represents a meaningful choice. Its shade reminds one of the yellow-green
93 Lederer:1946, pp. 185-186. 94 Wilson in Schoenfeldt, Chaplin; Rumrich:2006, p. 893. 95 Brodsky in Lea:1989, p. 50.
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transparency of ghosts, and is the colour of sickness and spookiness, signalling the incorporeal. The white variety, especially, was discovered in alchemic experimentations in the 1600s by Brandt, in an attempt to find the philosopher’s stone. It is a pyrophoric substance96, which self-ignites when in contact with oxygen, causing fire and smoke, and is highly toxic. At the time it was the sly ingredient of choice for murderers, and during World War One and Two, as well as in Vietnam, it became frequently employed to make ammunitions, commonly known as “Willie Peter”97. An echo of similar effects can even be found in an unpublished sonnet written in the poet’s youth98, “A Friend Killed in the War”:
In the clean brightness of magnesium Flares, there were seven angels by a tree. Their hair flashed diamonds, and they made him doubt They were not really from Elysium. And his flesh opened like a peony, Red at the heart, white petals furling out
The presence of wrath in his poetry, however, does not only affect the body but also the mind: even the apocalyptic owl of “The End of the Weekend”99 comes as a punishing force against the boy’s self-supposed immorality and uncertainty, “beat[ing] its wings in wrath”. As Sacks has noted: “in this case the raptor’s grip becomes an emblem of the punitive dispossession by which the narrator’s sexual adventure is interrupted”. Its golden eyes sort of make it into a God/father reproaching the young on their transgression100. Angels make a further appearance in “The Man who married Magdalene”101. As Gross notes, this poem carries an epigraph from the Book of Jonah, which “[...] in its original context ... is part of a complex comedy whose theme is the nature of the prophetic wrath – the zealous wrath against sin; the wrath that promises sublime violence; the frustrated, self-destructive wrath of a prophet against a god who is free to change his mind; wrath held out as a form of pity, a wrath against the wanton destruction of things and creatures; wrath divided, projected, abstracted102”. Here angels ridicule God’s pity for humanity with their jokes.
96 “Fosforo”, Enciclopedia Treccani,
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In “Wrath”, Hecht seems to complete the satire initiated in Donne’s “At the round earth’s imagin’d corners”, where angels are described as having “never taste[d] death’s woe” and yet, according to Guibbory103, he remarks that “he may be responsible for his sins, but he is not responsible for his salvation”, questioning free will when confronted with the punitive action. Even in the Bible the apparition of angels is usually a cause of distress to the witness, and their speeches often open with the phrase: “do not be afraid”104. They are, even according to the Holy Book, imperfect. This is testified, among several instances, in Job 15:15 (“the heavens are not guiltless in his sight”) and Isaiah 24:15. Their manifestation of wrath in this poem is not far from the scenes depicted in the Book of Enoch, which portrays angels with fire coming out of their mouth, and in the Visio Pauli, another account of the Apocalypse:
And I was in the Holy Spirit, and an angel said to me: Come, follow me that I may show you the place of the just, where they go after their end. And I went along with the angel, and he brought me up into the heavens under the firmament; and I perceived and saw powers great and dreadful, full of wrath, and through the mouth of them a flame of fire coming out, and clothed in garments of fire. And I asked the angel: who are these? And he said to me: These are they who are sent away to the souls of the sinners in the hour of necessity; for they have not believed that there is judgment and retribution105.
According to John Emsley106, white phosphorus was banned after World War One because “shells would create showers of burning phosphorus fragments that rained down, causing excruciating burns”, a different version of the beneficent act of God, who “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”107. Interestingly, “Phosphorus” is the Greek name for “Lucifer”, which means “bringer of light”. Skagen explains that “from the beginning there was a great fascination with the substance among alchemists and chemists, since its luminescence could also be identified with the “vital flame” or associated with “the universal light – drawn forth from chaos, ad on the first day of creation”108. This epithet reminds one of “the star of the morning”, the fallen Satan, but is equally used to praise Christ:
Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and
103 Guibbory in Corns:1997, pp.140-141. The poem appears in Donne:2010, pp. 535-537. 104 Luke 2:10 is an example. 105 Revelation of Paul, The Gnostic Society Library
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hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes109.
Most importantly, phosphorous embodies all the contradictions which Hecht wishes to portray: it is “cold fire”, alight in the dark, deceptively dangerous; it is ethereal and pale, yet highly explosive and bad smelling. It can offer light or burn down, and this compresence reflects Lewis’ definition of God as “love which, by its very nature, includes wrath also”110, a disparity which Hecht tries to portray in these emblems. The Renaissance and Medieval references in the poem thus help to revive a past perspective: that of a time in which stones were thought to have supernatural powers and angels were not always seen as the utterly benevolent guardians of man. From the Byzantine age111 to the engravings by Michael Burgher on Milton’s 1688 edition of Paradise Lost, in fact, a long pictorial tradition has been established of portraying angels in military attire, often in the guise of Roman soldiers. Angelic physiology was discussed in many treatises, and the body was often associated with natural elements and humours; a choleric character, specifically, corresponded to fire. Alchemy was at its peak at this time in history, and phosphorus even features in some emblems by Quarles, the British emblematist, specifically in relation to Christ (fig. 3.b.). Metaphysical poets discussed angels and stones profusely: the lodestone, inspired by erotic emblems112 , became widely employed by Donne, while Herbert defines man as “a quick coal/Of mortall fire” in “Employment II”113. In a more canonical image, hearts represented the hard stone mellowed only by God’s graciousness, as in Herbert’s “The Altar”114: “A HEART alone/ Is such a stone,/ As nothing but/Thy pow’r doth cut”. More specific heart emblems also became popular in Holland among the Jesuit writers, and reflected human sins115: they could be filled with shattered glass (Donne, “The Broken Heart”116), bleeding or even colonized by insects and snakes and then freed by Jesus (fig. 3.c.). Hearts could even catch fire, as is the case for the angels’: Donne’s “The Holy Ghost” in
109 From 1 John 2:8-11, suggested by Praz:1975, p. 217. 110 From the conclusion to “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, in Teskey:2005, p. 437. 111 Eddinger describes angelic representation in Birx:2009, p.18. 112 Lederer:1946, pp. 188-189. 113 Herbert:1945, pp. 78-79. 114 Herbert:1945, p. 26. 115 Lederer:1946 pp.185-187. 116 Donne:2010, pp. 144-146.
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“The Litanie”, as well as Crashaw’s “The Flaming Heart” exemplify this image117. The latter poem describes, differently from the angels’ in “Wrath”, the process of liberation from sins towards goodness, a “robbery” which is still “gracious”, far from the violence displayed by Hecht:
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art, Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart, Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play Among the leaves of thy large books of day, Combin’d against this breast, at once break in And take away from me my self and sin; This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be, And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
As in the previous cases, then, man is confronted with a surprising vision, something that denies his hopes and expectations and yet turns anger into a splendid, sublime spectacle.
1.2.4. “Sloth”
From the terrifying atmosphere of God’s final judgment, the emblems move to a subject that seems to have more room for humour, “Sloth”. In the same fashion as “Wrath”, the sestet maintains a set of correspondences in its rhyme scheme which is interrupted in coincidence with the enigmatic and yet proverbial motto, while following the alternating metrical pattern of “Envy”. Although the theme would suggest stillness, the anecdote is based on a circular movement which makes it comically misleading, directed towards no aim or achievement. This movement is also suggested by the six lines, functioning in turn as performance and commentary, which are linked in two undivided stanzas in terza rima, ABABCB. The action is provided by concise and clear statements, at the beginning of odd lines, followed, after the caesura, by a sentence in brackets which dwells on the details of the main statement and ends, lazily postponing its completion through the enjambment, in the following line. The anaphoric repetition of “The” at the beginning of each statement adds to the same effect, as well as the large amount of punctuation scattered throughout the poem with no consistency. The story is outlined in the first two statements ( “the first man leaps the ditch”; “the next falls in”) which, positioned at the beginning of each sentence and odd line, present us visually with a sort of sport competition observed in sequence (“first”; “next”), or a riddle. In this, the poem follows the structure and moral opposition typical of epigrams:
117 Donne:2010, 496-516; Crashaw:1872, vol. I, pp. 152-156.
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Two went to pray? O rather say One went to brag, th’ other to pray:
One stands up close and treads on high, Where th’ other dares not send his eye.
One nearer to God’s altar trod, The other to the altar’s God.118
Although Hecht’s architecture is more complex, due to continuous internal references, Crashaw’s text shows the same taste for contrariety, both semantic (“one” and “th’other”, “say” and “pray”, “brag” and “pray”) and visual, through the final chiasm and wordplay. Most interestingly, it also draws from biblical anecdotes (Luke 18), although it maintains a clear distinction between good and evil behaviour, expressed by the final joke. In this emblem, by contrast, as the reader progressively learns about the actions of the first and second man, his expectations for a third participant or for a conclusion on the performance of the first two are denied, and substituted in the third phrase by an assertion, the inscriptio of the poem, which defeats the whole purpose of the competition instead: “the blind still lead”. The attention is shifted to a third protagonist in first position, before unmentioned, who annuls their efforts all the while being decisively oxymoronic, a blind man who leads the blind. The ellipsis of a specifying complement in the last two sentences forces the reader to connect the three statements, but while the first two are explained by the commentary in brackets and further defined by the relative pronoun “who” (although it is used once generically and once specifically, to add complexity) the third reveals its implications directly to the audience, so that the act of trespassing becomes our own responsibility too. The parenthetical asides comment on the action by providing details which are not essential to the understanding of the main sentence, dragging the explanation to an unnecessary length either through reiteration or opposition and contributing to the lazy cadence of the poem: in the first case, the words “wins” is repeated twice, creating redundancy. The same effect is achieved by the repetition of “laurel” which appears twice in line 2 in chiastic position, if only visually. The mirroring effect produced by its repeated presence, along with the verbs “wins” and “dies” further suggests the aimlessness of the competition, which will eventually be ineffective. The second expansion presents once again the relative “who”, this time in reference to “the next”. The act of plucking out one’s eyes
118 Richard Crashaw, “Two went up into the Temple to Pray”, vol. II, p. 35, 1873. 33
may seem incompatible, to a modern reader, with the idea of “grace”, and the act of falling into a ditch after getting rid of “offensive eyes” seems counterintuitive at least. The image is made the more incoherent, moreover, by the statement according to which “the blind still lead”. The reader must ultimately interpret these representations of blindness in both religious and metaphorical terms. The act of “leaping the ditch” appears in Matthew 15:14: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch”. The sentence once again is found in the Gospels and in relation to the debate between Christians and Pharisees, and is quoted in another one of Hecht’s poems119. The latter hypocritically question Jesus about not washing his hands, while they follow the commandments in theory but not in practice, showing indolence. It is, somehow, the behaviour Hecht finds exemplified in the story of Jacob and Laban and which he also attributes to Shylock, a literal and not conscientious interpretation of the Law120. The ditch is here a metaphor for error, and, in a wider perspective, for Hell. As Avery121 noted, the laurel, which appears in the plate as the only ornament of a man taking up the whole space (fig.4), and not quite fit to physically undertake this “jumping” competition, will be reproduced much later in the engravings for “Death the Poet”, from The Presumptions of Death, although crowning a skull, signalling transient fame. This plant is suggestive of glory and achievement, especially in the arts, perhaps referring to poetry’s power of immortality, which is only apparent and limited. The mention of laurel could also be a reference to Psalm 37:35-36 in the English Standard Version: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green laurel. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found”. This is also quoted in “Words for the Day of Atonement”, in “Rites and Ceremonies122”, though under the name “Bay tree”, following King James’ version. Clements notes that artists and exegetes ascribed new properties to it and gave it an enlarged meaning in the wake of Alciatus, who was still influenced by Petrarch’s imagery. In this tradition, the laurel stands for everlasting youth and represents the diligent poet, able to see clearly123. Finally, the act of plucking out one’s eyes comes from another teaching by Jesus, reported in Matthew 5:29: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
119 “Three Prompters from the Wings”, in Hecht:1998, pp.22-29, from The Hard Hours suggests that the ambition towards “perfect bliss” is ruined by the blind behaviour of man. 120 “The Merchant of Venice: A Venture in Hermeneutics”. In Hecht:1986, pp. 186-7. 121 Avery:2012, p. 119. 122 Hecht:1998, pp. 38-47, from The Hard Hours. 123 Clements:1960, p. 43.
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thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell”. The same teaching is repeated in 18:29, and in Mark 9:47, and provoked either by adultery or violence against children124. We are therefore presented with a metaphorical blindness to the true meaning of the law – which allows men to avoid action and still comply, on the surface, to the guiding principle, but has in fact real consequences – and a physical blindness with moral consequences, which consists in the naive attempt to eliminate the source of all evil by directly eliminating all the media of physical perception. Metaphorical and concrete implications are mismatched in this poem to a satirical effect, where those who have sacrificed their real eyes to be saved fall, due to their limited vision, into a ditch that should have been symbolical. Overall, the author denounces the attitude of all those who follow a lead “blindly” to be excused from action and responsibility. At the same time, the uselessness of all attempts to go through life with glory or at least without sin speaks on a deeper level of the impossibility, on man’s side, to accomplish anything entirely good or successful. Blindness therefore becomes a cover, but also a punishment, and sometimes the only solution against despair. Perhaps the poem echoes the stories of Lear and Oedipus, two of Hecht’s favourite tragedies, but the tradition of blindness related to a sense of insufficiency in tackling the horrors of human life is proverbial in his production: Sacks signals “‘Three Prompters’, the corpse in ‘Birdwatchers’, the blindfolded figure in ‘The Origin of Centaurs’, the effigy of Valerian with ‘blanks of mother-of-pearl’ under the eyelids (as opposed to the speaker who was not allowed to close his eyes), the ‘Blind head of bone’ in ‘Tarantula’...the soot-covered eyes of the dead Pole in ‘More Light!’”125. The structural and syntactical division between past and present, or first and second, also found in “Pride”, might also suggest yet another example of failed typological circularity: while the first man, Adam, has managed to “leap the ditch”, meaning to avoid eternal death, his new counterpart, Christ, who is ready to sacrifice himself entirely, falls into it. Although this has taken place, there are still people who will behave blindly, as Michael predicts in the final vision in Paradise Lost126; however, differently from his account, Hecht’s poem does not mention Christ’s final victory over death, preserving untouched the sense of aimlessness which causes sloth.
124 The same passage of the Gospels is found in Allen Tate’s “Homily” (1948, p. 151), with a similar ironic message. 125 Sacks, in Lea:1989, pp.90-91. 126 Book XII, vv. 285-465, in Teskey:2005.
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Against this behaviour, and yet tempting us to another role model, the voice guides us in the “right” direction, with a maxim: “Consider the ant’s ways;/Consider, and be wise”. This statement, taken from a passage in Proverbs 6:6-11 suitably entitled “Sloth”, offers a contrasting perspective:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
Apart from the solicitous repetition of “Consider”, and the assonance “ways”/ “wise”, reported in the Bible but made into a rhyme by the poet, the proverb makes up the third phrase in between brackets, serving as a commentary, or hint, for the image of the blind man leading the blind. The ant has “no guide, overseer, or ruler” and does not embrace blindness as a way to careless forgetfulness. The ant, from Aesop’s fables, is one of the most widely diffused emblematic subjects (fig. 4.a.). As Clements states, it appears in the Horapollo as a symbol of knowledge and common sense, tied in with the image of the laurel-bearing poet. In this sense, Hecht may also be offering a commentary on the art of poetry127, although the ant had the opposite meaning in his “Improvisation on Aesop”: “Lorenzo sponsored artists, and the ant/Must save to give the grasshopper a grant”. Its exemplary role then fades a little against the failing circularity of the previous examples, suggesting above all that such slothfulness may be the mere acceptance of the fallibility of life, a life in which the laurel one has gained “dies” and even the teachings of Jesus do not allow for a fully satisfactory solution, as the rhyming dies/eyes/wise and race/grace suggest. The overall feeling of the poem is a feeling of religious helplessness, the kind that led Herbert to write: “my deare angrie Lord,/Since thou dost love, yet strike;/Cast down, yet help afford/[...] I will complain, yet praise;/I will bewail, approve”128. “Not seeing” is the human counterpart of God’s “no hearing”129, expressed in the opposition of God’s trials for humanity in terms of stolid obedience, a lazy acceptance or resignation with our fate, which finally leaves man with no guide at all. After all, ironically, ants themselves are mostly blind.
127 Clements:1960, p. 89. 128 “Bitter-Sweet”, Herbert:1945, p. 171. 129 George Herbert, “Denial”.
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1.2.5. “Avarice”
“Avarice” is written in the same trimeter/pentameter alternation of “Sloth” and “Envy”, and it is the longest of the poems, suggesting a desire for accumulation. The rhyme scheme is ABABCDCD, with eight couplets split in two quatrains, an incomplete Shakespearian sonnet whose rhyme change corresponds to a change of mind in the protagonists. After the more generic subjects of the previous poems, a group other than the terrible heavenly host of “Wrath” is featured here, as the protagonists are fakirs. Just as the messengers of God seem at first to be at odds with the sin they describe, the fakirs, originally Muslim ascetics who have taken the vows of poverty and worship, do not seem to be a suitable example for greed. As in the cases of “Envy” and “Sloth”, their sin is never directly referred to in the poem, as it develops as a sort of compulsion, through examples and modes of behaviour. In this case, as in the previous, Baskin pursues a different iconological tradition from Hecht while maintaining some similarities. He portrays avarice as a man covered in wolf-skin (fig. 5), and yet caught in the act of prayer – or perhaps with his hands cupped to count and hold onto his riches. The hungry wolf symbolizes avarice in Dante’s Comedy; wolves were known at the time for not sharing their prey, and were believed to often steal the food of other animals. In nature, such insatiability is caused by a maddening hunger, and a similar contradiction is mirrored in the meaning of the poem. Moreover, the fur acts as a disguise for the man in the picture, hinting at covetousness and cunning, and this particular, when paired with the praying hands, introduces the satire of faith which runs through the collection to the poem. In the Inferno, the demon of avarice, Pluto, is called a “wolf”130, and the canto satirizes the greedy who forsake the Christian value of Caritas, amongst which, most prominently, is the clergy131. Milton himself referred to careless priests as wolves in Lycidas132, and used the animal in Paradise Lost133 as a metaphor for Satan. The fakirs stand visually in the middle of the first line, in opposition to “the sinful kings” in the same position in line 6. The first attribute described is their condition as “penniless”, stated even before their origins, and they physically share the line with their only companions, “their camels”. The two, as beasts, are equated in the act of slipping “through the
130 Inferno, Canto VII, v. 8. 131 “Lupo e lupa”, Enciclopedia Dantesca Treccani,
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needle’s eye”. The saying refers to another parable of Christ in response to a rich man asking him the way to grace, related in Matthew 19: 20-24:
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
A camel will be graced before a rich man, and so the fakirs, whose very title contains the word “poverty” (faqr, in Arabic) in it, are immediately granted a place. Ironically, while the camel entering the eye of the needle is chosen for its largeness in order to hyperbolically stress the impossibility of such an action for the rich, the fakirs are, by contrast, slipping through due to their literal slightness. The fakirs’ “slipping” may even hint, by opposition, at a stanza from Crashaw’s in the “Holy Nativity of our Lord”134, where Christ is welcomed into the world, and which opposes kings and shepherds:
Welcome, though not to those gay flies Gilded i’ th’ beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes; But to poor shepherds, homespun things, Whose wealth’s their flock, whose wit, to be Well read in their simplicity.
The “eye” of the needle, rhyming with “die” in the second next line, also acts as a metaphorical gate to Heaven, projecting them “to bliss”. There is consistency between literal and spiritual meaning: as their meagre figures concretely facilitate their passage, they also mirror their spiritual moderation. As Herbert, someone who wrote about “ascetic renunciation”135 remarks, “A Christian state and case/Is not corpulent, but a thinne and spare,/Yet active strength” with a “long and bonie face136”. The parenthesis, opening on the topics of both flesh and soul, suggests that both sides of them are “prone to die”, highlighting their intention as well as their actual physical bent towards the objective, as they have stopped feeding themselves completely. As a matter of fact, their apparent asceticism betrays a greater greed for the richness promised by Christ: the “treasure in heaven”, a “bliss” above all
134 Crashaw:1872, vol. I, pp. 70-75. 135 Letter to Daniel Albright on January 4, 1994, in Post:2013, pp. 261-262. 136 “The Size”, Herbert:1945, pp. 137-138.
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material compensation. The word “die”, along with a closing bracket, closes the first introductory quatrain, marking the passage from action to reaction and from life to death. All throughout, the act of looking is echoed by the words “eye” and “behold”, perhaps hiding the pun eye/I in relation to “die”, which with “behold” and “gold”, explains the whole content of the poem. While the first part describes a movement from low to high, both physically and spiritually, in the second section the complement “from emaciate heaven”, another oxymoronic coupling, conveys the opposite tension, from above to below. Moreover, the now dead fakirs are not opposed to kings in general, but to “our [...] kings, shared by the speaker and by all temporal beings. They are, finally, opposed to Christ, the newborn who has come to the earth from Heaven as they did the opposite. The “sinful kings” here mentioned are specifically the Magi, although the term applies to all earthly kings; the title is made more relevant here by its confrontation with that of “true king”, Jesus himself. These wise men traditionally represent the stranger coming to terms with conversion, as in Eliot’s representation of them137. Other than the central position of both fakirs and kings within their line, it is interesting to remark that they both come originally from Asia, and that camels are a possession they share. The relations triggered by the verbs “behold and confer” are threefold, set in a sort of chain: the fakirs “behold” the “sinful kings confer” “upon an infant”, and ground themselves into the scene to the point of almost being an extension of the Magi’s arms. At the same time, the exaggeration of the Magi’s gift is conveyed in the structure of the penultimate line, where the received gift, the object, is placed in second position after the receiver, “an infant”, to keep it in focus. The two constituents make up the whole phrase, and the word “infant”, referring to Christ in the specific situation but chosen to sound completely casual and to emphasize the image of smallness, becomes even more an index of absurdity as it comes right before the word “huge”, indicating the sum of gold to which he is entitled. The word “gold”, moreover, the last in the line, is only the beginning of the conventional treasures poured out and leaking through enjambment into the final line: the sense of overabundance is conveyed by the repetition of the conjunction “and”, and the images of “frankincense and myrrh” close the poem, opposed to the misery of the fakirs in their colour and nature – white flesh against gold and spices. This contrast is perhaps objectified in the opposing fountains of Wilbur’s “A Baroque Wall-fountain in the Villa Sciarra”138, a favourite of Hecht which came out in 1955 and which in general describes the dialectical forces at work in The Seven Deadly Sins. Hecht
137 “The Journey of the Magi”, Eliot:2015, pp. 101-102. 138 Wilbur:1963, pp.103-105.
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notes that its two streams represent “two alternative postures of the spirit: one of relaxed and worldly grace, the other of strenuous, earth-denying effort”139. The different states of material richness and poverty should find their counterpart in turn in their spiritual poverty and richness, according to parables140. Herbert’s “The Size” stresses this balancing act:
What though some have a fraught Of cloves and nutmegs, and in cinamon sail; If thou hast wherewithall to spice a draught, When griefs prevail; And for the future time art heir To th’ Isle of spices, is ’t not fair?
To be in both worlds full Is more then God was, who was hungrie here.
In this case, however, while the “sinful kings” and Christ possess all such spices, the fakirs never find satisfaction – because of their extremism, or perhaps because of their mind “bent” on conservation, and never on indulgence, even in death. It is significant to note how the fakirs, discarding Christ as a mere “infant”, focus all their attention on the profusion of gifts, and on the gifts themselves. There is, in fact, as Auden has argued141, a second and more meaningful side to looking, that of adoration: while the Magi are contemplating the son of God, the fakirs are worshipping his richness, as a new Golden Calf. This goes against the teaching of Jesus in Luke 16:13 (also Matthew 6:24): “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon”. The Magi have followed a shining star to the “true sun”, the fakirs are only interested in material gold. In defining Heaven “emaciate”, in fact, Hecht may be hinting at the tradition of Christ as light hinted in the wordplay sun/son typical of so many poems of the Renaissance. Crashaw’s nativity hymn mentioned above presents the baby as “Summer in winter; day in night/Heaven in earth, and God in man”; Williamson notes that in a similar poem, “A Hymn For The Epiphany Sung As By The Three Kings”, the Magi end the false worship that took the sun as a source rather than a symbol of light142. Donne also employs this pun extensively,
139 From “Richard Wilbur”, in Hecht:1986, p. 134. 140 As in the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, in Luke 16:19-31, also used by Crashaw for his epigram “Upon Lazarus his Tears” (1873, vol. II, p. 55). 141 A notion Auden explored in “Pride and Prayer” mentioned, among other sources, in “Paralipomena to The Hidden Law”, in Hecht:2003, p.139. 142 Williamson:1967, p.136.
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in “La Corona”, “The Litanie”, “A Hymn to God the Father”, “To Christ” and “Goodfriday 1613”143. The Son as “sun” is, moreover, a commonplace of emblems (fig. 5.a.). By contrast, here the fakirs take on the previous role of the kings, worshipping material gold instead of true gold. Tuve144 notes that in “To All Angels and Saints” the Virgin becomes “the cabinet where the Jewell lay”. She argues that “Gold as restorative, Christ as gold, Christ as medicine are conventions”. Overall, like wolves, the fakirs adapt to poor nutrition due to their condition, and make it holy through idealization; their true intentions are revealed in the way in which, dissatisfied in finding the same state of life once in Heaven, they look with desire at a profusion of gold near the creature who is most worthy of their attention. In a way, Hecht is parodying the behaviour of religious extremists, who preach directions without accounting for the limits of human nature and end up betraying their own self-interest in the process. In his Moby-Dick essay, he mentions the Calvinists’ use of a quotation from Proverbs (22:29): “Seest thou a diligent man in his business? He shall stand before kings”. These are people who preach, as Weber explains in The Protestant Ethic: “the earning of more and more money, combined with strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life145”, and their “standing before kings” is parodied in this scene. At the same time, the paradox of giving gold to a child balances their fault by denouncing the useless lavishness of prodigality in contrast to a poverty which is often decided by the circumstances, and which has led popular imagination to picture the manna falling from the sky as golden coins146.
1.2.6. “Gluttony”
Another vision of misery is portrayed and satirized in “Gluttony”, the penultimate emblem. The plate for this poem (fig. 6) is the only one in which the picture itself takes life, and plays into the concept of rotundity by acquiring the sow’s legs: the effect is that of the frame having ingested its subject, or of the image leaking out of it. Although animals are portrayed in most of the plates and often referred to in poems, this is one of the only cases in
143 Lederer:1946, p.188-191. 144 Tuve:1952, p.143. 145 “Moby-Dick”, in Hecht:2003, pp. 226-227. 146 Donne’s Sermon CXI, “Preached to the Countess of Bedford” (Donne;Alford:1839, pp. 537-556): “God scatters not his blessings, as princes do money, in donatives at coronations or triumphs, without respect upon whom they shall fall. God rained down manna and quails, plentifully, abundantly”.
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which the pictura and the subscriptio align, perhaps because of the popularity of the association between pigs and insatiability. The poem is another sestet, with rhyme scheme AABBAB. As in previous cases, the structure partly mimics the sense of the poem, marking two different syntactic and semantic units (the heroic couplets) which converge in the ending. The first couplet opens with an exhortation in biblical style, but carrying a rather bitter and ironic message: in a religion based on Caritas, the one denied by the fakirs in “Avarice”, the poor must “look to themselves”; the syntactical construct “Let X do Y, for Z is bound to happen” is reminiscent of promising prophecies such as “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). Even if this may just be parody, and is typical of the colloquial style of epigrams (Crashaw’s own text, based on Acts VIII, similarly begins: “Let it no longer be a forlorn hope/To wash an Ethiop”147), Hecht testified to his attempts at imitating the tone of the Bible in a letter to Gregory Tigani and Callie Wright in 1999148. The impersonal expression “it is said”, hinting at popular wisdom, adds to this factor, along with the conditional “wouldn’t”, remarking on the sceptical tone. Looking after one’s own salvation contrasts with the presence of a “saviour” whose act of turning “stones into bread” is not dependent on inability but on unwillingness. The poem uses the paradox typical of epigrams though in negative terms: it is opposed, as an example, to Crashaw’s “On the Miracle of multiplied Loaves”, in which “bread” is not made of stone but is “unbounded”, the continuous act of thanksgiving is turned into an “easy feast” and the hunger that here leaves “no trace” there causes “no wound”149. Nor is Christ the one who turns water into wine, but rather the devil, who undoes the process through “wrath and strife”150, no longer “friend” but “foe”. Once again, martyrdom is conferred upon the human subjects, and God becomes paradoxically the recipient of things he does not need (“Avarice”) or unhelpful (“Gluttony”) due to standardized rules. As a matter of fact, not only does this phrase refer to Christ’s being teased with food in the desert, it also contravenes his admonition found in the following passage. Hunger is put to the test in the first temptation (Matthew 4:1-4; also in Luke 4:1-4):
147 “On the Baptized Ethiopian”, Crashaw:1873, vol. II, p.41. 148 On this occasion he remarked that he had “tried to write a poem that resemble[s] the Old Testament”. Post:2013, pp.305-306. 149 Crashaw:1873, vol. II, p. 40. An even closer example is found in Crashaw’s epigram titled “Command that this stone becomes a loaf”, where the same scene deprecated by Hecht is celebrated instead (1873, vol. II, p.139). 150 “To Our Lord upon The Water Made Wine”, Crashaw:1873, vol. II, p.135.
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Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
After his trial, the devil asks Christ to perform a miracle just to prove he can – somehow with a scepticism similar to that presented above – saying: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down” (6), to which Christ answers, admonishing him: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (7). A similar accusation is made by the soldiers against the crucified Christ, inviting him to prove his divine nature by freeing himself151. Hecht has elsewhere152 described this as “the temptation to deal with poverty through miracles”, as “a rejection of the God- created universe, and a form of pride”. The issue, however, stands as always in the true impossibility of synthesizing the human and the spiritual, so that while Christ can survive without food for forty days, a regular man has no concrete possibility of showing the same act of faith, but is still required to follow his example. The third line, shorter than the others, is another brief admonition, with repetition of the formulaic “let”. In this case, the subjects are not the poor, whose only resort are inedible stones, but the sow. Although the pig is usually associated with gluttony, its feminine counterpart is especially often portrayed in emblem books153 (fig. 6.a.), and its maternal quality strengthens its connection with fertility and nourishment. It should be remembered, moreover, that pigs, as Hecht suggests in his poem of that title, are considered a dirty animal in Hebrew culture, which cannot be eaten, lest they make a man impure in turn. According to Barber, “the sow represents the sinner and luxurious liver if we understand Solomon rightly: ‘As a jewel of golf in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion’. (Proverbs 11:22). The sow thinks on carnal things: from her thoughts wicked or wasteful deeds result. As in Isaiah: ‘A people … which eat swine flesh, and broth of abominable things in their vessels (65:3-4) that is, in their hearts’”154. Featuring this belief in “Pig”155, Hecht changes its perception, turning the animal from evil to beneficial, and even necessary for humanity. In his association, the pig becomes “the Jewish scapegoat”156, the creature in whose body all sins are finally concentrated, so that man
151 In Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23 and John 19. 152 In “On Auden’s In Praise of Limestone”, Hecht:1986, p.37. 153 Hassig:2000, p.73. 154 Barber:1999, p.86. 155 Hecht:1998, p.13, from The Hard Hours. 156 Ricks:2010, p.100.
