Narcissus and Mourning: Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature

Ealy, Nicholas

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-27916-5_3

Narcissus and Mourning: Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature

Nicholas Ealy³

Chapter
First Online: 01 October 2019

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Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

This chapter treats narcissism and selfhood, through the lens of mourning, in Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature (c. 1168). Nature, intermediary between God and humanity, laments humanity’s desires, attempting to close through mourning this wound created by sin. Narcissus represents such sin because he desires his image, mistaken for another man, and corrupts language’s univocality. Nature, despite her divine imperative, embodies qualities of the narcissine image, something that jeopardizes her appeals for univocality and exposes her as an ambiguous figure who, as her mourning fails, cannot deny language’s polyvocality. Nature’s ambiguity therefore reveals Narcissus’s, for his desire to fuse to an image exposes his sin while reflecting the human soul’s desire for the divine, in turn reflecting the love God has for himself.

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Notes

1.
The neo-Platonic concept of the “chain of being” comes from Macrobius . See Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 145.
2.
Alan of Lille, De planctu Naturae (The Plaint of Nature) in Literary Works, trans. and ed. Winthrop Wetherbee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 70–71. All quotations in English and Latin from Alan’s works, with chapter, verse, and page numbers cited, when appropriate, and with line breaks removed, when appropriate, come from Wetherbee’s edition.
3.
Ibid., vv. 1.1–3, 22–23.
4.
Nature’s history exceeds the scope of this present study. For her importance, see: George Economou , The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972). For neo-Platonism in the twelfth century, see: Winthrop Wetherbee , Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
5.
This idea comes from Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Revised Standard Version).
6.
For the mirror in medieval theology, see: Frederick Goldin , The Mirror of Narcissus in the Courtly Love Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 6–15 and Fabienne Pomel , “Présentation: réflexions sur le miroir” in Miroirs et jeux de miroirs dans la littérature médiévale, ed. Fabienne Pomel (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003), 17–26.
7.
For the erotic connection between divinity and humanity, see: Denys Turner , Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Press, 1995).
8.
Nicolette Zeeman , “The Theory of Passionate Song” in Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann, ed. Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011), 237.
9.
For evil within a neo-Platonic context, see: Eric D. Perl , Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 53–64.
10.
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1964), 243.
11.
Ibid., 244.
12.
Ibid., 245.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Nouri Gana , Signifying Loss: Toward a Poetic of Narrative Mourning (Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 2011), 24.
15.
Alan, Plaint, 48–49, translation modified.
16.
Ibid., 94–97.
17.
Ibid., 96–97. Nature makes an analogy between hammers (tools that strike) and anvils (tools that are struck) to male and female genitalia. See: Mark Jordan , The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 67–91.
18.
Pliny attests to this popular etymology: “[T]he narcissus […], its name being derived from the word narce, torpor.” See: Natural History VI, trans. and ed. W.H.S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1961), 255.
19.
Even though the categories queer, gay, straight, and bisexual are contemporary, I use them because, as Jordan argues, Alain’s categories of sex conform to what today are considered heterosexual, bisexual, and same-sex relations. See: Invention, 82–83.
20.
Shadi Bartsch points out the long tradition (which includes Narcissus) of the mirror containing the power to queer those who gaze into it. See The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 30–31.
21.
Alan, Plaint, vv. 1.5–6 and 15–18, 22–23.
22.
Ovid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 1–5, ed. William S. Anderson (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997), vv. 4.378–79, 116, my emphasis; Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2993), 124.
23.
Alan, Plaint, 22–23.
24.
Alan, Plaint, vv. 9.1–4 and 9–10, 114–15.
25.
Ibid., vv. 9.59–62, 118–19.
26.
For the Seven Liberal Arts, see: William Harris Stahl , Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, volume one (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
27.
Alan, Anticlaudianus, vv. 2.325–28, 282–83.
28.
Alan, Plaint, 94–97.
29.
Ibid., vv. 1.19–22, 22–23.
30.
