MARLIES KRON EGGI:::: R

TI-l E TE MPESTUOUS CONFLICT OF THE ELEMENTS

IN BAROQUE POETRY ANO PAINTING

The Baroque poet's voice owes its power to the fact that it arises from
an introspective solitude that conjures up the universe so as to impose
on it a human accent. What survives for us is a voice soaring towards
the gods accompanied by the tireless orchestra of death. Without the
word \\'ind most Baroque poems would not exist for the word contains
the notion of movement. What are the winds, but moving currents of
air? Whcn the winds fall silent, they cease to be. Baroque music,
likewise, cannot exist without motion, for it is hard to conceive of an
entire symphony composed of a single note or chord that never
changcs. The winds create the dramatic movement of the Baroque
pocm-symphony by carrying the reader from one geographical area to
marvelous visions, from past to future, from despair to hope, from exile
toa long-awaited return to the Fatherland.
Sorne of the themes in both Baroque poetry and painting are the
eternity of the winds, the earth, the sea, contrasted with the brevity of
man\ existence, as Drelincourt summarizes their common attempt:

Vents qui dans un cours inco nstant,

Naissez, et mourez, chaque instant,
Mes jours ne sont qu'un vent qui passe.

Mo n corps fait naufrage en la mort,

Mais Dieu, du souffle de sa grcke,
Pousse mon ame dans le Port. 1

Baroque artists often blend cosmology and mythological allusions.

Whilc the classical theory of the cosmos, that is to say mundus
(univcrse), based on the tetrad of the four clements emphasizes the
unity and orderliness of the world, Baroque poets and painters are
wresting the secrets of fury and tumult, o f suffering and inner discord in
a world of religious and spiritual crises. Their quest for an interdepend-
ence between the celestial and te rrest rial regions questions the view of
Pythagoras who devised the word cosmos to express the beauty and
orderliness of the created world. Baroque artists often recreate the four
73
, \-/ Trnuemecka (ed.), Analecta 1/usser/iana, Vol XXIII, 73 !lll.
Cl llJ!lH by 1\./wver Academic Publishers.

74 MARLJES KRONEGGER
classical deities which are associated with the four elements from which
all things originate. Jupiter, holding a thunderbolt and attended by a
salamander is identified with fire; Juno, holding a regal scepter as q ueen
of heaven and attended by a peacock is identified with air; Ceres
holding a cornucopia and attended by a cow, is identified with earth:
and Neptune holding a triton and riding a dolphin, is identified with
water.
Poussin's The Four Seasons (1660-64) contain not only allusions to
the related quarters of the globe, involving the passage of time, namely
the four times of the day, from sunrise to nightfall, but also the four
stages of human life, from childhood lo old age.
With Baroque artists and poets the macrocosm of the four elements
is further adumbrated by multitudinous microcosms that reproduce in
miniature its exhaustive fullness. As a consequence, an elaborate
network of correspondences exists between the various levels of crea-
tion. There are also the four bodily humors and the four cardinal winds:
the Eastwind, Subsolanus; the Southwind, Auster; the Northwind,
Boreas; and the Westwind, Zephyr.
What are the winds of Baroque painters and poets? They are a
changing free element in each work, taking on a new aspect with every
creation, though constant in their presence, and most often culminating
in storms, shipwrecks, and nocturnal visions. Nothing endures on this
earth, they tell us: winds are, if you wish, the sound that is necessary fo r
music, composed of infinite tones and half-tones, sometimes pianissimo
or do/ce; more often forte, the winds are the psychological color of
rhythms and words, composed of infinite nuances of emotions; the
winds are the emotional colors of painters, indicating and revealing to
us an entire scene in a single flash, as though it carne from a terrific bolt
of Iightning; the winds are flashes of illumination on the human
condition. Man seems to be threatened by the structure of the universe
whose spatial and moral coordinates coincide. Winds reflect the reality
of the moment, and suggest the ephemerality of human existence. T he
ephemeral, however, also evokes the eternity in which man is swallowed
up. Baroque poets and painters bear witness to the twofold vocation of
man, his fall and elevation, passing from corruption to salvation. T he
four elements are the matrix of their relations to both themselves and a
primordial Being. lnstead of enabling us to find stability on this earth,
winds and storms become a means of meditation on the question: what
is man's destiny and place, if not in the celestial world beyond?
With Baroque artists and poets, the macrocosm of the four elements
1
THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 75
s adumbrated by multitudinous microcosms. There exists an elaborate
~etwork of correspondences between the various levels of creation.
Bernini's "Fountain of the Four Rivers" at Piazza Navona in Rome
1648-5 1) exemplifies the common Baroque tetrad: the four rivers
1
of the Earth, the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, and the La Plata
symbolize the four corners of the world, tended by their deities. The
fountain is crowned by a huge obelisk, pointing into the sky. Bernini's
fountain symbolizes Baroque tension, and a return to unity. While man ,1
is threatened by the beast world pushing up from below, he is also
illuminated by the dove on top of the obelisk, the traditional symbol of "
divine Iight and eternity: man, then, is illuminated by the radiance of the
Universal Church, the radiance of God above.
~
Poets and artists feel free to redirect the course of the elemental 1
determinants. The artist delights in going back to the first chaos of the
world, in returning to a primal flux which denies the separate identity of
things. For Labadie the earth is:
a
Elle est tout la fois soleil, lumiere, feu,
Terre et ciel, air et mer, estre d'home, estre d'ange, 1!
Sans matiere pourtant, sans forme, et sans mlange,
Et d'un a ir minent qu 'on n 'a jamais conceu. 2
The tetrad pattern of the four elements-water, fire, air, and earth
informs the poets' and artists' views of the cosmos as a whole,
imprinting the elements' struggle with one another upon every level of
creation. Elemental stirrings are for Baroque poets embedded in the
most violent aspects of the elemental forces of the universe: storms,
hurricanes, blizzards, typhoons, Iightning, and the raging sea. Through
observation and experience, they are immediately aware of the turbu-
~
1:
lence of the natural elements, the chaos and disorder in religious and
political affairs, the repeated cycles of destructive forces in the history
of the world.
With Baroque poets and painters, man is tied to elemental nature
and governed by the laws of its unfolding. Natural phenomena are often
de,cribed anthropomorphically. Human experiences have cosmic meta-
phors with the result that each world calls the other, integrating man
into his surroundings.
It is significan! that Baroque painters and poets chose to express a m:
conception of human life through Iandscapes: with them the landscape
of introspective soliloquy and mood is born. The artist or poet himself
enters the landscape, psychologically speaking, making it respond to his
76 MARLIES KRONEGGER
own inner sentiments. When landscape is introduced into poetry, it
makes the point that nature is God's creation and thus the manifesta-
tion of the creator in the world. The purpose of landscape painting in
poetry was to evoke a moment of contemplation: the consciousness of
the outside world served to heighten awareness of thc world within.
There was a particular joy contemplating natural landscapes: the earth,
the sky, water, and vegetation. The world of phenomena, aesthetically
regarded, falls into two parts: the finite world with firm outlines, and
the sphere of the unbounded, the infinite skies. Vision is bound to
space, according to the position of the onlooker, and also to time, as far
as the appearance of things changes with the position of the sun and the
clouding of the sky. While the four seasons hold to their beneficent
cycle, recurring in predictable sequence, the poet feels at one with his
rhythmical recreation of experience even in times of heinous crimes
when the world seems to collapse. For Jean de la Jesse, stormy winds
anmate the rhythm of his poem-symphony: his precise vocabulary
creates the concreteness of his language and supports his vision of the
world, one sustained by rhythm, movement, and duration, fused freely
and directed only by the poet's emotions often those an unsuccessful
amorous adventure. Here, language is a chaos of elements to arder and
reform and transform. Language shares the power of the cosmos, for
like nature, language is organic.
Que tous les lments soient bands contre moi,
Que les cieux, l'air et l'onde et la flamme et la terre
M'assaillent pele-mete, et que l'apre tonnerre
M'accable et me ravisse acelle que j'aimais!
Que le crainte, l'horreur, et la rage et l'moi
Comme un Oreste fol m'pouvante et m'atterre,
Que tout ce que I'Enfer de monstrueux enserre
Redouble ici mon deuil, ma plaie et mon effroi.
Que pour moi le soleil se cache et s'obscurcisse,
Que les jours me soient nuits, quema foi me trahisse,
Bref qu'Amour soit sans cesse contre moi fach,
Puisque j'ai bien ose plein d'ardeur et de blame
Ten ter votre courroux! Encare crois-je, Madame,
Que la peine est trop douce au prix de mon pech ...3
THE TEMPI:.STUOUS CONFLICT 77
Sponde, in Fleurs, Bulle, witnesses the rhythm of the seasons, the
tides of the oceans, violent thunderstorms, life and death in this both
closed and infinite universe; yet these have no effect on the cyclic
rhythm and harmony of the poet's creative moment, mighty as they are
their manifestation: "Vivez, hommes, vivez, mais si faut-il mourir" is his
message of encouragement:
Mais si faut-il mourir, et la vie orgueilleuse,
Qui brave de la mort, sentira ses fureurs,
Les Soleils haleront ces journalieres fleurs,
Et le temps crevera ceste ampoulle venteuse,
Ce beau flambeau, qui lance une flamme fumeuse,
Sur le verd de la cire esteindra ses ardeurs,
L'huyle de ce tableau ternira ses couleurs
a
Et ces flots se rompront la rive escumeuse.
J'ay veu ces clairs esclairs passer devant mes yeux,
Et le tonnerre encor qui grande dans les cieux,
Ou d'une, ou d'autre part, esclattera l'orage.
J'ay veu fondre la neige, et ses torrents tarir,
Ces lyons rugissants je les ay veus sans rage,
Yivez, hommes, vivez, mais si faut-il mourir.4
Thesc creative efforts stem from the confusion and uncertainty that
follow when we are confronted by the unknown and unknowable
happenings of the universe. Baroque poetry and painting have common
ways of mapping the unfolding of man's existence, disclosing human
Being, in their understanding of the larger existential condition, raising
the \ame question: What is man? What is life? What is man's place in
this universe?
lhe poet tries coming to terms with the conditions of mortality,
likening the direction of our lives to the hazards of drifting winds:
Whe re are we going? Where does our flight take us? Fiefmelin states:
CETTE VIE EST DE PLUME
Si l'homme icy vivan! semble au traict empenn
Qui, tire, vote en l'air comme au champ de l'orage,
Cette vie est de plume, et de vent son passage,
Son passage est le monde ou tout vote estant n.
78 MARLIES KRONEGGER
Comment done tiendra roide a ce vent forcen,
Qui tout roule au tombeau, la plumc si volage?
Non, non, suyvons ce vent qui nous porte au voyage,
Et nostre esprit ne soit de l'orage estonn.
Pour le corps, non pour l'ame, est la travcrse faite;
L'ame veille a l'abry du choc de la tempeste,
a a
Et, l'erte l'effroy, laisse dormir le corps. 5
Life is conjured up only to vanish like foam, a bloom, a lightning bolt,
smoke into the air. Our life is short and transitory in Giovan Leone
Sempronio's words (1603-46):
a shaft, which flees the bow and picrces chest;
a mist, which springs from earth and vanishes;
a foam, which rises from the sea and falls;
a bloom, which April brings to life and wilts;
a lightning bolt, which burns and cuts the air;
the smoke, which rises in the sky and fades."
Winds can blow out our lives just as easily as they can blow o ut a
candlc, all dcpends on fortune according to Chassignet, La Mesnardiere,
Sigogne, Fiefmelin: what is life other than a soap bubble? Most often,
however, the forces of wind and water are clashing so fiercely that they
almost seem to merge, crushing a boat between them. All depends on
"fortune" as to who is going to survive or be drowned, as we shall see
later on. The flight of Icarus is seen as embodying the temptation of
immortality or an overreaching toward divine power, trying to conquer
the air. Ovid's description of the fall of lcarus (Vlll, 175-239) offers a
panoramic view of sea, island, mountains, and people by capturing the
feathers which carried him away in the wind toward the blazing sun. All
that remains is an echo of Daedalus' call, "lcarus, lcarus, where are
yo u?"
Pictcr Bruegel's Fa/1 of Icarus (ca. 1567) also offers a panoramic
view of the sea with scattered islands, mountains, and land. He con-
trasts lcarus' defiance of the Gods, in attempting to exceed his human
limitations with the earthbound works of a peasant, tilling his soil and a
shepherd tending his flocks. While lcarus' flight disturbed the balance
of nature, the work of both the ploughman and the shepherd is in tune
with nature. An effect of infinite extension of the skies is provided by
successive planes of distance, telescoped into a continuous, two-dimen-
sional surface.
THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 79
Theophile de Viau's "Monsieur L sur la mort de son pere" also
blends cosmology and mythological allusion, evoking Phaeton, a son of
phoebus who tried to drive the chariot of th~ sun. He soon betrayed ~s
ncapacity, and the horses departed from the1r usual course, threatemng
:he earth with a conflagration:
Le Dieu de l'eau, tout furieux,
Hausse pour regarder leurs yeux
Et leur poil qui flotte sur ronde,
Du premier qu'il voit approcher
Pense voir ce jeune cocher
Qui fit jadis bruler le monde. 7
As in the real world, there are no limits to space or time: poems by
Desporte~. J. Blanchon, Amadis Jamyn, Marc de Papillon, and Claude
Trellon rcnder Icarus' and Phaeton's flight with flowing, swirling move-
ment that sweeps through their poemes-tab/eaux like a windstorm: Jean
Godard illustrates in the following lines not only the rising, building
emotion, the climax and a recapitulation of the fall of Icarus and
Phaeton, but also the poet's experience of his own death. Here the poet
knew how to impose both musical devices (rhythm) and the mimicry of
natural forces to give order, strength, and meaning lo the particular
emotion of "engulfment, loss," using the repetitive device of theme and
variation:
Un jeune Icare englouti dans lamer
a
Un chaud soleil sentit son dommage
Moi j'en sens deux aqui je fais hommage,
Dans l'air d'amour voulant trop haut ramer.
Fol est celui qui veut trop haut aimer:
En haute mer plus cruel est l'orage.
On doit partout modrer son courage,
Aux hauts desirs la porte il faut fermer.
D'aspirer haut, quand tres bien on y pense,
La seule mort on a pour rcompense,
Tmoin lcare et tmoin Phaeton.
O moi perdu! Mais mon malheur je prise.
Un grand courage, une grande entreprise,
Une mort brave, est honneur, ce dit-on.x
80 MARLIES KRONEGGER THE TE:MPESTUOUS CONFLICT 81

The poet's image of the storm is metamorphosis: not being, but ... Voici la mort du ciel en l'effort douloureux
becoming, not essence, but existence. Baroque poets and painters Qui tui noircit la bouche et fait saigner les yeux.
surpass their predecessors (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, the Greek and Roman Le ciel gmit d'ahan, tous ses nerfs se retirent,
tragedians) in thunder, lightning, waves, rain, darkness, and d isaster. In Ses poulmons presa pres saos relasche respiren!.
Scarron's "Landre et Hro" (1656), dedicated to Fouquet, the Iover Le soleil vest de noir le bel or de ses feux,
Hro, swimming in winter across the Hellespont in a thundersto rm is Le bel oeil de ce monde est priv de ses yeux;
doomed to die questing for his beloved Lander who drops dead at the L'ame de tant de fleurs n'est plus espanouie,
sight of his body. In this scene everything flows together: heaven and 11 n'y a plus de vie au principie de vie;
earth, fantasy and reality, motion and emotion. Here nature and man Et, comme un corps humain est tout mort terrac
meet and unite in a concert of stormy seas and lightnings in the skies. Des que du moindre coup au coeur il est blcss,
Baroque painters and poets have given the skies an all prevading Ainsi faut que le monde et meure et se confonde
rhythmic life contrasting shipwrecked men overwhelmed by nature's Des la moindre blessure au soleil, coeur du monde.
fury with others saved when a blue sky has given way to gusty storm La !une perd l'argent de son teint clair et blanc,
clouds. Giorgione's The Tempest ( 151 O) synthesizes basic concerns of La tune tourne en haut son visage de sang;
later Baroque mentality: the rise and fall of civilizations (with ruins and Toute estoile se meurt; les prophetes fideles
modern edifices), the universal rhythm of life and death (a woman, her Du destin vont souffrir eclipses ternelles.
child, and a man looking at them, who seems to be a young traveler Tout se cache de peur; le feu s'enfuit dans l'air,
through his life's journey); there are the changing weather conditions, L'air en eau, l'eau en terre; au funebre mesler
an approaching storm, a potential threat to men; a flowing stream, Tout beau perd sa couleur. Et voici tout de mesmes
traditionally associated with time's passage and the course of life; a A la pasleur d'enhaut tant de visages blesmes
bridge in the middle distance, underlining the landscape lit up by Prennent l'impression de ces feux obscurcis,
lightning and contrasting to it the low, obstructed viewpoint of humans Tels qu'on void aux fourneaux paroistre les transis ... !9
who ought to meditate on both past and future. The frame is o ne of
trees. Trees grow in the air, but their roots dig in the dark: the two sides The poetic creation is an effort to fix the relationship and establish
an analogy between the cosmos and man's journey in time. Baroque
imply not only contrast, but also the compression of time and space.
poets synthesize poetry and cosmos to create reality. In Du Plessis-
Did Giorgione not convert the latent processes of nature into action?
Mornay's "Barque qui va flottant," life is likened to a stormy sea; we
The universe of Giorgione and the Baroque poets is engendered not
embark and travel on into Eternity while the sky arches above, and the
only by the destructiveness and violence of storms, hurricanes, but also
winds reveal their permeating force over man, bringing either destruc-
by the creative movement of water. Splendor is implied in the cyclical
tion or eternal salvation.
resurgence and rebirth which inevitably follows devastation and de-
struction. For them, the cycle of destruction and creation is eternal. Barque qui vas flottant sur les escueils du monde,
Baroque poets put their most passionate concern and anguish, their Qui vois l'air tout espris, et les vents conjurs,
deepest insights, into themes of disaster. They take the violence of Le gouffre entrebaill, les flots dmesurs,
mother earth into themselves and master it. Such, D'Aubign wrests Saos ancre, saos abry, sans amarre et sans sonde;
the secrets of fury and tumult, of suffering and inner discord fro m
the universe. The tempestuous clouds and waters are like his own spirit, Barque, ne perds poinct coeur! Qui doubte que ceste onde
like the disturbed society that surrounds him with religious wars, Ne soit subjecte aux vents? Aux flots mal assurs,
violence, and division, making the moral universe of man expand and Un esquif m y bris? Mais les cieulx azurs
fall into a moral abyss, into the void: Sont ils pas sur les vents et sur lamer profonde?
82 MARLIES KRONEGGER
A u ciel? Non! qu'a lamer commande ton pilote;
Par fui vente le vent, par fui ce monde flotte,
Vente et flotte pour toi, pour te conduire au port.
Ton port, c'est I'ternel, et tu t'en veux soubstraire.
Yeux tu calme ou bon vent? tu demandes ta mort;H1
Every instant attests the infinite difference between the actual anct
the eterna!. The image of the vessel caught at the brink of an abyss is an
emblem in reverse into which infernal time issues. There is nothing
more sudden than the fall of time. The time that appears to the
awakened ecstatic poet and painter is a time turned upside down, a
time out of joint due to Fortuna di mare - fortune which can be for
or against us. The stars fall from the skies as Clovis Hesteau de
Nuysement states: "Que les vents enrages fassent precipiter, Les toiles
du ciel dans la mer une a une." 11 The chaotic world of the traveler at
sea heightens with the rising winds the sensation of falling into the
abyss: fears, agonies, nightmares, rages, despair, and the sensation of
falling into the void express the grievious consciousness of the human
condition. At this point the depth of existence ceases to be an individual
depth since the fury of the elements creates not only a chaotic world
without fixed relationships, but a world essentially transitory, an
enormous scene from the Apoca!ypse: Clouds pile up in the sky, putting
us in a state of heightened emotion in which we can accept everything
with the poet-painter, Sponde, for example. Dark clouds indicate the
poet's inner chaos, yet he feels attracted to this infernal abyss of
unrescued darkness:
Les vents grondaient en l'air, les plus sombres nuages
Nous drobaient le jour pele-mele entasss,
Les abimes d'enfer taient au ciel pousss,
Lamer s'enflait de monts, et le monde d'orages. 12
All nature seems to threaten man. The unfortunate lover of Jean de la
Jesse feels threatened by all elements who seem to engulf him. Winds
sweeping across the sea are the vital force that animales both nature
and the artist, inviting the viewer to identify with the anguished poet
and hear the thunder sweeping across the waves, the howl of the wind
in the storm-tossed branches.
Often, Baroque poets depict the end of the world with images of
shipwrecks (i.e., Saint-Amant, Theophile de Viau), in nocturnal scenes,
THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 83
f rrnulating their experience of the Last Judgment and the End of the
~or!d in painterly descriptions: not only are the winds and the clouds
he chief-organs of sentiment and emotion, but the poet identifies with
:he fearful forces of nature, announcing catastrophes. Thus, Du Bartas,
observes the hostile moods of nature, identifying himself with these
fearful forces, immersing himself in the natural cataclysm:
Un jour de comble-en-fond les rochers crousleront,
Les monts plus sourcilleux de peur se dissoudront,
Le Ciel se crvera, les plus basses campagnes,
Boursoufflees, croistront en superbes montagnes;
Les fleuves tariront, et si dans quelque estang
Reste encor quelque flot, ce ne sera que sang;
Lamer deviendra flamme, et les seches balenes,
Horribles, mugleront sur les cuites arenes;
En son mid y plus clair le jour s'espaissira,
Le ciel d'un fer rouille sa face voilera.
Sur les astres plus clairs courra le bleu Neptune,
Phoebus s'emparera du noir char de la lune;
Les estoile cherront. Le desordre, la nuit,
La frayeur, le trespas, la tempeste, le bruit,
Entreront en quartier; et l'ire vengeresse
Du Juge crimine!, qui ja desja nous presse,
N e fera de ce Tout qu'un bucher flamboyant,
Comme il n'en fit jadis qu'un marez ondoyant. 13
In storms and shipwrecks, both poets and artists found a means of
stirring emotions, provoking reflection and thought, and meditation
on nature's wild forces which constantly threaten the work of man.
Shipwrecks and apocalyptic scenes are equally dramatic in paintings by
Rubens, Elsheimer, and Ruisdael, who were well acquainted with the
poetic creations of Ovid, Du Bartas, La Ceppede and others. They all
are preoccupied with cosmic forces, the violent aspects of the elements,
the eclipse of space, time, and the possibility of recreating not only the
universe, but also recreating themselves in the harmonious coordination
of transitory impressions and permanent expression. Listening to the
supreme rhythm of Being, Baroque poets and painters show that
upheavals serve to erase that which is disharmonious in time and space,
and that a spiritual essence flows throughout the universe. High
sp1ritual adventure takes them by means of analogical and symbolic
84 MARLIES KRONEGGER
images, by means of the far-reaching light of the mediating image and
its play of correspondences, by waves of spiritual energy from apoca-
lyptic scenes to salvation. Rubens' Shipwreck ( 1620) is a synopsis of
the poets' physical tension in surviving the powerful forces of a storrn
so uncultivated and elemental, and it narrates the struggle of nature ~
its unceasing struggle for balance among its opposing elements. Frorn
the nocturnal, tempestuous sea on the left, the eye moves to the infinite
interpenetration of the natural radiance of the rainbow on the right,
which symbolizes the end of the tempestuous conflict of the elements.
In the left foreground, a ship crashes against the rocks; in the right
foreground sorne of the survivors are seen making a fire. The middle of
the painting, a rocky pennsula with a lighthouse demarcates the
midpoint of a dramatic change of events.
Like Elsheimer's Flight into Egypt and Ruisdael's The Jewish Ceme-
tery, both pictures present nocturnal scenes in which nature alone
reveals the promise of renewal and salvation through the rainbow and
through the trees that rise to replace those that have died. The effect of
infinitity is provided by the firmanent with its panoply of stars.
Baroque poets such as La Ceppede or Du Bartas maintain alo ng
with the painters that the serious tensions of the human condition
can be overcome. La Ceppede in "Le Vieux Are Bigarr," from his
Thoremes, shows the cyclical character of the solar imagery with its
inherent opposites. Here, the shipwreck implies also the end of the
storm or deluge, due to the generative power of the sun. The Christian
poet evokes the cycle of lncarnation, Lamentation, Crucifixion, and
Resurrection, recreating the tension between sun, light, and night,
obscurity. After an eclipse of the sun all natural phenomena are felt to
be demonstrations of the Resurrection; pious Deucalion is recalled:
Du vray Deucalion le bois industrieux
Qui soustint la fureur du gnral naufrage,
Dans une mer de sang a cette heure surnage,
Pour sauver les humains des bouillons stygieux.
Le vieux are bigarr (signe prsagieux
De la fin du dluge, et mis en temoignage
Qu'on ne souffriroit plus des andes le ravage)
Est maintenant courbe sur ce bois prcieux.
THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLICT 85
Puisque ce Nuau peint des couleurs de l'opale
Calmoit les flots, ce corps rouge, livide et pasle
Pourra bien de son Pere appaiser le courroux.
Par ce gage sacr de ta chere alliance
Je t'adjure, o grand Dieu, qu'ore et tousjours pour nous
Ton courrouxjusticier cede ata patience. 14
Du Bartas', "Le Dluge" from La premiere semaine and "L'Arche"
from La Deuxieme Semaine contain the promise of Salvation with the
unexpccted intrusion of the infinite and eterna! into the catastrophic
world of human experience. His fascination with the infinite is expressed
in tcrms of air and heavenly music, illustrating a return to an overriding
harmony of the whole.
The wind is often compared to colors used by a painter. Colors and
sound create atmospheric space filled with the "filies de l'air," that is to
say l: cho, which Du Bois Hus evokes in La Nuict des nuicts.
Les ai les d'un zphir serviront de pinceau ...
rsonnante filie de l':lir,
Nymphe qui te plais a valer
Dans le creux de cette collin,
Echo, prete l'oreille aux concerts ravissants ...
Magicienne divinit
qui loges dans l'obscurit
***
Par leur douce harmonie, le ris donne
le bal aux Nymphes des vallons
J'entends d'harmonieux soupirs
Sortir sur l'aile des zphirs ...
les toiles de l'art allument tous les airs. 15
Wind, color, sounds recreate harmony, the musica mundana, a vast
symphony whose rhythmical movements govern the elements, the
procession of the seasons. The winds complete the creation for it was
they who blew away local discord. Light and color effects fill the
depiction of a sunset, when Mesnardiere in "Le Soleil couchant" creates
atmospheric space through which the air flows. Nothing is fixed and
86 MARLIES KRONEGGER
everything is about to change. The sea with its perpetua) movement o{
the waves reflects the changing Iight and the air cools off as all solid
reality disappears to give way to "perles liquides" and a depressing
fatigue, "un morne assoupissement":
La pourpre, qui luit sous ses pas
En l'air s'carte en mille pointes ...
Que les flots crets d'un zphir
Sont bien peints dans ces pommelures ...
Dans l'air illaisse les couleurs
Qui font les jasmins et les roses ...
Demain I'Aurore a son rveil
N'y verra que perles liquides,
Et tous leurs yeux seront humides
Pour avoir perdu le soleil.
Dja l'air par ce changement
Reste pesant, plutt que tranquille.
Et I'humeur froide qu'il distille
Cause un morne assoupissement. 16
With La Mesnardiere the human figure is reduced to insignificance,
completely dominated by natural scenery attuned to the cyclical rhythm
of da y and night.
The poet Durand clothes himself in a transcendental reality, and
addressing himself to the "filie de l'air" imposes imaginative and visual
unity on his composition, allowing the solidity of Iandscape to disappear
so that the changing colors of the air or atmosphere can reflect the
evanescen! effects of dawn and twilight.
Les sables de lamer, les orages, les nues,
Les feux que font en l'air les tonnantes chaleurs,
Les flammes des esclairs plustost martes que veues,
Les peintures du Ciel a nos yeux incogneues
A ce divin tableau serviront de couleurs. 17
It is for the poet to bear witness to the currents of spiritual energy in
the world, and to suggest a vision of the human condition based on the
interdependence of all elements, one which offers new spiritual possi-
bilities in a world in which they are attuned to one another, as we learn
from Theophile, who addresses himself tole Marquis de Boquignant:
THE TEMPESTUOUS CONFLJCT 87
Les zphirs se donnent aux flots,
Les flots se donnent a la lune,
Les navires aux matelots,
Les matelots a la fortune.
Tout ce que l'univers con9oit
Nous apporte ce qu'il recQit,
Pour rendre nostre vie ase;
L'abeille ne prend point du ciel
Les doux prsens de la rose
Que pour nous en donner le miel.
Les rochers, qui sont le tableau
Des sterilitez de nature,
Afn de nous donner de l'eau
Fendent-ils pas leur masse dure?
Et les champs les plus impuissans
Nous donnent l'yvoire et l'encens;
Les desers les plus inutiles
Donnent de grands tiltres aux Roys,
Et les arbre~ les moins fertiles
Nous donnent de l'ombre et du bois. 18
In conclusion, we ask ourselves, what are the winds of the Baroque
painters and poets? They are a changing free element in each work,
taking on a new aspect with every work, though constan! in their
presence, and most often culminating in storms, shipwrecks, and
nocturnal visions. Nothing endures on this earth, they tell us: winds are,
if you wish, the sound that is necessary to music, composed of infinite
tones and half-tones. The winds are the psychological color of rhythms
and words, composed of infinite nuances of emotion; the winds are the
emotional colors of painters, indicating and revealing to us an entire
scene in a single flash, as though it carne from a terrific bolt of Iightning;
the winds are flashes of illumination on the human condition. Man
seems to be threatened by the structure of the universe whose spatial
and moral coordinates coincide. Winds reflect the moment, the ephem-
eral human existence. The ephemeral, however, also suggests the
eterna) in which man is swallowed up. Baroque poets and painters bear
witness to the twofold vocation of man, his fall and elevation, and his
passing from corruption to salvation. The four elements are the matrix
of their relations to both themselves and a primordial Being. lnstead of
 SHERL YN ABDOO
88 MARLIES KRONEGGER