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is made free “And God’s Peaceable Kingdom return among them all/Save one full of offense”. The swine thus takes on the redemptive value of Christ, a value which is celebrated by man but can also betray his opportunism. The effect of its sacrifice, inspired by the evangelic episode of the Gadarene swine (in Matt. 8, Luke 8, Mark 5) brings about once again an hyperbolically optimistic vision of the world, satirized because impossible to achieve when compared to actual reality: “the suckling babe/ Lie safe in the serpent’s home/ And the lion eat straw like the ox and roar its love/to Mark and to Jerome”. The episode is reported in Isaiah 11:1-10, but its simplicity is here ridiculed by the lack of infinite verbs, oxymorons (roars its love) and opposition (babe and serpent, lion and ox). The sentences, in the manner of emblems, show little punctuation, and the poem begins with the familiar “of course”, in medias res. Further irony is produced by the representation of the Christ-pig being also a “lamb” travelling “on an ass’s back”, and by the absolute horror of expressions like “full of offense” and “the thousand fiends of a human soul” applied to the body of a pig. Overall, Hecht denounces the carnal nature of a sacrifice done for spiritual reasons, and in his respect for man compares the two victims, in the manner of Eliot, by quoting a prayer: “O Swine that takest away our sins”157. As Brown158 remarks, animals were especially featured in emblem books so that man would turn from their beastly behaviour to what was best for his soul. In this case, however, as in “Pig”, animals are victims of the harsh reality of life and of other creatures, and man shares their same destiny. This omnivorous animal is asked to perform a rather human act, to “continually say grace”. Grace is the ritual thanksgiving prayer to be recited before meals, but the following context almost turns it into a desperate request for safety, unlikely to be granted according to the rhyme “grace”/ “no trace”. The reiterative value of the act may be explained by the only apparition of the sow in the Bible, suggesting its continuous return to “bad habits”: “But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). While the consequential “for” related to the first prophecy is contingent to it in the first line, and brought into the next through enjambment, the admonition to the animal comes as a singular phrase, springing by contrast from the first, and is divided from its own completion by a full stop. As the rhyming pattern denotes, in fact, the two prophecies unite in one final sententia, which occupies the last three lines and unites men with pig. This is, perhaps,
157 Ricks:2010, pp. 100-101. 158 Brown in Hassig:2000, p. 54.
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symbolical: the first and second coordinate, defined by the main verbs “look to themselves” and “say grace”, which even contradict each other, are no longer truly correlated, as the first incorporates the other into its structure; even the rhyming couplets fail to contain their subject, and are hungry for more lines. To this effect, Hecht chooses the parable of the temptation instead of the various multiplications of food and drink described in the Bible. Ultimately, the last three lines suggest the merging of animal and human mentioned above according to the medieval vision of life in which the act of eating, like the round plate of the illustration or the belly of the fat woman in it, comes full circle. As humans, like pigs, eat, they are eaten in turn by minuscule bacteria, spreading like a disease inside of them. The moss building in the lung to “leave no trace” may refer to the mere act of decomposition, a sort of still decay, but more specifically it may hint at pig pneumonia – a bacterial infection common in sows, attacking the lungs and often spread to the piglets through lactation, turning feeding into an act of contagion159. In the same way, the “glutton worm” – a reference to Satan, or to Cerberus, the “great worm” in Dante’s circle of gluttony in the sixth canto of the Inferno (vv. 13-33), or perhaps the simple tapeworm, also common in pigs – will “tunnel in the head”. Any distinction between species is left behind, and what remains is simply the destructive action of infesting agents, “moss” and “worm”, strangely expressed in architectural terms (build in the lung, tunnel in the head) to convey their work of conquest and embodiment. As Raber explains, “overconsumption of meat was associated with sin, for which worms were in turn considered an appropriate punishment” and notes that “in The Hidden Treasures of the Art of Physick (1659), John Tanner announces his judgment that worms are associated with gluttony, since worms are ‘bred of such Nourishment as easily putrifieth’ and so tend to show up most in ‘Children and such as are Gluttonous’”160. Recalling Christ’s lesson that man shall live of the words of God, quoted above, Hecht ironically makes sure that his parasites turn to reality even the most symbolic of nourishments, as they “eat the Word out of the parchment face”. the satire behind the image, similar to the reference to the “lilies of the field” (Matt. 6:28), is that humanity, concretely, cannot survive on hope only. He rejects, in this case, the metaphors that associate the dialogue with God as “the church’s banquet” or “exalted manna”161, to insist on the concrete issue. The
159 “Porcine enzootic pneumonia”,
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physical world becomes the focus, and the spirit is slowly absorbed into its realm, as in other images by Herbert: “At first thou gav’st me milk and sweetnesses;/ I had my wish and way”. In his poetry as well, God’s absence occupies the chamber of the body as an illness as he is forsaken: “but then … My flesh began unto my soul in pain,/”Sicknesses cleave my bones;/Consuming agues dwell in ev’ry vein, and tune by breath to groans”162. However, while the Metaphysical poet objectifies his pain as bodily to create a simple conceit, Hecht does so to parody the inconsistent practicality of the literal interpretation of scripture. The addition of the term “parchment” is suggestive of man as a simple piece of paper given meaning only by God’s words on it, as well as of flesh dried out of all its juices – as parchment is nothing but sheep skin. Along with the tunnelling worm and the consuming moss, this reinforces once again the concepts of expropriation and conquest, the same that makes Herbert say: “a blunted knife was of more use than I”. A dried-up face may also hint at the symptoms of scrofula, an infection of the lungs which causes the face to assume the semblance of a pig’s, hence the name, and which was thought to be cured by the divine touch of kings in the Middle Ages163. The image of the worm, and of parasites in general, fascinates Hecht in several poems, and most relevantly in “Japan”164. In this context, he takes a popular illness among the population as a more general expression of the irony of life:
Human endeavour clumsily betrays Humanity. Their excrement served in this; For, planting rice in water, they would raise Schistosomiasis Japonica, that enters through The pores into the avenue And orbit of the blood, where it may foil The heart and kill, or settle in the brain. This fruit of their nightsoil Thrives in the skull, where it is called insane.
Perhaps the first verse of this quotation, in line with the ending of “Gluttony”, represents the true motto of the emblem. This section illustrates the cycle which describes the
162 “Affliction”, Herbert:1945, pp. 46-48. 163 “Scrofula”, Dizionario Treccani,
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relation of man to his environment: all derivatives of man enter the soil, all the derivatives of the soil enter man: life produces more life, and each element finds nourishment in the other. In this case, the bacteria expelled is reassumed through nutrition, provoking a slow deterioration of the brain which, as in “Tarantula”165, also affects the psyche. Entrails and mind are also connected in “The Venetian Vespers”166, where the speaker laments “the gross intestinal wormings of the brain”167. Expressions like “enters through/The pores into the avenue” or “settle in the brain”, suggest the same architectural quality of the head along with the establishment of a settlement. Schistosomiasis, interestingly, is mostly diffused among undernourished minorities (“the poor”), and one of its symptoms is potbelly, a bloating of the stomach, sadly mimicking satiety168. As Raber notes, bodily fluids were given to men with a curative purpose, and “human urine, sweat and bodily effluvia were fed to animals in a similar attempt to cure. This process of exchange emphasized humans’ and animals’ common physiology, tending to dissolve theoretical distinctions between the two categories of life”. She proceeds to conclude:
What you ate could also consume you from within. Vermin and parasites dwelt in everything that lived and, once ingested, caused extraordinary suffering, both psychic and physical. Thus, the daily experience of eating was rife with the reminders that humans, although putatively the crown of all creation, were embroiled in multidirectional process that involved eating and being eaten, consuming creation but being invaded, colonized, corrupted, and tortured by it as a result169.
She mentions Hamlet’s phrase (one close to the aforementioned quotation from Vespers) on this topic: “we fat all creature else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes but one table” (4.3.19- 25). The proximity between man and beast, and between man and parasite, was thus diffused, and equally featured in emblems (fig. 6.b.). This same concept is also reported in “Poem upon the Lisbon Disaster”170, Hecht’s translation of Voltaire: “To the far eye of God you are as base/As worms that dine and crawl upon your face”. The poem goes on to exemplify the same concept for which prays become hunters:
165 “Tarantula, or The Dance of Death”, another poem by Hecht (1998, p.5, from The Hard Hours) which elaborates on the structure of the Danse Macabre, a composition akin to emblems and relevant to popular culture in the Middle Ages. 166 In Hecht:1998, pp. 221-247, from The Venetian Vespers. 167 Nims in Lea:1989, p. 129. 168 “Schistosomiasis”,
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The bloody-taloned vulture in his day Devours with joy the dead meat of his prey, And all seems well with him; but soon he must Bow to the eagle’s beak, and bite the dust. Man wings the haughty eagle with a shot; And when at length it comes Man’s turn to rot Upon a battlefield, he becomes the swill On which the birds, triumphant, eat their fill. Thus are all creatures brother unto brother, The heirs of pain, the death of one another.
Overall, this cycle belonging completely to nature defies and counterfeits the ideal process of death and rebirth of the spirit brought about by the sacrifice of Christ. Even if we abstain from excess of food, other creatures will consume our body and, it is suggested, our soul, denying the meaning of such ideals. Even as the poor and the sow, like the soul of Herbert’s poem, try to turn their “purge to food”, with no help, God throws them “into more sicknesses”. God expects worship from man, but then, forgetful, allows him to die hungry and consumed by other hungry creatures, unable to escape his terrestrial condition. As Hecht remarks, bitterly, in another poem: “Is not that pastoral instruction sweet/Which says who shall be eaten, who shall eat?”171.
1.2.7. “Lust”
The final emblem, “Lust”, is also the shortest in the collection, and the only one presenting an odd number of iambic pentameter lines, in rhyme scheme ABA. The plate is reminiscent of the content of the text (fig.7.), as it portrays an androgynous man with a prosperous, sexualized body revealing both masculine and feminine features; his cloth, fallen too far down, fails to hide his sex, and his sides are covered in long, angelic or bird-like feathers, while the head shows luscious hair and a beard, perhaps reminiscent of some representations of Christ. The poem is, once again, based on a comparison and a contradiction and follows the same structure as “Avarice”: while X does something (the fakirs, or, in this case, a fantastic bird), Y (Christ, the fil rouge of the collection) does the opposite. The figures of the “Phoenix”, capitalized, and of “Christ”, sharing the first line, are here compared without any explicit link, but simply through a conjunctive “and” and by their equality as “One” in the
171 Anthony Hecht, “Improvisations on Aesop”.
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final line, rhyming with the first. A comparison built through one single element for a whole anecdote is certainly witty, a small conceit, previously explored in “Improvisations on Aesop” with the association of “The Fox and Buddha” as lustful characters172. The mysterious quality of the emblem, which never explicitly states the moral or the terms of the association, is also a traditional feature. The phoenix, a beloved subject of metaphysical poets and emblematists alike, adds to the obscurity of the interpretation, as it is the typical example of a symbol comprehensive of multiple and often divergent meanings. It could stand for richness, fire or Arabia, but most frequently it represented, in the two prevalent streams of Baroque poetry, either the union of two lovers in a metaphorical body, in erotic poetry, or the resurrection of Christ, in religious texts. These two fields were not always distinct, and this is the contradiction played upon by Hecht. Although the King James Bible, the version favoured by the author, does not mention this bird, it did appear in some Jewish translations and commentaries of the Old Testament173. In the Talmud, the phoenix was the only animal able to resist the temptation of Satan, by not eating the apple – a transgression caused by pride but ultimately manifested in lust. Its association with Christian rebirth, however, was first made popular by Clement of Rome around 100 A.D. A more secular tradition, by contrast, pairs birds with the specific sin of lust – from Dante’s aviary metaphors in Canto V of the Inferno, to Hecht’s own idea, in “The Origin of Centaurs”174, that against platonic love “sadly the soul must hear/Twitter and cricket where should be all hush”. Among the Metaphysicals, Donne presents the phoenix as a symbol of the spiritual and physical union of the lovers in “The Canonization” and in his “Epithalamion for Lady Elizabeth”175. Along similar lines, it is featured in Crashaw’s “In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord God”, where the sight of the infant Christ sitting in the manger causes this consideration: “The Phoenix builds the Phoenix’s nest./Love’s architecture is his own”. Once again, both love and spiritual uniqueness are hinted at in relation to it. The image of the resurrecting bird, able to spring from its own ashes every 500 years, thus became a powerful metaphor of both bodily and spiritual regeneration. Even if Christ, just like the phoenix, “knows no lust”, both being above the temptation of the flesh – unlike Satan, ever-burning in dissatisfied desire – and being able to recreate life from a single body, his reincarnation still implies two meanings: a sexless, chaste reproduction through
172 “The Fox and Buddha put away their lust:/‘Sour grapes!’ they cry, ‘all but the soul is dust!’”. 173 “Phoenix”,
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resurrection or, in contrast, his representation as both male and female, making him hermaphroditic and overly sexualised. After all, Christ is human, and as Paul reminds us: “There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”176. Hassig177 explains in this regard that bestiaries matched animals with either Satan or Christ according to their supposed concupiscence; the phoenix was usually seen as the purest of creatures, but at the same time hermaphroditic beasts were condemned as unclean figures. Just like the ambiguous Christ, moreover, the phoenix is connected with fire – the element typically associated with arousal of either anger or sexual desire. Many poems, in fact, connect “lust” with “dust” through rhyme: we can think of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, as well as Herbert’s “Church Monuments”, echoed by Hecht in “The Cost”178, and in the aforementioned epigram about foxes and Buddha. Lust is described as an everlasting fire in Donne’s “I am A little world”179, and the same goes for the hymn “O Holy Ghost”, where we find yet another instance of the rhyme lust/dust. This association of the phoenix with both sexuality and purity also found its counterpart in religious discussions180 on the resurrection of the body along with the soul, a discussion that leaked in time into popular culture. Hecht himself, in his essay on The Sonnet, explains that “negotiations between these realms become a familiar literary device in the counter- reformation period”. As previously mentioned, and in his own words, this brought about “a reversed effect, towards the desecration of the holy”181, an effect here exemplified. He himself exploited this desecrating paradox in several of his poems and puns. One need only think of a brief joke he sent to William Macdonald in 1969: “Said Mary to Gabriel/“Oi! Well at least I am glad it’s a boy./But what should I say/When my waistline gives way?/That I am filled with elation and goy?”182; in a more serious example, the material and lustful description of the Marian body in “To a Madonna”183, betrays an adoration that is plainly sexual (“As for the intimate part of your attire/your dressed shall be composed of my desire/Rising and falling,
176 Galatians 3:8. 177 Hassig:2000, p. 73-74. 178 Signalled by Matthews in Lea:1989, p. 147. Hecht’s poem appears in Hecht:1998, pp. 107-109, and is originally from Millions of Strange Shadows. Marvell’s and Herbert’s poems appear in turn in Marvell:1990, p. 24; Herbert:1945, p. 64. 179 Donne:2010, pp. 533-534. 180 Clements (1960, section IX) remarks on the fact that one of the most controversial topics in Christian history was whether or not the body would also return to life along with the soul, and how this debate was specifically allegorized by the phoenix in the Middle Ages. 181 In “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex and History”, in Hecht:2003, pp. 62-64. 182 In Post:2013, pp. 143-144. 183 Hecht:1998, pp. 18-19, from The Hard Hours.
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swirling from your knees/To your round hills and deep declivities”) also promoted by the function of the ex-voto, now a sexualized doll, used to cure the imperfections of the fallible body. The two concepts of rebirth and of sexless reproduction, aligned in the image of the phoenix, are in fact found, among humans, in two figures only, the protagonists of the poem: Christ and the Virgin Mary. Christ is seen here from a physical perspective, not as a father or brother of humanity, as St. Paul would have it184, but as out “mother”, caught in the act of feeding, as he “suckles his children with his vintage blood”. This strengthens the hermaphroditic quality suggested by the phoenix. The act of spiritual nourishment is ritualized through the Eucharist, when the body of Christ is introduced into man’s body through ingestion rather than sexual coitus, and he experiences a momentary death which is also a “passion”, perhaps hinting at the petite mort. In this turn of events, thus, the word “suckle”, in first position after the enjambment, describes the very act of a baby pumping milk out of his mother’s breast and remarks on the inherent physicality involved in the acts of nurture and reproduction, birth and death, in their shedding of the same bodily fluids and especially of blood, here satirized through the worldly adjective “vintage”. The image of wine in association with Christ insists on the sensual, savoury quality of his presence, as Hecht has noted, and belongs to the typological tradition of “Christ as grapes”, expressed by Herbert and, in an example cited by the poet himself, by Hopkins, in “Barnfloor and Winepress” (“The wine was rackèd from the press;/Now in our altar-vessels stored/Is the sweet vintage of our Lord”)185. Blood thus becomes the symbol of physicality, of nourishment and pain, uniting the two actions of violence and love, as in the emblematic selflessness of the pelican186 (fig. 7.a.) another bird of Christian significance. These two concepts are even related in an anagram by Herbert, linking the words Mary and Army: “How well her name an Army doth present,/In whom the Lord of Hosts did pitch his tent”, an image from the Song of Solomon VI187.
184 As mentioned in the analysis of “Pride”, Hecht notes the promotion insisted upon by Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians from servants to sons of God. 185 In “On Hopkins’ The Wreck of the Deutschland”, in Hecht:2003, p. 113. The image appears in Herbert, as one instance, in “The Bunch of Grapes” (1945, p. 128). 186 Pelicans were known for plucking their flesh to feed their younglings (this is also noticed by Hecht in “Public and Private art”, 1995, p. 113). It may be worth noting, in this respect, that the three plates featuring women in the collection are those of “Wrath”, “Gluttony” and, partly, “Lust”, sins related through similarity (nourishment) or opposition (violence). 187 Tuve: 1952, p. 138.
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According to Tuve188, this same image is associated with the phrase “Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof” in the act of colonization, uniting once again the Eucharist and sexuality. Blood is, as a matter of fact, the substance traditionally related to this sin, as medieval religious texts189 testify: “The human race had blood flowing through lust... Three conditions of those who lose blood that Christ also suffered: They emit blood: Christ emitted blood from his head, his hands, his feet and his side. [...] Christ had interior blood flowing from grief for human ingratitude. He suffered these conditions to cure us from lust”. Religious writing commonly explored the idea of Christ as nourishment, as he gave his body to man through the ceremony of Eucharist: Calvin himself wrote “Christ is milk for infants and strong meat for men”, and according to Hugh of St. Victor, the reward opposite to Lust is to “become children of God”190. Even Paul projects, as in previous examples, the image on himself, saying:
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?191
The image of Christ as mother is also repeatedly employed, with a different meaning, by Julian of Norwich192. She was one of the most prominent English mystics and she lived between the 14th and 15th centuries, an anchoress secluded in Norwich cathedral. After falling severely ill around the age of thirty, she experienced a series of visions of Christ bleeding, and was miraculously saved. She wrote about this epiphany in some celebrated texts, but what seems most prominent is the connection of the son of God with motherhood:
The Second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature, in our substantial making. In him we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother by mercy in our sensuality, by taking flesh. [...] A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. With all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously193.
188 Tuve:1952, p. 142. 189 Outline of Sustinuit crucem confusione contempta (Hebrews 12:2) (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. d. 1, fols. 171r-173r) by Johnson in Newhauser;Ridyard:2012, p. 122. 190 Sweeney in Newhauser;Ridyard:2012, p. 106. 191 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. 192 Hecht knew the story of Julian of Norwich; he notes Eliot’s use of her words in “Little Gidding” in The Hidden Law (1993, pp.336-337). 193 Julian of Norwich:1843, p. 146.
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The salvation provided by Christ, which should be spiritual, therefore has a long tradition in its physical elaboration as concrete nourishment from one body to the other. This sensuality takes on almost outrageous terms, in line with the Baroque taste for the grotesque, in an epigram by Crashaw “Blessed be the paps which Thou hast sucked”194, titled after a passage in Luke 11 and closest to Hecht’s in its exaggerated physicality:
Supposed he had been Tabled at thy Teates Thy hunger feeles not what he eates: Hee’l have his Teat e’re long (a bloody one) The Mother then must suck the Son.
The conceit here, less contracted then in Hecht, shows the paradox of the Child being suckled by Mary who will in turn suckle her with his blood. Milk and blood, son and mother, are opposed and recur circularly, and the spiritual message of the text cannot free itself from its sexual allusions. A very similar image is portrayed in Herbert’s more austere poetry, specifically in “Longing”195, showing how such extreme identification of body and spirit was devoid of shame for the mentality of the time: “From thee all pitie flows./Mothers are kinde, because thou art,/And dost dispose/To them a part:/Their infants, them; and they suck thee/More free”. Making Christ a mother stresses his sexless (or sex-saturated, given the physical details implied) nature and makes his absence the more real and anguishing. Herbert, in fact, adds: “Bowels of pitie, hear!/Lord of my soul, love of my minde,/Bow down thine eare!”. As is often found in Hecht’s emblems, the oxymoronic, failing fallacy of “Bowels of pitie”, attempts the impossible task of making God’s love man-sized. Similarly, the image of maternal union is connected to the concrete (at least for its time) body of the phoenix in an emblem in Partheneia Sacra: as Lederer notes, the author applies the emblem of the phoenix with “joined breasts”, or as he says, “with a twin-like heart” to the union of the Mother and Son196. Bertonasco moreover associates Crashaw’s epigram with two emblems – one in Amori Divini et Humani Effectus, in which Anima is pictured sucking the breast of Divine Love, and one by Quarles, in which a pig-faced man and a woman are pictured in front of a breast, milking it, with the motto “Ye may suck, but not to be satisfied with the breast of her consolation”197 (figs. 7.b.; 7.c.).
194 Crashaw:1873, vol.II, p. 101. 195 Herbert:1945, pp.148-150. 196 Lederer:1946, p.192. 197 Bertonasco:1934, p. 32.
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With a similar duality of meaning, Julian also goes on to define Christ, like the phoenix, as “One”: “[...] I am the Unity, I am the supreme Goodness of all kind of things, I am the One who makes you love, I am the One who makes you desire, I am the never-ending fulfilment of all true desires”198. Once again, the equation between Christian and sexual desire is made quite prominent and fulfilled in one who is both soul and body and given to us to feast upon. A similar expression is also found in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5, on the very topic of lust – its title is “Dealing with a case of incest”, as the one hinted at here – and specifically touching on the topics of Eucharist and sex:
It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife [...] In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
Even more significantly, he adds, in 1 Corinthians 6:12-16 :
Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
Such distinction between unity of flesh and unity of spirit is contradictory when related to a spiritual creature that became incarnate and whose “body”, through a simulacrum, is ritually ingested during mass. In all cases, the title “Such a One” remarks on the divine quality of Christ, not only on his unity. A simple man, by comparison, lacks both attributes, and is reduced to mere “other”. The image of otherness, within this satanic syllogism and reported in small letters, unaccompanied by a strengthening “such”, and paired in the opposition “not to be/is to be” suggests a sense of loss and inferiority, or rather incompleteness, unspecified and thus the more unresolved. This final word, closing the poem and the sentence, and significantly rhyming with “mother” in the first line, creates a tension which is typical of desire, mimicking the sin. It is interesting to notice that both “Lust” and “Gluttony” present at their basis the fundamental cycles of life – creation, decomposition – which were equally a preoccupation of Metaphysical poets and reveal the concrete origins of emblem writing, a practice born in response to the phenomena of experienced life.
198 Julian of Norwich:1843, p. 147
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As the same state of incompleteness was felt as a curse by many religious poets in the sixteenth century, many authors, according to Hecht’s explanation, began to represent God as a lover, in physical terms very close to Paul’s image of the harlot. Donne was one of the first who “wrote about incarnating the spirit in the act of sexual union, mimicking the incarnation of God onto Christ”199. This is evident especially in his “Holy Sonnet XIV”, where he asks God to physically overpower him (“you ravish me”) and to love him, “divorcing” him from the Devil who keeps him in his hold. The hope, once again, is for a reunion (“take me to you, imprison me”) expressed in physical terms. A similar feeling, although in a more measured and metaphorical way, is expressed by Herbert in “Church-music”200: “Now I in you without a body move/Rising and falling with your wings:/We both together sweetly live and love”. Being “other”, men and poets can only be contented with a continuous yearning, and with the perspective of an indirect interaction with God, never reaching a state of equality with him – not even, ironically, with his incarnation.
199 In “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex and History”, in Hecht:2003, p. 63. The poem appears in Donne:2010, pp. 553-555. 200 Herbert:1945, pp. 65-66.
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2. The Emblematic Representation of Saints
2.1. The Emblem as Religious and Artistic Medium
As has previously been noted, the time leading from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation was characterized by an emblematic point of view. This anagogic mode, which consisted in the interpretation of worldly material objects as tokens expressing God’s laws and teachings, had a pervasive influence on both individuals and society. The principle standing behind it, the “incarnation” of an ideal in a concrete body through analogy, in fact, was extremely persuasive and, most importantly, could be applied to several fields of experience. The most successful rendition of this practice was achieved in religion: from medieval illustrated Bibles to early modern religious poems and emblems, these forms employed objects, animals and anecdotes from everyday life to help worshippers visualize the abstract mysteries of faith, following the example of Christ’s parables. Remarkably, religious emblematic practices could furthermore be aligned with the principle of religious allegory: a parallel could be traced, as previously hinted, between the “Word made flesh”, the spirit incarnated in matter, and the in-between figures which represented the link between God and man, soul and body: Christ, the saints, the martyrs and, to a lesser extent, the men of the clergy. These figures thus became iconic human emblems, in which a divine purpose coexisted with an earthly body. Their nature as mediators was also emphasized by their representation through yet another vehicle, the artistic one. Through paintings and visual – and at times auditory – representations, in fact, artists developed the practice of iconography, the reproduction of a medium (the divine entity), within another man-made medium. The canvas or artistic support thus became a middle ground where ideal entities could be materialized. The fact that paintings, statues and decorations were such a prominent part of worship testified to the diffuse attachment to the platonic principle of the nobility of sight, the sense through which man could best “read” and “perceive” the book of knowledge, the world. Emblems thus spread quickly to every kind of artistic expression, from tapestries to illuminated manuscripts, and the Middle Ages saw the increasing development of rich objects of worship such as icons, portraits of saints, rosaries and reliquaries encrusted with stones and jewels, statues and ex-votos. This age specifically insisted on material lavishness in its embodiment of divine allegories, partly due to the discovery of new techniques and materials, but also mixed earthly and celestial subjects in representation. In this respect, the Gothic
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shared to some extent the physical, sensual representation of the otherworldly typical of the Baroque period, although the human body was meant as a vehicle to show concern around illness and fallibility of the flesh rather than to represent sexuality. During the Renaissance, by contrast, bodies became highly idealized, inspired by the geometric proportions of classical statues, an artistic source that had been put aside in previous centuries by the diffusion of a so-called “barbaric art”201. All ages continued to picture the sacred, and presented what has been defined by Praz as “the language of form”202, but several historical events influenced in different ways the development of artistic style in different parts of Europe. The Middle Ages had, as mentioned, promoted a growing interest towards votive objects, which, as Bynum has noted203, “fitted a late medieval theory of matter [...] related to a deep reverence for God’s creation as taught in Genesis: ‘When statues and altarpieces, like relics and sacraments, called attention to themselves as material stuff, they asserted themselves to be creation, the expression of the divine’”. This attachment to materiality as a means to reach the divine, however, was repeatedly challenged during a time-period subject to many changes in the configuration and rules of the church, first among which was the Reformation, a process begun around 1517. The Protestant faith, introduced in England around 1534, denounced the lavishness and corruption of the Catholic Church, characterized by rituals and devotions mediated by the priest and by several objects of worship, and preached the need for sobriety and for the individual, unguided experience of God. As a consequence, several waves of Iconoclasm, a movement against religious images, swept over Northern Europe until the 1640s, causing the destruction of many masterpieces, and worshippers became increasingly concerned with the role and the value of these media. The problem with icons referred back to the second commandment in Exodus 20:4204: “Thou shalt make no graven image, neither any similitude of things that are in heaven above, neither that are in the earth beneath, nor that are in the waters under the earth”. As Knapp205 remarks, the Bible explicitly specifies in the next passage that “Thou shalt not bow down to them, neither serve them”, and that thus the issue lay, as Calvin believed, in “the use rather than the creation of images”. Overall, pictures could be used for didactic purposes, but they should never be turned into idols, through a complete identification of divine entity and work
201 Panofsky: 1972, p. 18. 202 Praz:1967, p. 156. 203 Bynum Walker, quoted in Ivanič; Laven;Morrall:2020, p. 17. 204 Knapp in Caporicci; Sabatier:2020, p. 950. 205 Knapp in Caporicci; Sabatier:2020, p. 950.
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of art: this occurs when “The devotee makes the mistake of worshipping the brute matter of the image rather than the holy person and is guilty of misdirected worship – of idolatry”206. As some documents from the time suggest207, this theological debate filtered into popular discourse, showing to a degree a superstition of images as “false pictures”, deceptive elements in Protestant cultures. Even among Catholics, as Musacchio208 has pointed out, the use of icons was questioned, especially by friars who insisted on the values of charity and poverty. Nonetheless, the habits of worship of both parties failed to fully reflect the expectations of the reformed church, and the production of pictures, although more thriving in catholic countries, was kept up in England and beyond. The removal of pictures thus “never became universal”209, but rather triggered ambivalent opinions. As Laven210 has noted “the religious materialities of the major confessions, Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed, were not discrete. [...] Both Protestants and Catholics decorated their houses with Old Testament imagery”. Newly made Protestants found it hard to abandon certain cults of intimate significance, especially around the celebration of the dead, and the hunger for images found relief in more modest examples, such as miniatures and marginal decorations. Remarkably, the prohibition to portray visual images of worship also brought many poets and writers to employ an iconic language to represent pictures through words, determining a revival in the emblem poem tradition among the Metaphysical Poets. Bertonasco argues, in fact, that “those elements labelled [...] as ‘continental’ or ‘Catholic’ were not the exclusive property of Counter-Reformation countries”; Caporicci211 also reminds us of Ernest Gilman’s words, according to which Donne was “a man split between the Roman and Reformed church ... [who] seemed to have absorbed both sides of the iconoclastic controversy into the language of his little world”. These authors, Donne and Crashaw in particular, demonstrate a sustained interest in artistic details, and often portray religious figures or objects of cult in highly pictorial terms, partly translating into literature the worship of icons which was controversial at their time, and using these themes to articulate through wit new considerations on the relation between body and soul. In the famous words of T. S. Eliot, their ability resided exactly in the capacity to “feel a thought”212, like the odour of a
206 Maniura, Robert. “Persuading the Absent Saint: Image and Performance in Marian Devotion”, 2009 p. 641. 207 The Letters of Nicholas White in Knapp. Caporicci; Sabatier:2020, p. 1036. 208 Musacchio in Bohn; Saslow:2013. 209 Maniura, Robert. “Persuading the Absent Saint: Image and Performance in Marian Devotion”, 2009, p. 642. 210 Ivanič; Laven, Mary; Morrall, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 22 211 Ernest Gilman (1986), in Knapp. Caporicci; Sabatier:2020, p. 1036 212 “The Metaphysical Poets”, Eliot: 1999, p. 287. A point also remarked by Hecht’s introduction to The Essential Herbert, 1987, p. 6.
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rose, and to use emblems to represent, in the words of Vaughan, “bodied ideas”213. Although this method is often interpreted as a typical tract of their age, it had its origins in the tradition mentioned above. As Tuve214 has observed:
That [mediaeval Catholic devotional figures] were fully comprehended [in the seventeenth century] is one observation to be made, and that they were deemed worthy of keeping and transmitting is another ... It may be that we should recognize certain reasonable affinities responsible for the likenesses, drop our preoccupation with chronology and the baroque tensions, and observe how the methods and the subjects of religious allegory – and the traces left by exegetical theory pushing figures beyond didacticism to mystical truth – produce at any time imagery with the qualities we had thought were those of the seventeenth century.
