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 1 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. 2 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