looking for stability on this earth, these poets and artists find in wind
and storm a means of meditation on the question: where is man's FIRE TRANSFIGUR E D IN T. S. ELIOT'S
destiny and place, if not in the celestial world beyond? FOUR QUARTETS

Michigan State University

thc communication
NOTES Of the dead is tongued with firc hcyond thc languagc of thc living.
.. Littlc Gidding... 1, 52-53 1
Jcan Roussct, Anthologie de la posie baroque franratse, 1 (Pars: Armand Coln,
196!!), p. 159.
' Roussct, op. cit., Vol. 11, p. 264.
' Gislc Mathicu-Castellani, Eros baroque, Anthologie tltmatique de la posie amour-
euse (Pans: Un ion gnrale d'editions), 10/ 1H.
Roussct, op. Cll., Vol. l., p. 117. 11 has been fairly well established that one of the organizing principies
' /bid., Vol.!, p. 172. Eliot used when he wrote Four Quartets was to cquate each of the
" Harold B. Scgel, The Baroque Poem (New York: 1::.. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 220.
7 Mathicu-Castcllani, op.cil., p . 291. poem 's pa rts with one of nature's four elements:
x Rou'>sct, op. ci1., Vol. JI, p. 17.
,, /bit/.. p . 17. 'Burnt Norton' is a poem about air, on which whispcrs are borne, intangible itself, but
'" /bid., Vol. l. p. 197. thc mcdium of communication: 'East Coker' is a poem about earth, the dust of which
'' /bid. , Vol. 11, p. 184. we are made a nd into which we shall return ; ... 'The Dry Salvages' is a poem about
l ! Mathieu-Castellani, op. cit., p. 182. 1\ater . whilcl 'Littlc Gidding' is a poem ahout fire, the puw..t of thc clcmcnts, by
1
' Roussct, op. cit. , Vol. 11, p. 16. which sorne have thought the world would e nd , fire wh1ch consumes and purifies.'
14
/bid., Vol. 11, p. 184.
1' Alan M. Boase, The Poetry of Frunce, 11, 1600- IHOO (London- Methuen, 1973), What happens in the Quartets is, however, a bit more complicated. B.
pp. 105-114. Rajan, 1 think, correctly assessed the situation when he said that
1
'' /bid., Vol. 11, pp. 149- 152.
1' Rousset, op. cit., Vol.l, p. 75.
'Burnt 'lorton is conccrned with constructing conceph, 'East Coker' and The Dry
" Thcophile de Viau, Oeuvres poliques, ed. LoUts-Raymond Lefi:vre (Paris: Garnier, Sahages wnh the application of those concepts to a stcadily widcnmg area of experi-
1926),p.22. cnce. and 'Little Gidding' with the transfigura/tOn of the fach wllhin that area. 1 (my
emphaSis)

The unity of the four separate poems into one poem is, moreover,
crucial to our understanding of its individual parts.4 Perhaps it would
not be too inaccurate to declare that individually the poem's four
movements or quartets are ineffective compared to the experience of
the grcater poem. And Eliot's me thod is perhaps not so strange or
remate if we consider it against his own experience reading Dante's
Divine Comedy as he described the experience in his essay, "Dante"
( 1929). Eliot tells us that "the Purgatorio begin[sj to yield its beauty"

only when we have read straight through to the end of the Paradtso, and re-read the
lnfemo.<

89
A 1: Fymienieckil (ed.), Analecw Husserliana, Vol XXIII, 89- 1OO.
~ 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
90 SHERL YN ABDOO
His understanding of the lnferno is, likewise, revealing:
1 insbt that the full meaning of the !nferno can only be extracted after appreciation of
the two latcr parts.<>
lt would seem to follow, then, given Eliot's purpose in writing "Little
Gidding", namely, that:
Thc intention , of coursc. was ... to present to the mind of thc rcadcr a parallel, by
means of contrast between the !nfemo and the Purgatono which Dante visited and a
hallucmated scene after an air-raid. 7
that "Little Gidding" - the fourth poem in the quartet - would unite
the separate poems into a single unity and resolve the majar issues of
what Four Quartets is about.
In general, Four Quartets is about time and history; in particular, the
Quartets are about Eliot's position in time and his relation to the
kindred - whether they be blood-kin or spiritual kin - who peopled
the space befare him. Eliot's preoccupation was to an "utter and
relentless fidelity to the event" of the poetic past - to a "single
intelligence speak[ing] across those years." H Eliot, moreover, seemed
only to be able lo think of himself as a poet whose own significance
was heavy with the presence and tradition of aJI who carne before him.
This notion is self-evident in Eliot's definition in "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" (1919) of what he caJled the "historical sense." The
"historical sense" was a
sen se of the timelcss as well as of the te mpo ral a nd of thc timeless and of the temporal
togcthcr .. . it is at the same time what makes a writcr most acutely conscious of his
place in time, of his own contemporaneity."
In short, a poet's "significance ... is the appreciation of his relation to
the dead poets and artists." 10
In Four Quartets Eliot once again attempted to articulate his private
fee lings on the subject of Love - love not only secular and erotic, but
religious and devotional , as weJI. The very fact of the poem's reflexivity
(i.e., the poem is about its own production), however, is what enabled
Eliot to meditate on the use of language as he tried to use it writing
"Little Gidding":
Thc language has to be very dircct: the line, and the \tngle word, must be completely
disciplined to the purpose of the whole. 11
FIRE TRANSFIGURED 91
In a review of "Burnt Norton," "East Coker," and "The Dry Salvages"
(Poetry London, 1942), George Orwell responded impatiently to Eliot's
self-involved rumination on the facts of his own aging and, at the same
time, managed to situate Eliot fairl y accurately in his own time and
place:
one cannot go on 'despairing of tire into a ripe old age.... sooner or later one is
obhged to adopt a positive attitude towards life and society. lt would be putting it too
crudely to say that every poet in our time must either die young, enter the Catholic
Church or om the Communist Party, but m fact the escape from the consciousness of
futih ty is along those general lines .... after a certain age one muM eithe r stop writing
or dcdicatc oneself to sorne purpose not wholly aesthetic. Such a dedication necessarily
means a break w1th the past. 12
While it is true that Eliot "escaped ... into the church ," I think the
Quartets did, in fact, serve Eliot's prvate need to publicly testify to his
religious faith, even though, curiously enough, I agree with Orwell's
harsh judgment that Eliot was a "man who does not reaJly 'feel' his
faith, but merely assents to it for complex reasons." 11 Paradoxically
though, at the time he began Four Quartets Eliot was well aware that
his poetic career was coming to an end:
1thought purc unapplied poetry was in the past for me. 14
As I:.liot recounts, however, it seems the poem was meant to be written:
Thcrc wcrc lines and fragments that were discardcd in thc coursc of thc production of
Murder m the Cathedral that stayed in my mind, and gradually 1 saw a pocm shaping
ihclf round them: in the end it carne out as 'Burnt Norton.'
I ven 'Burnt Norton' might have remained by itsclf if it hadn't been fo r the war. ...
the conditions of our lives changed ... 'East Coker' was the rcsult - a nd it was only in
wrnmg t:.ast Coker' that 1 began to see the Quartets as a sct of four. 1 ~
1t was only after he was able to proclaim his faith through the use
of language that Eliot was freed from the terrible uncertainty of not
knowing he had completed his poetic mission. With Four Quartets
Eliot's position among poets was certain.
11
Gaston Bachelard persuades us in his book, The Psychoanalysis of Fire,
that there is, in fact, a poetics of fire. Prefacing Bachelard's work,
92 SHERL YN ABDOO
Northrop Frye defined fire as a natural force, imaginatively inseparable
from human experience- inseparable because
it i~ already linked by analogy and identity with a do1en other aspects of experience. hs
heat is analogous lo the interna! heat we feel as warm-blooded animals; its sparks are
analogous lo seeds, the units of life; its nickenng movement is analogous lo vitality; its
names a re phallic symbols, providing fu rther analogy to the sexual act ... its trans-
forming power is analogous to purgation. 1'
In the Quartets, fire is the metonymic symbol-system which gives the
poem its meaning. The poem begins immediately with images flickering
across the page asan emotion might evoke
a flicker
Over the strained time-riddcn faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction. (BN, Ill, 10- 12)
But Eliot's moments of revelation are fragmentary, as if he could only
see or imagine a world composed of parts - glimpses of places, parts
of people, moments in events, and hints of feelings - all spliced
together to compose the film clip of a dream or nightmare. Not only is
Eliot projecting memories from times past, but he is pairing contrary
states of being which are repetitively oxymoronic and allegorical. In
addition to the past/present oppositions, there are at Jeast five other
pairs of contraries working simultaneously in the poem: (1) life and
death; (2) heat and cold; (3) motion and stillness (or stasis); (4) light
and darkness; and (5) passion and purgation. Each pair of oppositions
is symbolically represented by the element of fire. It might be useful to
mention here that the word "fire" is, in fact, used eighteen times in Four
Quartets (twelve of the eighteen are in "Little Gidding"); the word
"light" is used twenty-two times; the word "rose", nineteen times; "love",
eight times; "sun", ten times; "blood" and "heat" five times each; and
"word" or "Logos", a total of twelve times.
There is, too, an unmistakably circular shape to the movement of
words in the Quartets. By itself, circula rity signifies wholeness and
perfection. Beginning and ending with fire, the refore, neatly closes the
poe tic circle and unites its parts within. At the same time, the mere fact
that each Quartet is associated in E liot's mind with a place particular in
his past, connects him to it.
"Burnt Norton" is the site of a seventeenth-century fa rmhouse which
was set on fire by its owner, Sir William Keyte, who immolated himself
FIRE TRANSFIGURED 93
as he destroyed his own home. The site seems to have remained in
Eliot's poetic imagination in its burned-out state, even though he visited
the rebuilt estate severa] times in the 1930's. But, "Burnt Norton"
also possesses a rose garden: "Down the passage which we did not
take" (BN, 1, 12), where laughing, innocent voices of children echo
tantalizingly behind the adult memories of passion dried with time, like
the "dust on a bowl of rose leaves." (BN, 1, 17) The poignant memories
Eliot associated with "Burnt Norton" became reduced in "Little
Gidding" to
Ash o n an old man's sleeve
ls all the ash the burnt roses leave. (LG, 11 , l -2)
While the experience of Eliot's personal past led him to describe it as a
wo rld of perpetua! solitude, . ..
Interna! darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fanc y (BN, 111, 26, 28-3 1),
the debauched past of Sir William Keyte led him to experience,
first-hand, the torments of hell
In hell. the tormcnt issues from the very natu re of thc damned themselves, expresses
thc1r cssence; they writhe in the torment of their own perpctually perverted nature. 17
Sir William not only had "abandoned his wife and younger children" in
order to "set up house" at Burnt Norton with "his wife's maid," but he
even threw over his mistress sorne years later in favor of a "dairy
maid." 1H
Eliot's method of conflating his own experiences with Sir William's
follows his familiar description of how
an ancient passion in a ncw emotion, in a new situa tion, ... comprehends, enlarges, and
gvcs a mcaning to it. 1Y
In "East Coker" Eliot meditates on the place of his earliest known
origins. East Coker was the "village in southeast Somersetshire from
which the E liot family emigrated to America." 211 While E liot refers
indirectly to erotic love in "Burnt Norton," in "East Coker" the
94 SHERL YN ABDOO
experience is explicitly rendered. We hear how Eliot's ancestors danced
"around the bonfire"
in the electric heat ...
On a Summer midnight (EC, 1, 28, 19, 26)
and "Leaplt] through the flames" of the bonfire, enacting an ancient
fertility rite. (EC, I, 35) The fire which signifies consummation of erotic
love is also the fire which transforms
old timber to new fires
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth (EC, I, 5-6)
and fertilizes the soil, "Nourishing the corn." (EC, I, 40) The fires of
human passion and fertility are provoked by the earth's response to
cyclical change, to "living in the living season" (EC, 1, 42) - in
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Oung and death. (EC, 1, 44-4 7)
But the seasons clash and "Late roses" are "filled with early snow" (EC,
11, 7) while
Comets weep ...
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns befare the ice-cap reigns. (EC, 11, 13, 15-17)
Eliot extends the seasonal metaphor of cyclical change to reflect upon
his own autumnal season - where the fires of youthful passion have
spent themselves and the
Long hoped for cal m, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age (EC, 11, 24- 25)
takes over. But Eliot cannot altogether escape the "echoed ecstasy" of
the rose garden "pointing to the agony 1 Of death and birth." (EC, 111,
34- 36) The cyclical metaphor of "death and birth" is reversed to
"birth and death" signifying Christ, "the wounded surgeon," - the
"dying nurse" who
FIRE TRANSFIGURED 95
plies the steel
That questions the distempered part ...
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. (EC, IV, 1-2, 5)
Christ's purpose is to "remind of our, and Adam's curse;" but in order
10 be saved, or healed, as the medica! metaphor indicates, the "sickness
must grow worse." (EC, IV, 1O) Eliot the protagonist
must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatoria! fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars. (EC, IV, 18-20)
Christ's "bleeding hands" become the sacramental meal:
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food. (EC, IV, 3, 21-22)
In "East Coker" the search for god and the search for knowledge are
the same:
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
ls the wisdom of humility; humility is endless. (EC, Il, 47-48)
Through humility and the courage to suffer, purgation can be achieved:
In purgatory the torment of llame is dcliberately and consciously acccptcd by the
penncnt ... thc soub in purgatory suffer becausc thcy "wish to suffer.' 1 1
In the Four Quartets "the faith and the love and the hope are all in the
waiting." (EC, III, 29)
"The Ory Salvages" represen! the place Eliot knew intimately. The
Dry Salvages are "a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N. E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts." 22 Eliot spent his childhood sum-
mers at Cape Ann and learned to sail the treacherous waters around
the rocky coast. In the poem Eliot's happy memories of Cape Ann are
coupled with Eliot's other childhood memory of water: the Mississippi
River as it flowed through St. Louis, Missouri, the city of Eliot's birth.
In Eliot's imagination, the "strong brown god" which is the Mississippi,
is predictably "sullen, untamed and intractable." (OS, 1-2) His earliest
memory of the river was its "rhythm ... in the nursery bedroom." For
I.:liot, the Mississippi continued to be present "within us" while the sea
was an element that flowed "all about us." (OS, 1, 11, 15)
96 SHERL YN ABDOO
In "The Ory Salvages" the seasons mingle. The "rank ailanthus of the
April dooryard" is juxtaposed with the "smell of grapes on the autumn
table," while the "winter gaslight" illuminates the "evening." (OS, r,
12-14) Though the sacramental wine is hinted at, "The bitter apple
and the bite in the apple" testify to Eliot's preoccupation with man's
Fall. But the repetitive intonation of "the calamitous annunciation," the
"last annunciation," and the "sound of the sea bell's 1 Perpetua! angelus"
strikes the ear as a death-knell even as its announcement - which is
salvation - tries to retrieve the situation. (DS, 11, 6, 18; IV, 14-15)
But the mystery of Incarnation is only "half understood." (DS, V, 32) It
is "Something that is probably quite ineffable." (OS, Il, 52) lt is
an occupation for the saint-
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in !ove,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender. (DS, V, 190-22)
In other words, there is no tangible proof that can provide assurance of
salvation. There are only "hints and guesses" anda
music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all. (OS, V, 29, 27-28)
As the most philosophical, least metaphorical of the Quartets, "The
Dry Salvages" is also the darkest. In the inescapable rhythm of the
language, the liquid elements not only carry the life force, but surround
us and carry us on the waters of life "In a drifting boat with a slow
leakage," until we drown. (OS, II, 16) Not only does the sea swallow
men alive and regurgitate the remains:
the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men (DS, 1, 22-24)
but, unlike woman, the sea in its feminine essence does not reject her
lovers; her lovers, instead, end their voyage
in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them. (DS, IV, 12- 13)
Like the Quartets before it, "Little Gidding" has its locus. It is
the site of "an Anglican religious community established in 1625 by
Nicholas Ferrer, and three times visited by King Charles." 23 Whereas in
FIRE TRANSFIGURED 97
the prior Quartets Eliot was primarily concerned with evoking a past
rnornent, in "Little Gidding" "History is now and England." (LG, V, 24)
With the realities of the war intruding upon his imagination, the voice
of God speaks from the mouth of an enemy fighter plane invoking
Arrnageddon:
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and terror. (LG, IV, 1-4)
Eliot can no longer escape self-confrontation; using memory he has
rneditated repeatedly on the facts of his own mortality, trying "To
surnmon the spectre of a rose" (LG, III, 36); he has attempted to define
the nature of his religious faith; but in "Little Gidding," the major issue
seems to be the use of language and the question of his poetic purpose.
In "Burnt Norton" Eliot briefly reached after
Words, after speech ...
lnto the silence (BN, V, 3-4)
only to find an unsatisfactory solution, wherein
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Oecay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. (BN, V, 13- 17)
In "East Coker" Eliot took another approach. lnstead of trying to
define what language does, Eliot attempted to interpret his own motives
and actions:
So here 1am in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of '!'entre deux guerres'-
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
ls a wholly new start, anda different kind of failure
Beca use one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each ven tu re
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate. (EC, V, 1-8)
~' t
-~
-,..,_
i ..,IJ.
98 SHERL YN ABDOO FIRE TRANSFIGURED 99

In "Little Gidding," finally, Eliot seems to come full circle and arrive at for Burnt Norton,' 'EC' for 'East Coker,' os for 'The Dry Salvages,' and 'LG' for
Littlc Gidding.'
an acceptable way of defining the enterprise he is engaged in:
Helen Gardner, 'Thc Music of Four Quartets,' Four Quartets: A Casebook, ed.,
every phrase Bernard Bcrgonzi (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 126.
In hcr book, 7he Composition of Four Quartets, Helen Gardner quotes from a letter
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
written in June, 1941 , by John Hayward to Frank Morley in which Hayward mentions a
Taking its place to support the others, slightly different, and 1 think correct, sequence for ordcring thc elemcnts. Referring to
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, Eliot. Hayward writes: " He wants if possible to complete thc cycle with a fourth poem
An easy commerce of the old and the new, _ Earth. Air, Water, 'Fire' - and has got as far as making a rough, preliminary draft."
The common word exact without vulgarity, (P :!1)
' B RaJan. "The Unity o f the Quartets," in T S. 1:./iot: A Study of His Writings by
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
Sel'eralllands (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947), p. 80.
The complete consort dancing together) ll>ul. p. 7H.
Every phrase and every sentence is an end anda beginning, < 1 S. 1:- liot. "Dante." in Selected Prose of T. S. E:.liot, ed. with an introd. by Frank
Every poem an epitaph. (LG, V, 3-12) Kerrnode (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1975). p. 218.
b lhul.. p.2l7.
Eliot, thus, seems to have arrived at a partial solution to his problem. 7 l. S. l:.liot, "Dante and 'Little Gidding'," Four Quartets: A Casebook, op. cit., p. 24.

