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ABSTRACT

MRTAMORPHOSIS AS A LITERARY DEVICE

By

Margaret w. Grimes
This study is an attempt to understand the use

of metamorphosis in the belles lettres of western

 

Europe. In an effort to arrive at such an under-
standing, the works of many of the best known writers
have been considered: Ovid, Apuleius, Dante, Ariosto,
Spenser, Milton, and Kafka, in addition, somewhat
less competent workers have been studied: the author
of La Queste del Saint Graal. Gower, Vercors, and
Garnett, as well as the medieval students of allegory.
These studies have produced certain conclusions.

The concept of metamorphosis has its roots in
the animistic thinking and worship of primitive man,
as well as in observation of the phases of the moon,
the changing seasons, the emergence of chick from egg,
the development of fruit from blossom. In its earliest
form, it was probably the mythic expression of religious

ritual and teaching.

Margaret w. Grimes

Very early, however, metamorphosis was conceived
of as a possible divine reward or punishment for
qualities of a human soul. In metamorphosis as pun-
ishment, particularly, we see the growth of the idea
that the change consists of the complete realization
of the sin, the ultimate development of the qualities
that brought about the punishment. Closely allied is
the Platonic and neoplatonic doctrine that the soul
imposes her form on the body. These ideas have been
at the root of most uses of metamorphosis as a device

of belles lettres.

 

In considering individual works of literature in
which metamorphosis has been an important device, the
student is confronted by the puzzle of Ovid's

Metamorphoses. Ovid has left few clues as to his

 

purpose in writing this "epic," nor do we know whether
he intended most or all of his stories to have a

double meaning, since he was using ancient myths as

his material. If we turn, however, to a story which
was almost entirely original with Ovid, we are entitled
to seek for its meaning. Such a story is that of
Pygmalion where may be found a glorification of chaste
love. In the light of this story, it is possible to
conclude that Ovid did indeed intend double meanings,
statements of psychological truth, in many, perhaps

all, of his tales.

Margaret w. Grimes

Whether Ovid did so intend or not, his work was
read in this light throughout the middle ages and as
late as the seventeenth century. Medieval scholars,
from Fulgentius to Berchorius, sought to interpret
Ovid's stories philosophically, scientifically, and
especially as expressions of Christian truth. ‘The
lengthiest and most elaborate of these interpretative

studies is the Ovide Moralisé of the fourteenth century.

 

About two hundred years after Ovid and quite
probably influenced by him, was the Golden Ass of
Lucius Apuleius. In this bawdy tale with its under-
lying mystical lesson, the hero incurs the wrath of
Isis by turning himself inwardly into an ass, indulging
his asinine qualities. She causes his outward form
to change to fit his inward form. When, at the end
of a year of trials, he has made himself inwardly
human, she bestows the grace which permits him to
become a man again.

Later authors who used essentially this same
concept include Dante, Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton.
The device was used interestingly by the author of
La Queste del Saint Graal and, not too successfully,
by Gower in the Vox Clamantis.

After the seventeenth century, metamorphosis
seems to disappear from the belles letters of western

Europe. In the twentieth century, however, it has

Margaret w. Grimes

reappeared. It is suggested that the scientific
thinking of the intervening centuries (with its rigid
categorizations) combined with the new prose (with its
emphasis on logical clarity of expression) and with a
basically optimistic rationalism to discourage para-
bolic expression in general and the figure of
metamorphosis in particular. It is further suggested
that the failure of rationalism to achieve its goals,
the bewilderment of modern man, has tended to express
itself in parabolic writing generally, and that modern
scientific thought (emphasizing as it does man's
animal nature and the obscure shading between different
forms of life) has permitted metamorphosis to be one

of the figures used.

METAMORPHOSIS AS A LITERARY DEVICE
By

Margaret w. Grimes

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Comparative Literature
College of Arts and Letters

1969

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Page
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Chapter
I. ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF METAMORPHOSIS. . . . 1
II. OVID'S METAMORPHOSES . . . . . . . . . 7
III. SOME MEDIEVAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THREE
METAMORPHOSES . . . . . . . . . . . 2“
IV. THE METAMORPHOSES OF APULEIUS . . . . . . 40
V. SOME EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF METAMORPHOSIS IN
THE MIDDLE AGES. . . . . . . . . . . 61
VI. ARIOSTO'S USE OF METAMORPHOSIS. . . . . . 73
VII. METAMORPHOSIS IN THE FAERIE QUEENE . . . . 93
VIII. PARADISE LOST . . . . . . . . . . . 125
IX. THREE WORKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. . . . 136
APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
I. Ovid's Versions of Three Myths. . . . . . l7u
II. Some Medieval Allegorizations of the
Daphne Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21A

11

INTRODUCTION

Metamorphosis as a Literary Device

Is there some fascination, subtler than meets the

eye in the idea of metamorphosis which haunts the

folklore of almost all nations? The lively

imagination of primitive peoples invents a story

to account for a natural feature which looks like

something else, or for a name which sounds like

something else. The resemblance between human

character and that of various animals may also

give rise to legends. But why should they appeal

to sophisticated people? Whence the success of

Garnett's Lady into Fox?l

In this study I shall attempt to provide at least

a partial answer to Mr. Wilkinson's question. In so
doing, I shall be concerned with metamorphosis only as
it appears as a device of the belles lettres of western
Europe. Folklore, fairytale, and myth will be con-
sidered only as they serve as background material for

belles lettres.

Before proceeding further, it would be well to
define metamorphosis as I shall use the term. Meta-
morphosis exists when there is an actual change of
physical form. Heightening of already existent

features such as takes place when one of Homer's

 

1L. P. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled, Cambridge, 1955,
p. 161.

iii

heroes is filled with divine grace is not metamor-
phosis; neither is the revelation of previously
concealed characteristics such as the sight of Duessa's

fox-like rear in The Faerie Queene (I, ix, “6-47).

 

Nymph into tree, maiden into spider, man into pig,
statue into woman—-these are metamorphoses.

After a brief consideration of the sort of
mythic thinking which probably encouraged the
development of the idea of metamorphosis, I shall
turn to the most famous of all works concerned with

metamorphosis, Ovid's Metamorphoses. After considera-

 

tion of the book as a whole, we will follow a few of
Ovid's stories through their interpretation in the
middle ages. We will then turn to the use of
metamorphosis in the works of later literary artists,
including Apuleius, Dante, Gower, Spenser, and Milton,
and three twentieth century authors. Ultimately, I
hope to show that the history of metamorphosis as a
literary device is, like the history of allegory in
general, double. On one side it is the history of
the attempts of scholars and theologians to discover
a "real" meaning behind absurd but compelling tales;
on the other, it is the history of the deliberate use
of a device through which complex ideas may be
presented more vividly than they can be presented in

"literal" terms. It is, then my contention that the

iv

literary use of metamorphosis is a form of allegory
and that part of its fascination is the fascination
of allegory, the charm of discovered complexity
beneath apparent simplicity, the charm of metamor-
phorical statement, sometimes "truer" than literal

statement.

CHAPTER I

ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF METAMORPHOSIS

The idea of metamorphosis, the notion that one form
(of existence may change or be changed into another, is a
primitive one. It developed at a time when man's sense

of himself as part of all life was stronger than his sense
of separation, when not only animals and birds, but trees
and rivers, even rocks were living personalities, mani—
festations of the mysterious forces of life.

To the primitive mind there was nothing intrinsically
impossible in the interchange of one form for another. Any
observant eye could see the egg become a bird, the cater-
pillar a butterfly, the "dead" tree a mass of bloom, the
flower an apple. In addition, in the totemistic stage of
development, the members of a tribe were in their own
thinking brothers to, sometimes interchangeable with, the
animal or plant that was their totem. It was both food
and friend, sacred as both.

Totemism, it is found, is the utterance of two
kinds of unity and solidarity, that of man with
his group of fellow men, and that of the human
group with some group of plants or animals. . . .

Totemistic thinking knows no god; it creates
sanctities but not divinities. These animal and

plant group-sanctities live on in the plant
and animal forms the mystery-god can assume at
will.1

From this totemistic unity—in—diversity developed
the varying manifestations of the year—spirit or earth-
daimon who was snake or bull or goat, or all three in
succession. He or she was the totem animal. He was also
the spirit of the tribe, the idealized young warrior or
the old man who must die that the tribe might remain strong.
She was Earth the blooming maiden, Earth the mother of all
living, Earth the receiver of the dead—-the dead who
would bring new life to the tribe in the sacred and
mysterious and endless cycle of blossom, fruit, and
harvest.

Examples of such many-bodied sanctities abound in
ancient art. The chimaera, for instance, is snake, goat,
lion, the year passing from deathlike winter to leaping
spring to the richness of harvest. The sphynx--woman,
eagle, lion--was almost certainly a tribal spirit before
she became the monster of Greek legend. It is easy to
understand, given the limitations of the plastic arts,
that an effort to show a changeable creature might result
in what looked like a monster to an age which had forgotten
the earlier sanctities. In literature, however, the

creature could remain changeable. Homer's Proteus, the

 

1Jane E. Harrison, Epilegomena and Themis, New York,

1962, p. 546.

 

shepherd of seals, becomes a lion, a serpent, a leopard,
a boar, running water, and a tall tree in full leaf—-all
symbols of strength and fertility. To Homer, Proteus is
merely another minor god, but in his metamorphoses he
remains a year-daimon, much older than any of Homer's
Olympians. He is Dionysus or Tammuz; he is Spenser's
Adonis, "Eterne in Mutabilite." The Greeks of Homer's
day had forgotten the sacred meanings of divine meta-
morphosis. Consequently, Homer's attitude toward Proteus's
changes is, like his attitude to all the divine shape-
changing he mentions, mildly mocking. His deities change
when it suits their convenience, not according to some
divine plan.

When the earth-daimon began to yield to the moon-
goddess as ruler over the seasons, there came into art the
representation of the moon's changing phases—-the new moon
with horns like a cow's, the full moon with shining eye,
the old moon wasting away. She is Cadmus's unbroken
heifer; she is Io-Isis, the cow—horned goddess; she is
Hera, the cow-eyed; she is Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur.
In her cycle she repeats the Mother's cycle of virginity,
motherhood and old age and is an unending example of
mutability.

It is probable that a vast number of the stories of
shape—changing so abundant in myth and folk—tale originate

in half-remembered stories of fertility-daimones or

moon-goddesses, in misinterpretations of ancient carvings
and vase paintings, or in attempts to explain ritual that
had ceased to be meaningful. It has been pointed out,

for instance, that in the story of Adam and Eve we have
almost all the elements of an ancient fertility ritual.
There is the sacred fruit tree, the sacred earth—snake,
the nymph or goddess, and the man who receives her bounty.
It seems quite likely that some early priest of a patri-
archal sky-god deliberately reduced Eve to the erring
wife and turned the serpent into a devil just as the
Christian fathers later turned into a devil the goat-
Dionysus.2 It is equally likely that the story of Acteon's
metamorphosis into a stag grew from some pictorial
representation of the slaying of a sacred stag, conceived
also as kouros, or of a young man dressed in the skin of
a stag, the totem of his tribe.

The combination of a sense of the unity of life and
the half-remembered animal forms of early deities accounts
for many of the metamorphoses to be found in classical
mythology and in early literary works. When Athena, for
instance, takes on the form of a crow, she is only
reverting to one of her many shapes earlier than the
anthropomorphized one with which Homer is familiar, but

Homer has forgotten this. His Athena changes shape as

 

2Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Grammar of
Poetic Myth (Vintage Books), New York, l9AB, p. 276n.

 

 

casually as does Merlin and with as little aura of
religious awe. She simply has a convenient magical power,
as does Circe. Circe, once the sacred sow, now with no
apparent purpose turns men into swine. In a similar way,
Daphne's metamorphosis into a laurel may be seen as a
reversion to one of the early forms of the goddess-as—
virgin, but Ovid does not know this. By his time, the
laurel had been too long associated with Olympian Apollo.
Tales of metamorphosis, however, were not simply
misinterpretations of myth and ritual or convenient magic
for poets. Quite early, the stories were used to point a
moral. Sometimes the metamorphosis is a form of reward
or punishment. Rewards seem to have very little relation-
ship with the situation which brought them about, a deity
turns his favorite into a star without regard to the
personal qualities that made him a favorite. The story

of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Loeb Classi-

 

cal Library, 1960, VII, 63lff) is the only one that occurs
to me as a possible exception.

In tales of punishment, on the other hand, the
punishment frequently takes the form of an exaggeration
of the very qualities which brought it about, an idea
which Dante adopted most successfully in the Inferno. In
the Old Testament, Lot's wife became a pillar of salt
(Genesis, xix, 26) because she disobeyed the divine

injunction not to look back at Sodom. In looking back,

she allowed her interest in things worldly and evil to
supersede her devotion to spiritual truth. Thus, she had
rejected true life, the life of the spirit. She became
incapable of movement, her very substance the essence of
sterility.

Similar tales abound in Greek mythology. When
Lycadn (Ovid, I, 237) becomes a wolf, he is punished for
impiety, but his punishment is to be turned into the out—
ward form of the animal he most resembles. Because he is
notably fierce and lawless, he becomes the wild and
ravening wolf. Arachne, whom hubris led to challenge
Athena's skill at spinning (Ovid, VI, Sff) becomes a
spider whose only noticeable characteristic is spinning.
The offending human being is not only punished for his
offense against divine law, but his punishment consists
of the ultimate development of his offense. In this idea
lies the seed of the most interesting literary uses of
the concept of metamorphosis, wherein the change in bodily
form becomes a metaphor for a change in spiritual

reality.

CHAPTER II

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES

 

When we turn from generalizations about fables of
metamorphosis to the most widely known literary work

using such fables, Ovid's Metamorphoses,l we find those

 

generalizations at first of little use. In the first A15

lines of the Metamorphoses, Ovid moves from a solemn

 

account of creation to a Jocular description of Mount
Olympus, where the upper class gods dwell (with their good
Roman Penates) along the main street. He goes from the
grim story of Lycaon, through the exuberant account of
the flood, to the tender tale of Deucalion and Pyrrha,
which ends in the tongue-in-cheek solemnity of rocks
turning into a new race of human beings.

Then, the preliminaries are out of the way, and
we are off at a gallop-~from Apollo, panting after Daphne
and idiotically imploring her to run more slowly (I, SOA-
52“), to Apollo seated in majesty in his gleaming palace
(II, 1-30); from the pathos of Io's terror of her own cow

face and moo (II, 637-6A1) to the burlesque of Mercury

 

lOvid, Metamorphoses (Frank Justus Miller, tr.),
Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1921. All line
references are to this edition. Translations, unless
otherwise noted, are my own.

 

telling, like Ovid, a tale of metamorphosis and putting
his audience to sleep (I, 689ff). We meet unabashed lust,
young love, conjugal devotion, conjugal jealousy; we meet
envy, generosity, and pride of place.

When we have begun to feel at home with Ovid's style--
witty, gently mocking, tender or disapproving, but always
human--we come upon the solemn, heroic story of the apo-
theosis of Hercules (IX, l59ff). This may be Ovid's
warning of what is to come, for, in the twelfth book, the
style heightens. From then onward, we are expected to
glory in deeds of war, look with pious eyes at the building
of Rome, take the gods seriously, and enter wholeheartedly
into a paean to Augustus. The reader's befuddled reaction
has been well expressed by Sir Harold Hicolson:

The difficulty in appreciating at its true value
this compendium of Myths, Ancient and Modern is
that we are unable to asséss Ovid's own point of
view. Was he poking covert fun at his gods and
goddesses? Was he collecting an anthology of
those already fading fables? Or was he just
using the stories as vehicles for_his fluent nar-
rative pen? It is hard to believe that a man so
convivial, urban and disrespectful can have
approached these myths with any reverence. It is
as if some bright young man of the twenties had
composed a long poem in fifteen books, in which
he had woven such disparate themes as the Garden
of Eden, the Ten Commandments, Samson and
Delilah, King Alfred and the cakes, Drake's drum
and the death of Nelson. We should be at a loss
to decide whether he was writing ironically,
allegorically, symbolically, or simply with some
perverted antiquarian purpose. We should be
perplexed by our inability to define his state
of mind.2

 

 

2Sir Harold Nicolson in a review of Rex Warner's Men
and Gods, Observer, June 2A, 1950, quoted in Wilkinson, p.
151.

When the confusion of the first reading settles
into a pattern of confusions, the problems presented by

the Metamorphoses are these: First, why did Ovid choose

 

to tell tales of metamorphosis? Second, why does the
work change its tone so decidedly and, for us, so
disastrously in the last four books? Third, since, in the
sophisticated Home of Augustus, it is highly unlikely
that he or his readers believed in the literal existence
of these gods or in the possibility of these transforma-
tions, are the stories perhaps allegorical? Was Ovid
using metamorphosis to express philosophical truths?

The first question is probably easiest to answer.
Ovid chose tales of metamorphosis, at least partly,
because they were popular in the first century, B.C. The
Alexandrians, Callimachus and Nicander, had written
linked stories of metamorphosis which were widely popular
and with which Ovid was undoubtedly familiar. The theme
of metamorphosis had been used by several Hellenistic
poets, including Boeus and Macer (who was Ovid's friend),

and there was a recent Metamogphosis in elegaics by

 

Parthenius. There were, in addition, a number of
treatments of individual stories, such as the Ciris and
Alcyone of Cicero and the Zmyrna of Cinna. The genre was

popular. Ovid's contribution was to link the stories in

IO

loose chronological order, an idea that he may have
borrowed from the first two books of Callimachus's Aegia.3

The problem of the change in tone, while more
complex, can also be explained. If, having conceived the
notion of linking his stories chronologically from
creation's first dawn to his own day, Ovid really looked
upon his work as a kind of epic, then at some point the
work must rise to epic dignity. It is entirely possible
that Ovid himself may have regretted his failure to attain
that dignity more often. If he were to attain it at
all, where better than in the treatment of Roman legend
and history? Not only did he have the example of Vergil
before him, but he would be a foolhardy poet indeed who
would treat those themes lightly under Augustus. There is
another possibility, however. If Ovid considered his
tales of metamorphosis as veiled statements of philosophic
truth, would he not have felt that the tone was already
so high that there was no need for explanation or apology
for the tone of the last few books?

Two points in the last and loftiest book have
particularly concerned commentators: the exposition of
the Pythagorean doctrine, which occupies more than four
hundred lines (XV, 60ff), and the exposition of Augustus's

right to godhead (XV, 745-761). Pythagorean teachings

 

3Wilkinson, pp. 145-155.

11

(the constant mutation of forms, the transmigration of
souls, and the wickedness of killing animals or eating
meat) were undergoing something of a popular revival in

Home at about the time Ovid was writing the Metamorphoses.

 

How easy it is to imagine Ovid's sympathy for this not—
too-mystical mysticism with its humanitarian overtones.
His dislike for blood sports comes through in the Actaeon
story:

Mons erat infectus variarum caede ferarum,
iamque dies medius rerum contraxerat umbras

et sol ex aequo meta distabat utraque, cum
iuvenis placido per devia lustra vagantes
participes operum compellat Hyantius ore:

"lina madent, comites, ferrumque cruore ferarum,
fcrtunamque dies habuit satis. . . ."

There was a mountain stained by the slaughter of

many different wild animals. Now midday shortens

the shadows, and the sun is equidistant from both

horizons. The young Hyantius spoke in friendly

voice to his companions in the work as they

wandered through hidden lairs. "The nets are

dripping, Comrades, and so are our weapons with

the blood of animals. The day has given us good

fortune enough . . . ." (III, lu3ff). .
The opening line is stronger in Latin than in English
because, not cnly is caede (slaughter) more "loaded" than
venatio, the usual word for hunting, but infectus carries
not only the sense of dyed or stained, but that of
poisoned. It would have been easy enough to say that the
young hunters had had a successful morning without such

strong references to blood and slaughter. Ovid is pur-

posely painting an offensive picture.

 

“Herman Frankel, Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds
Berkely and Los Angeles, 19A5, pp. 108-109.

 

18

His was a sympathetic nature. It enabled him to
write feelingly of the hare flying, panic stricken, before
the hound (I, 533-538), of the bullock seeing the axe
descend at a festival sacrifice (XV, 150-155), just as he
knew the grief of an old man seeing his once strong arms
grown flabby (XV, 229—231) and the agony of Medea torn
between passion and filial love (VII, 7-21). The
humanitarian side of Pythagorean philosophy would have
been congenial to him whether or not he accepted its
theories of transmigration. Even those, however, may not
have seemed impossibly farfetched to a poet who was
intrigued with stories of metamorphosis and mutability,
especially if, as Frankel suggests, he was particularly
concerned with the elusiveness of the sense of identity.
If he did, in fact, view his tales as veiled statements
of psychic reality, he may have been as seriously inter—
ested in theories of mutability as Spenser was.

The other problem passage, the paean to Augustus,
is indeed offensive to modern ears:

Caesar in urbe sua deus est; quem Marte togaque
praecipuum non bella magis finita triumphis
resque domi gestae properataque gloria rerum

in sidus vertere novum stellamque comantem,

quam sua progenies; neque enim de Caesaris actis
ullum maius opus, quam quod pater exstitit huius:
scilicet aequoreos plus est domuisse Britannos
perque papyriferi septemflua flumina Nili
victrices egisse rates Numidasque rebelles
Cinyphiumque Iubam Mithridateisque tumentem
nominibus Pontum populo adiescisse Quirini

et multos meruisse, aliquos egisse triumphos,

quam tantum genuisse virum, quo praeside rerum
humano generi, super, favistis abunde!

I?

J

ne f:ret hic igitur mortali semine cretus,
ille deus faciendus erat (XV, 7A6-76l).

Caesar is god in his own city. Him, illustrious

in war and peace, not so much his wars triumphantly
achieved, his civic deeds accomplished, and his
glory quickly won, changed to a new heavenly body,
a flaming star; but still more his offspring
deified him. For there is no work among all
Caesar's achievements greater than this, that he
became the father of this our Emperor. Is it
indeed a greater thing to have subdued the sea-
girt Britons, to have led his victorious fleet

up the seven-mouthed stream of the papyrus-bearing
Nile, to have added the rebellious Numidians,
Libyan Juba, and Pontus, swelling with threats of
the mighty name of Mithridates, to the sway of the
pecple cf Quirinus, to have celebrated some triumphs
and to have earned many more-~than to have begotten
so great a man? With him as ruler of the world,
you have indeed, O heavenly ones, showered rich
blessings upon the human race! So then, that his
son might not be born of mortal seed, Caesar must
needs be made a god. (Translation by F. J. Miller
in the Loeb edition already cited, pp. A17-419).

"Though," as Wilkinson exclaims, "all the world knew that
Augustus' father was Gaius Octavius, and Julius only his
adoptive father! Flattery could hardly go further, and

when all allowance is made for differences of convention,

"5 Indeed, we cannot.

we cannot help being alienated.
But is Ovid's fulsome flattery not to be explained, if not
excused, by the very probable assumption thati by this
time, word of Augustus's displeasure had already reached
him through members of the court, many of whom were his

friends? Was the passage not a desperate attempt to avert

the wrath to come, possibly death itself?

 

L:
“Wilkinson, p. 225.

14

That this was his intention is made more probable
by the defiant lines that follow soon after, particularly
if one equates Jove with Augustus as Ovid had twice
previously done.

Iamque opus exegi, quid nec Jovis ira nec ignis
nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas.

cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius
ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi:

parte tamen meliore me super alta perennis

astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum,
quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris,

ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama,
siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.

And now my work is done, which neither the wrath

of Jove, nor fire, nor sword, nor devouring time

will be able to destroy. When it will may come

that day which has power over only this body and

put an end to the length of my uncertain life:

Still, in my better part, I shall be carried,

immortal, beyond the high stars, and my name will

never perish. Wherever Roman power extends over

the subject world, I shall be upon men's lips,

and, if there is any truth in poets' prophecies,

through all ages shall I live in fame (XV, 87lff).

Notice how seriously Ovid appears to take this work
of fable. Now that it is completed, he need not fear
death, for he can expect poetic immortality. With all due
allowance for poetic hyperbole and the euphoria of the
artist who has just finished a work, it seems impossible
that Ovid could have written thus of a work which he
considered only a light entertainment.
The heightened tone of the last four books, then

may be explained by four factors: the demands of epic;

the necessity for treating Roman history (legendary or

real) seriously; the loftiness of Pythagorean philosophy,

15

with which Ovid had a natural sympathy; and the sense of
impending doom which Ovid most probably felt during the
composition of at least the last book. It is possible,
however, that commentators have failed to realize how
seriously Ovid intended his tales of metamorphosis and
have, therefore, felt a change of tone which Ovid himself
would not have felt.

And so we come to question three: Was Ovid using
his myths to express some serious philosophical, religious,
or psychological truth or truths? Was he, in fact,
writing allegorically? We can, of course, never be certain,
but the possibility increases in credibility when we recall
that he did interpret figuratively the myth of Danae in
the Amores,6 interpreting the shower of gold as plentiful
gifts to buy love. Certainly, the custom of interpreting
myth allegorically was as least as old as Plato, and would
have been familiar to Ovid and his contemporaries. Never—
theless, although we know that all Ovid's works were
widely read both in his own day and in the subsequent
years, we have no record of what his contemporaries

thought of the myths in the Metamorphoses. But we do

 

know that, as early as the third century A.D., Plotinus

explained certain of the myths as figurative expressions

 

6Ovid, Amores, III, viii, 29-3A, in E. J. Kenney
(ed.), Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femincae, Ars Amatoria,
Remedia Amoris, Oxford, 1961.

 

16

of neoplatonic truth, and, in the fifth century,
Fulgentius used some of them in his work of Christian
interpretation of mythology. Throughout the high middle

ages, of course, the Metamorphoses were read as veiled

 

expressions of Christian and philosophic truth, so much
so that some people believed that Ovid had been a
magician who had actually had foreknowledge of Christian—
ity. Most of these medieval interpretations seem uncon-

7

vincing to the modern mind, but they are evidence of the
fascination,'similar to the fascination of a puzzle,

that the book exerted and continued to exert into the
sixteenth century, when Nicholas Valois, in his Grande

Olympe, interpreted it as a work of alchemy.8

Although the Metamorphoses continued to be read,

 

admired, and freely drawn upon as source material through-
out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I have

been unable to discover any new attempt to ferret out its
underlying theme or themes. In the nineteenth century,
Ovid's reputation was at its lowest ebb since the tenth

century; there was even some question whether he was a

 

7One of the more curious of these works is a Meta-
morphoses for the use of nuns in which the stories are
eprained in such a way as to permit the good ladies to
read them without danger to their morals. The goddesses
become nuns; gods, members of the clergy. Their "marriages"

 

are merely common meetings. See L. K. Born, "Ovid and
Allegory," Speculum, IX (1934), 362-379.
8

E. K. Rand, Ovid and His Influence, New York,
1963, pp. 135, lAO-lEl.

 

l7

true poet. Recently, however, scholars have begun to take

a renewed interest in the Metamorphoses and to try to

 

decide what, if anything, was Ovid's underlying theme.
L. P. Wilkinson, who is the author of the latest study,

acknowledges no seriousness of purpose:

It is tempting, especially to the Teutonic
mentality, to intellectualize these myths; . . .
but we must not force such interpretations on
stories which, whatever their mythological
origin are surely told by Ovid for their own
sake, and for the psychological paradoxes which
intrigued him. . . . The essential thing was
that the reader should glide easily on without
pausing to reflect. For his purpose in writing
was clearly to entrance . . . , and nothing
more.9

E. K. Rand, on the other hand, emphasizes the element
of mockery to be found in so many of the stories. He
feels that Ovid "deserves a prize for ridiculing an out-
worn theology with a fine pungency beside which Lucian's

10 Hand also sees,

diatribes seem primitive and tame."
as do I, a resemblance between the Metamorphoses and the

Canterbury_Tales, but he does not go at any length into

 

the elements which make up this resemblance.

A third scholar, Hermann Frankel, is inclined to
attribute to Ovid a serious purpose, albeit a partly uncon-
scious one. He feels that Ovid was concerned with the

sense of individual identity, and particularly, with the

 

“7——

9Wilkinson, pp. 150, 212.

10Rand, pp. 58—75.

18

loss of that sense.ll He also tends to read into the

separate legends general psychological observations. He
sees the Deucalion story, for instance, as a statement
that "humble and tender believers in the good are able
to modify rigidity and enliven numb coldness."l2
Similarly, he sees the Pygmalion story as a celebration
of the power of affection to warm frigidity into response,
as well as a praise of creative art as an escape from
"the defects of reality."13

Although these scholars differ in their conclusions,
there seems to be an area of agreement among them. That
is, they all believe that Ovid is interested in the complex-

ities of the human psyche, that he is, like Chaucer in

the Canterbury Tales, attempting a sort of comédie humaine.

 

Even Wilkinson, after stating that Ovid's purpose was purely
entertainment, says, "Ovid's method is to take the
traditional story and 'play it straight,‘ to imagine what
would, as a matter of fact, have happened in the circum-
stances, human nature being what it is, and gods and demi-
gods only human in their emotions."lu

It is, in fact, this very concern with humanity

that furnishes most of the compelling interest of the

 

11
in toto.
l2

Herman Frankel, Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds,

 

Ibid., pp. 77-78-

13Ib1d., p. 96.

luWilkinson, p. 159.

l9

Metamorphoses. Ovid moves from Jupiter, a sort of super-

 

Squire Western, to Juno, his formidable grande dame of a

 

spouse. He shows us the jealous, greedy Aglauros (II,
7AOff), and the frightened, grieving Alcyone (XI, Alef).
His treatments of young men are particularly knowledgeable,
whether one turns to the young Apollo, lording it over
Cupid because he has just killed the Python (I, 7SOff), or
to Phaeton carrying his hurt pride to his mother before
approaching his father with a boy's combination of awe and
arrogance (II, lff), or, indeed, to Narcissus, self-
absorbed, dreaming, carelessly cruel. Mercury in the
Herse story (II, 7luff) is the Roman dandy, preparing to
bedazzle a particularly pretty village maiden. Tereus
(IV, u25ff) is the savage warrior, hiding his barbarous
lusts under a smiling, civilized demeanour.

The women, however, are also treated with insight
and understanding: Atalanta, fearful lest she should win
the race (X, 6S6ff), Minerva graciously postponing her
own business to listen to the muses (V, 33-36) are sides
of the same femininity. Enmeshed in and decorated by the
marvelous transformations and the trappings of mythology,
are timeless tales of the human heart in all its varied
manifestations of good and evil. Ovid wished to enter-
tain, of course. Which poet does not? But he was also
attempting to show us humanity in its weaknesses and

strengths and, perhaps, in the last book, to show its

20

highest manifestation, Roman civilization under the
empire.

But was this all? Or were the metamorphoses more
than a convenient literary vehicle? Were they perhaps
important in themselves? It seems unlikely that we shall
ever know how seriously Ovid considered the potentially
figurative qualities of the metamorphoses. In choosing
a popular story form on which to string his pictures of
humanity, he was choosing, of course, a unifying device,
just as Chaucer was in choosing the pilgrimage to hold

together the diverse characters of the Canterbury Tales

 

with their equally diverse stories. Like Chaucer, also,
Ovid tends to group together stories with similar themes,
as if he were trying to look at a problem from several
points of view.

Sometimes, indeed the machinery creaks, as in the
tale of Phaeton where the transformation of Phaeton's
sisters (II, 3AOff) seems obviously dragged in to justify
the interesting father—son confrontation of the major
story. At other times, as in Latona's transformation of
rude peasants into frogs (VI 339ff) he is apparently
using an aetiological tale as an excuse to paint an
interesting portrait of the main character. The Daphne
and Narcissus stories have attracted varying interpre-
tations for centuries, but, whatever Ovid may have

intended them to convey, they were very old indeed when

21

he used them. It is unlikely that we shall ever be sure
what his intention was, although his combining of the
Narcissus tale with that of Echo is suggestive.15
If we turn, however, to a story which seems to be
almost entirely Ovid's own, we are entitled to draw con—
clusions about his intentions. Such a story is that of
Pygmalion (X, 2U3ff). The tale follows a brief treatment
of the origin of prostitution (X, 238-2A2), in which the
PrOpoetides, having denied the divinity of Venus, are
caused by that wrathful goddess to make common property

of their bodies and reputations:

utque pudor cessit, sanguisque induruit oris,
in rigidum parvo silicem discrimine versae.

and as their shame ceased, and the blood

hardened in their faces, they were turned,

with small difference, into rigid stones (X,
Having lost their ability to blush, having hardened into
inhumanity, they most properly became stones. In our
story, the process is reversed. Pygmalion brings life,
signalled by a blush, to his marble maiden.

Pygmalion had become disgusted with the Propoetides's

shameless behaviour and, turning away from human girls,
had carved for himself a beautiful statue. She was

maidenly in aspect, looking like one who, potentially

passionate, is yet too modest to express that passion.

 

15For a full treatment of the possibilities of this

combination see Frankel, pp. 82-85.

22

Pygmalion, of course, fell in love, and at the festival
of Venus, that is at the time when her divinity was most
explicitly acknowledged, he prayed to have a wife like
his ivory girl. Pygmalion's prayer was answered; the
maiden warmed to life beneath his caresses:

ut rediit, simulacra suae petit ille puellae
incumbensque toro dedit oscula: visa tepere est;
admovet os iterum, manibus quoque pectora temptat:
temptatum mollescit ebur positoque rigore
subsidit digitis ceditque, ut Hymettia sole

cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas
flectitur in facies ipsoque fit utilis usu.

dum stupet et dubie gaudet fallique veretur,
rursus amans rursusque manu sua vota retractat.
corpus erat! saliunt temptatae pollice venae.
tum vero Paphius plenissima concipit heros

verba, quibus Veneri grates agat, oraque tandem
ore suo non falsa premit, dataque oscula Virgo
sensit et erubuit timidumque ad lumina lumen
attollens pariter cum caelo vidit amantem.

When he returned, he went to the image of his
maiden and, bending over the couch, gave her a
kiss; she seemed to be warm; he gave her another
kiss, and touched her breasts with his hands.

What he touched grew soft; the ivory ceased to be
hard; it sank and yielded under his fingers as
Hymettian wax softens in the sun and, moulded by
the thumb, is easily shaped to many forms, made
useful by use itself. The lover is amazed and
rejoices, still doubting, fears to be deceived.
Again, and yet again, he tests his hopes with his
hand. It is a body; the veins are throbbing
beneath his touching finger. Then, indeed, the
Paphian hero expressed in fullest words his thanks
to Venus and pressed his lips to the maiden's
living lips. The maiden felt the kiss he gave her
and blushed. Timidly lifting her eyes to the light,
she saw, at the same time, the sky and her lover
(X, 280-294).

Pygmalion and his ivory maiden were promptly married and,
presumably, lived happily ever after. Certainly, they

produced, in nine months, a son.

23

It is hard to believe that the juxtaposition of
these tales was fortuitous. That Ovid is contrasting the
inhuman existence of those who treat sexuality with irrev-
erence to the delights enjoyed by those who truly love
seems almost irrefutable. That he is also suggesting
that the artist can make his own reality is highly
possible.l6 Here, certainly, Ovid is using metamorphosis
as a device to make more effective his presentation of a
psychological principle.

Just as Chaucer could hardly have failed to be aware
of the equation his readers might make between a pilgrimage
and man's life, Ovid could hardly have failed to be aware
of the possible double meanings of many of his tales. The
tale of Pygmalion, in particular, seems almost certainly
intended as an allegory. May we not conclude, then, that
Ovid, who consciously used metamorphosis to make a
psychological point in at least one of his tales, probably
did so in many others? Possibly, Actaeon is the hunter
hunted; perhaps Narcissus is an example of the stultifying
effects of self-absorption; perhaps Daphne does exemplify
the vegetable existence of those who turn away from the

intellect.

 

161 am indebted for most of this interpretation to

H. Frankel, pp. 93-96.

CHAPTER III

SOME MEDIEVAL INTERPRETATIONS OF

THREE METAMORPHOSES

Whatever the purpose Ovid may have had in mind besides
that of charming his readers, it was not long before
scholars and philosophers were solemnly expounding their
interpretations of his stories. As early as the late
second century, Clement of Alexandria was using the
Narcissus story as a warning against vanity, and in the
third century, Plotinus used it as a figure for the descent
of the soul into the body.1 In the late fifth century,
Fulgentius, a Christian scholar, used Ovid's version of

the myth of Daphne and Apollo in his vast work of inter—

pretation, Viri Clarissimi Mythologiarum.2

 

After Fulgentius comes a period of about seven

hundred years during which Ovid's popularity would appear

 

*Louise Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western European
Literature up to the Early 19th Century, Lund, 1967, pp. 35-
DO.

