Abstract
Orpheus’ turn toward Eurydice, while ascending from Hades, is a memorable way of emphasizing the absolute intentionality of love. Langer analyses this episode of the myth in Virgil’s Georgics as not only conveying the “frenzy” of love, but also as advancing an argument for equity (and pardon), using the kinesic intelligence that allows us to absorb and understand the physical turn toward the beloved. This particular empathic movement is essential to a more general movement from universal qualities to specific qualities that is at the heart of Renaissance love lyric, as illustrated in a mourning sonnet by Petrarch and in a poem of praise of the beloved, in Scève’s Délie. Orpheus’ tragic gesture constitutes the core of a kinesic memory in the lyric tradition.
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Notes
- 1.
Or, as one neuroscientist would say, “unity-in-love” (Semir Zeki), or the “excitatory” (balanced, however, by the “inhibitory” or “aversive,” according to Patrick Colm Hogan); see Hogan, “What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion: Synthesizing Affective Science and Literary Study,” in The Oxford Handbook to Cognitive Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 273–90.
- 2.
In the sense that movement is an expression of the body’s animation, possessing a soul. In the early modern period one finds frequently the expression “il était sans mouvement et sans vie” [“he was without movement and life,”] (unless noted otherwise, all translations my own) (Jean-Pierre Camus); when Montaigne describes himself as dead, following his fall from his horse, he says of himself lying there: “moi … n’ayant ny mouvement ny sentiment” [“me … having no … movement or sensation”]; Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and Verdun-L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965) II.6, 373; The Complete Essays, trans. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1987), 419. “Mouvement” comes before “vie” and before “sentiment.” On signs of life as a special case of eliciting kinesic intelligence, see Raphael Lyne in this volume.
- 3.
I prefer the Virgilian version of Orpheus’s katábasis to Ovid’s, because Virgil is the first in the Orphic tradition to impart to the poet the role of tragic lover, and this scene is more intensely affecting than Ovid’s revision, which allows Eurydice only a faint “Vale” in response to her husband’s turning toward her. Also, it is distinctly “empathetic,” to use Brooks Otis’ term, in relation to the Aristaeus portions of the fourth Georgic. See Charles Segal, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 40. Already Cristoforo Landino remarked, on Eurydice’s short speech (which is absent from Ovid ): “oratio vehementer pathetica. Nam & suum vehementer exprimit dolorem. Demonstrat enim eo devenisse amantes, ut culpa illius qui nihil minus quam hoc voluisset infoelicissimo, & aeterno dissidio separentur” [“a vehemently pathetic speech. For she expresses vehemently her pain. She demonstrates indeed to him that the lovers had descended to this, that through the fault of him who wanted nothing less than this, they would be separated by a terrible and eternal divide”]; see Aeneis Virgiliana cum Servii Honorati grammatici huberrimis commentariis (Lyon: Jean Crespin, 1529), 264.
- 4.
Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, rev. ed. 1999). I have modified the translation to make it more literal.
- 5.
My focus on the gestures means that all the resonances of the myth in these lines cannot be dealt with: the Orpheus legend and the Orphic ritual tradition are much too varied and rich. For a summary overview of the myth of Orpheus and its history up to contemporary times, see Sergio Ferrarese, Sulle tracce di Orfeo: storia di un mito (Pisa: ETS, 2010); also, for a florilegium of texts recounting the myth, Marina Di Simone, Amore e morte in uno sguardo: Il mito di Orfeo e Euridice tra passato e presente (Florence: Libri Liberi, 2003). I will also refrain from alluding to significant later readings or versions of this scene, such as we find in Rilke or in Blanchot, which are rewritings or allegories little interested in the articulation of the classical text itself. I will also not consider the lines within the larger context of the epyllion.
- 6.
See Kathryn Banks’ essay on the “revival” of embodied meanings, in this volume.
- 7.
Or, as Kathryn Banks and Timothy Chesters formulate it, a “complex cognitive ecology” (Introduction).
- 8.
As Neil Kenny helpfully pointed out during our discussion. My thanks to Jan Miernowski for his comments on this essay, as well. On syntax and kinesis, see Terence Cave in this volume.
- 9.
Virgil insists, then, that this law is given by Proserpina (and the “tyrant” in l. 492 seems to refer to Pluto), not by Orpheus himself. Servius, rather ungenerously, characterizes Orpheus’s transgression as one against a law he “gave himself”: “Nam respiciendo commisit in legem sibi datam” [“For looking back he violated the law he had given himself”] see Aeneis Virgiliana, 264.