Praz215 and Vendler216 equally remark on the medieval cultural background of, in turn, Donne and Herbert. The former, moreover, points out that, in English literature, the distinction between medieval and renaissance culture is less clearly defined217. Although Anthony Hecht’s affinity with the emblematic practice has already been illustrated in the previous chapter, it is interesting to remark how several of his works develop the traditional argument about the duality of soul and body by moving precisely from a saintly or divine figure, and using exactly the same means of the Metaphysical poets, in a renewed concordance between allegory and emblem. This is evident not only in The Seven Deadly Sins, where the figure of Christ is ever-present, but also in several poems included in The Darkness and The Light, Hecht’s final work – some examples are “Samson”, “Saul and David” and “Judith” – which were meant as yet another collection of emblems based around biblical figures, a project never completed due to Baskin’s death in 2000218. Other than genuine emblem poems, notably, Hecht also wrote compositions inspired by religious paintings and artefacts, characterized by a “quasi-allegorical interpretation”, in the definition of Spiegelman219. Their subjects mostly pertain to the time span described above, about which Hecht demonstrates historical awareness: he speaks of “traditional, even biblical, contentions and competitions between the soul and the body” noting that
213 Freeman:1966 p. 154. 214 Rosamund Tuve in Vendler:1975, p. 57. 215 Praz:2002, p. 78. 216 Vendler:1975, p. 59. 217 “Che lo spirito della letteratura inglese si mutasse profondamente a partire all’incirca dall’epoca di Ben Jonson, è fatto indiscutibile: è invece discutibilissimo se si possa segnare una distinzione che non sia poco più che superficiale tra tardo Medioevo e Rinascenza. Il Donne, uomo del Rinascimento quanto a carattere, quanto a cultura e a gusto letterario resta medievale: e siccome è medievale, è anche secentesco”. Praz:2002, p. 89. 218 Post:2015, p. 228. 219 Spiegelman:1989, p. 59.
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many poems from medieval times forward, reflected this opposition. Negotiations between the realms of the body and soul, the carnal and the spiritual, as well as sometimes daring and dramatic substitutions of the domains one for the other, became a familiar literary device on the metaphysical poets and a staple of Baroque and Mannerist art of the Counter Reformation220.
His own poems thus move from their baroque antecedents and reflect on images to comment on the relation between the corporeal and the spiritual with an often satirical vein. In an age in which many poets – himself included – create parallelisms between an ancient time and the modern age, in which martyrdom has lost its value and has typologically been followed by more violence with no ennobling or redemptive value, Hecht employs the ekphrastic mode to point out how historically, even amongst the most devoted cultures the cry to God speaks more of human anguish and earthly concerns with the physical state than of a serene trust. Moreover, the poetic representation of painting, another emblematic practice in which one medium describes another medium, allows him to articulate a meta-reflection on the limits of human perception and on the frustration which derives from being stuck in the middle ground between the temporal and the spiritual: the gaze of the poet becomes, as with the Metaphysicals, the gaze of the painter, anxious to capture the essence of reality, following the belief that “details should be made to subsume, to contain, to embody, to incarnate the point and meaning of the poem”221 and of reality.
2.2. “Gorgeous emblems of salvation”: Relics, Ex-votos and Church Decorations
In A Thickness of Particulars, Post222 notes that “ekphrasis lay largely dormant in The Hard Hours; the pleasure he habitually discovered in visual arts finds little place in this rarely relenting anatomy of sorrow”. The exceptions noted are “Rites and Ceremonies” and “A few paintings of martyrs”. Although the collection does not present specific descriptions of paintings, the “anatomy of sorrow” remarked upon by the critic is a theme explored at this early stage in his career in certain poems inspired by religious objects. Mostly published in magazines and in his first book, A Summoning of Stones, as well as partly present in The Hard Hours, Hecht’s first attempts at poetry are possibly inspired by his post-war trips to Europe, which he describes in detail in his letters, and by the religious art typical of southern countries.
220 “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, sex, and History”, Hecht:2003, p. 62. 221 Letter to his parents, October 4, 1951. in Post:2013, pp. 93-94. 222 Post:2015, p. 138.
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These places, mainly Spain and Italy, whose cities will later be celebrated in two narrative poems223, fascinate him among other things for the sensual quality of their catholic art, a form of expression which represents divinity in very concrete, rich ways. Here he found pompously decorated churches, bejewelled bodies of saints and reliquaries, representations of martyrdom cast in coloured glass and rosaries, not to mention realistic statues and paintings. The memory of these luxurious textures is recorded, for instance, in “Wind of Spain”224, a tentative poem from his youth, written in 1947, where the wind blows upon the characteristic cultural features of the country actualized in the landscape, the architectural features of the cathedral – “the gargoyles”, “the round, full wounds of Saint Cecilia’s/Agony” and the “preserved lemon flesh/of the bishop’s corpse” or “the saint’s embalmed right hand” – uniting these elements under the premise that “there can be no beauty where there has not been pain”. In relation to catholic material culture, “liturgical implements, talismans, amulets, burial clothes, ex-votos, relics and so on” were employed due to “their capacity to operate variously as loci of supernatural power or as conduits of salvific grace and healing or apotropaic magic225”. Hecht226 himself noted that many of the practices of the church, like Candlemas, had been derived from “pagan rites and rituals, associated as they had been with heresy and the gross appetites of the body”, often meant to celebrate the change of seasons through “fertility festivals”, and had never completely lost their profane quality, but instead “in the course of time were found to flow in the reverse direction as well: that is, on behalf of the desacralization of the spiritual and the holy” up to the 18th century . Given the roots of the faith, it is interesting to observe how much importance is given in this tradition to the dead or sick body, theoretically recognized as the lesser part of man. As Bamji227 notes, speaking of Venice, “the significance of material remains is highlighted by the careful consideration which was given to where bodies were buried, as well as by practices such as embalming”. One of the most striking examples of this obsession, other than relics, is the tradition of ex-votos. These were votive offerings, particularly prominent, as attested by Jacobs228, between 1470-1610, presented by worshippers to statues or paintings of their elected saint, or often to the Virgin, given the cult of Mariolatry. They mainly consisted in reproductions of limbs, body parts or organs which had been injured, as a way of thanking the
223 “See Naples and Die” (Hecht:2005, pp. 25-39, from The Transparent Man) and “The Venetian Vespers”. 224 The poem was originally published in The Kenyon Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 1947, pp. 564-565. 225 Ivanič; Laven; Morrall, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 19. 226 “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, sex, and History”, Hecht:2003, p. 63. 227 Bamji in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 120. 228 Garnett; Rosser, in Corry; Faini; Meneghin:2019, p. 50.
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divinity for the healing of said part or as a request to make it healthy. Ex-votos could also be life-size reproductions, especially in the case of children, or other objects, – sacks of grain, candles, rosaries, strings of coral, crucifixes229 – although they were often chosen in order to reproduce a characteristic of the worshipper – his weight, height or social status. The objects could be made of all materials, from papier mâché to wax, and were often covered in silver or gold, or embellished with stones and precious metals. Indeed, Laven230 notes that “at a shrine like Loreto, [...] the sixteenth-century records of votive gifts – including numerous gold and silver items often studded with precious gems – read rather like the inventories of a jeweller’s shop”. Although this tradition was rooted in catholic culture and still persists nowadays to some extent, it was considered inherently idolatrous, as it consisted in the emulation of a bodily sacrifice to the false picture of the deity. “Such practices have long been seen as problematic in the context of Christian worship. The ritual focus on the image has been seen as carrying the risk of misdirecting worship onto the material object, that is, of idolatry”231. It is curious and most telling that people would objectify their weak parts by fashioning them into figurines and that they would present the concrete representation of a concrete anatomical part to the entities supposedly responsible for their spiritual salvation only. This betrayed most importantly a preoccupation with the physical condition which, in its pressing needs, prevented man from fully transcending the realm of the body after the biblical example, dear to Hecht and often contested by him, of the lilies of the field232. Moreover, it suggested – something Praz has generally noted in Baroque art233 – an early tendency to humanize religion, in the name of a shared physicality of both man and saint. Maniura makes clear that:
Saints are conceived of primarily as people. However exceptional in virtue and fortitude, according to their legends, saints are mortal human beings. Even the wholly extraordinary St Mary, held to have been conceived without sin, to have given birth to a child while remaining virgo intacta, and to have been raised physically into heaven, is a human being, too, even if her mortality is somewhat ambiguous234.
In The Hard Hours, Hecht tests himself with the translation of one of Baudelaire’s poems, “To A Madonna: Ex-voto in the Spanish Style”; in this exercise, the only translation
229 Laven in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 42. 230 Laven in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 42. 231 Maniura, Robert. “Ex Votos, Art and Pious Performance”, 2009, p. 422. 232 Hecht himself wrote a poem entitled “Behold the Lilies of the Field”, after the passage in Matthew 6:25-34. 233 Bertonasco:1971, p. 139. 234 Maniura, Robert. “Persuading the Absent Saint: Image and Performance in Marian Devotion”, 2009, p. 646.
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selected for the book, he declines the theme of corporeal preoccupation inherent to the practice of ex-votos in the realm of sexuality, experimenting with baroque language. The poem is reproduced in pointed couplets235, in a single, rambling stanza, after Baudelaire236. The content mostly coincides, with a few alterations made to respect the rhyming pattern, of which the most significant is the rendition of the sentence “pour completer ton rôle de Marie” as “to render you more real”. What makes the Madonna human, “more real”, is her liminal state between “love” and “savagery”, as suggested by the poet, but also between God and man. This concept, expressed emphatically at the end of the poem, is reflected in the imagery employed throughout the text. Several elements which will later appear in Hecht’s poetry make their apparition here: the body of the Virgin is made into a work of art, as the worshipper defines a prayer which takes the form of an exchange237: he promises to build “an altar of my misery” – in the manner of Herbert – or a niche, “enamelled totally in gold and blue”, from “my heart’s remote and midnight pitch”. Remarkably, while Baudelaire uses the second person and an active verb (“tu te dresseras”) Hecht uses the passive, as well as a verb indicating deliberate placement (“set you up”); nonetheless, his Madonna remains a human being, addressed as if in conversation (“you”), and there is no trace in the translation of her state as “Statue émerveillée”, as if she had completely stepped out of hard stone to become flesh. something which will recur later in later poems. It is important to notice how, somehow, offering oneself to the divinity brings about an aesthetic transformation of spiritual pain into a pleasing, rich or beautiful object presented in tribute. The part is hence ennobled. Another characteristic element is the representation of verse or prayer – something which will later be investigated in “Gladness of the Best”238 – as a “silver lace/Studded with amethyst of rhyme”, becoming in turn a crown on the head of the saint. The term “hammered”, referring to the crown and absent in Baudelaire, anticipates the double reference to manufacture and violence which will be made clear in the course of the poem. Again, Hecht chooses the active diathesis, along with a verb allowing a relation between “I” and “you”; while Baudelaire employs the verb “faire”, suggesting simply the act of making, the translator uses “place” and insists on the complement which accompanies it, signalling
235 Post:2015, p. 76. 236 “À une Madone”, Baudelaire:1983, pp. 62-63. 237 Maniura, Robert. “Ex Votos, Art and Pious Performance”, 2009, p. 420. 238 Hecht:1998, pp. 168-169, from Millions of Strange Shadows.
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another body part, “on your head”. the movement is made clear by the preposition, and so is the hierarchical relation. It is important to notice how, from the “seedling tears instead of pearl” (a baroque commonplace which can also be found in Crashaw’s “The Weeper” and in “The Tear”, which presents the tears of the Madonna as “a wat’ry diamond”, “a star about to drop”, “a pearl”239) to the respect for the Virgin turning into “a pair of satin shoes”, the speaker counts out, from top to bottom – crown, coat, intimate attire, shoes – the different parts of the body. The exchange between man and saint becomes entirely physical and is turned into a carnal union: The speaker enumerates his suffering organs – heart, mouth and eyes, intestines – in which his pain and sins articulate themselves – misery, tears, suspicion, jealousy, desire, respect – and by translating them into objects of art he sublimates them, projecting them on to the martyred body of the Madonna, through the indirect mean of clothes and ornaments. In this case, the gifts of anger and despair are not sacrificed but forced on the divinity, who is herself sacrificed, immolated for the peace of the worshipper. By this mechanism, the picture becomes an idol, a doll created piece by piece after the specific yearning of the devotee, a statue cast in his own mould. It is evident how all the feelings that contributed to the creation of such tributes allow for the offerings to become constricting: the barbaric coat, “lined with suspicion, made of jealousy” she has to “wear like mail” so that it may be “encasing all your charms”. The rhyming couplets emphasize the merging or appropriation of the saintly body in a sort of spiritual rape: the “midnight pitch” of the heart becomes “a niche”, and more tellingly, “attire” rhymes with “desire”, presenting one topic element (garment or feeling) in each line, while the syntax is more complex in the original version. The representation of the Madonna grows plainly sexual as the poem reaches its climax, and the generic “charms” of the saintly figure become “round hills and deep declivities” or “snowy slopes”, recalling images of purity but also of maternity and fertility, overcome by the desire of the speaker who confuses his religious fervour with the actual enactment of his vices, expressed in the form of water (“rising and falling”, “swirling”) or smoke (“rising forever in a smoky trance”). While Baudelaire makes of his worship a kiss, involving the deity – “revêt d’un baiser tout ton corps blanc et rose” – Hecht focuses on the gaze as the controlling element over the icon. His description of the body is formed through geometrical shapes, which also remind one of the natural landscape, following the same technique as some Renaissance paintings, and establishing a connection between the body and nature which will
239 Crashaw:1872, vol. I, pp. 3-18; Crashaw:1872, vol. I, pp. 25-28.
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be revisited in later poems. Most notably, the “snowy slopes” of the Madonna closely recall the “snowy hills” of Magdalene, her eyes, in Crashaw’s “The Weeper”. The hierarchical relation between the two counterparts changes as the speaker moves from a position of love vassalage, in which he is entirely and passively intent in the adoration of his midons, to the violent imposition of his vices onto her, in a sort of physical possession. The term “barbaric” first associated with a garment, is premonitory of a sort of bestiality which is slowly revealed in the worshipper. By the end of the poem, metaphors become even more dramatic: “I place beneath your heel/The head of this black serpent that I feel/Gnawing at my intestines all the time,/Swollen with hate and venomous with crime”. The serpent is the most common of emblems to indicate sin, and here the metaphor is extended by the association of hate and crime with venom, killing the body. The image of the intestines bitten by the serpent not only recalls the figure of Sin in Paradise Lost, a poem much appreciated by both Baudelaire and Hecht, but also insists once more on the body as the physical place for evil, and on the association between evil and illness. The worshipper has exchanged his gifts for his own sins; while Baudelaire talks about “mon art diligent” as of his zeal presented up to this point, Hecht speaks of “proffered boon”, hinting more closely at votive offering. And yet, his own translation fails to include the image of the Virgin who “foules et railles” (steps over and derides) his hurtful sins; the deity is not “féconde en rachats”, prone to defend its followers, and the serpent remains undefeated, ready to attack “all the time” – another detail freely added to the translation. In this case, thus, the attempt to transfigure pain into an object of art, the aim of poetry and the ability of Philomela, seems ultimately to fail: the objects of worship, from niche to “myrrh and frankincense” remain tainted by vice, until finally the Madonna becomes a simulacrum of all the subject’s faults, the collection of his sins, and his act of possession escalates from sexuality to violence: and so, after visualizing his scapegoat and burdening her with his sins, the speaker promises that he shall “mix my love with murderous savagery”. Martyrdom is the role of Mary, and as Hecht puts it, what makes her more real. Like Christ’s, her image works as a catalyst of human hatred and pain, to be sacrificed and turned into relief. Her icon is in fact finally eliminated in an attempt to achieve redemption, following the same dynamics of the exchange portrayed by Hecht in “Katharsis”240, where a King, wishing to be set free of his “bile”, decides to “purge his foulness” by the “gentle stead” of his wife, who is beheaded, a “devoted she” granting intercession. Baudelaire hints at the
240 Hecht:1954, p. 33.
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saint’s role as scapegoat when speaking of “role de Marie”. Hecht, going further, wishes for the object of worship to seek a common ground with man, as if his inquisitive eyes could detect in the unmoving object a living quality. His desire to penetrate the invisible side of the divinity, to reveal her concealed agency, moves from the perception of the eyes, too weak an instrument, to the forcing open of the body, in an attempt to reveal its secrets. The “seven blades of Spanish steel”, made out of the “Seven Deadly Sins” (the poems carrying this same name will appear a little later in the book) become material, as the act of repentance becomes an act of murder, and the speaker wishes to “plunge those blades into your beating heart/Your bleeding, suffering, palpitating heart”. The homeoteleuton, repeating similar terms, once again hinting both at emotion and bodily symptoms, places three adjectives in the final line, differently from the original version. Interestingly, Hecht turns “pantelant” into “suffering” in the final line, and repeats, at the end of the last two lines, the same concept: the heart is “beating” and “palpitating”, finally brought to life through, paradoxically, a desperate act of destruction. As Hecht explains in The Hidden Law, concerning Auden’s “For the Time Being”, Mary was given foreknowledge of the fate of Christ before his birth: “such foreknowledge included the Seven Joys of the Virgin; but it also included the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin. In this role of Mater Dolorosa, Mary is often depicted with seven swords piercing her breast or framing her head, representing, among other things, the Seven Deadly Sins by which men vitiate the sacrifice of her son’s life”. By killing the totem, the object of worship, man ends up enacting the ritual of destruction of his last salvific resort, manifesting his own desperate situation, and convinces himself of the absence of the divine, easily overcome by the loud presence of human sorrow, instead of reasserting an ideal of perfection to aspire to. Hecht described the poem in an essay241 as belonging to a strong baroque tradition, applying to the “courtly love of late medieval poets of southern France as well as Dante and Petrarch in Italy” a more sensuous language, and mixing profane and sacred love. He attaches this baroque quality to some of Donne’s poem as well – specifically “Batter my Heart, Three-Personed God”– and, in architecture, to Bernini’s St. Teresa, a statue which never ceased to shock for its sexual ambiguity. As a matter of fact, Crashaw’s poem about the same subject242 presents many similarities with the Baudelaire translation. Both poems, written in rhyming couplets, play on the two concepts of love and death, conceived as the loss of sense following the rapt merging with another being: “Thou art Love’s victim, and must die/A death more mystical and high”.
241 “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History”, in Hecht: 2003, p. 62. 242 “A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Saint Teresa”, in Crashaw:1872, vol. I, pp. 141-149.
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Abstract objects are transformed artistically, and death becomes an “unvalued diadem”, as the woman is slowly consumed into a “lump of incense” and turns into a votive offering to God, over which “All thy old woes shall now smile on thee,/And thy pains sit bright upon thee;/All thy sorrows here shall shine/All thy suff’rings be divine”. The correspondence of sins to body parts is also found in Herbert’s “Confession”243, where the body is divided into chests and boxes, “in each box, a till:/Yet grief knows all, and enters when he will”. A similar relationship between devotee and Madonna is articulated in a much later poem, “The Venetian Vespers”, although in much more sceptical terms, with no trace of the ardour of Baudelaire’s speaker-worshipper. Although the protagonist of the Vespers, a “Twentieth-century infidel”, has a disillusioned attitude towards life, he shows to some degree a sort of idolatrous habit, that of finding a moment of “blessing” in worldly beauty, conceived as both man-made art and natural landscape. The whole poem, as Hecht as confirmed in several interviews, is about the idea of “salvation through sight”244. The attention given to the Madonna, the undisturbed absorption with which the eye gazes at her figure, in its effort of artistic creation and transfiguration of the man’s sins, seem to correspond to the abandonment of all sorrow through vision described by the man in Venice, who lets his soul be “drenched in fine particulars”. Venice, a setting emblematic in its own right, defined by the speaker as “the world’s most louche and artificial city”, offers a continuous manifestation of the intermixing of the divine, in its churches and monuments, and the basest kind of human decay, represented here by illness, madness, dirt and death, up to the smallest corruptors of the flesh, “the lees of the venetian underworld,/A plague of iridescent flies”. In the words of Hecht245, it also is “a city with all the gorgeous emblems of salvation (which for this man fail to work) as well as the emblems of worldly grandeur and success, now reduced to decline and impoverishment”. In this setting, the protagonist refuses to reconcile the presence of God with the horrors of “time”, “history”, “evolution”, and thus focuses his attention on materiality, turning the whole city into his own tailor-made canvas by Bellini or Tiepolo. The Madonna he encounters in these surroundings, one of the many found in the city (fig. 8) is entirely demystified, and becomes a testimony to people’s sufferings:
243 Herbert:1945, p. 126. 244 Hecht, Anthony. Efforts of Attention, Interview with L. Hammer, 1996, p. 102. 245 Letter to Howard Moss on December 23, 1977, in Post:2013, pp. 165-168
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[...] There's a Madonna Set in an alley shrine near where I live Whose niche is filled with little votive gifts, Like cookie molds, of pressed tin eyes and legs And organs she has mercifully cured. She is not pretty, she is not high art, But in my infidel way I’m fond of her – Saint Mary Paregoric, Comforter. Were she to cure me, what could I offer her? The gross, intestinal wormings of the brain?
In this case, the style employed is much plainer compared to the pictorial vocabulary of the Baudelaire poem, and the representation more humble: differently from the pompous offerings presented in the translation (“satin shoes”, “a silver footstool of the moon”) the metaphors of this passage do not emphasize the zealous worship of the faithful, but, by contrast, their weak earthly condition: their eyes and legs are made of “tin”, and the thin, foiled material evoked suggests a fragility and levity which is, by association, translated onto the body parts, always liable to illness or injury. These body parts, created by artisans, are presented to the deity as to their creator, who has originally moulded them and is meant to fix them; without words, the offerings communicate the same message Hecht spells out in section IV of “Rites and Ceremonies”: “The soul is thine, and the body is thy creation/O have compassion on thy handiwork”. For all its shiny quality, the material fails to reach the splendour of “seedling pearls”, but resembles more closely the nature of “cookie molds”, an image which brings the donor closer to the humble domestic environment. Although pain is not transfigured into precious gifts, but is testified to directly by the poor quality of the objects that simulate it, and the Madonna herself is represented in more modest terms, the two poems converge in the description which moves from concrete objects (little votive gifts) to emblematic images transferring sins and feelings into a physical body part, in a true anatomy of melancholy which creates a stronger link between moral and physical suffering: the “gross, intestinal wormings of the brain”, in fact, recall very closely the “black serpent that I feel/Gnawing at my intestines all the time”. The association between spiritual and physical malady is further emphasized by the “certain fevers/The doctors cannot cure” lamented by the protagonist and by the epithet of the Virgin, “Paregoric”, after the analgesic carrying this name. As Hecht himself explained246, “The Madonna [...] he thinks of only as a Comforter, which is what certain quilts are called and what some medicines perform”. The merging of physical and
246 Letter to David Havird from January 21, 1998, in Post:2013, pp. 292-293.
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spiritual illness is also evident in a composition by Herbert with a telling title, “An Offering”247. This poem, built on four sestets and three other stanzas with a particular configuration, anatomizes the internal structure of a heart, to be given as gift: “What hast thou there? A heart? But is it pure?/Search well and see; for hearts have many holes”. The rhetorical question introduces the double allusion to “holes” meant as both scars and moral faults, caused by “lusts”, of which Christ, rhyming with the question, is our “cure”. Christ thus becomes the receiver of the gift, and his salvation is imagined in the form of a “balsome, or indeed a bloud [...]/Which does both cleanse and close/All sorts of wounds”, or even the “All-heal”, a medical synonym for “saviour”. Here again, in the final stanzas, the act of gifting is presented as a mechanism of conversion, emphasized by the parallelism of the two- foot or three-foot lines and hemistiches piled on top of each other, with recurring rhymes:
Since my sadnesse Into gladnesse Lord thou dost convert, O accept, What thou has kept, As thy due desert.
These ironic details hide a historical truth, as ex-votos were often purchased from apothecaries, the places which offered relief from all kinds of diseases. As Laven explains248, “Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, apothecaries continued to make ex-votos, liturgical candles and lights for chandeliers” using the wax left over from pharmaceutical products to diversify their product offering. The whole of Venice is built on the worship of saints who have acquired a more human imprint, or are especially associated with earthly cares: there is “San Pantaleone, heavenly buffoon, /Patron of dotards and of gondolas”, protector against madness and its disgraces; and there is also the “great church of Health”, which was “Voted in gratitude by the Venetians/For heavenly deliverance from the plague”. In all cases, the city has its own icons, its talismans against all kinds of human issues. Its greatest act of desecration, however, is embodied in the cathedral dedicated to St. Mark, the “splendid monuments to the labours of /Grave robbers, body snatchers”. The labours of saints and martyrs, their physical sacrifice for humanity, are here defaced by the undercover scavenging of crooks who stole the relic of the saint, to monetize sacred vestiges for “greater commercial and religious glory”. Venice is, in this
247 Herbert:1945, pp.147-148. 248 Laven, in Ivanič;Laven;Morrall:2020, p. 42.
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perspective, built through the exploitation of the intimate value attached by people to the cult of the dead; in a very similar logic, ex-votos were often produced in series249, and sold to worshippers at high prices, as manufacturers took advantage of the hope for salvation which animated the buyers. Most remarkably, however, the objects accumulated around the “alley shrine” of the Madonna echo an image presented in section IV, “Some emblem of attachment or affection/Or coddled childhood – bibles and baby booties,/Harmonicas, love letters, photographs”, carried by soldiers to war. In both cases, the propitiatory, religious ideal supposedly incarnated in these objects fails to work, as the first scene is immediately followed by the description of the life-span of viruses and their resistance against medicine, while the second proceeds to recount the vision of the cranium of one of the soldiers in question, “sheared away … like a soft-boiled egg”. This terrible, conceit-like image recalls the same fragile materiality of tin cookie-moulds of the pressed “eyes and legs”, or of the precarious glass-like life of the protagonist, who says “ho fatto un fiasco”. Overall, Hecht is never optimistic about the salvific quality of saints, who are perceived as idealized human beings, reflecting the flaws of their worshippers and used to convert illness into a mystical state250. A sort of ex-voto, mocking once again the possibility of a cure, is presented in another longer poem, “The Transparent Man”251. Here a woman in her early thirties, contemplating the last days of her life as she is slowly consumed by leukaemia, reflects in a monologue upon the analogy between body and nature, and the mysterious logic behind their intricacy. In her mind, the trees have come to look like “magnificent enlargements/Of the vascular system of the human brain”; their intricate net has its own correspondence in the body, here represented emblematically by the transparent man, a plastic toy designed to teach children about the human anatomy, a figurine filled with the “rivers of red and blue”, of the circulatory system. The attention with which the protagonist gazes at the landscape as she did with the toy in youth remarks her desperation, and her desire to understand the physical mechanism that has betrayed her, causing “a sort of blizzard in the bloodstream,/A deep, severe, unseasonable winter” whose “white cells/Multiply crazily and storm around/Out of control”. Even through the visual aid of the doll, the mysteries of life remain “a riddle/Beyond the eye’s solution”, especially to her and her friend, both destined to a sort of corporeal death, one by illness and
249 Chessa, in Ivanič;Laven;Morrall:2020, p. 56. 250 In his view, characterized by irony and realism, even the epiphany of Paul as the new apostle of God will be interpreted, in a later poem, as an epileptic attack, demystifying his role as divine messenger. In “The Road to Damascus”, in Hecht:2005, p.221, from The Darkness and The Light. 251 In Hecht:2005, pp. 75-78, from The Transparent Man.
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the other by monastic vocation. The imagery in this composition is not dissimilar from the one employed in Donne’s “Hymn to My God, in My Sickness”252; here, the poet imagines his own dissection after death, revealing a world within his body. The “physicians by their love are grown/Cosmographers”, and he their “map”. Here as in the transparent man our eyes can trace an inner geography, with the asymptotic list counting “Jerusalem”, “Anyan, and Magellan and Gibraltar” inside of it, while the veins and vascular system “are none but straits, are ways to them”. The dissection of the body, also reminding us of the fervour of the worshipper in “To A Madonna”, is found in the “holy man” of Hecht’s “Harangue”253, whose knife “picked at the chambers of the soul, the liver” and yet is dismissed by his interlocutor, who has equally tried to interpret the “defiant” logic behind the chirping of birds and the “wooden quiddity” of trees. Although ex-votos feature a few times in Hecht’s poetry in their canonical form, as will be made clear, the concept of the votive offering is perverted into an emblem of violence and human misery in other compositions, dealing with the tragedies of war rather than with religion and its culture. One example in particular shares a similar ritual of votive offering to that of the previous poems: “The Deodand”254 recalls in its title a form of retribution explained by Hecht in a footnote255, “a thing forfeited or to be given to God; spec. in Eng. Law, a personal chattel which, having been the immediate occasion of the death of a human being, was given as an expiatory offering, i.e., forfeited to the Crown to be applied to pious uses”. A deodand is, just like an ex-voto, something “to be given to God”, not to ask for salvation but to achieve atonement – although, given that illnesses were thought to derive from spiritual sins, the two concepts overlap. In the amplified, brutal context of the war, however, all simulacra are ditched for actual bodies, which are considered to be as insignificant as tin objects. The image of the “young French Legionnaire”, the victim, is here preceded by an ekphrasis256, picturing a group of rich French women engaged in a harem-like scene, enjoying the exoticism of foreign objects and habits in the safety of their Parisian home. Their representation is meant to denounce the vanity and thirst for richness which justify the violence of colonialism, but also to foreshadow the objectification into a hideously deformed artistic object which will, in an act of nemesis, fall on the soldier. Their description
252 Donne:2010, pp. 610-616. 253 Hecht:1954, pp. 56-58. 254 Hecht:1998, pp. 188-190, from The Venetian Vespers. 255 Post:2015, p. 157. 256 The painting is Parisians Dressed in Algerian Costume (Harem), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
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in fact presents the same lavishness expressed in the Baudelaire poem, and is equally associated with assault and prevarication:
Swathed in exotic finery, in loose silks, Gauzy organzas with metallic threads, Intricate Arab vests, brass ornaments At wrist and ankle, those small sexual fetters, Tight little silver chains, and bangled gold Suspended like a coarse barbarian treasure From soft earlobes pierced through symbolically, They are preparing some tableau vivant.
The two descriptions present similarities: the speaker focuses on each object, emphasizing its details through a long list of adjectives, mostly referring to the material quality of the object (“gauzy”, “metallic”, “brass”, “silver”, “gold”) or to the texture, also mimicked by words through alliteration (“loose silks”; “gauzy organzas”). The profusion of richness is also conveyed, in the quick blank-verse lines, by the asymptotic construction of the sentence, and by the plural suffix added to all objects, suggesting an indefinite quantity of treasures, in whose description the reader can dive as they fall in the vortex of the list-like recounting. As in the Madonna poem, the terms employed link the realms of sex and violence, (the small sexual “fetters”, the soft earlobes “pierced through”); at the same time, the images of captivity and possession ascribable to these fields of meaning also emphasize the ability of art to congeal and constrain its subjects: the girls are “swathed” by mean of the eye and of the canvas, they are involved in “threads” and “tight little … chains”, and “suspended”. Their “tableau vivant” is hence a performance over which they have no control, captured and defined by the gaze of the viewer. Compared to the painting of the women, the characterization of the deodand occupies a much smaller stanza at the end of the poem, along with the rendition of a song for added dramatic effect. These lines present the same syntactical construction of Hecht’s translation, describing an action of the subject aimed at the modification of the object, and marked by active diathesis and prepositions (“out”, “off”) to show the movements on the object’s body. And yet, these modifying actions are not meant as an adoration but as an attack, although both reach a grotesque idolization of the object: he is dissected and vandalized from head to toes: “They shaved his head, decked him in a blond wig,/Carminated his lips grotesquely, fitted him out/With long, theatrical false eyelashes … And cut off all the fingers of both hands”. The “costumed” transformation of the soldier, painted and decorated with mocking objects, reflects the transference of feelings onto the body – in this case not feelings of religious or
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moral despair, but rather of revenge, the result of continuous attacks. As Gross257 has noted, “in the dressed-up, mocked and mutilated youth, an image of the victimizer victimized, we are invited to see an emblem of a historically emergent, tragic justice”. Post258 furthermore mentions that the term is possibly inspired by Marvell’s “Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun”, where, in an inverted logic, the men are seen as the deodand to be offered for the death of the animal. It is interesting to note how the young man recalls very closely the “hideous life-sized doll, filled out with straw,/In the skin of the Roman Emperor, Valerian”, described in one of Hecht’s most celebrated poems “Behold the Lilies of the Field”. Just like the Frenchman, Valerian is made into an emblem of violence, in a context of conflict, and with the purpose of revenge. His corpse, suffering a sort of passion or martyrdom, is equally turned into a decorated relic, a “totemic effigy”259 although in a less mocking way: his stuffed body is provided “with blanks of mother-of-pearl under the eyelids,/And painted shells that had been prepared beforehand/For the fingernails and toenails”. Precious objects are made to substitute physical organs, in an echo of both Shakespeare and Eliot – “those are pearls that were his eyes”260 – and in a manner which closely resembles the catholic treatment of embalming of the body of saints. Most importantly, as Post261 has remarked “the Gospel image of God as protectively clothing the faithful [...] is re-turned by Hecht into the image of Valerian’s skin being ‘tanned and stuffed and sewn’, highlighting once more the ambiguous value of these human-like reproductions”. The word “deodand” occurs once again in Hecht’s production in a later collection of emblems, Flight Among the Tombs, and specifically in the first section of “Peekaboo: Three Songs for the Nursery”262. In this epigrammatic poem “athlete and statesman, priest and clerk” will all eventually have to pay up as they lose the game of Death, and the penance, somehow conceived as in a children’s board game, will consist of their own selves, offered as victims. Several elements are significant in this poem, most importantly the allegorical transformation of the cycle of life and death into a ritual performance aimed at escaping consumption – following the same logic of Christian faith – but also the reversed parallelism between art and salvation inspired by the Metaphysical poets. The “latticework” of Death’s hands becomes in fact a sort of artistic medium not dissimilar from the frame in the heart of
257 Gross in Lea:1989, p. 162. 258 Post:2015, p. 158. 259 Sacks in Lea:1989, p. 76. 260 A motif often employed in The Waste Land and inspired by The Tempest. 261 Post:2015, pp. 41-42 262 Hecht:2005, pp. 95-96.