Having confronted the spectre of himself and his dead masters in what According to Grover Smith (T. S. Eliot's Poetry ami Plays: A Study in Sources and
he called a hallucinatory state after an air-raid, Eliot absolved himself Meam11g !Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 19741) "in World War 11 Eliot belonged to
thc firc-,potti ng servicc in London." (p. 291)
from having gone his own way with language, of having invested his
K B. Rajan, op. cit., p. 95.
own way with words: " 1 S. Fliot. "Tradition and thc Individual Talen t." in Selected /'rose of T. S. Eliot, op.
Clt. p. J9.
'1 am not eager to rehearse 111
/hui.. p. 38.
M y thought and theory which you have forgotten' 11
1 S.l:.liot, "Dante and 'Little Gidding'," op. cit., p. 25.
11
Gcorge Orwell, "T. S. Eliot," in Four Quartets: A Casebook, op. cll., p. 85.
the apparition tells him 1
' !hiel. p. H6.
14
'These things have served their purpose: Jet them be. 1 S. l:.liot, "The Genesis of Four Quartets," Four Quartet1: A Casebook, o p. cit.. p.
21
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven 1
' /hui. p. 23.
By others, as 1 pray you to forgive " Gaston Bachelard. /he Psychoanalysis of Fire. Prcfacc by Northrop Frye, trans.,
Both bad and good.' (LG, 11, 58-63) Atan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). p. vi.
1
1 S. l::liot. "Dante," op. cit., p. 220.
With the golden rule his absolution, Eliot felt free to conclude his 1
' Hclcn Gardner. The Composition of Four Quartets, op. cit., p. 36.
poem, uniting the fires of passion, pain, fertility, and purgation to the 1
" r. S. l::liot, "Dante," op. cit., p. 225.
111
rose of memory, love, and art. Fire is here finally incarnated as Logos Grover Smith, T S. t :liot's Poetry and Plays: A Swdy in Sources and Meaning, p.
(place), Word, language which becomes poem: 255.
'
1
1'. S. Eliot, "Dante," op. cit., p. 220.
1
And the fire and the rose are one. (LG, V, 46) ' l. S. Eliot, "Thc Dry Salvages," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-/950, op. cit.,
p. 130.
' Grover Smith, r S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning, op.
1

m. p. 255.
NOTI:.S

1 All quotallons from T. S. Eliot's Four Quarters are taken from The Complete Poems BIBLIOGRAPHY
and Play.~ 1909- 1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1971) and are hereinafter referred
to in parentheses by line number immediately follo wing each citation. 1 have, in each Bachelard. Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Preface by Northrop Frye. Trans. AJan
case, referred to the standard abbrcviations for cach of the poem\ separate parts: 'BN' C M. Ross. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
lOO SHERL YN ABDOO TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWIC

Bcrgonzi, Bernard, Ed. Four Quartets: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Blamire~. Harry. Word Unheard: A Guide Through Eliot's Four Quartets. London:
Mctheun, 1969.
Burch-Brown, Frank. Transfigura/ion: Poetic Metaphor and the Languages of Religious
Belief Chape! Hill, North Carolina: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983.
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace
and World, 1971.
Se/ected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Ed. with an lntrod. by Frank Kermode. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1975.
Gardner. Helen. The Composition of Four Quartets. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1978.
Jlerakleitos and Diogenes. Trans. by Guy Davenport. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press,
1976.
Pa~cal, Blaise. Penses. lntrod. by T. S. Eliot. New York: Dutton, 1958.
Rajan. B., Ed. T S. Eliot: A Study of /lis Writings by Severa/ 1/ands. London: Dennis
Dobson, Ltd .. 194 7.
Skeat, Walter W. A Concise Erymo/ogica/ Dictionary of the F:nglish Language. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980.
Smith, Grover. T S. Eliot's Poetry and Play:.: A Swdy in Sources ami Meaning. 2nd Ed.
C hicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974.
FIRE ANO SNOW: THE OICHOTOMIES ANO
DICHOMACHIES OF POLISH BAROQUE POETRY
Le feu et la chaleur fournissent des moyens d'explica-
tion dans les domaine~ les plus varis paree qu'ils
sont pour nous l'occasion de souvenirs imprissables,
d'expriences personnelles simples et dcisives. Le
feu est ainsi un phnomene privilgi qui peut tout
expliquer. Si tout ce qui change lentement s'explique
par la vie, tout ce qui change vite s'explique par le
feu. Le feu est l'ultra-vivant. Le feu est intime et il est
universel. 11 vit dans notre coeur. 11 vit dans le ciel. 11
monte des profondeurs de la substance et s'offrc
commc un amour. 11 redescend dans la matiere et
se cache, latent, contenu comme la haine et la
vengeance. Parmi tous les phnomenes, il est vrai-
ment le seul qui puissc recevoir aussi nettement les
deux valorisations contraircs: le bien et le mal. 11
a
brille au Paradis. 11 brulc I'Enfer. 11 est douceur et
torture. 11 est cuisine et apocalypse. 11 est plaisir pour
l'enfant assis sagement pres du foyer; il punit cepend-
ant de toute dsobissance quand on veut jouer de
trop pres avec ses flamme~. 11 est bien-etre et il est
respect. C'est un dieu tutlaire et terrible, bon et
mauvais. 11 pcut se contredire: il est done un des
prncipes d'cxplication universelle.
Gaston Bachclard, La psychanalyse du feu

Despite the existence of indissoluble links between the phenomena of

fire, light, and sun, 1 have determined in my undertaking to describe the
topos of fire in Polish Baroque poetry to limit myself to the manifesta-
tion of fire alone (whose Latn counterpart is ignis), eliminating from
my description both light and sun. In these considerations, the only
companions of fire will be those appearances which are closely linked
to it physically: smoke, sparks, ash, and heat. Simplifying somewhat, 1
would say that the general common understanding of the word "fire",
with all of its designations except for light and sun, will set the limits of
my description. The reason behind this decision is not fear of the
cosmic dimensions of a more widely understood meaning of the word
101

A-1. Tymeniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol XXI//, 101 - 119.