- 10.
“Furiosus nullum negotium gerere potest, quia non intellegit, quid agit” [“The demented person cannot conduct any business, for he does not understand what he is doing”]; Institutes 3.19.8; ed. Paul Krueger, trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Furthermore, “furiosi [testamentum facere non possunt], quia mente carent” [“Demented persons cannot make a testament, for they are deficient in mind”] (2.12.1). Orpheus’ dementia thus takes on a specific juridical significance, and reinforces reasons to exercise clemency.
- 11.
See Guillemette Bolens: “Perceptual simulations are dynamic perceptual acts [corresponding to intentions to produce meaning, rather than to defined, isolatable, and fixed mental products]”; The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 6 [translation completed to reflect French original].
- 12.
L’Opere di Virgilio Mantoano, cioè, la Bucolica, la Georgica, e l’Eneide, commentate in lingua volgare toscana da Giovanni Fabrini da Fighine, Carlo Malatesta da Rimene, & Filippo Venuti da Cortona (Venice: I Sessa, 1615), f. 99r, my trans. following. Which is a version of Cristoforo Landino’s comment: “Ignoscenda,] nam si cognosceremus quam misere cupiant amantes visere rem amatam, & quam vehemens sit haec perturbatio in hac re iudicaremus illis huiuscemodi erratum condonandum. Sed manes propter illorum crudelitatem nullam noverunt humanitatem” [[“Ignoscenda,] for if we knew how miserably lovers desire to see the one loved, and how violent this trouble is, we would judge in this matter to forgive them this kind of error”]; Aeneis Virgiliana, 264. The “paraphrase” of Nicolas Grimald expands upon Landino: “Quis enim intelligens quam misere cupiant amantes rem amatam aspicere, quamque vehemens sit haec perturbatio, non existimet huiusmodi erratum condonandum? Sed profecto Dii manes, propter eorum innatam crudelitatem nulla moventur humanitate ad quamlibet lenem culpam remittendam. At in quo peccatum est.? cum[?] quae tenuit eum dementia?” [“Who indeed understanding how wretchedly lovers desire to look at their beloved, and how violent this trouble is, would he not think this kind of error to be pardoned? But certainly the spirits of the god, because of their natural cruelty, are moved by no humanity to pardon any slight fault. And where is the sin? Since a dementia possessed him?”]; In P. V. Maronis quatuor libros Georgicorum in oratione soluta Paraphrasis, London, George Bishop & Radulphus Newbery, 1591, f. 99v.
- 13.
The same terms are used in the Italian translation and amplification of Orpheus’s forgetfulness of Proserpina’s law (immemor): “Scordato oime, de l’aspra legge iniqua” [“Forgotten, alas, the harsh inequitable law”]; L’Opere di Vergilio Cioè la Bucolica, la Georgica, & l’Eneida, Nuovamente da Diversi Eccellentissimi auttori tradotte in versi sciolti, Et con ogni diligentia raccolte da M. Lodovico Domenichi (Florence: Giunti, 1556), f. 91v. A “legge iniqua” calls for its opposite, a judgment of equity. “Aspra” and “iniqua” are two epithets commonly given to death.
- 14.
Whereas Virgil accumulates juridical elements that seem to solicit clemency on behalf of Orpheus, Ovid arguably refuses to do so, explaining the poet’s violation of Proserpina’s “law” by his fear that his wife might be failing to follow him, and by his longing to see her: “hic, ne deficeret, metuens avidusque videndi / flexit amans oculos” [“he, afraid that she might fail him, eager for the sight of her, turned back his longing eyes”]; Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1984) X.56–7. Virgil insists on the cruel nature of the “tyrant” who imposed a condition upon her return, whereas Ovid only uses the term “cruel” after the episode, when he reports that Orpheus complained that the gods were cruel: “esse deos Erebi crudeles questus” [“complaining that the gods of Erebus were cruel”], X.76). Despite his wife’s tacit acceptance of her husband’s error, he remains a responsible partner in the pact with Proserpina, unlike the Orpheus of Virgil, overcome with a furor that makes him incapable of fulfilling (and even entering into) a legal contract.
- 15.
On apostrophe and the lyric, see most recently Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 211–43. Culler is most interested in apostrophe to things not normally addressed, and in its emphasis on the present moment (226), a feature of lyric address that heightens the empathetic value of the scene in Virgil.
- 16.