 

 

2The edition referred to here is Augustino van
Staveren (ed.), Auctores Mythggraphi Latini, Amsterdam,
1742. Some evidence of Ovid's continued popularity may be
seen in the fact that Fulgentius, unlike some later com-
mentators, does not feel the necessity to retell Ovid's
stories. That -e would tell the story if necessary is
showr by his treatment of the Cupid and Psyche episode in
The Golden Ass of Apuleius.

 

 

2A

to have been slight. By the end of the eleventh century,
however, Ovid was being widely read and quoted. With the

twelfth century begins the so-called Aetas Ovidiana which

 

was to last for three hundred years. In the late twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries appeared two major works

of interpretation, the Allegpria Super Ovidii MetamorphoSia
3

 

of Arnulf of Orleans and the Integumenta Ovidii of John of

 

Garland,“ the former in prose, the latter in verse. These
two works were so successful that they were bound,

separately or together, with copies of the Metamorphoses

 

well into the eighteenth century, usually without acknowl-
edgment. They have particular importance for us, also,
because they served as source material for that monumental

work of the fourteenth century, the Ovide Moralisé.5 The

 

last work with which we shall be particularly concerned,
a work of the late fourteenth century, is the fifteenth

book of the Reductorium Morale of Petrus Berchorius

 

 

3See F. Ghisalberti, Arnolfo d'Orleans: Un Cultore
di Ovidio nel secolo XII, Milano, 1932.

 

 

“Giovanni di Garlandia, Integumenta Ovidii (poemetta
inedito del secolo XII a cura di Fausto Ghisalberti),
Messina-Milano, 1933.

 

5Ovide Moralisé: Poemedu commencement du quatorzieme e
siécle,,publié d'apres tous les manuscrits connus par
C. De Boer, Amsterdam, l915, 1936.

 

 

Y\)
r

(Pierre BEPSUiPE), "De formis figurisque deorum,"

6

ordinarily referred to as the Ovidius Moralizatus.

 

One of the first points to strike a modern reader
looking into these medieval commentaries is each author's
evident fear that his work would be condemned by the
church. Such a fear was reasonable, for, throughout
the middle ages, many powerful churchmen felt that pagan
authors were dangerous purveyors of evil beliefs or, at
best, a waste of time better devoted to study of the
scriptures. Fulgentius solved the problem by leaving the
decision to his superior, Catus the Presbyter, to whom
the work was dedicated, saying:

. . . si ab his lector melius sapit, deum praeferat,
qui potiora concessit. sin vere ab his minus aliquid
desipit, ipsum praeferat, qui ista contribuit. Ergo
& haec non nostra sunt, sed ejus donum: & quae
ampliora eveniunt, non hominis, sed divinum est
largimentum. Sicut enim livoris nota est, silere,
quod noveram; ita non crimen est, enarrare, quod
senseram.

. . . if by reason of these [interpretations] a
reader knows more of good, let him praise God who
granted that ability; if, however, he becomes more
foolish because of them, let him blame the one who
put them together. For these things are not ours,
but His gift, and what enrichment results is the
bounty, not of man, but of God. If, indeed, some
evil is seen, let what I have renewed be sup-
pressed; if, on the other hand, there is no evil,
let that which I have devised be published in full
(p' 663)-

 

6Petrus Berchorius, Reductorium Morale, Liber XV,
cap. ii-xv, "Ovidius Moralizatus," Naar de Parijse druk
van 1509, Utrecht, 1962.

 

27

John of Garland and Arnulf of Orleans maintained that not
only was the study of classical poets conducive to a pure
literary style, but also that there was much philosophical

truth to be found in their works. The Ovide Moralisé

 

begins with more than forty lines defending the notion
that one may learn from Ovid's stories to do good and
avoid evil; while even as late as 1567, Golding must
insist, in his preface to his English translation of the

Metamorphoses, that he who is made worse by the stories

 

has approached them with the wrong attitude. He who reads
them with a pure mind will find moral uplift:
As for example, in the tale of Daphne turned to Bay
A mirror of virginitie appeare unto us may,
Which yielding neyther untoo feare, nor force,
nor flatterye, 7
Doth purchace everlasting fame and immortalitye.

In choosing the story of Daphne as his "example,"
Golding joins a long line of people who have found the
tale fascinating and attempted to seek out its hidden
meaning. Fulgentius was the first we know of; Robert
Graves and Joseph Campbell are among the most recent.§
This myth, like most of those Ovid used, seems to be

very old. Graves suggests that it may derive from an

ancient conflict between invading worshippers of a sky god

 

7W. H. D. Rouse, Shakespeare's Ovid: Being Arthur
Golding's Translation of the Metamorphoses, Carbondale,
Illinois, 1961, p. 2.

 

 

8For the tale as Ovid told it and the full inter-
pretations of various medieval scholars, see Appendix I,
p. 17“, and Appendix II in full.

A

28

and the defenders of a sacred grove of laurels, devoted to

the worship of the mother-goddess.9

As Ovid tells it, the
story is full of human emotion—-the tenderness of a father
who cannot deny a coaxing daughter, the boastfulness of

an adolescent boy, the ludicrously combined selfishness
and unselfishness of calf-love. Fulgentius, however, is
concerned with none of this. He wishes only to identify
and explain the significance of the major characters,
seeking etymological or naturalistic interpretations.
Daphne, for instance, is the daughter of Peneus because
laurels grow abundantly by that stream. Occasionally, he
may light upon a philosophical interpretation, as that

the Python killed by Apollo is false belief dispelled by
the clear light of reason.

Writing seven hundred years later, Arnulf of Orleans
is more obviously seeking Christian truth in the story.
Daphne has become Chastity personified, Apollo, Wisdom.
The sweet—scented, evergreen laurel is the crown of the
saints who, by living in wisdom and chastity, have achieved
eternal bliss. The interpretation given by John of
Garland does not differ significantly from that of Arnulf.
Arnulf, in fact, quoted a line from John's "Daphne" in a
rescension of his own work. Such an interpretation, it

may be observed, while Christian, would not have been alien

 

9Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Pelican Edition),
Baltimore, Md., 1955, 21.8.

 

29

to many of Ovid's contemporaries who were devotees of the
various ascetic mystery religions.

In all three of the works considered so far, the
myths are alluded to briefly, as though the author could
assume that his readers were familiar with them, and
each author usually contents himself with a single
allegorical interpretation. When we come to the glide
Moralisé, however, the situation is different. Writing
in the vernacular, the author must assume that his readers
have little or no knowledge of Latin literature. Writing
in the great age of allegoresis, he is challenged to make
as many interpretations as his fertile mind can conceive.
Therefore, he translates the myth in its entirety, adding
a bit here and there, then proceeds to make six interpre-
tations, each more elaborate than its predecessor. The
glide_has been abused as dull and absurd. It was, however,
very popular in its day, and, if one approaches it
sympathetically, it is easy to see why. The stories were
new to many readers; the style was informal, swift, and
sparked with a good deal of charming word play. As for
the interpretations, I question whether it is any more
absurd to see Daphne as a type of the Virgin Mary than
to see her as a figure for female frigidity, retreating

to the "father—image."10 Each age finds in myth what it

 

10Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

New York, 1949, makes such an interpretation, p. 62.
See also Frankel's Ovid, pp. 78-79.

 

3"]

needs to find there: the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were seeking Christian revelation.

The last important medieval interpretation of the
Daphne story is that of the Dominican friar, Petrus
Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire). It is, in reality, a
sermon. Ovid's phrases are analyzed as though they were
part of the text for the day; authorities are quoted;
there is even a particularly gory little exemplum.
Although the interpretation is labored and, it seems to
me, even more far-fetched than that of the glide, the
work breathes the vitality of sincere conviction as
Berchorius inveighs against those who become puffed up
with pride or who seek worldly glory, while he proclaims
the joys of the truly Christian soul. In this work, the
laurel becomes the cross; the lyre, praise of God; the
arrows, the word of God and the holy prophets.

As popular as the Daphne-Apollo myth, probably even
more often used as a theme in literature and emblematic
art, was the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Ovid's version
is a combination of two originally separate stories:
Narcissus's transformation into a flower (which may have
been originally the myth of a year—daimon) and Echo's
transformation into a bodiless voice (an aetiological
story). Ovid was, so far as we know, the first to combine
the tales, making Echo's fading away a consequence of

Narcissus's rejection of her love. Robert Graves suggests

31

that the idea may have occurred to Ovid as a result of a
misinterpretation of an icon intended to represent Orestes
mocked by his mother's ghost after a vain attempt to
cleanse his murderer's guilt in a sacred pool.ll To me,
it seems more likely that Ovid was intrigued by the
logical connection between the beautiful boy seduced by
his visual reflection and the beautiful nymph whose voice
is only an auditory reflection. In any case, Ovid's

happy combination has provided an endless source of

poetic treatment and allegoresis.

Although, in the extant manuscripts, Fulgentius does
not treat the Narcissus myth, Plotinus, in the third
century, had interpreted it, and he was followed by a
number of neoplatonists.l2 For the neoplatonists, Nar-
cissus's infatuation is a figure for the soul's love for
the false beauty of this world, as a consequence of which
it loses itself in the deceptive waters of earthly delight,
becoming as frail as a flower.

In the twelfth century, the Narcissus myth was used

in the songs of trouvéres, troubadours, and minnesanger

 

 

as a warning not to break the laws of courtly love as the
coldhearted Narcissus had done. His punishment in answer
to the prayer of a rejected suitor is seen as just,

although the punishing god is more often Amor than

 

llGraves, Greek Myths, 85.1.

 

12Vinge, pp. 37-u1.

Nemesis. In other songs and poems, the story is taken as
an example of the sufferings of hopeless infatuation.
Narcissus pining away before the pool where lies his
unattainable image becomes a figure for any lover dying
for want of his highborn, unattainable lady. For neither
the neoplatonists nor the poets, however, is Echo important.
Scholarly interpreters read the story in quite a
different manner. Narcissus becomes the symbol of pride
or ambition. He is the victim of illusion, mistaking the
false for the real. Echo becomes reputation, good repute,
though the physical explanation that the voice resounds
more noticeably in certain types of places is often
brought in. The flower is used, as it is in the Bible,
as a figure for the brevity of worldly good and as beauty
without fruit. Arnulf of Orleans (twelfth century) says:

Re vera per Narcissum arroganciam accipere
possumus, que multis placet 51 et illi placet
arroganti. Per Echo hominis bonam famam, que
arrogantem amaret et benedicendo extolleret nisi
se cunctis preferendo bonam famam contempneret.
Quia igitur contempta fuit, latuit nichil boni
dicendo de eo. Et mutata in lapidem dicitur quia
in locis saxosis melius resonat echo quam alibi.
Narcissus vero umbram suam dicitur amavisse quia
excellenciam suam cunctis rebus pretulit. Unde
deceptus deficiendo cum iam nullius haberetur
momenti, mutatis est in florem id est in rem
inutilem, quia cito evanuit ad modum floris.

Actually, for Narcissus we may understand arrogance,
which is pleasing to many and even to the arrogant
one himself; for Echo a good reputation among men
that would love the arrogant one and extol him by
speaking well of him, if he, by preferring himself
above all, did not disdain good repute. Because

she was thus disdained, she hid, saying nothing good

33

about him. And she is said to be turned into a
rock because echo resounds better in rocky places
than elsewhere. Narcissus truly is said to have
loved his own reflection because he preferred his
own excellence above all things. Wasting away
thus deceived and having no more force, he was
changed into a flower, that is, into a useless
thing, for he disappeared quickly after the manner
of a flower (p. 209).

John of Garland, writing at almost the same time,
gives a physical explanation of Echo, but he reads Nar-
cissus as greed rather than arrogance, greed for the
glories of this world "que velut umbra fluunt" (which
flow away like shadows, p. A9).

Guillaume de Lorris in the early thirteenth century
Roman de la Rose, not surprisingly, adOpts the poetic
interpretation of Narcissus as one who was punished for
his cold heart. He uses the story as a warning to cold-
hearted ladies, but says that he did not fear to approach
Narcissus' fountain, since he had never broken love's

l3

laws. Writing his continuation of the Rgmag, Jean de
Meun uses two different interpretations. Like some of
the trouvéres, he uses Narcissus as an example of the
peril of fastening the affections on an unattainable

object,124 an interpretation which Spenser was to adopt.

Earlier (ll. 20A09ff) he warns of Narcissus's well as the

 

l3Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun, Le Roman de

la Rose, publié par Félix Lecoy, Paris, 1965, RR. 1A2ff.

luGuillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun, Le Roman de
la Rose, publié d'apres tous les manuscrits par Ernest
EangIoIs, Paris, 1922, 22 20,817ff.

 

 

(, A)
L

as the fountain of earthly love as opposed to heavenly love,
following in the footsteps of Plotinus in seeing
Narcissus as the victim of a love of this world.

When, in the fourteenth century, we come to the

Ovide Moralisé, we find the author drawing upon both the

 

poetic and the moralistic interpretations of his prede-
cessors. In his translation of the Ovidian tale, he
follows Guillaume de Lorris, seeing Narcissus as the
justly punished offender against Amor, for he was "Plains
d'orgueil et d'outrecuidance" (full of pride and disdain,
l. 1336). In his explication, however, he draws on
Arnulf, reading Echo as Good Repute and adding an inter—
pretation of Juno as the world which can be fooled by good
repute (ll. lA6Uff). Narcissus is punished for pride in
his own beauty, beauty that is transient as a flower. In
his pride, Narcissus commits the sin of the fallen
angels. He also sins by preferring earthly to heavenly
beauty, and so he is damned (ll. 185Uff).

Berchorius, at the very end of the fourteenth century,
sees Narcissus as pride in earthly things, the same pride
for which he had reproached Apollo in his treatment of the
Daphne myth. Those, he says, who take pride in their own
beauty, whether of body, mind, or fortune, come to despise
others. Thus, they turn away from the true glory of heaven
to the shadowy glories of this world (pp. 70—71). Echo,

he says, was a loquacious nymph who encouraged adultery.

I. U
\\ 5-

She is like those noisy flatterers who surround great
prelates and priests, returning their words as if they
were blessings. She is also like a discontented woman who
must always have the last word (p. 71). It was probably
Berchorius's interpretation that Golding had in mind when
he wrote:
Narcissus is of scornfulnesse and pryde a myrror
clere,
Where Beawties fading vanities most plainly appere.
And Echo in the selfsame tale dooth kindly
represent
The lewd behavour of a bawd and his due punishment.
(1). 3)

The third myth which will concern us is that of
Pygmalion, whose ivory statue became a live woman. The
story as Ovid told it is of particular interest for several
reasons: First, it is one of the very few "upward" meta-
morphoses in Ovid's work. The changing of stones into men
in the Deucalion myth and the changing of serpent's teeth
into warriors in the stories of Cadmus and Jason are the
only other examples of the metamorphosis of an inanimate
object into a human being, and in none of these does Ovid
dwell on the metamorphosis with quite such loving attention
to detail as in the bringing to life of Pygmalion's ivory
image.

Second, this tale is unusual in that it seems to be

almost entirely original with Ovid. There would appear to

have been two legends current, the heroes of which were

named Pygmalion.lj

One, mentioned by Porphyrius, concerns
a certain king of Syria who executed a series of high
priests for eating the remains of animal sacrifices, for
there was a ban on animal food.16 There is no meta-
morphosis here, but the king's rigid abstention from the
eating of meat may possibly have suggested to Ovid his

own Pygmalion's abstention from sex. The second myth,
rather more widely referred to, concerns a certain Phoeni-
cian king who became enamoured of a statue of Aphrodite,
had it carried to his couch and there attempted to embrace
it so as to have sexual intercourse. The resemblance
between this tale and that of Ovid is obvious, but the
differences are even more so. Not only does Ovid intro-
duce the metamorphosis, but he makes his Pygmalion an
artist instead of a king, thus enabling the statue to be
Pygmalion's own work, a work of art more beautiful than

a work of nature; and, instead of the atmosphere of per—
version which surrounds the old tale, Ovid's story breathes
healthy sexuality. Pygmalion, though he attempts to
deceive himself by pretending his statue is alive, is not

content until she actually is alive and his love can

result in a son.

 

15Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclgpadie der Classichen
Alterumwissenschaft, Vol. 23.

16This story, which bears a remarkable resemblance
to Lamb's Dissertation on Roast Pig may be found in trans-
lation in Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food (Thomas
Taylor, tr.), London, 1965.

 

 

 

 

U)

In addition to the claims to especial interest
intrinsic in the tale itself, there is a third element of
interest for our purposes: so far as I have been able
to discover, the mythographers of the middle ages paid
almost no attention to it. Fulgentius does not mention
it, nor does John of Garland, nor Berchorius, while the

Ovide Moralisé translates the story without comment.

 

Only Arnulf of Orleans makes an explanation, and that of
the briefest:

Statua Pigmalionis de eburnea in vivam mulierem.

Re vera, Pigmalion mirabilis artifex eburnam

fecit statuam cuius amorem concipiens ea cepit

abuti ad modum vero mulieris.

Pygmalion's ivory statue into a live woman. In

reality, Pygmalion, a wonderful craftsman, made

an ivory statue for whose love he conceived a

desire, and he began tc misuse it as if it were a

real woman (p. 223).

This brief, unromantic interpretation, applicable

more nearly to the tale of the Phoenoician king than to
Ovid's story, was repeated as late as the fifteenth

17 It seems possible that

century by Thomas of Walsingham.
the Ovididan tale with its emphasis on warm and beating
blood; chill, white ivory transformed into blushing

flesh, was too overtly a celebration of the transformation
of female frigidity into happy responsiveness to be accept-

able to the celibate scholars who were the allegorists.

Whatever the cause, it is not until Jean de Meun (c. 1367)

 

17Thomas of Walsingham, De Archana Deorum (R. A. van
Kluyve, ed.), Durham, N.C., 1968, p. 154.

 

L A)
(I)

reaches the climax of his plea for mutually pleasing,
progenerative, sexuality that we find a treatment of
Ovid's Pygmalion.

Near the end of the Roman de la Rose (Langlois

 

edition, 11. 20817ff), just as the assault on the castle
has begun, just as the lover is about to achieve his
desire, Jean compares the beauty of the beloved to that
of Pygmalion's image. Then he launches into a retelling
of the story, elaborating on Ovid for 367 lines. Jean's
Pygmalion compares his madness to that of Narcissus, then
strikes a blow at courtly love by comparing himself with
those gentlemen who serve their ladies devotedly without
so much as a kiss as reward. He believes that his mad
passion is Venus's punishment for his insulting celibacy
and swears never to offend again, if he can but have his
love. When the statue has become a woman, Jean gives us
his prescription for happiness in love:

Or est Pygmalions aaise,

Or n'est il riens qui li desplaise

Car riens qu'il vueille e1 ne refuse;

S'il opose, e1 se rent concluse,

S'ele comande, il obeist

Pour reins ne la contradeist

D'accomplir li tout son desir.

Or peut o s'amie gesir

Qu'el n'en fait he dangier ne plainte.

Now Pygmalion is happy.

Now there is nothing to displease him,

For nought that he wished would she refuse
If he questions, she offers herself in answer.

l8"Oposer" and "conclure’are technical terms in argu-
mentation. See Girard Pari, Les Idées et les Lettres au XIII
siecle: Le Roman de la Rose,fMontreal, 1937, pp. 32633.

18

 

 

39

If she commands, he obeys

Not for anything would he gainsay her

In accomplishing all her desire.

Now can he lie with his love

Nor is she cold or complaining.

Jean, the poet of healthy sexuality, has understood
Ovid's celebration of it. For both poets, love is hetero-
sexual, tender, mutual, and procreative. What better
foreshadowing might Jean have found for the winning of

the rose than the warming and softening of Pygmalion's

ivory maiden?

CHAPTER IV

THE METAMORPHOSES OF APULEIUS

In the middle years of the second century, that is,

about one hundred and fifty years after Ovid completed his

Metamorphoses there appeared another book with a similar

 

title, Apulei Madaurensis Metamorphoseon, or The Metamorpho-

 

 

ses of Apuleius of Madaura subsequently and widely known

 

as The Golden Ass. In this work, Apuleius purports to tell

 

of the adventures which befell him when, as a young man
just out of school, he travelled in Thessaly, the land of
magic. There he had a fiery love affair with a slave
girl, the servant of a witch. With her connivance he
stole from the witch a box of ointment which he believed
would turn him into an owl. Instead, he became an ass,
and in this form lived for a year, moving from one

lurid escapade to another. At the end of the year, he
was vouchsafed a vision of the goddess, Isis, and allowed
to eat a bunch of roses which reversed the metamorphosis.
Thereafter, a chastened and devout man, he became a priest
of both Isis and Osiris and led a serene and godly life.

Because certain episodes in The Golden Ass can be

 

read as mockeries of Christianity, some of the Fathers
would have destroyed all COpies of the work. Apparently
A0

Al

taking the tale literally, they accused Apuleius of being
a magician, an agent of the devil. For others, however,
he was a noble pagan phiIOSOpher, from whom much good
might be derived.1 Partly, no doubt, through the efforts
of these good men, possibly more often by the efforts of
those who took an earthier delight in this collection of
bawdy tales, the work was preserved to delight such
diverse readers as Boccaccio, Spenser, and Robert Graves.
That Apuleius intended the book as religious instruc-
tion has been generally, though not universally, believed.
Adlington, in his introduction to his own translation says:
Now since this book of Lucius is a figure of man's
life, and toucheth the nature and manners of mortal
men, egging them forward from their asinal form to
their human and perfect shape, beside the pleasant
and delectable jests therein contained, I trust if
my simple translation be nothing accepted, yet the
matter itself shall be esteemed by such as not only
delight to please their fancies in reading the same,
but also take a pattern thereby to regenerate their
minds from brutish and beastly custom.2

Yet the current editor of Adlington's translation can say:

"In the Metamorphoses . . . the author's religious and

 

philosophical views take a less important place than in

most of his other works . . . ,"3 having failed, apparently,

 

1Jack Lindsay, Introduction to his translation of The
Golden Ass, Bloomington, Indiana, 1962, p. 26.

 

2Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of
Lucius Apuleius, with an English translation by W. Adlington
(1566), revised by S. Gaselee, Cambridge, Mass., 1965, pp.
xvii-xviii. All references to the Latin will be to this
edition, cited as GA.

3Ibid., p. vi.

A2

to realize that Apuleius's religious and philosophical
views are the subject matter of the book. Even Robert
Graves, whose identification of the ass as a symbol of the
god, Set, is most helpful, has not apparently recognized
the richness of the figure. In the following pages I
offer what I think is a more complete interpretation.
Lucius Apuleius, Roman gentleman, barrister, and

priest of both Isis and Osiris, lived at a time when the
religious life of the Mediterranean world was going
through great changes, coincidental with and, in part,
caused by the unquestioned dominance of the Roman Empire.
The great state religions were increasingly observed in
form only, having lost for various reasons, much of their
emotional appeal. The mystery religions, on the other
hand, flourished, providing, as they did, a sense of union
with the deity, guidelines for the proper conduct of this
life, and hope for happy immortality after earthly death.

What we witness is not a decay of religion but

rather a new orientation of the religious con-

sciousness. Two main trends are, I think, evident:

on the one hand a movement, alike in Egypt and in

the Graeco-Roman world generally, away from the

established cults of antiquity, which were communal

in character, towards a more personal relationship

to the deity, on the other a syncretism which by

constantly identifying different deities tended to

reduce them all to varying manifestations of one
divine principle. . . .A

 

“H. Idris Bell, Cults and Creeds in Graeco-Roman

Egypt, Liverpool, 1953, p. 65.

A?

.l

Both the syncretism and the deep personal emotion
are well illustrated in Lucius's invocation of his goddess

in Book XI of The Golden Ass. Exhausted and despairing,

 

Lucius has fallen asleep on a lonely stretch of sandy
beach, but he is startled awake by the sudden light of
the rising full moon:

Circa primam ferme noctis vigiliam, experrectus
pavore subito, video praemicantis lunae candore
nimio completum orbem commodum marinis emergentem
fluctibus, nanctusque opacae noctis silentiosa
secreta, certus etiam summatem deam praecipua
maiestate pollere resque prorsus humanas ipsius
regi providentia, nec tantum pecuina et ferina,
verum inanima etiam divino eius luminis numinisque
nutu vegetari, ipsa etiam corpora terra caelo
marique nunc incrementis consequenter augeri,
nunc detrimentis obsequenter imminui, fato scilicet
iam meis tot tantisque cladibus satiato et spem
salutis, licet tardam, subministrante, augustum
specimen deae praesentis statui deprecari, con-
festimque discussa pigra quiete alacer exsurgo
meque protinus purificandi studio marino lavacro
trado, septiesque submerso fluctibus capite, quod
eum numerum praecipue religionibus aptissimum
divinus ille Pythagoras prodidit, laetus et alacer
deam praepotentem lacrimoso vultu sic apprecabar:
"Regina caeli, sive tu Ceres alma frugum parens
originalis, quae, repertu laetata filliae, vetustae
glandis ferino remoto pabulo, miti commonstrato
cibo, nunc Eleusianiam glebam percolis; seu tu
caelestis Venus, quae primis rerum exordiis sexuum
diversitatem generato amore sociasti et aeterna
subole humano genere propagato nunc circumfluo
Paphi sarrario coleris; seu Phoebi soror, quae
partu fetarum medelis lenientibus recreato populos
tantos educasti praeclaris que nunc veneraris
delubris Ephesi; seu nocturnis ululatibus horrenda
Proserpina triformi facie larvales impetus compri—
mens terraeque claustra cohibens, lucos diversos
inerrans vario cultu propitiaris: ista luce feminea
collustrans cuncta moenia at udis ignibus nutriens
laeta semina et solis ambagibus dispensans incerta
lumina—-quoquo nomine, quoquo ritu, quaqua facie te
fas est invocare: tu meis iam nunc extremis aerumnis
subsiste, tu fortunam collapsam affirma, tu saevis

exanclatis casibus pausam pacemque tribue; sit
satis laborum, sit satis periculorum. Depelle
quadripedis diram faciem, redde me conspectui
meorum, redde me meo Lucio: ac si quod offensum
numen inexorabili me saevitia premit, mori saltem
liceat, si non licet vivere."

It is just about the first watch of the night when,
awakened by a sudden trembling, I see the full moon,
most brilliantly shining and just at that moment
rising out of the waves of the sea. And the thought
comes that in the secret silences of the deep night
that greatest goddess rules with exceeding great
majesty. For I know that all the affairs of humanity
are governed by her providence and not only domestic
and wild animals but indeed inanimate objects wax
strong through the divinity of her light and the
permission of her godhead. Indeed the very bodies of
earth, sky, and sea she causes to increase as she
grows, to decrease as she diminishes. If Fate

might now be satiated at last by my many and great
sufferings and a hope of salvation be at last per-
mitted, I determine, with her aid, to pray to the
august sign of the present goddess. At once, throw-
ing off drowsiness, I arise, quickly but calmly, and
eager for purification, go where I can bathe in the
sea. Seven times I submerge my head beneath the
waves, because the divine Pythagoras declared that
number to be best suited for holiness. Joyous and
lively, with tears on my face, I pray to the mighty
goddess:

"Queen of heaven, whether you wish to be invoked
as Ceres, original fostering mother of crops, who--
joyous at the recovery of your daughter--abolished
the brutish acorn diet of our ancestors and now
cultivate with care the fields of Eleusis, showing
the way to mellower foods; or whether as celestial
Venus, who in the beginning of the world ordained
that the sexes be bound together in love, creating
the eternal fruiting of humanity, and who now dwell
in the temples of sea-girt Paphos; or whether as the
sister of Phoebus who, in softening the pangs of
birth, have saved so many people, now above all
adored in the sacred groves of Ephesus; or whether as
Proserpina, terrible for the howlings of the night-
time, whose triple face makes powerless the attack
of ghosts and holds shut the earth, who wander in
many groves and are worshipped in differing rites:
With this, your womanly light, illumining the whole
world, and with moist warmth nourishing the joyous
seeds and, in accordance with the wanderings of the
sun, shedding your changing radiance--by whatever

45

name, by whatever rite, by whatever form it is
lawful to invoke you: May you now, at last, cause
to cease my dreadful troubles, may you strengthen
my fallen fortune, give pause and peace to my long—
drawn-out and fearsome trials. May there be an end
to labor, an end to dangers. Dispel this dreadful
four-footed shape, return me to the sight of my
family, restore me to Lucius: but if some offended
divinity pursues me with inexorable savagery, may

I be permitted to die, if I am not permitted to
live." (GOA'I’ XI, 1-3)

Lucius prays alone, with no formal ritual other than
the seven—fold wetting of his head; he prays as one who
expects to be heard, "laetus et alacer." He prays, not
only to the visible moon but to the moon as "augustum
specimen deae praesantis," and he prays to that goddess
in four of her aspects: queen of sexual love, queen of
chastity, mother of crops, and ruler of the dead. For
him, she is a listening presence who may manifest herself
in many ways and who will reply to the cry of one of her
children as easily as to the invocation of a whole community.

When his prayer is ended, Lucius has a vision of the
goddess in all her majesty. She tells him her true name,
Isis, and explains how he may get the roses that will
return him to manhood. Following her instructions, Lucius
does indeed become a man, but a better and happier man
than he had been before. The rest of the book is a sort
of thanksgiving hymn for this change.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to read

the Eleventh Book of The Golden Ass without realizing

 

that Apuleius is describing a conversion as deep, as

86

complete, as personal as that of St. Augustine or of
Saul of Tarsus. This sort of religious experience seems
to express itself naturally, as C. S. Lewis has pointed

5 in figurative language. Among the figures which

cut,
might spring naturally to mind, the change of physical

appearance to indicate the deeper change of soul is easy
to understand. But why the ass? Why not a dog, a wolf,

a bear?

In the very first lines of The Golden Ass Lucius

 

introduces himself and refers to the three spots where

his family has roots. These are: "Hymettos Attica et
Isthmos Ephyraea et Taenaros Spartiaca," "Attic Hymettos,
The Corinthian Isthmus, and Spartan Taenarus" (Qafli I, i).
These are the locations of well-known entrances to the
lower world, caves of the Great Goddess.6 With this
information Lucius suggests that he comes from a family
devoted to the worship of the goddess. That he worshipped
her as the Egyptian Isis he tells us himself at the time
of his vision, but we could be fairly sure of that earlier
because of Apuleius's North African birth. In the Second

Century and for another two hundred years thereafter, the

 

5C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in
Medieval Tradition, New York, 1958, pp. 56L66.

6Robert Graves, The Transformations of Lucius,
Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass, A New Translation from
Apuleius, New York, 1951, p. xix.

“7

7

worship of Isis and Osiris was dominant there. But, as
the story opens, we find Lucius no grave worshipper in a
great religion, but a gay, cocksure young man delighted
to be in Thessaly, for there he can hope to have personal
experience of magic; and magic fascinates him. This is
what Robert Graves calls the magic of the left hand, what
the medieval world named "black" magic. It is part of
the kingdom of the Great Goddess--as what is not? But

it is her kingdom in her Hecate aspect, the aspect of

the hag who rules the ghosts of the dead and the horrify-
ing, mysterious noises of midnight. As such, it is
avoided by the wise.

Lucius is twice warned. Almost immediately after
entering Thessaly, he encounters Aristomenes and learns
of the disaster which has befallen that gentleman as the
result of meddling, even at second hand, with a witch.
Only a few days later, he meets his mother's foster-
sister, Byrrhaena, and is warned by her to beware of
his hostess, the witch Pamphile. Since Byrrhaena refers
to Lucius's mother as "Salvia," "The saved one," it is
tempting to try to find some connection between that
name and hers, which would appear to mean "Fire-scattering,"
but whether or not these names are meant to suggest the

goddess, the setting of the warning is clearly intended

 

7E. A. W. Budge, The Egyptian Religion of Ressurec-
tion: Osiris, New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1961, pp. 282-306.

 

Ad

to do so. Byrrhaena and Lucius are standing before a
great statue showing Diana, hunting dogs in leash, by

the side of a forest pool. Peering through the under-
brush, reflected in the pool, is the face of Acteon, from
whose forehead the horns have already sprouted. Clearly,
here is the goddess-as—virgin punishing the overly-
curious. Since the effect of Byrrhaena's warning is to
hurry Lucius away resolved to seduce Pamphile's maid

as a way to learn Pamphile's secrets, it is ironic that
the warning takes place before the goddess of chastity.

Having twice ignored warnings, Lucius does indeed
seduce--with a great deal of pleasure on both sides-—the
I charming maid, Fotis. As an added delight for their
nightly transports, they crown each other with roses,
thus employing for their lechery the symbol of the grace
of the great goddess herself.

So pleasant, so mutual, is the seduction that Lucius
becomes completely subject to Fotis: he has no wish to
attend to the affairs that brought him to Thessaly; he
has no wish to return home to his family duties; he can
not even accept an invitation to a dinner-party without
asking permission of Fotis. Lucius, the gentleman, has
allowed his lust to make him subject to a slave.

One might say that at this point in the story,
Lucius has, metaphorically, made an ass of himself. He

has displayed stubbornness and undue curiosity as well

A9

as unbridled lust. All these were commonly accepted
attributes of the ass. He has also become the slave of
a slave, as a real ass might be. Still he retains his
human shape. Even when he stupidly becomes the butt of
practical jokers in the elaborate festival of laughter,
reminding us of Saturn's ass which was the symbol of
foolishness in similar festivals, he shows no outward
change. But when he steals Pamphile's ointment, he has
taken the final, the irrevocable step.

In this scene, Pamphile, the witch, seems to become
a figure of the goddess-as-Hecate for, using her magic
secrets "to which ghosts are obedient, by which are stars
disturbed, gods weakened, the elements made subservient"
(94A,, III, 15), she becomes an owl, Hecate's sacred
bird and the bird of wisdom. Having watched awestruck,
Lucius recovers his wits enough to persuade Fotis to steal
the ointment for him. What is his dismay, however, to
find that he has become, not an owl, but an ass.

The ass, in Egyptian religion, was a symbol of Set,
the god of evil, of ill-luck, of winter weather, the god
who had grievously offended the majesty of the goddess
Isis by treacherously murdering Osiris, by attempting to
rape the goddess, and by attempting to steal the kingdom

of her son, Horus.8 Lucius has also greatly offended:

 

8Ibid., p. “6. See also Graves, The Golden Ass,
pp. xiii-xv.

 

50

by losing his manly independence, yielding completely to
lust, he has offended against the chastity of the goddess
as virgin; by using the sacred rose in his sordid affair,
he has offended against her as queen of love; by attempt-
ing to steal wisdom, he has offended against the goddess
as Hecate. He has followed the pattern of behaviour
shown by the ass—god, Set. When Apuleius turned Lucius
into an ass, he was expressing several ideas in one figure.
Lucius has made himself into an animal by yielding to an
unthinking lust to the point of forgetting his human
dignity and responsibilities. By his treacherous and
foolhardy attempt to steal wisdom, he has made himself
into a particular animal, the hateful symbol of the hate-
ful god.

The transformation into an ass, however, is but the
beginning of Lucius's saga. He must be so chastened by
his experience that he can become again a man. This
reverse metamorphosis can be achieved only by eating
roses, i.e., by partaking of divine grace. In various
ways, including once his own fear, Lucius is prevented
from getting roses until the rose season has passed, so
that he must spend a whole year in his asinine body

9

waiting for the return of spring. Throughout this period

 

9Robert Graves has pointed out that these twelve
months are analogous to the twelve-month period of proba-
tion undergone by the would-be initiate and symbolised
by the twelve stoles worn at initiation. The Golden Ass,
p. xv.

 

\D

however, though she withholds the roses of grace, Isis
keeps a protective eye on Lucius.

We find the first evidence of her presence when
Lucius overhears the story of Cupid and Psyche in the
robbers' cave. Apuleius sets the stage carefully here
so that the significance will be felt, if not immediately
understood. The dark cave in the mountain, the firelight,
the hag and the still-virgin bride bring inevitably to
mind the oldest worship, that of the earth-mother, who
dwelt in a sacred cave lit by a sacred fire, and whose
double nature was both mother and daughter. In the fairy
tale itself we can see, with Graves, a symbolic tale of
the achievement of divinity through Eros in the Platonic
sense. It is possible also to read the tale as a pretty
fable of the vicissitudes of marriage, or, indeed, simply
as a fairy-tale with the usual happy ending. It is, of
course, all these things at once, but at the deepest
level it is the story of a soul struggling for and
achieving, through the rites of initiation, eternal and
blissful union with its deity.