C> 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
102 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
"fire," which in accordance with the ancient cosmogonies takes in
equally both light and sun; rather, the reason involves certain essential
differences in the functioning of the symbols and metaphors of fire
light, and the sun in the religions and mythologies of the peoples of th~
entire world. Jean Chevalier in conjunction with Alain Gheerbrant has
gathered impressive data concernjng the fundamental symbols of
humanity, among these the symbols of light, sun, and fire. In mytholo-
gies and religions, light is as it were without a source, without a cause, a
Kantian light for itself, reproducing the attribute of the Platonic
demiurge in "Timaeus." It is closely joined with cosmogony, with the
evolution of existence. lt is opposed to darkness, itself symbolizing
good whereas the darkness symbolizes evil. This is how light is seen
with sorne slight variations in the ancient beliefs of China; in the holy
book of the Moslems - the Koran; in the oldest relic of Indo-Aryan
literature, the Rig-Veda; or in the Buddhist Anguttara-nikaya. The
highest god of the old Iranian religion Mazdaism, Ormazd (Ahura
Mazda), is identified with light, and light with good, so that he is himself
the good. This powerful god is in opposition to the darkness and evil
which Ahriman personifies. This dualism les at the basis of all forms of
Manichaeism. The Apostle John identifies light with the Word-Logos,
and the Lagos is God. 1
The sun in these mythologies and religions has many characteristics
in common with light. It is most often a manifestation of the divinity
( piphanie ouranienne). But in sorne creeds it is lower than light, very
often being not a god, as is light, but the son of god , as, for example, in
Australian beliefs. The sun is above all the rhythm of life, a symbol of
immortality, resurrection, and the eterna! return of light and thus of
divinity. It is the center of the heavens, the heart of the world, the eye
of the world. According to Indian religions and philosophies, within it
dwells Purusa, the cosmic intelligence that compels the creative (thus
divine) forces of the world to action. It is likewise the seat of one of
the persons of the Trimurti - the Hindu Trinity - the creator and
guardian of the world, Brahma. The unchanging part of the inner man,
not subject to annihilation, Atman, is a form of the sun. According to
Hesychius of Jerusalem: "Jesus appears to us as the sun which radiates
justice." 2
In the intricate tangle of the symbolic meanings of fire which often
converge with the symbols of light and the sun, it is possible to catch
one fundamental and very distinct characteristic of this phenomenon: it
FIRE ANO SNOW 103
is a dualistic structure which, in its own dichotomy, is ethically
disturbing. Fire, as distinct from light and sun, lives in its own con-
tradiction; it has no opposite outside of itself, but only within; it attacks
itself as if always forgetting whom, in truth, it is. Light had its enemy in
darkness. So did the sun. Agni (the Sanskrit for "fire"), the Hindu god
of fire, second in power only to Indra, is formed from three opposing
elements: sun (life giving), lightning (always destructive), and hearth
(neuter). It has two faces, is a deity both benign and extremely
malicious. It has three or seven tongues. Light and the sun are single-
faced, and single-tongued. Light and the sun are cosmocentric, fire -
homocentric. In fire, according to ancient Chinese philosophy, two
elements are joined: the heavenly and the earthly, the yin and yang. Fire
is of the spirit and of senses; it is the symbol both of !ove and hatred. It
both fertilizes the earth and reduces it to ash. It can be a gentle saint, a
beam of heaven, and a terrifying element of hell. All these mythical and
symbolical properties of fire expressly separate it from light and sun.
In undertaking a description of the phenomenon of fire in poetry, 1
ought to clarify why 1 chose Polish Baroque poetry for this purpose -
for the simple reason that it is a perfect equivalent to the structure of
the myth of fire. Dichotomy and dichomachy is its striking charac-
teristic, one which mirrors the situation in which Europe found itself
after the Council of Trent, after the breakdown of the Reformation. A
sensitive individual of this continent stood confronted with the heritage
of St. Bartholomew's Day, the stake of Giordano Bruno, and the
condemnation of Galileo. Descartes, shaken by the fate of the author of
the "Dialogue," withholds publication a treatise of his own, deciding
to print only certain of its parts: La dioptrique, Les mteores, La
gomtrie, with the famous introduction to Discours de la mthode
(163 7). The children of the Renaissance had to tace a morrow painfully
divided, discovering in themselves the same prevailing contradictions as
in the element of fire. A brilliant expert on the Polish Baroque, Czestaw
Hernas, sees, with profound penetration, the former unity of Jan
Kochanowski's epoch beginning to break in half:
'Then comes the crisis of Renaissance aspirations for reconciliation
of earthly and eterna! values, of the horizontal and vertical pulse of life.
This crisis led to collision, to the sundering of unity, and to the
formation of opposing currents: those of metaphysical poetry and of the
poetry of earthly delights ....
As to the controversy concerning earthly and eterna! bliss, the
104 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
Church took a strong position, both overseeing the changes in culture
and exercising control over them. The debate concerning the world's
and man's transitoriness gripped all of the arts." 4
Besides the problem of dualism in Polish Baroque, which is so
strongly reminiscent of at least the dualistic structure of the myth of
fire, yet a third element played an important part in my choice: namely,
the problem of metaphysics, as it was understood by Andronicus of
Rhodes, publisher of the works of Aristotle, who gave to those works of
the great philosopher which were not contained precisely with in the
disciplines of the sciences, the title: T met t physic - that which allusiveness, of digressions (digression was one of the chief stylistic
follows after physics. Metaphysics is undoubtedly part of a common
denominator which joins, for the Baroque poets and for the phenome-
nologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, descriptions of the
exterior and interior world. Baroque poetics more than other poetics is
to a markedly larger degree characterized by that which is characteristic
of phenomenological description, namely:
(a) a reaching for the essence of things;
(b) by non-empirical means;
(e) rather intuitive;
(d) the bracketing of existence;
(e) by express intentional acts.
The metaphysical character of Baroque poetry is brought out in
relief by the titles of scholarly works on this period, as well as
anthologies: e.g., Joan Bennet Four Metaphysical Poets (Cambridge,
1934); H. J. C. Grierson, ed., Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems (Oxford,
1921 ); J. B. Leishman The Metaphysical Poets (New York, 1936);
Theodore Spencer and Mark Van Doren Studies in Metaphysical
Poetry: Two Essays and a Bibliography. Only lately does the term
"Baroque" seem to have taken hold in reference to the creativity of the
period, to which development the following titles witness: J. M. Cohen
The Baroque Lyric (London, 1963); Lowry Nelson, Jr., Baroque Lyric
Poetry (New Haven and London, 1966); Frank J. Warnke, Version of
Baroque (New Haven and London, 1972). The metaphysical elements
in phenomenology were noticed very early. Already in the year 1858
William Hamilton speaks of these in his Lectures on Metaphysics.
Criticism immediately linked with Husserl the name of Bolestaw
Lesmian, 5 the most renowned Polish poet of the highly metaphysical
period of Symbolism. Thus without doubt the metaphysical bond that
FIRE ANO SNOW 105
exists between the Baroque and phenomenology aided me in the
selection of my topic.
The dualistic function of fire blended perfect1y with the poetics of
the chief theoreticians of the European Baroque, such as: Giambattiste
Marino (1569-1625), Luis de Gngora y Argo te ( 1561-1627), John
Lyly, author of a program novel in two parts Euphues or the Anatomy
of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1580), and in Poland
Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski ( 1554- 1606). These poetics are full of
formal virtuosity, of astonishing associations, of conceptualism, of
features used by the author of L'Adone), and last of all of shocking
play - it can be said - with the word as with fire, a calculated surprise
by means of words. Fire in all mythologies and religions is also
surprising. Marino makes of astonishment the chief canon of his poetics
which, (next to the poetics of Carrillo y Sotomayor the author of El
libro de la erudicin potica ( 1611) who defends the "dark obscurities"
of his poetry) is the most profound influence on European Baroque,
finding its way into the creative work of the most talented of Polish
poets of the Baroque, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. The chameleon-like
attributes of fire became the perfect tool in the structure of surprise,
attributes which Marino promoted with such insistence:
Astonishment's the poet's aim and aid:
Who cannot startle best had stick to trade.
The use of antitheses and paradoxes was one of the contemporary
traits of Marinism, Euphuism, Gongorism and further of the "acutism"
(pointillism) and "argutism" (witticism) of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski,
author of the basic, despite its brevity, treatise entitled De aculO et
arguto liber unicus sive Seneca et Martialis. The specially favored
stylistic figure of these movements was antithesis, the most Manichean
of all stylistic structures. Fire was simply the perfect tool for expressing
the fundamental dichomachies and dichotomies of the Baroque: on one
side with its divine, creative power, its own sacred burning bush of
Moses, its Promethean reference, its vision of vestal virgins, its obvious
hierophany; on the other with its aggressive diabolical, destroying
power. It expressed the dichotomies and dichomachies quite dramti-
cally by opposing to itself cold and snow which symbolized the breath
of death, or even worse than death - indifference. The duality of the
nature of fire is quite simply ideally suited for the production in poetic
106 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
pictures of the encounter of the fleshly with the spiritual (the chief
dichomachy of the Baroque), of the conscious with the unconscious, of
the expressible with the inexpressible, of the social with the individual
and finally of the creative with the destructive. The duality of fir~
created also a perfect "semantic space" for showing the two postures
that are at war with each other in man, the posture of horno rnilitans
and horno ludens, which comprise in their struggle the chief collision of
the Baroque.
In the Polish Baroque the fire of earthly, sensual, fleshly love is most
violently at odds with the fire of spiritual, divine love. It will be in truth
a battle of metaphors, but one experienced profoundly by earth and
heaven. This clash is the signurn ternporurn of the Baroque. "Fire of
flesh" enters into the Polish Baroque from the Polish Renaissance
which constituted one of the most sensual periods in Polish literature.
A bold lewd fleshliness resting on Epicureanism, hedonism, Lucretian-
ism, permeates the works of Andrzej Krzycki, the first Polish bishop
to write almost pornographic erotics, and these in Latin (Tadeusz
Chrzanowski calls him "a greedy and immoral bishop'V' These tensio ns
prevade equally the poetry and prose of Miko1aj Rej and Jan
Kochanowski. The author of Songs enchanted the arbiter of taste in thc
Polish Baroque, Sarbiewski, who second after Klemens Janicki held the
golden laurel from the hands of the then reigning pope, Urban VIII.
Sarbiewski, "poeta laureatus," opens wide the gates of the Polish
Baroque before the author of the poems On Love, To Magdalene, To
Hanna, Midsurnrner Night's Song on Sobtka, Of Pranks, Trifles, and so
on. In the poem To Magdalene, the fire of "worldly bliss," the fire of
sensual !ove attains simply a paralyzing intensity. It is not the fire of the
septic altar of the Vestals, rather of the god Kama. lt attains, within its
desire for possessing the coveted person, the power of the demon of
love in the book of the Vedas, and will become, by transformation in
Hinduism, a prototype of the already mild Mediterranean Amor, and
neither a Greek nor a Roman Siva has ignited this flame as a means of
arousing !ove for a European Kala. In Kochanowski, Amor has real ly
the outlines more of the demon of !ove from the Vedas than of a god of
love in Anacreon. Gazing on the object of love-possession, the poet
loses control over himself, as emotion paralyzes his voice: "I have no
speech; a secret fire moves within me." 7 The epithet "secret" does not
here mean "unknown," rather it is metonymy for that which does not
wish ever to be expressed. The nature of this flame is made express by
FIRE AND SNOW 107
sensual context: it hums in the poet's ears, it darkens his eyes: "a
two-fold night sets on the eyes." In the poem Love, Kochanowski, as
he new Prometheus, is punished for stealing the fire of love by being
chained to "a crag of the snowy Caucasus." But instead of a liver, it is
his heart which grows ever anew, and gnawing at it is not a vulture but
a "she-eagle" - the beloved woman. This Caucasus, covered with snow,
is here expressly a symbol of the unattainable but haughty and cold
body of the desired woman. He is "nailed" to her by the sentence of his
0 wn feelings, but this "nailing to" does not unite him with his object,
rather it separates him through the snow of her indifference. Warm
emotional bonds change themselves into icy chains.11 There appears in
this picture as it were a trace of medieval misogyny which will extend
sometimes into the Polish Baroque. Kochanowski, almost like a genuine
poet of the Baroque, seeks escape in a different fire: the fire of love for
God who - Himself being the fire of love for man - gives wings to the
poet, removes him from the snowy Caucasus, and rewards him with
new peaks, no longer carnal but spiritual, from which the poet sees, as
will the future Romantic Kordian (Stowacki), the entire surrounding
world taking its place in the eye of Providence:
Who has given me wings, who clothed me with feathers,
Who placed me so high, that from a mountain
1 see the world of all, and, as if it were normal, 1
Mysclf in touch with Heaven?
ls he the fire unquenched
Of the gol den sun ....e
After this as it were "ascension through fire," there appears in
Kochanowski a calmed yet magical fire. Its sources are hidden in a very
intense, omnipresent proto-Slavonic cult of this element. It is a charac-
teristic of Slavic traditions that many of the leading gods are gods of the
sun and fire, such as the powerful proto-Slavonic Swarozyc and the
chief god of the proto-Polans and proto-Vistulans Dadibg. 10 Both of
these were gods of sacrificial and domestic fire. The tutelage of
domestic fire attributed to them by the pagans was enormously
importan! in the climate formed in the post-glacial age, when physical
fire was a question of life and death. By this attribution are the gods
distinguished from those described in the excellent work of James
George Frazcr, The Golden Rough. In proto-Polish regions, there
where Slavic mythology was born, human life was possible only and
108 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
exclusively thanks to fire. Traces of this life from 180,000 years ago or
so from a time when glaciers were receding toward Scandinavia, are
found in the Dark Cave (Jaskinia Ciemna), in the Ojcw Valley
(Dolina Ojcowska), as well as in the window Cave (Jaskinia Okiennik)
in Piaseczno. They have also been discovered in Krakow, in the suburb
of Zwierzyniec. 11 The exceptional intensity of the cult of fire among the
Slavs and thus the proto-Poles, joins it, quite cl0sely at that, with the
cult of fire among the Celts. On the hill Sobotka, which from the time
of the Lusitian culture was the chief center of pagan practice, there has
been found a stone cultic circle, with stone sculptures, ceramics, and
tools, which according to sorne archeologists, are the work of Celts o ra
Slavic people under their influence. These objects bear on their surface
signs of the cross, the swastika, and the sun-shield, indicating the solar
character of this cult and thus of fire. A pearl of Polish Renaissance
poetry "Midsummer Night's Song of Sobotka (Pies .~wpojaska o
Sobtce) by Jan Kochanowski, shows traces of the ancient beliefs in the
divinity of fire, in fire's prophetic power. This hierophany appears only
once in the author of Songs and there with restraint, already having
been taken into the parenthesis of culture.
As befitted a genuine Renaissance poet, John of Czarnolas looked
on fire as an element purely practical, as protection from the cold. In
the quite epicurean Song XIV, he sings: "Jet there be wood on the fire,
and wine on the table" 1~ so as to be able to loo k at the snow-capped
peaks of the mountains without the feeling of menace, the peaks from
which - thanks to the influence of Epicurus and ataraxy - the Pro-
metheus-poet bound by the chains of passion disappears now to sit
comfortably befare his fireplace with the former cruel "she-eagle"
which formerly fed on his living heart, now drinking the wine and
caring for that "which hand had taken hold of." But then when the poet
in Muse imagines to himself his own "Grenzsituationen" (Karl Jaspers),
the eschatological moment of death, he feels suddenly like taking the
form of the speedy fire that penetra tes the clouds, 1.1 in a liberated flight
toward God who is here more a category of fame than of immortality.
The chameleon-like nature of fire will return as if to the starting point,
the protofire of primordial cosmogonies, but - as if it were dictated by
Giambattista Vico, the author of La scienza nuova - with just a turn of
the spiral higher, it returns this time to the di vine.
The Baroque pendulum of antitheses, of extremes, of the struggle of
opposites, being a mirror that reflects the struggle of two elements in
FIRE ANO SNOW 109
rnan - the carnal and the spiritual - will burst forth in almost model
forrn in the writings of Daniel Naborowski ( 1573-1640), the precursor
of p0 lish Baroque poetry, an artist linked with the dissident court of the
Radziwi'ffs in Birze. In the formulation of this existential and ontological
pendulum, fire and its opposite, ice, will again be helpful to him ... as
rnuch as to Petrarch (1303-1374), a poet fascinated first by secular
life, thcn again by the contemplative, coming first under the rule of
flesh . then of the spirit, first praising Lucretius, and then again seized by
an almost abject mysticism. Naborowski, the excellent translator of the
author of JI Canzoniere (1352), translated Petrarch's Sonnet 85 which
begins with the words: "Pace non trovo, e non o da far guerra." This
work showed with exceptional acuity the relentless struggle of opposites
as embodied this time in feelings of love, a struggle partially expressed
in the opposition: fire-ice. Up until the time of the celebrated,
oxymoronic work of Franciszek Karpinski, God is being born, with its
phrase: "Fire congeals - the blaze darkens," no one had shown more
profoundly the "unity of opposites" in the emotions of man than did
Naborowski, even if it was by means of borrowing, he himself being
perhaps a diligent reader of Pierre Abelard's Sic et Non:
There is no peace forme, 1 don't prepare an army,
For 1 see terror and cheer, fire and ice in you.
And drag myself on the earth, and fly up to the sky,
Scooping in the whole world, and encompassing nothing.
1 admire what neither holds nor releases me,
1 am neither bound to it, nor am 1 released,
1 amas if free, and yet these chains weigh heavily -
1 am neither alive, nor do I feel freed from grief.
Having no eyes 1 see, having no tongue 1 call.
1 want myself to perish, and yet I ask for he! p.
1 hate myself, yet !!ove others.
1 am nourished with pain, mixing tears with laughter.
1 bear thc same laste, moreover, for life as for death.
In such alife 1 live for you, my lady.
Thesc pendulums of opposing emotional states, of existential and essen-
tial feelings, which recall the functions of fire as assigned to it by
mythology and religion, are the very foundation for the rhythms of
Polish Baroque poetry. Naborowski expresses this very model of the
110 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
alternation of human existence by the title of the poem Performance:
Calando poggiando, first up, then down." 1 ~ For this "ontological swing"
Naborowski chooses to translate Sonnet 83 of Petrarch so to cry out
amidst the ravaging opposites in him: "1 burn up in winter, and shiver in
summer." 16 Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, for the very same reason, decides
to render into Polish part of L 'A done of Giambattista Marino, the
Vanneggiar d'une innamorata ("A Beloved's Reverie"):
Fire races around with the cold in secrecy,
And 1 bum with frost and pour forth
This miracle of lo ve, a new kind of spell,
A burning frost, and icy fire. 17
Seeking out these ravaging opposites, Sarbiewski discovers Pindar, his
Aetna, which will become in the soil of the Polish Baroque a near
symbol of woman:
Nivosa Aetna, per totum annum ni vis acutae nutrix,
Cuius ex penetrabilus
Eructantur inaccessi ignis purissimi fontes
Fluviique ignis interdiu effundunt verticem fumi ardentem 18
(Snowy Aetna, provider for the whole year of delicate snow,
From whose interior
Gushes forth the clearest springs of inaccessible fire,
As streams of fire throw out all day a burning column of smoke)
The model of Aetna settles for good into the imagination of the Polish
Baroque poets who describe woman. No other epoch propases such a
violently contrary picture of the nature of woman. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
complains that the carressed hand of the admired has stolen his heart,
then at once concealed itself first in heat, then in snow, in "the perfumed
Roman glove." 19 The Socinian Zbigniew Morsztyn, gazing on the face
of his lady-love, sees on it both snow and fire. 20 This fire has the
peculiarity of displacing itself from the object of adoration to the one
adoring; it abandons, in the act of admiring, the body of the woman and
settles in the man, sowing conflagration in him. The same thing takes
place with snow. Many of the heroines of Baroque poems behave as
Deianeira, sending down on their victims flames and snow equaJiy. "As
fire 1 burn and as snow 1 melt,'' ~ 1 calis out Zbigniew Morsztyn, as
if on him and not on Hercules had been placed the shirt dipped in
FIRE ANO SNOW 111
the blood of the centaur Nessos. The Baroque Deianeira can saturate
with fire not only a shirt, but every object. Hyppolitus in Szymon
zrnorowicz's Roksolanki confides that the orange which he received
from Rozyna in a dance has suddenly metamorphosized "into fire." 22
This very sensual, erotic symbol increases even further its own power
of expression by giving voice to black magic, as Rozyna becomes a
sorceress. Eating fire from her hand menaces with eterna) damnation,
inasmuch as it rubs up against purgatory and even hell.
Jt must be remembered that Polish Baroque poets matured in the
epoch of the intensive influence of the Confession fi.dei Catholicae
Christianae ... of Cardinal Stanisfaw Hozjusz (39 editions!), of the
Uves of Saints by Piotr Skarga ( 16 editions to the end of the XVIIth
century), and the Gerusa/emme Liberata of Torquatto Tasso (1544-
1595). Poland slowly ceased to be a "Paradisus hereticorum." Readers
were won over by the adapta tion from the pen of Hieronim Maripetrus
of St. Francis' life entitled: "Seraphiceae in di vi Francisci vitam Christiano
carmine editae and translated by Hyppolite Liricius, a guardian of the
Franciscian cloister in Nowy Sacz, in a work entitled Models of Virtue
or the Miraculous LiJe of the Angelic and Blessed St. Francis (1599,
and many reissues). In this climate, earthly love becomes a feeling
sentenced almost a priori to purgatory, to being cast into the fire which
purges it of "earthly bliss." When Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski in his
Lectures on Poetics becomes entranced by one of the Anacreonic
verses, whose theme is struggle with Cupid, he writes: "The idea is
nonetheless beautiful how the poet conjures Cupid from the wax and
then threatens that he, who had been changed into wax, will bum." 23
Sarbiewski knows perfectly well both the Greek text of the original and
the faithful Latn translation made by Elias Andreas, which goes: "ipse
Oamma statim liquesces" - "And Cupid melts in the flames." Yet the
translator burns Cupid, does not melt him as in the original and in the
faithful Latn translation. The climate of the Counter-Reformation
augments fire when confronted with earthly love. A small change and
yet how meaningful.
We are not permitted to forget that each and every trifling with this
element, it being a symbol or allegory of sensual love, of carnal
possession, must in the period of the Counter-Reformation have its
own purgatoria( or infernal connotation. The poems of Zimorowicz
appear between Giordano Bruno's stake and the imprisonment of
Galileo ( 1564-1642). Only in one case, from the pen of Henryk
112 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ
Chelchowski, author of Sylvan Murmuring (Gwar leny) do we have a
different situation. In spite of the myth, his Meleager burned by his
vindictive mother Althea, feels the sanctifying, cleansing activity of this
fire. "Holy is this fire;" he calls out, "it bums but does not consume."24
Nonetheless it burns out that which is of earthly !ove, and aims to
cleanse the sensual element from him. This calls to mind that very much
later fire of Novalis (1772-1801 ), a representative of "magical ideal-
ism," a fire also observed by Bachelard: "My love is transformed into a
flame, and this flame consumes little by little a11 that is earthly in me."2s
("Mon amour s'est transform en flamme, et cette flame consume peu a of fire. Reaching for the noblest form of fiery purification distant from
peu tout ce qui est terrestre en moi.") This "burning up of the earthly"
is a basic function of fire in Polish Baroque poetry, although that, which
in !ove has an earthly nature, offers obstnate resistance, and time after
time, the sensual beauty of life, given over to "divine judgments,"
escapes whole, surviving the cleansing flames much like the legendary
salamander. This fabulous animal was disturbing to the Polish Baroque,
and especially to its grandchild Benedict Chmielowski who in New
Athens left a description of its nature, wondering expressly whether it
possesses magical characteristics. "Grevius Author," he writes as if with
slight disappointment, "learned from his own experiences that if pul in
fire, it would burn as any other combustibilia." 2
The heart above all, traditionally, is the object of the attacks of
varying forms of fire, it being in all mythologies and religions an
exceptional organ. In Old-lndian beliefs it is the seat of Brahma; in
Islam, the throne of God - for the ancient Egyptians it becomes the
center of life, will, and intelligence, being an individual personal god of
man. For the Taoist Liu-tsou, it is the sovereign of breath and so of life.
Angelus Silesius calls it "the sanctuary of God." 27 The fire enveloping
the heart of man is at the same time the fire that embraces the universe
and its Creator. lf it threatens the center of the individual - it threatens
equally the center of existence in general. As with all great symbols
which fascnate man and enchant in the beginning, and then suffer
terribly from overuse, this symbol too diminishes in cognitive value in
Polish Baroque poetry, despite the great words written about it. Poets
sense danger in the decline of the power of this trope. When the
talented Elzbieta Druzbacka wants to pul Narcissus to death - she
does not consume him with the fire of the heart, but poisons him with
his own tears. "From his own tears he takes the liquor," she writes, "and
drinks his death." ~x But she never frees her own imagination from fire
FIRE ANO SNOW 113
as the symbol of love, equally earthly and spiritual. What is more, she
considers, as do other poets too, that there is no escape from this
element. 1t is man's lot, indispensible for closing the cycle of his
existence - for our transformation into ashes: "From dust thou camest,
and unto dust thou shalt return." Before this happens however, fire
fulfills a purifying function. It is, as 1 have already remarked, the most
frequently met role of fire, not only in Polish Baroque poetry, but in a11
the mythologies and religions of the world. In the Golden Bough,
Frazer describes an enormous number of rituals which purify by means
purgatory, sorne poets of the Polish Baroque want to be kindled by
God Himself, stating at the same time that God is a form of the noblest
fire. "Inflame us with Your fire!"~'~ asks Samuel Przypkowski of the
Creator. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, the poet who most profoundly and
most dramtically showed the dichotomies and dichomachies of the
Polish Baroque, burns equally for God and woman, as if trying to leave
after himself two types of ash for posterity to choose from: earthly and
311
heavenly. Later thc Count of Chateau-villain, he is fully aware of the
all-consuming functio n in the imagination of Counter-Reformation
poets of the fire of earthly love, but he does not succeed in extin-
guishing it in himself, and what is more - he shields it, feeds it on
himsclf, caresses and !oves it:
By God! How do llive, having now no heart?
Lifeless, still I feel the fire in me?
If by this fire 1 myself decay
Why do 1 caress it, a m 1 so in lo ve with it? 31
This is the most desperate attcmpt at saving earthly love on the altar
of thc airead y Puritan God at a time when Udalryk Radziwi11 ( 1712-
c. 1770) turns away, with a simple incomprehensible fanaticism, from
earthly love, sending it and its children to hell: "That offspring of Venus
which fills he11" 32 - he cries out with hatred in an elegy bearing the
characteristic title "Heaven does not we/1 consent to earth". Except in
the case of Radziwi1T, infernal fire was not so lavishly squandered by
Polish Baroque poets, as if they had apprehensions that they might "call
the wolf out from the forest." They accepted purgatory and even did
their all so to spend time in it, but as for agreeing to residence in he11,
to the he11ish fire, to "une saison en enfer," for that it would be
necessary to wait until the epoch of symbolism. The Polish Baroque
114 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWIC
could permit itself only a Christianization of hellish fire, calling forth
hosts of angels to put to rout the ancient hell administered by Pluto anct
Juno. This victory over an obsolete hell is shown by Aleksander
Obodziski in the work entitled "Importan! Legacy from the Consistory
of the Most Holy Trinity . ..." 33 It is a curious thing that this author of
The Ancient Pandora of Polish Monarchs did not take notice of Uriel
- the angel of fire. But he is not alone in this. The entire Baroque
period overlooked him, though it was quite "preoccupied" with fi re. In
the age of the Counter-Reformation, U riel seemed too Judaic.
From their summits of pure spiritual fire, the poets of the Baroque
opposed a Seraphic fire to the fire of hell. lt is extremely similar to the
ordinary fire of the oven, in the fireplace, to the shepherd's fire in the
field. This fire is kindled by angels occupied with the same work as
men. Its "humanization" is bewitchingly simple, Renaissance-like, almost
deistic. The Renaissance once again aids the Baroque poets in saving
themselves from the degeneration of Marinism, Gongorism, and
Euphueism. There is a very beautiful poem of Kasper Twardowski
entitled "Jesus' Cradle", with a section "Shepherds," which leads heaven
to earth and humanizes heavenly fire:
They [shepherdsj come in the stable: and here tiny
Angels are planing
The dry plank of golden willow
For Jesus as a crib.
Sorne gather dry wood,
Others fan the fire.
Each helps from his heart.
One is drying the wet diapers. 14
It is not strange that in such a climate, in a poem by an anonymous
author entitled "The Most Delicate Straw", the Child Jesus, wrapped in
heavenly fire and placed on the straw, does not set it aflame in this
stable of humanity:
A strange change too k place on earth,
That a Nazarean was thrown on the straw.
Oh straw, straw, what happened to you?
That simply, straw, you became a flower?
But it is more amazing that the Lord being fire
Curled up in the straw, and did not ignite the straw. 15
FIRE ANO SNOW 115
lt is in this way, most often in anonymous poetry (and so certainly folk,
plebeian, "burger," as Karol Badecki has termed it), and in Socinian
poetry, that secularization takes place, the humanization of heavenly
fire. For the anonymous author of the work The Ravens in Rome
Greeted Caesar, fire serves above all for the cooking of chickens on a
spit. 11' Jan Gawiski mocks the god of fire, Vulcan, inciting Mars against
him in order to make fun of him and "cuckold his wife." 37 Jerzy
Szlichtyng does the same thing, showing that the former menacing
Vulcan today merely smokes tobacco. 3H Fire in the hands of Turkish
jugglers w is all that interests Samuel Twardowski of Skrzypno. Hiacynt
Przetocki counsels an old man that he should "eat fire with a spoon" if
he wants to warm up. 40 This "earthiness" of Polish Baroque poetry
meets up, with sorne resistance, with the historical and mythological
figures who rule fire or perish by it. The traitor Krzysztof Opaleski
feels a particular aversion to Sardanapalus.41 The height of devaluation,
of thc desacralization of fire, will be the anonymous A Skinflint's
Tomhstone, in which fire serves now only for heating one's backside:
A skinflint here lies, naked he was born,
Naked he carne from the inn, naked buried,
So naked will he rise at judgment and without clothes
Will he be in hell where flames warm his backside.42
In the Polish Baroque, the ties of fire to the destruction of war are
unavoidable. The time of Zebrzydowski's rebellion, of the Muscovite
wars, the time of the events in Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, of the
Confederacy of the Bar, revealed a second, stormy nature of fire, which
Sarbiewski saw expressly when, to the remark of Marcus Tulius Ccero
concerning the elements: "aer et ignis, et aqua, et terra prima sunt", he
adds his symptomatic remarks: "But this fire, where it enters, it storms
and turns all to ash." 43 lt is precisely these rebellions, and civil and
border wars, that given the dichotomous structure of fire, fed (and this
by mcans of blood) that fire which contained within itself hatred for the
mortal caldron of events which touched the Republic already ebbing
into its decline. Wojciech Stanisfaw Chrsciski, in Lamentation of a
Disconsolate Fatherland in unusually passionate images, depicts the
ravaging fire of war.44 Here appears a mindless, accidental fire, an
indifferent tool in meaningless acts. Stanis1aw Makowiecki presents an
unheroic version of the death of the hero of Sienkiewicz's Tri/ogy,
Wmodyjowski, in his Accounts of Kamieniec Taken by Turks, 1672. In
this poem, the "little knight" dies from a smoldering fuse senselessly
116 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWIC
placed beneath the gunpowder stores of the fortress. He is not here a
Polish kamikaze, as in Sienkiewicz, but a victim of blind Bellona anct
her blind . servants. The fo~me r magical functions _of purification by
conflagrat10n take on questtonable value at a certam moment in this
epoch of treason and Ioyalty, of cowardice and heroism.
When a part of the rebellious royal army, because of missed
paydates, joined up in 1614 with the confederacy, it entered onto the
road of lawlessness. lt plundered the monarchical and ecclesiasticat
holdings, ne ighboring villages and towns, coercing the king into meeting
its demands. On securing their overdue pay, the rebellious soldiers
burned, inside a church and before the altar, the act of the confedera-
tion. This fire consecrates banditry more than it condemns it; it
destroys paper but immortalizes the words inscribed on it, words which
brought the king to his knees. Thcy "ascend" to heaven with the smoke.
The indignant Hieronim Morsztyn, when asked why the rebels burned
this document, answers: "Because they were afraid, test Iightning strike
their leader." 4 ~ Fire in this unfortunate epoch for Poland adopts the
even more menacing function of pseudo-purification, when the Calvinist
prince Janusz Radziwi1t starts a war against crosses, destroying them
by, among o ther means, burning.41' How very far is this fire from that in
which the C hild-Jesus was wrapped, in Kaspe r Twa rdowski's poem
about thc straw! These two fires in a dramatic way point out the
dichotomy and dichomachy within spiritual fire. Fire is here testing its
own limits of good and evil, as if these were not yet adequately defined
by all the mythologies and religions of the world. The directions of
these attempts must have enormously alarmed thc me n of those times,
as when a, once again anonymous, poet of the Confederacy of the Bar,
in his song The Confederare Veni Creator, cried:
O Third Pcrson o f the Trinity,
Deign to e nkindle Your fire
And out of pity on the rabblc
Enlighten their stupid minds!47
Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in her work Poetica Nova, a basic
work for critics and researchers of the history o f lite rature, calls literary
works "the elucidation of human destiny" 4 h The topos of fire in Polish
Baroque poetry, which 1 have tried to introduce to you, is a small spark
in this process of "elucidation." The enormous numbe r of appearances
of fire in this literature is astonishing, which strengthens my conviction
FI R E ANO SNOW 117
that in principie there are as many fires as there are human beings who
have existed and exist on the earth. And perhaps even more - if we
add its anticipated forms even now before their actual physical appear-
ance, giving them shape by pure, cognitive necessity, in the mind of
rnan. And perhaps in this pure, cognitive form, fire appears as both
unique and genuine.
Chicago
Translatedfrom the Polish by Frank Kujawinski
NOTES
1 Chevaher, Jcan, in collaboration with Alain Gheerbrant, Diclionnaire des symboles,
mythes, rle1, couwmes, formes, figures, couleurs, nombres, under the conceptual and
technical d1 rcctio n of Bernard Gandet (Paris: Robcrt Laffont, 1969), pp. 4 70-4 7 1.
l !bid.. pp. 71 0-7 1 l.
.l /bid.. pp. 350-352.
4 Herna~. Czestaw, Barok (Warsaw: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), pp.
21-22.
\ Boye. l::.dward, Dwlogi akademickie - w niepojetej zielonoset, Szkice literackie
(Warsaw: PaMwowy lnstytut Wydawniczy, 1959), p. 497.
6 Chrzanowski, Tadeusz, Historia literawry niepod/egfej Po/ski (965-1795) (Warsaw:
Pastwowy lnstytut Wydawniczy, 1971 ), p. 73.
7
Kochanowski, Jan, Do Magda/eny, in : Dziefa po/skie (Warsaw: Pa stwowy lnstytut
Wydawniczy, 1952). Vol. 1, p. 179.
s Kochanowski, Jan, Mitos, op. cit., p. 169.
Y Kochanowski. Jan, Pie5 X, op. cit., p. 227.
10 See: G icysztor, Aleksander, Mitologia S1owian (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Artystyczne
i Filmowe. 1982).
11 Bogucka. Ma ria, Dawna Polska. Narodziny, rozkwit, upadek (Warsaw: Wiedza
Powszechna, 1974). p. 8.
12 Kochanowski. Jan, Pie5 XIV, op. cit., p. 234.
11
Kochanowski. Jan, Muzo, op. cit., p. 88.
14 Naborowski, Daniel, Sonet 85; Poeci polskiego baroku (Warsaw: Pastowowy
lnstytut Wydawniczy, 1965), Vol. 1, pp. 200-20 l.
11 Naborowk1, Daniel, lmpreza: calando poggiando, to na df, 10 do gry, op. cit., p.
18!!.
" Naborowski. Daniel, Sonet 83; op. el/., p. 199.
17
Morsztyn. Jan Andrzej, Vanneggiar d'wra innamorata lA translation of Song XII
from L 'A done by Marino; Poeci po/sktego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 7 12.
1
" Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, Wyk1ady poetyki. Praecepta poetica (Wroctaw-Cracow:
Zaktad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, 1958), pp. 2 10-211.
" Morsztyn, Jan Andrzcj, Rekawica; Poeci po/skiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 71 O.
118 TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ FIRE ANO SNOW 119

2" Morsztyn, Zbigniew, Jednej zacnej damie; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1 Anonymous, Kalwfska wojna z Chrystusem, co figure Meki Paskiej jedna spalili,
788. ' p. druga 1n-r:.ucili; Poen pol.~kiego baroku, op. cit., ibid., Vol. 2, p. 590.
21
lbld. Anonymous. Veni Creator Konfederackie, 1bu/., pp. 806-807 passim.
22 Zimorowicz, Szymon, Szsty: Hipolit, Rok.solanki; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cu " Tyrnlcnccka, Anna-Tcresa, Poetica Nova, in: The Philosophical Rejlect1on of Man
Vol. 1, p. 600. , Uterature," Analeclll Husserliana, Vol. XII, Dordrecht Boston - Lancaster; D.
2 ' Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, op. cit., p. 71. Reidel Puhl~hing Company, 1982. p. 2 l.
24 Chelchowski, Henryk, Gwar piaty, Gwar lesny; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol.

l,p. 371.
2 j Bachelard, Ga~ton, La psycfumalyse du fe u (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 174.
26
Chmielowski, Benedykt, Nowe Ateny albo Akademia wszelkiey scyencyi pdna, na
rine tytufy iak na C/asses podzielona, Madrym dla memoryafu, ldiotom dla Na uki
Politykom dla Praktyki, Melancholikom dla rozrywki erygowana (Cracow: Wydawn1 c:
two Karkowskie, 1968, 2nd edit.), p. 256.
27
Chevalier, Jean, op. cit., pp. 216-218, passim.
zx Druzbacka, Elzbieta, Na pysznego Narcyza uciekajacego od mifo.fci nimfy Echo
nazwanej. Zhir rymw; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 524.
N Przypkowski, Samuel, Elegia, Poeci polskiego baroku, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 432.
'" Morsztyn, Jand Andrzej, W kwarantanie, op. cit., p. 747.
11
Morsztyn, Jan Anrzej, Cuda mifosci. Sonet, ibid., p. 741.
12 Radziwifl, Udalryk Krzysztof, Elegia. Niedobrze sie zgadza niebo z ziemia; Poeci

polskiego baroku, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 582.