Pausanias , the Greek geographer writing in the second century C.E., could not imagine such a mistake on Narcissus’s part could ever be true. See: Description of Greece, trans. W.H.S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 311.
31.
Alan, Plaint, 94, my emphasis.
32.
Ibid., 96–97.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid., 132–33.
35.
Ibid., vv. 11.15–16, 138–39.
36.
Ibid., vv. 11.44–48, 140–41.
37.
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Armand Strubel (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1992), vv. 1478–81, 122, my translation.
38.
Alan, Plaint, vv. 1.24, 22, my translation.
39.
Ibid., vv. 7.1–4 and 9–12, 84–87, translation modified.
40.
Ibid., 66–67, my emphasis.
41.
Ibid., v. 9.10, 114.
42.
The soul of Plato’s Timaeus, as two interlocked revolving circles, is a union of similitude to, and difference from, its divine source. This coincides with the movement of the diadem, which Alain describes as turning in a circular fashion, returning to its starting point by a reciprocal path. See: Timaeus in The Complete Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 1166.
43.
The Aristotelian Square of Opposition is a means of categorizing and synthesizing opposing propositions in quantity and quality. James Sheridan references this in his commentary on Alain’s Plaint of Nature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), n. 14, 77.
44.
The concept of the macrocosm /microcosm duality is important in medieval philosophy, resting in the belief that the human body and universe reflect one another in form and function. See Winthrop Wetherbee’s introduction to Bernardus Silvestris’s Cosmographia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 12.
45.
This is a reference to the “zodiac man” or homo signorum, attested to in the first century C.E. by Marcus Manilius , where each sign of the zodiac corresponds to a part of the body. See: Astronomican, ed. A.E. Housman (London: Grant Richards, 1912), vv. 453–65, 47–48.
46.
The seven heavenly bodies relate to the seven Liberal Arts : the diamond (Saturn/astronomy), agate (Jupiter/geometry), asterite (Mars/music), ruby (sun/arithmetic), sapphire (Venus/rhetoric), amethyst (Mercury/logic), and pearl (moon/grammar). Although Alain does not make this explicit, other medieval authors, such as Alexander Neckam in On the Nature of Things (De naturis rerum), attest to this. See: De naturis rerum, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863), 283.
47.
Alan, Plaint, vv. 3.1–2, 5–16 and 18–20, 54–55, translation modified.
48.
Ibid., vv. 3.25–26, 56–57.
49.
Pierre Hadot , “Le mythe de Narcisse et son interprétation par Plotin” in Narcisses, ed. Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 128–29.
50.
Even though Ovid describes the narcissus flower as croceus, normally translated as golden, Hermann Fränkel argues this word signifies “‘reddish’ […], as can be seen from Ovid’s describing the crocus flower as ruber.” See: Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 214.
51.
Alan, Plaint, 108.
52.
Ibid., 108.
53.
Ibid., 108–09.
54.
Ibid., 110–11.
55.
Sheridan, Notes in Plaint, n. 44, 147.
56.
Alan, Plaint, 78–79.
57.
Ibid., 44.
58.
Ibid., 28–29.
59.
Alan, Plaint, 114–15.
60.
Ibid., 70–71.
61.
Ibid., 52–55.
62.
Jordan, Sodomy, 71.
63.
Ibid., 70.
64.
Alan, Plaint, 100–01, translation modified.
65.
Ibid., 94, my emphasis.
66.
Ibid., 100–01.
67.
Sheridan, Forward in Plaint, no page number.
68.
Alan, Plaint, 82–83.
69.
Ibid., 216–17.
70.
Ibid., 120–21.
71.
Ibid., 102–03.
72.
See , for instance, Psalms 42:1–2, Psalms 63:1, John 4:10–14, Revelation 7:16–17 (RSV).
73.
Alan, Plaint, 74–75.
74.
Ibid., 194–95.
75.
Turner, Eros, 58.
76.
Alan, Plaint, 108–09.
77.
Ibid., 204–05.
78.
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna (New York: Penguin, 1991), 53–54.
79.
Alan, “Sermon on the Intelligible Sphere,” 2–3.
80.
Alan, Anticlaudianus, vv. 5.118–23, 370–71.
81.
Alan, Plaint, 108–09, translation modified.
82.
Ibid., 110–11.
83.
Eileen Sweeney comes to similar conclusions regarding Alain’s allegories in Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Absence of Things (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 166.
84.
Alan, “Sermon,” 6–9.
85.
Henry Staten, Eros in Mourning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995), xi.
86.
Gana , Signifying Loss, 28.
87.
I borrow the terms “successful” and “failed mourning” from Jacques Derrida . See: Memoires: for Paul de Man, trans. Cecile Lindsay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 1–43.
88.
Alan, Plaint, 78–79.
89.
Alan, “Sermon,” 16–17.
90.
Alan, Anticlaudianus, vv. 5.161–65, 372–73.
91.
Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York, Columbia University Press, 1987), 111; I John 4:8 (RSV).
92.
Ibid., 111.

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Ealy, N. (2019). Narcissus and Mourning: Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature . In: Narcissism and Selfhood in Medieval French Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27916-5_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27916-5_3
Published: 01 October 2019
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