“[I]ncautum è l’epiteto dell’innamorato, perche non è cosa alcuna tanto propria agli innamorati, quanto essere poco accorti, & imprudenti: dice dementia, pazzia, l’esser fuor di sentimento, perche la forza d’amore non è altro, che pazzia” [“‘Incautum’ is the epithet of the person in love, because there is nothing as appropriate to persons in love, as being little aware and imprudent; he says ‘dementia’, madness, being out of your senses, since the force of love is none other than madness”] (ibid.). Landino points to the child-like nature of those afflicted by love: “vis amoris dementia est., incautum, nihil tam proprium amanti, unum pueris equiparatur” [“the force of love is madness, careless, nothing is as specific to the lover, one that he shares with the child”]; Aeneis Virgiliana, 264. The paronomasia amans—amens occurs frequently in the commentary: e.g., Badius Ascensius: “sunt enim amantes ceci & amentes fere” [“indeed, lovers are blind and almost mad”]; ibid.
- 17.
This distinguishes Orpheus and his love for Eurydice from Aristaeus’ bees, from their need to merely reproduce and hence their lack of human amor, as Segal points out (Orpheus, 47).
- 18.
In the Ovidian version, the passive and active forms of prendere, in his formulation prendique et prendere certans [“and striving to be taken and to take,” my trans.] (X.58), similarly underline the (wished-for) reciprocity of gesture uniting the couple.
- 19.
There are many instances in Cicero, and see also Virgil, Georgics I.59: “Eliadum palmas Epiros equarum” [“Epiros [gave us] the Olympian victories of her mares”]. A well-known second century painting of the Orpheus-Eurydice episode, taken from a villa in Ostia, and presently in the Vatican museum, shows Eurydice holding her right arm toward her husband, but not stretching her hand; instead, she is presenting him her palm, as if to literalize that Virgilian synecdoche. The image can be seen at: http://www.ostia-antica.org/dict/plnec/plnec.htm (consulted 4 October 2016).
- 20.
All quotations from the Canzoniere are taken from the ed. by Marco Santagata (Milan: Mondadori, rev. ed. 2004). English trans. from Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. and ed. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976). For related brief analyses of this poem, and Maurice Scève’s second dizain of his Délie, see my Lyric in the Renaissance: From Petrarch to Montaigne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 151–2 and 154–5; I look at the specifically Petrarchan heritage (not the resonance of Virgil) in Scève’s poem in “Legacies of Rime Sparse 267 (Petrarch, Ronsard, Scève),” in Legacies of Petrarch, ed. Ernesto Livorni, Jelena Todorovic (forthcoming).
- 21.
Which is a movement tying lyric to epic (and as such deserves more attention than I give it here); see Thomas M. Greene, The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), a study predating cognitive approaches to literature.
- 22.
Commentators note this bursting-forth of emotion, initiating the list of her qualities. Bembo comments: “Comincia adunque piangendo, & dice Oime il bel viso…” [“He begins thus by crying, and says ‘Oime il bel viso’…”]; Il Petrarca con dichiarationi non piu stampate. Insieme con alcune belle Annotationi, tratte dalle dottissime Prose di Monsignor Bembo (Venice: Nicolò Bevilacqua, 1568), 257; Francesco Filelfo: “dolendosi crida oime bel viso” [“lamenting he cries out ‘oime il bel viso’”] and Antonio da Tempo: “In questo sonetto piange el poeta le belleze de la sua donna” [“In this sonnet the poet laments the beauties of his lady”]; Petrarcha con doi commenti sopra li sonetti et canzone. El primo del ingeniosissimo misser Francesco Philelpho. L’altro del sapientissimo Antonio da Tempo novamente addito (Venice: Bernardinus Stagninus, 1508), f. 92v.
- 23.
On the distinction between a limited question and an unlimited one, see, although the source is not, perhaps, known to Petrarch himself, the summary in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, III.5.5–7.
- 24.
In defending the poet Archia, Cicero admits that his own oratory is nourished by the reading of poetry (Pro Archia, exordium), and that other endeavours are limited in time, in age and in place, whereas poetry belongs to all times and ages and places (vii.16).
- 25.
See, especially for later medieval readers, Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX.2.38.
- 26.
See Castelvetro’s commentary: “Rivolge il parlare all’anima sola, che piu non ha il corpo con seco…” [“He turns his speech to the soul alone, which no longer has the body with it”]; Le Rime del Petrarca brevemente sposte per Lodovico Castelvetro (Basel: Pietro de Sedabonis, 1582), Parte seconda, 1.
- 27.