11
0bodziski, Aleksander, Powaina legacja w Konsystorze Trjce Przenaswietszej, na
uzdrowienie wszystkiego swiata urodzona, a przez najwyiszego hetmana hierarchii
niebieskich, Aniufa Gabriela, w domku Przenaswietszej Panny Maryjej, przed wcieleniem
Syna Boiego odprawiona; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 320-322.
14
Twardowski, Kasper, Kolebka Jew.sowa; Poeci polskiego baroku, Vol. 1, op. cit., p.
416.
H Anonymous, Simw najdelikatniejsze; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp.
667-668.
16
Anonymous, K rucy w Rzymie witali cesarza, ibid., pp. 6 1 1-61 2.
17
Gawiski, Jan, Buko/ika albo Sielanki nowe polskie, 1bid., p. 137 .
.Jx Szlichtyng, Jerzy, iart piekny o tabace; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.

225 .
.w Twardowski, Samuel ze Skrzypny, Przewaina legacja Jasnie Oswieconego Ksieiecia
Krzysztofa Zbaraskiego, Koniuszego Koronnego . ... od Najainiejszego Zygmunta /11
... do . .. Cesarza Tureckiego Mustafy w roku 1621; Poeci polskiego baroku, ibid., Vol.
1, p. 478.
40
Przetocki, Hiacynt, Jarzyny. Do starego, ibid., p. 398.
41
Opaliski, Krzysztof, Satyra l . Na de wiczenia i rozpasana edukacja rrrfodzi, ibid.,
p.610.
42 Anonymous, Nagrobek kostyrze; Poeci polskiego baroku, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 596.
41
Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz, op. cit., p. 441.
44
Chrsciski, Wojciech Stanistaw, Lament strapionej ojczyzny, Poeci polskiego
baroku, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 438-439 passim.
4
j Morsztyn, Hieronim Jarosz, Aliud epitaphium konfederacji spalonej; Poeci polskiego
baroku, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 278.
164 CCILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA
vent les unissait entre eux. Et le poete reprend sa tache, celle qu
"froisse les choses assises". lci encore, l'unit se fait au-dela de la form~
dans une sorte de puret de "l'oeuvre ouverte", selon la belle expression
d'Umberto Eco. L'anneau s'allonge. Et la frontiere entre la prose et la
posie s'abolit dja. Mais, a travers la nature et la ville, au bout du
respirer et du soupirer, en instance de lumiere, de parfum et de chaleur
au coin des recherches surralistes les plus pousses, le theme de l'ai;
envahit toute la posie de Paul-Marie Lapointe et l'unifie, tout en la
rendant unique.
Ccile Cloutier- Wojciechowska
Universit de Toronto
J. Y . DUPRA
"L'f:TRE CONTRE LE YENT": ASPECTS DU VENT
DANS LA POSIE DE PAUL YALRY
-L'tre contre le vent", telle se prsente la jeune Parque lorsqu'elle se
souleve finalemem vers le soleil, a la fin d'un poeme bas sur les
variations, cycles et retours d'une conscience. Mais n'est-ce pas la le
paradigme du poeme valryen? Un etre seul face au monde et quise dit
seul, entrelac;ant au coeur de sa voix les diffrents moments du moi et
du monde, un etre qui parle pour se constater et qui s'difie par ce fait
mme, dification qui nonce un mystere, celui de l'etre revenant sur
soi en-dec;a de son personnage, ou se dissolvant au-dela de soi jusqu'a
vouloir ne plus etre "la voix de personne/Tant que des ondes et des
bois".
Qui pleure la, sinon le vent simple, a cette heure
Seule, avec diamants extremes? ..... .
Le cri de la Parque qui s'veille nalt du choc avec l'lment, choc
issu, comme le poeme, d'une ncessit minime qui se prsente comme
hasard, forme sortant de !'informe et du chaos et suspendue dans la
fragilit de cette genese.
Le choc de l'lment comme source et genese est un des aspects
constituants de la posie et de la pense valryennes. Dans "L'introduc-
tion aux figures valryennes 1 J. Jallet indique le rle qu'a jou dans la
pense du jeune Valry le vent qui, crant sur le sable tout un ensemble
de formes gomtriques, pose la question du passage de !'informe a la
forme; mais surtout ce critique indique comment cette rflexion fonda-
mentale instaure une esthtique qui s'enracine, a la fois dans le corps et
l'unive rs mathmatique, dans l'etre vibrant et dans la conscience du
caractere priodique de cette vibration. "Ce qui s'indique ici, dit-elle,
c'est l'utopie d'une naissance commune, le dsir d'effacer la coupure
originelle de !'esprit et des choses."
11 s'agit bien d'une forme de posie puisque naissance et connais-
sance ne sont pas spares, mais aussi de la forme d'une pense pour
qui l'abstraction est un geste vcu.
165
A- T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol XXIII, 165- 176.
1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
166 J. Y. DUPRAZ
LE VENT ET L'ARBRE: LE POSSIBLE ET LES COND ITIONS
Daos un des poemes ou il est le plus question du vent, Au Platane,2 le
vent est une composante dont le rle s'avere complexe. Nous trouvons
nonc, des la troisieme strophe, un conflit:
De ton front voyageur les vents ne veulent pas.
La terre tendre et sombre,
O platane, jamais ne laissera d'un pas
S'merveiller ton ombre!
Le premier vers de cette strophe mrite l'attention car il articule une
grande partie de la problmatique du poeme. En effet, ces vents sont
apparemment "ddaigneux" mais d'ou provient l'image du "front
voyageur" sinon de ce vent meme? Ce vent impassible est celui qui
impartit un dsir de mouvement impossible. Ce dsir se heurte a "la
force du site", comme le dit la premiere strophe, c'est-a-dire a ce qui est
la condition meme de l'arbre, son enracinement. Encore cet enracine-
ment n'est-il pas simple puisque les racines apparaissent comme une
"hydre vnrable" qui fouit avidement en direction d'une profondeur
ou, comme !'indique la sixieme strophe, les morts saisissent les "pieds
chevels" des arbres.
Cette puissance de mort est cependant une condition de progres:
Ce front n'aura d'acces qu'aux degrs lumineux
Ou la seve l'exalte; ... (str. 4)
et, au cours du mouvement obstin de la minutieuse croissance vgtale
vers le haut les arbres "sentent les fuir les fleurs,/Et leurs spermes ails
le cours lger descendre." Un dynamisme dont la mort est une des
conditions, est croissance vers le haut et gnration d'oeuvre.
Nous assistons au jeu du possible et des conditions, car, ce qui rvele
les conditions, ce qui donne lieu aux images de ces conditions est la
sollicitation du possible qu'est le vent. Et ces conditions qui se rvelent
en rvelent d'autres:
Pressens autour de toi d'autres vivants lies ... (str. 5)
et ces autres vivants: "lis vivent spars, ils pleurent confondus ..." (str.
8). Le vent est ici commc il l'est aussi pour les amants heureux des
Fragments du Narcisse-' le lieu d'une communion.
PAUL VALRY 167
Dans la suite du poeme l'arbre, sous la pousse du vent accede a la
voix:
Ose gmir! ... 11 faut souple chair du bois,
Te tordre, te dtordre,
Te plaindre sans te rompre, et rendre aux vents la voix
Qu'ils cherchent en dsordre! (str. 13)
La voix est la base de la posie, "l'onde porteuse" comme le dit
Valry a plusieurs reprises. Or, cette voix, meme si elle est gmissement,
n'est pas le cri qui jaillit immdiatement; cette voix est conjonction d'un
dispositif et d'un univers de lois. Dans cette 13eme strophe comme
dans la quinzieme, il s'agit de rendre aux vents leur voix ou de "rendre
un langage" au ciel. 11 ne s'agit pas d'une parole, mais de la voix et du
langage vus comme trame et sollicitation-a-dire, mise en place avant la
parole qui communique.
Pourtant le message viendra a la derniere strophe:
-Non, dit J'arbre. 11 dit: Non! par l'tincellement
De sa tete superbe,
Que la tempete traite universellement
Comme elle fait un herbe! (str. 18)
Ce message, ce Non! est bien ambigu, il est assez semblable a la
position de l'auteur du poeme qui dit s'etre dtach constamment "du
vrai et du faux et du "vrai" et du "faux". D'ailleurs les admonestations
du poete a l'arbre devanc;aient ce probleme: ... "Parais l'impatient
martyr" lui disait-il ala 14eme strophe, "Ose gmir" a la 13eme; il s'agit
la d'une activit de parade sans que la parade ou le phnomene
implique un fond des choses ou une vrit cache. Ainsi ce Non! n'est
pas un faux "non" puisqu'il est bien un geste de ngation, mais ce n'est
pas un pur "non" puisque ce geste de ngation se fait sous J'action de la
tempete qui le traite "universellement", comme elle traite tout l'univers.
Ainsi dans Au Platane on peut voir l'image de la pense, mais a travers
cette problmatique du vent on peut y voir aussi une image de la
condition humaine et de la condition du poete.
Revenan! sur l'image du mouvement impossible, on peut rappeler un
passage de Note et Digression qu'il faudrait citer en entier. Valry y
parle de certains moments dont il compare l'effet a celui de la musique:
"Nous portons en nous des formes de la sensibilit qui ne peuvent pas
168 J. Y. DUPRAZ
russir mais qui peuvent naitre" et, parlant de ces moments il ajoute
"On ne peut pas dire qu'ils sont rels; on ne peut pas dire qu'ils ne ~
sont pas. Qui ne les a pas traverss ne connait pas la vritable fragilit
a
du monde, qui ne se rapporte pas l'alternative de l'etre et du non-etre
ce serait trop simple! L'tonnement ce n'est pas que les choses soient:
c'est qu'elles soient telles et non telles autres. La figure de ce monde fai;
partie d'une famille de figures dont nous possdons sans le savoir tous
les lments du groups infini" ...4
Cette dcouverte de la fragilit du monde et du moi est bien celle
que nous faisons devant le platane qui sous la sollicitation du vent est
pret a on ne sail quel dpart. Ce vent est la rvlation d'un pur
extrieur qui se rvele en rvlant a l'arbre les conditions memes de son
existence, conditions qu'il ne peut pas transgresser el qui le poussent a
se hausser vers ce "front voyageur" qui esl le lieu ou se manifeste le
dsir d'une telle transgression.
Mais le vent retrouve aussi une voix qui lui est rendue par l'arbre. Ce
a
mouvement de retour esl celui de l'accession un ordre qui se rvele
au moment ou il se mel en place. Le vent rintegre son identit qui est
d'etre "voix dans les arbres", d'etre lment qui se rvele dans l'obstacle
et qui illustre le fait que toute parole esl rponse qui se joue a la surface
de deux ensembles: que ce soit le son et le sens, l'image el la ralit,
l'ineffable et le dicible, le dsir et le besoin, le hasard el la ncessit; ce
meme effet de composition qui fait que le "Non!" de l'arbre ne peut pas
etre absolu, "absolu" au sens tymologique: dli.
De cette prsence du vent, on peut passer a ce que rvele la
prsence au vent. Le point de vue change car il ne s'agit plus alors
d'une contemplation mais de la raction di recte a l'lmenl.
PRtSENCE A UNE SURFACI:. ET A UNE PROFONDEUR
11 y a au dbut des Fragments du Narcisse un paradoxe: la vent est a la
fois prsent et absenl. Le venl. d'une certaine fa~on, reprsente pour
Narcisse un danger mortel; s'il trouble la surface de l'eau, cette image
sera perdue; pour que Narcisse puisse se voir le vent doit etre absent.
Et cela semble bien etre le cas puisqu'apres avoir invoqu les nymphes
en les implorant de rester immobiles, Narcisse dit:
Des cimes l'air dja ces se le pur pillage (l, v. 34)
PAUL VALtRY 169
Cependant 9 vers plus loin on trouve:
La nuit vient sur ma chair lui souffler queje l'aime.
Sa voix fraiche a mes voeux tremble de consentir
A peine dans la brise, elle semble mentir
Tant le frmissement de son temple tacite
Conspire au spacieux silence d'un tel site. (l. v. 43-48)
Ce "je" dtach de sa chair, ce "je" qui n'a pas de voix et qui parle,
utilise la voix d'un vent qui a cess pour qu'une profondeur de
Iui-meme vienne avouer, avec l'apparence du mensonge, l'amour qu'elle
a
porte sa surface de chair. Le vent est une voix qui se dplace le long
d'une ligne paradoxale et imaginaire qui contribue a l'atmosphere
angoissante du poeme car cette voix tierce, ou mdiane, dessine en
creux un espace impersonnel et impensable qui pese en surplomb sur le
personnage. Cette angoisse est beaucoup plus subtile que celle que peut
provoquer la crainte de la mort de la lgende. Elle provient peut-etre
de la prscnce de cet univers de figu res dont notre monde n'est que le
cas particulier, un univers sans rfrence connue mais qui, dans notre
monde redistribue les lignes de partage.
Cest la meme atmosphere que celle qui se prsente a l'entre de la
Jeune Parque:
"Qui pleure la, sinon le vent simple a cette heure
Seule avec diaments extremes? ..."
Cet adjectif "simple" qui s'appl ique au vent est a comprendre en
relation avec les "diamants extremes" qui daignent faire luire "je ne sais
quoi de pur et de spirituel"; le "pur", comme le dit Valry dans
Paraboles 5 est "le fruit d'une Pense de vie Exactement change en
lui Sans reste." Le simple est un donn immdiat, c'est le terme que,
dans Paraba/es encore, Valry applique a la prsence comparable au
"calme d'une eau calme". Cene prsence simple du vent en rvele une
qui ne l'est pas: la Parque hsite entre une surface touche par une
prsence et une profondeur qui a la meme voix que celle prsence. El
cette indcision dlimite un axe qui ne cessera de se dplacer dans le
poeme: surface el profondeur ne cessant de se contester le droit a la
paro le.
"Dieux!" dira-t-elle bientt" Dans ma lourde plaie une secrete soeur
Brule quise prfere a l'extreme allen tive." (v. 48- 49)
170 J. Y. DUPRA
Car la Parque pourrait tout aussi bien reprendre a son compte le
paroles de Narcisse gmissant dans le vent: s ~usez vi te se produit un nouveau dpart, vers 1' "Harmonieuse Moi"
Antres que me rendez mon ame plus profonde
Vous renflez de votre ombre une voix quise mcurt ... (v. 100-101)
... et un peu plus loin
Le roe rit; l'arbre pleure; et par sa voix charmante
Je ne puis queje me lamente
D'appartenir sans force a d'ternels attraits. (1 Y. 106-11 O)
Narcisse ou la Parque sont "sans force" devant cette alliance d'une
surface et d'une profondeur: que cette surface soit la beaut de Narcisse
ou "les plis" et "les calices" de la Parque. Le vent est ce qui le plus
immdiatcment fait percevoir, physiquement meme, cette conjonction
et cette disjonction. "Ce qu'il y a de plus profond chez l'homme c'est la
peau", cette peau sur laquelle vient jouer le vent qui provoque la prise
de conscicnce d'un extrieur et la rsonance d'un intrieur mais aussi
une certaine prsence au temps.
PRSENCE ET PRSENT
"L'etre, nous dit Valry dans une note de ses Cahiers, projette autour
de soi une enceinte forme- dont la clture n'est que la rciproque de
l'extension de ses sens, figure ici par une surface au lieu de cette
porte.
C'est la topologie de la perception - et topologie ici embrasse le
temps." 1'
Dans cette topologie, le vent marque la surface et le prsent, comme
nous l'avons vu des le dbut de la Jeune Parque, sans que la conscience
ne soit jamais capable d'etre parfaitement immobilise dans ce pur
prsent. Ainsi, dans le parcours de la Parque qui se meut entre le
prsent, la rminiscence ou le futur, les raccords au prsent sont
marqus par la prsence du vent et la prsence au vent. Ainsi, a la fin
du passage sur le serpent du dbut trouvons-nous:
... Je sors, pale et prodigieusc,
Toute hu mide de pleurs queje n'ai point verss,
D'une absence aux contours de mortelle bercs
Par soi seule ... (v. 91-93)
Ces pleurs, on peut le penser sont ceux du dbut et nous revenons done
PAUL VALRY 171
. prsent apres la plonge intrieure du souvenir et de l'absence. Mais
a;lui-la ct l'articulation se marque encore par la prsence du vent.
~une fa~on intressante, la Parque et le vent changent leur surface; la
parque s'tait dite "hrisse", le vent deviendra "velu":
Front !impide et par ondes ravis,
Si loin que le vent vague et velu les acheve
Longs brins lgers qu'au large un vol mele et souleve
Di tes ... (v. 104-1 08)
Un peu plus loin se propose une image de la limite et de la dmarca-
tion. D'un ct, nous avons la Parque qui dit:
Et moi, vive, debout,
Dure, et de mon nant secretement arme (v. 148-49)
mais par raport a cette armure de la posession de soi se prsente un
symtrique:
Oh! Cambien peut grandir dans ma nuit curieuse
De mon coeur spar le part mystrieuse (v. 151-52)
La lignc de partage passe a la surface du corps:
L t la narinc jointe a u vent de l'oranger
Jc ne rends plus a u jour qu'un regard tranger. (v. 150-51)
Nous avons la un effet de fixit de la surface: la narine n'est pas active,
ce vcnt est une simple prsence de l'arme de l'oranger et ce regard
voit sans voir. Cet tat de neutralisation cessera bientt.
Je pense, abandonnant a la brise les heures ... (v. 162)
Cet abandon est le contraire de ce qui se produira dans le Cimetiere
Marin lorsque le personnage qui boit "la naissance du vent" retourne a
"1"ere successtve
. " . (str. 22)
Car cette prsence au vent fait aussi ressortir le contraste entre
deux temporalits. Une temporalit de la pure surface: la course de
I'Harmonieuse Moi dont toute la "blande argile" nageait vers des "sens
lumineux" et rautre, la temporalit de la profondeur et de la division ou
un temps dsorient fait place a des intensits et a des distances jusqu'a
l'arrct complet d'"Achille immobile a grands pas".
172 J. Y. DUPRAZ
Ce complexe spatio-temporel se marque dans le passage de la J.P.
sur la honte et le souvenir qui utilisera la mtaphore du vent:
Souvenir, o bucher, dont le vent d'or m'affronte
Souffle au masque la pourpre imprgnant le refus
D'etre en moi-meme en flammes une autrc queje fus ... (v. 190-94)
Et nous aurons enfin l'etre centre le vent'' de l'envoi final eu la
Parque se dtachant de ses proccupations antricures va cffectuer une
prcaire synthese:
Sur toute ma peau mord, dit-elle l'apre veil et elle ajoute:
Alors malgr mei-meme, ille faut , 6 Soleil,
Que j'adore mon coeur o u tu te viens connaitre,
Doux et puissant retour dud! ice de naitre,
Feu vers qui se souleve une vierge de sang
Sous les especes d'or d'un sein reconnaissant! (v. 507- 512)
a
Cette harmonie se marque dans le coeur et la surface irrigue de
sang. Mais il faut aussi remarqucr le "malgr moi-meme". Cest-a-dire
que le probleme qui est au centre du poeme, ce qui lui donne sa tensio n
a !'extreme, n'est toujours pas rsolu. Le poeme, comme la Parque,
resten! vivants de leur inachevemcnt mcme, de cette instabilit per-
manente.
PRI:SI::NCI:. LI!:. l:.T SON CON 'I RAIRI:. : LA PRSE:NCI:. "RELIE"
(MORT . JOUISSANCE . ESPRI'I " RI:'Lil:.", PRI::SENCE "POREUSE")
Ce qui aurait pu rsoudre le prebleme se trouve a l'horizon de certains
mements et de certains tats avec lesquels on peut encere explerer ce
qu'implique la prsence du vent.
Ce qui aurait pu trancher dfinitivement la question, bien sur, est la
mort; lorsque la Parque l'appelle, elle lui dit:
O, Mort, respire enfin cette esclave de roi
Appelle-moi, dlic! ... (v. 219- 220)
Cette derniere expression est importante car un des termes qui est
affect au vent, aussi bien que le terme de "simple", est le terme d e
"lien" qui se trouvait dja dans Au Platane; la parque, voquant le
printemps et ses arbres dans le vent, dcrira l'espace comme "accabl
de liens"; de meme qu'elle nous avait dit:
PAUL VALRY 173
Je scintille lie a ce ciel inconnu (v. 16)
de mmc on peut trouver dans le poeme La Ceinture 1
Cette ceinture vagabonde
Fait dans le souffle arien
Frmir le supreme lien
De mon silence avec le monde.
Ce qui peut briser ce lien qui est a la fois runion et ligne de
dmarcation, moteur de la parele potique, est aussi la pure jouissance,
cette jouissance qui, a la fin du Cimetiere Marin, est attribue a lamer:
Hydre absolue, ivre de ta chair bleue
Quite remords l'tincelante queue
Dans un tumulte au silence pareil. (23 str.)
Cette mcr qui est dlie - absolue - , a la fois chair et manteau,
profondcur ct surface "troue de mille et mille idoles du seleil", et qui
rassemble galement la forme etl'informe, le silence et le tu multe.
La morl el la jouissance sent des images de l'union, des points de
fuitc et de rsolution; dans un des Cahiers Valry dit: "La mort est
l'union de !'ame et du corps dont la censcience, l'veil et la seuffrance
sont dsunion." x
On peut voir cette alliance de la mort et de la jouissance s'inscrire
dam. les arbres du printemps de la Jeune Parque; les arbres seus l'effet
du vent se transforment en animaux exalt mais on nous parle de:
La flottante foret de qui les rudes troncs
Portent pieusement aleur fantasques fronts
J\ux dchirants dparts des archipels superbes
Un fleuve tendre, o mort, et cach sous les herbes? (v. 239-44)
Dans le domaine de !'esprit, Yalry, a propos de Descartes parlait de
ce que serait un "esprit entierement reli" qui serait aussi "infiniment
libre"; il ajoute dans un de ses Cahiers lorsqu'il revient sur ce passage:
"Ce qui conduirait a concevoir cet "esprit" comme une nergie qui
tend l'instant, qui tend a remplacer le temps par je ne sais quelle
lumiere ou prsence telle que - rien n'y chappant, rien ne peut suivre
apres".'1
\lous verrons encore ce jeu du li et du dli dans le passage de la
Jeune Parque ou, face au vent, celle-ci semble se prparer au suicide:

174 J. Y. DUPRAZ
... Et le vent semble au travers d'un linceul
Ourdir de bruits marins une confuse trame
Mlange de la lame en ruine, et de rame ...
Tant de hoquets longtemps, et de rales heurts,
Briss, repris au large ... et tous les sorts jets
Eperdument divers roulant l'oubi vorace. (v. 316-322)
Nous avons des images de l'apres (l inceul, ruine) et des images de
ravant (hoquets, rales), mais il est impossible de dire ou de penser le
moment de l'union: l'instant mortel. Cet instant impensable se marque
dam le texte par un blanc que la Parque saute pour se jeter dans
"l'apres": "Hlas! de mes pieds nus qui trouvera la trace ..." et apres un
autre blanc, elle reviendra au temps de "l'avant": ''Terre trouble et
mele a l'a lgue, porte-moi!". Ce que nous avons dans ce vent-la est
l'image meme d'un len qui s'est dtach et qui se propose en un
mouvement de retour (tous ces bruits sont "repris au large").
A la fin du Cimetiere Marin, le penseur dira:
Le vent se leve! ... Il faut ten ter de vivre
L'air immense o uvre et referme mo n livre
Envolez-vous pages tout blouies ... (str. 24)
On voit qu'il essaie de se placer au lieu meme du len puisqu'il se donne
l'illusion de s'associer au vent, une place impossible entre l'int rieur et
l'extrieur, la conscience et la fusion avec les lments.
De cette illusion nous pourrons rapprocher la prsence "poreuse",
autant celle de la Jeune Parque que celle du Cimetiere. L"'Harmonieuse
Moi" dit:
Poreuse a l'ternel qui me semblait m'enclore
Je m'offrais dans mon fruit de velours qu'il dvore. (v. 113- 14)
Dans le Cimetiere s'adressant asa "grande ame" le protagoniste s'crie:
C hanterez-vous quand serez vaporeuse?
La sainte impatience meurt aussi. (str. 17)
On peut voir qu'il est oppos a la Parque puisqu'il vient de refuser
l'immo ralit; mais tous deux partagent la meme illusion: celle de
pouvoir passer tout entier du ct d'une limite. La Parque a les yeux
ferms mais l'clat du soleil l'emplit d'une "nuit de trsor", de "tnebres
d'or", elle croit pouvoir se fondre - peut-etre en jouissance? - dans
PAUL YALtRY 175
une irralit pulpeuse. Le personnage du Cimetiere croit pouvoir se
distancer parfaitement de la "grande ame", celle pour qui "l'onde et
ror" sont des "mensonges" dest ins aux "yeux de chair" celle qui refuse,
dans sa "sainte impatience" de patir dans sa prsence au monde. Il croit
rouvoir se tenir face au pur rel qui lui fera dire aux morts qu'ils sont
bten morts, qu'i ls sont des cranes vides. Mais tous deux ne pourront se
rnaintcnir dans cette position; l'axe de la prsence/ absence changera
encore tout autant que celui de la profondeur et de la surface. Ils seront
rappelcs ala prsence que donne le vent, la prsence lie, celle qui
dlimitc chaque instant un dedans-dehors.
Dans lcur surgissement ces images nous dessinent tout un univers de
retre possible, de ses dsirs et de ses aspirations. Ce qui est illusion
pour une certaine marche du sens du poeme demeure une ralit pour
runivers imaginaire du poeme qui conserve en creux tous ces moments
qui se composent dans une sorte de prsent de l'etre potique. Celui-ci
se constitue petit a petit une topologie et nous apparalt dot de ses
dimensions de ses aspects et de ses modes. Il se dote aussi avec le vent
d'une CCrtaine fafYOn d'apprhender le temps a l'aide du vent puisque
celui-ci est, a la fois un len et un dcalage, lui qui veille et qui rveille.
On peut replacer au coeur du dsir d'oeuvre le vent qui, dans ce cas,
nous permettra de sauter par-dessus la priode mythique du "grand
silence". Bien avant les poemes de la maturit nous trouvons en 1897
une note:
"Hier \Otr, en chemise, avant d'entrer au lit, je suis rest devant tous mes livres
chcrchant celui qu'il me fallait. Cclui qui m'aurait plu, et je le faisab - du moins j'en
avais le go(a."
Une neche renvoie a la page suivante et indique avec la mention
"exactement":
"La mcr. pour moi, impression des narines el des poumons. espace. dressement des
vagues. boisson anennc- Grandeur, Od~o:ur immcnsc el hrissee. arbrc odorant et gros,
ar, air hriss ..." 10
A !'origine du dsir d'oeuvre il y avait le vent et une respiratio n.
University of Western Ontario
NOTES
1
Editions Jcan Tou1o1, Paris, 19!l2, pp. 41 ct sqq.
 JOHN DOLIS

rJ-IOREAU'S WALDEN: THE PRO-VOCATION OF FIRE

We begin with a propos1t1on - somewhere between tautology and

contradiction as Wittgenstein explains 1 - although the contour of this
essay immediately seeks to move beyond it, inhabiting the boundary of
the limiting cases themselves. The proposition is itself circular: "world"
is but another name for "discourse." 2 We wish to understand how it is
(possible) that a word creates a world (and world creates word as well),
how the text ceaselessly recommences this reversible figure-ground
relation. We attempt a way into the circle itself. It is a question of
entrance: how do 1 begin the text called Walden? - or better, how does
Walden inaugurate me? As with any embarkation, it sets out from a
region which is always already also a place of departure, a threshold: a
border between inside and out, a liminal space which secures me, which
entrances me and ex(c)it(e)s me at once - a passage where something
"takes place," where something situates itself so that it might happen or
"come to pass," a passage wherefrom 1 gaze both before and behind the
glance which is itself self-regarding. 3 With Thoreau, we want extrava-
gance to make a place for this extra-ordinary "shape" of nomination: " 1
fear chiefly test my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may
not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experi-
ence, so as to be adequate to the truth of which 1 have been convinced.
Extra vagance! It depends on how you are yarded .... 1 desire to speak
somewhere without bounds . . . for 1 am convinced that 1 cannot
exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression." 4
On the margin of discourse we linger, facing both forward and back,
and listen to what is able to appear, re-calling the ironic invitatio n
Kierkegaard repeats in forward recollection: "Loquere ut videam te" 5
- speak that 1 might see you.
But something matters first: an image hovers both before and beyond
me, the direct image of matter itself, a matter which reverberates, a
resonance or sonority which sings being-on-the-(self-Same)-threshold:
the image locates me at the origin of a speaking being.6 As I take up
thi-, book called Walden, as l embrace it to the extent that it under-
standingly dis-places me as an-Other in which 1 am able to recuperate
215
11 r Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta llusserliana, Vol XXIII, 2 t 5-235.
Cl t988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
216 JOHN DOLIS
again what is my own, the image which first speaks soundly is that
which makes a threshold possible in the first place; it speaks of building
itself: "When 1 wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, 1
lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which 1
had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond." (3) Here thinking takes
a direction from Heidegger: "We obtain to dwelling ... only by means
of building.... Still, not every building is a dwelling.'' 7 Nevertheless
genuine building always and everywhere seeks dwelling; it need~
dwelling; it wants it, desires it; without dwelling (that is, outside of
dwelling) building is an absence. Dwelling makes building full and gives
to it a presence, though never a completion. And so it is that building
makes a way for itself, both in and out. This we call its threshold. And
yet, the threshold of building is not the building of a threshold.
Although building holds its threshold befare it, it does so as something
which comes later. By this it is simply understood that building is
pre-liminary to the threshold - that from the beginning of building, the
threshold itself is not constructed first.
Authentic building begins with borrowing. From the outset, the
borrowed enterprise recognizes the Other in the establishment of itself.
Thus Thoreau begins his work of construction, the construction of his
work - his oeuvre - that is, the house of both his being and his text:
"Near the end of March, 1845, 1 borrowed an axe and went down to
the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where 1 intended to build my
house .... It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the
most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise." (40-41) Thoreau's enterprise of construc-
tion, however, not only designates a borrowed undertaking, but o ne of
deconstruction and reconstruction also: "1 had already bought the
shanty of James Collins ... for boards .... I took down this dwelling
the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side
by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach
and warp back again in the sun." (42-44) In this sense, building
re-enacts an originary cvcnt: in so far as it borrows and dismantles, it
indicates the locus of a transfer. Yet, the topology of this locus suggests
nothing of a spatial location. lt is originally a place of indebtedness; and
if we are to recover its primordial dimensions, we must initially
recognize that presence which is lacking to it(self).
First of all, who does not immediately understand that building is a
seasonal affair? "At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to
THOREAU 'S WALDEN 217
onsider every spot as the possible site of a house .... Wherever 1 sat,
~here I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly.
What is a house but a sedes, a seat?" (81) This kind of inhabiting,
however, is, from the outset, out of season, outside all season, for it
un-self-consciously abides within the perpetua! summer of the Other.
There comes a time of dis-placement: "Man was not made so large
limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall
in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but
though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, ... the
rainy season and the winter ... would perhaps have nipped his race in
the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a
house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower befare
other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first
of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections." (27-28) In
other words, there comes a time for wintering, a moment which
disrupts the idyllic conjunction - that harmonious stanza or room
where man stands within what is other to him (nature) - in order to
stand out ( ek-sist): "We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the
human race, sorne enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rack for
shelter." (28) Erupting from the text of nature, consciousness seeks a
site for itself - a context for its own textuality which is no longer a
simple impression, but one which reads into experience an imprimatur.
This event brings with it the question of authority - that is, the author-
ization of one's self: "The only house I had been the owner of befare, if
1 except a boat, was a tent, which 1 used occasionally when making
excursions in the summer .... With this more substantial shelter about
me, I had made sorne progress toward settling in the world. This frame,
so slightly ciad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on
the builder." (85) The movement from summer to winter, then, reflects
a transference from nature to world, and carries with it a co-responding
need to secure a place of one's own.
Winter spells the advent of sheltering: "Every child begins the world
again, to sorne extent, and !oves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold.
It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not
remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving
rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that
portian of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us." (28)
And yet the cave is child's play. It does not provoke us to ourselves, but
rather recalls us to what already is. It does not provide what Thoreau
218 JOHN DOL!S
calls a "point d'appui"; it fai ls to purchase us: "Let us settle ourselves
and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of
opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance ..
till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can cali
reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point
d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might
found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely." (97-98) When
winter calls, sheltering thus builds on a site of its own, a site which is
originary insofar as it establishes one's self. For those who hear the
silent call to wintering, displacement has already occurred. Building
changes place; it grounds sheltering upon a foundation which is itself a
place of transfer. This seasonal event heralds the advent of a departure,
one which calls those, who hearken to its soundless silence, to build
soundl y for themselves amid a silence which is not itself unsound.
We have yet to speak, however, of the sheltered site toward which
winter bcckons, and is itself thc locus of a transfer- the location which
author( l)zes one to build for oneSelf. Building builds well when it
settles upon a site, when it gathers to itself a location cleared for
dwclling. Here dwelling is not merely the concentration of a boundary,
for what is gathe red together in the ahodc where dwelling takes place
"makes place" - it makes room for the horizon as wcll, for what is
outside. Thoreau acknowledges this dialectic of inside and out, and it is
pointedly "brought home" to him from the beginning:
Whcn 1 first took up my abode m the woods, that 1s, began to spend my nights as
wcll a~ day~ there. which. by accident. wa\ on lndcpcndcncc Day, or the fourth of July,
1H45, my house was not finishcd for wintcr, but wa'> mcrcly a dcfcncc against the rain,
w1thout plastering or chimney, which madc it cool at night.
. . . 1t wa'> suggcstivc somcwhat as a picture in outline'>. 1 did not need to go o ut
doors to takc the air. for the atmosphere within had IoM none of its freshness. 1t was
not so much within doors as hehind a door where 1 sat. even in the rainiest weather.
Thc llarivansa says, An abode without birds s likc a mcat without seasoning." Such
was not my abode, for 1 found mysclf suddcnly ncighbor to thc birds; not by having
imprisoncd onc. hut having cagcd mysclf ncar tothcm. (H4 H5)
This neatly echoes an earlier passagc whcre Thoreau introduces the
dialectic of hearth and field:
hum thc cave wc havc advanccd 10 roofs of palm lcavc'>, of bark and boughs, of lincn
wovcn and stretched, of grass and straw. of board'> and shinglcs, of stones and tiles. At
las t. wc k mm not \\ hat it is to livc in thc opcn <m. and our livcs are domes tic in more
\cnsc'> than we think. From the hcarth to thc ficld is a grcat distancc. lt wou ld be well
THOREAU'S WAU>t.N 219
crhaps if wc were to spend more of our days ami nights without any obstruction
~etwccn us and thc celestial bodics. if the poct did not speak so much from under a
roof. or thc saint dwcll there so long. Birds do not sing m caves, nor do doves chcrish
thcir innocencc in dovccob. (28)
Ho\~ fitting that it is the birds who sing so eloquently the interval of this
dialectlc, for it is they who huild so brilliantly that most intimate of all
abodes: the nest.
Here we might pause to consider how dwclling appropriates the nest,
hO\~ every house deserving of the title "home" hahilitates this germinal
form, although a thorough phenomenological description of the topology
of Thoreau's imagination, of the place which the "nest," the "shell," and
the "comer" occupy in the establishment of his poetic consciousness,
is heyond the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, how succinctly his
inosculation of images anticipates a slender, almost fragile, poem by
Jean Caubere: "The warm, calm nest/ In which a bird sings .. ./ Recalls
th e songs, the charms,/ The pure threshold/ Of my old home."R Will
the geometrician tell us that we are incorrect if we discern, amid this
conccntration of intimacy, the round sound of being itself:Y how being
sings \\hen it is well-come, how this "interval" of the nest - this
gathering of remoteness, this pastiche of things and empty space -
stays all distance, and sings the consonance of being-well? The nest
recalls us to the depth of being at its '>Ource, how all being begins with
well-heing, as Bachelard remarks. And so the nest recreates, in minia-
ture. the way in which the house re-sonates the plenary chord of
emtence, how it wou ld retrieve the being that belongs to d(well)ing.
Dv.elling makes a passage, then, for that which stands out(side) in. In
dwelling. thcre being (Da-sein) is made well (indwelling); it is secured
from hoth sides at the edge of a horder, facing both in and out.
Dwelling cares for itself to the extent that it confcrs upon inhabited
spacc thc value of what it itself is not. Dwelling nears being; it
rehahilitates being and makes it well. Within thc habitation of dwelling,
wcll-being becomes a hahit. When being is so at home, it fastens a
refugc that harbors all ; it in-corporates a community. This grounds the
rcc1procal to and fro movement he twcen solitude and neighboring, and
characterizes the overall dialectical quality of Wa/den - its natural as
wcll as structural incorporation of both solitude and visitors, bean-field
and village: " 1 had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two
for friendship, three for society. When visitors carne in larger and
uncxpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all." (140)
220 JOHN DOLIS
Thoreau's house therefore becomes the occasion for what Heidegge
calls "nearing." The intimate space of inhabiting which secures ~
threshold between self and other, between within and without, inscribes
a place for preserving, a place of appropriation. Here the proximity of
proscription has been banished: at the indwelling threshold of building,
all things settle in repose; they are given over to themselves, allo wed 10
be. Where all things count, nothing is ever brought to account fo r itself.
Distance too is given over to itself, as Heidegger suggests: "Nearness
brings near - draws nigh to one another - the far and, indeed, as the
far. Nearness preserves farness." 10 The nearness of dwelling binds
together each and all into its own freedom. Dwelling thus gives us over
to genuine community, a settlement: it sediments the unsettling terro r of
the techno-/ogos, a technology which - like the train that penetrates
Thorcau's landscape - solicits the eradication of all distance, placing
everything outside (its own nature) despite the fact that, with the
conquest of all distances, nearness remains absent. 11 In the nearness of
dwelling, all distance be-longs to itself. Can we therefore doubt the
resonant interval of Thoreau's dwelling, thc nearness in which it binds
each to the other in the freedom of its own:
One inconveniencc 1 ~ometimes cxpcricnced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting
to a sufficient dbtancc from my gucst whcn wc began to utter the big thoughts in big
words .... our scntcnccs wantcd room 10 unfold and form thetr columns in the interval.
.. In my housc wc wcrc so ncar that wc could not bcgm tu hcar. wc cuuld not speak
low enough to be hcard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that
thc; break each other's undulations. lf we are mcrcly loquacious and loud talkers, then
we can afford to stand very near together, check by jowl. and fccl cach other's breath;
but if we spcak rcscrvedl) and thoughtfully, wc want to be farthcr apart .... If we
would cnjoy the most intimate soctety with that 111 cach of us which is witbout, or
abovc. bcing spokcn to. we must not only be silcnt, but commonly so far apart bodily
that wc cannot possibly hear each othcr's voicc in any case. Referred
to this standard, spccch is for thc convcnicncc of those who are hard of hcaring.
(140 41) 1 '
His habitation thus enfolds thc othcr; it leavcs a crease for the other so
that Thorcau might be next to him.
Yet, on the hither side of intersubjectivity, dwelling does more than
neighbor the other; it neighbors abo thc sclf: "For the most part we
allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions.
They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is
that powcr which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are
THOREAU'S WALDf.N 221
ntinually being executed. Next lo us is not the workman whom we
~~ve hired, with whom we l~ve so w~IJ to talk, but the workman whose
work we are" ( 134) - that ts, dwelhng makes us nearest of all to our
elf it makes us next to ourself. This, above all, characterizes the
S '
function of solitude whose operation retrieves the dialectical interval of
dwelling at its source. lf "Solitude is not measured by the miles of space
that intervene between a man and his fellows" ( 135), and if 'This
whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space" (133), then:
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fello'vs and
makes him solitary? 1 have found that no exertion of the legs can bring
two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most lo dwell
near to? Not to many men surely ... but to the perennial source of our
life." ( 133) On the threshold of dwelling, nearness inscribes even nature
as our own; it in-corporales the text(ure) of what is radically Other into
the very structure of our Self. So begins the chapter on solitude: "This is
a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes
delight through every pore. r go and come with a strange liberty in
Nature, a part of herself." ( 129) The text of our body thus inter-
penetrates the body of the text of nature: "1 have never felt lonesome,
or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once ... when, for
an hour, 1 doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to
a serene and healthy life .... But 1 was at the same time conscious of a
slight insanity in my mood .... In the midst of a gentle rain ... 1 was
suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature ... in
every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable
friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the
fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant." ( 131-32) It
is curious that Thoreau describes his initial uneasiness as a slight
insanity of mood, for is not insanity precisely that occupation of a space
which has receded toward the purely subjective, a space without the
Other, exclusive of the Other - a place, in fact, outside Otherness
itself?
The indwelling threshold of Thoreau's abode, on the other hand,
returns him to the Other so that he might stand against the Other as
does a figure on a ground. Here "standing" is both a standing "with"-in
and with-"out;" one stands outside the Other as a particular in-stance
of it. By means of its reversible significance, this "gestalt" dimension of
being (that is, being-between as being with, as being both with-in and
with-out) inscribes the interval of a difference wherein each genuinely
222 JOHN DOLIS THOREAU'S WALDEN 223