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Herbert’s “Jesu” or the stained-glass representation in “Love-joy”263; this background, however, fails to bring the message of salvation of the Son of God264 – IESU, meaning “I ease you” – but instead spells out a menace: ICU, as “I see you”. The transformation of bodies into artistic objects made part of a devotional ritual also informs the practice of embalming, which transformed the body – supposedly the deterior part – of saints and martyrs, as in the example of the corpses found in the Roman catacombs, into statue-like mummies covered in precious metals. The representation of bodily remains as a materially precious object of cult is brilliantly described in an early poem, “The Plate”265. The structure is made of two stanzas of 10 lines each, with a consistent rhyme scheme in the first six lines (ABCADE) followed by a final quatrain which matches the yet unrhymed lines in different order. The meter is iambic and the lines are predominantly pentameters, with two trimeters in the fourth and ninth line of each stanza. The first stanza describes a concrete scene imagined under different possible circumstances, while the second provides a theoretical commentary upon it. Moreover, while the first six lines of each stanza develop the thematic content of the poem, the final quatrains synthesize it and provide the closure of the reasoning. These characteristics make the poem almost metaphysical. In fact, the whole text is built on an analogy, an extended metaphor, and the double structure mimics the comparative aim of the composition and its division into practical example and moral teaching, so close to the nature of emblems. The whole poem is based around the act of erosion, a phenomenon which divides man in its two components, defined by two sets of references: the body, represented in turn by “fat”, “teeth”, “life and vigour”, “eye”, “lip”, and its core – the “nub of our identity”, the “spine”, which like a relic (fig. 9) is compared to precious stones and metals: the body “has silver in him”, the skeleton will show “a richness to be wondered at” a “mine”, having become “a plate of armor”. The paradox here is given by the possibility of finding a treasure after erosion, when what is normally considered good and rich, the health and plumpness of the flesh, is instead discarded, along with true gold set in the teeth, for a richer treasure, the skeleton. It is a celebration apt to ennoble an act of destruction, to elevate the fragile remains of a body to something extraordinary, justifying the act. The process of erosion can be carried out in several ways, but all have to do with fire, as the verbs – “boiled down”, “rifled”, “chemistry
263 Found, in turn, in Herbert:1945, p. 112; Herbert:1945, p. 116. 264 Vendler:1975, p. 68: “Herbert resorts to a congenial form of emblem – the verbal riddle or puzzle”. 265The poem was published in Poetry, vol. 198, no. 5, 2011, pp. 445-446.
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has eaten” – suggest. The natural decomposition of the body, orchestrated by forces which are however tangible and personified, given agency (“Death”; “chemistry”) is thus superimposed with its willing destruction by a firearm: the poem pivots, in its final lines, on the irony of the fact that man bears an armour within the very substance which he should protect, rather than without. The first stanza articulates the artistic process of change, opening with the statement “now he has silver in him”; such richness becomes suddenly visible “sometime”, in several scenarios of degradation exposed through the anaphoric “when”. The result of all such aggressions always end the same, with the body, or its least part, not directly turned into a mine but “thought a mine”, in the eyes of the beholder, almost a mystery of the flesh “to be wondered at”, in the rhyming of “spine” and “mine” or “teeth and wreath”, associating luxury and fame with dry bones. The whole first stanza is based, by placing this argument at the beginning and end and providing various possibilities at its core, on the idea that the body will somehow reveal its beauty after death, transcending the horror of the act. Still, such enthusiasm cannot hide a redolent note, as the sentence is linked through enjambment to the last line, admitting to the “stone and floral wreath” through which we must pass to be so celebrated. A similar representation of the body occurs in “La Condition Botanique”266, where Hecht denounces the pretence of “Simeon Pyrites, patron saint/Of our fools’ Paradise, whose glittering effigy/Shines in God’s normal sunlight till the blind men see/Visions as permanent as artists paint:/The body’s firm, nothing decays/Upon the heirloom set of bones/In their gavotte”. The saint, whose original name “Stylites”, from his habit of living on top of a pillar267, is here associated with the stone known as “fool’s gold”, and is part of the long- standing tradition of religious figure whose remains are mystified and taken as a reassurance against the horrors of death and decay. The conservation of his body, this time completely unspoiled by erosion, is interestingly compared to a painting, and his bones become, like those of the skeleton of “The Plate”, precious objects, a “heirloom”. In a similar way, section IV of “The Short End”268, a much later poem, sees the protagonists, Shirley and Kit, confronting the casket of the buried and yet living body of George Rose, who has “forsworn the vanities of this world” and still accepts donations from the curious tourists who wish to see his spectacle of life in death. His figure will reappear in the final section, all “shimmy and
266 Hecht:1998, pp. 72-75, from A Summoning of Stones. 267 Letter to Allen Tate on October 16, 1951, in Post:2013, pp. 95-96. 268 In Hecht:2005, pp. 185-203, from The Venetian Vespers.
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glitter” in Shirley’s fantasy of his resurrection, inspired by an advertisement in The New Yorker, in less spiritual fashion. The second stanza articulates a reflection based on the phenomenon described in the first. The verb “to burn” is repeated twice in the first line in figura etymologica, offering both the general picture and the more particular effects of fire, also conveyed by the alliteration (“the body burns [...] and burning”): this consummation aligns in parallel syntactic structures bodily as well as moral qualities, as the fire transforms different elements: it gives “light to the eye”, “moisture to the lip” and “warmth to our desires”. These would seem to be positive contributions, but this belief is immediately denied by the opposing conjunction which introduces once again the verb “to burn”, once again related to the whole body, isolated in the trimeter line, returning to it in its wholeness to announce the truth which represents the core, the true skeleton of the poem itself: “it burns/whatever body lives/Into extinction though it wear a plate/Of armor in it”. Whatever thing inhabits the body, organs or sins rooted in it, will have to face decomposition. The antithetic “though”, right next to the main sentence rather than distanced in the next line emphasizes the effect of surprise at the paradox. The dialectical movements of the sentences recall the musings of some of Donne’s poems (as noted by Praz269) who also employed concrete objects, the human body among others, to reflect on the nature of soul and body. The final wordplay of the poem has to do with the different realizations of the words “fire” and “armour” in the realms of the body and of war. The ending sentence plays precisely on these variations in meaning: “A soldier learns/To bear the silver weight/Where in his head the fire is most alive”. The skeleton has its counterpart in the helmet and protective gear of the soldier who, bearing both this equipment and the metaphorical weight of his life, becomes a sort of modern martyr bearing the cross. This image ties in with the relic-like representation of the skeleton, and the fire in the head suggests, in the same way, the “fear of fire” (another suggestive alliteration) and madness which erodes humanity at the perspective of bodily extinction, with a simultaneous dissolution of organs and personality. Moreover, as Yezzi explains270, the poem is inspired by “the silver-like metal plates (of tantalum, most likely) that were used as prostheses to repair severe head wounds during the war”. The poet’s imagination creates thus a comparison
269 Praz on Donne: “il suo tratto più notevole è la nervosa dialettica della sua mente appassionata … le caratteristiche della poesia del Donne hanno affinità con quelle del manierismo in arte: tale il suo dare sovente prominenza a un elemento accessorio, capovolgendo così quello che in altri poeti sarebbe stato il corso normale, tale la linea tortuosa del suo tipo di ragionamento che spesso si presenta come un’affermazione che a un certo punto viene contraddetta da un “but” (un “ma”) che si trova a un principio di verso, procedimento che trova un parallelo nella linea serpenti nata dei manieristi”. In Praz:2002, pp. 61-62. 270 Yezzi:2012, p. 442. More insight on the poetry of Hecht can be found in Yezzi:2014; Yezzi:2017.
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between the internal skeleton, easily defeated, and man’s attempt at creating an indestructible body, as if the natural one mocked his chances to survive. The sustained analogy, and the association between soldiers and saints, is perhaps too full of conceits. Hecht’s early work has often been criticised for hiding the traumatic experience of the war behind formal features and theoretical arguments; he himself notes as much in his interview with Philip Hoy271, and this may be the reason why this early attempt (undated, and yet possibly from his first months of military training) has been left out of his poetry books. The poem does not present, in fact, one of the strong satirical conclusions which many of his later poems offer, but simply ends with a paradoxical sentence. Relics animated the fantasy of seventeenth-century poets as well, as Donne’s “The Relic” suggests, imagining a celebration of his and his lover’s remains, which experience a fame usually reserved to saints after death. Although this could only happen in a land of “mis- devotion”, the poet dreams of them being transfigured into “a Mary Magdalene” and “something else thereby”, somehow as in “The Canonization”. In the Elegies, especially, he presents the same aesthetic transformation of remains which occurs in Hecht’s poem. The tribute to Lady Markham272, as an example goes:
But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach, And leaves embroidered works upon the sand, So is her flesh refined by death's cold hand. As men of China, after an age's stay Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay; So at this grave, her limbeck, which refines The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and mines, Of which this flesh was, her soul shall inspire Flesh of such stuff […].
The process of natural erosion found in Hecht’s poem is also present here, along with all the jewel imagery which covers the body in the accumulation of the penultimate line. Equally, in “Elegy upon the Death of Mistress An Bulstred”273 the woman is turned into a saint, or an angel whose body has been left on earth, where “the tree/That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb/Shall be took up spruce, filled with diamond”.
271 Hoy:1999, pp. 41-43. 272 “An Elegy upon the Death of Lady Markham”, in Donne:2010, pp. 735-742. 273 Donne:2010, pp. 755-752.
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As critics have observed274, “in an age before analgesics or anaesthetics death was sometimes better than life. The living body was often torn apart by terrible, unrelenting pain” and, to make such pain bearable, “Gothic artists registered these agonies by depicting the excruciating sufferings of the saints”. The possibility to share a similar experience to those who had a divine nature “provided a locus of identification for all those whose sick bodies ached and who could enter into the voluptuous sufferings of the saints”. That the suffering of the body would be celebrated through exaltation to the state of martyrdom, still, betrayed a willingness to endure and overcome said pain instead of a desire to find peace in the reign of God, renouncing life on earth. This paradox, along with a debate on the value of saintly remains, is discussed in “The Place of Pain in the Universe”, from Hecht’s first book, A Summoning of Stones275. This poem once again creates a dialectical opposition between flesh and bones, between worldly and otherworldly life, between the concept of vanitas, so relevant to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and pain, a very tangible experience for the living. The text is articulated in three stanzas of 6 lines each, in iambic pentameter, each rhyming ABCCBA. This structure goes well with the philosophical theme of the poem, showing precise correspondence between the first and last three lines, leaving nothing behind and closing each argument circularly within its allocated space. The mirroring couplet which occurs, due to the rhyme scheme, at the centre of each stanza relates the key concept of the reasoning. This early poem shows a habit which will become increasingly frequent in Hecht’s ekphrastic poems, especially those based on religious paintings: while the first stanza describes an everyday scene – although in emphatic terms and metaphors – the second and central part of the poem shifts completely in scenery to associate with the previous reflection the description of a painting or, in this case, “an old engraving” of “St. Jerome”. The final stanza, almost in the manner of an extended sonnet, introduces the mediating voice of the speaker who, through a paradox, synthesizes thesis and antithesis. The first stanza opens with what may seem, seen independently, a recipe straight out from a witchcraft book from the Middle Ages: “mixture of chloroform and oil of cloves”. The fable-like atmosphere is however immediately dispersed by the very straightforward sentence which follows, in which the medical terms and the aseptic procedure described take us straight back to the modern world. These ingredients, in fact, are nothing more than painkillers and analgesics, and the reader finds himself in a dentist’s room. The process of anesthetizing the gums is made realistic, the movement mimicked by the /w/ sound of the
274 Camille: 1996, p. 159. 275 In Hecht:1954, p. 15.
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alliteration “swabbed with a wadded toothpick”. The soft flap of skin covering the teeth anticipates the discussion on flesh which will later be developed, and its small surface reveals, in the next lines, a more complex structure underneath: it is “the thread/Of rich embroidered nerve spun in the head”, and calmed, or more visually (almost metaphysically) relaxed through its “slackening” by the anaesthetic. The rhyme “thread”/ “head”, the central rhyme in the stanza, wittily introduces the comparison between nerves and threads, both characterized by the complexity of their interrelation and almost turned into works of art. The nervous system of man, then, is described as a “rich, embroidered” brocade tapestry, visualizing pain as a complex, textured network of sensations. The complex artwork of man’s nervous tissue, “spun” – a passive verb – by some unknown entity, is somehow undone by these potent ingredients, which have, by this time, achieved an almost religious value: the mixture is celebrated as a miracle of salvation, as it “grants us its peace” – something usually asked of God – and is perceived, in the variatio of the final line, as “lighter than manna and in sweeter loaves”. Once again, the rhyme between cloves and loaves sanctions the salvific and almost profane value of the drug, whose numbing effect is favoured, as somehow it will be in the Vespers, to other images of Paradise. What remains fascinating for Hecht throughout his career, is the very tangible lament of the “weak and wretched jaw”, whose pain is no less negligible than spiritual pain and which is somehow presented as charged with moral qualities, as a metonym of the state of general pain of human beings. “Teeth”, “jaw” and “gums”, portrayed in one continuous sentence spanning the length of the first stanza, return as the leitmotif of the second, which, as previously mentioned, opens up on a fairly different background. Hecht offers no logical link between the two parts, beginning abruptly with a new subject. Once again, the lines form all together a single long sentence, and while the first four are dedicated to the description of the engraving, the last two create an opposing thread marked by the “yet” at the beginning of line 5, offering a comment on the scene. The engraving is fairly compatible with many representations of the saint, such as Dürer’s (fig. 10), and contains the usual emblems associated with Jerome: he is studying at a table – a verb which, in this context, regains its original Latinate meaning of making a meditative or thinking effort – and, most importantly, is represented along with a skull which “crowned with a candle, streams cold tears of wax/On its bone features for the flesh it lacks”. The emblematic image of the skull and candle pertains to the aforementioned iconography of vanitas. In an age enfeebled by wars, social crises and epidemics, the church used this symbolic image to convey the message of the vanity, lack of value and substance of worldly and concrete possessions and cares in comparison to the importance of a rich spiritual life,
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which would grant eternal salvation after a brief life on earth. This was done, interestingly, both to dissuade from raids and tyranny and to console the victims of current events. Hecht, however, presents this icon by using oxymoronic associations, paradoxes and significant adjectives to turn the concept of vanitas to a negative perspective. First of all, the “candle” and “wax”, representing the ephemeral value of life, are here strongly associated with flesh; just like the body in “The Plate”, wax burns away from the skull, revealing the bone underneath. Moreover, as it slides, wax covers the skull in a simulation of skin which is, although close, not entirely realistic – the rhyme “wax”/ “lacks” is emphatic in this perspective. The association between this material and the body has a long tradition, from the Bible276 (“I am poured out like water/Like wax my heart is melted in the midst of my bowels” is found in Psalm 22:14, and spoken by one of Hecht’s characters, Isaac, in his poem “Sacrifice”277) to Renaissance wax statues278. As George Didi-Huberman279 explains, “wax is the material of all resemblances. Its figurative virtues are so remarkable that it was often considered a prodigious, magical material, almost alive – and disquieting for that very reason”. Göttler280 also comments on the Italian expression “‘avere una bella cera’ – ‘to look well’. There is thus a linguistic collapse between wax and flesh: just as wax could be used to represent the dead face, so the living face was viewed and evaluated as if it were a piece of wax”. The skull therefore still needs something to be “crowned” with, something as realistic as wax, and tricks the eye as it “streams cold tears of wax”. The verb, indicating movement and flow, clashes with the rigidity proper of the material when cold, and the tears, meant to replicate the tears of human pain, remain still and unmoving. Overall, the skull is not very different from the ex-votos mentioned above, reproductions (sometimes even life-size) of entire bodies or body parts mostly made of wax, due to its celebrated similarity to tender tissue, presented to the deity as a mute substitute for the suffering fleshy correspondent. The image of the cranium, representing humanity as despoiled after death of all its earthly attributes, seems meant to condemn vanity, following the traditional moral. And yet, in this case, it also suggests a yearning for all it has lost, and a pathetic attempt at regaining it by emulation. In fact, “its white complement of teeth is full/While his pain runs happily to loam”.
276 Christine Göttler: “the psalmist described the heart at the point of death ‘like wax melting in the midst of my bowels’ (Psalm 22:14)”. Quoted in Laven, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 40. 277 In Hecht:2005, pp. 194-199, from The Darkness and The Light. 278 These were at times used in theatrical representations. 279 Laven, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 40. 280 Laven, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 40.
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The full set of teeth of the skull, emphasized in its whiteness and completeness by the superfluous addition of “full” to the term “complement” are perfectly preserved, cured from the pain reported in the first stanza, and pain is associated fully with the flesh, as it “runs”, complementary part of the liquid, soft, deteriorating part of the body underground, returning to the earth, after the final dissolution of the tapestry of nerves. These contrasts make the author proclaim, entering the poem in the final stanza in the first person and addressing the reader directly: “Observe there is no easy moral here”. The next two quatrains articulate the paradox of the skull, an expression of decay which still retains its presence on earth: “Having received their diet from the skies,/The teeth remain, although they cannot bite,/And to perform inspection beyond sight/The empty sockets famish for their eyes”. What is left is a false picture, a simulacrum devoid of substance. The organs, eyes and mouth, have reached a further stage, taking “their diet” from Heaven and looking beyond mortal reality. It is important to notice, however, how such otherworldly acts are still represented through very concrete images, concerning food and sight. The third line of the stanza divides into two hemistiches the opposing parts of the contrast: the teeth persist on earth, but the intent and system which governed them has failed, and they are useless once devoid of it. Significantly, the yearning for carnality evoked by the uselessness of the empty skull is expressed in the fifth line by synaesthesia, a typical emblematic feature, where taste and sight are blurred into a general appetite for lost life. While vanitas is debased in Ecclesiastes I, proclaiming that everything on earth is evanescent and toilsome, and that “all things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (8) human bodies present different necessities. These bones, scattered and devoid of flesh like the “chirping” bones of Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday”281 (Section II), do not, however, present the same faith in a salvation and oblivion offered by the deity, who is asked to “let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness” in order to be “forgetting themselves and each other, united/In the quiet of the desert”. These verses echo ironically the lines of Herbert’s “Repentance” (32-35): “the broken bones may joy,/And tune together in a well-set song/Full of his praises,/Who dead men raises”282. By contrast, Hecht’s bones yearn for the flesh and its complications, also belonging to saints and carrying meaningful messages. The tension towards physicality which his poem expresses equally contrasts with the teachings against vanity given in emblems (fig. 11), where the subject is invited to cover their face not
281 Eliot:2015, pp. 85-98. 282 Commentary on “Ash Wednesday” in Eliot:2015, p. 744.
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to confront materiality, in a similar way to the biblical exhortation to “pluck out” offensive eyes (Matthew 5:29) suggested in the aforementioned “Sloth”. Eliot wrote, about the Metaphysical poets, that authors like “[...] Donne looked into a good deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tracts”283. Hecht certainly took the advice and the example of his 17th- century predecessors, mocking the dry existence of Jerome with much more graphic images of saintly physicality in other poems. In “Humoresque”284, the most incisive instance, the “sewage lines, man-holes”, “fitted brass/Sphincters” and “ the dark/Gastro-intestinal corridors of hell” of a train engine produce ghostly vapours that sing “in Pentecostal tongues” and are compared to “pale S. Lazare”, in a mocking superposition of saint and station. Similarly, in section III of “Rites and Ceremonies”, we are presented with St. Cecilia, “whose pipes were the pipes of plumbing/And whose music was live steam”. These associations are to some degree comparable to the architectural (or rather, hydraulic) images often proposed by Herbert, as in “Whitsunday”, where the apostles become “those pipes of gold, which brought/That cordiall water to our ground”. Ricks285 insists in reference to the imagery in “Humoresque”, on Hecht’s fascination with the “poor infected place beneath”, represented by the city of Venice in the Vespers. Remarkably, the final stanza of “The Plate” also articulates a parallel between the ascetic Jerome, cast in the desert away from all vices, and the skull. Both exist under the crux of the same contradiction: love and success are worldly and available, but the ascetic cannot be lustful or proud; hunger could be met by the satisfaction of food, but the ascetic cannot eat. This is perhaps vouchsafed, ironically, in a limerick the 23-year-old Hecht sent to his brother, named “Observations on The Futility of Incessant Devoted Labor”286. As Gross has commented, “indeed, one might suggest that the image of the satirist (as opposed to the prophet) caught in the wilderness defines a kind of archetype for Hecht”287. Overall, like the skull, having ditched the weak parts of his mortal life, Jerome is still intact but void, and, like the skull, studious in the effort of bearing a different pain, a sort of patience against deprivation, the kind observed by Hecht in “Avarice”. While the delights of Heaven should surpass the grace offered by drugs easing pain, the pain of separation from the
283 “The Metaphysical Poets”, in Eliot:1999, p. 290. 284 In Hecht:2005. p. 63, from The Transparent Man. 285 Ricks:2010, pp. 121-123. 286 “A saint by the name of Jerome /Translated the Biblical Tome/From Hebrew to Greek,/Which no one could speak,/To the obsolete language of Rome”. From a letter to Roger Hecht, October 13, 1946, in Post:2013, pp. 72-73. 287 Gross in Lea:1989, p. 171.
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body is perhaps stronger than that which renews our consciousness of it. This should also be interpreted from a religious perspective: the pain of the bones reflects their doubtful desire and hope to be reunited and recomposed after death through the redemption of Christ, in a view which hopes for the rebirth of both soul and body. To this aim, bones and remains still occupy a place of importance in the world of the living. The place of pain in the universe is ultimately the body, as Norman German has noted288, but this pain can have an ambivalent value. While remaining a simulacrum, in fact, the empty skull communicates the memory of an utter loss, which allows the poet to say “The pain is life-like in that waxwork tear”.
2.3. “Dim shapes enacting hobbled stories”: Speaking Pictures and Statues
As has been observed, votive and religious objects had acquired in the course of time a role as simulacra, through which man could contemplate indirectly those concepts which were beyond human comprehension, like the circle of life and death, the impact of sin on humanity, and the nature of God. Although these figurines often became the embodiment of both the physical (through rich and material decoration) and metaphorical (through transfer of expectations and human burdens on the token) nature of man, as is clear in both the ex-votos dedicated to the Virgin, worshippers mostly limited themselves to a mediated relation with the divinity through their emblem. Starting from the late Middle Ages, however, votive offerings went through a phase of change: along with wax and paper gifts left in adoration of a statue or painting, decorated tablets of wood came into fashion. In comparing the two forms, Laven289 notes that “while the anatomical models pinpoint the afflicted area of the donor’s body, the tablet fails to identify the nature of the man’s injury” and yet “each anatomical fragment exists in isolation and there is no attempt to conjure up the spiritual relationship between the donor and the saint”. The tablets allowed for the creation of a more complete narrative: they portrayed the devotee in the act of adoring the divinity, on the same plan and within the same frame. These narrative pictures soon evolved into actual paintings and frescoes, mostly commissioned by the rich, who paid with their money to be represented in conversation with the saints or the angelic choirs and suspended in Heaven: Warburg gives the example of “the 'intrusion' of the secular portraits into Ghirlandaio's sacred stories in the Sassetti chapel”290 in Florence (fig. 12). This practice was also and fittingly common in Venice, where religious
288 German:1989, p. 24. 289 Laven, in Ivanič;Laven;Morrall:2020, p. 36. 290 Maniura, Robert. “Ex Votos, Art and Pious Performance”, 2009, p. 414.
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authority and temporal power were united in the person of the Doge, and where many noblemen strove to display their wealth and piety through extravagant offerings and artistic creations. Bamji291 addresses the topic in particular in relation to the cult of death, topic of great interest in Venice given its conformation (Ruskin’s note on the lack of burial places is also quoted in the Vespers). In reaction to the frequent witness of consumption, art helped to articulate one’s hopes for salvation; moreover, “appearance mattered in early modern Venice. Elite individuals planned the materiality which would surround their body in their wills. The physical transition of the body from place of death to place of burial also provided opportunities for families, scuole and the Venetian Republic to display their wealth and prestige”292. Other than the Madonna of the alley shrine, “comforter” of the poor, Hecht presents in section VI of the Vespers another example of ex-voto, a painted one, which becomes the perfect allegory of the hybrid nature of the city, suspended between profanity and religious zeal:
Those tributes, homages, apotheoses Figured upon the ceilings of the rich Wherein some rather boorish-looking count, With game leg and bad breath, roundly despised By all of his contemporaries, rises Into the company of the heavenly host
According to the protagonist of the poem, as has been observed, this is the “most cherished dream of paradise”, another instance of the blessedness which can derive from the “stasis of painting”. The whole representation points the viewer upwards, so that they can experience for the duration of the passage the same deluded rapture as the ancient worshipper wishing to convince himself of the reality of the depicted scene: the eyes are upturned at the climatic enumeration of “tributes, homages, apotheoses” in which the subject “rises” and is “suspended” in a fantasy of his own making. The ascent, nonetheless, forces the observer to take consciousness of his own position in relation to him, as one of “us proletarians on the floor”. Art embodies the cultural superimposition of moral and hierarchical status, and thus betrays a fundamentally human, material, worldly quality in both gazer and figured subject. The assumption of the rich man is simply a farce, a blessing granted by money, and the picture fails to convince: the count is “boorish-looking”, his lameness amplified by the approximating suffix and by the alliteration of his physical qualities (“lame leg”, “bad
291 Bamji in Ivanič;Laven;Morrall:2020. 292 Bamji, in Ivanič; Laven; Morrall:2020, p. 131.
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breath”). The adjective “roundly” unites the unified consent with the wide plan of perspective, as the man is “despised” by all as they gaze at the picture in its entirety. This anticipates the assimilation of moral and visual perspective, which only allows the observer to see the “nether parts” of the man, who is pictured looking from upside down and can only be characterized in his horrible nature through his animal-like body parts, the “thick ham and dangled calf”. These refer allusively to meat, stressing even more the antithetical, ridiculous nature of the man’s presence within the ethereal angelic context, as the binary construction “pimpled donor among flawless saints”, set in brackets, suggests. The moral and visual perspective is elongated by yet another spatial adverb, “beyond”, opposing our “dark resentment” by now reflected in the painting and away, in an anaphoric repetition of “in”. Despite the “numinous diffusion” of light that envelops him, the sky in which he belongs is made of material objects of pomp, “quilts and comforters”, (once again, the idea of comfort is noticeable) and even the light of God is simply a “tinted steam”. Ultimately, the trick of perspective is revealed, and the rich man swimming among the clouds is plainly seen as simply “Suspended always at that middle height”, between earth and the true heavenly sky, in a dimension which is entirely metaphorical, a lie bought with his money. The only art capable of truly fixing him into a significant “final form” is time, which in the eyes of the viewer “Seems to inch toward...the grand metastasis of art”. Only death will turn man into a still figure not unlike those of the saintly relics preserved in churches, in the only true process of artistic transfiguration “ordained”, as if willingly, by the only true patron of the world. This reflection mirrors closely the words Hecht will later have “Death the Painter”293 speak – “Under my watchful eye all human creatures/Convert to a still life”. Even more punctually, the final stanza of this emblem goes: “Your lordlings, what is Man/his blood and vitals,/When all is said and done?/A poor forked animal, a nest of flies./Tell us, what is this one/Once shorn of all his dignities and titles,/Divested of his testicles and eyes?”. The rhetorical question brings about the topic of iconoclasm and false pictures. The theme was particularly sensitive for the Metaphysical poets, torn between the desire to use images and in fear of doing so. Among them, Herbert, although interested in iconic language, is the one who most decisively rejects church embellishments and religious representations. In his conception, false pictures represent those faiths foreign to the British Church294, which however allows imagery and celebration to some degree, maintaining sobriety without the austere extremism of the Puritan creed. In a poem of this title, he notes that “outlandish looks
293 In Hecht:2005, pp. 115-116, from The Presumptions of Death. 294 Herbert:1945, pp. 109-110.
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may not compare, /For all they either painted are,/Or else undress’d”. Most famously, in “Jordan (I)” he asks the rhetorical question “Who says that fictions only and false hair/Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?”. Here and in other poems the word “painted” reappears with the meaning of “made up”, or false. Even in Donne, who, according to Farmer, reveals “pictorial habits of mind”295, there is a concern for the controversial implications of imitation and reflexiveness associated with images. In a sermon to the king on April 1629, he wrote: “we endure the decay of fortune, of body, of soule, of honour, to possesse lower Pictures; pictures that are not originals, nor made by that hand of God, nature; but Artificial beauties”296. Pictures of subjects offering votive gifts occur early in Hecht’s poetry; “Fugue for One Voice”297, a poem from A Summoning of Stones, features a dreamy floral scene which is connected with the flowered tapestry (another recurrent object of art in his production) named The Offering of The Heart, a beautifully embroidered French representation from the early 15th century, in which a lady, confronted by a man, is given “the red meat of his heart”. In its prospective visual representation, also echoed in the form and language, however, the aforementioned section of the Vespers shows most affinities with another early exercise by Hecht, after one of Marvell’s most famous works, “Instructions to a Painter for the Capital Dome”298, representing a similar scene to be depicted. Here the clouds are made of “cappuccino froth” rather than “quilt”, and the patrons are substituted with classical-esque gods, equally “beefy” – a term which once again unites the theme of flesh and animality – and “contemptuous”. The expression “us proletarians”, introducing the economic theme, is here substituted, using again a comprehensive “us” in a spirit of camaraderie, with “us/Benighted taxpayers”. The titles of those rich business-man like allegories of divinity are mocked as previously in wordplay, as the paronomasia “well-heeled heels of the legislative powers” suggests – the title of the painting, ironically, will be “venality and Greed triumphant over Merit and Common Sense” where the latter allegorical figures stand out from the canvas and onto the ground, and are embodied in the very voice of the speaker, who looks upwards. The sense of different spatial plans is here remarked in relation to the “baroque” style which was just hinted at in the previous representation, and which in some of its characteristics has always been present in Venetian art: here it is emphasized by the visual addition in asyndeton
295 Farmer:1984, p. 2071. 296 Donne 9:79-81, in Farmer:1984, p. 835. 297 Hecht:1954, pp. 8-9. 298 The Poem is reported in a letter to Timothy Murphy on January 15,1999. in Post:2013, pp. 300-301.