The apostrophe to the soul recalls Laura’s evocation as “humile in tanta gloria” [“humble in such glory”] (126, l. 44), and it is no less ambiguous: whereas Laura’s bestowing of hope on the poet, in the concluding tercet, conforms to the qualities of the Virgin redeeming the original sin of Eve, the desire that she also provokes in the poet-lover runs counter to the identification of Laura and Mary . The political connotations are also deeply problematic in these two lines, and the commentary tradition is justifiably divided on their meaning.
- 28.
Petrarch mostly addresses Laura in the second-person plural: e.g. “son già roco,/donna, mercé chiamando, et voi non cale […] da voi sola procede … il sole e ‘l foco…” [“I am already hoarse, Lady, with calling for mercy, and you do not care […] from you alone come forth the sun and the fire”], 133, ll. 3–4, 8), but sometimes not: “Tu sola mi piaci” [“You alone please me”] (205, l. 8).
- 29.
Le Rime …, Parte seconda, 1. My translation. In the note to l. 1 Castelvetro uses similar language of Laura’s attributes as “goods”: “Altrove annovera i beni in Laura…” [“Elsewhere he lists the goods in Laura…”]; ibid.
- 30.
Vellutello used the same expression, but locating the apostrophe at the beginning of the first tercet: “E volgendo a lei il parlare dice, che quantunque ella sia morta, convenirli però anchora per lei ardere, & in lei respirare” [“And turning to her his speech, he says that even though she is dead, it is still appropriate for him to burn for her and to breathe by her”]; Il Petrarcha con l’espositione d’Alessandro Vellutello e con piu utili cose in diversi luoghi di quella novissimamente da lui aggiunte (Vinegia; Bartolomeo Zanetti Casterzagense, 1538), f. 99r.
- 31.
Death can be characterized, among others, by the following epithets, according to Ravisius Textor : frigida, rigida, acerba, nigra, crudelis, indomita, saeva, dura, violenta, cruenta, squallida, misera, gelida, turpis, aspera, cruda, iniqua, terribilis, tristis, impia [“cold, rigid, bitter, black, cruel, unconquered, vicious, hard, violent, bloody, harsh, miserable, icy, hideous, harsh, savage, inequitable, terrifying, sad, impious”]; cited in his Epitheta Ioannis Ravisii Textoris Nivernensis … (Rouen: Romanus de Beauvais, 1612), f. 310r–311r. But it is also “æqua” [“equal”], since it affects everyone.
- 32.
Dizain 2, ed. Eugène Parturier (Paris: Nizet, 5th ed. 1987), 6; my trans.
- 33.
In his 1552 Amours, Pierre de Ronsard imitates Scève’s second dizain (and Petrarch as well), in the second sonnet: “Tout ce qu’Amour avarement couvoit/De beau, de chaste, & d’honneur sous ses aeles,/Emmïélla les graces immortelles/De son bel œil, qui les dieus émouvoit/Du ciel à peine elle étoit descendue,/Quand je la vi, quand mon ame éperdue/En devint folle” [“Everything that Love greedily hatched, everything beautiful, chaste and honourable, under its wings, she sweetened the immortal graces with her beautiful eye, which moved the gods. Hardly had she descended from the sky when I saw her, when my bewildered soul went mad for her”]; ed. André Gendre (Paris: Libraire générale française, 1993) 82, l. 5–11). Similar katábasis, this time explicit, similar contrast between all goods and only me, similar perception of the beloved by the soul, and the same result: amorous frenzy. See Timothy Chesters’ commentary on the first dizain of the Délie, in this volume.
- 34.
Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves , in Romanciers du XVII e siècle, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 1126. The translation is by Terence Cave, quoted in his Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 115). On the inaugural scene of exchanged glances, see Jean Rousset, Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent (Paris: José Corti, 1981); this scene does not reproduce the archetypal model, preferring, as Cave rightly points out, sound and physical movement to mere visual encounter.
- 35.
See the analysis by Cave, Thinking with Literature, 114–20, who limits himself to the actions of Nemours.
- 36.
However, our kinaesthetic knowledge of her movement, and the history of this particular movement, set us up for the reversal that is the key to the novel. The Princess de Clèves is quite literally inimitable, for she alone, of all lovers from Orpheus and Eurydice to Petrarch and Laura and so many others, she alone refuses to participate in the scenario that her turning to Nemours has made seemingly inevitable.
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Langer, U. (2018). Turning Toward the Beloved (Virgil, Petrarch, Scève). In: Banks, K., Chesters, T. (eds) Movement in Renaissance Literature. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69200-5_3
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