In the form that Apuleius himself first heard this
story, the fairy bridegroom probably was a magic shape-
changer, a serpent who became by night a man. This seems

to have been the situation in the Hindu folk tales from

52

which this version is presumed to derive.10 Apuleius,

however suppressed this metamorphosis, retaining only the
hint of it in the Delphic oracle's pronouncement, a hint

which serves to remind us of Eros's majesty and might in

Orphic theology:

Montis in excelsi sc0pulo, rex, siste puellam
Ornatam mundo funerei thalami:

Nec speres generum mortali stirpe creatum,
Sed saevum atque ferum viperumque malum,

Quod pinnis volitans super aethera cuncta fatigat
Flammaque et ferro singula debilitat

Quod tremit ipse Iovis, quo numina terrificantur,
Fluminaque horrescunt et Stygiae tenebrae.

On the rocky peak of the highest mountain, King,
place the girl

Adorned with ornaments fit for a deadly marriage bed;

Nor hope to have a bridegroom of mortal lineage;

Instead, a savage, wild, and viperous evil

Who, wings whirling through the aether,

With flame and sword wears out all things,

Whom Jove himself fears greatly, by whom the gods
are terrified,

Whom even rivers and the Stygian shadows abhor.
(G.A., IV, 33)

To have retained the bridegroom's traditional shape-
changing would have been to make less impressive the
double metamorphosis that was the core of Apuleius's
"dark conceit." He was too good an artist to commit
that error.
We have seen that Lucius was probably a devotee of

Isis when the story began, though probably not yet an
initiate. In "Cupid and Psyche," Psyche achieves a

similar status when she becomes Cupid's bride but may

 

10R. M. Dawkins (ed. and trans.), Modern Greek Folk—
tales, Chapter 12; W. A. Clouston (ed.), Popular Tales and
Fictions: Their Migrations and Transformations, Vol. I,
pp. 205ff.

 

 

 

53

not see him. Like Lucius, Psyche is solemnly warned not
to attempt to see more than is permitted. Like Lucius,
she succumbs to curiosity and wanders in misery. Finally,
she yields herself unreservedly to the goddess. Then,
with Cupid's secret aid, she performs four seemingly
impossible tasks. These tasks are suggestive of initia—
tion rites invoking the goddess as ruler of earth, sun,
water, and death. When they have been successfully com-
pleted, Cupid and Psyche are married on Olympus and

dwell forever there with their daughter, Voluptas. Isis
is saying to Lucius, as Apuleius is saying to his

knowing readers, "Bear well your year of trial and punish-
ment, and you too will achieve your desire."

Shortly after the telling of the tale of "Cupid and
Psyche," Charite, the kidnapped bride, is rescued by her
husband, Tlepolemus, and returns home, riding in triumph
on the back of the ass-Lucius. She is happily greeted
by "pompam cerneres omnis sexus et omnis aetatis novumque
et Hercule memorandum spectamen, virginem asino
triumphantem," "a parade of both sexes and all ages to
see a new and, by Hercules, memorable sight, a virgin
triumphant on an ass" (VII, 13). The chaste virgin is in
complete control of the lusts of the flesh symbolized by
the ass. We are in the presence of the goddess as

chastity.

5’4

We may again see Isis's presence when Lucius hears
the story of Charite's tragic marriage. Apuleius has
foreshadowed this tragedy by calling the young husband
Tlepolemus, for that was the name of a Homeric hero
whose widow avenged his death by killing Helen.ll
Charite, whose name, derived from Greek xvpié (grace),
means not only "dear" in both senses but also "highly
respected," is greatly desired by Tlepolemus's brother-
in-arms, Tryasyllus. The latter, whose name means "bold
one" but also "foolhardy" and "presumptuous" pretends,
however, to be Tlepolemus's true friend. One day, he
and Tlepolemus go hunting together, although Charite has
begged Tlepolemus to hunt no animal armed with tusks or
horns, just as Venus had warned Adonis not to hunt any
animal which might stand and fight. They encounter a
wild boar, the animal that killed Adonis. Thrasyllus
treacherously hamstrings Tlepolemus's horse, so that he
falls into the path of the boar and is killed. Thus,
we have Charite-Tlepolemus = Venus-Adonis = Isis-Osiris.
Thrasyllus, the "brother-in-arms," becomes a figure for
the treacherous Set. When, after learning the truth of
Tlepolemus's death, Charite revenges him by blinding

Thrasyllus, Isis is revenging on Set the murder of Osiris.

 

11Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 11A, 0.

 

55

In each of these two incidents, one of Lucius's
faults has been reproved. When Charite rides the ass
home, lust has been conquered; in the punishment of
Thrasyllus, we have the punishment of foolhardiness and
presumption.

Throughout his year of trials, Lucius is miraculously
rescued from one misfortune after another, and throughout
the year he seems to become increasingly human. When,
in Book X, he has become the "trained" pet and shOWpiece,
he is human in all but form, but this very humanity makes
his animal form more bitter to endure. It is then that
he prays to his goddess as Jonah prayed, "out of the
depths." Like Jonah, he is heard. He sees a vision of
Isis, garbed in mystic splendour, and she tells him how
to approach her priest in next day's festival procession
and acquire the roses.

Once the roses are eaten, the ass becomes a man.
Divine grace has enabled Lucius to throw off his brute
self and become truly human. It is worth noting, however,
that he has not become again the man he was when the
story began. The jaunty, curious, pleasure—loving young
man has become a serious, patient, chaste and abstemious
one, who rejoices daily in the knowledge that he has found
favor with his divinity. Thus we have another example of
the paradox of the fortunate fall. Humanity, impatient

to become godlike, falls into bestiality, then through

56

divine grace, rises to new heights. The myth is as old
as religion, as new as individual experience. Apuleius
used his tale of metamorphosis to express his own
experience of the myth, because the animal figure was at
once the completest expression of the sacred truth and
the means of hiding it from the uninitiate:

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 and not

perceive, and may indeed hear and not understand;

lest they should turn again and be forgiven (Mark

4:11).

The outsider could read The Golden Ass as an entertaining

 

fantasy. The initiate, however, would understand the
metamorphosis into an ass as the punishment for sin which
consists in the complete experience of the sin, and he
would see the year of trial as a period of purification,
after which the sinner might, through divine grace,
become a true man: wise, pure, and virtuous, assured

of blessed immortality.

The plot of The Golden Ass was not new, in general

 

outline. Robert Graves mentions two earlier works, The

Ass, by Lucius of Patra, and Lucius, or the Ass, by Lucian

 

of Samosata. S. Gaselee, in his introduction to the Loeb
Library edition, questions Lucian's authorship, but not
Apuleius's debt. Both editors agree that the earlier
works are merely dirty stories, lacking in all charm and
grace. Apuleius greatly improved his material, changing

some tales to make them less offensive and adding several

new ones, including the stories of Aristomenes and
Thelyphron and the folk tale of "Cupid and Psyche."
Several incidents among the adventures Lucius claims as
his own are new also: the festival of laughter, the
"hoodooing" of the baker, and most importantly, Lucius's
vision of Isis and subsequent conversion. Most of the
stories appear to be drawn from "the various collections
of facetiae which were common in the later Greek and

Roman literature," as Gaselee tells us, and were "almost

universally of more than doubtful morality."l2

In addition to his debt to the ass-stories and to
the collections of bawdy tales, Apuleius seems to show
a considerable debt to Ovid. We know that Ovid was

popular with his successors and was chosen as a model of

13

style by post—Augustan poets. We also know that

Apuleius took pride in having an excellent education:

Sapientis viri super mensam celebre dictum
est: 'prima, inquit, creterra ad sitim pertinet,
secunda ad hilaritatem, tertia ad voluptatem,
quarta ad insaniam.‘ Verum enimvero Musarum
creterra versa vice quanto crebrior quantoque
meracior, tanto proprior ad animi sanitatem.
prima creterra litteratoris rudimento excitat,
secunda grammatici doctrina instravit, tertia
rhetoris eloquentia armat. hactenus a plerisque
potatur. ego et alias creterras Athenis bibi:
poeticae comptam, geometriae limpidam, musicae
dulcem, dialecticae austerulam, iam vero

 

l2R. Graves, The Golden Ass, pp. xvii—xviii;

Apuleius, G.A., pp. vii-viii.

 

13Wilkinson, pp. 366-368.

universae philosophiae inexplebilem scilicet [et]
nectaream.lu

There is a famed saying of a wise man about the
pleasures of the table: 'The first wine-bowl
quenches thirst, the second begets jollity, the
third stirs up desire, the fourth sends mad. But
the bowls of the Muses have an opposite effect.
The more you drink and the stronger the draught,
the better is it for the good of your soul. The
first bowl, given you by the elementary teacher,
rescues you from ignorance; the second, proffered
by the teacher of literature, sets you up with
learning; the third, brought by the rhetorician,
arms you with eloquence.

These three draughts are enough for most men.

But I have drunk other cups at Athens: the
imaginative draught of poetry, the clear one of
geometry, the sweet one of music, the austere

one of dialectic, and the nectar of universal
philosophy, of which one can never have enough.15

It is most probable, then, that Apuleius would have been

acquainted with Ovid's Metamorphoses.

 

In The Golden Ass there are at least fifteen

 

references to myths treated by Ovid, and, while it is
possible that Apuleius was familiar with them from other,
individual, sources, it seems much more likely that he
knew them from Ovid, where they were all available. In
addition to the references to myth, there are several
passages that, stylistically, are reminscent of Ovid.

The descriptions of the magical ointments, preparations,

 

l“Apuleius, Florida, XX from Apulei Platonici

Madaurensis,,0pera Quae Supersunt, Vol. II, Fasc. 2
(Recenscit Rudolf Helm), Berlin, 1959, p. A0.

15Jack Lindsay's translation in his Introduction
to his edition of The Golden Ass, Bloomington, Indiana,
1962, p. 6.

 

 

 

59

and incantations of the witch, Pamphile, with her
"miranda secreta, quibus obaudiunt manes, turbantur
sidera, coguntur numina, serviunt elementa," "woundrous
secrets, to which the souls of the dead are obedient,
by which the stars are troubled, divine powers weakened,
and the elements made subservient" (G.A., III, 15, 16),
appears to owe much to Ovid's Circe:
ignotosque deos ignoto carmine adorat quo solet
et niveae vultum confundere Lunae et patrio
capiti bilbulas subtexere nubes. tum quoque
cantato densetur carmine caelum et nebulas
exhalat humus. . . .
And with unknown songs she worshipped unknown
gods. By which she used both to overspread the
white-faced moon and to cover with moisture-laden
clouds her father's head. Indeed, when the song
was sung, was the sky darkened and the clouds
gave forth moisture. . . . (XIV, 366-370).
Again, when Apuleius is about to describe Tlepole-
mus's death, he seems to call on our memory of Ovid's
version of Adonis's death by causing Charite to beg
Tlepolemus to hunt nothing fiercer than wild goats, as
Venus had begged Adonis to avoid all savage beasts:
Hos tu, care mihi, cumque his genus omne ferarum
quod non terga fugae, sed pugnae pectora praebet,
effuge, ne virtus tua sit damnosa duobus!
Flee from these [lions], my dear one and from
every kind of wild animal which, instead of
turning its back in flight, presents its breast
to fight, lest your courage be the ruin of us
both (Met., X. 705-707).

Tlepolemus was to hunt, with beaters, ". . . feras, 51

quid tamen in capreis feritatis est; nec enim Charite

maritum suum quaerere pateibatur bestias armatas dente

vel cornu," "savage animals, if indeed there is savagery
in goats, for Charite had begged her husband to avoid
beasts armed with teeth or tusk," (G;A,, VIII, A).
Again, when Jupiter addresses Cupid, he accuses
him, among other transgressions, of having caused Jupiter
to transform his majesty "into serpents, fires, wild
animals, birds and bulls,"
in serptentes, in ignes, in feras, in aves et
gregalia pecua serenos vultus meos sordide
reformando . . . . (§;A., VI, 22).
One is inevitably reminded of the impudent stories

Arachne wove into her web in Book VI of the Metamorphoses:

 

Maeonis elusam designat imagine tauri
Europam; . . .

fecit et Asterien aquila luctante teneri
fecit olorinis Ledam recubare sub alis;
aureus ut Danaen, Asopida luserit ignis
Mnemosynen pastor, varius Deoida serpens.

She shows Europa, cheated by the likeness of a bull
and she made Asterie, held by the struggling eagle
She made Leda supine beneath the swan's wings,
How he tricked Danae as a golden shower, As0pida
as a fire,
Mnemosyne as a shepherd, Deo's daughter as a
many-colored serpent (VI, 103—11A)

Other examples might be adduced, but these are suf-

ficient to suggest that Ovid's Metamorphoses influenced

 

Apuleius's treatment of his material in The Golden Ass

 

in several ways. It is indeed possible that it was from
reading Ovid that Apuleius conceived the notion of using
a tale of metamorphosis to convey the double or multiple

meanings of a psychological experience.

CHAPTER V

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF
METAMORPHOSIS IN THE

MIDDLE AGES

In spite of the widespread interest in finding
religious and philosophical interpretations for Ovid's
Metamorphoses throughout the high Middle Ages, there would
seem to have been surprisingly few attempts to use meta-

morphosis as a device of belles lettres. The French and

 

English romances are, indeed, replete with shape-changers
--Merlin, for instance, can change himself and others at
will--but most of these transformations are mere fairy-
tale machinery, ghostly survivors of a forgotten

mythology.l One of the major characters in Guillaume de

 

Palerne2 is a young prince, changed into a wolf and
restored, at the story's end, to his former state; but
there is no indication that there was anything wolflike in

his personality to dictate the change. Indeed, from his

 

1The transformation of Bercilak into the Green Knight
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight occurs as a possible
exception to this statement. I feel, however, that this
cannot be considered true metamorphosis. The green knight
keeps his man's shape, though enlarged.

2Charles W. Dunn, The Foundling and the Werewolf: A
Literary-Historical Study of "Guillaume de Palerne,
Toronto, 1960.

 

 

 

61

62

actions throughout the tale, he might better have been a

sheep dog. Marie de France also tells the story of a

3

werewolf in Bisclavret, but again the character could

 

have had the form of any wild animal just as conveniently.
In Marie's other tale of metamorphosis, the charming
32222» a version of the Lohengrin theme, the hero is a
large bird, only because that is the tradition, and he
can apparently resume his human shape at will.

The only examples of apparently conscious use of
metamorphosis as metaphor in romance occur in the rather

late (thirteenth century) Queste del Saint Graal.“ There

 

are three of these passages, each concerned, not too sur-
prisingly, with the deceitful shape-changing of the
devil. They are borderline cases, for, of course, the
devil, as a supernatural being in the landscape of
romance, is closely akin to a wicked enchanter or bad
fairy and can assume any shape he wills. Nevertheless,
the forms he assumes here have significance.

Perceval, having lost two horses and having been
bested in battle, gives himself up to grief and rage
until he falls into an exhausted sleep. At midnight, the
devil appears to him in the form of a lady and offers to

give him a horse in return for his promise to do her a

 

3Marie de France, Lais (Jean Rychner, ed.), Bris,
1966, pp. 6lff and 103ff.

. “Albert Pauphilet (ed.), La Queste del Saint Graal,
Paris, 19U9.

 

63

service when she demands it. This promise made, she leads
from the forest a huge, black stallion. This stallion,
which is also the devil, starts to gallop as soon as
Perceval is in the saddle and runs so uncontrollably

that Perceval is almost plunged into a mighty stream to

be drowned. Perceval's fright prompts him to cross him-
self and pray, whereupon the horse throws him from the
saddle and dives into the water in a thunder of smoke and
flames.

Perceval awakens next morning alone on a craggy
island, far from other land. He helps a lioness to
rescue her cub from a serpent, killing the serpent. He
dreams of two ladies, one young and fair, the other old
and ugly. The young one rides a lion, the old one a
serpent. Again, Perceval kills the serpent.

The unknown Cistercian monk who wrote La Queste

 

del Saint Graal, never content to allow his readers to

 

interpret symbolism for themselves, next arranges for
a holy hermit to arrive in a boat, fittingly draped in
shining white, to explain that the lady of the lion is

ecclesia, she of the serpent, synagogia. Therefore,

 

Perceval has twice aided the New Law to triumph over the
Old Law.

When the hermit has departed, another boat comes
skimming over the waves, but this one is draped in black.

From it there steps a beautiful lady. Perceval, whose

6A

intelligence is not his greatest virtue, misses the sig—
nificance of the black drapery and welcomes the lady.

She provides him with food and strong wine, to which he
is unaccustomed, and so bewitches him that the chaste
Perceval begs for her love, promising to become her man.
At the last moment, as he is entering her silken bed, he
glimpses his sword and the cross on its hilt and comes to
his senses, crossing himself and calling on God. At once,
there is a mighty storm, and the boat departs amid

clouds and flames, with the lady calling back that he has
betrayed her.

Twice in these episodes the devil appears as a woman,
once as a black stallion. For the author, whose main con-
cern throughout his work is the praise of celibacy as the
duty of true knights of Christ, woman, offering all the
pleasures of the flesh, woman deceitfully urging a man
on to any passion whatever, would obviously be a form of
the devil. The horse, probably a descendent of Plato's
horses of passion in the Phaedrus, is passion itself,
whether of hate, grief, or sexual love. Dark, strong,
and uncontrollable, it makes a man forget that way of
reason so necessary to salvation. Perceval, in giving
up his heart to rage and grief, has made it vulnerable to
the temptations of the devil. In yielding to one passion,
he has prepared himself to yield to all. He is saved

by the teachings of the church (the lion) and by his faith

in God. The machinery creaks a bit in these episodes,

as it does throughout the Queste, but the author is at

least attempting to use a SOphisticated metaphoric device.
The following century affords two clear examples

of the artistic use of metamorphosis, Dante's Inferno

(0.1315) and Book I of Gower's Vox Clamantis (c. 1385).

 

Although Gower is later in time, he is so much less
expert that we might do well to look first at his work.

The whole of the first book of the Vox Clamantis is con—

 

cerned with the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and is composed
of three dream visions, the first of which is a dream of
animals. It is apparent throughout this book that Gower
was thoroughly familiar with his Ovid, and it is probable

that he believed himself to be emulating the Metamorphoses

 

in his account of this dream of men transformed into
animals. Unlike Ovid, however, but like the author of

the Queste, he is unable to leave his readers to make what
they will of his metamorphoses. Instead he prefaces the
tale with a brief "argument," explaining his intentions:

In huius opusculi principio intendit compositor
describere qualiter seruiles rustici impetuose
contra ingenuos et nobilis regni insurrexerunt.

Et quia res huismodo velut monstrum detestabilis
fuit et horribilis, fingit se per sompnium vidisse
diversas vulgi turmas in diversas species bestiarum
domesticarum transmutatas: dicit tamen quod ille
bestie domestics, a sua deuiantes nature, crudelitates
ferarum sibi presumpserunt. De causis vero, ex
quibus inter homines talia contingunt enormia,
tractat vlterius secundum distincciones libelli

istius, qui in septem dividitur partes, prout
inferius locis suis euidencius apparebit.5

In the beginning of this work, the author intends
to describe how the lowly peasants violently
revolted against the freemen and nobles of the
realm. And since an event of this kind was as
loathsome and horrible as a monster, he reports
that in a dream he saw different throngs of the
rabble transformed into different kinds of
domestic animals. He says, moreover, that those
domestic animals deviated from their true nature
and took on the barbarousness of wild beasts.6
Thus, from the first Gower deprives the reader of one of
the joys of allegory, the pleasure of discovery.

In the dream vision of the animals there are seven
episodes, the first four of which tell us a good deal
about Gower himself, for the peasants become asses, oxen,
swine, and dogs. The last three are less obvious:
household servants become cats, while some unnamed group
become foxes; another group turns into birds, wild and
domestic; a third becomes flies and other noxious insects.
Every group develops a fierce nature, seeking to bite,
claw, and kill. Each develops physical traits indicative
of its unnatural savagery: sharp unicorn horns for the
asses; bears' paws and lions' tails for the oxen; eagles'

beaks for the cooks. All the animals abandon their

accustomed food, seeking such delicate foods and wines

 

5John Gower, Vox Clamantis, in The Works of John
Gower (G. C. Macauley, ed.), Oxford, 1902. Vol. IV, p. 3.

 

 

6Eric W. Stockton's translation from his edition of
The Majpr Latin Works of John Gower, Seattle, 1962, p. 49.

 

67

as were enjoyed by the nobility, or human flesh. All
want soft beds in castles.

The metaphor is clear enough, even without Gower's
explanation: the peasants have abandoned humanity in
seeking to overturn the established order. They are
behaving "like animals," but not like the domestic
animals which they rather resembled in more peaceful
times. They have become fierce monsters. The metaphor
fails to convince, however, for several reasons. First,
after the ox, ass, swine, and dogs, the animal forms
bear little, if any relationship to the previous character-
istics of the peasants. Second, when transformed, they
all act the same, seeking human food, soft beds, and
slaughter. Third, in the seventh vision Gower apparently
tires of the metaphor and alludes to his characters as
men; yet he never reverses the metamorphosis, so that in
the end it is unclear whether we are dealing with men
or beasts. One suspects that, in Gower's view, this was
unimportant, there being only a thin line of demarcation
between a peasant and a brute, but it is artistically
unsatisfactory.

When we turn from Gower to Dante, we turn from
fumbling awkwardness to a work of consummate artistry.
Dante's handling of his metamorphoses in the Inferno
is as sure and as effective as his handling of all his

other figures throughout the Divina Commedia. Like

 

 

 

68

Gower, he has read his Ovid, to whom he refers explicitly

in Canto XXV, lines 97-102,7

and in Canto IV, line 90, as
the third among the group of four great poets. Unlike
Gower, he has absorbed Ovid's technique. He makes no
effort to explain his figures, but presents them, leaving
to the reader the challenge of interpretation.

The first of these figures to be considered is the
last in Dante's order of presentation, the transformed
Lucifer frozen in the very bottom of Hell. Lucifer, the
most beautiful of the seraphim, godlike of countenance,
snowy of wing, has rebelled against God Himself. Because
he hates God to the extent of his potentiality for love,
he finds himself permanently placed at the spot in the
universe furthest removed from the warmth of God's love,
encased to the waist in the ice which results from that
lack of love. Frustration, grief, and rage have filled
his heart, so that he weeps continuously even as he gnaws
and claws Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot. His
alienation from God's love, his rage and grief have
changed his outward form. His seraphic countenance has
become three hideous faces, a travesty of the trinity.
One face is red, one black, one yellowish white, showing

respectively his hatred, his ignorance, and his impotence.

 

7Dante, Inferno (John D. Sinclair, tr. and ed.),
Galaxy Edition, New York, 1961, p. 310.

8Sinclair, p. U30.

69

His six seraphic wings are six monstrously large sails,
featherless and hideous like the wings of a bat. Though
he waves them continually, they are powerless to move
him from his icy place. His whole body is covered with
coarse hair, to which Vergil clings as he climbs. Thus
has Lucifer, Son of the Morning, been transformed by
his own rebellious hatred into a monster. Because he
wished to be God, he has become, with his triple face,
a parody of God; because he has turned from love to hate,
he has turned from beauty to ugliness; because he has
rejected "the love that moves the sun and the other
stars," not all his wing beating can bring him movement.

Hideous the monster may be, and evil, but he is
essentially impotent. There is no question of his
moving from his icy seat to roam the world or even to
rule Hell. Because the devil is impotent, it is not he
who causes the sufferings of the damned human souls who
share Hell with him. According to Dante, they cause their
own suffering. Whatever character trait has separated the
soul from God is not only the cause but the form of the
soul's punishment. Therefore, it is logical that those
who have shown disrespect for their own bodies, who have
reft their souls violently from their bodies, should be
permanently shorn of their human shapes.

These souls, of course, are the suicides. They

have the shapes of dark, twisted, fruitless trees. They

\l

L)

can speak only when wounded, but they are always
wounded, for the harpies perch on their branches and
gnaw at their leaves. Thus, the suicide who in life,
was gnawed by fear, remorse, or despair until he wounded
himself to the death, is, in death, gnawed by the
hideous embodiments of fear, remorse, and despair,
forever wounded. But the body which suffers is not a
human body, for in insulting their bodies, these men have
lost their right to them.9
Dante's third metamorphosis, that of the thieves,
is equally striking. It is really double: first a six-
footed "serpent" attaches itself to a man-form, and the
two mingle so as to become one monstrous shape; a second
serpent bites a man in the navel. Then:
Lo trafitto '1 miro, ma nulla disse;
anzi, co' pie fermati, sbadigliava
pur come sonno o febbre l'assalisse.
elli '1 serpente, e quei lui riguardava;
l'un per la piaga, e l'altro per la bocca
fummavan forte, e'l fummo si scontrave.
The struck one looked at him in wonder, but said
nothing, only stood still and yawned like one
attacked by sleepiness or fever. He was looking
at the serpent and the serpent at him; one from

his wound, the other from his mouth was smoking
heavily, and the smokes met (XXV, 88-93).

 

9An interesting bit of evidence of Dante's
belief in a divinely fixed order is provided by the
manner of the suicide-trees' planting. Because they
arrive in Hell helter—skelter, not waiting for their
assigned deaths, Minos has them thrown, helter-skelter,
into the seventh level, to sprout where they lie.

In this eerie atmosphere, the metamorphosis takes
place. Gradually, in silence, eyes fixed on each other,
the two exchange forms. The man's legs become a tail,
the serpent's tail Splits into legs. Arms become
forepaws; forepaws arms. At last, he who was a man runs
off on all fours; he who was a serpent rises and spits
after him, rejoicing to have-"Buoso run on all fours, as
I have done." And one understands that the forms will be
reversed again at the first opportunity.

Sinclair remarks that the serpent with its "tra-
ditional subtlety, furtiveness, malice, and deadliness,"
is a fitting image for thievery.lO It is also true
that, in the middle ages, a man's property was looked upon
as part of his own personality, so that he who stole
property stole a part of the owner. It is fitting that
these man-serpents will spend eternity stealing each
other's bodies, only to have them stolen back again.

Between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries,
then, we have three interesting examples of the use of
metamorphosis as a metaphor, expressing complex ideas in
a single figure. The first of these, the devil's changes

of form in La Queste del Saint Graal, while closer to

 

fairy tale than to myth, yet expresses the author's fear

and hatred of sexuality and, indeed, of any passion. The

 

lOSinclair, p. 316.

72

second, Gower's peasants into monsters in the Vox

Clamantis, though inept, is an attempt to express horror

 

at the overthrow of a divinely ordained order, a horror
so great that ordinary language could not express it.
Last, and by far the most interesting, is Dante's use

of metamorphosis to express three ideas: the sacredness
of the human body, along with the sinfulness of despair;
the sacredness of property, along with the malice of
covetousness; and the ultimate horror of hate as the
separation from God. Although Dante drew the idea of the
bleeding tree from Book III of the 59219 and that of the
man turned into a serpent from the transformation of

Cadmus in Book IV of the Metamorphoses, he has adapted

 

them to his own purpose, so that the metaphors are
entirely his own. In each metamorphosis, the body has
changed to conform to the shape of the sinning soul.
Though it is unlikely that we shall ever know
whether the author of the Queste had read Ovid, it is of
interest that both Gower and Dante had done so and that

each turned to his Metamorphoses when seeking to express

 

the inexpressible. Whether or not they conceived of
Ovid's use of metamorphosis as an allegorical one--and
it is likely they did so conceive it--they at least saw
its possibilities for such use. In this use of meta-
morphosis they were soon to be followed by Ariosto and
two of the greatest poets of the English language,

Spenser and Milton.

CHAPTER VI

ARIOSTO'S USE OF METAMORPHOSIS

Benedotto Croce suggests that Ariosto's Orlando
Furioso (1516) is neither a praise of chivalry nor a
criticism of it, neither an intricately worked allegory
nor a simple entertainment: it is, he feels, Ariosto's
attempt at mimesis, at reflecting the whole of life in
all its variety. Thus, we can find therein true love
and treachery, high chastity and bawdiness, courage and
cowardice, solemnity and hilarity—-all bound together in
harmony by Ariosto's gently ironic style.1 It is not
surprising then, that we should find also three cantos
of the Orlando (VI-VIII) devoted almost exclusively to

that form of reality which is the psychomachia, the

 

inward struggle between virtue and vice, between reason
and concupiscence, which occupies so large a place in

the minds of the middle ages and the Renaissance, indeed,
in the minds of civilized men.

Writers who attempt to portray the psychomachia

 

seem to fall naturally into figurative language, using

 

 

lBenedetto Croce, Ariosto, Shakespeare E. Corneille,
Terza edizione Riveduta, Bari, 19AH, pp. A-Al. I

73

TU

personation, type, and symbol to express psychological
events and truths. Ariosto is no exception, nor is it
surprising to find that metamorphosis is one of the
modes he found useful.

Early in Canto VI (Stanza xvii)2 we find Ruggiero
clinging dangerously, but obstinately, to his flying
hippogriff. Ruggiero, as the ancestor of Ippolito da
Este, to whom the Orlando is dedicated, is as nearly the
hero of the work as any one character can be so termed.
As such, he must be brought to perfection as a Chevalier,
but his character is at first much too fiery for perfect
virtue.

Previous to the episode with which we are con-
cerned, his valiant lady-love, Bradamante, has rescued
him from a magician's castle, where he has been held in
a sort of "protective custody" to keep him out of the
dangers of battle. Released, the impetuous Ruggiero,
siezes the Magician's steed, the hippogriff (a monster
with the body of a horse at the rear, a lion at the
front, the wings, claws, and beak of a giant eagle),
and leaps into the saddle. He is unable to control the
fiery animal, which flies into the air and whirls

Ruggiero swiftly out of Bradamante's sight.

 

2The edition used is Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando
Furioso (a cura di Lanfranco Caretti), Milano—Napoli,

I955.

75

When the hippogriff at last alights, the hot and
breathless Ruggiero finds himself in a typical lgggg
amoenus. He is on an island, far past the gates of
Hercules, where there are

culte pianure e delicate colli
chiare acque, ombrose ripe e prati molli

level fields and gentle hills
clear water, shady banks, and soft meadows (VI, xx).

Here are palms, myrtles, cedars, and orange trees in
fruit and flower. Nightingales sing in the shade; red
roses bloom, and white lilies; the breeze is cool; and
deer graze without fear. Ariosto is alerting us to our
entrance to that "other world" where the events of the
soul take place.

Once off the hippogriff, Ruggiero ties the beast
to a branch of a myrtle tree and goes to wash his burning
face in a clear stream nearby. What is his amazement to
hear the tree begin to hiss like a green log burning, then
break into human speech. Quickly recovering himself,
Ruggiero enters courteously into conversation with the
myrtle tree and learns its sad secret. The tree is all
that remains of Astolfo, heir to the King of England
and a paladin of France.

Astolfo, young, handsome, and careless, had been
walking with his comrades by the sea when he came upon the
beautiful nymph, Alcina, amusing herself by calling to her

a variety of fish. Pleased with Astolfo's appearance,

\l
O\

Alcina invited him to play at fishing with her. Then,
promising to show him mermaids, she led him to a small
island just offshore. The island, however, was in

reality a balena, commonly translated as whale, but in

3

this instance, probably a dolphin. The dolphin swam

furiously away with Alcina and Astolfo on its back and
landed them next day on Alcina's island.

There, Astolfo became Alcina's lover, ruler of
her kingdom. He was surrounded by every luxury, his every
wish fulfilled. It seemed to him that he was truly in
Paradise; like Lucius when he was about to become an ass,
he forgot everything but his lust. As he says himself,

Io mi gcdea le delicate membra:

pareami aver qui tutto i1 ben raccolto

che fra i mortali in piu parti si smembra,
a chi pid et a chi meno e a nessun molto;
né di Francia né d'altro mi rimembra:
stavomi sempre a contemplar quel volto:
ogni pensiero, ogni mio bel disegno

in lei finia, he passava oltre il segno.

I took endless delight in her delicate body:
I seemed to have there all the good things
Which are usually divided among mortals,
To this one more, to that one less, to none very much;
I remembered neither France nor anything else:
I lived always in the present moment
My every thought, every desire
Finished in her, not passing beyond her nod.
(VI, xlvii)

Soon, however, Astolfo's happiness ended abruptly.

Alcina took a new lover, and, in order to prevent

 

3See note to stanza xl, Canto VI, in Lanfranco
Caretti, "Nota critica a1 Testo dell' 'Orlando Furioso'"
in Ariosto, Opere Minore (a cura di Cesare Segre),
Milano-Napoli, 195A, p. 872.

 

77

Astolfo from telling of her lascivious ways, turned him
into a myrtle tree.

Astolfo tells Ruggiero that the beautiful Alcina
is sister to the Fata Morgana (Morgan le Fay of Arthurian
legend), and that the two are wicked, given to every sort
of vice. The two have usurped the rule of the island
from their elder sister, Logistilla, its lawful ruler.
Astolfo is far from the first to be seduced, then
abandoned. The island is full of discarded lovers
changed into animals, rocks, pools, or trees so that they
cannot report Alcina's perfidy. Astolfo, too, is normally
Speechless, but he is enabled to speak when injured by
the plungings of the hippogriff.“

. Astolfo explains to Ruggiero that Alcina and her
wicked sister, La Fata Morgana, rule most of the island,
only a small portion behind a rugged mountain being still
in the control of the virtuous Logistilla. He warns
Ruggiero that it is almost impossible to elude Alcina's
wiles and that the way to the safety of Logistilla's
kingdom is rugged and beset by dangers.

Ruggiero thanks him courteously, and, swearing
by his love for Bradamante to help Astolfo if possible,
sets out toward Logistilla's kingdom. When he is in

sight of Alcina's shining palace, the road divides, and

 

qu. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 22ff. and Dante,
Inferno, XIII, 22ff.

T8

he dutifully leaves the broad, flat road to the castle to
take the righthand fork that leads up the mountain. His
way is contested, however, by fierce monsters, some with
the bodies of men and the faces of cats and monkeys,

some with goats' feet, some centaurs; some are young,
some old, some naked, others wrapped in skins. This
motley crew forces Ruggiero, in spite of his vigorous
defense, ever closer to Alcina's castle. He thinks of
flying over them on the hippogriff, but is afraid to
mount that wild animal after his previous experience. At
last, he is brought to the gate of the castle. Two
beautiful ladies, riding snow white unicorns, escort him
into the castle, where he is welcomed and served by
"wanton maidens" dressed in green and crowned with young
leaves.

Inside the castle walls is a garden of love where
young people amuse themselves with music, poetry, and
dalliance. Belta and Leggiadria (the two lovely young
ladies) pray Ruggiero's aid against a giantess who pre-
vents their using part of their land. Her name is
Erifilla, and she is long-toothed, sharp-nailed, the
mother of many sons as wicked as herself, the motly crew
Ruggiero had previously encountered. Ruggiero does,
indeed, conquer the giantess, whose steed is a wolf,

although he does not kill her.

79

Thereafter, Ruggiero returns to the castle,
becomes violently enamoured of the beautiful Alcina, and
succumbs to the charm of life in her castle. He and the
other dwellers there live only for luxury and delight--
feasting, bathing, jousting, and dancing.

Meanwhile, the chaste and shining maiden, Brada—
mante, has set out to search for her love. Her search
is interrupted, however, by Melissa, a good enchantress,
who tells Bradamante where Ruggiero is, but convinces her
that she, Melissa, is the better equipped to retrieve
Ruggiero. Accordingly, Melissa, taking Bradamante's
magic ring, journeys to Alcina's island where she finds
Ruggiero alone. He is dressed in soft, rich clothing,
worked in gold. He wears a splendid necklace. On his
once virile arms are shining bracelets. From his ears
hang loops of gold. He has become a soft, effeminate

person, a recreant knight.

Non era in lui di sano altro che'l nome;
corroto tutto i1 resto, e piu che mezzo
Cosi Ruggier fu ritrovato, tanto

da l'esser suo mutato per incanto.

Nothing of him remained healthy except his name;

All the rest was corrupt, more than half.

Thus was Ruggiero found

So greatly changed from himself by enchantment.

(VII, lv)
The horrified Melissa reproaches Ruggiero and

reminds him of his faithful Bradamante. Then, with the
aid of the ring, she shows him the true Alcina, not

beautiful but haglike, and the true castle, rotten and

8O

wasted. Ruggiero, with Melissa's aid, escapes from
Alcina's castle on one of Alcina's horses, Melissa
having undertaken to keep and train the hippogriff.
Conquering this time the crew of guardians, he betakes
himself safely to Logistilla's kingdom.

When Alcina and her followers sally forth to capture
and return Ruggiero to the castle, they leave the castle
undefended, and Melissa takes advantage of their absence
to return Alcina's former lovers to their human shapes
and send them back to their homes with their promises to
stay there. Among these is Astolfo whom Ruggiero had
particularly asked her to help, returning the magic ring
that she might better succeed. She gives Astolfo his
arms, including his golden lance, and he returns to
France, where he gains much honor.