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of richnesses – “drapes of scarlet, massive reds, Gold leaf thickly applied” – reinforced by hyperbolic adjectives and adverbs, and in the ironic composition of the final line. The “foreshortening” achieved by the image, in fact, as well as by the poem, allows us to read about the figures in the poem only from bottom up, just as in visual perspective, as only the last line offers us the description of the main element of this magnificent composition: “enormous butts and little pointy heads”. Looking back at “The Venetian Vespers”, another display of humanized divinity occurs in the speaker’s description of St. Mark. In this setting, too, we can observe “the vast open fields/Of the sky turned intimate and friendly”, thanks to an imitative attempt through material means: the synaesthesia mixes two fields of experience, the material and the abstract, turning materials into adjectives in the “coined and sequined light” and “crumbs of brilliance” which compose this specific Eden. Several synonyms (“patines”, “laminae”, “plates”) invite the observation of surfaces, whose knurled texture is presented through alliteration of the velar sound /k/ (“fish-scaled, cataphracted”) evoking the “braille of the pavement” for the blind readers staring at a written page. The covering of the church is reminiscent of the radiance of Heaven, and yet the building is paved with materials which closely recall human and animal imagery: the term “cataphracted” originally stands for armour coverings, recalling the wars and violence which have made Venice great, along with the very nightmares of war of the protagonist; at the same time, the allusions to fish skin and “pavonine … walls”, as Post299 has noted, recall the animal icons of Christianity, emblems of faith in themselves and also a testimony to man’s earth-based conception of the divine. When comparing these lines with the description of Saint Mark in The Stones of Venice, it is clear where Hecht took his inspiration from:
In the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago300.
After Ruskin’s imagination, in this man-made, artificial context, “glories reveal themselves, grave mysteries/Of the faith cast of their shadows, assume their forms”. As Laven301 has observed, “medieval holy matter in particular was vibrant [...]. Matter tended to
299 Post:2015, p. 125. 300 John Ruskin, in Praz:1967, p. 37. 301 Ivanič;Laven;Morrall, in Ivanič;Laven;Morrall:2020, p. 17.
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be described by theorists as ‘organic, fertile and in some sense alive’. Certain things held intrinsic spiritual significance for their viewers. Bleeding hosts, moving statues and speaking images were each regarded as a ‘locus of divine agency’”. People were familiar with stories of Virgins and saints who had been seen descending from their painting to perform everyday tasks, and with miracles narrating of statues interacting with the worshipper302. Venice had maintained in time these traditions, and its statues and decorations had strikingly human features. In fact:
[...] Into those choirs Of lacquered Thrones, enamelled Archangels And medalled Principalities rise up A cool plantation of columns, marble shafts Bearing their lifted pathways, viaducts And catwalks through the middle realms of heaven. Even as God descended into the mass And thick of us, so is He borne aloft As promise and precursor to us all, Ascending in the central dome's vast hive Of honeyed luminosity [...].
The “saints and angels” remain the object of a creator’s hand, but detach themselves from the architecture as their wings, which in real life only hide the conjunction of the columns to the ceilings, give the impression of “uphold[ing]” them. The synaesthesia previously applied to the surfaces returns, focusing in particular in the description of the mosaics representing the angels: although the their nature of manufacts is never directly mentioned, and the subjects are called out as if present in their flesh – Thrones, Archangels, Principalities, in an echo of Milton’s Satan – they carry adjectives indicating matter, such as “lacquered”, “enamelled”, “medaled”. The “crumbs of brilliance” and “golden plates” which make up their bodies may remind the reader of the plates of armour in “The Plate”, equally turned into a piece of the human body. It is by virtue of these fictive aids and make-ups that their configurations seem to take life, turning the nave of the Cathedral into “viaducts and catwalks”. The sumptuous, mystical atmosphere of the church is trumped by the mocking representation of God himself, who, like a human being, appears “behind/The altar” and even communicates with the viewer, with “two fingers raised/In benediction, in what seems two- thirds/Of the boy scout salute, wishing us well” (fig. 13). The metaphors here crammed, the analogies that cause the reader to lose track of the single objects to be invested by the
302 Maniura, Robert. “Persuading the Absent Saint: Image and Performance in Marian Devotion”, 2009, p. 632.
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deceptive reflection of gold, the antithesis relating in mockery the “Patriarch” with “pigeons” and the “promise and precursor to us all” to a child explorer, in a bitter typological parody, all converge to create a sense of unavoidable and inescapable materiality. The statues and mosaics of these creatures amaze the devotees for their beauty and life-like expressions303, but at the same time, for all their mocking, apparent livelihood, they remain silent and superb; we are reminded of the fact that their expression of happiness is “studied”, artificial and made on purpose to trick the eye to accept it as real. In the Seventeenth century, Donne too struggled to abandon images and statues. In “The Crosse”304, he talks of this cultural divide in relation to the devotional symbol of the crucifix. The poet employs here a witticism suggesting that, since Jesus is the image of God, not worshipping his image would be like not worshipping his person. As Knapp305 has noted, finding it hard to persist in his faith without a concrete image to meditate upon, the poet layers in the lines “the different levels of image and prototype”. He further notes how “Donne often seeks confirmation of God’s truth in visual and material terms” as in the Holy Sonnet “What if this present were the world’s last night”306, where the image of the passion of Christ is directly affixed to his heart. In the controversial composition, Donne admits that “the loss/Of this cross were to me another cross”. Transcending all the meanings the term “cross” comes to acquire in the course of the text, the superimposition, remarked by assonance and rhyme, of man and Jesus’s crosses is significant. Moreover, the definition of Christ as “the image of God” evidences the confusion men in the age of Donne felt concerning the prohibition to use images, a medium engrained in the very theological description of the deity. Men need to see an equivalent of their pain depicted, something in which to believe, in order to bear their own burden. Even Herbert, in his “Prayer (II)”307, attempts to reach God with his voice but, instead, says “I lift my eyes, my suit is made”. Churches become, although in a much more subtle way, a place of inspiration and encouragement for him as well: other than the poems in The Temple, dedicating several qualities to each part of the building – in “The Church- Floore”, as an example, the “speckled stone” stands for patience – “Church Monuments” develops a more general discussion on the value of the physical place of worship308. The
303 Michael Camille: “In Italy the Virgin often appeared as a magnificent painted portrait, a person who, although enthroned in heaven, also gazed directly upon the hopeful devotee from her two-dimensional golden world”. In Camille:1996, p. 110. 304 Donne:2010, pp. 467-474. 305 Knapp, in Caporicci;Sabatier:2020, p. 1141. 306 Donne:2010, pp. 551-553. 307 Herbert:1945, p. 103. 308 In turn, in Herbert:1945, p. 66; Herbert:1945, p. 64.
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building is described as a grave for the living, where the poem makes “acquaintance of this heap of dust”, death. Although the poet ‘s body “may learn/To spell his elements, and find his birth/Written in dusty heraldry and lines” – the church’s decorations and emblems – both man and monuments are ultimately destined to crumble down under the power of God and the erosion of death. Equally, in “The Holy Communion”309, the relationship with God is sought “Not in rich furniture or fine array,/Nor in a wedge of gold” but in the “nourishment and strength” of the manifestation of God’s spirit within the body, again conceived in architectural terms. On this occasion, too, the poet remarks on the risk that “sinne turn’d flesh to stone”, equalizing body and monuments as casings emptied by death. In the same way, although the imagination yearns for the saints and angels to translate their marmoreal tension into a sprint for movement, the mosaics of St. Mark remain mute and unmoving, puppets placed in an eloquent, suggestive setting to play a scene. Under this new- found understanding, the churchgoer is taken by the unresponsiveness of said icons and, in turn, of God, whose message is no longer easily interpreted, as the doubtful verb “seems” in relation to the expression “wishing us well” suggests. After all, as has been suggested, Hecht’s main source of inspiration for the poem is John Ruskin, a man whom he praised for touching on the same themes he wishes to discuss and underline in this specific poem:
What I find so striking on virtually every page is a vast knowledge – including the geological and topographical conditions that antedate all building – together with a deeply felt (I suppose there is no other word for it) “moral” sense of the ways we live, or ought to live, or have failed to live, and the ways that these modes of living, healthy and unhealthy, worldly and spiritual, exalted or debauched, reflect themselves in works of art, and especially of architecture310.
This is the spirit which ultimately animates the descriptions and representations of Venice, and which, as will become clear, pertains to so many of Hecht’s poems. In a similar way a statue, or rather another decoration carved out of stone has captured Hecht’s imagination in his early work, and he moves from it to discuss the ways humanity articulates is vision of reality. The statue in question, protagonist of “Mathematics Considered as Vice”311, represents an ass playing a lyre, and it stands on the façade of Chartres Cathedral (fig. 14). Although it may seem strange to attach the representation of an animal to a theological statement, animals share many characteristics of saints and martyrs, who are often
309 Herbert:1945, pp. 200-201. 310 Letter to William McDonald on September 9, 1977, in Post:2013, p. 163-164. 311 The poem appears in Poetry, vol. 198, no. 5, 2011, pp. 449-453.
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identified with them on the basis of their shared carnality. They are a relevant part of both religious art and hagiographic landscapes, starting from the ox and ass watching over the holy baby, to those creatures associated with saints – Jerome and the lion, Francis and birds. Hecht himself portrays animals, other than in numerous emblematic exercises, in poems that deal with the nature of sacrifice, originally practiced on beasts. One needs only to think of the identification with lamb and ram of Isaac and Abraham in “Sacrifice”, preceded by the very incisive “Pig”, which insists precisely on the human need to find a scapegoat that will take on all of the burdens that man fails to confront, creating an analogy between the episode of the Gadarene swine and the Crucifixion. Even “Rites and Ceremonies”, one of his greatest tributes to the Holocaust, presents a carnival scene in which, among other animals, “twenty chosen asses,/Grey, Midas-eared, mild beasts receive the jeers/And clouts of the young crowd”, and stand on the “Corso”, in Rome along with “Twenty young men”, Jews, about to be equally beaten and sacrificed for the general merriment of the occasion. In this perspective, thus, animals become simulacra following the same act of transference of man’s burdens which characterizes the representations of martyrs, as exemplified in “To a Madonna”. Animal symbolism is prominent within the very structure of churches, in emblematic iconography inspired by the Gospels and emblem books, as in the example of St. Mark’s. This didactic practice became particularly prominent in northern countries during the gothic age, of which Chartres is a supreme example, and which lasted in France until the 15th century, a time when the Renaissance, with its completely different style, was at its peak in Italy. The ass-musician is part of this tradition, and remains the focus of the poem for its whole length. The five stanzas, somehow as in “The Plate”, present five sets of rhyming lines organized in various order (ABCDADBCEAE), but each stanza contains 11 lines, as the first verse is repeated once more in the penultimate line and also rhymes with the fifth line in all cases. The pattern is broken only in the final stanza, where the repeated line is slightly varied to create an element of surprise. The meter is iambic, once again with variations of trimeter and pentameter. The merging of the figures of man and ass, creator and creature in this case, is hinted at from the first stanza: the key sentence, later repeated, is “I would invoke that man”, but the relative “who”, at the beginning of the next line, introduces to the public the figure of the ass that has been sculpted by the man in question, keeping the creator out of focus until the end, for the length of 9 lines. The ass was “chipped for all posterity”, and this preposition, indicating aim, suggests the intention of its durability and of its didactic intent. This is testified, a few lines later, by the sentence “that it might sing/The praise to all who pass/Of its
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unearthly load”. Somehow like the skull aiming at “inspection beyond sight” accompanying Jerome, the ass has now left the burden and fatigue of the weight carried in life for an insubstantial one, the faith and message he is meant to profess; or perhaps, given that it is defined, in between brackets, as “(The one that Jesus rode)” the “unearthly load” he praises is the divinity, now turned from flesh to spirit. In all cases, the description is ironically betrayed by the fact that the artist “hung from its neck a harp-like instrument” – a weight not exactly metaphorical, and an unnatural object for an animal. The artistic process, illustrated through dedicated verbs, adjectives and materials (“chipped”, “hard stone”) is described meticulously in action, through the partitive “its either wing” suggesting the composition of the figure taking shape and being “set” in the wall. The partitive also insists on the prominent presence of the ass, representing through words its conformation as a haut-relief312 and making starker its contrast with other and very dissimilar winged figures, as in the painted ex-voto in the Vespers. The enjambment in fact allows the winged ass to slide just alongside of “the most saintly clan”, rhyming interestingly with “man” at the beginning and end of the poem, and to accommodate, in repetition, his “either wing” with their “wings”. This levels hierarchical differences, parading a forced similarity: the very word “clan” suggests exclusivity, and the presence of the ass among angels stresses the opposition between the rigid austerity of church and celestial beings, whose bodies are still feather light, and the levity and light-heartedness of the humble animal, who is instead heavy in its body, “carved out of stone”. Overall, however, both creatures are made equal by their common ritualistic value: they are both manmade, and both intended as message-carriers (angels, in fact) for the viewers of the cathedral, carrying out an artistic purpose. “The ass smiles on us all”, and its smile suggests a placid ignorance of its state: it is astonished, and speaks in the third person (“an ass may rise”) as if stuck in an extra-corporeal experience. The place to which the ass has risen is singled out in its glory in the next line as “to such sure eminence” where the intensifier, related to the adjective in its absolute comparative form suggests the blind faith of a naive creature. His importance is redoubled, as the ass has considerably improved his state, going beyond its own kind: it is not just eminent “among asses but mankind”, two categories once again superimposed. The way in which the
312 A predominant feature of Chatres Cathedral, as explained by Giorgio Cricco: “All’Antelami già dai suoi inizi come scultore. In particolare, durante un suo probabile viaggio in Francia collocabile tra il 1165 e il 1170, egli dovette restare molto impressionato dalle immagini scolpite tra il 1145 e il 1155 nel Portale dei Re della Cattedrale di Chartres […]. In questo portale le sculture, assimilabili quasi a delle colonne, si staccano dal fondo e diventano statue a tutto tondo”. In Cricco;Di Teodoro:2010, vol. II, p. 323.
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ass “simpers” – a fake, dramatic smile, suggesting mockery rather than joy – suddenly reminds us that it is simply another simulacrum, a representation which has been infused with life through the words of the poet only. The hinted reference to “in praise of folly”, interestingly, recalls the life of the medieval Western Church through an extratextual reference to the book, bearing this title, written by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1511 as a satirical attack on this institution. As Yezzi313 has noted, Erasmus employs the expression “asinus ad lyram”, “which correlates roughly with ‘pearls before swine’”. Erasmus314 often emphasizes the association of man and ass as both characterized by a sort of stupidity which grants them the light-hearted happiness here described:
As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and should take it for ravishing music; or if anyone, born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if (as is most usual) it be accompanied with pleasure, brings a great satisfaction both to those who are possessed with it themselves, and those who deride it in others, though they are not both equally frantic.
And yet, he also notes how such a humble, unreasoning animal was chosen by Christ himself:
We may farther take notice, that among all the several kinds of brute creatures he shows greatest liking to such as are farthest distant from the subtlety of the fox. Thus in his progress to Jerusalem he chose to ride sitting upon an ass, though, if he pleased, he might have mounted the back of a lion with more of state, and as little of danger.
In line with Erasmus’ considerations, in fact, and like the camel featured in “A Ruminant”315, the ass of the poem “Saw with its foolish eyes/Gold, Myrrh and Frankincense/Enter the stable door, against all odds”. Thus, one ass becomes all asses, in a minor typological play. The animal is accompanied by “sow” and “kine”, other animals considered impure; the group name turns the symbolical duo of ass and ox into a small herd, and, by consequence, the manger into a sort of farm, where the animals lose their allegorical value and become simply livestock: the realism of the scene is emphasized by the natural component, and yet, instead of observing the miracle of the birth of Christ, the ass only remembers the “Gold, Myrrh and Frankincense” , and sees repeated, in its past, the miracle of richness and grandiosity mixed with the most humble, poor and undignified side of life. This
313 Yezzi:2011, p. 443 314 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, p. 370. Project Gutenberg. 315 Hecht:2005, p. 140, from Flight Among the Tombs.
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kind of paradox has many literary precursors: the ass is a notable moral example, other than in emblem books, in metaphysical epigrams. Crashaw’s316, for example, insists on the animal’s ignorance of its own state, using the mise en abyme of the ass bearing a burden bearing, in turn, an even greater burden – the faith of humanity: “Does He, base ass, thus/Deign to honour thee,/Unworthy thus to bear th’/Incarnate God?/Alas, Thy patience strangely/Tried I see,/Thee carried thus who/bear’st sin’s awful load!”. Even Herbert, in the “Church-Porch”317, employs the example of the ass who, bearing Christ, thinks everyone is adoring him instead of the man he carries on his back. Here, too, the narrow view of the beast, unable to see clearly, and of the man who in turn portrayed it, is hinted at by the language, in the assonance “sow”/ “saw” and the rhyme, once again, between human and animal, “mankind”/ “kine”. This episode is also presented in an emblem by Alciatus, reiterating the importance of such iconic images (fig.15). The equation between man and ass is finally confessed in the third stanza, through the words of Bottom318. Just as Shakespeare does with Bottom, moreover, Hecht employs all meanings implicit in the word ass – and so, the previous stanza closes on the ironic note “our butt at last is God’s”. The following passage articulates the central message of the poem: “That ass is but a man/Who struggles to describe/Our rich, contingent and substantial world/In ideal signs”. The inability of the ass, who can only understand his condition superficially and even ignores his own stupidity, to describe and sing otherworldly matters is equally the ignorance of man, who assigns allegorical meaning to reality – in this case, religious value to an ass – without realizing that his attempt to use analogy or emblematics to gain real understanding of divine nature is just another experiment destined to fail because human. It was also an experiment particularly true to the time, when, as Camille and Male report, cathedrals could be read like “books in stone” and “like computers, were constructed to contain all the information in the world for those who knew the codes”319. Moreover, the speaker denounces the blindness of men who, wishing to extract esoteric meanings from natural objects, fail to know and appreciate the true beauty and value of earthly phenomena, ending up stuck in mid-air between Heaven and Earth, somehow like, once again, the rich man in the painted offering, without having gained anything. The world is in fact “rich” for its variety of forms beyond economic value, “contingent” – casual and
316 “The Lord borne on the ass”, in Crashaw:1873, vol. II, p. 90. 317 Herbert:1945, pp. 6-24. 318 Yezzi:2011, p. 443. 319 Camille:1996, pp. 14-15.
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accidental but also limited, objective – and “substantial” sanctioning the final materiality opposed to ideal representation. Leaving the celestial spheres, we are reminded that the cathedral itself is simply a human artefact, and pertains to a world which is described as “pagan”, “dunged” in the physical interaction between earth and creatures, which are personified like the ass. In nature, the precious mother-of-pearl, used in art for carvings and decorations, appreciated for its shine, is more simply the “home of the bachelor-clam” a figure also present in “La Condition Botanique”320.What makes up our reality, although man and creatures can only “coldly think” upon it, is substance which feeds and nourishes life, guaranteeing a harmonious equilibrium. All of this is lost to animals and most men, sheepishly basking in their mere existence or distracted by the shine of things they cannot reach; ultimately, “man is but an ass/Who smells not his own stink”. The image of the ass bearing a lyre321 goes back to the classical tradition, through fabulists and philosophers like Phaedrus and Boethius, and was rediscovered during the Middle Ages. The story tells of an ass who, having found a lyre, tries to play it with its hoofs and immediately recognizes that, not having any training nor the natural skills to do so (given the shape of its extremities and the braying voice) renounces any attempt, showing exemplary humbleness. This is also the moral – ignored by the ass at Chartres – implied by Hecht and extended to a discussion on language, which recurs in relation to animal symbolism in yet another poem. “The Life of Crime”322, a much later composition, compares the ways a man and his Methodist father view the world. During a visit to the zoo, the child is taken by the exotic, (“dreamed of as the Arabian cortège/That accompanied Melchior and Balthazar/To the crib from exotic ziggurat pavilions”) bestial and intuitive smell and noise of the animals even before being able to see them, and considers this experience of the senses as “an incontestable presence and true sign/Of the animals I was about to see”, a sign trusted with an almost religious fervour – his rhyming of the words tell/smell have a function not dissimilar from Adam’s rhyming of “speak”/ “seek” in Paradise Lost, during his confrontation with God on his perceptivity323. By contrast, his zealous father cannot go past the allegorical, empty description of these creatures, according to which “The camel was God’s symbol for the
320 “The ‘mother-of-pearled’/Home of the bachelor oyster lies/Fondled in fluent shifts of bile and lime/ As sunlight strikes the water, and it is of our world,/And will appear to us sometime where the finger is curled/ Between the frets upon a mandolin,/Fancy cigar boxes, and eyes/Of ceremonial masks”. From “La Condition Botanique”, one of Hecht’s poems in A Summoning of Stones. 321 “L’asino nel Medioevo”, Pillole d’arte, January 17th, 2013,
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grace/of patience, never mind his sorrowful eyes;” and equally “The lion God’s assurance we shall rise/Like Gospeler Mark from this polluted place”. This attitude only turns the animals into “dim shapes enacting hobbled moral stories”, and is moreover denounced by the speaker in the behaviour of the Methodists, who ditch all responsibility for their sins by believing blindly in the symbolical act of confession, while he has become an assassin, bathing in “the Blood of the Lamb” but devoid of hypocrisy. The last two stanzas provide a sort of abstract commentary around the pivotal explanation which has occurred in stanza three, and to some extent justify man’s attempts at gaining knowledge on the ground of his innate impulse towards elevation. It is interesting to notice how the key phrases, “For all his abstract style” and “despite his abstract style” articulate the debate on the pros and cons of such a habit. The material representation of divinity is perhaps a foolish exercise, but it also allows man, working for approximation, to shorten his distance from something that cannot be convincingly pictured. The ideal and now “abstract” shows “neither the purity/Of heaven, nor the impurity beneath”; the impurity is represented yet again in animal terms – “the feasted crocodile/Ringed with St. Francis birds to pick its teeth”, an image taken from “Improvisations on Aesop”324, commenting on how charity and cruelty can be easily mixed, and “Siamese twins, the double-beasted back”, suggesting “normal intimacy”, and relating a genetic issue, a test of man’s “imperfection”, to the act of sexual union, marked as the creation of the reversed “beast with two backs”. The final stanza, however, overcoming the insistence on brute materiality, ditches “abstract style” for an effort of concentration, where the “dunged and pagan grass” is finally replaced by painterly descriptions of “summer pools/Lit by the flitterings/Of light dashing the gusty surfaces” previously foreshadowed. Under this light, the world is viewed from a Franciscan perspective of harmony with the divine, where even the mules, “neuter things”, sing “hosannas” through their off-key braying. And yet, their natural call differs greatly from the active effort of the ass/man to reach a singing voice. If the unawareness of its limited condition is the “chiefest lack” of the ass, the same is not entirely true of man, who can become conscious of his limits, triggering thus an extended effort to “learn to sing” and compare things, which makes him unequivocally human. As Hecht has observed, metaphors are crucial to human life:
they bring into persuasive, revealing and even persistent relationship dimensions of our experience which would otherwise be incommensurate and without bearing upon one another.
324 “The crocodile rends man and beast to death/And has St. Francis’ birds to pick his teeth”.
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They suggest to us in the most tentative way an order and design among the disparities of the universe; they hint at a homogeneity that we all piously hope is really there, and which we predicate our lives upon, and which science must take as a basic assumption325.
Although the attempt to create a system of equivalences to see a moral teaching in an animal, or to see God in man or in any form of material art is a foolish attempt, this system based on numbers and correspondences, these “mathematics”, considered by the speaker as “vice”, are instead at the basis of all human art, seeking “homogeneity”, which more than illustrating the nature of God explores the tensions inherent in man, a creature stuck between two realms. This same ideal is expressed in the “Eclogue of the Shepherd and the Townie”326 in which the character embodying civilisation and attacking his adversary, standing for Arcadia, suggests an etymological relation between human “kindness” and “consideration”, ditching the perfect “dream” of the shepherd-child Christ for a more complex reflection on the ways intellect allows man to reach God, through “those broadcast emblems of divinity,/That prove in their unduplicable shapes/Insights of Thales and Pythagoras”, or through the large scale reproductions of buildings (Palladio’s Malcontenta, in this example) reflecting in their proportions certain human qualities. Wishing to capture the essence of the abstract concepts of divinity, Herbert also comments on the best way to understand them: in “The Agonie”327 he observes that while “philosophers have measur’d mountains,/Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,/Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains” all the theoretical methods known to man have failed to understand the nature of “love” and “sin”, which can only be known through human experience, through the “agonie” which gives the poem its title, and cannot be transcended. The anaphoric list with which Herbert insists on the parts of the body – “His hair/His skinne, his garments” – which are vividly “bloudie” under the grip of sin echoes the “dunged, pagan grass” of our reality expressed in Hecht’s term; even love can only be experienced as a wine. And yet, the poem itself, while refusing mathematics-based means of understanding, conveys its meaning through metaphors and analogies. Similarly, those gothic statues adorning cathedrals, as Camille has noted, “are based on geometrical principles. Their movement not only conforms to an underlying order, but takes place in a single direction. It has an aim”. He also adds that “for the Gothic period it is indeed possible to discern what art historians have called a “period eye” – a way of seeing shared by audiences and artists across
325 Hecht:1965, p. 497. 326 In Hecht:2005, pp. 15-17, from The Transparent Man. 327 Herbert:1945, p. 37.
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a variety of media”. It is no accident that, just like all the objects of art portrayed in these pages, emblems were defined as “speaking pictures”328. The title of the poem ultimately also offers a meta-reflection on the nature of art and of poetry, given the ancient equivalence between music, poetry and mathematics329. In an interesting comparison, “the intimacy of the linkage between architecture, number or proportion, and music was expressed in the Greek myth in which Amphion, by his skill in playing the harp, was able to summon the stones of the walls of Thebes to assume their proper places”330. Ultimately, “for all his abstract style/The ass will learn to sing”.
2.4. “A riddle beyond the eye’s solution”: Paintings and Mirrors
The representation of religious figures among animals recurs in another poem inspired by a work of art. The painting in question is St. Francis in Ecstasy, one of Bellini’s masterpieces (fig. 16) on show “at the Frick”, the location which gives the title to the poem, although it has also appeared in print under the name “Anniversary”331, with some variations. Both titles suggest a circumstance which goes beyond the painting itself to acquire a personal meaning, and this is confirmed by the superimposition, previously seen, of two different scenes, one being the description of the painting and one, much distant in time, reporting the reflections of the speaker on a landscape in the first person. The painting of Francis is considered one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, created by one of its most iconic artists and showing all the characteristic qualities of this tradition. Most importantly, the devotional element is conjugated with a man-centric vision, inviting a meditation on the saint’s role as a man and on his position among the hierarchies of the Universe, conceived of as a perfect geometric structure.
328 In the definition of Francis Pastorius, “Emblematical Recreations”; Newberry Library, Chicago, MS W 1025, p. 176. in “Visual Regimes and Charmed Spaces”, Engel:2002, p. 46. Hecht also notes that Simonides defined poems “speaking painting” in “Poetry and Painting”, in Hecht:1995, p. 5. 329 Hecht notes as much his Mellon Lectures, as well as in a letter to Joseph Summers from March 1985: “You and I admire and delight in the same details of Jonson’s comments: about those who “think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed.” Numerous is superb there, and reminds us that numbers is another term for poetry.” In Post:2013, pp. 220-221. Praz also writes, more specifically: “The Pythagorean tradition passed on, through the practices of architects and stonecutters, to the builders of Gothic cathedrals”, in Praz:1967, p. 63. 330 Hecht:1995, p. 51. 331 “Anniversary” appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 1950, and later in 1954 in A Summoning of Stones, with a few variations and under a new title, “At the Frick”.
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Emulating this mentality, the two parts are divided in the three stanzas of the poem with a 2:1 ratio, organized in a general description of the painting, followed by a close-up on its details and inherent meaning, to finally reach the closure of the poem with a note from the speaker remembering the past. The stanzas are once again composed of 10 lines each, in iambic pentameter, providing enough space for reflection and articulated into an inner logic reflected in the rhyme scheme AB ACDE BCDE. This internal structure organizes the themes presented in the poem, and mirrors the geometrical qualities of the painting. The first couplet of each stanza in fact not only presents a brief summary of the content, but also creates a consistent parallelism between the natural and living subjects, in turn presented in lines A and B: the first stanza places the “rock” in opposition to “St. Francis” and “Master Bellini”; the second presents the “Birds in trees” opposed to “God” and Francis, and the third recalls once again the “mountains” opposed to the “faun”. This scheme allows the poet to introduce the two main topics of the poem, the individual and nature, and to repeat them in varied forms in the next eight lines. The first stanza portrays in the first couplet the subject of the painting in its setting: “Before a grotto of blue-tinted rock/Master Bellini has set down St. Francis”. Hierarchic relations are immediately made clear, Francis being in this context an object “set” in place by the “Master”, a sort of god working within his own canvas. In the Early Modern period, and up to the 18th century, art and artist had a key role in defining the religious settings and iconographies which entered people’s imagination: Hecht too, in “A Poem for Julia”332, recalls the episode in which Michelangelo set one of pope Paul’s clergymen in Hell, after his comments on the indecency of his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and was supported by the Pope himself in such a god-like action. As Norman German has brilliantly noted, nature, in communion with the saint, mimics – in a very emblematic way – the state “of man’s painful doubleness”333. The doubleness of man, concerning the division of soul and body, of spiritual and temporal life, is made the more painful by the fact that its components are competing in the same shell, the human figure, and continuously torn between union and division. In the same way, a visible “split” among the rocks is there to “counter and splice” them, and they appear fragmented though holding together. On this note, the rhyme “rock”/ “lock” emphasizes the constriction of the spirit between the walls of the body. Praz recalls the words of Wittkower on how, even in a world so man-centric,
332 Hecht:1998, pp. 86-88, from A Summoning of Stones. 333 German:1989, pp. 20-21.
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Renaissance artists firmly adhered to the Pythagorean conception 'All is Number’ and, guided by Plato and the Neo-Platonists and supported by a long chain of theologians from Augustine onwards, they were convinced of the mathematical and harmonic structure of the universe and all creation [...]. With the Renaissance revival of the Greek mathematical interpretation of God and the world, and invigorated by the Christian belief that Man as the image of God embodied the harmonies of the Universe334.