The most useful key to the underlying meaning of this
tale may be the cue-names which I think Ariosto used
throughout. In the order of their appearance the
characters are: (l) Ruggiero, whose name is akin both
to French rgggg (red) and Italian ruggire (to roar), so
that we have all the violent connotations of red hair,
fire, ruddy (sahguihe) complexion, etc., with suggestions
of a sun-hero; (2) Astolfo, whose name seems to be
related to the Latin S3213, a feminine garment, figura-
tively said to be worn by men who were voluptuaries;

(3) Alcina, whose name seems to be related to Latin

81

cinaedus (wanton) and cinedo (Italian for a male prosti-
tute); (A) Erifilla, whose name is but an Italianized
version of Eriphyla, who, Greek legend tells us,
betrayed her husband, Polynices, for a magic golden
necklace; (5) Logistilla, whose name derives from lgggg

both in the sense of reason and in that of word of God;

 

(6) Bradamante, whose name would seem to combine amante
(lover or loving) with 23392 (wild in the sense of
natural or unspoiled); and (7) Melissa, whose name is
particularly interesting.

Milissa (Queen Bee) as a name for a revered female
personage would seem to derive from remotest antiquity.
From earliest times the bee, with its cleanly and
industrious habits and its seemingly miraculous produc-
tion of honey, was connected in religious ritual with
numerous goddesses and with their priestesses. Demeter
and Persephone, for instance, sometimes were represented
as bees, and one title of the Delphic priestess was
Aexcis Melissa, Queen Bee of Delphi.5 There was, in
addition, the bee-nymph, Melissa, who, along with the
goat-nymph, Amalthea, nursed the infant Zeus in his

Cretan cave, feeding him goat's milk and honey.6

 

5Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der Classichen
Alterum-Wissenschaft, Stuttgart, 1931, pp. 523—530.

6Ibid. See also J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the

 

 

 

Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1903, pp. AA2-Uu3;
and Graves, The Greek Myths, 7.3.

 

 

82

If, as seems probable, these identifications were
known to Ariosto, then the identification with the
Delphic oracle might have for him the connotation of the
ability to foretell the future, and this Melissa does
for Bradamante in Canto III. Delphi's connection with
Apollo might suggest that light of truth which dispels
error,7 as Melissa shows Ruggiero the truth about Alcina
and her castle.

The idea of Melissa as nurse to the infant Zeus
might quite easily bring to mind the spiritual nourish-
ment of a young hero, that is, instruction in the ways of
righteousness, and this, also, Melissa provides when she
lectures Ruggiero in Alcina's garden and sends him off
to her doublet, Logistilla. She also undertakes to
school the hippogriff which is, as I shall show later,
Ruggiero's passionate nature.

The form of Zeus's nourishment, milk and honey,
might easily bring also to Ariosto's mind the many Old
Testament references to the promised land as a land
"flowing with milk and honey" glosed in the Glossa

Ordinaria8 as

 

 

7See Fulgentius's interpretation of the Apollo-
Python story, Appendix II, p. 190.

8Glossa Ordinaria, Lib. Levit, Caput XX, vers 2A,
in J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae: Cursus Completus,
Tomus 113, Paris, 1879.

 

83

Deliciis beatitudinis, quibus nihil suavius,

nihil dulcius, et sine omne labore et dolore

erunt. . . .

With blessed delights, than which nothing is

softer, nothing sweeter, and they are without

any labor or pain. . . .
Melissa proffers, therefore, the delights of Paradise and
perhaps also those ordinances of God described in Psalm
XVIII (Vulgate) as "dulciora super mel et favum,"
"sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." In all these
interpretations, Melissa is an appropriate name for one
who is the prOponent of wisdom and virtue, the conqueror
of error, and the enemy of mindless passion. That she is
also Divine Grace may be suggested by her ability to
rescue Ruggiero when Bradamante, who has become a type
of Chastity, cannot do so. Without Divine Grace, Chastity
cannot prevail against Lust.

The cue names, however, are just that--cue names.
The personages who bear them are rather more complex than
their names would indicate. Ruggiero and Astolfo are both
courteous and brave, truly 23335 knights, Paladins of
Charlemagne's kingdom. Bradamante, also, is brave, a
valiant fighter. She is a chaste maiden and a loyal
lover, desiring for Ruggiero fame and honor in contrast
to Atlante, the magician, who seeks only to prolong
Ruggiero's life.
Alcina also is a complex character, having some of

the attributes of Aphrodite, some of Circe, some of

8A

Luxuria, and some of Morgan 1e Fay. Ariosto tells us that
she is Morgan's twin sister, that is, he--or rather,
Boiardo, who originated the character--has Split the
figure of Morgan, leaving with La Fata Morgana the tra-
ditional treachery and malice, giving to Alcina the
wantonness, along with the practice of keeping her

lovers in happy imprisonment.9

Morgan, the enchantress,
could transform men's appearance, and that is but a step
from Circe, who transforms men into animals. We are
reminded that both Morgan and Circe are debased forms of
the Great Goddess in all her bewildering variety--ever
virgin, ever wanton, old as the world, young as the
spring, ever kind, ever cruel, ever generous, ever greedy.
Of this goddess, Aphrodite was, of course, one manifesta-
tion, so it is appropriate that Alcina should be found
fishing. Aphrodite, the Foamborn, was the goddess of
fishes (considered an Aphrodisiac food) and was connected
particularly with the dolphin whose lustiness was a byword.
But the figure of Aphrodite had also degenerated, by
Ariosto's time into that of Luxuria, the wine-bibbing,
lavishly—clothed figure portrayed by Prudentius,lo so that

the silken garments worn at Alcina's court are appropriate,

 

9R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de
Troyes, New York, 19A9, pp. 118sll9.

loPrudentius, Psychomachia in Prudentius (Loeb
Library), Cambridge, Mass., 1962, Vol. I. (11.310-3AA).

 

 

 

85

as are the careless ease of the life there and the
indulgence in time-wasting pleasure. They suggest
Luxuria, that concern for ease which diverts knights
from the pursuit of honor and fame.

It is interesting to notice also that Alcina's
name carries overtones of unnatural passions and of
prostitution, as opposed to the natural love suggested
by Bradamante's name. To become Alcina's lover is to
prostitute one's manhood or to pervert it, devoting to
bodily pleasure the virility which a true knight devotes
to honorable combat.

Erifilla also presents an interesting combination
of characteristics. She wears rich armor-~gold, ornamented
with emeralds and sapphires, rubies and jacinth. On her
shield is painted a swollen, poisonous toad. She is a
giantess of awesome proportions whose teeth are long,
whose bite is poisonous, whose nails are as sharp and
dangerous as a bear's claws. Instead of a horse, she
rides a huge, fierce wolf. When one remembers the wolf's
connection in the medieval mind with fraud and violence
and its use by Dante in the opening of the Inferno,ll
one is inclined to see in Erifilla a figure for Avarice
advancing itself by fraud and violence. If, as I suspect,

her vicious sons are the deadly and venial sins, then she

 

11For a full discussion of this symbol, see H. F.
Dunbar, Symbolism in Medieval Thought and its Consumma-
tion in the Divine Comedy, New York, 1961.

 

 

86

seems almost certainly to be Avarice, Cupiditas, "Radix

 

enim omnium malorum est cupiditas" (for cupidity is the
root of all evils, 1 Timothy, VI, 10). Nor can we

forget that 1323 is both Latin and Italian for prostitute,
the person who uses sexual desire for gain, an idea which
would reinforce this interpretation.

The derivation of the name would also seem to bear
out this interpretation, but the figure of Erifilla is
not quite so simple. The original Eriphyla desired the
gold necklace, not for its monetary value, but for its
magical ability to preserve her beauty from decay. She
may be, therefore, more a figure for vanity or falSe
pride than for cupidity, though there is still an element
of treachery or fraud. The reading of Pride is
strengthened when we see that Ariosto twice mentions
Erifilla's pride: she rides "a1 fiero incontro," (to
the proud encounter, VII, vi), and Ruggiero lifts her
proud head, "1a tests superba" (VII, vii), when he has
defeated her. Even her role as mother of sins might
strengthen the reading of Pride, for in Ecclesiasticus X,
lA-lS, we read: I

Initium superbiae hominis apostatare a Deo;

quoniam abeo qui fecit illum recessit cor ejus,

quoniam initium omnis peccati est superbia. . . .

The beginning of man's pride is a falling away
from God

for his heart draws away from him who made him,
for the beginning of every sin is pride. . . .

87

The toad on her shield, also, is swollen with poison
as one is "swollen with pride." Bloomfield, however,
lists three other qualities as symbolized by the toad:
Envy, Anger, and Avarice.l2 If we equate Anger with

Hate, these are among the qualities depicted on the outer

wall of the garden of Love in the Roman de la Rose (11.

 

l29ff) as enemies of love and so are suited to Erifilla
as an enemy to Alcina's court. The toad is also a symbol

13

of the forces of death and darkness and so particularly
suited to oppose Ruggiero if he is partially a sun-hero.
I would suggest that Erifilla, with her wolf and
toad, combines all these ideas, but with the emphasis on
Pride and Avarice. She suggests in her single person
Dante's lion and wolf who (along with the leopard) block
his path to repentance (Inferno, I, 30-60). The lion and
the wolf are the sins of middle and old age; therefore,
although in the flower of his youth, Ruggiero may have
succumbed to the sin of the leopard, represented by
Alcina, he is able to defeat Pride and Avarice represented
by Erifilla. Yet he does not kill Erifilla. There
remains the possibility that he will have to fight her

again.

 

12Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins,
East Lansing, Michigan, 1952, pp. 2H5—2A7.

 

13J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, New York,
1962, pp. 109, 151, 326.

 

88

In addition to his cue-named personages, Ariosto
has in this episode two personified abstractions, Belta
(Beauty) and Leggiadria (Graciousness). These two
charming damsels appear outside the castle gates riding
snow white unicorns. Immediately, the villainous crowd
disperses, and Ruggiero, blushing, meekly follows the
two ladies through the castle's golden gate. Both in
dispersing the attackers and in conquering Ruggiero,
Beauty and Graciousness have accomplished what force
could not. The two lovely ladies are attended within the
castle by "lascive donzelle," wanton damsels, dressed in
green and crowned with young leaves, signifying, I
believe, the natural generative forces of youth and
spring which increase the natural powers of B213; and
Leggedria. It is these two personages, also who beseech
Ruggiero's aid against Erifilla, for Beauty and Gracious-
ness are the natural enemies of Avarice, Pride, Envy,
and Hate as Luxuria is not.

As the various human personages in this episode
bear multiple connotations, so do the animals. We have
seen those of the toad, wolf, and dolphin, but there
remain the unicorns and the hippogriff. The unicorn
would seem to have been most commonly a beneficent and

highly moral figure in the art of the middle ages; indeed,

89

sometimes it is a figure for Christ.lu Its gentleness

and chastity are both emphasized. The image is ambiguous,
however, for in earliest times, it would appear that

the unicorn's fierce strength and sexual prowess (of
which the single horn is an obvious symbol) were his

major characteristics. Indeed, the powdered horn of his
closest relative in the real world, the rhinoceros, was
considered an aphrodisiac.15 The unicorn's well—known
weakness for virgins emphasizes the ambiguity of the

figure, for the very word virginity, like chastity, is a

 

reminder of its Opposite. We are at liberty then to see
the snow white unicorns either as chastity conquered by
beauty and graciousness or as virility made the servant
of feminine charm, or one may conclude, as I do, that
Ariosto had both concepts more or less consciously in
mind.

The hippogriff, Atlante's magic steed, is, as his
name suggests, a hybrid. He is half—horse, half griffin.
His front, or griffin, half is lion-headed and lion-
bodied with eagle's beaks, claws, and wings. His hind
half is a stallion. He combines, therefore, the character-
istics of three widely used images for strength, high

courage, and virility: the lion, the eagle, and the

 

1“T. H. White, The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts,

New York, 1960, pp. 20-21.

 

15R. Graves, The White Goddess, Ch. XIV.

 

9O

warhorse. Ruggiero, like Perceval in La Queste del Saint

 

Graal, is unable to control his steed; instead, he is
swept away to a far off land, so that one is reminded
again of Plato's horse of passion which must be con-
trolled by reason. This interpretation is strengthened
when, at the close of the episode, Melissa undertakes to
school the hippogriff and takes him with her to
Logistilla's castle. It is appropriate that the fiery
Ruggiero should be swept into trouble by those same
masculine virtues and passions which, when controlled
by reason, will make him a perfect knight, just as it is
appropriate that Astolfo, the voluptuary, should be swept
away by lust. Ariosto is reminding us that any passion
is dangerous when not controlled by reason and religion.
The fable, then, is double. Two prggr knights are
swept by uncontrolled passion into the kingdom of Luxuria.
The two are saved by the Grace of God, through his word
and through reason. The kingdom is on an island, a
microcosm of the earth in all its beauty ruled by wicked-
ness and treachery in the persona of La Fata Morgana and
by sensuality in the persona of Alcina. Even their rule
is contested by Avarice and Pride in the persona of
Erifilla. Only a small portion of the island is ruled by
Virtue and Reason in the persona of Logistilla, who is
the friend of Melissa, the nurse of Virtue. That small

portion can be reached only by climbing a rugged mountain

91

and crossing a swift river, and the way is made more
difficult by the assaults of fierce monsters. These
monsters bear many of the attributes of beasts, many
of Dionysiac revellers. They are the sins to which
mankind is prone, the Sins that reduce man to beast, and
once again we have the identification of the goat-
Dionysus with Evil.

If one is successful in eluding the clutches of
Alcina, if one can conquer Erifilla, if one can repel
the attacks of her monstrous sons, one finds in

Logistilla's kingdom Salvamento (VII, lvii) which means

 

both safety and salvation. It is, however, impossible

 

to achieve the journey to salvamento without the aid of

 

Melissa.

The two young heroes are swept by their very youth
with its natural passions into the sin of sensual delight.
But this sin has natural time limits. Age brings reform
if nothing else can. Or, as Ariosto expresses it,

Alcina tires of each lover in turn. But Luxuria has
deprived the lovers of their true humanity, so that they
are said to be turned into animals, rocks, fountains, etc.
Thus, Astolfo becomes a myrtle tree. The myrtle tree,
however, is not simply plant-likeness or non-humanity.

The myrtle is the tree of death, as Vergil knew and as

Milton reminds us in the opening lines of Lycidas. It

92

( _
is also the tree of love, sacred to Aphrodite.lj As the

tree of love and death and as a fragrant evergreen, it is
also the tree of immortality, most particularly connected
with the dying-reviving year-king. If we think of death
as the death of the soul, it is most appropriate that
Astolfo, the king's son, having given up reason, the
soul's prime attribute, for the sake of lust, should be
changed into a tree sacred to death and Aphrodite, to be
transformed into a human being again only by the Grace of
God. Ariosto, like Apuleius and Dante, has used
metamorphosis as a metaphor for spiritual experience.
Ruggiero, although he is apparently as guilty as
Astolfo, is not really so. When Mercilla finds him, he
is, indeed, a recreant knight, but he is able to feel
remorse when she upbraids him (VII, lxv), and, with the
aid of her ring of truth, he is able to see the ugliness
of Alcina's kingdom. Because his soul is not yet dead,
he retains his human form. The metamorphosis here seems
to be the outward and visible Sign of an inner and
spiritual death, from which resurrection can come only
by the intervention of God in the person of His emissary,
Melissa. It serves as a warning to those who, like

Ruggiero are still spiritually alive enough to repent.

 

16Graves, White Goddess, p. 282.

 

CHAPTER VII

METAMORPHOSIS IN THE FAERIE QUEENE

 

The sixteenth century, which had early (1516) seen

Ariosto's Orlando Furioso with its knowing use of meta-

 

morphosis in the transformation of Astolfo, was to see

in its closing decade the publication of another work

in which metamorphosis was an important device, Spenser's

Faerie Queene (1590). In this "continued allegory, or

darke conceit," as Spenser wrote, ". . . the general ende

of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person
1

in vertuous and gentle discipline." To this end Spenser

presents in the completed portion of The Faerie Queene

 

portraits of six virtues (Holiness, Temperance, Chastity,
Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy), bringing to the task
not only his poetic imagination but all his vast store

of learning. In the work there are echoes of the

Odyssey, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Roman de la Rose, the

 

 

Arthurian romances, and of course and primarily, the

Orlando Furioso.

 

 

1"A Letter of the Authors" prefaced to The Faerie
Queene in The Complete Poetical Works of SpenserVIR. E.
Neil Dodge, ed.7, Cambridge, Mass., 1908, p. 136. All
textual references to The Faerie Queene are to this
edition.

 

 

 

93.

9“

Although we have no real evidence that Spenser knew
Dante, there are certain resemblances between the Faerie

Queene and the Divina Commedia which indicate a simi-

 

larity in the mental process of the two poets. The
chief of these is the tremendous preoccupation with light
and vision which runs through both works. For Dante,
from the time he emerges from the "selva oscura" to the
moment when his eyes are dazzled by the multifoliate
rose which is the glory of God, darkness and night are
danger and evil, starlight, sunlight, morning are hopeful
and good. For Spenser, also, nightfall and darkness
bring sadness or dismay, terror or evil, while he greets
dawn with joy. The happy scenes, such as the welcoming
of the Redcrosse Knight to Una's castle (I, xii) are
drenched in sunlight in which flowers glow and knightly
armor gleams.

In both works, this light symbolism is allied with
a preoccupation with sight and appearance. Throughout the
Divina Commedia, whenever a personage is described, the
appearance fits precisely the qualities of that per-
sonage, whether we turn to Geryon with his kind face and
scorpion's tale in the figure of Fraud or to Matilda's
youthful gait and innocent smile in the Earthly
Paradise. Spenser's characters also define their natures

in their appearance, so that the evil personages must

95

somehow disguise themselves if they are not to be found
out. Errour does so by avoiding the full light, which
is truth:

For light She hated as the deadly bale,

Ay wont in desert darkness to remaine,

Where plain none might her see, nor she see any

plaine (I, i, 16).

In an allied symbolism, Spenser gives other evil characters
the power to change their outward appearance, so that they
seem to be what they are not: Archimago appears to be a
pious hermit; Duessa appears to be a beautiful lady;
but eventually, the light of truth will show them as they
are, as Duessa is shown filthy and deformed, "a loathly
wrinkled hag" when Una orders her to be stripped (I, ix
u5_u9).

Akin to false appearance is the inability to see
clearly. As Irwin Panofsky has pointed out,2 blindness,
except for the blindness of Homer, was throughout the
middle ages symbolic of evil. So we have Blind Devotion,
mother of Abessa (I, iii), Aveugle, son of Night, father
of the three pagans, Sansloy, Sansjoy, and Sansfoy (I, v),
and Malbecco, the half—blind, miserly cuckold (III,

ix-x).

With all this concern with clarity of vision and

honesty of form, it is not surprising that Spenser, like

Dante, should use metamorphosis to show character, for

 

2Irwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, New York

and Evanston, 1962, pp. 107-110.

 

96

in metamorphosis, as both poets used it, the body, the
outward appearance, changes to conform with the reality
of the soul. Spenser, in fact, uses this device in
several ways. He uses well-known examples from classical
antiquity to emphasize the underlying reality of an
episode; he uses metamorphoses derived from these and
from the works of previous artists to Show inwardness of
character or philosophical truth; and, for one character,
Malbecco, he contrives a metamorphosis which is entirely
original.

Approaching the metamorphoses in the order named,
we have first the allusions to mythology: Britomart's
comparison of herself to Narcissus, the painted scenes in
Busyrane's castle, the flowers in the garden of Adonis,
and the decorations in Castle Joyous.

The first of these occurs in Book III, Canto I
when Britomart, having conquered six knights who had set
upon the Redcrosse Knight, is led with him into Castle
Joyous, the home of the Lady of Delight, Malecasta. The
name of the castle, reminiscent as it is of Lancelot's
"Joyeux Garde" accords well with the name of its mistress,
Malecasta (Unchastity). Malecasta is served by six
knights: Gardante (Looking), Parlante (Talking),

Jocante (Joking or Playing), Basciante (Kissing),
Bacchante (Drinking), and Noctante (Nighting; spending

the night together)--the actions and circumstances

97

whereby chastity is endangered. Castle Joyous, then, is
the castle of unlawful love, so that it is appropriate

that the first of its furnishings to greet Britomart's

eye is a tapestry encircling the great hall and depicting
Venus's seduction of Adonis, his death, and his transforma-
tion into a flower. The transformation, however, seems

the least important part of the tapestry. Spenser mentions
it in three lines, but he devotes two complete stanzas to
the seductive arts where with Venus did "steale his
needlesse hart away/ And joyd his love in secret unespyde"
(III, 1, 37). The Adonis story here is used to reinforce
the atmosphere of seduction and unlawful, secret love.

The second allusion to classical metamorphosis comes
in Canto II. Britomart's nurse, having discovered that
Britomart is in love with an image she has seen in her
father's magic crystal, comforts her and assures her that
hers is lawful love, nothing to be ashamed of. Britomart,
she says, is not like Myrrha and Biblis, whose love was
incestuous, nor yet is she like PasiphaE, whose love for
a bull was against "kynd." "But," says Britomart in
efTect, "I'm as bad as Narcissus, for I love a shadow."
'The nurse stoutly replies:

'Nought like,‘ quoth shee, 'for that same wretched boy
Was of him selfe the ydle paramour,

Both love and lover, without hope of joy;
For which he faded to a watry flowre (III, ii, A5).

98

Britomart may love a shadow, but it is the shadow of a
real knight, with a real body which may be enjoyed, if
only the knight can be found. Spenser, in his legend of
chastity, is affirming the virtue of natural, lawful
love. Lawless love, in the normal sense of unchastity,
he had disposed of in Canto I when Britomart, aided by
the Redcrosse Knight had fought her way out of Malecasta's
castle, even though Slightly wounded by Gardante. Now,
he turns to Ovid's metamorphoses to remind us of more
offensive forms of lawless love; incest, with Myrrha and
Biblis; bestiality, with Pasiphae; and, with Narcissus,
self-love which can know no real satisfaction. Britomart
in this book is not only the knight of chastity, she is
also the literary daughter of Ariosto's Bradamante, that
other figure of chastity whose name means "natural love."
For Spenser, chastity is not celibacy; it is fidelity

to one love, lawful, that is married or marriageable, and
most especially not "against kynd." Narcissus's self-
infatuation is as unnatural as is Pasiphe's love for the
bull.

Later (III, vi, “5), Spenser uses Narcissus and
Adonis again, as well as Hyacinthus and "sad Amaranthus."
This time, however, the emphasis is on their rebirth as
flowers after untimely death, for in this canto we are
in the Garden of Adonis, ruled by Venus Generatrix. The

garden is the nursery of all life and the place to which

99

all flesh returns, for, Spenser emphasizes, nothing is
ever lost or really destroyed. All matter is but changed
"and often altered to and froe" (III, vi, 37). Narcissus,
Hyacinthus, and Amaranthus are not dead, but are living
flowers and are in some sense still alive in their human
shapes, as Adonis is in his--invisible, but "eterne in
mutabilite."

The fourth and last of these classical allusions
comes in Canto XI, when Britomart has entered the castle
of Busyrane, intent upon rescuing Amoret from his enchant-
ments. Busyrane had spirited Amoret away on her wedding
night, using a show of jest and play to prevent the other
guests from becoming alarmed. Now, Amoret is imprisoned
deep in his dungeon, and he seeks to gain her love.

When Britomart first approached the castle with
Amoret's husband, Scudamour, she was appalled to see that
it was surrounded by a curtain of fire,

And turning backe to Scudamour, thus sayd:

'What monstrous enmity provoke we heare,

Foolhardy as 'th' Earthes children, the which made

Batteill against the gods? So we a god invade
(III, xi, 22).

She was right to feel dismay, for she was about to
"invade" a very great god indeed, Cupid, the god of
courtly love. Busyrane's castle is that god's abode. In

fact, as I read the canto, the enchanter, Busyrane is

Courtly Love, or, perhaps, even Cupid himself. His very

100

3

name, combining Busiris and Siren combines seductiveness
and treachery with cruelty, the qualities which the chaste
Spenser would see in courtly love or in the god of
courtly love.
The most important furnishing in the outer room

of Busyrane's castle is an altar on which stands an
image of Cupid, shining gold body, great varicolored
wings, blindfolded, arrows in hand, one foot triumphantly
on the neck of a dying dragon. This is the god, and the
castle is his temple. It is fitting, therefore, that the
outer hall should be decorated in a style that would turn
worhsippers' thoughts to the greatness of the god. These
decorations are tapestries woven in Silk and gold,
depicting Cupid's triumphs: the many times Zeus became
an animal to seduce a human maiden or a nymph and the
similar ignominies of Apollo, Neptune, Saturn, Mars, and
Venus, as well as the abasements of "kings, Queenes,
lords, ladies, knights, and damsels gent" (III, xi, A6).
Only a part of these humiliations involve metamorphosis,
but they all show the abasement of gods and men beneath
the power of Cupid. This is clear when we see Jupiter
turned to a ram, a bull, a golden shower, while Cupid
plays on Zeus's throne, saying,

Lo! now the hevens obey to me alone

And take me for their Jove, whiles Jove to earth
is gone (III, xi, 35).

 

3Alice Blitch,"Etymon and Image in the Faerie Queene,"
unpublished doctoral thesis, Michigan State University, 1965,

101

Intermingled with the scenes of great gods sub-
jugated by Cupid's power are the scenes of the sad fates
of his lesser victims, demigods and men: Daphne turned
into a tree, Hyacinthus and Coronis into flowers. Cupid's
power knows no limits, as his heart knows no mercy. The
golden tapestry is both a celebration of the greatness of
the god and a warning to Britomart that she is engaging
in combat a very mighty power. Having conquered with
ease simple Unchastity, having thrust aside Unnatural
Love, the valiant Britomart is about to meet her greatest
challenge, Courtly Love, wherein Chastity may be entrapped
by a romantic misconception just as Amoret, the virgin
bride, was entrapped by Busyrane.

When we turn from direct allusions to classical
instances of metamorphosis to Spenser's own metamorphoses
derived from previous works, we come first to the episode
of Fradubio and Fraelissa (1, ii). In the previous canto,
the Redcrosse Knight and Una have been separated. In
this canto, Redcrosse, wandering alone, has been challenged
by and has killed the Saracen, Sansfoy,and has taken
over the guardianship of Sansfoy's beautiful companion,
Fidessa. Fidessa has spun him a tale to appeal to his
chivalry and has reSponded to his amorous overtures with
"coy lookes," so that he is utterly beguiled, never guess-

ing that she is the wicked Duessa in disguise.

102

When, tired with the heat of the day, Redcrosse and
Fidessa rest in the shade of a great tree, Redcrosse
thinks to please the lady by breaking branches to make a
wreath for her hair, but scarcely has he plucked a bough
when the broken bark begins to bleed and a piteous voice
begins to cry for mercy:

. . 'O spare with guilty hands to teare

My tender sides in this rough rynd embard,

But fly, ah! fly far hence away, for feare

Least to you hap that happened to me heare,

And to this wretched lady, my deare love;

0 too deare love, love bought with death too deare!‘
(1, ii, 31)

When Redcrosse has recovered somewhat from shock,
he inquires the identity of the speaker within the tree
and learns the wretched story of Fradubio and his lady,
Fraelissa. Fradubio, riding with Fraelissa, had
encountered another knight, also accompanied by a
beautiful lady. The two knights quarrelled over whose
lady was more beautiful and came to blows. Fradubio
killed the unknown knight and thus came into possession
of the second lady. Then, beloved of two fair damsels,
he sought to determine which was the fairer and playfully
declared that the chosen one should have a crown of
roses. But the second lady was, in reality, the
ubiquitous Duessa in masquerade. Using her magic arts,

she caused Fraelissa to appear so ugly that Fradubio

believed Fraelissa to be a witch, fit only to be slain.

103

Duessa stayed his hand, however, and they left Fraelissa
"where she now is turned to treen mould" (1, ii, 39).

Thereafter, Fradubio became Duessa's happy lover,
until one morning he chanced to see her bathing at the
hour of prime when her true form was revealed. She was
filthy, foul, old, misshapen. Horrified, Fradubio
sought means to free himself from her, but she, per-
ceiving his changed feeling, took advantage of his falling
asleep to smear his body with magic ointments and convey
him to the Side of the tree-Fraelissa. There, she turned
him also into a tree, unable of course to move, but
still able to suffer.

When Redcrosse has heard this tale, he asks how
long the enchantment will last. "Till we be bathed in a
living well," is the reply (I, iii, 43). Redcrosse
volunteers to find the well, but Fradubio answers that
the time is not yet. The knight thrusts the bleeding
bough into the ground, closes the wounded bark with
clay, and turns back to Fidessa.

We are, in this episode, once more in the presence
of the bleeding tree, enabled to speak when wounded.
This motif appears first, as we have seen, in the Aeneid
(III, 22ff) when Aeneas attempts to break myrtle branches
for a sacrificial altar. It appears again in the Divina
C_0mmedia (£22.: XIII, 22ff) in the wood of the suicides;

and it appears yet again in Orlando Furioso in the

 

10“

episode of Alcina's island (Cantos VI, VII, and VIII)
which we have considered in the previous chapter. Whether
Spenser knew Dante's treatment of this motif is Open to
question, but he did, of course, know both Ariosto's and
Vergil's. His emphasis on Redcrosse's horror at hearing
the tree speak is, indeed, more reminiscent of Vergil
than of Ariosto, as is his mention of the blood drops that
welled from the wound. In all three previous works, the
tree speaks to protest being wounded, as it does in this
episode. In Vergil and Ariosto, however, it then issues
a warning, while in Dante's version there is no warning.
It seems likely, therefore, that Ariosto's Astolfo
incident reminded Spenser of Vergil's Polydorus incident,
which he then followed closely in his own introduction
to the Fradubio story, though the lengthy tale itself is
more like Ariosto's. We may perhaps go one step further
and suggest that, Since both Vergil and Ariosto specify
that their tree is a myrtle, it is likely that Spenser's
unnamed tree is also a myrtle, the tree of death.

In interpreting this incident we are helped, as
we were with the similar incident in Orlando, by certain
cue names: Fradubio (Brother Doubtful), for instance,
wavers between two loves, the one truly beautiful, the
other only seeming so. Even when he has recognized
Duessa's true ugliness, however, he hesitates to break

away from her.

105

Duessa, the wicked enchantress, plays many parts

in the Faerie Queene, but she is always true to her name,

 

Doubleness or Falsity. In this episode she has taken
the name of Fidessa, Faith. She is

. . . clad in scarlet red,

Purfled with gold and pearle of rich assay;

And like a Persian mitre on her hed

She wore, with crowns and ownches garnished

(I, iii, 13).
The new name, coupled with her rich apparel which suggests
the cardinal's red robes and the bishOp's mitre, shows her
to be here a figure for the outward show of faith where
there is no inner faith, with a suggestion of the Roman
church, the Faith. Sansfoy, Fidessa's companion, is of
course "Without Faith," an appropriate companion for the
hypocritical, double dealing, Fidessa-Duessa.
Fraelissa's name is something of a problem. She
is interpreted by Dodge (p. 817) as "Such true faith as
is possible to a doubter." If we accept this interpre-
tation, the name is probably a pun on £3311: the spelling
suggested by that of Fradubio.
The situation, then, is this: Redcrosse has lost

Una (Truth) through the weakness of his own faith in
her and through his inability to look beyond appearances.
Wandering without her, he is confronted by two figures,
the proud Saracen, Sansfoy, and the outwardly beautiful

Fidessa. Sansfoy attacks boldly, encounters equal bold-

ness and superior strength and is killed. Fidessa,

106

however, uses beauty, charm, and guile to seduce
Redcrosse, and he succumbs to her wiles, just as he has
fallen victim to every false appearance that he has so
far met. He has never stopped to investigate whether
what he sees is truth or seeming. He is spiritually
half blind. This is the weakness he and Fradubio share,
just as a heated temperament was the shared fault of
Ruggiero and Astolfo.

At this dangerous moment, Redcrosse is vouchsafed
a warning, just as Ruggiero in a similar situation was
warned by Astolfo. He finds the tree-Fradubio, who had
also abandoned his true lady and succumbed to Duessa's
charms. Fradubio had been the devoted lover of Fraelissa
before he accepted the companionship of Duessa. Then,
torn between the beauties of his first love, a weak but
true faith, and the seeming beauties of his faithless
new love, he succumbed to the latter and found temporary
happiness.

The morning light, however, as so often in Spenser,
brought a realization of truth. At the hour of prime,
Fradubio saw Duessa for what she was--foul, deformed.
Still, true to his name, he hesitated. Instead of break-
ing away at once, he cast about for "safe Opportunitie"
(I, ii, “1). He allowed himself to fall asleep and, as
he lay "drowned in sleepie night," (I, ii, 42), the

witch worked her charms and turned him into a tree--

107

helpless, immobile, but still suffering, in a sort of
Hell, from which he can be redeemed only by the water of
life.

Fradubio's transformation is clear, but why was the
innocent Fraelissa turned into a tree? First, we should
notice that Spenser nowhere says that Duessa worked the
transformation, simply "she now is turned to treen mould."
I would suggest that Fradubio, all unwitting, worked the
metamorphosis, for his frail faith was dependent upon him
for life. When he turned away, Fraelissa became as
spiritually impotent as a tree.

In the first book as a whole, devoted to the per-
fection of the Redcrosse knight as Holinesse, this inci-
dent serves as a warning abainst Doubt, of course, but
also against the tendency to accept outward Show too
easily. Redcrosse has allowed himself to suspect the
chastity and fidelity of Una, so that he has wandered
away from her. Without her, he is vulnerable to Fidessa's
wiles. Although he is warned by Doubt himself in the
person of Fradubio, he turns again to Fidessa. He is
obviously about to experience Fradubio's fate, just as
Ruggiero was about to experience Astolfo's when
Melissa found him in Alcina's garden. But, although
Redcrosse is led into the House of Pride by Duessa,
although he has a terrible battle with Sansjoy, although

he is held prisoner in the dungeon of the giant, Orgoglio,

108

he is finally rescued by Arthur, as Ruggiero was rescued
by Melissa. He is then taken to the counterpart Of
Logistilla's kingdom, Coelia's castle. There he is
instructed by Faith, HOpe, and Charity, learns patience
and repentance, becomes in fact the true knight of
Holinesse. Thus perfected, he is able to fight the Great
Dragon, who is Evil or the Devil. Even thus perfected,
however, Holinesse would have lost the fight to Evil had
he not at two crucial moments been bathed in the water of
a sacred well. The first well is the Water Of Life, which
can restore the dead (probably the sacrament of baptism);
the second flows from the Tree Of Life and can cure all
wounds (probably Holy Communion). If Spenser had completed
The Faerie Queene, it is probable that Fradubio and I
Fraelissa would also have been bathed in water from these
sacred wells and would have been restored to their former
state, strengthened by their experience of Doubt and
Deceit.

Spenser's next derived metamorphoses form a cluster
about the figure Of Acrasia, the wicked enchantress,
Opponent Of Sir Guyon (Temperance) in Book II. Acrasia
is, as her Opposition to Guyon would indicate, a figure
for Intemperance, but she denotes a special kind Of
intemperance, overindulgence in the pleasures Of the
senses, most particularly in sexual delights, the

indulgence which results in exhaustion or debility--

109

Acrasia is the literary descendant of Alcina and, like
Alcina, can trace her ancestry to Luxuria, Morgan 1e Fay,
Circe and, ultimately, the great goddess, in her role as
inciter Of lust, but not in that Of Mother of Life. It
is not surprising, then, that Acrasia's domain is a
"wandering island" (II, 1, 51) nor that She practices
various kinds Of evil magic, including transformations.

The first Of the cluster Of metamorphoses with
which we are concerned, however, is not directly Acrasia's.
Rather, it is the work Of her equally sterile other self,
Diana Ever-Virgin. Sir Guyon and his Palmer have come
upon the dying Amavia in time for her to tell them her
tragic story. Amavia's husband has been killed by the
treacherous Acrasia's magic, and the griefstricken Amavia
has plunged a knife into her own breast. As she dies, the
babe in her arms dabbles his hands in her blood.

When Sir Guyon attempts to wash the blood from the
babe's hands in the waters of a nearby well, he is unable
to do so. The palmer explains that the well can not be
defiled. It springs from a stone which once was a nymph,
a follower Of chaste Diana. Pursued, almost caught, by
Faunus, the nymph had prayed to Diana that she might
die a maid, and as she sat, "Welling out streames of
teares, and quite dismayed/ With stony fears of that rude
rustick mate," Diana heard and "Transformed her to a

stone from stedfast Virgin's state" (II, ii, 8).

110

LO! now she is that stone, from whose two heads,

As from two weeping eyes, fresh streames do flow,

Yet colde through feare and Old conceived dreads;

And yet the stone her semblance seems to show,

Shapt like a maide, that such ye may her know,

And yet her vertues in her water byde;

For it is chaste and pure, as purest snow,

Ne lets her waves with any filth be dyde,

But ever like her selfe unstayned hath been tryed.

(II, 11, 9)

It is easy to recognize here the myths of Daphne and
Apollo, Syrinx and Pan, and a plethora of other tales Of
chaste maidens, pursued by lecherous gods or satyrs and
metamorphosed at the last minute into vegetation, rocks,
or pools.

Spenser makes the most Of this metamorphosis. The
maiden's rocklike chastity and "stony feare" dictate that
she become a stone; her weeping eyes that the stone should
be the source of a double spring; her fearful virginity
that the waters should be cold, clear, and pure. I can
'not avoid, however, the feeling that Spenser viewed such
formidable chastity with ambivalence. Admirable it might
be, but what was the result? A formation that was hard,
cold, and, ultimately, useless.

The second metamorphosis in this group is that Of
the sirens, who attempt to lure Guyon to their abode as
he sails toward Acrasia's island. According tO Spenser,
they had been five fair ladies who were transformed

because Of the hubris they showed in challenging the

muses to a singing contest. This is a very Old tradition,

111

much Older than Homer,“ but in HOmer and the classical
tradition generally, the challenging sisters were changed
into bird-women, whose sweet singing lured sailors to
their deaths. In the tradition, also, the number of the
sirens may be two, three, or nine, rather than five.
Spenser has made the sisters five and has turned them
into fish—women, mermaids. He was not the first to
picture the sirens as mermaids, for Cirlot dates as
earlier than the tenth century fish-tailed sirens on the
tympanum Of the Chapel of St. Michael d'Aiguilhe at Le

5

Puy and lists numerous other such representations. In

view Of Spenser's classical education, however, his choice
Of the post—classical mermaid, rather than the classical
bird-woman, is interesting.
According to Cirlot, such mermaid figures
may well be representations Of the inferior forces
in woman, or of woman as the inferior, as in the
case Of lamias; or they could also be symbolic Of
the corrupt imagination enticed toward base ends
or towards the primitive strata of life, or of the
torment Of desire leading to self-destruction, for
their abnormal bodies cannot satisfy the passions
that are aroused by their enchanting music and by
their beauty Of face and bosom.6
If this or similar symbolism was in Spenser's mind,
then we have the five sisters (possibly related to the

five senses) setting themselves up as superior to Jove's

 

“Graves, Greek Myths, 15A.3.
5

6Ibid.

 

Cirlot, A Dictionary Of Symbols, p. 283.

112

daughters, the muses--that is, to the arts and sciences,
daughters Of Reason. For their hubris they lose a portion
Of their human form (significantly, the portion which can
afford complete sensual satisfaction) and take on a part
Of the outward form of Lust itself, Aphrodite's fish.

Such a reading explains Spenser's placing the Sirens among
the hazards Guyon must survive on his voyage to Acrasia's
island, for to succumb to the sirens' sweet voices would
bt to forget his purpose, to lose himself in the senses.
Instead Of successfully harrowing the luxurious Hell

which is Acrasia's island and bringing Acrasia, captive,
away, he would have been conquered by Acrasia in the per—
sons Of her servants, the senses, or the Sirens.

The third metamorphosis in this group is divided
into two parts. When Guyon and the palmer first land on
Acrasia's island, they are attacked by fierce-looking,
monstrous animals (II, xii, 39), but the animals are
quelled by the sight Of the palmer's wand and slink away.
Later, after Guyon and the palmer have captured Acrasia
and destroyed the Bower Of Bliss, they return, leading
Acrasia, across the island toward their boat; but their
passage is contested by the same group Of monstrous
animals, seeking to rescue Acrasia. When the palmer has
calmed them, Guyon asks "What meante those beastes" (11,
xii, 84). The palmer replies that these were Acrasia's

former lovers, changed into "figures hideous/ According

113

to their minds like monstrous" (II, xii, 85). We are
again in the presence Of Circe, who takes advantage of
men's appetites to turn them into beasts. Spenser's
handling Of the reverse metamorphosis is, however,
unusual.

When the beasts are returned to their human forms,
some are filled with shame for their previous misdeeds,
some with wrath toward Acrasia,

but one above the rest in speciall,
That had an hog been late, hight Grille by name,
Repyned greatly, and did him miscall,
That had from hoggish forme him brought to
naturall (II, xii, 86).
Sir Guyon is shocked, but the palmer knows that some men
are animals at heart and not worth saving,
. . . The donghill kind
Delightes in filth and fowle incontinence:
Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish minde;
But let us hence depart, whilst wether serves and
winde (II, xii, 87).

Spenser's last derived metamorphosis, strongly
reminiscent Of that Of LycaOn (Ovid, Met., I, 198-237),
is the transformation of Adicia in Book V, Canto VIII.
In this canto, Arthur, who is Magnificence itself, the
lover Of the Faerie Queene, and the embodiment of the
valor Of England, joins with Artegall, the knight of
Justice, to defeat the wicked designs of the Souldan.
The Souldan has been guilty Of attempting to subvert the

crown and dignity Of Queen Mercilla by making war on her

and by bribing her knights. Mercilla is both Queen

11“

Elizabeth and England's glory here, but, more importantly,
She embodies Justice as Mercy, as her name indicates.
The Souldan has been read as Philip of Spain, but he is
also a figure for power unregulated by faith and social
law. Otherwise, his marriage would not make sense, for
he is married to a woman worse than himself, the Lady
Adicia. This lady, whose name Obviously derives from
a-dike, that is, without Natural Law or Justice

Counsels him, through confidence Of might,

TO breake all bonds Of law and rules Of right,

For she herselfe professeth mortall foe

TO Justice, and against her still doth fight,

Working tO all that love her deadly woe,

And making all her knights and people to do SO

(V, vii, 20).

It is the Lady Adicia who breaks one of the most
ancient Of human laws, the sanctity of the person of the
messenger, when she turns Mercilla's messenger, Samient,
out Of doors, then sets two knights to follow and rape
her. Artegall and Arthur, having defeated the two pagan
knights and having heard Samient's story, determine to
punish both the Souldan and his lady. Accordingly,
Artegall, in the armor Of one Of the pagan knights, gains
entrance tO the castle with Samient, while Arthur
challenges the Souldan.

Although the Souldan's chariot is so fiercely
armed with axle blades that Arthur cannot get near enough

to strike a blow, he yet causes the Souldan's death. He

uncovers his magic shield, the gleam of which maddens the

115

Souldan's horses. In their mad flight, the Souldan is
torn to bits.

Enraged by her lord's defeat, Adicia rushes like a
cow maddened by the loss Of her calf, upon the innocent
Samient. But Samient is in the care of Artegall, and he
wrenches the knife from Adicia's hand. Thus deprived of
her unjust revenge, Adicia goes completely mad, and

As a mad bytch, when as the franticke fit

Her burning tongue with rage inflamed hath

Doth run at random, and with furious bit
Snatching at every thing, doth wreake her wrath
On man and beast that commeth in her path.
There they doe say that she transformed was
Into a tygre . . .

Because she has the soul Of a lawless and cruel
beast, she is changed into a tiger, just as the lawless
and murderous LycaOn was transformed into a wolf.

Thus, we have the Souldan, who is irresponsible
power, that is power unregulated by either the Christian
faith or social responsibility, married, that is,
inevitably linked, to Injustice. He is the opponent of
true sovereignty, exemplified by Mercilla, whose name is
Mercy, and whose servant is Artegall, the knight Of
Justice. The Souldan is destroyed by Arthur, the highest
development Of godfearing, law abiding chivalry. It is
possible that his ungovernable horses, which tear the

Souldan apart are another appearance Of Plato's steeds

of passion: the passions which have caused him tO ride

116

roughshod over the rights of others have been his own
undoing.

When he is destroyed, Adicia is no longer able to
work her will and, in her frustrated passion shows her-
self for what she is. She becomes outwardly what she
has always been inwardly, a ravening beast. Notice,
however, that she is not destroyed. She still lives to
ravage the countryside, for injustice lives in men's

minds even when recognized as evil.

 

The last of the metamorphoses in the Faerie Queene
to be considered is the most original and interesting of
all, for here we have a personage, a personality,
gradually transformed into a personified abstraction.
Malbecco ceases to be Malbecco and becomes Jealousy.

The Malbecco incident, which occupies Cantos IX
and X of Book III, is only loosely connected with the
adventures of Britomart, the heroine of the book; she
appears briefly, then rides away again. It is, however,
most appropriate to the subject of the book, which is
Chastity, for Spenser is concerned with one of the causes
of unchastity: a husband's inability to provide his wife
with physical satisfaction, to pay the "marriage debt."

As the episode opens, Sir Satyrane, Sir Paridell,
and the Squyre of Dames have sought lodging for the
night at a castle and been refused. The squire explains

that the owner of the castle is a "cancred, crabbed carle,"

117

a miser whose mind is on his "heapes of evill gotten
masse." This miser is married to a young beauty who
"does joy to play emongst her peares/ And to be free
from hard restraint and jealous feares" (III, ix, 3-U).
The husband, however, is old

. . . and withered like hay,

Unfit faire ladies service to supply,

The privie guilt whereof makes him alway

Suspect her truth, and keepe continuall spy

Upon her with his other blincked eye (III, ix, 5).

The old husband's name is Malbecco, a most appro-

priate one both as comment on the present situation and
as foreshadowing of future developments, for the literal
meaning of beggg is he-goat, the figurative, cuckold.
The he-goat has always been a popular symbol for rampant
lust. He is "a lascivious and butting animal who is
always burning for coition. His eyes are transverse
slits because he is so randy."6 Malbecco, however, is
a bad goat, because he is "withered like hay." 1n the

7 it is not

light of Panofsky's comments on blindness,
surprising that Bad Goat also has one blind eye.
Despairing of gaining lodging in the castle, Sir
Satyrane, Sir Paridell, and the Squire of Dames retreat
to a nearby shed for pigs to escape the stormy night.
Britomart happens along and, after fruitlessly trying

the castle, turns also to the shed. When she insists on

 

6T. H. White, The Bestiary, p. 7“.

 

7Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, pp. 95-128.

118

entering the already crowded shed, she and Paridell fight,
but Satyrane soon makes peace between them, so that they
determine to join forces to get into the castle.

When Malbecco is convinced that they are about to
set fire to his gates, he hastens down to let them in.
Grudgingly, he provides supper and allows his wife to
join them. Throughout the meal, he glares suspiciously
at Satyrane, who is seated opposite, but ignores Paridell,
who is on his blind side.

Paridell takes advantage of Malbecco's blindness
to flirt outrageously with Hellenore, and Hellenore
responds with shocking enthusiasm. Meanwhile, table talk
provides the information that Paridell is a descendant
of that Paris who abducted Helen, while Hellenore is
descended from that same Helen. Thus Spenser sets up
the equivalence between this episode and the Paris-Helen-
Menelaus story. It is no surprise then that Paridell on
the following morning should plead his wounds from his
fight with Britomart as an excuse to remain a guest in
the castle while Britomart, Satyrane, and the Squire of
Dames ride away.

In spite of Malbecco's efforts to keep constant
watch over his wife, Hellenore and Paridell lay their
plans, and one evening Hellenore manages to get at her
husband's stored riches, seize a part, and set fire to

the rest. In the ensuing confusion, she flies into

119

Paridell's arms, shrieking rape. Torn between dismay over
his burning treasure and dismay over his stolen wife,
Malbecco dashes uselessly back and forth, but finally
elects to save his treasure, so that Paridell and
Hellenore get safely away.

When the flames are quenched, Malbecco falls into
grief and rage over his lost Hellenore and, at last,
resolves to go forth to seek her. Taking a portion of
his treasure along, he sets forth. He has gone only a
short way when he comes upon Braggadochio and his squire,
Trompart. Mistaking the blustering, cowardly Braggadochio
for a true knight, Malbecco prays his aid, and
Braggadochio promises it. There is a little extra
insight into Malbecco's character here, for he offers to
pay Braggadochio, although a man with any understanding
of true knighthood would have known such an offer was an
insult.

As the three proceed, they meet Paridell. Malbecco
hails him, but Braggadochio is too busy mending a
"broken" harness to offer a challenge. Paridell cheer-
fully admits to Malbecco that he has deserted Hellenore
in the forest, then rides away toward fresh adventures.
Malbecco, Braggadochio, and Trompart go into the forest
to seek Hellenore, but first Trompart persuades Malbecco

to bury his treasure for safekeeping.

120

Meanwhile, the deserted Hellenore has taken up
with a band of satyrs who have taken her home with them
"To milk their gotes, and make them cheese and bredd/

And every one as commune good her handeled" (III, X, 36).
Shortly after entering the forest, Malbecco, Braggadochio,
and Trompart come within earshot of this satyr band,

who are making such a hubbub that Malbecco faints from
fright, while Braggadochio and Trompart run away.

When he has recovered from his faint, Malbecco spies
on the satyrs as they dance with Hellenore, then, at dusk,
follows them home. He hides among the goats, running on
hands and feet, helped in the deception by "his faire
hornes." From his hiding place he watches Hellenore in
the arms of a satyr

Who all the night did minde his joyous play.

Nine times he heard him come aloft ere day,

That all his heart with gealosy did swell

(III, x, “8).

At last, Hellenore and the satyr fall asleep, and Malbecco,
creeping to Hellenore's side, begs her to come away with
him. She refuses curtly and, though he begs until day-
break, continues to refuse. The downcast Malbecco creeps
out with the herd, butted and mauled by them as he goes,
and runs back to where his treasure is buried. Of

course, those two confidence men, Braggadochio and

Trompart, have made away with the gold.

121

Then Malbecco becomes quite mad. He runs with
staring eye and "upstart haire," runs over hill and dale,
bank and bush.

Grief, and despight, and gealosy and scorne
Did all the way him follow hard behynd

And he himselfe himselfe loath'd so forlorne,
So shamefully forlorne of womankynd;

That, as a snake, still lurked in his wounded mynd
(III, x, 55).

Still running, he comes to a steep cliff and throws
himself over it on to the rocks below. But he has become
so wasted that he is too light to be hurt by the fall.
Crawling on crooked claws, he creeps into a cave. There
he remains to this day, never daring to sleep for fear of
falling rock, never at peace for the noise of the billows
that beat about the cliff. His food is frogs and toads
"which in his cold complexion doe breed/ a filthy blood"
which causes inward pain like that of death.

Yet can he never dye, but dying lives,
And doth himselfe with sorrow new sustaine,
That death and life attonce unto him gives,
And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine.
There dwels he ever, miserable swaine,
Hateful both to him selfe and every wight,
Where he, through privy griefe and horrour vaine,
Is woxen so deform'd, that he has quight
Forgot he was a man, and Gelosy is hight
(111, x, 60).

In this broadly comic episode, Spenser contrasts the
havoc wrought by the unnatural marriage of Malbecco and
Hellenore with the propriety of natural instinct, the Bad

Goat with true goats in the persons of Sir Satyrane and

the whole band of satyrs. Sir Satyrane, who is half

122

satyr by birth, wholly so by training, yet knows
instinctively what is the nature of woman and what is
due to a fair lady. When he first hears of Malbecco's
jealous watch over Hellenore (III, ix, 6), he smiles
and says that a man must be mad to think he can control
by watchfulness a woman who is determined to deceive him.
A woman is held by "fast good-will with gentle courtesyes/
and timely service to her pleasures meet" (llI, ix, 7).
The forest satyrs know as much; and, instinctively, they
recognize Hellenore as the natural partner of their
unbridled lust, just as earlier (I, vi) they had recog-
nized Una's true purity and worshipped her as a goddess.
Malbecco, on the other hand, is not only sexually
impotent, but the victim of deformed instincts that tell
him all the wrong things. He is metaphorically as well
as literally blind. He suspects the honest Sir Satyrane
of having designs upon Hellenore, but he fails to notice
Paridell's manoeuvers. He mistakes the bag of wind,
Braggadochio, for a true knight, yet hopes to buy his
knightly aid. He is willing, nay eager, to regain the
much-used Hellenore, as if she were a stolen gold
piece. Most amazing of all, he believes in Trompart's
honesty and allows himself to be persuaded to leave that
which he loves best in the world, his treasure, buried

where Trompart can steal it.

123

Spenser knew long before the Better Business Bureau
that avarice marks the natural victim for the tricks of
the confidence man. Avarice is, indeed, Malbecco's most
important characteristic. His jealous guarding of his
beautiful young wife is but the shadow of the jealousy
with which he guards his treasure. He is unable to
enjoy the natural delights of her body as he is unable to
enjoy the natural pleasure of spending his gold. He
clasps to himself both the woman and the treasure, though
he can get little good of either, and he torments himself
with unfounded fear of loss even as he is robbed by those
he trusts.

When he has had to recognize the loss of his two
dearest possessions, he has also had to recognize the
loss of his human dignity among the goats and the loss
of confidence in his own judgment. Then, it is self-
loathing that, like a snake, lurks in his "wounded mynd."
It is self-loathing that eats him away until there is
nothing left of him but his self-loathing—-his jealousy,
for what we call jealousy is but a manifestation of a
lack of self-love, self-respect. It is born of "secret
guilt." Malbecco has become his dominant emotion.

His outward form may be that of a snake. Certainly,
Spenser means to suggest that it is with his talk of
eating toads and breeding venom. This outer form would

be appropriate, for, according to the Bestiary, snakes

12“

are cunning, secretive, venomous, troubled with bad
eyesight, and very longlived, sometimes, indeed immortal.8
Jealousy seeks to keep through cunning what is not freely
given; it "creeps by secret approaches;" it breeds poison
within the heart; it sees unclearly, mistaking good for
evil, evil for good, and it is very hard to kill. It is
indeed a "hatefull, hellish snake . . . that turnest love
divine to joylesse dread. . . . the vilest of the passions
of the mind" (III, xi, 1). Yet Spenser never actually
says that Malbecco has become a snake, merely that he

has "waxen so deform'd, that he has quight/ Forgot he

was a man, and Gelosy is hight." That the deformity is

a metaphor for the inner disintegration is incontrovertible,
but the exact nature of the outward form is left to the

reader's imagination.

8T. H. White, Bestiary, pp. l65ff.

CHAPTER VIII

PARADISE LOST

After Spenser's use of it in the Faerie Queene,

 

the next important example of the use of metamorphosis

as a literary device occurs in Milton's Paradise Lost

 

(1667). Here, Satan, the glorious if rebellious angel,
becomes a hissing snake. Milton's plan, apparently, was
to show the gradual deterioration of Satan's character,
using the Platonic idea that the soul impresses her form
on the body, so that Satan's fading beauty and,
eventually, animal form would indicate his moral degenera-
tion. The idea was a bold one, but beset with diffi-
culties: first, there was some question whether heavenly
beings had bodies or were pure spirit. If they were

pure Spirit, how could a body be metamorphosed? Second,
there was the difficulty of Satan's traditional role as

a shape-changer. If he could change at will, how would
the real metamorphosis be different? Third, once the
metamorphosis was achieved, would not Satan be helpless?
How then, to account for continued sin and evil in the

world?

125

126

Milton overcame the first difficulty by carefully
stating the nature of angelic substance. Angels do,
indeed, have bodies, and, as Raphael explains in Book V,
those bodies must be fed, but they are "so soft, so
uncompounded," their essence so pure that they can
assume whatever size, shape, or sex the owners wish, as
well as any degree of brightness, simply by rearranging
themselves.1 This explains why some of the pagan gods,
who were really fallen angels, were worshipped as
goddesses. Shortly after this explanation, Milton gives
us an example of the angels' ability to change size (I,
752ff) when the host of fallen angels, finding themselves
too crowded in the great hall of Pandemonium, shrink to
the size of fairies seen by moonlight-~perhaps no
physical size at all.

He overcomes the second difficulty by making clear
that although angels can change shape, they have a true
form, from which their deviations are voluntary and
temporary. It is the involuntary changes of this true
shape which constitutes the metamorphosis. It is in his
true shape and size that we first find Satan (I, 192ff),
and it is this shape which gradually changes as Satan's

deeds and thoughts grow more foul.

 

1John Milton, Paradise Lost in J. H. Hanford (ed.),
The Poems of John Milton, New York, 1953, I, A22ff. All
‘Iine references to Paradise Lost are to this edition.

127

After nine days' stupor in Hell's lake of fire,
Satan lifts his head to speak to Beélzebub. His eyes
blaze, sparkling, and his body stretches "many a rood,"
as great as that of any fabled giant. That he is changed
from his heavenly beauty by his fall we can assume, for
he laments that Beélzebub is so changed, yet, he is vast
and flashing-eyed. When, later, he stands among his
tr00ps, announcing his determination to continue war in
spite of their recent defeat, he is a most impressive
figure:

. . . He above the rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent

Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess

Of glory obscured . . .

. . . Care .

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows,

Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge (1, 590—60“).

He seems to love his followers; he weeps for their
pain and their loyalty; he is still full of a sense of
injured merit and of determination to win back to Heaven.
It is at this moment, however, that he makes his first
step toward serpentdom, for he declares that they must
now prepare to win by fraud or guile what they could not
win by force. As we learn from Genesis 2 and as we have
seen in connection with Dante's serpent-thieves, fraud
and guile are the traditional attributes of the serpent.

Having undertaken the dangerous task of surveying

the newly-created world, Satan essays to leave Hell;

128

but at its gate he meets an obstruction which may be con-
strued as a warning of what will happen to him if he
pursues his announced plan. The gate is locked, and the
key is in the possession of a monstrous creature, half
woman, half serpent, whose huge tail ends in a deadly
sting. She, we learn, is Sin. Before the rebellion, she
had sprung, "shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed"

(II, 757) from Satan's forehead, the embodiment of his
rebellious thought. His incestuous love for her had
brought forth the monster, Death, and her incestuous
union with that monster had resulted in a litter of
hideous dogs, the individual sins. Their birth had been
so painful and prolonged that it had transformed her
lower body into that of a serpent. The monster, Sin,
literary relative of Spenser's "Errour" and of the Python
of the medieval allegorists, is entrusted with the key

to Hell. This was an error in judgment on the part of
Milton's God, if He really meant to keep Satan in Hell,
for Sin is all too quickly persuaded to open the triple
gates when Satan promises to bring her to Earth, where
she and Death may dwell at ease. By trafficking with
this serpent-woman, by bribing her, using guile to Cause
her to disobey God as he will later do to the innocent
Eve, Satan has increased by another step his own inward

resemblance to a serpent.

129

Having escaped from Hell, Satan makes his laborious
way to the sun, there to ask guidance toward Earth from
Uriel, the sun's resident angel (III, 63Aff).~ In order
that Uriel may not suspect who is asking his aid, Satan
takes advantage of his ethereal nature to put on the
appearance of a "stripling cherub," all youth and eager-
ness, with flowing curls and many-colored, gold-sprinkled
wings. He deceives Uriel into giving him directions, for,
says Milton, he is the first example of Hypocrisy, which
can deceive all but God. Thus, Satan's powers as a
shape changer, misused for wrongful purposes, bring him
again nearer to his serpent form, for the serpent of
Genesis hypocritically pretends to wish only good to Eve.

Leaving the sun, Satan makes his journey toward
Earth, but he turns to address the sun as he leaves.

This apostrophe, one of the most moving passages in

Paradise Lost, is really a soliloquy, in which the

 

fallen angel struggles with his misery, his desire for
repentance, and in the honesty of self-knowledge,
recognizes his unconquerable pride and makes his choice:
"Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell," but, even if
forgiven, I would rebel again; therefore, "Evil, be thou
my good" (IV, 32ff). From this point on, Satan's
degeneration is rapid.

Arriving at Eden (IV, l31ff), Satan overleaps the

wall of Paradise, "the first grand thief," and sits in

130

the shape of a bird of prey, a cormorant, on the Tree
of Life. Milton points out that, ironically, he sits on
that tree plotting death, when one bite of its fruit would
have saved him. This raises an interesting question:
does Milton mean that Satan is destined for physical
death? or is he suggesting that the fruit of the Tree
of Life might yet have enabled Satan to repent? In any
case, Satan ignores the fruit while he spies out the land.
When he sees Adam and Eve moving in beauty, love,
and innocence through the garden (IV, 358ff), Satan's
better nature makes another effort to assert itself. He
wonders at their beauty and grace, feels that he could
love them, grieves that he plans to destroy their happi-
ness. But, he says, I offer you all I have, Hell, and
"if no better place/ Thank him who puts me loath to this
revenge/ on you who wrong me not." Thus, he attempts
to transfer the guilt for their future unhappiness to the
god he hates. Then, stifling pity, he continues:
And should I at your harmless innocence
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,
Honor and empire with revenge enlarged,
By conquering this new World, compels me now
To do what else though damned I should abhor
(IV, 386-392).
Thus, he is the first to plead public necessity as an
excuse for cruelty. He has indulged in another form of
hYpocrisy.

His last bit of tenderness stifled, Satan has become,

metagflmmdcally, coldblooded. He sets about his business

131

briskly, coming by night to Eve's ear (IV, 799ff), where
he squats in the shape of a toad, attempting to poison
her sleeping mind. Poison, like guile, is a serpent's
weapon. He is discovered by the guardian angels, and,
touched by Ithuriel's apear, springs back to his own
form, for false semblance must always disappear at the
touch of "heavenly temper."

Although at this point he is without pity, he is
still not without courage. He speaks proudly to his
captors and challenges Gabriel when they meet. He is
put to flight only by the express will of God. We learn,
however, that his outward appearance has changed still
more for the worse, for the guardian angels do not
recognize him. Says Zephon, "thou resemblest now/ Thy
sin and place of doom obscure and foul." Nor is Satan
without regret for his former beauty, though he is too
proud to show it:

So spake the Cherub, and his grave rebuke

Severe in youthful beauty, added grace

Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined

His loss; but chiefly to find here observed

His luster visibly impaired; yet seemed

Undaunted (IV, 8AA-851).
Such pride in beauty and brightness makes all the more
understandable Satan's repugnance when he must mingle

his substance with that of the snake. Repugnant or not,

however, the deed must be done.

132

Having regained entry to Paradise (IX, 69ff), Satan
decides that Eve would be most susceptible to temptation
if she thought one of her familiar friends, the animals,
had eaten of the forbidden fruit with beneficial results.
He therefore determines to enter into an animal and cause
that creature to perform his task. Because the serpent
was the "subltlest beast of all the field," he chose to
enter the serpent, so that he would not arouse suspicion
if he showed unusual intelligence.

Before entering into the serpent, however, Satan
meditates on the beauty of the earth and on his own changed
being which will not permit him to enjoy that beauty. Only
in destroying does he find ease, in the cruelty of bringing
to others misery like his own, and in the thought of
wrecking in one day what the Almighty had taken six to
create. No pity for doomed mankind enters here, no regret
for the beauties of Paradise; his only hesitation is
caused by the repugnance he feels at mixing his proud
essence with the body of a beast:

O foul descent! that I who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the height of deity aSpired;
But what will not Ambition and revenge
Descend to? (IX, 163-169).
In the form of a black mist, he prowls the garden

until he finds and enters into the body of the serpent.

Filled with cruelty and thoughts of revenge, with

133

loathing for the means of this task, he becomes incarnate--
a horrible travesty of the pitiful and loving incarnation
of Christ. Now Satan's inward self has become a snake:

he is cold and pitiless, guileful, hypocritical, and he

has crawled in slime, as the snake crawls in earth.

Still, his outward form is that of a ravaged angel.

His deed done, his goal accomplished, Satan lurks
in the shrubbery, eavesdropping as Adam and Eve discuss
their doom. Gathering that his own punishment is not
yet, he returns in triumph to Hell (X, 325ff), pausing on
the way to congratulate Sin on the broad causeway she and
Death have built between Hell and Earth. Entering
Pandemonium in the likeness of a lowly soldier angel,
he makes his way unnoticed to the throne. Then, he puts
on again his majesty. His shining head and star-bright
body appear "clad/ With what permissive glory since his
fall/ Was left him, or false glitter," and he rises to
address his hosts.

"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues,
Powers," he begins, then tells of perils past, of triumphs
won, laughs at the thought of punishment, invites the
hosts to join with him in full bliss. When he pauses
for "Their universal shout and high applause," what he

hears is hissing. Then he feels his body change:

134

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell

A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain: a greater power

Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom (X, 511-518).

He and all his followers have-become serpents.
Then, filled with hunger and thirst, they turn to a
newsprung grove where hang fruits like those on the Tree
of Knowledge. Eagerly they bite, only to find their
mouths filled with ashes, yet, driven inexorably, they
bite again and again, falling over and over again, though
Man fell only once.

Thus Satan who, by his cruelty, hate, and, most
expecially, his guile, had made himself spiritually a
serpent before ever entering the body of the true serpent,
was most appropriately punished by being transformed into
a serpent at the moment of his triumph. Satan, the
shape-changer, is powerless to avert his change of shape.
His followers, who by their approval made themselves
his accomplices, were also fittingly transformed. The
outward form has been made to conform to the inner~
reality. Neither Satan nor his followers, however,
remained serpents, but were permitted to regain their
own forms. Yearly, however, they undergo the metamorpho-

sis as a reminder of the power of God, against Whom they

have sinned.

135

There is, for me, a certain lack of satisfaction in
this metamorphosis. One cannot help comparing it with
Dante's handling of a similar theme. In both poets'
treatments, the metamorphosis is a metaphor for an almost
inexpressible spiritual reality. In both treatments,
the Devil by his own chosen actions and emotions makes
himself first spiritually, then physically, into a
monster. In the Inferno, however, the devil metamorphosed
is no longer a power. It is man's infatuation with his

own vices that cuts him off from God. In Paradise Lost,

 

Satan, Sin, and Death must be left active and free to
range the world until such time as God shall deem it
proper to close the account. For Milton, Satan must
remain the Adversary. In Milton's theology this was
doubtless sound, but, as metaphor, the temporary meta-
morphosis is much less satisfactory than Dante's

permanent one.

CHAPTER IX

THREE WORKS OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY

After Paradise Lost, metamorphosis disappears from

western belles lettres for more than two hundred years.

 

With the twentieth century, however, we find it used in
three widely-read pieces of fiction: Kafka's Die

Verwandlung (Metamorphosis), 1916; Garnett's Lady into

 

 

£25, 192“; and Vercors's §lll£: 1961. Why the two
hundred year gap should exist is as much a mystery as
why an ancient device should have been revived. In
considering the individual works, however, we may come
to some tentative explanations.

Although the earliest of these works, Kafka's short
story, Die Vervandlung,l has been the object of fifty
years of critical study, there has been no definitive
analysis, for each critic seems to find a different
meaning in the tale. Paul Goodman, for instance, sees

it as the suicidal fantasy of a paranoid neurotic with

 

1Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung, London, 1967.
Metamorphosis also takes place in Ionesco's Rhinoceros,
but the work does not seem to me of sufficient interest
to justify analysis.

 

136

137

repressed homosexual urges,2 while Johannes Pfeiffer
hesitates between the conviction that the story is a
presentation of the reality that "through the
desperation . . . of a life that has stumbled into an
impasse, there is a sight of the hidden light for which
we all stretch out our hands. . . ." and the worry
lest it is "only an experiment in portrayal" and serves

the needs of a "hidden desire for torment."3

In Die Verwandlung, Gregor Samsa awakens, as

 

Kafka's heroes often do, into "the nightmare world which
is always just below the surface."u After a troubled
sleep, he has regained consciousness only to find that
he has become a giant insect. His brown, segmented
belly is so steep that the quilt is about to slide from
the bed, and his rotund body is surrounded by small legs
that wave wildly without his conscious control. His
mouth is a toothless, sucking beak.

At first, Gregor refuses to believe the reality
he sees. He wishes only to pull himself from bed, eat
his breakfast, catch a train, take up his job again.
When his mother timidly knocks to remind him that he is

late, he assures her that he will soon be on his way,

 

2Paul Goodman, Kafka's Prayer, New York, lgU7,
pp. 1u7, 157.

3Johannes Pfeiffer, "The Metamorphosis," in Ronald
Gray (ed.), Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays,
Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962, p. 59.

“Idris Parry, "Kafka, Gogol and Nathanael West."
in R. Gray, Kafka, pp. 85—86.

138

noticing as he does so that his voice sounds oddly
squeaky. A few minutes later, when the Chief Clerk
arrives to question him, nobody can understand what
Gregor says. His voice has become that of an insect,
perhaps a locust or cricket, high metallic, unintel-
ligible.

Still unaware, still unwilling to be aware, of
what has actually happened to him, Gregor laboriously
pulls himself upright, gets to the door in that position,
manages to turn the key with his jaws, and opens the
door of his room to attempt to explain matters to the
Chief Clerk. He is shocked to see the man back off,
turn, and leap down the stairs, screaming as he goes.

Gregor retreats to his room, where he is cared
for by his sister. She gives him a bowl of his favorite
drink, milk, but he finds it offensive. Then, she
provides an assortment of the foods available in the
house, and, to his own surprise, Gregor finds that he
prefers decayed cheese, half-rotten vegetables, and
leftover bones to fresh food.

Gradually, Gregor becomes less and less a member
of the family, more and more an alien monster. This
is partly his own doing, partly the doing of the family.
His sister, for instance, seeing that he needs to crawl
over the walls and ceilings, thinks to remove his

furniture to provide him more space. His mother pro-

139

tests that he may miss his own furniture, and Gregor
realizes that this is true. Yet his attempt to
protect the furniture serves only to frighten his
mother and sister and to excite his father into an
attempt to kill him. Before he can escape, he has
been seriously wounded.

Thereafter, Gregor eats less and less, although
he is very hungry, and he spends almost all his time
in the darkest corner of his room, hidden under a
sofa. Yet, on one occasion, he is drawn forth: when
the lodgers his parents have taken in to help defray
expenses hear the sister playing her violin, they
invite the family into the living room. The sound of
the music draws Gregor, too, into the room. As he
hears the violin play, he feels as if the way were
being opened to the food he craves. At this moment,
when fulfillment of some sort seems near, the lodgers
suddenly become aware of the monster and, when the
ensuing hysterical scene is over, the sister announces
that the family must get rid of "it." "It" is no
longer Gregor; "it" is an alien and burdensome monster;
they are all too worn out to cope with "its" presence.
Exhausted and in pain, Gregor returns to his room,
withdraws slowly into a stupor, and finally, as the

dawn breaks, dies.

IMO

Thereafter, his body is swept away by the char—
woman while the family determine to take the day off
and ride out into the country. During the ride, the
parents become aware of what an attractive young
woman Grete, the sister, has become-—marriagable. The
story ends as she rises and stretches her young body.

In attempting to interpret this moving but
mysterious tale, one is drawn into looking into various
aspects of Kafka's own life. His relationship to his
father, we know, was of overwhelming importance to
him.5 Certainly, the belligerent, almost murderous
father is important in this tale, and Kafka, writing
in 1919, three years after its publication, could say
to his father, "My writing was all about you."6 In
the same letter, Kafka imagines that his father is
answering him, and he becomes for the moment an insect.
The father says:

There is chivalrous fighting, in which the forces
of independent opponents are measured against each

other . . . . And there is the fighting of vermin,
which not only sting but at the same time suck the
blood too to sustain their own life . . . . And

that is what you are.

 

5See especially, Franz Kafka, "Letter to his
Father," in Dearest Father (Max Brod, ed., Ernst Kaiser
and Eithne Wilkins, tr.,) New York, 195“, pp. 138ff.

 

6Ibid., p. 177.

71bid., p. 195.

1U1

Even earlier (about 1909), Kafka had played with
the idea of transforming a man into an insect. In
"Wedding Preparations in the Country,"8 his hero,

Eduard Raban, unwilling to join in a forthcoming
celebration, reminds himself that he has had as a child
a trick of sending his body into situations, leaving
his mind and heart behind. He will do the same now.

He will become a stag beetle or a cockchafer and
pretend to hibernate while his body goes to the wedding.

In other stories, Kafka uses animals to make clear
his vision of the human condition. Perhaps it is wilful
blindness that prevents men from recognizing the ways
of deity, as the dogs refuse to see human beings in
"Investigations of a Dog;" the endless, hopeless search
for security is presented in "The Burrow."9 So we are
justified in suspecting that the giant insect in our

story has parabolic significance.