This tension must be maintained in man, “else he could weakly couple at the belt/His kite mind to his cloven nether parts/That seek to dance their independent dances”. The mind, compared to the very concrete image of a “kite” is perhaps intended as man’s free will, which, tending towards the sky like a flying object, is also fragile and easily misled by vice, whose lively activity and desire for dynamism is expressed through the repetition of the “dances”. The “cloven” quality of the lower part of the body, further connected to the act of dancing, is a simple reference to the legs, whose anatomy reflects the split of the rocks, but may also be associated with animal hoofs, perhaps foreshadowing the analogy between the saint and the subject of the final stanza. The word, moreover, recalls another of Hecht’s poems, this one of classical inspiration, “The Origin of Centaurs”. As a matter of fact, Francis’ body partition is similar to that of a Centaur. Tellingly, the poem opens with an epigraph from King Lear – “But to the girdle do the gods inherit,/Beneath is all the fiend’s” – and the protagonist finds himself enveloped in a natural and yet divine communion not dissimilar from the one experienced by the saint. As has been noted335, the actual body of Francis is also split in two by the rope of his faith. The parallel description of the subject and his immediate background is interrupted by a semicolon after seven lines of asyndeton and attentive description, flowing through enjambments. The ending lines of the stanza focus on the main event of the representation: “the sudden light descending came to bless/His hands and feet with blisters, and to melt/With loving that most malleable of hearts”. The arrival of the light is made more sudden by being placed at the beginning of the sentence, and the phenomenon, given direction and intentions through verbs of movement (“descending came”) is somehow personified as the essence of God (although he is not directly mentioned), who “came to bless”. The verb “to bless” seems fitting when intended for a saint, but the integrity of its promise is ruined by the oxymoronic complement which follows it, “with blisters”, directed at “hands and feet”. Even in Herbert’s
334 Praz:1967, p. 83. 335 German:1989, p. 20.
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“Holy Baptism”336, the soul is presented as a child, handled by God at his will, while “the growth of flesh is but a blister”. These wounds are of course the stigmata which, found in saints, represent a minor duplication of Christ’s own wounds, renewing the worshipper’s closeness to God. At the same time, it is hard, from a secular point of view, not to look at them as painful scars given spiritual meaning in an effort of consolation and tolerance of the human condition. Moreover, supposedly, blisters could perhaps be the result of the exposition to sunlight; following the same logic, the personified light physically “melts”, this time with “loving”, the person of Francis. This may be an attempt on the part of the poet to imitate the great modernity of the painter, whose rendition of the scene is especially appreciated for its distancing from the traditional iconographical elements which characterize the episode. The body of the divinity in fact is not featured, but simply hinted at by a source of light coming from outside the frame. Another noticeable quality is the “most malleable” heart of Francis, which somehow links him to one of the many statues of wax previously mentioned, and which is melted to its core in a way not dissimilar to Crashaw’s “St. Teresa”’s. The martyr will witness a similar and yet more sensuous manifestation of the divine, when the Virgin “shall dart/Her mild rays through [her] melting heart”. Just as in the immediate picture he is the passive subject of the painter, in the story therein illustrated Francis does not oppose resistance to the transforming powers of God over his weak body. The second stanza zooms in on the particulars of the picture, as the visual evocation is accompanied by the singing of the birds that “his chronicle recite”, perhaps a nod to Giotto’s earlier painting representing this exact scene. Although the birds are the supposed speakers of the passage, we step into the poem as if we were able to hear their voice and see shades and hues of the landscape. Birds often appear in Hecht’s production in relation to Francis, possibly as a reference to his Sermon to the Birds, which sanctions his role as protector of nature. These creatures represent for Francis the epitome of God’s grace, the beauty and carelessness of those beings who trust absolutely in the providence of God. While the birds fly closer to Heaven, however, the saint is still earth-bound, and the words that describe his background, with alliteration in /r/ and /s/ (“Champs at the grasses and the sunset rusts/The hill-top fortress”) mimic their chirping. Their voices talk us through the details of the landscape, and the anaphoric repetition of “where”, introducing the three plans composing the background, signals their position in relation to the saint. As Gentili has pointed out337, “the landscape that spreads out behind and around the protagonists of Bellini’s devotional images
336 Herbert:1945, p. 44. 337 In Gasparotto:2017, p. 19.
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is a container of symbols and metaphors, for allusions and quotations, constructed according to the demands of Christian allegory”. The three main elements accompanying Francis, just behind the rock that almost supports his spiritual revelation, are an “oblivious mule”, perhaps a humbler version of the exalted ass in the previous poem and a sharer of Francis’ celibacy338, “heron and rabbit”, which are “set” in their place by the painter, just like the man, and the main architectural feature visible in the distance, the “hill-top fortress”, reflecting Francis’ isolation339. It is interesting to notice how the close-up background and the full-length landscape also differ in their qualities, the “Apennines” – suggesting a geographic reference which will later be commented upon – being “split” and “blue tinted”, cold in shade and cracked, and the “fortress” having turned a warm, rusty colour due to the action of the sun. “Rusts”, rhyming with “lusts”, cover its walls, and the elements surrounding it furthermore tell of the fecundity of the thriving nature, exemplified by the animals and “the grasses”. Hecht points out as always textures and colours, mimicking the movement of the eyes gazing at the canvas, a movement attracted by visual impulses but also directed by the musings of the mind. The two plains thus become another instance of opposition between abundance and moderation, between the corporeal and spiritual dimensions, and thus, like a Russian doll, the painting and the poem enclose within one another three opposed couples describing the same debate: the two visual plains, the divisions within the rocks and the division within Francis. And yet, despite their different tensions, Francis and the animals are united under the light of God by the same nature: “like the rabbit he … lives in a grotto; like the mule he is ‘sterile’ […], like the birds associated with him, his spirit soars”340. As Rona Goffen has remarked341, the landscape in Bellini’s paintings works “visually, in the composition; emotionally, in establishing the mood of the scene – and of the beholder; and symbolically, as a metaphor for God’s presence”. Amid this landscape, Francis has undergone a sort of transfiguration, “now342 that God made of him a living net/To catch all graces, yet to let through light”. This is the first time God is directly mentioned in the poem, and his role is transformative, parallel to that of the painter – he is a “creator”, as in Herbert’s “The Temper”343. The divinity “made of him” something else; the verb “to make” suggests an active influence on the object, and the
338 German:1989, p. 21. 339 German:1989, p. 22. 340 German:1989, p. 21. 341 In Gasparotto:2017, p. 12. 342 The time adverb is substituted by “how” in the final version. 343 Herbert:1945, p. 56.
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preposition “of” hints at the materiality of the thing being transformed. The mean through which God has achieved his miracle is a substance perceivable by the human eye and yet incorporeal. The net which he has become cancels any distinction between upper and lower parts, turning the body into a sharing ground, capable of the double, simultaneous and yet oxymoronic acts of catching and letting pass through “graces”. Its transparency is comparable to “The Windows”344 of Herbert’s poem. This intimate reflection begins with a plea to God: “Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?”. The only half-rhymed line in the stanza defines the nature of man, who is “a brittle crazy glass”, turned into a window – reflecting light rather than the self – by divine grace. The central stanza, meaningfully, represents the glorious conformation which the mediators of God can achieve by this transfiguration, through the aid of “doctrine and life, colors and light”, equated by the parallelism: “but when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,/Making thy life to shine within/The holy preachers, then the light and glory/ More reverend grows, and more doth win;/Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin”. Francis’ new net-like constitution makes of him a priest-like figure, a “fisher of birds and lepers”. He was known for bringing the message of God to all creatures of nature, and to all the most humble; having been encouraged to keep spreading his faith, he started against all odds, according to several witnesses, with the sermon to the birds; he was also particularly fearful of lepers, and yet would not deny charity to one:
Now, as he was riding one day over the plain of Assisi, he met a leper, whose sudden appearance filled him with fear and horror; but forthwith calling to mind the resolution which he had made to follow after perfection, and remembering that if he would be a soldier of Christ he must first overcome himself, he dismounted from his horse and went to meet the leper, that he might embrace him; and when the poor man stretched out his hand to receive an alms, he kissed it and filled it with money345.
This passage, exemplifying Francis’ newly-acquired charity, may be inspired by Auden’s “Heavy Date”, which hints precisely at this episode: “now I hear Saint Francis/Telling me in breezy/Tones as we are walking/Near a power-house:/‘Loving birds is easy,/Any fool can do it,/But I must admit it’s/Hard to love the louse’”346. We observe, in this case, a hagiographic representation which diverges partly from the heavy materiality of ex-votos and baroque representation, but which remains grounded in
344 Herbert:1945, p.67-68. 345 Bonaventure:1868, p. 13. 346 Hecht:1993, p. 115.
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nature and expresses its role as medium in concrete terms: Francis is a “fisher” not just of human beings, like the Christ whose wounds he has just received, but of all beings, in an ironic substitution of fish and men with all sorts of unexpected creatures, the free birds who cannot usually be ensnared and those sufferers who are neglected by definition. Every soul which he receives blesses him, and leaves behind goodness for those who need it, emphasizing the sense of harmony present among creatures. He turns, in brief, sin into blessing through his welcoming compassion, in a more responsive and human way than the Madonnas and statues previously observed. In the same way, then, he receives “holiness that came swimming like a school/Of silver fishes to out-flash his lusts”. This is yet another physical representation of the entity of God reflected in nature: the light creates flashy contrasts (note the assonance of “flash” with “flesh”, the subject of lust now annulled by the new reticulated configuration of the saint’s body347) of dark and light against the “darkly emblazoned” figure of the saint, the way iridescent fish shines as the sun hits them in movement – a comparison previously encounter in the light shining within St. Mark, which was instead artificial. The capacity of the scene to entail so many reflections at once and to synthesize them in an image makes this painting inherently meditative. As Gasparotto348 has written, “in this work Bellini invented a kind of ‘sacred poem’ or ‘meditational poesia’ to use the eloquent phrase coined by Keith Christiansen, by creating a deliberately poetic language, in which the landscape becomes the main subject and for the first time the traditional hierarchy of figure and background is inverted”. As we reach the culmination of the scene, with the fine description of its centrepiece act, a new voice emerges, a first person, and we are reminded of the significance of the original title, “The Anniversary”. While the narration has previously been impersonal, or attributed to animals within the composition itself, the sudden emergence of a subject suggests that we have been immersed in someone’s thoughts and fantasies about the painting until this moment, when they have decided to speak. The subject recalls a brooding Prufrock349, hinted at in the repetition of the formula “I have seen”. This chant however does not suggest, as in the case of Eliot’s character, a repetition born from tedium, but rather a sort of emphasis on the significance of the landscape, or perhaps the recognition of a view shared
347 The preposition “out”, hinting at an expulsion, is further emphasized by the hyphen, which is removed in the final version. 348 Gasparotto:2017, p. 102. 349 Eliot:2015, pp. 5-9.
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by saint and speaker, subsisting in time and recalled in all its constituents, accompanied by demonstrative or determinative pronouns: “those mountains” that Francis saw, “the trees/As green as ever”, “the warm Italian winds of one more year/Since that great instant”. It is interesting to note how the personal memories also tend to join landscape and body, after the example of the painting, in the rhymes “branches thresh”/ “flesh” and “trees”/ “knees”. The place has remained unvaried since a miracle occurred on its ground, with one interesting exception to characterize it:
The faun go frozen on the road with fear Of the careening autobus, the sheen Of its dilated eyes flash in its head Like glass reflectors [...].
The faun is the only living presence mentioned in the remembered landscape; its addition is perhaps a homage, on Hecht’s part, to certain animal poems by fellow contemporaries such as Robert Frost’s “Two Look at Two”, which portrays the encounter with the wild as a sort of epiphanic occasion. Norman German recognizes in the faun an alter- ego of the speaker350, but it is also important to note how the animal and Francis share a similar experience – the sudden vision of a foreign phenomenon, entailing possible harm to the observing subject, who is “frozen”, either in memory or in painting it its rapture – also described in similar terms. In this perspective, present and past overlap, in their positive and negative comparisons, as the ecstasy of Francis who “caught” the light of God to “out-flash” his lust is evoked in the “fear” (alliterated with “frozen” and “faun”) of the animal, whose head and eyes have become “like glass reflectors”, something retaining and reflecting light (just like the net), which “flash”, mirroring the light coming from the “careening autobus”. The faun is, like the lamb or the ass, a sacrificial animal, mild and innocent, often used in iconology to represent Christ351. As the two images are weighted against each other, and the figure of Francis as martyr is reflected in an animal, fast approaching its own sacrifice, the reader reflects on the crudity of modernity – the division of the poem, according to German352, is reflective of three eras: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the present time – which must make do with the banality of an “autobus” instead of having access to any form
350 German:1989, p. 24. 351 Spinrad argues, in relation to Marvell’s “The Nymph Complaining for The Death of her Faun” that the animal is presented through Christian symbolism due to the iconographic relation between Christ and the faun. In Bloom:2010, pp. 29-45. 352 German:1989, p. 24.
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of divinity. This consideration triggers a celebration of the capacity of ancient men to bring the miracles of the sky so close to our nature: “the painter’s dead/Who brought the Doge and nobles to their knees/Before the joiner, Francis in the flesh”. The ability of Bellini to represent the sanctity of Francis and his true affection under the influence of God’s light is so realistic that, in a paradox, the richest, most powerful and those mostly known for their corrupted habits among the clergy are moved, and kneel in front of Francis, the epitome of humility, just like the Magi in front of Christ. In reference to the final passage in the poem, a remarkable change occurs between the two versions published by Hecht, “At the Frick” and “Anniversary”, concerning the epithet conferred on the saint. “At the Frick” defines Francis as “the wind’s Brother”; in this case, the blurred relation between man and nature is further emphasized, as the wind is reminiscent of the spirit of God (as in “Wind of Spain”) and the apposition “Brother”, suggesting the harmony of Francis’ Canticle of the Sun, also hints at the religious order of the friar – the very word “friar”, from the Latin frater, means “brother”. By contrast, in “The Anniversary”, whose line is quoted above, the saint is defined as a “joiner”, both in the sense of a linking element between man and God and in the more humble meaning of “carpenter”, an artisan job left to the poor, but also the occupation of St. Joseph – Christ was called “the carpenter’s son” (Matthew 13:53-55). Despite the change, it is clear that Hecht originally conceived the poem as a form of mediation between several realms of experience, and took under consideration the go-between role of Francis. It is, overall, thanks to the Master’s ability if Francis becomes a figure so capable of mediation between realms: he emphasizes his nature as “joiner” recovering the “split” which plagued human nature at the beginning of the poem, allowing the “flesh” to be illuminated by divine “flash”, as in all the pieces of art analysed until now. One specific detail of the ekphrasis is particularly revealing of the way man portrays the dynamics of his relationship with God. As previously mentioned, in fact, the painting is admired for the astute and emphatic use of light to signify the presence of God, who is otherwise absent. Francis is the only one who is truly able to partake in the vision, and the viewer is left, just like the Doge and nobles, mainly in awe of the saint, whose “net” reflects the vision only transversally. Hecht, along the same lines, makes much of light in the poem and, significantly, portrays a similar scene in a later and longer work, “See Naples and Die”. This poem is built around a man’s reminiscence of his past, in an attempt to reconstruct his holidays in Naples, among faded memories, questioned belief and a general conflict between past and present recollections and views. Some of the most distinctive features of the poem
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are the pictorial and literary imagination353 employed by the speaker to experience the reality around himself: by often comparing landscapes, situations and people to paintings and artistic objects, by the recurrent use of metaphor to represent everyday life, he has built for himself an artificial world, in which he struggles to make sense of real events and of the real implications which derive from them. In a pivotal passage from section III, protagonist and reader are caught in the observation of another one of Bellini’s masterpieces kept at the Museo Nazionale in Naples, The Transfiguration of Christ (fig. 17). The description of the painting begins with the first line of the section, but, unlike the previous poem, there is no direct mention of the fact that what the voice is recalling is in fact a painted, rather than real, landscape:
See, what a perfect day. It’s perhaps three In the afternoon, if one may judge by the light. Windless and tranquil, with enough small clouds To seem like innocent, grazing flocks of heaven. The air is bright with a thickness of its own, Enveloping the cool and perfect land, Where earthly flocks wander and graze at peace And men converse at ease beside a road Leading to towers, to battlement and hills, As a farmer guides his cattle through the maze Of the chipped and broken headstones of the dead.
This opening resembles previous journal entries (one of the modes of recollection of the subject) referring to everyday life – “Here is a sunny day in April/the air/Cool as spring water to breathe […]” – with even a passing remark on the light. The sky is described with increasingly mystical images, as the clouds become the “flocks of heaven” and the air embraces the earth, which comes with its own set of “earthly flocks”. This kind of imagery seems symbolical and specific, but it goes along with the picturesque language previously employed to describe the bay of Naples. Even the “towers and battlements” may be some instances of the rich ancient architecture which characterizes the city. Instead, the reader is baffled as he learns that “All this, serene and lovely as it is,/Serves as a mere background to Bellini’s painting”. One can no longer distinguish between a true and a false picture, and falls into the trap of optical illusion typical of certain Renaissance paintings, the trompe-l’oeil pictures representing perspective gardens or palaces mimicking real ones. And yet, the
353 Lindsay:2017, p. 79.
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pictorial quality of the words (“the air is bright with a thickness”; “the chipped and broken headstones”) allows us to penetrate a confined, two-dimensional space. The painting describes the episode in the Gospels where Christ reveals his “inner sanctity”, in a physical manifestation of the brightness of his spirit, to prove his divine nature to some of the apostles. In the biblical story the voice of God erupts from a cloud, calling him his son, and the prophets, Moses and Elijah, also appear to the shocked companions of Jesus. Many critics354 have noticed the mistake in the protagonist’s description of the subjects, as he confuses the two men “holding/Fragments of scroll with Hebrew lettering” for “one being Peter,/The other possibly John”. This may be one of many clues to reveal the confused and misplacing mind of the speaker. Hecht himself noticed that “He is figuratively “blind,” and there is irony in his pride in being a careful observer”355. What is most important, however, is the consideration that comes right before this misunderstanding:
[...] five dazzled apostles, Three as if just awakening from sleep, Surround a Christ whose eyes seem to be fixed On something just behind and above our heads, Invisible unless we turned, and then The mystery would indeed still be behind us. A rear-view mirror might perhaps reveal Something we cannot see, outside the picture But yet implied by all Bellini’s art.
The description of the characters is striking: the apostles are “dazzled”, even more engrossed than the “lost in thought” Francis, as they have witnessed something otherworldly. The perspective, however, is not set from the point of view of Jesus and his followers, but from ours: the spectator becomes at last the third party constituting the picture, standing right where God should be. The mystery is perceived right behind his back, in a sort of mockery; even using something as common, as material as a “rear-view mirror” would not work: as Hecht recalled in a passage from “Poetry and Painting”356, God speaking to Moses, in Exodus 33:20 declares “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me and live”. The issue in question was in fact an important point of discussion during the Council of Nicea, deliberating on iconoclasm, and the theme of the visio Dei was explored by emblematists,
354 Lindsay:2017, pp. 67-68; Post:2015, p. 220. 355 Post:2015, p. 219. 356 Hecht:1995, p. 17.
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often, tellingly, in the form of a glass (as in Herbert’s “The Window”) or a tent set between worshipper and deity (fig.18). The whole passage is thus built on the tease between possibility and impossibility: “we might perhaps reveal” – literally, take off the veil, the Veronica – “something which we cannot see”, but which is, in turn, “implied”. The implication of the unseen is the trick which characterizes Bellini, making something we cannot see believable. This is the way in which paintings make the challenges of faith easier to understand, as the “dazzled” faces of the apostles tempt us into a desire to share their position, and convince us there is something to be observed. Still, we are looking at a representation of the sacred which is in turn looking at a representation of the true sacred which is right behind us but which we cannot reach. We are only given the possibility to see the intermediaries, and are constantly disappointed by the lack of response: God always eludes us. Not even art dares to represent the most mysterious aspects of divinity, and, left with no corporeal proof, the only option left is the stretch of the imagination to its utmost capacity. Concerning these figures, however, the voice adds some further considerations: “their lowered eyes indicate that, unseeing,/They have seen everything, have understood/The entire course of human history”. It would seem the greatest of paradoxes that some of the apostles, having been granted the possibility to look at God, would avert their eyes instead, just like Dante, whose perception of the deity is defined “ineffable”, and reduced to blurred, incorporeal shapes. However, while man has a “mystery behind”, and could not see even if he tried to, the apostles, “unseeing”, “have seen everything,/Have understood/The entire course of human history”, “the ordinance of destiny” and “providential purposes”. An important remark must be made on this topic. In The Genesis of Secrecy, a book much appreciated by Hecht, Frank Kermode recalls the fact that
when Jesus was asked to explain the purpose of his parables, he described them as stories told [...] with the express purpose of concealing a mystery that was to be understood only by insiders. So Mark tells us: speaking of the Twelve, Jesus said, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again and be forgiven”. [...] only those who already know the mysteries – what the stories really mean – can discover what the stories really mean”357.
Something similar occurs here: while man is offered an image of God which is veiled, its essence concealed from his senses the way a riddle or a parable work, the apostles do not
357 Kermode:1980, p. 2. Part of this quotation is also cited by Hecht:1986 in “The Riddles of Emily Dickinson”, p. 110.
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even feel the need to solve the riddle, as they are already offered a knowledge which goes beyond sight. The only available glimpse of divinity is found in the allegory of the process of parable-making itself, presented in the transfiguration (literally a “transformation of figure”) of Christ, whose spirit becomes for a moment visible over his body which usually hides it. The picture furthermore becomes a reminder of our own mortality, setting the limit beyond which we cannot trespass and yet inviting us to watch something unimaginable: just as parables do, emblems and representations use objects as masks to present ideals, pushing the senses as far as they can go within the limited realm of the physical world. Kermode goes on to say: “There is seeing and hearing, which are what naive listeners and readers can do; and there is perceiving and understanding, which are in principle reserved to an elect”358. Hecht perceives this fact as a necessity more than as a limitation; as he writes in his essay on Emily Dickinson359, man needs a “slant” truth, a mediated version of it. And yet, the poet insists on the fact that while the protagonist is looking at a false picture, and his understanding is limited to the senses, he is still learning something about himself. Another process is in fact enacted here, a process which had much fascinated the Early Modern Period and the Metaphysical poets in particular. Farmer360 observes that Donne often reflected on vision through “conventions associated with pictorial seeing”. Chief among these was the image of the mirror, found in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians: “we see through a glass, darkly”. This concept inspired not only Herbert’s previously mentioned “The Windows”, but also Donne’s 1628 Easter Sermon361: “That which we see in a glasse, assures us, that such a thing there is, (for we cannot see a dreame in a glasse, nor a fancy, or a Chimera) so this sight of God, which our Apostle says we have in a glasse, is enough to assure, that a God there is” (8.222-223). The image had also attracted Leonardo, who observed how the mutual reflection of two mirrors facing each other offers a way to explain the workings of human vision: “hence the eye transmits through the atmosphere its own image to all the objects that are in front of it and receives them unto itself, that is to say, on its surface, whence they are taken in by common sense”362. Kuchar363 adds that Augustine made a similar argument, seeing the bible as a mirror: “in that text a mirror is held out to you. See whether you are one of the pure- hearted it mentions, and grieve if you are not yet like that; grieve in order to become so”.
358 Kermode:1980, p. 3. 359 Hecht:1986, pp. 110-111. He wrote a poem titled “A Certain Slant” (Hecht:2005, p. 180, from The Darkness and The Light) where a window is featured as a screen reflective of light. 360 Farmer:1984, p. 814. 361 Farmer:1984, p. 821. 362 Farmer:1984, p. 1033. 363 Kuchar:2017, p. 3.
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(19.110). The image of the glass, as well as of the telescope, using a lens to perceive what was invisible to the naked eye, was employed by emblematists as well, especially in the form of the debate between soul and body, in which the soul permits introspection, a form of vision inaccessible to sight (fig. 19). These observations point out two aspects highlighted by the painting: first of all, that the apostles and the canvas itself, representing the images of the Bible, should be enough to guarantee the existence of God, and are a test of our faith; the apostles, most importantly, are fellow human beings easier to trust, as the dazzled eyes of some of them are something man can recognize himself in. In this respect, both the representation of Francis and the artwork in Naples present two cases in which the religious medium becomes a “window” or screen truly capable of filtering information, even through a material support. Secondly that, like a bible or a mirror, the painting reflects not the proof of God but our own image, varying according to our response. This is the principle which, in Vendler’s analysis364, makes the Bible “the thankfull glasse, /That mends the lookers eyes,” in Herbert’s “The Holy Scriptures (I)”365, or, in Donne’s “His Picture”366, allows for a correspondence between a concrete picture and a picture within the heart367. Hecht too wrote a poem titled “Mirror”368, interestingly defining the object as “halfway between you and your double”, but also tracing a distinction between truth, placed “in the clouded cornea/Of the self-deceived beholder” and beauty, which “lies in makeup”, meant perhaps as false picture or art, and followed by “Bach’s fugues, the right-to- left/Writing of Leonardo”. As Herbert presents two versions of glass-vision, “one self-regarding and the other God- directed”, a duality Vendler369 notes in “Justice”, he “implies a third state, in which the medium will be dissolved and one will see without mediation”. In “The Glance”370, in fact, he makes a comparison between the slight vision man has of God and the full vision which is hopefully achieved after death: “if thy first glance so powerful be,/A mirth but open’d and seal’d up again;/What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see/Thy full-eyed love”. A similar idea concerning God’s contemporarily still and moving eye, fixed on man for a second before disappearing, is portrayed, as Wind371 recalls, in Cusanus’ De Visione Dei, and
364 Vendler:1975, pp. 197-198. 365 Herbert:1945, p. 58. 366 Donne:2010, pp. 345-346. 367 Farmer:1984, p. 1045. 368 Hecht:2005, pp. 170-171, from The Darkness and The Light. 369 Vendler:1975, p. 93. 370 Herbert:1945, pp. 171-172. 371 Wind:1958, p. 186.
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reproduced in emblem books by Wither (in his “double-faced Prudence”) or by Alberti, (with the “winged eye of God”, fig. 20). Although this consideration on emblems and their ability to interpret the world, failing because based only on the senses, is possibly inserted in the poem to add to the short-sightedness and deluded attitude of the protagonist, their use also exemplifies man’s thought-process and the potential of thinking through analogies. This paradox is key to the understanding of many of the author’s pieces. Returning to the conscious awareness of the saints, the most important element is perhaps the correlation of the two aspects they perceive, “the meaning and the burden” of the previous servants of God, who have given their life to him. Man fails to detach himself from his humanity enough to understand the meaning of violence and sacrifice; he can thus only hope that only in the presence of God, when his true language is understood beyond masking words, does one have the full perception of its sense, and feel a long-lost communion with other witnesses of the deity, prophets and men of the Bible. The final lines of the description are focused on the central figure in the representation: after attempting to gaze at God and watching in envy those thoughtful saints, we come to Christ, who instead looks at the Father and beyond the public. As I have previously noted, Christ is considered the emblem par excellence, the Word embodied, and thus “all hope, all life, all effort has assembled/And taken human shape in one figure”. It is important to notice how the Son is described not as the sum of the powers of God concentrated into a body, but rather from a very human perspective, as the incarnation of the hopes of salvation of man, produced by the worship and good behaviour of many in the past. Christ pertains to the human world, and is made so realistic in the picture that the observer feels the need to specify his presence as contemporary to the Son of God’s, “this afternoon”. After employing the image of the “luminous” sun/Son, a Donnean remnant, by remarking how he lighted up the night at his birth and darkened the day at his death, he goes as far as to ditch his role of aster, despite his present “illuminated” state, in the time “between” – the time on earth – by suggesting that, regardless of him, “was a day so glorious/As to explain and even justify/All human misery and suffering”. While the apostles are brightened by the sun of God and Jesus, and their presence allows them true perception, man finds mystical understanding in the natural beauty of a day on earth; not any day, but a day reflecting the splendour of God to natural scale, according to the way “the artist felt”. The many asides – “so”, “at least”, “perhaps” – are there to convey a
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sense of rational scepticism towards the previous statement; and yet, the painter forces us to believe in his vision. Once again, we are in the physical realm of artistic artificiality, as our own “pain has cleanly been expunged” not by seeing God but by “a pastoral hand, moving in synchronous/Obedience to a clear and pastoral eye”. We are always tricked by the art of synchronous movement of hand and eye, vision and representation, and we are granted acceptance of the mystery of God and of the sacrifice of men of faith not through understanding but through forgetfulness, as we are progressively engrossed in the paradisal landscape and the rich details of the painting, an enchantment that will cease as the man and his wife will leave the museum. Out in the world, reality hits them again: as Lindsay has noted, “what follows … is a series of transfigurations of their own in which the world is revealed, not as numinous and providential, not as glorious and free from pain, but bleak, deformed, warped and crippled”372. The corruptibility of the body presents itself to them in the forms of death – the worst kind, a “small coffin” for a child who has passed away – and, later, of genetic deformity or limitation – the “straggling parade of freaks and mutants/From a local hospital for the handicapped”, so similar, in the mind of the protagonist, to those monsters Dürer represented in his Temptation of Saint Anthony. Sacrifice and pain remain related, from a human perspective, to the torments of the body, unable to reach a higher level of interpretation. In the very words of Hecht373: “they are demons, our secret evil longings, and they are very real. but these images exist outside of time, eternally, everywhere, and in their submerged and terrible domain we are pretty much alike. It is history that makes us, or lets us be, what we are uniquely, and gives to our lives their singular stamps and profiles”.
2.5. “The visible counterpart of branched polyphony”: Painting, Words and Music
Hecht kept up his fascination with Italian landscapes and the art of “a nation/Devoted to the cult of the Madonna/With all its doctrinal embellishments”374 into the mature years of his life. The Transparent Man contains, among other ekphrastic attempts, “Meditation”375, which reflects on the aim of pictorial landscapes and on art’s capacity to embody and capture the reverberating echo of entire cultures – in a way not dissimilar to figures of worship, which, as has been seen, reflect in their different representations the result of different historical and
372 Lindsay:2017, pp. 76-77. 373 Hecht:1960, p. 133. 374 “See Naples and Die”, section IV. 375 Hecht:2005, pp. 18-21.
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cultural contexts. To achieve a dialogue between the world and art, the poem aligns, in its three sections, a sacred conversation with worldly voices and a Bach quartet. Hecht described this complex achievement thus:
it is based on a set of metaphors or figures that are acoustical or auditory in character, and that move from music and its opposite, cacophony, to an articulate silence; that is, from a perilous oscillation between the real world and an imagined one; or rather, not oscillation but interpenetration. The imagined world is art, whether as music or painting. But it is a world into which we enter, and even seem to inhabit, however briefly. The poem in its three parts is about the strange way we negotiate our entrance into this world, and the strangeness of that world in which all disharmonies are somehow reconciled376.
In this effort, the composition continues a tradition begun with “Gladness of the Best” in Millions of Strange Shadows and repeated later in “Illumination”377, poems concerning the artistic representation of religious themes through multiple simultaneous media. The poem is introduced by a quotation from Yeats’ “Under Ben Bulben”378, his self- dedicated epitaph. The epitaph reflects on the great subterranean forces which influence human life – the realms of the magical and the spiritual – and the recurrence of certain universal themes: the circle of life and death, or the patterns of crisis and reconstruction which determine personal growth as difficulties are overcome. All these elements represent the flow of habits, rituals and beliefs which make up a common culture. Stanza four, in particular, reflects on the role of artists, who, according to the poet, must strive to “bring the soul of man to God” – an interesting affirmation shedding light on the paintings previously observed, which often attempted to picture the unachievable. The poet solicits a refinement of man’s soul, not by proudly attempting to picture the unknown but by recording its influence over nature – after the example of Michelangelo, who has achieved “Profane perfection of mankind”, celebrating with an almost religious fervour the beauty of the concrete world. Interestingly, Yeats also points out the value of measurement, the greatest artistic tool; this is in tune with the emblematic insistence on proportions and equations between objects, suggesting a relation between the effortless perfection of nature and the perfection of its creator, the same way in which man and temple share proportions in Vasari’s view379. The passage that Hecht quotes from Yeats offers a very similar perspective to the one offered by the viewer of the Transfiguration:
376 Hecht, Anthony. Interview with P. Hoy. Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy, 1999, pp. 90-92. 377 Hecht:2005, p.189, from The Darkness and The Light. 378 Yeats:2008, pp.301-304. 379 “Poetry and Music”, Hecht:1995, p. 47.
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Quattrocento put in paint, On background for a God or Saint, Gardens where the soul’s at ease; Where everything that meets the eye Flowers and grass and cloudless sky Resemble forms that are, or seem When sleepers wake and yet still dream, And when it’s vanished still declare, With only bed and bedstead there, That Heavens have opened.
The meaning of these lines can be perhaps best explained by Praz’s commentary on the period:
Il rinascimento, come si era venuto formando in Italia, aspirava al tipo, all’ideale: un’arte platonica che elevò in onore il nudo, la colonna antica e il mito, non solo perché queste cose erano classiche, ma principalmente perché esse esprimevano per eccellenza quell’aspirazione a un mondo armonioso, fatto di sola bellezza, ignaro di corruzione e di travaglio: una stirpe di uomini, gli italiani del Quattrocento, che con un puro equilibrio di linee, di spazi, di volumi pensava di attuare in terra il regno dei cieli…e di sbandire la morte: tale Orfeo che con la virtù dei puri suoni avvince la natura, soggioga l’inferno, abolisce la morte380.