Such background information is interesting, but
it helps very little in understanding Die Verwandlung
as a work of art complete in itself. Why is Gregor
Samsa a giant beetle? Since Kafka is careful to show
the situation only from Gregor's point of view, we

will never be sure of the answer, for Gregor himself

 

8In Dearest Father, pp. 6-7.

9Both in Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other
Stories (Willa and Edwin Muir, tr.), Penguin Books,
pp. 83ff and l27ff.

1A2

does not know it. Perhaps he has been transformed by
his unremitting attention to daily details in the busy
hierarchical world of a salesman or by his subjugation
of his personality to the needs of his family as an
ant or a bee is devoted mindlessly to the wellbeing of
the nest or the hive. On the other hand, perhaps he
has become an alien creature because he has ceased to
be a member of the family. While working ceaselessly
for the family's wellbeing, he is a lonely outcast,
nostalgically remembering the evening conversations
about the dining table, but absorbed only in his bills
of sale and his woodworking. Significantly, even the
photograph he cherishes is not that of sister or
sweetheart, nor even of a girl he knows. It is clipped
from an illustrated paper. Perhaps his insect form is
indicative of his alienation from all humanity. Perhaps
again, it is the father's dislike and contempt, dis-
played throughout the story, which have changed Gregor
into the creature his father believes him to be. In
my opinion, the metamorphosis, a richly complex figure
is meant to suggest all these ideas and to suggest
them simultaneously, but the importance of the
metamorphosis seems to lie, not in its cause, but in
its effect. The beetle—-Gregor changes within himself
to conform to his outward shape.

The metamorphosis in Kafka's story differs from

those we have previously studied in that the physical

1A3

change is complete when the story opens. What the
reader is concerned with is Gregor's attempts to cope
with his nightmarish condition. One of the devices
Kafka uses most effectively to emphasize these efforts
is that of light symbolism. Gregor first awakes into
a morning of heavy fog. While he struggles to avoid
realization of what has happened to him, the fog
remains, but when, after heroic effort, he opens his
door and faces his family, sees and is seen, the day
brightens. Thereafter, however, as Gregor, in a
well-meaning attempt to avoid troubling his family,
retreats further and further from them, his vision
slowly dims. Eventually, he sees the world outside
his window as gray sky blended with gray land. The
fog has returned, but it is from within Gregor.

As Gregor retreats more and more from his family,
as be progressively eats less and less, he comes to
spend almost all his time in the darkest corner of his
room. At first, he has hovered near the parlour door
of an evening when the lamplight shone underneath,
but eventually, even when the door is left open, he
lies in the dark in the far corner of his room. At
the climax of the story, Gregor is drawn once more
into the light. This time, it is lamplight, humanity's
defense against the night, that draws him, along with

the sound of conversation and, especially, of music.

1““

Feeling that he can not be quite a monster when the
music moves him so, Gregor, almost unconsciously,
creeps through the door into the lighted room, only

to cause a scene of horror. When he bears his sister
announce that "it" must go, he acknowledges inwardly
the rightness of her judgment, withdraws painfully

into the dark and into a stupor. As the first light
of dawn enters the room, he dies. When Gregor is dead,
swept out with the trash, the daylight is bright; the
spring sun shines.

Food symbolism is also important, though more
difficult to interpret. Grete, the sister, at first
brings Gregor bread and milk--healthy, human food-~but
Gregor is nauseated by the dish. When she returns
with other food, it is molding cheese and rotting
vegetables that Gregor eats with pleasure. Daily
thereafter, his appetite lessens--when he dies it is
at least partly of starvation--but we never know what
is the food he needs. The charwoman calls him a
dungbeetle, and perhaps she is right. Yet the nearest
Gregor feels to the food he craves is when he hears
his sister's music. In his retreat to the dark, in
his preference for spoiled food, Gregor has become
a true beetle, but the soul of the man he once was is
still alive enough to want to hear the music, and it
is that man's soul which surrenders to death to remove

the burden of his presence from his family.

1A5

Not only, however, does Gregor change. His
family change too. The father, inimical, belligerent,
but ineffectual, becomes a self—important wage-earner,
the true head of the house. The mother, a helpless,
asthmatic, neurotic, who yet loves Gregor, learns to
help with the wage—earning and to be glad when Gregor
is dead. Grete, at first the most understanding of
all the family and the kindest, becomes less and less
gentle, less and less concerned, until, near the end
of the story, she is shaking her fist at Gregor as
the father had done when the story started.

As the story ends, Gregor has made his final
sacrifice for the family. In learning to die, he has
removed the alien personality. The other members of
the family, however, have learned to live. As they
fare forth for a bright spring day in the country,
even the mother has come alive and can look with love
and wonder at her blooming daughter and think of the
start of a new cycle of life. Each person has reacted
as his own nature compelled him to the burden of
Gregor, but they are as one in their relief at his
death.

In this story, Kafka may have used metamorphosis
as a figure for the plight of the alienated, the
clifferent, whether the man of genius or the victim of

great misfortune. Such a person is as much of an

1U6

encumbrance on normally healthy human beings as would
be a giant cockroach. The emotional changes within
the victim prepare him for the death which is the only
gift he can bring to those he loves. Those who receive
his gift, however, are the tribe, ceaselessly affirming
the goodness of life.

Shortly after the publication of Kafka's story,
a second work of metamorphosis appeared, David Garnett's

Lady Into Fox (192“). This novelette was widely admired

 

at the time of its publication and received, in addition
to enthusiastic reviews, the Hawthornden and the James
Tait Black memorial prizes. It was praised by Virginia
Woolf, George Moore, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad.

As a work of art, indeed, Lady Into Fox is
almost flawless. There is not a wasted paragraph, not
even a wasted word in the tale. On page 5, Mrs. Tebrick
becomes a fox; on page 90, Mrs. Tebrick is dead. In the
intervening pages, we have all the story, told in a
quiet, slightly formal style, calculated to allay the
reader's disbelief and to make all the more effective
the marvellous events recounted.

The plot of the tale is this: Mrs. Tebrick,
nee Silvia Fox, has grown up in an isolated manor, far
removed from human society. Her guardians and instruc-
tors have been her uncle, a Canon, and her governess,

for her mother died very young and her father is

147

bedridden. How she met Mr. Tebrick we are not sure,
but it was probably through her uncle, the Canon.

Mrs. Tebrick, at the time of her marriage, is
a remarkably beautiful woman-—small, delicate of
hand and foot, brownskinned and dark haired, though
the hair shows a glint of red. Her manner is reserved
"almost to shyness,"10 but she is self-possessed and
wellbred. There is no history of unusual behavior in
childhood, if one excepts her vomiting at the age of
ten, upon being "blooded" after her first fox hunt.
She has, however, ridden to hounds since her marriage
in order to please her husband.

This, then, is the lady whom we discover as the
story opens strolling with her new husband in the
autumn woods. There is the sound of haying hounds,
and Mr. Tebrick starts hurrying toward an opening from
which they will be able to see the hunt go by.

Mrs. Tebrick seems to hold back and, suddenly, she
cries out, snatching her hand from his. Looking back,
Mr. Tebrick sees only a bright red fox where his Wife
should have been.

Believing that he recognizes his wife's glance
in the vixen's eyes, Mr. Tebrick gathers the animal
into his arms where she weeps copiously and exchanges

kisses with him. Smuggling her under his jacket, he

 

loDavid Garnett, Lady Into Fox, New York, 1966,

 

p. A.

1N8

carries her back to the manor house, though not without
arousing the two house dogs, who scent fox and bark
furiously. Mr. Tebrick deposits the vixen in his bedroom,
then descends the stairs to dismiss his servants with a
trumped-up tale and to shoot the dogs. Thereafter, he is
alone with his fox-wife.

At first, Silvia is more woman than vixen. She
indicates her desire for clothing. She wishes to be
carried to avoid walking on all fours. She sits at
table and drinks tea from a saucer, eating bread and
butter from Mr. Tebrick's hand. Her first concession
to her animal nature, indeed, comes as a concomitant of
her womanliness. In her eagerness to help her husband
go properly about the housekeeping, she gets down onto
her four feettx>follow him freely about the house and
indicate his mistakes with gestures.

It is not long, however, before the fox begins
to be the dominant force in the vixen's nature. When
Mr. Tebrick reads aloud, he discovers that she is more
interested in watching the movements of their pet dove
than in hearing the story. When she goes outdoors for
the first time, she delights in frightening the ducks
on the pond, although she does not yet attempt to harm
them. But a little later, when Mr. Tebrick allows her
the opportunity to kill a hare, she does so as soon as

his back is turned and eats the animal--hair, bones,

1A9

and all. Nevertheless, Silvia remains part woman,
seeking to soothe her husband's feelings by listening
to his music, playing cards, or gazing at stereoptican
slides.

At last, however, she grows frantic to leave
the house and become part of the wild life in the
surrounding woodland. Neither affection nor walls
will hold her. Mr. Tebrick, recognizing something
of her anguish, still tries to protect her from
herself. On one occasion, he catches her as she
attempts to leap over the garden wall, and she falls,
neck twisted under her, apparently dead. Half—mad
with grief, Mr. Tebrick weeps and curses, goes into
the house to fetch a razor. But when he returns,
ready to kill himself over the body of his vixen,
the body has disappeared. The live fox is trapped
in the fowl yard, where she has run as soon as he
left her.

Eventually, Mr. Tebrick is unable to withstand
Silvia's obvious distress and, himself, opens the
gate for her. She runs off, and, though he searches,
he is unable to find her again until she willingly
shows herself in the spring. She leads him to her
burrow where she has five charming cubs. Thereafter,
Mr. Tebrick becomes one with the fox family. He

knows each cub as an individual. He plays with them,

150

hunts with them, learns the ways of the wild. At last,
he is living more in the woods with the foxes than in
the world of men.

When he recognizes the dog fox which is the
father of the cubs, he asks himself whether there is
any difference between the love he feels for Silvia
and her cubs and the love the fox feels. After all,
each would lay down his life for the family, and each
finds his greatest happiness in their company. Again,
looking at the cubs at play, he considers the nature
of sin. The cubs, he thinks, are quite innocent, for
they can be only as God made them. Only man can sin.
He would wish to lose his manhood and become like the
animals.

Nevertheless, he cannot conquer his human concern
about the future of the vixen and her cubs. This very
concern causes him to spend more and more time with
them, until he is hardly returning to the world of men
at all, except for food supplies. By this time, he
actually runs like an animal, hunched over, touching
his hands frequently to the ground. Most nights, he
sleeps on the ground, where he can protect the burrow.

One morning, however, he awakens, cold and faint
with hunger. Mist fills the valleys. Autumn has
returned. The foxes have disappeared, and the chilled,

'starving Tebrick returns to his house. It is only.

151

hours later that he hears the beat of horses' hooves
and the baying of hounds and realizes that the first
hunt of the season has begun.

In a panic, Tebrick opens his hedges to provide
scapeholes for foxes, fixing bars across the gates to
keep out horsemen. The hunt draws nearer. Suddenly,
he sees Silvia, just ahead of the pack of hounds.

She runs through the gate and leaps into his arms.
The hounds, however, are upon her and bear her with
Mr. Tebrick to earth. There is one wild scream, as
of a woman in despair. When the huntsmen succeed in
beating off the bounds, the vixen is dead and

Mr. Tebrick badly wounded. He is for some months
quite mad, but eventually recovers.

The tale, though short and apparently simple,
is highly effective, with a strong emotional impact.
When one seeks to determine the reason for this
impact, however, it is difficult to do so. The first
question that occurs is whether the tale is one of
madness. Perhaps Mr. Tebrick's neighbors were right
all along when they said he was mad. Perhaps his wife
really had run away, and the fox he cared for so
lovingly was only a fox.

The story, however, is too circumstantial for
such an interpretation. The fox's behaviour, at least

at first, is too unfoxlike. The metamorphosis must be

152

taken as real. The body of Silvia Fox Tebrick did
indeed become the body of a fox, and, in the months
that followed, her soul became more and more foxlike,
until she was, apparently, as much an animal as if
she had been born one. But there is the scream with
which she dies. The witnesses say it was a woman's
scream.

If Lady Into Fox is not the story of a madman's

 

delusion, what is it? Vincent Starrett, in his
introduction to the present edition, calls it a
parable and a fable, but he adds that it is told
"without obvious allegorical significance."ll
Garnett himself makes the usual author's disclaimer
of any parabolic intent:

The story was written not as a fantasy, or as

an allegory, but for its own sake. It was

not until many years later that it occurred

to me that the subject was a reductio ad

absurdam of marital fidelity.l2

In spite of the disclaimer, one cannot avoid the

feelings that the story is parabolic, that such an
obviously absurd tale could not arouse such strong
emotional response if its characters and events were
not somehow symbolic of the human condition. In

attempting to define or to uncover this symbolism,

one's mind returns again and again to one of the early

 

11Vincent Starrett, Introduction to the Present
Edition (f 5/v).

12Author's Note to the Present Edition (f 6/r).

 

153

scenes: Mr. Tebrick, having shut the new made vixen in
his bedroom, descends to the courtyard and calmly,
methodically, ruthlessly, kills his two dogs, both pets
of long standing, the one having belonged to Silvia
before her marriage, the other to Mr. Tebrick.

Granted that it is practically inconvenient, even
perhaps impossible, for a fox to live where there are

dogs, the notion of an English country gentleman's

6;?“ 1

shooting his faithful pets without even a quiver of
regret is startling. If, however, we turn to the
Bestiary or to the more modern Dictionary of Symbols,
we find a clue to what may be the meaning of this
scene. The dog, we learn, is a symbol of fidelity
and, particularly, of faithful guardianship. He is,
indeed, often used as a figure of the priesthood, for
priests are the faithful guardians of the souls of
their flocks.l3

The fox, on the other hand, is noted for his
wily, untrustworthy nature, particularly his habit of
"playing dead," and is often a symbol for the devil,
that wily thief, against whose depradations the priest
faithfully acts as watchdog.lu Does this traditional
wiliness in the cause of evil not explain Garnett's

emphasis on the increasing untrustworthiness of the

 

13T. H. White, Bestiary, pp. 61 ff, and Cirlot,
Dictionagy, p. 80.

1“

 

Bestiary, p. 53; Dictionary, p. 108.

15A

fox-woman? Mr. Tebrick first becomes aware that he must
get rid of the pet dove, for he cannot trust Silvia not
to kill it at the first opportunity, though he could so
trust any trained dog. Later, when she has almost
broken his heart by pretending death, Mr. Tebrick is
crushed by his realization of her deceitfulness, not
being, Garnett says, like so many men, accustomed to a
deceitful wife.

Consideration of the figures of dog and fox leads
to still another obvious difference between them. The
dog is the trained companion of man, his wild origins
all but forgotten. The fox is all wildness, a creature
of the forest and of instinct.

It seems possible, therefore, that, in killing
his dogs, Mr. Tebrick is destroying civilized restraints,
whether in the form of ideas of marital fidelity or
religious principles, in an effort to protect and to
remain himself faithful to a wife who has taken on the
form of untutored nature, freedom from the restraints
of civilization. That she is also a form of Evil is
apparent as we watch Mr. Tebrick's degeneration as he
associates with her. He becomes less and less human
until, at the end of the story, he is an unwashed, half-
starved, crouching savage whose separation from his

obsession sends him into outright madness.

 

155

If this were all the story, however, one would
come away from the reading with a sense of revulsion.
That one does not is the result of Garnett's realization
that no situation is as simple as this sort of analysis
would indicate. Throughout the tale, Silvia retains
much of her charm. She is affectionate and anxious to
please. She is motherly. Throughout, there are hints
that the woman trapped inside the animal is grieving
and wishing to escape. Her single scream of despair
as the bounds find her throat may be her cry of despair
that now she can never do so.

The last (1961) of our modern examples of the use
of metamorphosis is Sylyg, a novel by the French
novelist and philosopher, Vercors. In this apparently
slight work, Vercors tells a charming tale of a young
fox changed into a young woman, reversing the direction
of Garnett's metamorphosis. Instead of lady—into-fox,
we have fox—into-lady: Albert Richwock, a young
bachelor, returning at twilight to his isolated country
home, hears the hunt in full cry at the edge of his
field. The bounds are obviously about to make the
kill. Suddenly, the barking ceases; the hounds have
lost the scent; and at Richwick's feet, half caught
in his hedge, lies a naked woman. She is scratched
and bleeding, bruised, and dirty, but when Richwick

tries to pick her up she struggles and bares her

 

teeth. She is too exhausted to escape, however, and
Richwick bears her to his house to bathe and tend

her, observing in the process that she is young and
delicately made, with tawny skin, high cheekhones,
almond eyes, and a mass of golden-red hair. Unwilling
though he is to believe it, what Richwick bears in

his arms was, ten minutes earlier, a fox.

The remainder of the novel is concerned with the
process by which the vixen in woman's body becomes a
real woman, with the process balanced against the grad—
ual dehumanization of another character, a woman who
is using drugs to escape her intellect and emotions.
Step by step, we watch the taming process as the young
Sylva is "housebroken," taught to eat at table and to
wear clothes. When she has learned these things,
however, she is still at heart a fox, longing to escape
to her native woods and dismayed to find she is no
longer accepted there. .

Gradually, the fox-woman learns more and more.
She speaks in simple sentences and performs simple
household duties, but her words and actions are all
connected with satisfying some physical desire. There
is no indication that she thinks in any sort of
abstract way or questions her world. She is affec-
tionate, but in the way a cat is affectionate,
seeking only protection and companionship, with some

sexual overtones.

 

157

It is not until she is forced to recognize herself
in a mirror that she becomes self aware; and it is not
until she realizes that she and her guardians must die,
as her dog has died, that she questions the universe.

It is then that she becomes fully human, capable of
human love, and in her rebellious cry for knowledge,
capable of reason.

Vercors does not end the story here, however.

Sylva becomes pregnant and gives birth, not to a human

 

child, but to a fox cub.

Fortunately for our purposes, Vercors has dis-
cussed this novel at length in an exchange of letters
with his friend, Paul Misraki.15 These letters make
clear that Vercors, who has been long concerned with
the problem of what constitutes humanity, what, if
anything, divides man from the other mammals, has given
us in Sylya a parable of the human condition as he
perceives it.

As Vercors puts the problem, the usual defi-
nition of man as an upright mammal possessed of
intelligence and an articulated language does not
really define, for many animals reason, some quite
adstractly, and numerous birds and apes have artic-

ulated languages. Nor does the use of tools really

 

15Vercors et Paul Misraki, Les Chemins de l'Etre
(Une Discussion), Paris, 1965.

158

separate man from the beasts. Many kinds of animals
use a simple tool. In fact, some animals excell some
human beings in the very qualities we are accustomed
to assume mark humanity. It is the uses to which
intelligence, language, and tools are put which dis—
tinguish the human being. Man is the only animal to
seek to understand himself, his world, and the reason
for his existence.

Prenons donc l'homme a sa limite la plus primitive,
celle du 11 se distingue a peine de l'anthropoide

Le pygmeé de nos jours peut encore nous en donner
une image, puisque dans presques tous les domaines,
il est inférieur a certains animaux: moins éducable
que l'éléphant, moins adroit que le chimpanzé,

moins ingénieux d'apparence que le castor constructeur
de villages, de digues, de canaux et d'écluses.

Ceci confirme bien que ce n'est pas dans ces divers
domaines que l'homme se distingue essentiellement
des animaux. Mais il est une chose que fait le pyg-
mée et que nul animal ne fit jamais; il lance au
ciel des imprecations.

Take man at his most primitive, when he can hardly

be distinguished from the ape. The modern pigmy can
still give us an image of him, since in almost every
domain, he is inferior to certain animals; less
teachable than the elephant, less adroit than the
chimpanzee, apparently less ingenious than the beaver,
builder of villages, dikes, canals, and locks. This
confirms indeed that it is not in these diverse domains
that man is essentially distinguished from the animals.
But there is one thing the pigmy does that no animal
ever does: he shouts imprecations at heaven.1

To pray or to curse is for Vercors the most obvious
example of the kind of mental activity which does dis-
tinguish man from the animals, for to do either is to

conceive of the possibility that the order of things can

 

l6Vercors, Plus ou Moins Homme, Paris, 1950, p. 19.

159

be changed. Man sees the world as separate from himself.
He feels his own ignorance, in particular his ignorance
about his own existence, and he rebels at that ignorance.
He actively wills to know.

In Sylva's transformation in a moment of complete
terror from fox to woman, then, we have a metaphor for
the first wrenching away of man from his simple life as
an unthinking part of nature. In her response to
training, there is a parallel to the learned responses
of members of the most primitive societies forced into
cooperation for the sake of a common food supply. In
her hysterical and destructive response to recognizing
her own individuality when she recognizes herself in the
mirror, there is the loneliness and fear of Neanderthal
man recognizing his naked weakness through the glances
and gestures of others. But, though Sylva has broken
from the forest, the world of animals, though she has
learned to live and cooperate with others, though she
has recognized her own individuality, she has not taken
the last step into full humanity.

This comes when, recognizing painfully that her
former playmate, the dog, can not be made to play again,
she makes the mental leap to ask about her other play—
mate, Bonney (Richwick), then moves on to ask, "Et Sylva?"
It is the rebellion against the realization that one day

both she and Bonney will die that turns her into a truly

 

160

loving woman, and it is this same rebellion that causes
her to ask "Et pourquoi qu'on existe, tout ca?" (Why
does anything exist? p. 271) and "Mais alors, quoi,
on ne sait Elfin?" (But then, don't we know anything?
p. 272) Sylva has become a questioning, reasoning,
loving human being.

Why then, does Vercors tell us that her baby was
a fox. Because, I think, he wants to make his point

that humanity is a mental, not a physical state. That

 

the metamophosis was incomplete, that Sylva still has
the reproductive system of a vixen, is unimportant
beside her emotional and mental womanhood. Perhaps,
also, Vercors would remind us that each newborn infant
is the animal man once was and must learn, in the
process of growing up, to be a human being.

Although in this chapter three tales have been
studied together, they are not all the same type.

Die Verwandlung and Lady Into Fox are, in the final

 

 

analysis, hermetic. What the concept of insecthood
meant to Kafka we shall never know precisely, just as
we cannot be sure what the idea of foxiness or of
animality in general means to Garnett. Each of us is
free to find his own meaning in these works. Sylya,
on the other hand, resembles somewhat a medieval piece
in that there are hints throughout, becoming at times

almost explicit explanations, of Vercors's essential

161

concern, and our interpretation is confirmed by a study
of the author's other works. Kafka and Garnett, it
seems to me, have worked somewhat in the tradition of
the Symbolists. Vercors has drawn from a much earlier
tradition.

Nevertheless, when we first consider the three
modern examples of metamorphosis as a literary device,
it seems that they resemble each other more closely
than any one of them resembles the majority of the
previous works we have studied. For the most part,
early authors agree in presenting the change of form
as the climax of a psychic process. Lucius has made
himself inwardly an ass long before his body turns
into that of an ass. Astolfo has lost the life of
reason, subjecting himself to that lustfulness which
can be the death of the soul, before he is turned into
the tree of death. Milton carefully shows Satan's
inward resemblance to a serpent before Satan's outward
form becomes serpentine. All the early authors, with
the exception of Ovid, perhaps, in certain episodes of

the Metamorphosis, seem to follow the Platonic concept

 

that the soul imprints herself to some degree on the
body, or, as Spenser puts it:
So, every spirit as it is mest pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure

 

162

To habit in, and it more fairly dight

With cheareful grace and amiable sight.

For of the soule the body forme doth take:

For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.
Spenser, of course, is thinking only of human bodies.
It is but an extension of the idea, however, to say
that the soul which has become animal—like or plant-
like could turn the body into that of an animal or a
plant. It is because his soul is wolf—like that
Lycaon becomes a wolf; it is because his soul is asinine
that Lucius becomes an ass.

In the three modern stories, on the other hand,
either metamorphosis has taken place before the story
begins, as in Kafka, or it happens very early in the
tale, as in Garnett and Vercors, and we are given no
opportunity to make a real judgment as to the qualities
of soul that may have brought it about. Instead, our
attention is directed to the gradual inner changes that
result from the metamorphosis. The soul, one might

say, is, in these stories, formed by the body.

In keeping with the two different philosophical

points of view are the two different methods of presenting

the physical process of metamorphosis. In the modern
stories there is no mention of process. Gregor Samsa

awakens one morning to find that he is a cockroach;

 

_—f

17Edmund Spenser, "An Hymne in Honour of Beautie,"
in The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition
(Greenlaw 32 gl) Baltimore, 1933, VII, 207, it. 127—33.

163

Silvia Tebrick becomes, between one breath and the next,
a fox; Vercors's Silva is a fox as she starts through
the hedge, a woman as she emerges from it. Metamorphosis
is instantaneous.

In the earlier stories, however, the process of
bodily change is often presented in great detail.
Daphne first feels numbness, then the growth of bark
on her sides, then her hair changing to leaves. Lucius
tells us how first his hair coarsens, then his skin
thickens, next his fingers and toes become hooves,
while from the end of his back grows a great tail,
and so on, until he is the complete ass. Dante's man-
serpents, too, change form gradually, as does Milton's
Satan:

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell

A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain . . . .1

There is another, more subtle, difference between
the two sets of stories. In the earlier works, the
essential consciousness or self remains unchanged. The
Io who has a cow's body is the same 10 that Jupiter
seduced. Lucius inside the ass is still Lucius. In
Die Verwandlung, however, Gregor Samsa develops more

and more nearly the consciousness of an insect; in

Garnett's tale, Silvia develops more and more nearly

 

18Paradise Lost, x, 511-515.

 

 

164

the instincts of a fox; in Vercors's work, Sylva becomes

a human being. In Kafka and Garnett, however, the inner
change, is not quite complete: Gregor Samsa is still

drawn to the music, is capable of self-sacrifice: Silvia
screams like a woman. The body changes the soul, though

it does not do so absolutely. Sylva, on the other hand,
although physically still part fox, has acquired completely
the soul of a woman.

In their apparent reasonlessness, their suddenness,

surre-1

and their subsequent spiritual effects, the modern
metamorphoses resemble more closely the rare upward
change of the classical authors than the more common
downward change into animal or plant. We are not told
what Gregor has done, if anything, to cause his
transformation. Silvia Tebrick has apparently done
nothing to cause hers, nor has the fox which became
Sylva. One thinks of Deucalion and Pyhrra and the
stones which become men at the command of the goddess.
Certainly, the stones had done nothing to precipitate
this change. Nor had Pygmalion's ivory statue done
anything to cause her transformation. It was simply
the will of Venus. But in the lengthiest and most
circumstantial treatment of upward metamorphosis,
Lucius's transformation from ass to man in the Golden
fléi: Lucius has done something to permit, if not

actually to cause, the change.

165

Throughout the latter part of the book, he
becomes more and more nearly human in both his virtues
and his vices. He no longer seeks to couple with
mares, but has an affair with a noble lady. He eats
human food. When, by running away rather than submit
to the public embrace of a murderess, he rejects vice
and seeks instead the cleansing sea, he has made it
possible for Isis to show herself to him and bestow
that grace which effects the final transformation.

Looking at the other early upward transformations
in the light of this one, it becomes apparent that in
each case, someone has indeed acted to permit the power
of deity to act. It is the simple piety of Deucalion
and Pyhrra which the goddess rewards by giving them
companions. It is Pygmalion's purehearted worship and
his gentle wooing of his ivory maiden which induce
Venus to make the statue into warm and loving flesh.'
The objects have been made human because of the actions
of human beings, just as Fraelissa was turned into a
tree by Fradubio's neglect.

In the early metamorphosis, then, each change
can be considered the work of a human being's heart or
soul, made physically evident by the will of a deity
or some other outward force. In the modern stories
there is no mention of a deity who might effect the

transformation, although some outward force seems to

166

be implicit in each story. It is possible that there
was some psychological force at work also. That two
of the victims of metamorphosis are named so similarly
may, perhaps, give us a clue to what that force was.
Sylya or Sylvia derives, of course, from the Latin
sylya, a woodland, with all its connotations of
wildness or savagery, a double meaning which Dante
delights in in the "selva selvaggia" of the opening
of the Inferno. We have seen how Garnett opposes the
dog as a figure for civilization and good to the fox
as a symbol for untamed nature and evil. Vercors
considers his vixen a woman when she has achieved the
ability to love and reason like a woman, when she has
the qualities a medieval philosopher would attribute
to the soul. Is it not possible, then, that in both
these stories we are dealing with the Platonic concept
of the dichotomy between soul and body, between the
"higher" or spiritual part of man and the "lower" or
animal part?

With this possibility in mind, we can return to

Die Verwandlung and ask whether it is not a devotion

 

to the life of the body, to the minutiae of this world's
tausiness, which has transformed Gregor Samsa into an
insect. The animal part of him, that part which craves
(flung, has all but destroyed the spiritual part. Yet

tfiqe soul is not quite dead. It reaches out for music,

 

fie;

167

the "food of the soul," and allows the body to die in a
heroic gesture of self-sacrifice. The modern stories,
like the earlier ones, are tales of spiritual experience.
The question, however, remains: Why does anybody
use a device which is patently absurd, not only to the
modern reader but to any educated man after the Fourth
Century, B. C.?19 First, I think, it is necessary that
an author wish to express instantaneously a complex of
ideas which cannot be so effectively presented if they
follow one ofter the other in logical order. These
ideas will usually have to do with psychic experience,
for such experience is difficult to convey in the
language of logic. It is this desire which leads often
to the use of simile and metaphor. When we say that a
girl is like a flower or a man like a lion, we are
drawing upon a common store of concepts to express in
the one case the beauty, freshness, and fragility that
are shared by the girl and the flower, in the other,
the valour, nobility, and generosity supposed to be
shared by the man and the lion. We are also saying,
by implication, that the emotional experience of being
in the girl's presence is like that of looking at a
flower, that the presence of the man effects us as

would the presence of a lion.

 

19See, for example, Plato's mockery of the idea
that Deity would engage in such games in The Rppublic,
II, 379-381. (F. M. Cornford, tr., The Republic of

Plato, pp. 72—7A.)

 

168

When, moving one step further, into metaphor, we
say, "The girl is a flower," we suggest that the
qualities the two share are more important than their
differences. It is at this point that a second
element must enter, the visual imagination. For the
artist of strong visual imagination, the statement,
"She is a flower," brings to mind a picture in which
the slender body becomes a stem, the arms, leaves,
the rosy face a blossom. The statement, "He is a
lion," calls to mind a real lion with mane, tail, and
claws.

In addition to the desire to express a complex
of ideas in one bold figure, and in addition to a
strong visual imagination, one must have, I believe,

a sense of the unity of living things, so that the
idea of one form of life being interchanged with
another is not totally absurd.

In the mind of primitive man, all creation seems
to be alive. A rock, a tree, a bird or animal, is
not simply living but possessed of personality. One
apologizes to the tree before hewing it down; one
weeps while harvesting the wheat; one attempts to
placate the spirit of the slain bear. To such a mind,
the possibility that a rock should become a man is not
inherently impossible, for it possesses already some

(of man's characteristics. Although this animistic way

 

169

of thinking may be laughed at by the sophisticated, it
has great strength, and it persisted, side by side with
philosophy, throughout the middle ages. One need only
to glance at a bestiary where all sorts of intellect,
virtue and vice are attributed to animals to see how
persistent such ideas are, and St. Francis's Canticle

of the Sun is an example of how beautiful this thinking

 

can be:

Praised be my Lord for brother fire,

By that which Thou lightest up the dark.

And fair is he and gay and mighty and strong.20

The animism became less and less important in the

great centuries of the "new science" and the triumph of
reason may help to explain the disappearance after 1700
of metamorphosis in literature, although the declining
popularity of all forms of parabolic writing was obviously
also an important factor. Literature, particularly prose,
aimed at logical clarity of expression rather than dreamy
emotionalism. This emphasis on logical clarity accom-
panies, is perhaps an outgrowth of, the kind of scientific
theory exemplified by Linnaeus, with his ordering of
species, geni, and phyla, which renders impossible the

idea of moving from one rigidly defined category to

another.

 

20St. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun
(P. Robinson, tr.) in Karl F. Thompson (ed.), Classics
of Western Thought, New York and Burlingame, II, 53.

 

170

With the work of Darwin, Freud, and their
followers, however, science has brought in through
the back door the concept it had tossed out through
the front, though, of course, in somewhat altered
form. Modern man may not attribute human character-
istics to animals (though many still do), but he is
very much aware of the animal characteristics of
people. Although he may not consciously hold the
beliefs of primitive animism, the idea that one form
of life flows into another and that the instincts and
desires of human beings differ little from those of
the other animals is a part of his thinking. We are
all aware that under our civilized exterior sleeps
and dreams a very primitive animal indeed and that he
sometimes threatens to awake. As early as 1927,
Hermann Hesse was writing:

And so the Steppenwolf had two natures, a human
and a wolfish one. This was his fate, and it
may be that it was not a very exceptional one.
There must have been many men who have had a good
deal of the dog or the fox, of the fish or the
serpent in them .21
That the animal is there we know; that he threatens our
hard—won humanity we fear.

The increased awareness of our animal nature has

influenced the literary mind as has scientific inquiry

 

21Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (Basil Creighton,
tr., Joseph Mileck, Horst Frenz, eds.), New York, 1963,
pp. “1-1420

 

 

171

and speculation about the blurred boundaries between
forms of life and even, in the case of viruses, between
life and non-life. But there has also been another
influence at work. The relatively optimistic view of
man prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries with its emphasis on the invincibility of
reason, the perfectability of man, the inevitability

of progress, the view which produced Dickens and Zola,

Defoe and Flaubert, with their underlying assumption

F- 7“!

that, with a little better management, all might yet
be well—-this view has disappeared from serious lit-
erature. Instead, the artist of the twentieth
century, who has seen the triumph of evil, whether

in the form of a Hitler or of a soulless bureaucracy,
has returned to something like the world view of the
Platonists and the Christian philosophers. He looks
upon the human condition with fear and pessimism,
pinning whatever hopes he has to the triumph of the
individual soul over its besetting circumstance.

In his effort to analyze, to understand, to
express his view of the human predicament, he may
find himself seeking to escape from the details of
the here and now, from the "accidents" as a medieval
philosopher would have said, into the world of
essential being. In so doing, he returns, perhaps

without the consciousl realization of what he is

172

doing, to the antique modes. Kafka, for instance,
uses cue-names and the quest motif, as well as the

dream vision, in both The Trial and The Castle as

 

 

he struggles to come to terms with death and the
existence of God in a senseless world. Camus's

stranger is an Everyman forced out of his animal
stupor into spiritual awareness. Golding uses a

locus amoenus, an island-other-world, as the scene for

 

his dismal realization of man's essential evil, and he
uses a near-metamorphosis in the murder scene, where
Simon (a figure for spiritual truth) becomes in the
boys' eyes a beast.22
A renewed sense of the reality of evil has joined
with an awareness of man's double nature, the struggle
within between beast and angel to require the use of

that figurative language which always seems to be

necessary when one describes the psychomachia. The

 

antique modes have become useful again, nor is it sur-
prising that, among those modes, the startling figure

of metamorphosis has found a place.

 

22Franz Kafka, The Trial, New York, 1956, and
The Castle, New York, 1966} Albert Camus, L'Etranger,
New York, 1955; William Golding, Lord of the Flies,
New York, 1959.