The purpose of renaissance painting may thus be defined as the quest to figure a world as close as possible to Heaven in its essential lines, by extracting from the polyphony of voices at the background of everyday life a common thread, and to distinguish clarity within chaos. Such chaos is portrayed in the first two of the three sections, written in blank verse and different in length. The first two, of 18 and 16 lines, present similar contexts which are later included and opposed in the third part, 67 lines long. Post has seen in this division, and in the content of each, an allusion to the three parts of Dante’s Commedia381.The first stanza opens the poem with the portrayal of a Bach quintet, personified as a series of high-brow figures socializing at a cocktail party: “the orchestra tunes up, each instrument/In lunatic monologue putting on its airs,/Oblivious, haughty, full of self-regard”. The poet plays with the analogy man/instrument, making the first high society: the “orchestra” is just an ensemble, a company “tuning up”, meaning it is trying to reach a certain standard in sound and in appearance, and each individual being is involved in “lunatic monologue” – where the term is hinting at both a capricious inconstancy of the individuals, playing a game of reciprocal teasing, and at the
380 Praz:2002, p. 90. 381 Post:2015, p. 163.
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variation of sound and mood of the music. These sudden changes aim at “putting on … airs” – meaning creating tunes, but also suggesting smug behaviour. Each instrument (or person) is in fact “oblivious, haughty, full of self-regard”. Social gatherings, thus, betray a desire to be observed and envied, an ego-centric self-consciousness which is hardly masqueraded by the social interaction, and which turns human life into a performance, just like that of the instruments. The comparison develops further, becoming manifest: The flute – meant as both flutist and instrument – fingers the keys covered by shining buttons, as the act of playing turns into an act of seduction and vanity, mimicking the way a lady would play with her necklace in showing off her self-complacency. The pearls it fingers are “priceless” – perhaps a hyperbole to indicate their high value in conversation, but also an indispensable part of the equipment. The “nasal disdain” evokes clearly the snort of scorn coming out of someone’s nose as if from the holes of a woodwind, making man a living instrument, and hinting at the further association of noses and pride in the expression “turning up one’s nose at someone”. Moving from woodwinds to strings, these offer the last tableau of the cocktail party scene, as the “overtones” of the music are transferred synaesthetically to the realm of feelings, and become “hints”, subtle and yet resonant with “malice”. The second half of the stanza finally makes explicit the analogy between instruments and “voices at a cocktail party”: among the “garbling of voices” (of instruments, of people) the ear tracks a certain melody, selectively. Adjectives such as “keen” and “alert” suggest an engagement in role playing that is utterly theatrical. Hecht, however, abandons mundane affairs for a pivotal moment of confusion: what is described as the “conversation” of the instruments “disintegrates after one’s third martini/To dull orchestral nonsense, the jumbled fragments/Of domestic friction in a foreign tongue”. The term “conversation” is relevant to the poem in its entirety, and here we see its dissolution into something fragmentary and nonsensical, a background flow, just like the “background noise” of magic and ritual in Yeats’ poem. The word “Smooth” in prime position shatters after it is substituted, one line later, by “disintegrates”, which signals the process of deterioration from the “intelligible” to “dull … nonsense”. As with the unexpected confusion suddenly caused by too much alcohol, old age comes suddenly, making the conversation of life literally less and less intelligible, until the mind experiences “ a private sense of panic” as the engagement with the world becomes a “friction”, whose difficult understanding is remarked by the fricative and plosive /f/ /t/ alliteration of “Domestic friction in a foreign tongue”. The colon stops the light-hearted noise of background music and voices for a final consideration, which breaks, like old age, the
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habitual flow very suddenly: “this surely must be how old age arrives,/Quite unannounced, when suddenly one fine day/Some trusted faculty has gone forever”. The second stanza varies the motif of “conversation” transcribed into music by translating it into its ritual form, resonating within the architectural details of a cathedral. These are both man-made expressions of the voice of the world, but belonging to different fields of experience, the profane and spiritual. The passage, divided content-wise into two smaller sections, opens with a clear nod to Eliot’s Waste Land, as Christopher Ricks has noticed382, and to many other lines inspired by the poet. First of all, the anaphora “after … After” refers the reader to the last section of the modern epic, “What the Thunder Said”383, which ends the composition by shoring “fragments against my ruins”, and recalling all the threads and voices projected in the previous sections. The end of the first line is also suggestive of his voice, as the “cathedral doors” invite us into a religious world depicted, among many other attempts, in Murder in the Cathedral. The words “footfall” and “reverberation” come in turn from “Burnt Norton”384 (“Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take”) and from “What the Thunder Said” (“Prison and palace and reverberation/Of thunder of spring over distant mountains”). The poems and passages quoted engage in the recollection of a lost world, part of which casts its shadow into the present, and the very term “reverberation” as Ricks has noted, suggests a repetition and multiplication of the verbum385. In the same way, “after” the church is emptied, Hecht registers something that still remains: “grottoed sounds”, “reverberations”, the echo of human life. The memory of the “coughs, whispers and amens” is turned into music which moves in the air, shaking with physical vibrations the very walls of marble. The sounds are imagined as muffled, transformed in turn by the acoustics of the place of worship. Their vibration persisting after the sound suggests a presence which goes unperceived, existing at a deeper level, forever “unspent” and forever given nourishment by the repetitive habit of worship of the people. The physicality of the movement of sound is moreover emphasized by many indicators of position (“after”, “below”, “upon”) creating a contrast between the physical and the incorporeal “threshold”. This is the transposition into sound and shape of the dimension of reverberation that perhaps both Eliot and Yeats had in mind: the idea of a “historical sense”, the consciousness of a music which grows through time into an ever-adapting system,
382 Ricks:2010, pp. 95-98. 383 Eliot:2015, pp. 68-71. 384 Eliot:2015, pp. 179-184. 385 Ricks:2010, pp. 95-98.
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continuously in fieri as more voices are added to the choir, a sound influencing life: in fact, “they continue forever. Nothing is ever lost”. The mechanism through which the hope and prayers of people create an echoic tradition of music and ritual, manifesting the spirit of the community, corresponds to the workings of the natural echo. This physical (rather than metaphorical) diffusion of sounds and messages is illustrated through another scenario, antithetical to the rigorous atmosphere of compunction of the church. Hecht takes on the hard task of representing poetically and pictorially the modulation of tone in the screams of young children, rising and falling as they play: “So the sounds of children, enriched, magnified,/Cross-fertilized by the contours of a tunnel,/Promote their little statures for a moment/Of resonance to authority and notice,/A fleeting, bold celebrity that rounds/In perfect circles to attentive shores,/Returning now in still enlarging arcs”. Whereas the music decreased in volume in the first stanza, the music left in the background persists beyond the voice which spoke it in the second, and is magnified in the echoic screaming of children, which, thin in pitch, grows through a climatic list of adjectival past participles (“enriched, magnified,/Cross-fertilized”) mimicking their movement as they go down a tunnel slide, and the sound once again hits the walls. Hecht develops an interesting parallel between children and plants: their voices are “cross-fertilized”, turned into flowers and mixed in a bouquet of blossoms made reciprocally stronger. This recalls once more certain lines from “Burnt Norton”386 – “The leaves were full of children” – which traces a connection between children’s voices and botany, children being “the echoes that inhabit the garden”. This detail also anticipates the superimposition of humans and natural landscape presented in the final stanza. It is furthermore important to underline the association of physical and hierarchical status with pitch level. The contours of the tunnel “promote” these small beings to a higher position, and especially allow their “little statures” – in a metonymical equation of body and voice – to grow into “resonance to authority and notice”. The games of the children seem a practice, although innocent and playful, of the modulation of voices heard in the adult context of the cocktail party, a further echo of what they will become. The relation between sound and social relations persists, along with the link between sound and personality. This “bold celebrity” (yet again impactful and bold in sound) goes in “perfect circles”, moves autonomously and in the perfect realization of the most perfect of forms, the circle, in continuous movement, and never-ending in its line. The reverberation is
386 Ricks decodes some of the references to Eliot in his book. Ricks:2010, pp. 95-98.
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equally rendered by the movement of the children within the tunnel slide, the actual circles that make up its structure and the sound waves which appear visually (and to the ear, thanks to the alliteration of the sounds /s/ and /k/) as concentric circles in movement, as the voice comes closer to the exit. The “attentive shores” of the tunnel, listening and absorbing the sound, remind once again of the shores of memory in The Waste Land, as architecture embodies the processes of the mind. The circles are “returning” and “still enlarging”, and thus come to reinforce the closure in line 8: “to which there is no end. Whirled without end”. The word “end” is repeated twice and twice negated, to devalue its actual meaning. The alliteration “whirled without end” cannot fail to remind us of Eliot’s insistence on the same word and sounds in “Ash Wednesday”, section V (“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent/If the unheard, unspoken/Word is unspoken, unheard;/Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,/The Word without a word … Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled/About the centre of the silent Word”). Most importantly, it recalls the pun, found in Eliot, between “world” and “whirled”. While he conceives the image of a world moving around the “word”, even when it is unheard, Hecht suggests that the true voice which makes the world “whirl” is that of tradition. Here, the voices of children “whirled with no end” create in fact a “world without end”, entirely human. The latter expression references Ephesians 3:21, in which Paul, professing himself as the new made apostle of God, imagines “glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end”, a celestial vision challenged here by an earthly one. Interestingly, Post387 has noted that this image has a negative implication, suggesting that only in art, or perhaps in play, “we imagine, momentarily, all harmonies resolved”, while the music of the world, not the ideal world of Christ but the suffering world of humans, becomes oppressive. The poet creates thus an analogy between church and cocktail party, old age and young lives, expanding his poem to comprehend all sides of experience. In all of these cases, the sounds that once were vibrant acquiesce into a mere vibration in the background. This decline of sound, echoing the decline of life, traces a parabola which stands emblematically for all the situations described. The true test finally stands in the way said parabola is accommodated within a religious representation, portraying figures which look as if they were engaged in a similar mechanism, but stand, on canvas and on a conceptual level, on an altogether different and inaccessible plan.
387 Post:2015, p. 166. I thank Prof. Gregory Dowling for suggesting the relation between children’s games and Paul’s words in Ephesians 3:21.
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Both music and architecture become the human means to frame the holy subjects of the third stanza, distant from human life. The scene opens ex abrupto, and with a sudden turn from the scenes previously described, whose message will be tied in only at the end. This section is not made up of longer sentences as were the previous two, but presents shorter descriptive passages, moving from character to character. As in the case of Bellini’s Transfiguration, the content of the painting is described to the reader as a real-life scene: the first couplet in fact explains that “this perfect company is here engaged/In what is called a sacred conversation”. The presence of the demonstrative, as previously noted, allows the viewer into the scene, and the “Sacred Conversation” is turned into a metaphor by the sceptical expression “what is called”, suggesting a mere comparison between the company and the sacred counterpart. Up to this point the reader could have been witnessing a scene not dissimilar from that of the cocktail party. And yet, a growing number of specific details, counted out one by one to compose a picture, the way the instruments had been previously called out one by one until reaching “orchestral nonsense”, reveals that this is truly a sacred rather than secular scene, distant from the chatter and noise of parties, outdoor games and popular church-going, and yet related to those, on a different plan, by the social engagement of the saints (this time a “perfect company”) and the presence of the baby. The painting in question, according to Hecht’s explanation388, is a picture of his own making, after the example of Cima da Conegliano (fig. 21) and Bellini, so that both pictorial and more common circumstantial elements are entwined in it. In fact, “a seat has been provided for the lady/With her undiapered child in a bright loggia”. The Virgin is still represented, generically, as a “lady”, and the emphasis lies on very concrete details: a “seat”, not a throne, has been provided for her, and her child is offered no celebratory epithets. There is also much emphasis on the concrete dimension of the architecture: mother and son stand in a “bright loggia/Floored with antico verde and alabaster”. The immediacy of the pictorial description, clashes with the rarity of these materials, whose “antico verde” in particular reminds us of the canonical components of renaissance paintings. And yet, these architectural elements frame the woman, and meet the eye before the rest: only by following these geometric shapes do we enter the world of the picture, perceiving the “cool and pleasing” substance of the pavement just to notice that on it stand “saints” on “either side”. We share their experience of
388 “The answer is that this is a painting of my own making, with details borrowed from great altarpieces by the likes of Giovanni Bellini and Cima da Conegliano. There are a number of these stunning works in Venice, and I have assembled my own composition out of them, pretty much ad lib”. In Hecht, Anthony. Interview with P. Hoy. Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy. 1999, p. 90.
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corporality, the coolness of the pavement and, as in “See Naples and Die”, we almost breathe the same air for a moment: “it is eight o’clock/On a sunny April morning”. The contextualization resembles the effort of a museum guide, and the speaker purposefully addresses his public, noting that “there is much here worthy of observation” and re-claiming focused attention. From the details of the architecture he moves to a close-up, orderly description of the saints, illustrated individually like the instruments. Only, by contrast, “no one in the group seems to be speaking”. The auxiliary, suggesting doubt, is important to remark the possibility that their way of speaking may be imperceptible, not absent, and hints at the representational limits of a painting. The description of these figures diverges from the glamorous representation of the instruments: “the Baptist, in a rude garment of hides,/Vaguely unkempt, is looking straight at the viewer/With serious interest, patient and unblinking”. The definite article suggests that both parties share almost a first-name basis knowledge of the object discussed, but here there are no strings of pearls nor malicious sounds; the only “rude” element is found in the rough clothing, while the subject appears “serious … patient and unblinking”. Next, “relaxed but powerful,/Stands St. Sebastian, who is neither a ruse/To get a young male nude with classic torso/Into an obviously religious painting,/Nor one who suffers his target martyrdom/Languidly or with a masochist’s satisfaction”. Just like John, St. Sebastian is characterized by a moral integrity and sobriety which transcends appearance and a dramatic behaviour, and which rarely distinguishes martyrs: its strength is “relaxed”, suggesting that his Greek god’s muscles are not tense, like the chords of the instruments, in an effort of pomp, but rather a dignified part of his being, which is neither weak nor captured in a state of languid affliction. The following detail is specifically relevant: his martyrdom is not represented as a glorifying sacrifice but as a cure, an “acupuncture/That in its blessedness has set him free/To attend to everything except himself”. The stigmata, just as in the case of Francis, are expressed in very human terms, and with a certain dose of irony – transfixion by arrow is hardly comparable to acupuncture – but reverse illness into cure, as the body is appropriated by God and the torment of the self is abandoned in an act of external contemplation. The pain of martyrdom, rather than becoming a self-engrossing act has had the ability to free him from himself and to move his attention away from the body. This is perhaps the same attempt of the speaker, not through his own martyrdom but through the artistic contemplation of it, a “meditation” which induces a similar extra-corporeal experience389.This representational style is highly classical, opposed to the elaborate or witty
389 Specifically in relation to Sebastian, in an interview with Langdon Hammer, Efforts of Attention, Hecht
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mode of the Mannerists and Metaphysicals: Herbert, as an example, plays on contradictions and wit in “Marie Magdalene”390, striking a celebratory note. Crashaw’s, most remarkably, often gives his character the languid expression of “masochistic satisfaction” here rejected. In the case of “St. Teresa”, for example, the darts of martyrdom are also made corporeal, but betray a strong, human and even sexualized involvement of the senses instead of the steadiness of sanctity: “How kindly will thy gentle heart/Kiss the sweetly-killing dart!/And close in his embraces keep/Those delicious wounds, that weep”. Equally, the sober compunction of the saints in the picture, implied by a slight nod of both painter and poet, is turned into a vivid series of images in “The Weeper”, studded with metaphors, adjectives and alliteration: “O cheeks! Bedds of chast loves/By your own showres seasonably dash’t./Eyes! Nests of milky doves/In your own wells decently washt”. Along with these focused characters, mirroring the concentrated gaze of the viewer, come two more: “Jerome and Francis, the one in his red hat,/The other tonsured, both of them utterly silent,/Cast their eyes downward as in deep reflection”. Interestingly, something similar, once again, to the Transfiguration painting occurs here: the gaze lingers on their thinking heads and points out their “eyes cast downward”, like those of the apostles in the presence of God. Rather than losing the self in a forceful show in society, these characters appear immersed in a conversation with their own consciousness, focused on interiority rather than exteriority. Overall, the presentation of characters in the final section of the poem, up to this point, and in line with its title, recalls closely the technique proper of Ignatian meditation, diffused around the 17th century. This habit, which recurs as well in the descriptions of the paintings previously analysed, has been studied by Louis Martz391, who has identified its influence not only on the Metaphysical poets, who absorbed it directly from their culture, but also on Yeats, Allen Tate and Robert Lowell, major influences for Hecht’s poetry392. Jesuit writings, made popular by Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises (1548), became popular in Protestant England, where images were mostly prohibited, as they guided the reader through a process of imagination of
mentions a quotation from Simone Weil’s Waiting for God: “One of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today, is that looking is what saves us”. And commented “surely, part of that ‘salvation’ is engendered by a capacity, at least momentarily, to forget ourselves and fully to attend to something else”. In Hecht, Anthony. Interview with L. Hammer. “Efforts of Attention: An Interview with Anthony Hecht”. The Sewanee Review, vol. 104, no.1, 1996, p. 97. 390 Herbert:1945, p. 173. 391 In The Poetry of Meditation, 1955. The Book was familiar to Hecht, who mentions it in Melodies Unheard, in reference to Hopkins (2003, p. 107). 392 Martz:1955, p. 4.
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spiritual scenes. The concrete representation of ideal subjects they encouraged, moreover, made it, as Praz has noticed393, an important source for the production of emblems. These meditations, presenting the characteristics previously noted in Hecht’s poems, worked as “mirrors” of the worshipper’s soul, and insisted, as in this case, in the sensual apprehension of the image through analogies and metaphors394, through the visualization of the religious subject as if occurring in real time, as occurring within the heart or, as in this case, as occurring in front of one’s eyes395. To crown the scene, in perfect accordance with renaissance style and the iconography typical of sacred conversations, on the pavement, “a small seraphic consort of viols and lutes/Prepares to play or actually is playing./They exhibit furrowed, child-like concentration”. This final, emblematic image represents visually the musical harmony present among the conversation of saints, in which each tune is clearly expressed, forming a melody rather than a friction with the others. It also aligns the meditation of the saints with those of musicians, of readers and of observers. The adjective “seraphic” here stands to describe the category of angels portrayed, but most importantly connects the angelic nature to a state of calm and concentrated precision, again an act of meditation. The association between saints and music recalls the analogy between cosmological harmony and music typical of Metaphysical poems: Lederer396 recalls Donne’s elegy “To the Lord Harrington”397 in which the soul of the man, who has left the earth, does “beare a part in God’s great organ”. For Herbert, by contrast, the “lute” is an instrument which personifies human grief, comprised of “bowels” to sing man’s pain398 – a concept nearer to the church’s reverberations, and which will be confronted in the closing lines. After presenting each subject, the poet focuses on the background, the stuff of dreams portrayed by Yeats. Landscapes were the trademark of renaissance pictures, and at this time occurred the conceptual passage from the term “paese” to the word “paesaggio”, notably used by Bellini along with the term “fantasia”399 (a word with a meaningful connotation in relation to the dreamscape imagined by Yeats). The landscape has “extraordinary beauty” and “Leads out behind the personages” into the details of the real world. Every aspect of life is
393 In Studies in Seventeenth-century Imagery, 1975. 394 Gibbons suggests that, to make the practice easier, “we must find some similitude, answerable to the matter” with the subject. In Martz:1955, p. 28. 395 Martz:1955, p. 30. 396 Lederer:1946, pp. 192-193. 397 Donne:2010, pp. 774-798. 398 In “Ephes. 4.30, ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit’”, in Herbert:1945, pp. 135-136. 399 Gasparotto:2017, p. 13.
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emblematized in it: “a shepherd tends his flock. Far off a ship/Sets sail for the world of commerce”. Agriculture and commerce are portrayed, the main means of social sustenance, along with other human habits, like the “worship” of travellers. But what mostly enchants is the place in which these activities unravel, natural forms which betray the same geometric motions and linear correspondences of music and architecture, and show, underneath the blurry matter which composes it, the presence of an underlying geometry which comes closest to Heaven: the “game-birds or song-birds strut or take the air/In gliding vectors among cypress spires/By contoured vineyards or groves of olive trees”. As in the case of Francis’ rock, nature mirrors the underlying structure of the subject, and here the conversation is echoed, by reproduction, in the “gliding vectors”, hinting at the bruises of Sebastian and at the general “airs” of music, in the “spires” of high tones and high buildings, in verbs such as “contoured” and “crowns”, suggesting an artistic medium, a shape imposed on nature. Even the language takes the shape of the composition, as the enjambed lines curve like a road to bring us through the hills to see the shepherd and the different figures. The final passage ties in all the elements confronted up to this point. The landscape that has just been presented is the landscape (and soundscape), of human life. As Wittkower noted: “in the eyes of the men of the Renaissance musical consonances were the audible tests of a universal harmony which had a binding force for all the arts. This conviction was not only deeply rooted in theory, but also – which is now usually denied – translated into practice400”. Just as the apostles, looking down during the “transfiguration”, understood fully the presence of God, the saints here collected, “though they have turned their backs/To all of this, are aware of everything” pertaining to man. They are pictured, somehow, spatially and metaphorically in a middle-space, from which they hear and perceive worldly and spiritual voices. These figures are even more aware than man of man’s own growing voice through the ages, whose lamentations remain in church “beneath the threshold of the audible”, in the back of the mind, perhaps as an interiorized music. By contrast, in their hortus conclusus, the ethereal figures are accompanied by “the silver liquidities of stream” and the “measured periodic creak” of the waterwheel, the sounds of earth, a music which is only audible as they pause, but is ever-present. The flowing voice of humanity, the voice of the historical sense, ranges from grief to joy, and nothing is lost to their attentive listening: “they hear the coughs, the raised voices of children/Joyful in the dark tunnel, everything”. The anaphora “they hear” returns to recall
400 Praz:1967, p. 84.
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other elements of the preceding scenes, more closely identified as messages with a conative aim: “all the petitions, all the cries … over marble floors”. The absolute term “everything” is further emphasized by the obsessive repetition of the word “all”, culminating in “all the world’s woes, all the world’s woven woes” – a reminiscence of Eliot’s kind of alliteration, but also interesting in the references to “woes” being woven both in sound and in a sort of tapestry, as the verb suggests – which ends in a repetition of the verb, in chiastic construction, reinforced by a second one: “they hear and understand”. This emphasis is perhaps spoiled by a resentful note, a direct appeal to the reader: “observe with care their tranquil pensiveness”. What contrasts with the bounty inherent to these figures is once again the lack of response which they provide, the fact that they do not take part in this music, although it begs them for their contribution. A similar plea is expressed in Herbert’s “Easter”401: “since all musick is but three parts vied/And multiplied/O let thy blessing Spirit bear a part,/And make up our defects with his sweet art”. This emotionless reaction resonates negatively, from a human perspective, against the repetition and alliteration of “cries” and “woes”, reproducing the background sound and its content. The inference of the speaker somehow matches another exhortation in a different poem, “The Place of Pain in the Universe”: “observe there is no easy moral here”. By asking this of the viewer, the voice also projects our own concerned looks (we are, after all, the source of the echoes) on these seraphic creatures, whose tranquillity is different from our own “care”, which is closer to preoccupation than theirs, a thoughtless, immersive concentration. To this lack of response to the worldly tune “is added a final bitterness”: “that their own torments, deaths, renunciations,/Made in the name of love, have served as warrant,/Serve to this very morning as fresh warrant/For the infliction of new atrocities”. This passage is significant, especially in the light of the impersonal “is added” which makes it unclear who it is who feels bitter, whether the saints, who have intended their own “torments, deaths, renunciations”, not dissimilar from the cries reverberating in churches, as “warrant” against violence to save future generation, and have instead found such warrants used in favour, “for the infliction of new atrocities”, or whether the speaker and, by extension, humanity, looking at the expressions of the saints, frozen in spite of their failed effort. Whatever the case, this terrible perception is not commented upon. The idea that “nothing is ever lost” thus takes on a decisively negative connotation, implying not just the conservation of the fruitful side of life but also the existence of violence, impossible to exorcise. Here, once again, we witness
401 Herbert:1945, pp. 41-42.
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Hecht’s “puritan streak”402, his attentiveness to suffering, even when it does not involve him in person. Post, in fact, reporting one of his considerations, notes that “if one is among the elect, the beauty of being a saint in the Paradiso is not just that you’re close to God. You are also far from Hell and don’t have to hear the sounds of suffering”. The critic associates Hecht’s concern with a rather Miltonic view – the angels in paradise lost, although unable to cry, witness the failure of Adam and Eve. In the same way, the necessary consideration of worldly pain strikes the puritan “bitter” note in this poem of baroque sensuousness, in which “that paradise included is not perfect”403. In this light, the value of sacrifice fails, along with the possibility of redemption, and the only “condition of [...] blessedness” achievable for man is that of blurring the persistent voice of violence, prevarication and horror into a confused ensemble, in order for each sound to annul the other, and become harmless. The forgetfulness of old age, in this perspective, allows for a sort of peace of the senses. The saints, however, in a similar and yet utterly different procedure, are able to allow the cries of pain into the music of their conversation, represented by the “viols and lutes”, to “parse” and consider each of them in its entirety and then find a place for them within the ever-growing flow, recalled by Yeats, of expressions of human life, the music of culture and history, though it proves a “strange agreement”. This melody is immanent, something to “recall” and yet “recurrent”, pertaining to past and present, and fixed in a single instant in the all-encompassing view of the divine, whose still eye observes both good and bad. It is a vision from which we are excluded, and which we can only picture in the union of divinity and human landscape, creating a harmonious mirroring of one another, a shadow of Heaven as in “Under Ben Bulben”. This way only, with still a hint of resignation and patient tolerance of evil, do these figures join two distant worlds, the celestial song of “sacred conversation” and “every gathered voice, every amen” meant to reach it. This is what Hecht defined as the “redemptive function that poetry” and painting “can perform by transmuting into art what in nature was tragically flawed and painful”404. Asked by Philip Hoy how he would accommodate this view with the idea that “the contemplation of horror is not edifying” he answered that the horror could not be entirely removed, and offered a fitting example:
402 Hecht, Anthony. Efforts of Attention, Interview with L. Hammer, The Sewanee Review, vol. 104, no.1, 1996, p.104. 403 Post:2015, p. 165. 404 Hecht, Anthony:1993, pp. 151-152.
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I have always found that the stories and paintings of Christian martyrdom are very strange because they can be understood in two different and opposing ways. The orthodox way is to say that they inspire admiration for fixity of faith in the face of the most horrible and obstinate persecution. At the same time, of course, they are often remarkable for their morbidity, and, alas, a part of their meaning seems to concern the ineradicable savagery of the human race 405.
Hecht406 commented on “Meditation” with a quote from the art historian Kenneth Clark: “facts become art through love”. It is the otherworldly love of the saints which allows them to accept the will of God unconditionally, to “stand” the way Abdiel does in Paradise Lost, fighting for an already omnipotent being. This true servitude, as observed by Stanley Fish407, along with piety, allows them to turn noise into music, accommodate evil into blessedness. In the same way, painting transfigures painful concepts through artistic dedication, by imposing geometrical equivalences and thus creates a harmony able to accommodate within the same frame the life of man and the life of saints. Because the saints don’t look at us, we are compelled to look at them, and articulate our mutual, fictional engagement in art. The result brings one no closer to divinity, but brings man closer to his own nature. This is also the message of “Illumination”, in which Hecht kept exploring the way artistic media are intended for a closer relation with the divine but remain rooted in the realm of the senses, as single products of human history. The poem was originally meant as an emblem for Hecht and Baskin’s Florilegium408, but, being featured independently in the poet’s last book, it mainly focuses on yet another object of religious art. Books of Hours, religious exercises spanning centuries of artistic practice, are in fact a perfect instance in which the word of God is represented on the page to clarify and embody its meaning, in an effort which truly makes them masterpieces of artistic value. Commenting upon the form, Michael Camille409 refers to the different interpretative plans this type of artefact could present:
In the late twelfth century Richard of St. Victor, prior of the Parisian abbey of the same name, wrote a commentary on the New Testament Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, in which he separated “spiritual” from “corporeal” levels of seeing in formulating four distinct modes of vision. Corporeal vision was divided into two levels. The first involved opening one’s eyes to “the figures and colors of visible things in the simple perception of matter”. The second corporeal mode
405 Hecht, Anthony. Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy, 1999, p. 57. 406 Hecht, Anthony. Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy, 1999, p. 91. 407 Fish.1997. “Standing Only: Christian Heroism”. In Fish:1997. 408 Another one of Hecht’s and Baskin’s emblem collections, presented in The Hard Hours without the engravings. 409 Camille:1996, pp. 16-17.
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also involved viewing the “outward appearance”, seeing one image in terms of another in this way was not peculiar to Gothic art, but it became an increasingly important way in which images were made tools for knowledge. The third level was that of spiritual perception, which, according to Richard St. Victor, meant the discovery of the “truth of hidden things...by means of forms and figures and the similitude of things. This level best corresponds to the revelation experienced by St. John in the Apocalypse. The fourth level was the mystical mode, which entailed the “pure and naked seeing of divine reality” as described in I Corinthians 13:12: “for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”. These categories were not just theological distinctions. They were directly related to the kinds of images that artists made and that their patrons wanted to see.
The poem, in its 17 lines of blank verse, portrays all of these modes. The first element that meets the eye is the description of each material composing the picture, meticulously traced back to its sources. Nothing incarnates the earthly nature of supernatural paintings like the beginning of the first sentence, “ground lapis for the sky”, which reveals the substance of which the ethereal dome is made and also ironically plays on the opposition between “ground” and “sky”. The complement “for the sky” is in fact anticipated, put in central position before the second material which composes it, “scrolls of gold”, to emphasize the polarity between the two. The materials of “ground lapis” and “gold”, instead, literally bring us back to the earth from which they are dug, still used as “celestial tinctures”. Camille remarks that “the semi-precious stone was thought to cool internal heat and, when powdered and mixed with milk, to cure fevers and blindness. [...] ‘nature’ was considered, even by the scientific community, as inherently magical, a mixture of natural and supernatural elements”410. The mixing of spiritual and profane recurs as the “shepherds”, possibly the Magi, “kneel” in front of a comet which is never mentioned but in metonym, through its material constituents, the luminous “scrolls”. In the same way, the angels, supposedly made of ether, are “clothed in egg-yolk gowns” – egg yolk being another common source of pigment in ancient times. These lines speak of the concrete execution behind a work of art, and of its exotic colours, which entail further references to the history of the time, and acquire more concrete significance. They denounce, as in the case of Venice, a sort of demystification of the sacred in contraband, as these “celestial” means have been “smuggled from the East”, in the same way as Mark’s body. The wordplay on “sunlit Eden” and “sun-tanned Aden” connects the exoticism and vividness of colours with the exotic places from which they come, as unknown and marvellous to an Early Modern conscience as the Paradise from which Adam and Eve had been driven away. Hecht is probably thinking of “Paradise and Wilderness”411, and of the way in which colonization, even before the discovery of America, triggered hope
410 Camille:1996, p. 140. 411 The title of one of his lectures from On the Laws of The Poetic Art.
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for a new-found Eden and a representation of the savages – the “sun-tanned” coast of Aden seems to be merged with the tanned skin of its inhabitants – as newly found Adams. The trip of the Magi is in fact replicated in the viler but mystified process of cultural appropriation, as the tints are “brought home in fragile grails”. The final association between the East and the divinity, rising like the sun, occurs in the association of Christ with the crocus, “planted in England, rising at Eastertide” – a nod to the resurrection – and, as will become clear, represented in the picture. This association is entirely emblematic, and plays on the historical memory of the import of crocuses into the British Isles412 – although Hecht, as Schreiber has noticed413, merges into one two different varieties of the flower. The crocus thus reflects Christ, foreign and springing in adversity, but is also close to the activities of everyday life – it is the “powdery stuff of cooks and cosmeticians” as well as a precious container of “topaz dust” – saffron, the substance produced by crocuses. Reeves414 observes that:
The sustained interest in the very status of representation, particularly as it related to the depiction of the natural world, took place alongside increasing attention to the materials and media available to the artist. This broad area...is characterized by crucial exchanges between a wide variety of scientists and of painters, who provided detailed information about the properties and limits of their materials... Complex processes of dyeing and bleaching evolved in tandem with the influx of exotic substances from the New World and the Far East, and changes in the color of cloth and foodstuffs frequently engaged the attention of merchants, physicians, and amateur naturalists”.