 

 

 

APPENDICES

173

 

 

 

APPENDIX I

OVID'S VERSIONS OF THREE MYTHS

17A

APPENDIX I

OVID'S VERSIONS OF THREE MYTHS

DAPHNE (I, u52 ff)

Primus amor Phoebi Daphne Peneia, quem non

fors ignara dedit, sed saeva Cupidinis ira,

Delius hunc nuper, victa serpente superbus,
viderat adducto flectentem cornua nervo

"quid" que "tibi, lascive puer, cum fortibus armis?"
dixerat: "ista decent umeros gestamina nostros,
qui dare certa ferae, dare vulnera possumus hosti,
qui modo pestifero toto iugera ventre prementem
stravimus innumeris tumidum Pythona sagittis.

tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores

inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!"

filius huic Veneris "figat tuus omnia, Phoebe,

te meus arcus" ait; "quantoque animalia cedunt
cuncta deo, tanto minor est tua gloria nostra."
dixit et eliso percussis aere pennis

impiger umbrosa Parnasi constitit arce

eque sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra
diversorum operum: fugat hoc, facit illud amorem;
quod facit, auratum est et cuspide fulget acuta,
quod fugat, obtusum est et habet sub harundine plumbum.
hoc deus in nympha Peneide fixit, at 1110

laesit Apollineas traiecta per ossa medullas;
protinus alter amat, fugit altera nomen amantis
silvarum latebris capitivarumque ferarum

exuviis gaudens innuptaeque aemula Phoebes:

vitta coercebat positos sine lege capillos.

multi illam petiere, illa aversata petentes
impatiens expersque viri nemora avia lustrat

nec, quid Hymen, quid Amor, quid sint conubia curat.
saepe pater dixit: "generum mihi, filia, debes,"
saepe pater dixit: "debes mihi, nata, nepotes";
illa velut crimen taedas exosa iugales

pulchra verecundo suffunditur ora rubore

inque patris blandis haerens service lacertis

"da mihi perpetua, genitor carissime," dixit
"virginitate frui! dedit hoc pater ante Dianae."

nl'
. .1

175

176

ille quidem obsequitur, sed te decor iste quod optas
esse vetat, votoque tuo tua forma repugnat:

Phoebus amat visaeque cupit conubia Daphnes,
quodque cupit, sperat, suaque illum oracula fallunt,
utque leves stipulae demptis adolentur aristis,

ut facibus saepes ardent, quas forte viator

vel nimis admovit vel iam sub luce reliquit,

sic deus in flammas abiit, sic pectore toto

uritur et sterilem sperando nutrit amorem.

spectat inornatos collo pendere capillos

et "quid, si comantur?" ait. videt igne micantes
sideribus similes oculos, videt oscula, quae non
est vidisse satis; laudat digitosque manusque
bracchiaque et nudos media plus parte lacertos;

si qua latent, meliora putat. fugit ocior aura
illa levi neque ad haec revocantis verba resistit:
"nympha, precor, Penei, mane! non insequor hostis;
nympha, mane! sic agna lupum, sic cerva leonem,
sic aquilam penna fugiunt trepidante columbae,
hostes quaeque suos: amor est mihi causa sequendi!
me miserum! ne prona cadas indignave laedi

crura notent sentes et sim tibi causa doloris!
aspera, qua properas, loca sunt: moderatius, oro,
curre fugamque inhibe, moderatius insequar ipse.-
cui placeas, inquire tamen: non incola montis,

non ego sum pastor, non hic armenta gregresque
horridus observo. nescis, temeraria, nescis,

quem fugias, ideoque fugis: mihi Delphica tellus
et Claros et Tenedos Patareaque regia servit;
Iuppiter est genitor; per me, quod eritque fuitque
estque, patet; per me concordant carmina nervis.
certa quidem nostra est, nostra tamen una sagitta
certior, in vacuo quae vulnera pectore fecit!
inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem
dicor, et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis.

ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis

nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes!"

Plura locuturum timido Peneia cursu

fugit cumque ipso verba inperfecta reliquit,

tum quoque visa decens; nudabant corpora venti,
oriaque adversas vibrabant flamina vestes,

et levis impulsos retro dabat aura capillos,
auctaque forma fuga est. sed enim non sustinet ultra
perdere blanditias iuvenis deus, utque movebat
ipse amor, admisso sequitur vestigia passu.

ut canis in vacuo leporem cum Gallicus arvo

vidit, et hic praedam pedibus petit, ille salutem;
alter inhaesuro similis iam iamque tenere

sperat et extento stringit vestigia rostro,

alter in ambiguo est, an sit conprensus, et ipsis
morsibus eripitur tangentiaque ora relinquit:

177

sic deus et virgo est hic spe celer, illa timore.
qui tamen insequitur pennis adiutus Amoris,

ocior est requiemque negat tergoque fugacis
inminet et crinem sparsum cervicibus adflat.
viribus absumptis expalluit illa citaeque

victa labore fugae spectans Peneidas undas

"fer, pater," inquit "opem! si flumina numen habetis,
qua nimium placui, mutando perde figuram!"

vix prece finita torpor gravis occupat artus,
mollia cinguntur tenui praecordia libro,

in frondem crines, in ramos bracchia crescunt,
pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret,

ora cacumen habet: remanet nitor unus in illa.

Hanc quoque Phoebus amat positaque in stipite dextra
sentit adhuc trepidare novo sub cortice pectus
conplexusque suis ramos ut membra lacertis

oscula dat ligno; refugit tamen oscula lignum.

cui deus "at, quoniam coniunx mea non potes esse,
arbor eris certe" dixit "meal semper habebunt

te coma, te citharae, te nostrae, laure, pharetrae;
tu ducibus Latiis aderis cum laeta Triumphum ‘
vox canet et visent longas Capitolia pompas;
postibus Augustis eadem fidissima custos

ante fores stabis mediamque tuebere quercum,

utque meum intonsis caput est iuvenale capillis,

tu quoque perpetuos semper gere frondis honores!"
finierat Paean: factis modo laurea ramis

adnuit utque caput visa est agitasse cacumen.

Daphne, Peneus's daughter, was Phoebus's first love,

a love caused, not by unknowing chance, but by the
savage wrath of Cupid. The Delian, filled with pride
over the conquered serpent, recently had seen Cupid
flexing his tight-strung bow. "Naughty boy," he said,
"What are you doing with such mighty arms? Such burdens
befit my shoulders, I who can give battle to wild
animals, wounds to enemies, I who have but now laid
dead, swollen with my arrows, the huge Python

of disease-breeding belly. Be satisfied to light

some sort of love-fires with your torch. Don't lay
claim to my honors." Venus's son replied, "Your

arrow may pierce all animals, Phoebus, but mine will
pierce you, and, by as much as all animals are less
than a god, by so much is your glory less than mine."
Then, striking through the air with beating wings,

he quickly arrived at the shady peak of Parnassus.
From his quiverful of arrows, he drew two darts of
opposite purposes. One puts love to flight, the other

178

causes love. The one that causes love is golden and
its sharp gold point gleams. The one which drives
love away is blunt and has lead at the end of its shaft.

This latter the god struck into the nymph, Peneus's
daughter; with the former he struck to Apollo's marrow,
right through the bones. At once, he loved; she

fled the name of love, rejoicing in the depths of the
forests and in the hides of captured animals, emulating
the virgin Phoebe. A headband controlled her unordered
locks. Many sought her, but she, averse to suitors,
impatient, and wanting nothing to do with men, wandered
the pathless groves--nor did she heed the existence

of Hymen or Cupid or the state of marriage. Often her
father said, "You owe me a son-in-law, Daughter." Often
her father said, "Daughter, you owe me grandsons." She,
detesting the nuptial torches like something criminal,
reddened for shame over her pretty face. Clinging with
her soft arms around her father's neck, she said, "Dearest
Father, let me enjoy perpetual virginity. Her father has
already granted this to Diana."

He yielded indeed, but your beauty, Daphne, forbade
your hope, your appearance was not suited to your
prayer. Phoebus loves, at first sight desires to
marry, Daphne, and what he desires he hopes for.

His own prophecies betray him. And just as the stub-
ble is kindled, as hedges burn with the torches put
too near by a traveller, one who leaves at daybreak,
so the god lived in flames, so in his heart he was
burned, and so, hoping, he fed hopeless love. He
looks at the unarrayed hair hanging on the neck, and
"What if it were arrayed?" he says. He looks at her
eyes shining like stars, at her lips, to look at which
is not enough. He praises her fingers, her hands and
lower arms and the half-bare upper arms, and what

is hidden he deems better. She flees him swifter
than the fleeting breeze, nor does she turn back

to his recalling words. "Nymph, I pray you, Daughter
of Peneus, wait! I am not an enemy who follow.
Nymph, wait! So does the lamb flee the wolf, the

doe the lion, so doves, wings fluttering, flee the
eagle, so every animal its foes. But love causes

me to follow you. Oh, miserable me. You might

fall down and, guiltless, be hurt. The briars might
scratch your legs, and I should have caused you pain.
It's rough country you're running through.

Run away a little more slowly, I beg, and I will
pursue more slowly. Just ask who your suitor is.
Through me the lyre-strings harmonize in song. Mine
is sure, even though a surer arrow has wounded my
carefree heart. Mine is the discovery of medicine,
and I am called help-bringer by all the world. Ah me,

179

that love can be healed by no healthful herbs, that the
arts which heal others do not heal their lord.

Peneus's daughter took her frightened flight from
more talk and left him with his words unfinished;
even now, she seems to be disappearing. The winds
were baring her body, opposing winds fluttering her
clinging clothes. A light breeze blew her hair
behind her. Flight increased her beauty.

But the youthful god holds back no longer, wasting
blandishments. So moved was he by love that he followed
her track at top speed. Just as, when a Gallic hound
sees a hare in an open field he seeks, running, his
prey, while the hare runs for safety. The dog, just
about to fasten his teeth, now, now hopes to grab,
and with outstretched muzzle grazes the tail. The
other, in doubt lest he be caught and, snatched from
the very teeth, escapes the just-touching jaws. Thus
the god and the virgin are sped, he by hope, she by
fear. He, however, aided by the wings of love, is
swifter. He denies her rest, he is almost over her
fleeing back. He breathes on the hair spread on her
neck.

Her strength gone, she turns pale, exhausted by the
labor of her swift flight. Seeing her father's waters,
she cries, "Father, If your stream is divine, make

me so that no one desires me. Change, my beauty!"
Hardly was her prayer finished when a heavy numbness
seized her legs; her soft sides were encircled by

thin bark; her hair turned into leaves, her arms grew
into branches. Her foot, just now so swift, was slug-
gishly rooted, her face was a treetop. Only her sleek
beauty remained.

Still Phoebus loves her and, putting his right hand

on the trunk, he feels the heart still beating beneath
the bark. Twining his arms around the branches as if
they were arms, he kisses the wood, but it draws

away from the kiss. At this the god said, "Although
you can not be my bride, you shall certainly be my
tree. My hair, my lyre, my quiver, 0 Laurel, will
bear thee. You will cling around Roman generals when
the joyful voice sing the Triumph and long processions
climb the Capitoline hill. At the gates of Augustus,
a most faithful guardian, you will stand before the
doors guarding the oak in the middle. And, as my

head is that of a youth with uncut hair, so you shall
wear your leaves in perpetual beauty. Apollo ceased,
and the laurel nodded consent with her newly-made
branches, so that her top seemed to moved like a head.

180

Narcissus (IIIi 3AA ff)

 

enixa est utero pulcherrima pleno
infantem nymphe, iam tunc qui posset amari,
Narcissumque vocat. de quo consultus, an esset
tempora maturae visurus longa senectae,
fatidicus vates "si se non noverit" inquit.
vana diu visa est vox auguris: exitus illam
resque probat litique genus novitasque furoris.
namque ter ad quinon unum Cephisisus annum
addiderat poteratque puer iuvenisque videri:
multi illum iuvenes, multae cupiere puellae;
sed fuit in tenera tam dura superbia forma,
nulli illum iuvenes, nullae tetigere puellae.
adspicit hunc trepidos agitantem in retia cervos
vocalis nymphe, quae nec reticere loquenti
nec prior ipsa loqui didicit, resonabilis Echo.
Corpus adhuc Echo, non vox erat et tamen usum
garrula non alium, quam nunc habet, oris habebat,
reddere de multis ut verba novissima posset.
fecerat hoc Iuno, quia, cum deprendere posset
sub love saepe suo numphas in monte iacentis,
illa deam longo prudens sermone tenebat,
dum fugerent nymphae. postquam hoc Saturnia
sensit,
"huius" ait "linguae, qua sum delusa, potestas
parva tibi dabitur vocisque brevissimus usus,"
reque minas firmat. tamen haec in fine loquendi
ingeminat voces auditaque verba reportat.
ergo ubi narcissum per devia rura vagantem
vidit et incaluit, sequitur vestigia furtim,
quoque magis sequitur, flamma propiore calescit,
non aliter quam cum summis circumlita taedis
admotas rapiunt vivacia sulphura flammas.
a quotiens voluit blandis accedere dictis
et mollis adhibere preces! natura repugnat
nec sinit, incipiat, sed, quod sinit, illa parata est
exspectare sonos, ad quos sua verba remittat.
forte puer comitum seductus ab agmine fido
dixerat: "ecquis adest?" et "adest" responderat
Echo.
hic stupet, utque aciem partes dimittit in omnis,
voce "veni!" magna clamat: vocat illa vocantem.
respicit et rursus nullo veniente "quid" inquit
"me fugis?" et totidem, quot dixit, verba recepit.
perstat et alternae deceptus imagine vocis
"huc coeamus" ait, nullique libentius umquam
responsura sono "coeamus" rettulit Echo
et verbis favet ipsa suis egressaque silva
ibat, ut iniceret sperato bracchia collo;
ille fugit fugiensque "manus conplexibus aufer!
ante" ait "emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri";

181

rettulit illa nihil nisi "sit tibi copia nostril"
spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora
protegit et solis ex illo vivit in antris;

sed tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae;

et tenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae

adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus

corporis omnis abit; vox tantum atque ossa supersunt;
vox manet, ossa ferunt lapidis traxisse figuram.

inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur,

omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in illa.

Sic hanc, sic alias undis aut montibus ortas
lusetat hic nymphas, sic coetus ante viriles;
inde manus aliquis despectus ad aethera tollens
"sic amet ipse licet, sic non potiatur amato!"
dixerat: adsensit precibus Rhamnusia iustis.
fons erat inlimis, nitidis argenteus undis,
quem neque pastores neque pastae monte capellae
contigerant aliudve pecus, quem nulla volucris
nec fera turbarat nec lapsus ab arbore ramus;
gramen erat circa, quod proximus umor alebat,
silvaque sole locum passura tempescere nullo.
hic puer et studio venandi lassus et aestu
procubuit faciemque loci fontemque secutus,
dumque sitim desare cupit, sitis altera crevit,,
dumque bibit, visae correptus imagine formae
spem sine corpore amat, corpus putat esse, quod umbra

est.
adstupet ipse sibi vultuque inmotus eodem
haeret, ut e Pario formatum marmore signum;
spectat humi positus geminum, sua lumina, sidus
et dignos Baccho, dignos et Apolline crines
inpubesque genas et eburnea colla.decusque
oris et in niveo mixtum candore ruborem,
cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse:
se cupit inprudens et, qui probat, ipse probatur,
dumque petit, petitur, pariterque accendit et ardet.
inrita fallaci quotiens dedit oscula fonti,
in medias quotiens visum captantia collum
bracchia mersit aquas nec se deprendit in illis:
quid videat, nescit; sed quod videt, uritur illo,
atque oculos idem, qui decipit, incitat error.
credule, quid frstra simulacra fugacia captas?
quod petis est nusquam; quod amas, avertere, perdes!
ista repercussae, quam cernis, imaginis umbra est:
nil habet ista sui; tecum venitque manetque;
tecum discedet, si tu discedere possis!

Non illum Cereris, non illum cura quietis
abstrahere inde potest, sed opaca fusus in herba
spectat inexpleto mendacem lumine formam
perque oculos perit ipse suos; paullumque levatus
ad circumstantes tendens sua bracchia silvas
"ecquis, io silvae, crudelius" inquit "amavit?

182

scitis enim et multis latebra opportuna fuistis.
ecquem, cum vestrae tot agantur saecula vitae,
qui sic tabuerit, longo meministis in aevo?
et placet et video; sed quod videoque placetque,
non tamen invenio: tantus tenet error amantem.
quoque magis doleam, nec nos mare separat ingens
nec via nec montes nec clausis moenia portis;
exigua prohibemur aqua! cupit ipse teneri:
nam quotiens liquidis porreximus oscula lymphis,
hic totiens ad me resupino nititur ore.
posse putes tangi: minimum est, quod amantibus obstat.
quisquis est, hic es! quid me, puer unice, fallis
quove petitus abis? certe nec forma nec aetas
est mea, quam fugias, et amarunt me quoque

nymphae!
spem mihi nescio quam vultu promittis amico,
cumque ego porrexi tibi bracchia, porrigis ultro,
cum risi, adrides; lacrimas quoque saepe notavi
me lacrimante tuas; nutu quoque signa remittis
et, quantum motu formosi suspicor oris,
verba refers aures non pervenientia nostras!
iste ego sum: sensi, nec me mea fallit imago;
uror amore mei: flammas moveoque feroque.
quid faciam? roger anne rogem? quid deinde rogabo?
quod cupio mecum est: inopem me copia fecit.
o utinam a nostro secedere corpore possem!
votum in amante novum, vellem, quod amamus, abesset.
iamque dolor vires adimit, nec tempora vitae
longa meae superant, primoque exstinguor in aeve.
nec mihi mors gravis est posituro morte dolores,
hic qui diligitur, vellem diuturnior esset;
nunc duo concordes anima moriemur in una."

Dixit et ad faciem rediit male sanus eandem
et lacrimis turbavit aquas, obscureque moto
reddita forma lacu est; quam cum vidisset adire,
"quo refugis? remane nec me, crudelis, amantem
desere!" clamavit; "liceat, quod tangere non est,
adspicere et misero praebere alimenta furori!"
dumque dolet, summa vestem deduxit ab ora
nudaque marmoreis percussit pectora palmis.
pectora traxerunt roseum percussa ruborem,
non aliter quam poma solent, quae candida parte,
parte rubent, aut ut variis solet uva racemis
ducere purpureum nondum matura colorem.
quae simul adspexit liquefacta rursus in unda,
non tulit ulterius, sed ut intabescere flavae
igne levi cerae matutinaeque pruinae
sole tepente solent, sic attenuatus amore
liquitur et tecto paullatim carpitur igni;
et neque iam color est mixto candore rubori,
nec vigor et vires et quae modo visa placebant,
nec corpus remanet, quodam quod amaverat Echo.

183

quae tamen ut vidit quamvis irata memorque
indoluit, quotiensque puer miserabilis "eheu"
dixerat, haec resonis iterabit vocibus "eheu";
cumque suos manibus percusserat ille lacertos,
haec quoque reddebat sonitum plangoris eundem.
ultima vox solitam fuit haec spectantis in undam:
"heu frustra dilecte puer!" totidemque remisit
verba locus, doctoque vale "vale" inquit et Echo.
ille caput viridi fessum submisit in herba,

lumina mors clausit domini mirantia formam:

tum quoque se, postquam est inferna dede receptus,
in Stygia spectabat aqua. Planxere sorores

naides et sectos fratri posuere capillos,
planxerunt dryades; plangentibus absonat Echo.
iamque rogum quassasque faces feretrumque parabant:
nusquam corpus erat; croceum pro corpore florem
inveniunt foliis medium cingentibus albis.

From her full womb the beautiful nymph gave birth

to an infant, even then worthy of love, and she called
him Narcissus. She consulted the fate-speaking prophet
about him, whether he would have a long maturity and
old age. "If he does not know himself, "he replied.
Vain did the voice of the augur seem

for a long time. The event proved it, however,

as did the manner of his death and the strangeness

of his madness. When the son of Cephisus was sixteen
years old and might seem to be either a boy or a man,
many youths, many maidens desired him; but within

that slender form was a pride so rigid that he was
touched by neither youth nor maiden. The sounding
nymph saw him when he was driving frightened deer

into his nets-~she who can neither withhold speech,
nor herself speak the first word, resonant Echo.

At that time Echo was a body, not just a voice, but,
although talkative, she had no other use of speech
than she has now; she could repeat out of many words
only the last. June had done this because often,
when she might have surprised nymphs lying with her
Jove on the mountain, Echo would skilfully hold the
goddess in long talk, while the nymphs fled. After-
wards Saturnia realized this and said, "Little power
will be yours from this tongue, by which I have been
deluded, and only the briefest use of your voice."

Events proved her threat. Echo does, however, repeat
the ends of speeches and carries back voices and

the words she hears. Therefore, when she saw Narcissus
wandering about through the countryside and began

18A

to burn with desire, she furtively followed in his
footsteps, and the more she followed, the hotter
burned her flame, just as quickburning sulfur smeared
around the top of a torch catches fire when flames
are brought near.

Ah, how often she wishes to approach him with pleasing
words and to offer him soft prayers. Her nature for—
bids this, nor does it permit her to begin, but

what it does permit she is prepared for: to await
sounds to which she may return her words. It happened
that the boy, having strayed from the right path of
his companions, said, "Is anyone here?" and "Here",
replied Echo. He is amazed and, casting sharp glances
in all directions, calls in a loud voice, "Come".

She repeats the call. He looks back and, no one coming
behind him, he asks, "Why do you fly from me?" and
again he receives the words he speaks. He stands
still, deceived by the semblance of another voice, and
says, "Here let us meet," and Echo, never to reply
more willingly to any sound, returned "Let us meet!"
And, to help her words, she herself goes out of the
woods, hoping to twine her arms about his neck.

He flees and, fleeing, says, "Take away your embracing
hand! Rather will I die than that my riches should
become yours." She replies only, "My riches

should become yours."

Scorned, she hides in the wood, covers her shamed face
with foliage, and lives from then on in solitary caves.
But still her love remains fixed and grows with the

pain of refusal; sleepless care wastes her miserable
body, her flesh becomes lean, and all the moisture of
her body goes away into the air. Only her voice and

her bones survive. The voice remains; the bones, having
lost their shape, become stones. From thence forth

she lurks in the woods and is seen no more on the
mountain. She is the sound which dwells in the woods.

Thus did this Narcissus mock her, thus had he mocked
other nymphs from the waters and mountains, thus
also companies of men. Then, raising his hands to
heaven, one of the despised ones said, "Thus may he
love, thus may he not be able to be loved!" Nemesis
assented to the just prayer.

There was a clear pool, with waters shining silvery,
which neither shepherds nor sheep pastured on the
mountain came near, nor did any other cattle; which
neither bird nor wild beast disturbed, nor a limb

fallen from a tree; there was grass around it, nourished

185

by the nearby water, and never did the wood allow

the sun to pass through to heat the place. Here,

weary with hunting and the heat, Narcissus leans down,
drawn by the beauty of the place and the fountain.

While he seeks to quench his thirst another thirst
grows. As he drinks, he is struck by the sight of

a beautiful form. He loves a bodiless hope; he believes
to be a body what is only a shadow. He himself is
astounded by himself and remains motionless, with the
same expression, as if he were a figure made of Parian
marble. He saw the constellation of the twins brought
to earth, his eyes, and his curls, worthy of Bacchus,
worthy of Apollo, his hairless cheeks, ivory neck,

and the great beauty of his mouth, and the blush mingled
with snowy white. The whole he admires for that

for which he is himself admired. Unknowingly, he
desires himself, and he who praises is himself what

he praises. Even as he seeks, he is sought. Equally,
he burns and causes to burn.

How often he gives, in vain, kisses to the deceiving
fountain; how often he plunges his arms into it seeking
the neck he sees, without catching himself within them.
Whom he sees he does not know, but what he sees causes
him to burn, and the very eyes with which he used

to deceive cause him to be deceived. Oh credulous

one, what vain, fleeting semblance do you capture?

What you seek is nowhere; what you love, if you turn,
you lose. What you see is the shadow of a reflection.
It is nothing in itself. With you it comes, with

you it goes; with you it will depart, if you can
depart.

No concern for food or rest can draw him from thence.
Stretched on the shady grass, he gazes with greedy
eyes on the lying form, and with his eyes he kills
himself. Rising a little and holding out his arms

to the surrounding trees, he asks, "Has any one,

0 Woods, loved more cruelly? You know, for you have
been the convenient hiding place for many. Your life
lasts through centuries, do you remember anyone through
the long ages who has thus pined away? I am charmed
and I see, but that which I see and which charms

me I can not come to--such an error holds my love.

And I grieve more that neither a great ocean separates
us nor a road, nor mountains, nor the closed gates

of city walls. We are forbidden by a little water.

He himself desires to be embraced, for whenever I

hold out my kiss to the water, he always strains toward
me with backflung face. You would think he could be
touched, so small a thing it is that separates

186

us lovers. Whoever it is, come here! Peerless boy,
why do you elude me? Where do you go when I seek you?
Certainly neither my appearance nor my age is such
that you should flee, and many nymphs have loved me!
Some little hope you promise with your friendly face.
When I hold out my arms to you, you hold out yours;
when I smile, you smile at me. I have often seen
your tears when I weep. You answer my nod with a
nod, and, from the motion of your beautiful lips I
believe you reply to me in words that can not reach
my ears.

"I am he! I know! I am deceived by my own image.

I burn with love of myself. I kindle the flames and
suffer from them too. What shall I do? Shall I woo

or be wooed? Why woo at all? What I desire is

mine. Wealth makes me poor! Oh, that it were possible
to leave my body! And--a new prayer for a lover--

I wish that what I love were absent from me. And

now grief is draining away my strength; not for long
will my life endure. I shall die in my first age.

Nor is death important to me, for in death my troubles
are put aside. I wish that he whom I love could live
longer, but now we two will die together in one breath."

He spoke, then, maddened, turned again to the same
image. With his tears be disturbed the waters so
that their motion obscured the image. When he saw

it disappear, he called, "Where do you flee? Stay,
do not desert your lover, cruel one; let me look

at what I may not touch, and with that food nourish
my unhappy passion." As he grieves he folds back

the top of his tunic and beats his bare breast with
hands like marble. The blows gave to his breast

a rosy glow rather like apples which are often part
white, part red, or like unripe grapes on the branch,
which take on a purplish color. When he saw that
reflected in the waters, he could bear no more, but--as
wax melts before a gentle fire, as the morning frost
melts in the warmth of the sun--so he melts, wasted
away with love, consumed, little by little, by his
inward fire.

And now, no longer is his color a mixture of white

and red, nor remains strength, vigor, nor pleasing
visage, nor even the body which formerly Echo had
loved. She, when she sees this, though she is still
angry and unforgetful, feels pity. As often as

the miserable boy said, "Alas!" She repeated with
answering voice, "Alas!" When he beats at his arms
with his hands, she also returns the same plaintive
sounds. With his last voice, gazing into the familiar

187

pool, he said, "Alas, boy, loved in vain." The place
sent back the same words, and when he said, "Farewell,"
"Farewell," said Echo. He lays his tired head down

on the green grass, and death closes the eyes that

have marvelled at the beauty of their own lord. Even,
after he had been received into the halls of Hades,

he gazed at himself in the waters of the Styx. His
naiad sisters wept and cut their hair for their brother.
The dryads wept, and Echo repeated the sound of their
weeping. And now they were preparing the funeral
pyre and the waving torches, but nowhere was there

a body. Instead of the body they found a flower
whose yellow center was surrounded by white petals.

Pygmalion (X, 2A3 ff.)

 

"Quas quia Pygmalion aevum per crimen agentis
viderat, offensus vitis, quae plurima menti
femineae natura dedit. sine coniuge caelebs
vivebat thalamique diu consorte carebat.
interea niveum mira feliciter arte
sculpsit ebur formamque dedit, qua femina nasci
nulla potest, operisque sui concepit amorem.
virginis est verae facies, quam vivere credas,
et, 51 non obstet reverentia, velle moveri:
ars adeo latet arte sua. miratur et haurit
pectore Pygmalion simulati corporis ignes.
saepe manus operi temptantes admovet, an sit
corpus an illud ebur, nec adhuc ebur esse fatetur.
oscula dat reddique putat loquiturque tenetque
et credit tactis digitos insidere membris
et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus,
et modo blanditias adhibet, modo grata puellis
munera fert illi conchas teretesque lapillos
et parvas volucres et flores mille colorum
liliaque pictasque pilas et ab arbore lapsas
Heliadum lacrimas; ornat quoque vestibus artus,
dat digitis gemmas, dat longa monilia collo,
aure leves bacae, redimicula pectore pendent:
cuncta decent; nec nuda minus formosa videtur.
conlocat hanc stratis concha Sidonide tinctis
apellatque tori sociam adclinataque colla
mollibus in plumis, tamquam sensura, reponit.

"Festa dies Veneris tota celeberrima Cypro
venerat, et pandis inductae cornibus aurum
conciderant ictae nivea cervice iuvencae,
turaque fumabant, cum munere functus ad aras
constitit et timide '31 di dare cuncta potestis,
sit coniunx, opto,' non ausus 'eburnea virgo'

188

dicere, Pygmalion 'similis mea' dixit 'eburnae.'
sensit, ut ipsa suis aderat Venus aurea festis,
vota quid illa velint et, amici numinis oment,
flamma ter accensa est apicemque per aera duxit.
ut rediit, simulacra suae petit ille puellae
incumbensque toro dedit oscula: visa tepere est;
admovet os iterum, manibus quoque pectora temptat:
temptatum mollescit ebur positoque rigore
subsidit digitis ceditque, ut Hymettia sole

cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas
flectitur in facies ipsoque fit utilis usu.

dum stupet et dubie gaudet fallique veretur,
rursus amans rursusque manu sua vota retractat.
corpus erat! saliunt temptatae pollice venae.
tum vero Paphius plenissima concipit heros
verba, quibus Veneri grates agat, oraque tandem
ore suo non falsa premit, dataque oscula Virgo
sensit et erubuit timidumque ad lumina lumen
attollens pariter cum caelo vidit amantem.
coniugio, quod fecit, adest dea, iamque coactis
cornibus in plenum noviens lunaribus orbem

illa Paphon genuit, de qua tenet insula nomen.

Because Pygmalion had seen these women spending their
lives in sin, repelled by the wickedness which nature
had given in such full measure to the minds of women,
he lived celibate, without a wife, without a companion
for his bed. Meanwhile, with felicitous art he carved
snowy ivory and gave it such beauty as no woman can

be born with. Then for his own work he begins to

feel love. The face is that of a true virgin, whom
you would believe to be alive and, if not deterred

by modesty, desirous of passion. Art thus hides

his art. Pygmalion looks in wonder, and his heart
burns for this seeming body.

Often he touches the work to try whether it be flesh
or ivory, nor yet does he confess that it is ivory.
He gives kisses and believes them to be returned.

He speaks to her and holds her and believes the
limbs to sink under his fingers as he touches them,
then fears lest he leave bruises.

Now he addresses her with love—words, now brings her
gifts pleasing to girls--shells and smooth pebbles,
small birds and varicolored flowers, lilies, painted
balls, and the tears of the Heliades. He decorates
the limbs with clothing, puts jewels on the fingers
zand a long necklace about the neck. Pearls hang

 

189

from her ears, chains across her breast. All these
are beautiful, but she seems no less beautiful nude.
He lays her on a couch draped with Tyrian cloth,
calls her the companion of his couch, and places her
reclining neck on soft feather pillows, as if

she could feel.

The feast day of Venus came, greatly celebrated in
Cyprus. Heifers with spreading gold horns fell,
struck on their snowy necks; and the altars smoked.
Having poured out his gift, Pygmalion approached the
altar saying timidly, "If, Gods, you can give all
things, let my wife be, I pray"--and not daring,

to say, "the ivory virgin"--said, "like my ivory
girl." Golden Venus, for she had come to her own
feast, knew what that prayer concealed, and, as an
omen of her friendly deity, she made the flame to
leap up three times, high in the air.

When he returned home he sought the image of his

maiden and, leaning over the couch, gave her a kiss.
She seemed to be warm. He kissed her again and touched
her breast with his hands. The ivory softened to his
touch and, losing its rigidity, yielded and sank
beneath his fingers just as the wax of Hymettos

softens under the sun and, pulled by the thumb, is

bent into many shapes, made useful by use itself.
Amazed, he rejoices, still doubting, fears to be:
mistaken. Again and again, the lover tries his hopes
with his hand. It was flesh! The veins pulsed beneath
his testing finger.

Then indeed did the Paphian hero conceive fullest
words with which to give thanks to Venus as he touched
with his lips lips no longer false. The virgin feels
his kisses and blushes. Then, timidly lifting,

her eyes to the light, she sees at the same time,

the sky and her lover.

The goddess came to their wedding, and when the moon
had joined her horns into a full circle nine times,
that Paphos was born from whom the island takes its

name .

 

APPENDIX II

SOME MEDIEVAL ALLEGORIZATIONS

OF THE DAPHHE MYTH

190

APPENDIX II

SOME MEDIEVAL ALLEGORIZATIONS

OF THE DAPHHE MYTH

I. Fulgentius:

(xi) Apollinem Solem dici voluerunt: dfiolAwY enim
Graece perdens dicitur, quod fervore suo omnen succum
virentium decoquendo perdat herbarum. Hunc etiam
divinationis deum voluerunt, sive quod Sol omnia
obscura manifestat in lucem, seu quod in suo processu

& occasu ejus orbita multimodos significationum monstret
effectus Sol vero dicitur aut ex eo quod solus sit,

aut quod solite per dies surgat & occidat. Huic quoque
quadrigam scribunt illam ob caussam, quod aut quadri-
partitis temporum varietatibus anni circul peragat

aut quod quadrifido limite diei metiatur spatium.

They supposed Apollo to be the name of the sun; indeed,
he was called Apollo the Destroyer by the Greeks,
because all the sap of green plants is destroyed by
his heat, being boiled away. They considered him
the god of divination whether because the sun makes
dark things clear with its light, or because, by ad-
vancing and retreating, his orbit seems to effect
many things of significance. He is truly called Sol
either because he is alone [solus] or from the fact
that he is accustomed [solire] to rise and set each
day. They also write him as a quadrigam, for the
reason either that with the differences of the four
sorts of weather he passes through the circle of
the year, or because the space of a day is measured

in four parts.

(xiii) In hujus etiam tutelam laurum adscribunt,

unde etiam eum amasse Daphnen dicunt, Penei fluminis
filiam. Et unde laurus nasci posset, nisi de fluvial-
ibus aquis? Maxime quia ejusdem Penei fluminis ripae

191

192

lauro abundare dicuntur. At vero amica Apollinis

ob hanc rem vocitata est, quia illi, qui de interpre-
tatione somniorum scripserunt, ut Antiphon, Philocrus,
& Artemon, & Serapion Ascalonites, promittant in
libris suis, laurum si dormientibus ad caput poseris,
vera somnia esse visuros.

They assigned the laurel also to his [Apollo's] pro-
tection, and because of this, they said that he had
loved Daphne, the daughter of Peneus. And whence might
the laurel be born, if not from river waters? Es-
pecially as the shores of the River Peneus are said
to have an abundance of laurels. Moreover, indeed,
the laurel is wont to be called the love of Apollo,
because those men who wrote about the interpretation
of dreams, such as Antiphon, Philocrus, and Artemon,
and Serapion Ascalonites, claim in their books that
laurel, if you will place it on sleepers' heads,
brings about true dreams.

(xvi) Arcum vero huic sagittasque conscribunt, sive
quod de circulo ejus radii in modum sagittarum ex-
siliant, seu quod suorum radiorum manifestatione

omnem dubietatis scindat caliginem, unde etiam Pythonem
sagittis intermisse fertur: "goo enim Graece credu-
litas dicitur. Et quia omnis falsa credulitas sicut
serpentes-luce manifestante deprimitur, Pythonem

eum intermisse dicunt.

A bow and arrows they ascribe to him [Apollo], whether
because rays go out like arrows from his sphere, or
because every fog is dried up by the shining forth

of his rays; whence, indeed, he is made to kill the
Python with his arrows. For the Python is called
credulity by the Greeks, and, because any false be-
lief, which is like a serpent, is dispelled by the
shining forth of light, Python is said by them to be

killed.

II. Arnulf of Orleans:

Terra in Phitonem serpentem quem Apollo sagitta suis
occidit. Per Phitonem noxium terre humorem habemus

quem sol sagittis id est radiis suis dessicat. Vel

Phiton est falsa credulitas, quam Apollo id est Sapiens
:ratione sua exterminat. Apollo enim exterminans inter-
Ipretatur: exterminat enim et dividit tenebras per lucem.
.Sic et sapiens falsam credulitatem exterminat a veritate,
'vel etiam fallaciam que potest haberi per Phitonem serpentem

193

fallacem. Sed inde rediens Apollo id est Sapiens aliquando
superbit, et quasi iustificans se, Cupidinem deum amoris
negligit.

Earth [changed into] the serpent, Python, which
Apollo killed with his arrows. For Python we have
noxious humors from the earth which the sun dries

up with its arrows, that is its rays. Or Python

is false belief, which Apollo, that is Wisdom,
destroys with reason. Certainly, Apollo may be in-
terpreted as the destroyer: he does in truth destroy
and put apart shadows with his light. And just so does
Wisdom destroy with truth false belief, or indeed,
deceit, for it is possible to understand the serpent,
Python, as deceit. But, returning thence, Apollo,
that is Wisdon, later became prideful and, as if

it were his right, neglected Cupid, the god of love.

Sed Cupido eum arcu sagittat id est stimulis carnis
sue eum calefigat. Sed tamen ille non amat nisi
virginem Danem, quam tamen consequi non potest donec
ea sit mutata in laurum. Virgines enim de virgini-
tate sua in hoc seculo non merentur coronam nisi

post suam mutationem id est post mortem eam accipiunt.
Sed tunc habent lauream coronam quam in hac vita mer-
uerunt. Dane ideo filia Penei dei fluvii fingitur
quia aqua est frigida, et pudicicia est filia frigidi-
tatis sicut impudicicia caloris.

But Cupid shot him with an arrow from his bow, that
is, he caused him to burn with fleshly desires.

But still he loved only the virgin Daphne, whom,
however, he was unable to overtake. At last, she

was turned into a laurel. Virgins, indeed, do not
deserve a crown in this life for their virginity,

but only after their change, that is after death.

But then they have the laurel crown which in this
life they won. This same Daphne is fabled to be

the daughter of Peneus, the god of the river, because
water is cold, and modesty is the daughter of coldness,
just as shamelessness is of heat.

III. John of Garland (11. 91-6):

Phebus Phitonem superat,.sapiensque malignum,
Fallacemque virum sub ratione premit.
Mentibus hec arbor sapientum virgo virescit
Que quamvis fugiat victa labore viret.
Est virgo Phebi Sapientia facta corona
Laurus, quam cupida mente requirit homo.

19A

Phoebus conquers the Python; so the wise man con-
quers evil. He forces poisonous deceit to submit
to reason. In the minds of the wise, this tree,

as a virgin flourishes, for no matter how she may
flee, when conquered laboriously, she grows green.
She is the virgin of Phoebus, Wisdom made into a

crown, the laurel which men seek with greedy mind.

IV. Ovide Moraiisé (11. 2952—296U):

 

Souvent avient, jerfen dout mie,

Que tez aide et conseille autrui

Qui ne set pas conseillier lui,

Et, puis qu'oms est d'amours espris
Ja tant ne sera de grant pris,

De grant sens ne de bones mours,
Qu'il n'asotisse par amours.

Amours les amoreus assote:

Li plus sage n'i voient gote,

Si ne se sevent conseillier.

Trop me puis d'amour merveillier,
Dont ce vient et que ce puet estre
Qu'amours fet les plus sages pestre,
Puisqu'il les tient pris en sa corde.

There are often people, I don't doubt,
Who thus help and counsel others,

Who don't know how to advise themselves.
And when a man is captured by love,
Then, no matter how worthy he may be,
How sensible and well-conducted,

He makes a fool of himself for love.
Love makes fools of lovers:

The wisest then see not a speck

And don't know how to counsel themselves.
Greatly can I marvel at love

By whom it is made possible

That love makes even the wisest run
When he holds them with his rein.

(11. 3065-75)

- Or m'estuet ceste fable espondre.
Dirai quel sens i puet repondre.
Dane fille Penei iere.

Peneus est une riviere

Ou de loriers grant copie a.
Phebus, qui d'amours la pria,

C'est 1i solaus, si con moi samble,
La cui chalours, mellee ensamble

195

L'umoistour, fet multeplier
Ces arbres et actefier.

Now, I must expound this fable.
I shall tell what meaning may be hidden there.
Daphne was the daughter of Peneus.

Peneus is a stream

Where there are a great plenty of laurels.
Phoebus, who prayed for her love,

Is the sun, it seems to me,

Whose warmth, mixed with the moisture,
Makes the trees multiply and thrive.

(11. 3076-3108)

- Autre sentence i puet avoir,
Par istoire acordable avoir.
Dane fu une damoisele,

Jente, joenne, avenant et,be1e,
Riche et de grant nobilite,

Qui vault vivre en virginité
Sans violer son pucelage,

Mes la biauté de son visage
Esmut maint a s'amour requerre.
Dané pour nulle riens en terre
Ne s'asentist a home amer,

N'a son pucelage entamer.
Phebus, par proiere et par dons,
La tempta primes en pardons,
Qu'ains tant ne la pot esmouvoir
Qu'il peus a s'acointance avoir
Pour promettre ne pour proier.
Aprez 1a cuida forcier

Et tolir li son pucelage,

Mes la pucele simple et sage,
Qui se lessast angois larder
Fuioit, pour son honnor garder,
Que cil ne 1a deshonnorast,

Et malgre sien la desflorast.
Tant se traveilla, tant corut
La bele, qu'en fuiant morut,
Ains que cil l'eust desfloree.
Sous un lorier fu enterree.

Pour ce fu 1a fable trouvee
Qu'ele fu en lorier muee,

Pour ce qu'elle fu vierge et pure,
Si tint cuer et cors sans ordure,
Tout son temps et tout son aé,
En la verdour de chasteé.

196

There may be another meaning there;

It is easy to see this as history.
Daphne was a young lady,

Gentle, young, charming, and beautiful,
Rich and of high noble blood,

Who wished to live in virginity

Without violating her maidenhood,

But the beauty of her face

Caused many to seek her love.

Daphne, for nothing in the world,

Would agree to love a man

Or to stain her maidenhood.

Phoebus, by prayer and by gifts

First tempted her in vain,

For in this way he could not persuade her
To let him know her [in the Biblical sense]
Neither by promise nor by prayer.

Then he thought to force her

And to steal her maidenhood.

But the maiden, simple and good,

Who caused him so to burn,

Fled to guard her honor

Lest he dishonor her

And, in spite of her, deflower her.

So hard she struggled, so hard she ran,
The beauty, that in fleeing, she died
Before he could deflower her.

She was buried under a laurel.

For that reason the fable was made

That she was changed into a laurel,
Because she was a virgin and pure

And kept body and heart free of filth
Throughout her life

In the greenness of chastity.

(11. 3109-321“)

- Mes or donons a ceste fable
Autre sentence profitable.

Par Dane, qui tout son aé
Vault vivre en pure chasteé
N'onc ne vault estre corrompue,
Est virginitez entendue,

Qui de corruption n'a cure.

- Dané fu fille de froidure,
Que l'en note par la riviere:
Tant soit froide de grant maniere,
Que nulle naturel chalour
Ne puisse esmouvoir a folour
Cele qui chastement veult vivre.

197

Dane voloit Dyane ensivre,

C'est la lune sans obscurté,

En nete vie et en purté.

Apollo l'ama longuement,

C'est Phebus, que l'Integument
Selonc la paienne creence,

Apele dieu de sapience,

Qui tout enseigne et endouctrine:
Solaus, qui art et enlumine,
C'est sapience et charité,

Qui doit estre en virginité.

Je ne tieng pas la vierge a sage
Qui son cors garde, et de corage
Est corrumpue ne faussee:

Nete doit estre la pensee,

Et pour Dieu charitablement

Doit vivre chaste, ou autrement
Je ne pris riens sa continence,
Quant la pensee a desirance

De faire les charneulz pechiez,
Dont li cors seroit entechiez,
Si'il en avoit ne leu ne tens.

Je ne croi mie ne n'entens

Que teulz virginitez soit sainte:
Ou, se la volentez est fainte,
C'aucune par ypocrisie,

Pour estre loee et prisie,

Pour un petit de gloire vaine,
Pour aquerre loenge humaine,
Eschive charnel compaignie,

Cele n'est pas bien enseignie.

Ce dist la Devine Escripture,

Ne de teulz vierges n'a Dieus cure.
Ce n'est pas vertus, ains est guile.
De teulz dist Dieus, en l'Evangile,
Que lor lumieres son estaintes,
Lor oeuvres son fausses et faintes,
Plaines de fole vanité

Vides de bone charité.

Cele qui son vessiel a vuit,
Quant vendra a la miennuit,
C'est au grant jour du Jugement,
Se trouvera dolentement

Des noces a l'Espous fors close,
Quant Dieus avra la porte close,
Qui ore est ouverte et atant.

Ja Dieus ne nous haIsse tant

Que de ses noces nous fors cloe!
Qu'Anemis n'i tende la poe,

Pour mener en l'infernal cage,
Ou li dampné sont en fernage!

198

Dane, qui si isnelement

Fuioit charnel atouchement

Et pui fu en arbre muee,

C'est: que cuer et cors et pensee
Doit garder enterinement,

Sans nul charnel esmouvement,
Sans pensé de corruption

Et sans nulle interruption,

Qui veult estre vierge parfaite,
Et lors sera elle arbre faite,
Que nulz vens ne puet eslocier,
Car 51 con 11 vens, pour hocier,
Ne puet le fort arbre mouvoir,
Ne doit flescir ne esmouvoir
Vierge cuer en nulle maniere
Dons ne promesse ne proiere,

Qui tout sont vent de vanité,

A perdre sa virginité.

Dane fu muee en lorier

Plus qu'en chesne ne en cerisier
H'en nul autre arbre qu l'en voie,
Quar 81 com 11 loriers verdoie
Et nul temps ne pert sa verdure,
Ne pour chalour ne por froidure,
Ains verdoie en toute saison
Sans fruit faire, ausi par raison
Doit virginitez verdoier

Et vivre sans fructefier,
Qu'onques n'avint ne n'avendra,
Qui viergement se contendra,
Qu'il puisse fere engendreure,
Fors cele qui contre nature
Enfanta son pere et son mestre,
Dieu, qui de la Vierge volt nestre,
Qui sagement en Charite

Gardera sa virginité,

Et parseverer i porra

Jusqu'a la fin. Dieus li donra,
En signe et en non de victoire,
En sa grant delitable gloire,
Coronne que les vierges ont

Qui ou ciel coronnees sont.

But now let us give to this fable
Another profitable meaning.

By Daphne, who all her life

Wished to live in pure chastity

And never wished to be corrupted,
Is to be understood Virginity,
Which does not desire corruption.
Daphne was the daughter of Coldness
Which the river denotes.

199

So very cool shall she be
Who desires to live in chastity
That no natural warmth shall move her to folly.

Daphne wished to be a follower of Diana
- That is the moon, clearly.

In clean life and in purity.

Apollo loved her for a long time.

That is Phoebus, whom the Integumenta,

According to Pagan belief,

Calls the god of wisdom

Who teaches everything;

The sun, which burns and illuminates,
Is wisdom and charity

Which ought to be in Virginity.

I don't believe that virgin is virtuous

Who keeps her body safe, but at heart
Is corrupt and false:

Thought should be clean,

And, for the sake of God, one should

Live charitably in chastity. Otherwise,
I do not value the continence

Of one whose thoughts are desirous

Of committing fleshly sins,

By which his body would be besmirched,

Except that he lacks the time or place.
I do not believe or understand

That such virginity may be holy;

Or, if the will is weak,

So that hypocritically

For the sake of praise and glory

One eschews fleshly companionship,

Such a one is not well-taught.

So says Holy Scripture;

Nor does God value such virginity.

Of such God says, in The Evangelist,

That their lights are put out,

Their works are false and weak,

Full of foolish vanity,

Void of virtuous charity.

She who has emptied her vessel,

When midnight comes,

That is, on the Great Day of Judgment,

Will find herself grieving,

Shut out from the Bridegroom's wedding

When God will have closed the door

Which now stands open and waiting.

May God not so hate us

That he shuts us out from this wedding!

May the Enemy not tempt to sin

To lead us into the infernal prison

Where the damned are in a furnace!

 

2OO

Daphne, who so swiftly

Fled carnal stain

and then was changed into a tree,
Signifies that heart, body, and thought
Ought to keep whole

Without any fleshly emotion,

Without thought of corruption

And without interruption.

Whoever wills to be a perfect virgin
Will then be made a tree

That no wind can dislodge;

For, just as the wind, by blows

Cannot move the strong tree,

Neither should gifts, nor promises, nor pleas,
Which are all the wind of vanity,

Move in any way the virgin heart

To lose her virginity.

(11. 3215—3261)

- Autre sentence i puis poser,
Par Dané puis prendre et gloser
Cele glorieuse Pucele,

Vierge pure avenant et bele,

Que Dieus eslut premierement

Sor toutes autres plainement,

Que Jesus, ou tous biens habonde,
Li filz Dieu, lumiere dou monde,
Solauz qui tout home enlumine,
Mestree qui toute descepline,
Tout art et toute sapience

A trouvee et toute science,

Mires qui set toutes les cures

Et d'erbes toutes les natures,
Qui puet tout malade et tout mort
Saner et resourdere de mort,

Rois dou ciel, de terre et de mer,
Et rois d'enfer, pot tant amer
Qu'a lui se volt charnelment joindre,
Si se lessa navrer et poindre

Au cuer d'amoureuse pointure,
Pour l'amour d'umaine nature.
Cele benoite Marie,

Vierge mere en cui se marie
Plentureuse virginitez

Et vierge plentureusetez,

Cele benoite Marie,

201

Pu vierge en sa conception

Et vierge en son enfantement

Vierge aprez pardurablement,

Cele pucele vierge et pure

C'est 1i loriers plains de verdure,
Dont li filz Dieu se coronna,

Quar la vierge l'avironna

En son cors, ou 11 volt descendre
Et char humaine et mortel prendre,
Cele qui Dieu plot, et Dieu fist
Tant qu'en sa haute court l'assist
En gloire pardurablement,

Ou e1 regne o lui dignement,

Cele dont la harpe apoline,

C'est la fois comune et devine,
Fait pardurable remembrance,

C'est cele par cui Dieus avance

Et essauce en sa haute gloire

Ceulz qui dou monde ont 1a victoire.

- I can put another meaning there.
For Daphne, I take and glose
That Glorious Maiden,
A Virgin, pure, charming and beautiful,
Whom God chose plainly
As first over all others;
Whom Jesus, in whom all good abounds,
The Son of God, light of the world,
The sun which enlightens every man,
The master who invented every discipline,
Every art and all wisdom and all knowledge,
Healer, who knows every cure
And the nature of all herbs,
Who is able to heal and to bring from the dead
Every sick man and every dead one,
King of the sky, of the earth and the sea,
And king of Hell,
Could love so much
That he wished to join himself to her flesh
So that he let himself be wounded and stabbed
To the heart by the loving arrow,
For the love of human kind.
This blessed Mary,
Virgin mother in whom mingle
Abundant virginity
And virgin abundance,
She who, without sin,
Was virgin in conceiving
And virgin in childbearing,
Virgin afterwards forever,
This maiden, virgin and pure

202

Is the laurel, full of verdure,

With which the son of God is crowned;
For the virgin surrounded him

With her body, when he wished to descend
And take on human, mortal flesh,

She who pleased God, and God so arranged
That she sits in his high court

In glory eternally,

Where she reigns with him in dignity.
She of whom the Apolline harp,

That is, the common, divine faith,

Keeps eternal remembrance

Is she by whom God brings forward

And bathes in his high glory

Those who have victory over the world.

(11. 3261-31407)

- Or vous dirai que senefie
La tence et la contreversie
De Phebus et dou dieu d'amours,
De lor vaillance et de lor mours.
De ceste ist la solucion
D'une doutable question
Que l'en seult faire et proposer,
Qui bien set 1a fable exposer:
C'est: qui est de greignor vaillance,
Ou bone amours, ou sapience?
Ces deus choses sont proprement

En Dieu, qui, sans devisement,
Sans discort et sans difference,
Est bone amours et sapience.
Quar, quanqu'a en la deité
Tout est un, sans diverseté,
Mes quant a l'effait et a l'oeuvre
Que sapience et amours oeuvre,

Et quant a nostre cognoissance,

I samble il avoir differance.

La sapience proprement
Fist home et le monde ensement,
Mes homs pecha par sa folour,
Si fu mis a mortel dolour

Et dampnez pardurablement,

Et, se dieus piteablement

Et l'amours qu'il avoit vers homme
n'i eust ouvré, c'est la somme,
Mieux venist qu'ains homs ne fust fais
Qu'il se fust puis vers Dieu mesfais
Por mortel dampnement encourre.
L'amour Dieu, por home secourre,
Dou dars de bone amour ploia

203

Sapience, et l'envoia

Au monde en humaine figure,

Pour soi joindre a nostre nature.
Cupido, cil qui nous avoie

Et nous monstre la droite voie

De bone amour, a mon avis,

C'est Dieus, li rois de paradis,
Qui en amours nous endouctrine,

Se nous tenons bien sa doctrine.
Bien nous moustre signe d'amer,
Quant ciel et terre, monde et mer
Et toutes les riens qu'il y a

Pour nostre avancement cria.

Bien nous ama Dieus, sans doutance,
Quant il nous fist a sa samblance,
A sa samblance et a s'image,

Et pour nous traire de servage,

De paine et de mortel dolour,

Ou homs s'iert mis par sa folour,
Fist sa sapience descendre

En terre et char humaine prendre,
Si fist sa char a mort livrer,
Pour nous garir et delivrer

De mort et de l'infernal cage,

Et dou souverain heritage

Nous faire hoirs et parconeors.
Nostre Dieus, nostre Sauvaors,
Bien nous ama, bien nous ot chiers,
C'est Cupido, li bons archiers,
Que bien set ses dars empener,
Pour les amoureus assener.

Li Dart sont li comandement

De la loy, qui diversement

Sont fet et de divers ouvraigne:
L'une partie nous enseigne

A amer, et l'autre a hair,

L'un a suivre et l'autre a fuir;
La pointe est la compunction

Dou cuer, et droite entention
Doit estre la hanste apelee;

La fleche doit estre empenee

De deus penons, pour courre droit;
Li penon, qui garde i prendroit,
Sont dui devin comandement,

Aus quelz deus especialment

La lois et 1i prophete pendent;
Tuit cil qui loiaument entendent

A ces deus comandemans faire
Sevent bien de ces fleches traire.
L'un des penons, 31 com j'entens,
Est qu'en toute hore et en tout temps,
De cuer et d'ame et de desir,

2OU

Devons fere 1e Dieu plesir,

Et lui sor toutes riens amer

De fin cuer et pur, sans amer,

Com nostre pere et nostre mestre:
C'est li penons qui siet a destre.
L'autres que chascuns doit son prime
Amer autant con soi meisme,

Si ne face vers lui desloi.

Bien acomplira cil la loi

Que nostre sires a donnee,

Qui 31 a sa fleche empenee.

Ceste fleche a non Charite;

De ceste vient par vérité

Tous biens et toute cortoisie;
Ceste fuit toute vilonie,

Tout mal, toute desloiauté;

Ceste aime toute loiauté.

Cil qui de ceste pointe est poins,
Amer le convient en touz poins
Toute raison, toute mesure,

Si n'a de nul outrage cure.

De ceste fleche vault ferir

Dieus son fil, quant, por nos garir
Vault son benoit fil offrir

Pour nous a paine et mort souffrir.
Bien nous monstra d'amours la voie
Charitez est, se Dieus me voie,

La meillour et la plus certaine
Des fleches et la souveraine.

Que ceste fleche a, bien 1e soi,

11 est en Dieu et Dieus en soi,
Quar Dieus meisme est charité

En tesmoing de l'auctorité,

Et cil cui ceste fleche faut

A de tous autres biens defaut.

Poi puet prisier sa sapience,

Sa dignite ne sa poissence,

Quar sans vertu de charité

Sont tuit autre bien vanité.
Charitez est l'enbrasant flame
Dont Dieus en s'amour nous enflame;
C'est 1e brandons et c'est la fleche
Dont Dieus nous embrase et acroche.
Autre fleche toute contraire

Trait li archiers de put afaire,

Li deables, li anemis,

S'en a pluisors en paine mis.

Cele fleche est torte et noeuse,
Rebousche et aspre et eschardeuse;
Cele est de haine entoschie.

L'ame qui de cele est touchie

205

Net tout bien et toute mesure,
Toute raison, toute droiture,
Toute honor, toute loiauté
S'aime toute desloiauté,

Tout pechié, toute vilonie,
Tout tort et toute felonie,
Toute ordure et toute vilté,
Tout mal et toute iniquité.
Envie a ceste fleche non,

Si sont contraire li penon
De ceste a cele devant dite.

Now, I shall tell you the meaning

Of the dispute and controversy

Between Phoebus and the god of love

About their valour and their superiority.
From this comes the solution

To a difficult question

That one should ask

Who wishes to explain it well:

That is: which is of greater value,

Love or wisdom?

These two things are attributes

Of God, who, without division,

Without discord and without difference,
Is true love and wisdom.

For, in the Deity

All is one, without diversity;

But within the creature, the work

That wisdom and love perform

Seems to our minds to be different.
Wisdom, properly speaking,

Made both man and the world,

But man, in his madness, sinned

And was put into mortal sadness

And damned eternally.

And, if God had not pity,

And if the love of man

Had not worked in him

It would have been better that man were not made
Than that he had sinned and wronged God
So that he incurred mortal damnation.
The love of God, in order to save man
Struck Wisdom with the arrow of true love
And sent Him to earth in human form

To combine himself with our nature.
Cupid, who guides us

And shows us the right way of love,

In my opinion, is God, the king of Paradise,
Who teaches us love

If we attend well to his teaching.

Well does he show his love to us

206

When sky and earth, the world and the sea
And everything that is

He has created for our good.

Well did God love us, without doubt,

When He made us in his semblance and image,
And, in order to take us out of the servitude,
The pain and the mortal grief

Where Man had put himself by his folly,
Caused his Wisdom to descend

To earth and take on human flesh,

Then to deliver up his flesh to death

To heal us and deliver us

From death and the infernal prison

And to make us heirs and co-owners of the
Kingdom.

Our God, our Saviour

Who loved us well and held us very dear,
Is Cupid, the good archer,

Who well knows how to feather his arrows
To direct the ways of those who love.

The arrows are the commandments of the Law
Which are of different workmanship:

The one part teaches us to love,

The other to hate;

The one to follow, the other to flee;

The point is the heart's penitence

And the shaft should be named right purpose;
The arrow must be feathered with two feathers
In order to fly straight.

The two feathers, put there as a guide,
Are the two divine commandments

Upon which especially

Hang all the law and the prophets:

All those who apply themselves loyally

To following these two commandments

Know well how to draw their arrows.

The first of the feathers, as I understand,
Is that at every hour and in all weathers
We ought to do the will of God

With heart and soul and will,

And to love him with a pure heart,

Void of evil, .

As our father and our master:

This is the feather which is on the right.
The other is that each one ought

To love his neighbor as much as himself,
And never to sin against him.

He who has his arrow thus feathered

Will accomplish well

The law that our lord gave.

This arrow is named charity,

 

207

waeruje C(nne.;, iruleexi,

All good things and all Courtesy;
This arrow flees all villainy,

All evil, all disloyalty;

It loves all loyalty.

He who is pierced by this arrow

Must love all reason, all moderation
And never wish to sin.

God struck His Son with this arrow
When, in order to save us,

He wished to offer his blessed Son

To suffer pain and death for us.

Well did He show us the way of love.
Charity is, as surely as God sees me,
The best, the most certain,

The king of arrows.

He who has this arrow, I know well,
Is in God, and God in him,

For God himself is charity,

As authority witnesses,

And he who lacks this arrow

Lacks all other good things.

Of little worth are his wisdom,

His dignity, and his power

For, without the virtue of charity,
All other goods are vanity.

Charity is the inflaming fire

By which God makes us burn with love;
Charity is the brand and the arrow
With which God makes us burn and
Another arrow, quite different,

Is drawn by the archer of evil

The devil, the enemy,

And with it he has brought pain to many.
This arrow is twisted and knotty,
Blunt, painful and poisonous;

It has been dipped in hate.

The soul which is touched by this arrow
Hates all reason, all moderation,

All good, all right

All honor, all loyalty,

And it loves every disloyalty,

Every sin, every villainy

Every wrong and felony

Every filth, every iniquity, every evil.
Envy is the name of this arrow,
And the feathers are the opposite
Of the ones I told about before.

208

Berchorius (Fa VII):

Iste phoebus significat quosdam de virtutibus glorian-
tes in saeculo vel in claustro. Serpens significat
carnem quae venene deliciarum suarum premit & occupat
totum mundum. quia multi sunt qui quando possunt
praeualere contra serpentem id est carnem venenosam
exinde superbiunt/ intantum quod cupidinem deum amoris. id
est amorem carnis & sectatores ipsius abhorrent &
vilipendunt non considerantes propriam fragiliatem

sed gloriantes se habere castitatem. Sed volens

deus tales humiliare sagittis carnalis amoris vulnerari
permittit: & ad amandum mulierum delicias eos laxat:
ut sic suae carnis conditionem cognoscant: &

alios non contemnant. Sicut fecit de Petro qui alios
contemnens dixerat. Etsi omnes scandalizati fuerint
sed non ego. Qui tamen deo permittente vilius ceci-
dit quam aliquis aliorum excepto iuda. Deus enim

sicut Iudith VI. dicitur praesumentes de se & de

sua virtute gloriantes humiliat. Vel dic quod Phoebus
significat mundanae gloriae appetitores: qui quando
phitonem occidunt id est aliquod laudabile opus faciunt:
summe superbiunt & gloriantur: & alios contemnunt.
Daphne puella pulcherrima est mundana gloria quae

a talibus adamatur ita quod ipsam quantum possunt
insequuntur sicut patet de multis militibus qui pro
ista habenda vadunt ad huerras/ & torneamenta. De
clericis qui pro ista dimittunt patriam & delectamenta.
De hyprocritis qui pro ista patiuntur poenitentiam

& tormenta. De ambitiosis qui pro ista

puella tanta adhibent blandimenta. Hihil enim eis
delectabilius quam illa puella. nihil eis speciosius
quam sua forma nihil suis membris

appetibilius. Sicut enim phoebus prae desiderio
membrorum daphnes pulchritudinem notabat ipsamque

ad sui amorem humiliter appellabat. Unde Ouidius
Ibidem. inornatos collo pendere capillos Et quid

si comantur: ait: videt igne micantes Sideribus
similies oculos: videt oscula quae non est vidisse
satis. laudat digitosque manusque Brachiaque et

nudos media plus parte lacertos. Si qua latent

meliora putat. Et infra Nudabant corpora venti:
Obuiaque aduersas vibrabant flamina vestes. Et levis
impulsos retro dabat aura capillos aucta fuga forma est.
Et sequitur. Nympha precor peneia mane. Sic et

isti de quibus supra: mundanam gloriam insequuntur

& affectant Ista enim habet diuersa membra appetibilia
scilicet caput id est altitudinem honoris: brachia

id est amplexum amoris: ventrem id est affectus
deliciarum oculos id est affectus scientarum: capillos
id est successus diuitiarum. Ista enim phoebe

209

id est vane gloriosis placent: ista summe desiderant
& affectant. Sed pro certc de dis-

positione fit quod ista daphne mundi gloria

tales sui amatores immoderatos fugiat & contemnat.
Hcclesiastic. XI. Si se quutus fueris non appraehendes
Hugo dicit quod haec est gloriae gloriosa proprietas
quod appetitores fugiat & optet contemptores. Deinde
dicit fluidius quod ipsa daphne pulcherrima nimis
fatigata fugiendo phoebum qui eam corrumpere volebat
volens virginitatem seruare: rogauit tellurem id

est deam terrae: vt istam pulchritudinem auferret
sibi quae erat causa & occasio tanti doloris: et

sic ista dea: eius mesertus mutauit eam in laurum.
Nam subito pedes eius qui laeues erant eonuersi sunt
in radicem: pellis in corticem: brachia in ramos.
Et sic laurus effecta: phoebi cupidinem euasit &
Virginitatem ouam vouerat custodiuit. Unde textus.
Vix prece finita torpor grauis occupat artus Mollia
cinguntur tenui praecordia libro. In frondes crines:
in ramos brachia crescunt. Pes modo tam velox pigris
radicibus haeret: Ora cacumen habent: remanet

nitor unus in illa. Phoebus iste potest significare
diabolum: daphne animam christianam quia procul-
dubio istam virginem: animam scilicet per tentationes
non cessat allicere vt eam per malum consensum subiuget
& subiiciat & per peccatum destruat & corrumpat

Sed ipsa debet fugere occasiones peccati: temptationes
vitando: & debet regare deam terrae id est Christum
vt eam de manibus eius eripiat: formam aliam sibi
dando. Et sic pro certo debet fieri laurus id est
religiosa persona virtuosa & perfecta. pedes bonorum
gressuum radicaliter figendo: corticem poenitenciae
induendo & ramos bonarum affectionum acquirendo:

& virorem honestae conuersationis nunquam deponendo:
Sic enim mutata istius phoebi cupidinem non timebit

& integritatem mentis & corporis retinebit. Ioannis
XX. Conuersa est retrorsum & vidit Iesum Vel dic
allegorice de multis virginibus quae pulchritudinem
corporis propter quam insectantur ne peccato deprae-
dentur iugiter deponunt. Sic dicitur accidisse in
anglia de quadam moniali quam cum rex terrae vellet
haberer & ipsam incessanter rogaret: petiit illa
quid erat in ipsa quod ipse tantum diligeret: Rex
vero asseruit pulchritudinem oculorum: illa autem
domum pergens oculos eruit & regi ut sedaret eius
concupiscentiam transmisit Ista enim audierat illus
ecclesisti XXI. Quasi a facie colubri fuge peccata
Laurus autem alio modo dicitur daphne pro eo facto
quod daphne in laurum est mutata arbor quam enim sibi
phoebus appropriauit quam osculatus & amplexatus
tenerrime adamauit ipsam specialibus priuilegiis

210

insignuit. Voluit quod de lauro sibi fierent coronae
Cytharae & sagittae. Voluit quod victores lauro
coronarentur. Voluit quod lauro domus imperatorum

& quercus & aliae arbores vicinae a fulmini tuerentur
quia teste Plinio: sola laurus inter arbores non
fulminatur. Voluit insuper quod coma illius numquam
deponeretur sed quod viror eius perpetuo videretur
sicut dicit Ouidius. Hanc quoque phoebus amat.

Cui deus. at quoniam coniunx mea non potes esse:
Arbor eris certe mea dixit: semper habebunt te coma:
te citharae te nostrae laure pharetrae. thue meum
intonsis caput est iuuenile capillis: Tu quoque
perpetuae semper gere frondis honorem. Ista laurus
significat crucem quae pro certo phoebo id est Christo
soli iustitieae fuerat dedicata & ab eo corporaliter
amplexata Ista debet esse nobis pro corona honoris.

& gloriationis pro cithera laudis & gratiarum ac-
tionis: pro sagitta verbi dei & sanctae praedicationis
pro gloria victoriae cuiuscunque temptationis. pro
tutela fulminis diuinae sententiae & aeternae damna—
tionis: & quod plus est pro amore aeternae gloriae

& futurae saluationis. Ista enim habentur in cruce
sicut dicit Chrisostomus. Crux Christianorum spes:
prauorum Victoria: caecorum dux: conuersorum via:
claudorum baculus: pauperum consolatio: arbor re-
surrectionis: lignum vitae eternae.

Phoebus here is a figure for those who glory in

their virtues whether in the world or in the cloister.
The serpent signifies the flesh, which, with the poison
of its delights, subdues and takes possession of

all the world. There are certainly many men who,

when they have been able to prevail over the serpent,
that is, the poisonous flesh, afterward become filled
with pride, in the same way as Apollo did toward
Cupid, the god of love. They hate and vilify fleshly
love and those who seek it, not remembering

their own weakness, but glorying in the possession

of chastity. But God, wishing to humble such persons,
permits them to be wounded by the arrows of carnal de-
sire; and he lays them open to lasciviousness and

the desire for women so that they may recognize

their own fleshly state and not condemn others. So
he did in the case of Peter who, despising others,

had said, "Even though everyone should be ashamed
because of you, yet would not I." Yet he, by God's
will, fell lower than any of the others except Judas.
Indeed, as it is said in the sixth chapter of Judith,
God humiliates the presumptious and those who glory

in their own strength.

911

Or, you may say, Phoebus signifies those who

are eager for the glories of this world. When they
kill the Python, they have done some laudable deed.
They become extremely proud and boastful and contempt—
uous of others. Daphne, the beautiful girl, is worldly
glory, which is exceedingly loved by such people.

In the same way, that they follow her as fast as they
can refers to many knights who, desiring worldly glory,
go about to wars and tournaments; to clerics who,

for its sake, abandon their native land and its pleasures;
to hypocrites who, for the same reason, make public
displays of penitence and sufferings; to the ambitious
who, for the sake of this maiden, make use of so much
flattery. For, to these people nothing is more delight—
ful than that girl, nothing is more beautiful than

her form, nothing more desirable than her limbs.

So Phoebus, because of his ardent desire, noticed

the beauty of Daphne's limbs and, because of his love,
called her humbly to him. Thus Ovid says, in the

same passage: her unarranged hair hanging on her

neck and, What if it were combed? he says. He sees
her eyes shining like fiery stars. He sees her mouth
for which seeing is not enough. He praises her fingers,
hand, lower arm, and her more than half bare upper arm.
And he believes that what is hidden is even better.
Later, the winds bared her body and contrary breezes
fluttered her clothes. Light airs blew her hair

behind her. Her beauty was increased in flight. He
follows. The nymph prays to the God, Peneus. Just

so are those mentioned above. They run after the

glory of this world and strive for it. It has, in
truth, different desirable parts. For instance,

the head is high honor; the arms are the embrace of
love; the belly is the enjoyment of sensual delights;
the eyes are the delight in knowledge; the hair is

the following after riches. She is indeed pleasing

to Phoebus, that is, to those who enjoy vainglory.

They greatly desire and long for her. But, by the
certain arrangement of God, it comes about that Daphne,
this world's glory, flees from her immoderate suitors
and despises them (Ecclesiasticus XI). If you have
followed but do not understand, Hugo says that the

most glorious quality of glory is that she should

flee those who desire her and choose those who despise
her.

Next, Ovid says that this same most beautiful Daphne,
exhausted by her flight from Phoebus, who wished

to violate her while she wanted to save her virginity,
prayed to the Earth, that is, to the goddess of the
earth, that she would take away that beauty which

212

was the cause and occasion for so much grief. So
the goddess, out of compassion, changed her into a
laurel. For, suddenly, her feet, formerly fleet,
were turned into roots, her skin into bark, her arms
into branches. Thus made into a laurel she escaped
Phoebus's desire and preserved that virginity she
had vowed.

The text says that immediately after her prayer was
finished a heaviness came over her limbs. Her soft
body was encircled by bark. Her hair grew into leaves,
her arms into branches. Her foot, formerly so swift,
was fixed by sluggish roots. _Her face was a tree-top.
Only her beauty remained. Phoebus here may signify

the devil, Daphne a Christian soul (because without
doubt the soul is a virgin). The soul, you know,

never ceases to be allured by temptations that may
cause her to be subdued and cast down by consenting

to evil and corrupted and destroyed by sin. But she
must flee the occasions of sin, avoiding temptation,
and must pray the goddess of the earth, that is, Christ,
that he snatch her away from sin's hands, by giving her
a different form. And thus certainly she must be

made into a laurel; that is, a religious character,
virtuous and perfect, fixing her feet like roots in
the way of righteousness, putting on the bark of
penitence, acquiring the branches of right desires,

and never putting off the fresh greenness of honorable
associations. Indeed, thus changed, she will not

fear the desire of Phoebus and will retain her integ-
rity of mind and body. (John XX: She turned back

and saw Jesus).

Or one may speak allegorically of many virgins who
put aside bodily beauty because of which they are
pursued, lest they be permanently ravaged by sin.
This is said to have befallen a certain nun in Germany
whom the king of the country wished to possess and
whom he constantly importuned. She asked him what
it was about her that so pleased him. The king de-
clared, truly, that it was the beauty of her eyes.
She, then, proceeding home, dug out her eyes and
sent them to the king to assuage his desire. She
certainly had heard Ecclesiasticus XXI: Flee from
sin as if from the face of a serpent.

The laurel may be said to be Daphne in still another
way in that Daphne changed into a laurel the very
tree that Phoebus took for his own, which he loved
exceedingly, kissed and hugged most tenderly, and
singled out by special privileges. He willed that

213

from the laurel only should be made the wreaths of

his lyre and arrows. He commanded that victors should

be crowned with laurel. He commanded that the house

of the emperors, the oak and the other neighboring

trees be guarded by the laurel from ligtning. For

Pliny attests: the laurel, alone among trees is not

struck by lightning. He ordered, above all, that

she should never shed her foliage, but that instead

her freshness should be seen perpetually--so says

Ovid. The tree also Phoebus loves. The god said,

though you can not be my wife, you shall certainly be

my tree; our lyres and quivers will always bear your

foliage, Laurel. And. as my head is youthful with
uncut hair, you also shall wear the honor of perpetual
leaves. Here, the laurel signifies the cross which
certainly by Phoebus, that is, by Christ was conse-
crated to righteousness alone and by him bodily em-
braced. This ought to be to us for a crown of honor
and thanksgiving, for a lyre of praise and of deeds [
of grace. The arrows are the words of God and of
the holy prophecies, the glory of victory over any
temptation whatever. The protection against lightning
is against divine Judgment and eternal damnation.
And, what is more [the gift] through love of eternal
glory and future salvation. These things indeed

are contained in the cross as Chrysotom says: The
cross is the hope of Christians, the victory of the
crippled, the leader of the blind, the way of the
converted, the staff of the lame, the consolation

of the poor, the tree of resurrection, the wood of
eternal life.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2114

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

 

Alanus de Insulis (Alain de Lille), The Complaint of
Nature (Douglas M. Moffat, tr.), New York, 1908.

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