These thorough remarks on colours and materials may remind the reader of the example of Constable in “Devotions to a Painter”415, who “would have known each crushed jewel in the pigments/Of these oily golds and greens, enamelled browns”. The speaker in the composition sees in nature the greatness of God, to the point that he declares “against the Gospel” the quality of natural substances as “the anaglyphs and gleams of love”. Similarly, to the eyes of the religious protagonist of this poem, all this is much more than substance and colour:
But to the camel’s hair-tip of the finest brush Of Brother Anselm, it is the light of dawn,
412 “Saffron”, in Saffron Walden Museum,
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Gilding the hems, the sleeves, the fluted pleats Of the antiphonal archangelic choirs Singing their melismatic pax in terram.
In Brother Anselm’s artistic revelation, the “camel’s hair” of the brush recalls again the experience of the Magi416, as the “scrolls of gold” turn into the shining stars and the spectacle of light of the comet is embodied in the new-born child. To him, saffron has lost for a moment its materiality, becoming “the light of dawn” of his representation. The passage ties in with the title, “Illumination”, meant to hint on purpose at both the phenomenon of illumination and the practice of illuminated books. Anselm himself is possibly Anselm of Canterbury, an archbishop from the Middle Ages and a supporter of instruction and education, author of several illuminated books (fig. 22). Interestingly, he pictures the light “gilding” the two- dimensional shapes of his representation, as if giving shape to “the hems, the sleeves, the fluted pleats” of angels. The term “fluted” referred to a garment also hints at the embodied musicality of the servants of God, grouped in “antiphonal archangelic choirs”. Once more, we can observe a musical theme associated with a mute picture, but still replicated in the language. The fact that the music is “melismatic” is of particular significance for the message of the poem: the melismatic mode indicates a particular kind of chant, opposed to the syllabic. It was employed to read the Torah and it is typical of Gregorian chants, developed around the 10th century, the unaccompanied sacred songs of the Roman Catholic Church417. This mode consists in the stretching of a single syllable into several neumes (accentual indicators) and has specific liturgical significance: it is fact a way to express the ineffable joy of the communion with the divine, which is thus sung without words418. In a similar way, the visual component accompanying the text amplifies man’s realm of expression, working as a complementary exegesis to the written text. It is a kind of understanding, as Post has noted, which is not achieved through a sudden revelation419, but which is conquered through “the time-consuming production of finely detailed works of art”. As in the case of emblem poems, the image (or the music) adds meaning to the text as the text adds meaning to the picture. The final lines revive the association between Christ and crocus, also an allegory of the doctrine reaching England, like Anselm, whose petals, born in the sun, “will find their way to
416 The “camel hair-tips of watercolour brushes” also appear in a very different epiphany, that of Shirley in “The Short End” (Section V). 417 “Gregorian Chants”, in Encyclopedia Britannica,
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the light through drifts of snow”, the snow of England and the snow of death. The white skin of the baby recalls both his metaphorical purity and the colour used to transcribe it, prefiguring the baroque interest in flesh: as Dolce noted in his Dialogues in the 16th century420, “when the painter produces a good imitation of the tones and softness of the flesh...he makes his painting seem alive”. The resurrection aims at the passage from “below, in bestial dark” – the human condition – into a realm of light which man can only picture on a page. The representation reminds of the mannerist distinction between light and dark, bestial and divine presented by Herbert in the final stanza of “Christmas (I)”421: “Oh Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,/Wrapt in night’s mantle, stole into a manger;/Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,/To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger”. Interestingly, the hyperbaton “dark soul and brutish” reinforces the dichotomy mentioned above, along with the rhyming of manger/stranger. The image of “contracted light” is evocative, almost recalling the way a photograph or an image can capture such shining in a physical surface. The insistence on light returns in “Christmas (II)”422, where the Son, turned into the “sun” of the resurrection, is opposed to a younger sun closely resembling Hecht’s crocus: “a willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly/As frost-nipped suns look sadly”. The blossoming baby therefore contains the promise of greater glory. This is expressed in other Metaphysical poems through significant symbolism. In Crashaw’s “A Hymn on the Nativity”, for instance, the shepherds address Christ: “We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,/Young dawn of our eternal day;/We saw thine eyes break from the East/And chase the trembling shades away”. Bertonasco423 notes how behind this appealing tableau Crashaw has set a symbolical reflection on the meaning of the incarnation: “the Divine Son is the source of love and intellectual activity, and the cause of spiritual life, just as the earthly sun is the source of physical warmth and light and the cause of natural life”. The day equally refers to the illumination of faith, the state of grace of being united with Christ. “The cause of this state of grace [...] is Christ’s redemptive love, first revealed at the Incarnation – just as the cause of the physical light of day is the sun, first visible at dawn”. The emblematic images hidden under an apparently celebratory description are thus what make the message meaningful, since they express the relation between artistic process and meditation, which occurs in this poem.
420 Farmer;1984, p. 1008. 421 Herbert:1945, pp. 80-81. 422 Herbert:1945, pp. 80-81. 423 Bertonasco:1971, p. 12.
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In reference to another composition, very similarly, as Norman German has noted, “the manuscripts and tapestries are the meditative objects”424. “Gladness of the Best” is the poem Hecht modulated on Herbert’s meter and style, wishing to pay homage to the poet’s ability to create concordance among people, “that only amity/Which is our only hope”. The true way in which art and music can employ successfully their underlying symbolical schemes and icons is when they use them to highlight the similarities among human beings and their affinity with the created world, achieving thus the “Profane perfection of mankind” hoped for by Yeats. Stephen Kampa has mentioned the association between this poem and “Meditation”425, and although the subject is rather akin to that of “Illumination”, he especially comments on the liturgical exchange which allows for a harmonious intertwining, the creation of a polyphonic melody. The two poems also share a further comparison: man and landscape are married by the pastoral theme of the epigraph, from Solomon 7:12, portraying the microcosmic love of man and wife in relation to the fecundity of the land which regulates the macrocosmic mechanism of life on earth, described by Hecht as the symbol of the soul’s espousal of God426. Moreover, thought, music and decoration are aligned: the repetitive exhortation to “see” – intended both as observing and perceiving – opens the poem427. The subject is not directly mentioned, but instead, somehow following the mechanism of “Prayer”, the reader is offered several appositions for it: “gold-leafed curlicue”, “sepals and plumula of filigree”, a “vast, untrellised vine”, a “Jesse’s family tree”. The artistic references to materials (“gold- leafed”, “filigree”), to nature (again “leaf” and “tree”) allow the mind to visualize the textural complexity of the entwining, also signalled by the alliteration of the hard climb ahead, with the friction of the plosive sounds /sk/ and /p/ (“scaling the steep escarpments”) opposed to the soft, intricate texture of the vegetation, in the sounds /f/, /r/ (“filigree”, “untrellised”, “fretwork”, “clambering”) and /l/ (“sepals” and “plumula”). The religious references to the vine (Christ in connection to the grapes) and the Jesse’s tree are also typically Herbertian, as the poet often uses botanical or typological images to represent divinity. What mostly matters at the end of this stanza, in relation to the work of art, however, is the fact that those “thick clambering entwine/Heaven and earth and the viewer’s raddling eye”. Once again, the artistic
424 German:1989, p. 157. 425 Kampa:2009, p. 394. 426 “The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History”. Hecht: 2003, p. 64. 427 “The inevitable tension between looking at and looking into is a phenomenon difficult enough to isolate in the complicated task of both reading and seeing … one of the delights of late Renaissance English imaginative writing emerged from just this tension. Poets, it appears, did indeed depend upon the visual arts, and their readers in turn brought to the works of poets visual concepts and conventions of beholding that established a powerful creative interaction between the verbal and visual arts”. In Farmer:1984, p. 150.
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medium unites the secular and spiritual by means of patience and a “raddling eye”. The movement of the decorations thus mimics the engaging, ramifying movement of thought in the human mind, captured in the effort of stretching its imagination enough to catch something beyond mortal sight, through patient reflection and much back and forth, a “raddling” by all means, in the attempt to solve the Gordian knot of the mysteries of God – note the rhyme “sky”/ “eye”. As Kampa notes428, the verb “to raddle” means “to twist things together or interweave them”; he identifies it as an English regional form indicating the weaving of sticks to make a fence, a manual process which is translated to the mind. The investigation is achieved by creating a network of references, resulting in a complete picture. In fact, the description does not illustrate a real-life scene, but rather a work of art. The fretwork presented in the first stanza, whose complexity is once again remarked by anaphora (“this”) and alliteration (“sprinkled glittering”, “gerbs and golden falls”, “lace or grille”). The Fleurdalys (a Spenserian form for “Fleur de lys”) and Gobelin millefleur suggest a kind of tapestry, which “is a mere lace or grille/Before which Jesus works his miracles/Of love, feeding the poor, curing the ill,/Here in the Duc de Berry’s Tres Riches Heures”. All that has been kept under such close sight was a mere background decoration, in front of which Christ is represented performing significant miracles. The contrast between the two plans perhaps illustrates Herbert’s poetic mode, which employs visual and witty images to represent the state of man and then matches the complex description with a simple truth taken from the Bible. The image belongs to a book of prayer (already hinted at by the Tree of Jesse), considered one of the most famous examples of French Gothic manuscript illumination, created between 1412 and 1416 for a rich patron, John, Duke of Berry (fig. 23). It is a lavish piece of art, filled with gold and decoration. Its aim is that of showing the harmony between peasants and aristocrats429, but this simple scene from the Gospels is later complicated in a reflexion on the “holy amity” between different people and faiths. In this respect, and in its use, the prayer book represents the kind of public art which goes beyond the subject and also comments upon the value of the community, a value Yeats insisted upon:
I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that architect and artificers...spoke to the multitude and the
428 Kampa:2009, p. 379. 429Bolli, M. Christine, “Limbourg brothers, Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry” in Khan Academy,
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few alike. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design430.
The very title of the book of hours, “Très Riches Heures”, suggests a strong opposition between the sober image of Christ feeding the poor and the complicated decorations which stand in the background, a richness which seems starkly out of place. At the same time, the picture of the Son encased in the vegetation was a typical way of representing the creator in the midst of the world of his creation: The Book of Kells, one of the earliest examples, features the name of Christ with each letter representing an animal or vegetal decoration431. Most remarkably, Weinryb432 goes into detail on the use of leaf designs in both reliquaries and illuminated manuscripts from the 12th century on. Plato’s Timaeus, a key text in the Middle Ages, translated Genesis into a mathematical principle, according to which the four elements unite in a primordial matter in which the soul and body of man merge. When Calcidicus translated the text in the 4th century, he rendered the term denoting “primordial matter” with the word “silva”, which also hinted at forests and vegetation. As his translation became popular, silva became part of the Genesis; thus “silva, arboreal ornament, not only lies at the beginning of time but also is what decorates the page that marks the physical beginning of the illuminated manuscript”. Moreover, Weinryb adds that “just as the divine creator made the world out of silva, the artist creates the illuminated world with unformed materials. Therefore, in accordance with the Calcidian understanding of silva as pure potentiality, the ornamentation signifies artistic ability, in addition to being an attribute of austere materiality”. A further transfiguration, this time musical (to pay homage to the poet of Bemerton433) takes place in this poem: the prayer book is the “visible counterpart”
of fugal consort, branched polyphony, That dense, embroidered art Of interleaved and deftly braided song In which each separate voice Seems to discover where it should belong Among its kind, and, fated by its choice, Pursues a purpose at once fixed and free […].
430 Hecht:1993, p. 451. 431 Camille:1992, p. 20. 432 Weinryb:2013, pp. 113-132. 433 Hecht notes in his Introduction to the Essential Herbert how the poet employed many musical Metaphors. In Hecht:1987, p. 9.
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As Hecht has noted in “Poetry and Painting”, “the arts almost invariably express or embody conflicting impulses, not simply in their meanings but in their very natures. They are engaged in the business of going beyond the limits of their means. In so doing they not infrequently resort to poaching on one another’s territories”434. The intricacy of leaves corresponds to the intermixing of songs and chants, which, like the saints in the Sacred Conversation, pursue “a purpose at once fixed and free”, both a detached existence and one blessed by communion with the rest of the pattern. In the words of Norman German, “the rhyme scheme verifies and completes this pattern”. The poem does testify to the fact that “all art forms are linked to one another by a common harmony”435– a harmony which must be striven for and emulated by humanity, and which resembles the background noise of all the voices of culture in Bellini’s landscape. Exactly as in “Meditation”, it is interesting to note436, there is not only a further superimposition of man and vegetation, mediated by artistic reproduction through the Tree of Jesse, but also in the fourth stanza the chants, like the tunes of the instruments in the first section, are personified: each cantus “Exchanges brief salutes/And bows of courtesy at every turn/ …Bends to oblige each one”. In stanza five, finally, the meaning of the emblematic value of the fretwork and of the music, also a metaphor for individual thought, can only be realized as “the trope/Or figure of that holy amity/Which is our only hope”. The eye and the music, although “firm in its own pursuit” of divine meanings, will not manage to unravel the mystery of life; the pattern is only successful when the lesson of God is practiced within the dimension of the community, in this case a parish, striving for a communion resembling as closely as possible the sacred conversation previously seen, in which each element is contemplated in its singularity and as part of a whole. Although this alludes to the union of the “two mountain heights”, the ancient and new prescription, united in harmony, it is interesting to note the attachment to the only written piece of information given by God, the “Tables of The Law”. The “trope” is an important term, referring to both the music and decoration, and distinctly emblematic. The poem this time is dedicated to a man, a man not unlike Anselm, who still represents to some extent a medium between the church and the individual, a “Domestic servant to the King of Heaven”, here ennobled to the role of “St. George”, the patron of England. Kampa437 remarkably notes that Hecht employs the weaving motif of poems “wrought as at a forge” to
434 Hecht:1995, p. 6. 435 German:1989, p.158. 436 Something also remarked by Kampa:2009, as observed in note 426. 437 Kampa:2009, p. 386.
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relate Herbert to “the legendary Saint George – an armour-wearing, sword-carrying knight”. Once again saints, soldiers and poets are engaged on the common ground of mediators between opposite realms. George Herbert is the perfect prototype of a man in “whose work” the understanding of communion and discord, of the “Love” and “Denial” of God, of the possibility of a divine interpretation of the world “are woven/Or wrought as at a forge/Of disappointed hopes, of triumphs won/Through strains of sound and soul”. The mind of the poet, the “disappointed hopes” and “strains” caused by his human nature are the force which refines and accommodates reality in an ever-growing system through creative expression. Art becomes a way to achieve clarification, and to express in the meantime the emotions that the previous lack of understanding caused.
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Appendix
1. The Seven Deadly Sins: Anthony Hecht and the Emblematic Tradition
1. “Pride”
1.a. Illustration of Amor and Anima driving away a peacock, a symbol of pride, with the motto “Superbiam odit”. Originally by Otho Vaenius, in Herman Hugo “L’ame amante de son dieu representée dans les emblemes”, 1717, p. LIII.
i
2. “Envy”
2.a. Invidiae descriptio438, Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other devises, 1586, p. 94
438 What hideous hagge with village sterne appeares?/Whose feeble limes, can scarce the bodie staie:/This, Envie is: leane, pale, and full of years,/Who with the blisse of other pines awaie./And what declares, her eating vipers broode?/That poisoned thoughts, bee evermore her foode./What makes her eyes so bleared, sore ad red:/Her mourning still, to see an others gaine./And what is mente by snakes upon her head?/The fruite that springes, of such a venomed braine./But whie, her harte shee rentes within her brest?/It shewes her selfe, doth worke her owne unrest./Whie lookes shee wronge? because shee woulde not see,/An happie wight, which is to her a hell:/What other partes within this furie bee?/Her harte, with gall: her tonge, with stinges doth swell./And laste of all, her staffe with prickes aboundes:/Whill shows her words, wherewith the good shee woundes.
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3. “Wrath”
3.a. “Emblem IX”439, Francis Quarles, Emblems, divine and moral (1634), pp. 80-81. Venturum exhorresco Diem (“I fear the upcoming day”)
439 Isaiah X.3 – What will ye do in the day of your visitation? to whom will ye flie for help? and where will ye leave your glory? “Is this that jolly God, whose Cyprian bow/Has shot so many flaming darts,/And made so many wounded beauties go/Sadly perplex’d with whimp’ring hearts?/Is this that sov’reign deity, that brings/The slavish world in awe, and stings/The blund’ring souls of swains, and stops the hearts of kings?/ What Circean charm, what Hecataean spite/Has thou abus’d the god of love?/Great Jove was vanquish’d by his greater might;/(And who is stronger-arm’d than Jove?)/Or has our lustful god perform’d a rape,/And (fearing Argus’ eyes) would ‘scape/The view of jealous earth, in this prodigious shape?/ Where be those rosy cheeks, that lately
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3.b. Part of “Emblem XIV”440, Francis Quarles, Emblems, divine and moral, 1634, pp. 50-51. “O chase the gloomy Shades of Night away,/Sweet Phosphor, to our Sphere return the Day” scorn’d/The malice of injurious fates?/Ah! where’s that pearl port-cullis that adorn’d/Those dainty two-leav’d ruby gates?/Where be those killing eyes that so controll’d/The world, and locks that did infold/Like knots of flaming wire, like curls of burnish’d gold?/ No no, ‘twas neither Hecathean spite/Nor charm below, nor pow’r above;/’Twas neither Circe’s spell, nor Stygian sprite,/That thus transform’d our god of love;/’Twas owl-ey’d lust /more potent far than they)/Whose eyes and actions hate the day:/Whom all the world observe, whom all the world obey./ See how the latter trumpet’s dreadful blast/Affrights stout Mars his trembling son!/See, how he stares from his melting throne!/Hark, how the direful hand of vengeance tears/The swelt’ring clouds, whilst heav’n appears/A circle fill’d with flame, and centre’d with his fears!/ This is that day, whose ost report hath worn/Neglected tongues of prophets bare;/The faithful subject of the worldlings scorn,/The sum of men and angels pray’r:/This, this the day, whose all-discerning light/Ransacks the secret dens of night/And severs good from bad; true joys from false delight./You grov’ling wordlings, you, whose wisdom trades/Where light ne’er shot his golden ray,/That hide your actions in Cimmerian shades,/How will your eyes endure this day? Hills will be dead, and mountains will not hear;/There be no caves, no corners there/To shade your souls from fire, to shield your hearts from fear”. 440 Psalm XIII.3 – Lighten my eyes, o Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of death. “Will’t never be morning? will that promis’d light/Ne’er break, and clear those clouds of night?/Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,/Whose conqu’ring ray/May chase these fogs; sweet Phosphor, bring the day./ How long! how long shall these benighted eyes/Languish in shades, like feeble flies/Expecting spring? How long shall darkness soil/The face of earth, and thus beguile/Our fools or sprightful action? When, when will day/Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray/May gild the weathercocks of our devotion,/And five our unsoul’d souls new motion? Sweet Phosphor, bring the day;/Thy light will fray/These horrid mists; Sweet Phosphor, bring the day./ Let those have night, that slily love
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3.c. Iesus cor expurgans (“Jesus sweeping a heart”), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, a collection of engravings from Anton II Wierix (c.1600), in Praz:1975, p. 153
4. “Sloth” t’immure/Their cloister’d crimes, and sin secure;/Let those have night, that blush to let men know/The baseness they ne’er blush to do;/Let those have night, that love to have a nap,/And loll in ignorance’s lap;/Let those, whose eyes, lie owl, abhor the light,/Let those have night, that love the night […]”.
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4.a. Dum aetatis ver agitur: consule brumae (“In the Spring of life, prepare for Autumn”) 441, Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other devises, 1586, p. 159
5. “Avarice”
441 “In winter coulde, when tree, and bushe, was bare,/And frost had nip’d the rootes of tender grasse:/The antes, with ioye did feede upon their fare,/Which they had stor’de, while sommers season was:/To whome, for foode the grasshopper did crie,/And said she starv’d, if they did helpe denie./Whereat, an ante, with longe experience wise,/And frost, and snowe, had manie winters seene:/Inquired, what in sommer was her guise./Quoth she, I songe, and hop’t in meadowes greene:/The quoth the ante, content thee with thy chaunce,/Fot to thy songe, nowe art thou light to daunce”.
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5.a. Mentis sol amor dei (“The love of God is the sun of the soul”)442, Otho Vaenius, Divini Amoris Emblemata, 1660, pp. 18-19, quoted in Bertonasco:1971, pp. 35-36. “Si el sol del alma es Amor,/ La que de Dios se desuia/No diga que goza dia” (“if the sun of the soul is Love, the soul which strays from God shall not say that it enjoys its days”)
6. “Gluttony”
442 “What the sun is for the senses, Love is for the mind; the way the sun shines on everything that is on earth, in order for us to see it, so does the Love of God reveal the intelligible. Due to carnal love Solomon lost his wisdom, which he had conquered through spiritual love: since the way desire brings darkness, charity is luminous. Charity is the strength of faith, faith is the vigour of charity: they sustain and bring light to one another; this is akin to the perfect flight of two twin wings, through which the purity of the mind is elevated to the merit and vision of God”.
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6.a. In dies meliora (“The best in every day”)443, Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other devises, 1586, p. 53
6.b. Gula. In parasitos (“Gluttony. Against parasites”)444, Andrea Alciatus, Emblemata, 1577, p. 76
443 The greedie sowe for longe as shee dothe finde/Some scatteringes lefte, of harvest under foote/She forward goes and never lookes behinde,/While anie sweete remayneth for to roote,/Even soe wee shoulde, to goodness everie daie/Still further passe, and not to turne nor staie. 444 “Accept the river crabs I gift to you; this is a gift worthy of your behaviour. They have bright eyes, more than one set of claws with pincers, and a huge belly. You too carry, on your fat stomach, a flaccid belly, quick feet
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7. “Lust”
7.a. Quod in te est, prome (“Give all that you can”)445, Geoffrey Whitney, a Choice of Emblemes and other devises, 1586, p. 53
and, at your feet, pincers, when you wander around in the street or among the seats of the hall and, bitter, you throw around your false insults”. 445 “The Pellican, for to revive her younge,/Doth peirce her brest, and geve them of her blood:/Then searche your breste, and as yow have with tonge,/With penne proceede to doe our countrie good:/Your zeale is great, your learning is profunde,/Then helpe our wantes, with that you doe abounde”.
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7.b. “Emblem XII” 446, Francis Quarles, Emblems, divine and moral, 1634, pp. 33-34. Inopem me copia fecit. “What are the Riches which the World can grant!/Plenty like this, alas” has made me want”. Mentioned in Bertonasco:1971, p. 32
446 Isaiah LXVI – Ye may suck, but not be satisfied with the breast of her consolation. “What, never fill’d? By thy lips screw’d so fast/To th’earth full breast? for shame, for shame, unseize thee;/Thou tak’st a forfeit where thou should’st but taste,/And mak’st too much not half enough to please thee./Ah, fool, forbear; thou swallowest at one breath/Both food and poison down; thou draw’st both milk and death./The ub’rous breasts, when fairly drawn, repast/The thriving infant with their milky flood;/But, being overstrain’d, return at last/Unwholesome gulps compos’d of wind and blood./A mod’rate use doth both repast and please:/Who strains beyonf a mean, draws in and gulps disease./But, O that mean, whose good the least abuse/Makes bad, is too, too hard to be directed:/Can thorns bring grapes, or crabs a pleasing juice?/There’s nothing wholesome, where the whole’s infected./Unseize thy lips: earth’s milk’s a ripen’d core,/That drops from her disease, that matters from her sore. /Think thou that pounch, that burlies out thy coat,/Is thriving fat; or flesh, that seems so brawny?/Thy paunch is dropsy’d, and thy cheeks are bloat;/Thy lips are white, and thy complexion tawny;/Thy skin’s a bladder blown with watry tumors:/Thy flesh a trembling bog, a quagmire full of humours./And thou, whose thriveless hands are ever straining/Earth’s fluent breasts into an empty sieve,/That always hast, yet always are complaining, And whin’st for more than earth hath pow’r to give/Whose treasureflow and flees away as fast;/That ever hast, and hast, yet hast not what thou hast./Go chuse a substance, fool, that will remain/Within the limits of thy leaking measure;/Or else go seek an urn that will retain/The liquid body of thy slipp’ry treasure:/Alas! how poorly are thy labours crown’d!/Thy liquor’s never sweet, nor yet thy vessel sound./What less than fool is man to prog and plot,/And lavish out the cream of all his care,/To gain poor seeming goods, which, being got,/Make firm possession but a thoroughfare;/Or, if they stay, they furrow thoughts the deeper;/And, being kept with care, they lose their careful keeper!”.
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7.c. Dulcedo Amoris (“The sweetness of Love”)447, Ludovicus van Leuven, Amoris divini et humani antipathia, 1629, p.160. Meliora sunt ubera tua vino (“Que sunt amour vos deux mamelles!Sources de douceurs eternelles”). Mentioned in Bertonasco:1971, p. 32
447 “Our benign God who loves all men, cares not only for our soul, our superior part, but also for our body. In the banquet of contemplation he gives to each restoring food. For the soul he prepares the light of intelligence, the fervour of love and spiritual delicacies; for the body and its senses an ineffable sweetness, which is great, pure, effective and general. Great, because it almost overcomes all corporeal pleasures, born from the senses. Pure, because it contains nothing akin to the dirt and vileness of mortal flesh and of impure bodies. Effective, because at times it reinvigorates and comforts the body, so that it can suffer asperities and harsh times, above all human abilities. General, because it pervades the whole body, it fills it with enlivening and pure warmth, and it reaches all the senses as if with objects most convenient to them. This is the suavity of breasts, this is the sweetness of Love, who made milder the hard stones of St. Stephen, who made St. Lawrence’s gridiron sweet. The sweetness which filled the first apostles so much that, instead of the Cross itself, one of them chose the gallows, one equally did not fear to offer his head to the sword. To obtain this sweetness Bartholomew gave his life; to taste it, John fearlessly drank venom from a cup. How great is the multitude of your sweetness, Lord, how foreign to those who fear you! Thus, all of you, taste and see, for sweet is the Lord”.
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2. The Emblematic Representation of Saints
8. An Alley Shrine in Venice, featuring a Madonna
9. Detail of the hand of St. Valentine, found in the Roman Catacombs and brought to Bad Shussenreid, Germany (copyright Paul Koudounaris).
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10. Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in His Study, 1514
11. Part of “Emblem V”448, Francis Quarles, Emblems, divine and moral, 1634, p.160. “Psalm 119.37. O turn away mine Eyes; nor let the Vain/And Wanton have me in their idle Train”
448 Psalm CXIX.37 – Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity. “How like the threads of flax,/That touch the flame, are my inflame’d desires!/How like to yielding wax,/My soul dissolves before these wanton fires!/The fire but touch’d, the flame but felt,/Like flax, I burn; like wax, I melt./ Ohow flesh doth draw/My fetter’d soul to that deceitful fire!/And how th’eternal law/Is baffled by the law of my desire!/How truly bad, how seeming good,/Are all the laws of flesh and blood!/O wretched state of men,/The height of whose ambition is to borrow/What must be paid again/With griping int’rest of the next day’s sorrow!/How wild his thoughts! How apt
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12. Domenico Ghirlandaio, a fresco in the Cappella Sassetti, 1482-1485.
13. Detail of a mosaic in Saint Mark Cathedral, Venice (c.1210)
to range!/How apt to vary! Apt to change!/How intricate and nice/Is man’s perplexed way to man’s desire!/Sometimes upon the ice/He slips, and sometimes falls into the fire;/His progress is extreme and bold,/Or very hot, or very cold [...].”
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14. Detail of ass with lyre on the south façade of Chartres Cathedral (c.1200)
15. Non tibi, sed religioni (“Not for you, but for religion”)449, Andrea Alciatus, Emblemata, 1577), p. 10
449 “An ass slowly carried a statue of Isis, and kept on its back that venerable icon. A passer-by stops to obsequiously pray the goddess, and, kneeling, says devoted prayers. The ass believes those honours are for his
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16. Giovanni Bellini, Saint Francis in Ecstasy, 1480
17. Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration of Christ, 1455
own sake only, and puffs its chest out, full of pride, until the stable boy shuts it up with his whip, saying: ‘You are not the god, you ass, you carry the god’”.
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18. Quando veniam et apparebo ante faciem dei? Psal. 41 (“When will I finally appear in front of God’s face?”). Illustration originally by Otho Vaenius, in Herman Hugo “L’ame amante de son dieu representée dans les emblemes” (1717), p. XLIL
19. “Emblem XIV”450 Francis Quarles, Emblems, divine and moral, 1634, pp. 142-143. Deuteronomy 32.29 “O that Mankind would Wisdom’d Voice attend!/In life preparing for their latter End”
450 Deut. XXXII.29 – O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! Flesh and Spirit. Fl. “What means my sister’s eye so oft to pass/Thro’ the long entry of that optic glass?/Tell me; what secret virtue doth invite/Thy wrinkled eye to such unknown delight?” Sp. “It helps the fight, makes things remote appear/In perfect view; it draws the object near.” Fl. “What sense-delighting object dost thou spy?/What doth that glass present before thine eye?” Sp. “I see thy foe, my reconciled friend,/Grim death, ev’n standing at the glass’s end:/His left hand holds a branch of palm; his right/Holds forth a two-edg’d sword”. Fl. “A proper fight./And is this all? Doth thy prospective please/Th’abused fancy with no shapes but these?” Sp. “Yes, I behold
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20. “The winged eye of God” by Leon Battista Alberti, presented on a medal, c.1450
21. Cima da Conegliano, Sacred Conversation, c. 1490
the darken’d sun bereav’n/Of all his light, the battlements of heav’n/Swelt’ring in flames; the angel-guarded Son/Of glory on his high tribunal-throne;/I see a brimstone sea of boiling fire,/And fiends, with knotted whips of flaming wire,/Tort’ring poor souls, that gnash their teeth in vain,/And gnaw their flame-tormented tongues for pain./Look, sister, how the queasy stomach’d graves/Vomit their dead, and how the purple waves/Scald their consumeless bodies; strongly cursing/All wombs for bearing, and all paps for nurturing.” Fl. “Can they distemper’d fancy take delight/In view of tortures?These are shows t’affright;/Look in this glass triangular; look here,/Here’s that will ravish eyes.” Sp. “What feels thou there?/The cheeks of Proteus, or the silken train/Of Flora’s nymphs; such various sorts of hue,/As sun-confronting Iris never knew;/Thou may’st; or, with a hand, turn’t upside down;/Here may’st thou seant or widen by the measure/Of thine own will; make short or long a pleasure:/Here may’st thou tire thy fancy, and advise/With shows more apt to please more curious eyes.” Sp “Ah fool! that doa’st on vain, on present toys,/And disrespect’st those true, those future joys;/How strongly are thy thoughts befool’d, alas!/ To doat on goods that perish with thy glass;/Nay, vanish with the turning of a hand!/Were they but painted colours, it might stand/With painted reason that they might devote thee;/But things that have no being to besot thee!/Forefight of future torments is the way/As thou hast fool’d thyself, so now come hither,/Break that fond glass, and let’s be wise together.”
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22. One of the illuminations from St. Anselm’s manuscript, Meditations, from the 12th century
23. An illuminated page from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, picturing Christ feeding the poor, c. 1412
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