belongs to the Other only insofar as each one makes the Other possible rnaY be the tragedy, of life is over, the specta tor goes his way. lt was a kind of fiction , a
in the first place - in other words, at the source: in Other Words. One work of the imagina tion only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily
rnake u~ poor neighbors and friends sometimes. ( 134-35)
belongs to an-Other at the very o rigin of alterity, at the threshold of an
event which is itself the advent of what Emmanuel Levinas has called
Whenever one stands out and into the graft of displacement, there
the "interval of discourse." 1 ~ How ironic it is that Thoreau should thus
dwelling "takes place;" it makes room for itself and reverberates the
1efer to this out-standing event, to that con tour of ek-sistence which
interval wherein abides the alterity of the Other. 15
returns being to its well-spring, to the very fountainhead of well-being,
When being is so recovered at its source, in its commencement
as one which sits. And yet it does, for the house that truly shelters being
address, if you will, it is not accomplished in the sense that we speak for
stands out as but an instance of repose.
being, but rather that being, here(there), bespeaks us. But we have yet
He re, the sym pathetic - indeed, sympho nic - chord o f nature nears
to discover how being reads and writes Thoreau, how being initially
us to what is lacking as a kindred presence. Amid an absence, and yet
manifests itself in this text called Walden. As a construction which
next to the resounding interval of the Other, something comes to pass:
houses both the being of a text and the text of being, Walden soundly
"Every littlc pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and
dwells as a monument to an origin-al call. We wish now to disclose the
befriended me. 1 was so distinctly made aware of the presence of
nature of that call toward which Walden hearkens and responds. We
something kindred to me ... and also that the nea rest of blood to me
incline toward the immemorial traces of this monument, that which
and humanes! was not a person nor a villager, that 1 thought no place
elicits Thoreau to build toward the threshold. What stands before this
could ever be strange to me again." ( 132) It is plainly the shrinkage of
work of constructio n as an invitation to dwell? What betokens it and
this inte rval by which we cha racte rize the insane. lndeed , if thinking is
calls it forth ? What provokes it? We hearken to the threshold itself
to speak well for itSelf, it must recognize insanity as tha t structure of
which has becn waiting for building, and yet always already stands
behavior which is closed off to the very possibility of a form of being
before building as its pro-vocation. An all too hasty reply might well
which is "beside" o ne's self, as Mcrleau-Ponty has observed , for it is
misdirect o ur path, and so we ask again: whence comes the invocation
precisely this loss or withdrawal of space which )caves no room, no
to build? lf winter spells the advent of sheltering, toward what are we
margin , for th c patient: "Besides the physical and geomctrical distance
called upon to build a shelter for?
which stands between myself and all things, a 'lived' distance binds me
In his introductory chapter on "Economy," Thorcau has already
to things which count and exist for me, and links them to each other.
prepared us when he defines those things which m3y prope1 !y be called
This distance measures the 'scope' o f my life at every mo ment. . . .
necessary to life- food, clothing, shelte r, and fuel :
between mysclf and the events the re is a certain amount of play
(Spielraum), which ensures that my freedom is preserved while the Man ha~ invented. not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the
events do not cease to concern me." 14 Similar! y, Thoreau recognizes accidental discovery of the warmth of tire. and the consequent use of it. at first a luxury,
this doubleness of displacement at the heart of existen ce: arose thc prescnt nccessity to sit by it. ... lt appears, therefore, from thc above list, that
thc exprcssion, ammal life, is nearly ~ynonymous with the expression. animal heat; for
while Food may be regarded as thc Fue! which keeps up the fire within us, - and Fuel
With thmkmg w.: may be be~id.: ourselvc' in a \ane ~ense. Hy a comcious effort of the serve~ only to prepare that Food or to incrcase the warmth of our bodies by addition
mind wc can -.tand a loof from actions and their consequences . . We are not wholly from without. Shclter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus gencrated
involved m Nature.... 1 may be affected by a theatncal exhib1t1011; on the other hand, 1 and absorbed. ( 12 13)
may not be affected by an actual event which appear~ to concern me much more. 1 o nly
know myself a' a human enllty; the scene. so to speak. of thoughh ano affections; and Economy therefore recognizes only o ne necessity - the grand necessity
am -.emible of a ccrtam doubleness by \~h1ch 1 can stand as remole from myself as fro m
"to keep wa rm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we acco rdingly
another. However intense my experiencc. 1 am conscious of the prc~cnce and criticism
of a part of me. which. as it werc. is not a part of me. but spectator, sharing no take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our
experience, but taking note of it; ano that is no more 1 than it is you. When the p lay, it beds, which a re our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds
224 JOHN DOLIS
lo prepare lhis shelter wilhin a shelter." ( 13) Dwelling thus shelte rs for
warmth; when winler calls us lo lhe icy silence of ils breath, it is to clear
a space for kindling. Those who hearken are lhereby called upo n 10
build for dwelling. Dwelling shellers and nears; il draws us nigh the self
we are beside. Here drawing is nol understood as the instrument of
represenlalion, bul thal very aspiralion which suslains a passage
between inside and out. Nearing, a~ drawing nigh, gives space for
breathing; il engenders an equi-vocal response lo winler's burning
breath, and supplements a breathing space for both, a place of respira-
tion where each might take a breath - that is, breath easy in repose.
Nearing thus draws us nigh to winter itself, and does so in the intimacy
of friendsrup. 16 In the place of respiration, vitality transpires: each
partakes of the other; each reserves a space for the other-inside out;
each preserves the other - inside out. And this is what is now
underslood by the sheltered place toward which wintering aspires, and
is itself the locus of both an inhalation and an exhalation, both an
inspiration and an expiration. The sheltered precinct loward which
dwelling draws nigh is the drawing "room" itself, that interval wruch
neighbors both inside and out, the very space for drawing which
preserves the draught. Thus Thoreau observes: "The chimney is to
sorne extent an independent structure, standing on the ground and
rising lhrough the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned
it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are
apparent." (241-42)
Is it not now clear that the sheltered place of dwelling, loward which
winter beckons, is itself the place of Jire: "1 lingered most about the
fireplace, as the most vital part of the house." (241) Dwelling com-
mences only when it has thus faslened this sancluary for fire: "I now
first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began lo use it for
warmth as well as shelter. ... and it did me good to see the soot fo rm
on the back of lhe chimney which 1 had built, and 1 poked the fire with
more right and more satisfaction than usual." (242) Here, in a simple,
single room, Thoreau's house trans-forms to home, a dwelling reduced
to fundamental simplicity: "1 went to the woods because 1 wished to live
deliberately, lo front only the essential facts of life .... lo drive life into
a comer, and reduce il to its lowest terms." (90-91) As with fire,
reduclion is the genuine gauge of exislence - both the princip(le)al and
its interest. The true lesson in economy teaches us that life is dear. And
so when winler sets in at Walden, Thoreau burrows even deeper into
THOREAU"S WALDEN 225
his "comer," which is now the well-being of the nest transformed to
shell: "1 withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a
bright fire both witrun my house and within my breast." (249) When
cornpared to the solitary lamp placed squarely in the window, how
much more vibrant is the glowing fire that welcomes us home to the
round embrace of its companionship: "1 sometimes left a good fire
when 1 went lo take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when l returned,
three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My
house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if l had Jeft a cheerful
housekeeper behind." (253) In the same spirit, Thoreau remarks: "I
weathered sorne merry snow storms, and spent sorne cheerful winter
evenings by my fire-side." (256) Beside the fire, even the snowstorm is
made merry for, as Henri Bosco has described it, "When the shelter is
sure, the storm is good"; how eloquently lhe fire gathers us to the
intimacy of that house which has the good fortune lo be blanketed by
winter snow, thal house which has been warmed - indeed, flushed -
by the blanket of winter ilself, as Baudelaire (Les paradis artificiels) so
well understood, that house which has so well-comed us to the home-
coming of our well-being. 17 How aptly, therefore, speaks lhe poem
which concludes this pivota) chapter entitled "House-Warming":
Wcll, we are safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands- nor does lo more aspire;
By whose compact utilitarian heap
Thc present may sil down and go to sleep,
Nor fear lhe ghosls who from lhe dim past walked,
And with us by the unequallight of the old wood fire talked. (255)
Only in the light of this blaze are we now able to begin again to
understand that expression wherein Thoreau reveals his most intimate
relationship at Walden (the place) and in Walden (the texl): "It was I
and Fire that lived there." (253)
To suggest, in this way, that "House-Warming" is pivota! to Walden
is not to imply that it is "central," but rather the opposite; for it is
specifically this chapter which de-centers the text, which induces an
imbalance. lt is commonly accepted that "The Ponds" is itself the
central chapter of the book. One cannot disagree, here, to the extent
that it occupies a mid-point, halfway between beginning and end. And
226 JOHN DOLIS
after all, where is the water amid all this talk of fire? lsn't this supposed
to be a book about Walden Pond? It seems no t, for the po nd has been
displaced. We no more begin to inhabit this text, than Thoreau does the
site called Walden, until the fire-place has been christened. T hat is 10
say, the book does not begin to inaugurate us until the chapter on
"House-Warming." Here is the threshold toward which we are at last
invited, and by which we enter its intimate sphere o f companionship
and solicitude. To those who hearken, no lo nger do we hear, nor have
we ever heard thro ugho ut, a voice crying in the wilderness, a man
speaking to strangers, but the authentic discourse of one who cares. At
this pivot, o r turning point, the text turns into a fire-side chat. Here the
threshold introduces us to an unexpected lesson, for what promised to
be a baptism of water has, from the outset, been always one of fire.
"Ho use-Warming" is there fore pivo ta! insofa r as it functions as the very
hinge of the text, its folding place. At this juncture, the logic of the
geometrician, who chooses to represent the text as a single narrative
plane, is called upon to perform an ambidextrous exercise, for he is
forced to balance a text which already "tilts" backward to re-collect
itself forward once more. We would do well to envision the text as a
circle. More properly, however, the path o f discourse in Walden
assumes the contour of a spiral, a burrowing into existence itself. It is
circular inasmuch as it is seasonal; and yet it moves forward by means
of dialectic.
From "Higher Laws" and "Brute Neighbors," "Ho use-Warming"
returns us to Walden Pond, but to the pond in winter. It recalls us to
thc "middle" image of the pond, though one displaced in its doubleness:
the fire of ice. In winter, Walden too burns. Here, one might lie next to
(be-side) its transparency: "The first ice is cspecially intercsting and
perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best oppor-
tunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; fo r
you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect
on the surface of the water, and study the bo ttom at your leisu re." (246)
Winter turns Walden on its side - turns it inside out. Winter reduces
the pond to its other-side, its foundation or bottom. In "House-
Warming," Walden, as both place and text, is reduced to its single,
most concentrated point. In the two previous chapters, Tho reau has
discussed "Higher Laws" (man) and "Brute Neighbors" (animals); this
chapter continues the reduction, beginning with plants: grapes, cranber-
ries, barberries, chestnuts - trees. Furthermore: "When l carne to build
T H OREAU'S WALDFN 227
rnY chimney 1 studied masonry." (240) With stones, we have traversed
frorn animate to inani mate matter. Over and against the division of
labor, within the concentrated image of the house reduced to a single
room, we have thus far arrived at the "rock bottom" o f dwelling, the
chimney. But we have still to discern the elemental ground itself, for the
chimney sets itself upon the fire-place proper - its hearth. And what is
the hearth but the place of firc itself? - the o riginal e/ement. lf we a re
thus asked to deduce its "atomic st ructure," the composition of Walden
is irreducibly that of fire. And so the book orbits its way around this
decentered region called "H o use-Warming," just as the fiery o rb itself
not only st ructures the cycle of life but concludes the text as a whole.
From this point on, the text folds back upo n itself to do its work all
over once again, only this time "Higher Laws" becomes "Former
Jnhabitan ts; and Winter Visitors," "Brute Neighbors" becomes "Winter
Anmals," and 'The Ponds" becomes "The Pond in Winter." In this way,
fire dialectically incorporales all to its domain: animate and inanimate,
fire and ice, summer and winter. And herein resides the significance
Bachelard asc ribes to fire, when he defines it as a privileged phenome-
non: "lf all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that
changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is th e ultra-living element. It is
inttmate and it is universal. lt lives in o ur heart. It lives in the sky.... It
is cookery and it is apocalypse .... It is well-being and it is respect. .. .
It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principies of univers&l
explanatio n." ts
Beside the fire, Thoreau is allocated to himself, apportioned so
that he might stand-be-side-him-self as one inhabitant to an-Other.
Here fi re provokes the arch-logos, an archeology of the vestiges of
habitation:
ror human ~octcty 1 v.a, ohliged to conjure up the formcr occupanb of thcsc v.ood~.
Wnhm the mcmory of many of my townsmen the road near which my housc stands
rcsoundcd with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants .... East of my bean-ficld, across
thc road, livcd Cato lngraham. slavc of Duncan lngraham .... Cato's half-obliterated
cellar hole still remains .... Here, by the very comer of my field. still nearer to town.
ZI!pha, a colorcd woman, had her hule house .... At length, in thc war of 1812, her
dwel1111g was sct on fire hy English ~o ldicrs .... 1 havc scen bricks amid the oak copse
thcrc. Down thc road . . ltved Bristcr Frccman. "a handy Negro," slave of Squire
Cummings once, - therc where grow still thc apple-trecs wh1ch Bri~ter planted and
tended; large old trees now .... Farthcr clown thc hill ... are marks of sorne homestead
of thc Stralten family .... Ncarer yct to town. you come to Breed's location .... Breed's
hut was .,tandmg only a do1en years ago.... lt was set on fire by mi.,chievous boys ...
228 JOHN DOLIS
a heap of bricks and ashes.... Farther in the woods ... Wyman the potter squatted...
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an lrishman, Hugh Quoil. ... Befor~
his house was pulled down ... 1 visited it. ... In the rear there marks the site of these
dwellings.... With such reminiscences 1 rcpcoplcd the woods and lulled myself asleep.
(256-64)
Amid this topography of remnants erupts a catalogue of epic propor-
tions, a veritable reverie of re-collection. Beside the fire, Thoreau's
reminiscences not only repeople the woods but regather them to the
focal significance of his dwelling: "! am not aware that any man has
t>ver built on the spot which 1 occupy." (264) Beside the fire, he is given
over to memorial traces of a past structured in reverie. And yet, there is
a presence other than the personal which engenders the originary
recitation of the site upon which he has settled and come to dwell, the
si te which he has authored for himself.
Be-side the fire: the fire also has its "side" (to tell), one whose
location bespeaks a circum-locution beyond the Sclf. Here fire is both
the occasion for the dia-logos and, at the same time, the very Other to
whom the dialogue is addressed. As that Other who induces Thoreau to
re-collect the memorial traces of the being of his text (that is, Walden
as place and text, as well as his very life), fire too has its story to tell,
one whose history, in fact, recounts the narrative of Western meta-
physics, and imbricates the immemorial traces of the text of Being itself.
Fire reverberates the echoes of being as it is spokcn by the biblical
c;tory of Christianity, where tongues of flame announce the doubleness
of God, of his displacement in the Son; fire reverberates the echoes of
being as it it spoken in Plato's cave, where dimly flickers the doubleness
of the Idea, of its displacement in the shadows; fire reverberates the
echoes of being as it is spoken by Heraclitus, whcrc lighting reveals the
doubleness of the "Not-Setting-Ever," 1 '~ of its displacement in disclosure
and concealment. Fire even reverberates beyond the outline of Western
metaphysics itself, to echo being as it is spoken in the Buddhist Fire
Sermon. Thoreau has heard all of this, hearkening to the congenia!
tongue of the flame, and he has taken to himself thcse traces which
murmur the text of Being. But we have yet to specify the manner and
the meaning of this event, how it is that this dialogue transpires between
Thoreau and Fire.
Dialogue takes up its space "between" one an-Other; it implies a
place of co-respondence, and assumes that the one who responds has
not only already heard but also understood. How is it that Thoreau
THOREAU"S WALDEN 229
under-stands the solicitous articulation of the fire, when so many hear
nothing but hissing? The question put another way is this: how does
one gain respect for the fire? Bachelard gives us a clue: "fire is more a
social reality than a natural reality. ... respect for fire is a respect that
has becn taught; it is not a natural respect. The reflex which makes us
pull back our finger from the flame ... does not play any conscious
role m our knowledge about fire .... In reality the social prohibitions
are the flrst."' From this it follows that the burn merely confirms the
soctal prohibition itself. If fire is, then, the object of a general prohibi-
tion, as Bachelard observes, "the problem of obtaining a personal
knowlcdge of fire is the problem of clever disobedience. The child
wishes to do what his father does, but far away from his father's
prescnce, and so like a little Prometheus he steals sorne matches" -
undcr the tcrm "Prometheus Complex," Bachelard thus gathers together
"all those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers,
more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers.
Now it is by handling the object, by perfecting our objective knowledge,
that we can best hope to prove decisively that we have attained the
inlellectual level that we have so admired in our parents and in our
teachers .... The Prometheus complex is the Oedipus complex of the
life of the intellect.'' 21 ls not then the problem of "clever disobedience"
the problem of Civil Disobedience superimposed upon the cultural,
historical life-world? We have spoken earlier of the threshold as a locus
of transfer, the transfer of authority. Is it not evident that by handling
firc, by learning it, by listening to its prophecy, Thoreau becomes his
own man. The authority of society, of culture, of tradition, of the past,
of the historio-lagos, must be revised, rewritten for every individual
existcnce.
To stand out is to stand against on the threshold, facing both in and
out, forward and back. This is both the place of the text and the text of
the place to which we are invited: "There too, as every where, 1
sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana
says, 'The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his court-yard as
long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he picases, to await the
arrival of a guest.' 1 often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long
enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man
approaching from the town." (270) lt is the invitation the book holds
forth as a with-ho!ding, a holding together for each and every reader.
We must accomplish the task for our Self. Each must author-ize the
230 JOHN DOLIS
lagos upon a site of his own building. Authority lays claim only to that
which we have authored. And who, that has ever built a fire, has not
observed this reclamation. Each fire is its own, and from the outset
establishes the way it will accomplish itself, the way it will aspire toward
expiration. So too, authoring the Self is consonant, individual, integral:
each locus of inauguration is one of departure also; every entrance is
itself a pro-visional region of retrospect: a pre-text. In order to winter
the crisis of the Self, "human life but dies down to its roo t." (311) Each
direction is an entrustment, a bequeathing of the selfP The flame so
extends itself toward non-being. 23 It is the disquisition of the fire that
our visions must ceaselessly be revised, that the authority of the lagos
must be rewritten toward a mythology of the authorized Self. We are
re-sponsible for the edifice which we inhabit.
In this regard, Thoreau's dwelling erects a veritable temple to
Vulcan, he who built the dwellings of the gods themselves, whose
heavenly fircs bequeath the fires of earth, who is originally referred to
lightning - the very same lighting of which Heraclitus speaks. At the
same time, Thoreau is the keepcr of the fire and consecrated, therefore,
to Vesta as well. And though he warns against confusing fire and
warmth, it is a caution which extends merely to those who only
understand the lagos logically: "The animal heat is the rcsult of a slow
combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or
for want of fuel, or from sorne defect in the draught, the fire goes o ut.
Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much
for analogy." ( 1 3) So much for analogy - indeed! For the ana-lagos is
simply incapablc of addressing the discourse at hand, the vocatio n
which Thoreau has set for himself from the outset, constructing an
expression beyond bounds (extra-vagant), one that surpasses the logical
limits of the proposition in its evocation of a world. For this, there
emerges a pro-logas, one that has already revised the lagos at its
source. Thoreau's dwelling repeats, in forward re-collection, the andro-
gynous mytho-logos at its centcr. at the heart of the very being of the
text (of Being). It stands consecrated to both Vulcan and Vesta,
dedicated to the divinity of the home - that is, to the divinity of
dwelling, to the habitation as a habit of that existence which has
forsaken the nomadic modc in order to settle itSelf. At the heart of
dwelling abides the aspirated lagos, its signification as a breath o r
breathing "mark" (v d{}Xf ~v A.yo~). the "the" of its originary it rages, that it is able to burn itself out, to erase itself. "Who that has
authority. Here, at the heart of dwelling, The Word aspires to incarna-
tion. In the place of fire, the lagos matters. We need only project it
THOREAU'S WALDEN 231
wward the end of an-Other word to appreciate the sign-ificance of its
originary displacement as incarnation, its pnmordial ethos as pathos
(the patho-logical difference itself between lagos and mythos, head and
heart, which enables one to stand beside the Self in a sane way). For at
the heart of dwelling abides the breathing space itself: the hearth. The
sacred heart is the heart(h) that burns.
In this way, no new home is duly consecrated until the hearth glows,
until the heart of the Self has been lit by the ancestral hearth of Being,
until it aspires to the place of respiration, the place of extravagance
wherc speaking is without bounds, at once both its inspiration and
expiration, its inspiration as the very expiration of itself. And after all, is
this not how we "measure" the grandeur of the fire, its volatility, the
truth of its expression? For what are the fire's embers but what will be
its remains: the ashes which speak so eloquently of its power. Here the
well-made fire conspires with us to teach the lesson of the hearth, the
sacrament of true economy, the outward sign of an inward salvation. 24
We measure the fire's purity and strength in inverse proportion to the
intcrval of its life, that which stretches between inspiration and expira-
tion. hetween the inception and its only exception, between lagos and
teleo-logos. This brevity of the interval, which is in no way a shortness
of distance, announces how near the fire stands to itself, how the fire
too may stand next to itself as a standing be-side. In this way, the
well -made fire banishes all shadows, rubs out the anxious discrepancy
of Plato's cave, erases the doubleness of displacement at the heart(h) of
extstence, and returns (redecms) it to the self-Same-threshold, to the
"wcll" of being: ''Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit/ Beside a
hcarth where no dim shadows flit,/ Where nothing cheers nor saddens,
huta fire / Warms feet and hands- nor does to more aspire." (255)
l.ike the fire, true economy refcrs to spending oneSelf, not saving it.
As Stanley Cavell has observed of Walden, "One earns one's life in
spcnding it; only so does one savc it. This is the riddle, or you may say
thc paradox, the book proposes." 2 ) It is, in other words, that foundation
or scttlement, as Thoreau expresses it, below frcshet and frost and, yes,
cvcn fire - what he calls the point d'appui. It is the meaning toward
whtch the fire itself perspires, its very being. Here the foundation of a
truc expression is grounded in the event itself: it is to be measured in
calories. Within the textuality of bcing, the fire is only to the extent that
hcard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly
any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live
232 JOHN DOLIS
quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that
side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun.
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inade-
quacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its
literal monument alone remains." (324-25) And is this not Thoreau\
elemental lesson in economy transformed - indeed, translated - once
again: "the cosl of a thing is the amounl of what 1 will call life which is
required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." (31)
T his is the genuine work of construction, a strenuous undertaking,
both arduous and long: life-long. And after all, the vision is easy; it is
the labor of re-vision that requires our perspiration: "The words which
express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and
fragrant like frankincense to superior natures." (325) Walden revises
the mytho-logos of creation; it rewrites the logos insofar as and only to
the extent that it writes the Self. Its project is both economical and
origin-al: "to be in on the beginning." 26 This is the life and the
resurrection, the phoenix translated toward the cosmo-logos of "intimate
immensity," 27 a cosmography of the Self: "Direct your eye sight inwa rd,
and you'll find/ A thousand regions in your mind/ Yet undiscovered.
Travel them, and be/ Expert in home-cosmography." (320) We must
not be deceived by the gossip of Westward movement which concludes
the book, for the movement of the discourse itself is toward the East,
not only asan Easterning of Western thinking, but as the vcry Eastering
of the Self. The self that would revise itSelf knows lhat the sun, too, sets
in the Easl, thal this is where it settles or sels ilself as that which is
already risen. For those who would be in on the beginning, the
lhreshold of creation is where-ever we can gel inlo 1he circle: "The
other side of lhe globe is bul lhe home of our correspondent. Our
voyaging is only greal-circle sailing." (320) He who wou ld write the
lagos of himSelf, rewrites thc mytho-logos: its dcsccnt into time.
Re-creation beslows time, the interval between logos and teleo-/ogos.
The mytho-logos therefore temporalizes author-ity, makes author-ship
responsible for its self as a project that lies before it, that provokes it to
itSelf. Each must forge his own text, a temporality that stretches out
between two points which are themselves settled upon the circum-
ference of a dif-ference, a difference which itself commences both the
mythos of Prometheus as well as Vulcan: each must steal the fire
himself; each must forge the dawn anew. The mytho-logos (incarnation)
is thus the point of departure into the world, a world that enters back
upon the logos (creation) at the place of dis-placement, a locus which
THORf:.AU'S WALDEN 233
protends the text of the Self forward as a re-vision (redemption) of the
traces of retention. Is this not the meaning (insignificance) of Thoreau's
fnal" words, and are they not the reclamation of Vulcan himself, he
who forged the very chariot of the sun: "mere lapse of time can never
rnake to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only
that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The
sun is but a morning star." (333)
This is the labor of existence which each is called upon to claim for
himself: to forgc the setting sun on the horizon, to fire it up and send it
wward an-Other day. Re-creation is therefore understood here as the
labor which accomplishes the Self. It is the play of inscription as both
the hcing of a text and the text of Being also. Properly understood,
then. re-creation is but the recreation of the Self, a self that dwells
securely in that flicker of repose he-side the fire. Let us listen once
again lo the poem that speaks Bcing(-)on(-)the(-)threshold of this
monumental work of wor(l)d literature, this monument to fire whose
ashes still remain:
Never, hright flame, may he denied tome
Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.
What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright?
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night?
Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,
Thou who art welcomed and bcloved by all?
Was thy existence then too fanciful
For our life's common light, who are so dull?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold
With our congenia! souls? secrcts too bold?
Well, wc are safe and strong, for now we sil
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands- nor does to more aspire;
By whosc compact utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the di m past walked,
And with us by the unequallight of the old wood
fire talked. (254- 55)
Pennsylvania State University, Scralllon Campus
234 JOHN DOLIS
NOTES
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tracratus Logtco-l'hilo.loplucrtJ, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F
McGuiness (London: Routledgc and Kegan Paul, 1961 ), pp. 68-69.
' S tan ley Cavcll, in The Senses of" Walden" (New York: Viking Prcss. 1972) has put
1
this way: "A word has meaning against the context of a sentence. A sentence has
meamng agmnst the context of a language. A language has meamng against the context
of a form of life. A form of life has meamng agamst the context of a world. A world has
mcamng agamst the context of a word ." (p. 1 1O)
Cf. Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in the / e\1. f ..uays on l'erception, Mannerist 10
'>fodem (Princeton: Princeto n Umversity Press. 1981 ). pp. 15 19: and also Edward
W. Said, Beginnings: lntenrwn ami Jfethod (Balumore: Johns Hopkins University
Prcss, 1975), pp. 29-78.
Hcnry David Thoreau, Walden, ed. J. Lyndon Shanlcy (Pnnceton: Princeton U ni-
verslty Prcss, 1971 ), p. 324. Suhsequent rcfercnces 10 Wa/den will he exclusively to this
cdition, hcrcafter parenthetically cited in thc tcxt by pagc number only.
< Sorcn Kicrkegaard, 11te Concept of /rony, trans. Lee M. Capcl (Bioomington: Indiana
Univcrsity Prcss, 1971 ), p. 52.
'' Gaston Baehclard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969), p. xix; cf. a lso. p. xii: "the poellc 1mage has an enllty anda dynamism of its own;
it \ refcrablc toa direct ontology. .. . Very often. thcn. it is in the opposite of causality,
that is. in rel'erherarion ... that 1 think we find the real measure of ihe being of a poetic
image. In this reverberation, the poet1c 1magc w1ll have a sonority of being. The poet
speaks on the threshold of being."
Martn Heidegger, ' Building Dwelhng Thmkmg.' m l'oerry. Language, fhoughr, trans.
Albert Hof\tadter (New York: H arper and Row, 1971 ). p. 145.
' Quoted in Bachelard, I he Poe11cs ofSpace, op. c/1 .. p . 1OO.
'' Bachclard. Ihe l'oerics of Space, op. cit . p. 239: "what calm thcre is in the word
round. How peacefu lly it makes one\ mouth. hp'> and the bemg of hreath become
round .... IJas Dasein ist rurul. Bemg 1s round."
111 Marun Heidegger, 'The Th111g,' 111 Poetry, Language, fhought, pp. 177-78.
1 /bu/., p. 166.
' And again: "lndividuab. like nallom. must havc sul!ablc broad and natural bound-
arics, cvcn a comiderable neutral ground, bctwccn thcm. I havc found it a singular
luxury total k across the pond toa companion on thc oppositc s1de." ( 141 )
l.l E:mmanuel Levinas, Totality (1/l(/ Jnfinit\' (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1969).
1" Maurice Mcrleau-Ponty, l'henomenology of l'erceprion, trans. Colin Smith; rev.
trans. Forrcst Williams (London: Routledgc and Kcgan Paul, 1962). p. 286.
1< Cf. A. F. Lingis. 'On the Essen ce of Tcchniquc,' in 1/eidegger and rhe Quest for
lruth, cd. Manfrcd S. Frings (Ch1cago: Quadranglc Book\, 1968), p. 136: "We should
not say that the discourse. properly speaking. manifcsts the alterity of the Other: there
is dscourse only when there is a difference. a distance. bctween the Other of whom I
\peak. who 1s manifest, who is pre~ent. and the Othcr to whom 1 speak and who is, as it
wcrc. altcrity pure, and as the trace of an irrcmcdmhic ah~ence. Th1s di~tance, which is
ncver suppressed, which each utterancc reaffirm\ and traverses, 1s the originating
THOREAU'S WAL/Jf:N 235
distancc. thc interval of discours: as such. The ~ Jt er_ity of the Other is primordial, since
0
manifcstauon - no 1llum111a11on nor themauzat10n revcals h1m. As soon as any
"11un11 nauon of thematization is said, the distance hetween thc Other of whom it is said
nd thc Othcr to whom it is said recurs. But without this distance the dis-course could
a ..
never commence.
lb For a scns111ve and truly insightful phenomcnology of thc relation hetween winter
and fricndsh1p. ~ce Michael Gelven, Wmter, fneml~lup, a/U/ Gwlt: The Sources of
St/f/1!({/ilr\ (New York: Harpe r and Row. 1972).
' Both Hmco and Baudelaire are quoted m Bachclard, Tite l'oetio of Space, pp.
38-.W. l.bcwhere, Ba<.helard quotes Anne Bahf (/Je Van Gogh et Seurat aux dessins
d'enfimt.\ ). "'Asking a child to draw his house ~ ~ askmg him to revcal the deepest dream
sheltcr he has found for his happiness. lf he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug,
protectcd house which is well built on dccply-rooted foundations .... it is warm
indo<>rs. and there is a fire burning. \uch a big firc, in fact, that it can be seen coming
out of thc ch1mney." (p. 72)
~~ Gas!On 13achclard, The Psychoanalym of Fire, tr an ~. AJan C. M. Ross (Boston:
Beacon Prcss. 1964 ). p. 7.
IY ro d ljVV.7WTf : Martn H eid egger, 'A ie thcia (lle raclitus, Fragment B 16),' in
Earlv Greek Thinking (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. Il 8. In Heraclitus, the
evcnt ol lighting is the World-Fire: "The fundamentally 111terrogative character of the
fragmcnt 111dicates that Heraclitus is contemplating the revealing-concealing lighting, the
world flrc. 111 lis scarccly perceptible reiation to tho\e who are en-lightened in accord
w1th thc1r CS\ence, and who the re fo re hearken to and belong to the lighting in an
excepllonal way." (p. I 20)
111 Bachclard, Th e Psychoanalys of Fire, op. cu .. p. I O.
: 1 Bachclard, The P.1ychoana/ysi~ of Fire, op. ca .. pp. I 1 and 12. respective! y.
11 Cavcll, /he Senses of .. Walden," op. c/1., p. I 08.
= Rogcr A\Sehneal', Posies incomplere~ (Pars: Dchresse. 1959). p. 38.
1
" In this respect, Thoreau cites Bartram's descriptio n of the Mucclasse Indians: "When
a town celebrates the busk, having previously provided themselves with new clo thes,
nevv pots, pans, and o the r household utensib a nd furnitu re, they collect all their worn
out dothcs and other despicable things, swccp and cleame their hou se~. squares, and
thc wholc town, of their filth , which with all thc rcmaining gra111 and other oid provi-
sions thcy cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire .... On the
fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, prod uces new fire in the
puhhc square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and
purc flame." (68)
O n this. Tho reau comments: "I have scarccly heard of a truer saerament, that is, as
thc dicuonary defines it, 'outwa rd and visible sign of an inward and spirituai grace,'
than this, and I have no d o ubt that they were originally inspire<.! directly fro m Heaven
todo thu\, though they ha ve no bibiical record of the revelation." (69)
h th1s not the ritual accorded to Vesta. and continued through the ages? And if the
sacre<.! fi re should go o ut, we ha ve always the sun with which to rekindle it.
1
' Cavcll. (he Senses of" Wa/den ... op. cit.. p. 44.
1
" lhid.. p . 1 1O.
I take the phrase from Bachela rd, Jite l'oeun ofSpace, op. cit., p. 183.
 MARLIES KRONEGGER

fROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS IN BAROQUE POETRY

Baroque poets, inspired by both the Bible and philosophers of classical

antiquity, believed not only in an ideal order animating earthly order,
but were obsessed by fear of chaos and the fact of mutability and
cosmic anarchy. With the rise of royal power and various religious
ideals, poets in the service of lhe King or Church could transfigure
and harmonize lhe elemenls' savage confronlations of strenglh as so
often depicted in Greek myth and lilerature. 1 Fire, water, earth, and air
were no longer conceived as world-masses in slruggle wilh one another,
but became sensible phenomena in artistic rearrangement, redistribu-
tion, and transfiguration by perceptible transmutalions. Yigarini and
Ruggieri, 2 in charge of fireworks at all celebrations and Jetes in France
and England, could stage magnificent fireworks. 3 After lhe peace
treaties ending the Thirty Years War ( 1648) and the Austrian succes-
sion quarrel ( 17 49) fireworks too k place internationally. Instead of
forming theories of the physical phenomenon of fire, poets and artists,
as we hope to illustrate in our investigation, could show lhat change and
metamorphoses can be derived from lhe nature of fire itself. Baroque
poels saw in fire an active, living force into which olher lhings could be
converled visibly, involving ceaseless flow, but marked by an inherenl
stability. The flame, though in perpetua! upward molion, remains more
or less conslant. The process does not end al lhe point where the flame
disappears, bul continues lhroughoul the world. lt is in lhis sense that
the royal funclions of Gustavus Adolphus or of Louis XIV assumed lhe
cosmic power lo transmute the elemenls, and impose order on the
universe.
The ooelics of fire depends on geographic, mylhical, biblical loca-
tions which Baroque poets transfigured in marvelous visions. Concrete
places wilh savage volcanoes, isolated islands, and sacred rituals gave
them voice in an aeslhetically significant way.
Well acquainted with Greek geography and Greek myth, Baroque
poets and artists often refer to four locations: the savage island of
Lemnos, the purifying fires of Mt. Oeta near Euboea, and the destruc-
tive fires of Troy and Mt. Etna. Happenings in the mythological pasl
259
A- T. Tynueniecka (ed.), Analecta lfuHerliana, Vol XXIII, 259-279.
1988 by Kluwer Academic Publrshers.
260 MARLIES KRONEGGER
related to Lemnos, Oeta, Troy, and Etna made poets and artists believe
that fire, water, air, and earth were powers whose mutual relationships
were considered to be confrontations of strength. These powers are not
abstractions; an element's cratos is never to be separated from the
space it occupies.
The wild and savage landscape of Lemnos with its volcanic anct
tellurian fires is the setting for the crime of Lemnian women who,
according to Aeschylus 4 and Sophocles 5 extinguished their cooking
fires for nine days. They refused to cook, and without a hearth, without
a fire that cooks and heats, always located in the center of the house,
families could not gather. Their alienation set them and their families
apart from civilized life. In order to restore bonds with civilization, a
sacred fire is taken from Delos to Lemnos in the annual festival, the
Pyrophoreia or carrying of fire. Lemnian altars, fireless for nine days,
are rekindled in sacrificial rites in order to renew the bonds between
men and gods.
Lemnos, also called Aithalea, the Blazing lsle, is the site of
Hephaistias, its major city. Here, not only Hephaestus, the fire god,
landed when Zeus hurled him from Olympus, but also Prometheus,
Orion, and Philoctetes. Here Prometheus brought to men the fire which
he stole from the gods." Here Hephaestus and Philoctetes lived in exile
(Hephaestus for nine years, Philoctetes for ten), and acquired magical
powers in coping with the element of fire: with the fire that melts
metals, the fire of the sun, and the fiery fire of hydra. As the magical
smith or worker of metals, Hephaestus wrought the wondrous armor of
Achilles. As a healer of any wound, he could restare blind Orion's
eyesight by taking him to the sun; and he was renowned for curing any
bite of the fiery snake hydra. Hephaestus for sorne time is the outcast
from divine and human sympathy, until finally he was like Philoctetes
redeemed in hecoming the magic healer, and harmonizer in violent
confrontations. 7
Philoctetes, briefly mentioned by Homer in the second book of the
/liad, had sailed from Greece in command of seven ships. Wounded by
the deadly water snake hydra, his wound smells, and makes him cry in
agony. Therefore, his comrades abandoned him in Lemnos. Sophocles,
in Philocretes, adds the tragic fact that Philoctetes had unconsciously
stumbled into the precinct or shrine of God. Here the snake, symbol of
God's power, bit him in the foot and left him crippled. He thus became
burdened with the mark of God's resentment without any explanation.
FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 261
Ten years later the gods intervened to rescue him as mysteriously as
they had injured him.
Recall also the twelfth book of Fnelon's Tlmachus ( 1699), where
Philoctetes relates his fortunes to Tlmachus. Fnelon varies the earlier
part of the legend, following Vergil's version in the Aeneid, when the
Greek chieftain who fought against Troy, settled in ltaly where he
founded Petelia (lll, 522). For almost all the part of the story which
passes in Lemnos, Fnelon has closely followed the play of Sophocles.
In Germany, Winckelmann ( 1717-1769) compares Laocoon's suf-
fering to the subdued pain of the Philoctetes of Sophocles. Lessing, in
his Laocoon ( 1766), however, admires the Sophocles version in which
Philoctetes shrieks aloud, not ashamed to express his bodily pain.
While the volcanic fires of Lemnos denote the savagery within man,
his destructive and beast-like passions that threaten civilization (or the
gods' resentment for Hephaestus and Philoctetes), fire also has a
purifying function when used in sacred rituals orina magic way.
The saving and purifying power of fire is mostly associated with Mt.
Oeta in the region of Malis, just opposite the promontory of Euboea.
Here, on top of Mt. Oeta, so sacred to Zeus, Heracles has constrained
his son Hyllus to aid in preparing the funeral-piJe, but could not prevail
upon him to kindle it. Philoctetes, son of the king of Malis, performed
the kindling of the funeral-piJe, and Heracles, in token of gratitude,
bequeathed to Philoctetes the bow and arrows which he himself had
received from Apollo. 8 Heracles' death by fire takes him back to Mt.
Olympus. As the llames arose on the mountain, they were answered
from heaven by the blaze of lightning and the roll of thunder; and by
that sign his companions knew that the great warrior had been
welcomed to the home of his immortal father. While Heracles' purifying
pyre is associated with the hero's return to his homeland and its
divinities, Ovid sees in the use of fire a political means used by Jupiter
to manipulate the people of Oeta, assuring them that only the female
portion that Heracles owes to his mother would burn, while the more
valuable one, the maJe portion, would be preserved for eternityY
All these events denote either the savagery within man that threatens
civilization, as exemplified by the Lemnian women, or the forces
beyond man that transcend it, as exemplified by Hephaestus, Philoctetes,
and Heracles. The events at Troy in Homer's Iliad renew the tension
between civilization and savagery. Wherever fire occurs in connection
with heroes who are dashing like fire or whose armor is flashing, it
262 MARLIES KRONEGGER
emphasizes their inspired energy of heroic passion and death. Lurid
flames seem to start from every portion of the epic poem. T he eyes of
Agamemnon in the quarrel glare like fire, perhaps foreshadowing his
hope to see the flames of burning Troy. With fire Achilles identifies
death, sacrifice, and the fall of Troy, and Priam sees him in the likeness
of a star, racing back toward Troy, consuming the Trojan plain itself. lt
foretells the tire which will destroy Hector and the city. Thus in myth,
the diverse views of tire concealed an ambiguity which allowed the
spheres of humans and gods to become confused.
In both the dramatic and poetic Baroque versions of Greek myth, the
nature of fire, set by humans and gods, remains ambiguous. While tires
set by nature, men, and gods bring destruction, there is redemption
through sacrifice, and glorification of the ruler through the feux-
d'artifice.
In Racine's Andromaque, the images of fire, flame, and blood reflect
both the destructive and the constructive decisions of Andromaque and
Pyrrhus whose incendiary emotions consume them in their blaze. The
repetition of such images as torch, fire, sun, and flame imply both
destruction and purification.
In Rotrou's Hercule mourant,w dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, an
adaptation of Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus, the spectator relives the
transfiguration of Hercules, when the woods of Mt. Oeta burst into
flame~ in a thunderstorm, and Hercules descends from heaven on a
cloud. Philoctetes witnesses Hercules' death and transfiguration in
which the whole of nature becomes a flaming fire.
In Routrou's and Racine's lphignie we see the fires burning on the
altar before which Eriphile-Iphignie has sacrificed herself. The reader's
visual sePse is irritated by such images as fire and flame, and calmed by
a vision of a blue expanse of water. In Racine's lphignie, Achille has
caught the fire that the gods have set in Agamemnon: "Achille ... veut
dans Troie embrase allumer le flambeau," 11 and when the pyre bursts
into flames, all nature participates, the heavens open with the lightning's
flash; when Diana descends to the pyre in a cloud, the spectator's sense
of horror is deepened by the deafening sound of thunder, and the
blinding effect of smoke, carrying to heaven both incense and vows,
FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 263
. ing through the soaring flames. Only at the very end, does the tire of
~~~e become a regenerative force. Horror prevails in Racine's Phedre,
vhen Hippolyte is confronted with an aquatic monster which is as
~uch a creature of fire as of water, half bull, half dragon. Phedre's
poisoned love resembles the monster. Her passion is described as
pamme noire; the flame that should bring light and life to Phedre, in
reality brings darkness and death. Negative in connotation, man-made
fires in Racinian tragedy are artificial and sacrilegious, destroying both
altar and hearth; they dismember both divine and human order. With
Phedre, sacrifice does not mean to render sacred. The flame that should
bring hcr life and light, inspired by Venus, makes her a ravager at one
with her flame. Like Andromache, Phedre has been victim of a nuit
enj7amme and her j7amme noire. In Racine's world picture, the dual
views of divine and natural physis, and the resulting distinction made
between severa! levels of reality, do not yet emphasize and clarify the
separation between nature, gods, and men which is the prior condition
for rational thought.
With Baroque poets all elements are in constant metamorphoses.
This is clcarly realized in the mythical bestiary, with such examples as
the phoenix and the vulture. The image of the burning bird appears in
the legendary phoenix. Ovid describes it as "one living thing ... which
reproduces and regenerates itself, without any outside aid." 12 It is the
mythical bird which is consumed by fire, and then rises rebom from the
ashes. It provided a particularly fascinating image for the Baroque
imagination. It is at the same time both maJe and female, bom of itself
and with each rebirth appears more radiant: "Son corps tant enflamm,
Puis en cendres consum, Retourne en vive smence." 13 Sometimes it is
associated with the cycle of physical desire in passion and in the love
relationships. The poet wishes to be reborn, but realizes that his rebirth
would be an unhappy one:
O Phnix, pour renaitre on te dit bien heureux,
moi dsastr si mort je prenais novelle ame,
Qui naltre ne pourrai que toujours malheureux. 14
Joachim Bernier de la Brousse correlates the details of the phoenix tale
which involves the building of its own funeral pyre upon a mountain or
altar. Here the lover constructs his pyre upon "les monts de ton sein" 15
and his love will be fuel enough for the flames. His desire will be
burned and he will be reborn anew. Often, the phoenix is the image of
264 MARLIES KRONEGGER
life that has triumphed over death and is therefore associated with
Christ's resurrection. 16
Sometimes, the phoenix is contrasted with Prometheus with whom
the poet Amadin Jamyn identifies as his love devours him in the same
way as the vulture which gnaws the liver of Prometheus. Often love
consumes the poet in the same way fire would burn the mythical bird
Phoenix to ashes, yet with no rebirth in accordance with the orthodox
Christian viewpoint that physical love may be the cause of spiritual
death. The poet Amadis Jamyn feels as vulnerable as Prometheus. The
sin for which Prometheus paid so heavily did not benefit mankind and
the need for love remained unfulfilled, and the poet agonizes:
La flamme du Phnix vient du flambeau des Cieux
Et la mienne s'embrase au soleil de vo~ yeux
Ou je commets larcin comme fit Promethe,
Ainsi je suis pun d'un mal continuel,
Car Amour quise change en un vautour cruel
Me dchire toujours d'une main indompte. 17
With both Le Moynes L 'Anwur Divin, "Feu sans matiere et sans
fume" 1x and Crashaw's The Flaming Heart, there is the appearance
of the Judeo-Christian deity in fire, surrounded by angels of fire
(seraphim) and light (cherubim). 1 ~ Both poets associate fire with a
spiritual and angelic world midway between the human and the divine.
While with Baroque poets Prometheus assumes the Titanic and
tragic stature which is now so familiar to the reader of Goethe and
Shelley and to the listener of Scriabin, the mythical bird Phoenix stands
for the burning crown of thorns. This burning crown of thorns is
represented in various forms. Gongora, in Soledad Primera, speaks of
goal herds who held Vulcan crowned, when they sat in a circle around
the fire and the glitter of light on the circle of their faces became like a
crown on the fire:
Lleg pues el mancebo, y saludado,
sin ambicin, sin pompa de palabras,
de los conducidores fu de cabras,
que a Vulcano tenan coronado. 20
With San Juan de la Cruz and Crashaw, the burning crown of thorns
is analogous with the saint's halo, when a human life was sacrificed for
divine love in ecstasy.
FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 265
With Crashaw's The F/aming Heart upon the book and picture of the
Seraphical Saint Teresa the saint's ecstasy becomes the "triumphant
name" of "fireworks," 21 while with San Juan de la Cruz, his yearning for
God, absent from this world, makes him accept death, burning for
eternal Life:
Vivo sin vivir en mi,
Y de tal manera espero,
Que muero porque no muero. 22
Baroque poets, such as Crashaw, Southwell, Kuhlmann, or Du
Sartas. inspired by Heraclitus, saw fire as the elemental activator of two
principies, love uniting, and strife sundering. Their picture of primeva]
chaos awaits the ordering fire of God's love. They simultaneously
understand the separation of fire from water, as a natural fact in the
visible world and as a divine birth at the beginning of time. For them,
the whole of reality is like an ever-flowing stream, and the substance of
things is in constan! change. Just as in the macrocosm fire is identified
with the one wisdom, so in the microcosm the fire that animates the
poet i~ ec~tasy, a unification of awareness and heightened consciousness
of past, present, and future. In moments of illumination, the poet
becomes himself an ever-living star.
Ne~ a~tronomical theories, notably those of Copernicus, bring forth
landscapes conceived on a cosmological scale, such as Saint-Amant's
Le Contemplateur and Di Pers' Terremoto.
Saint Amant, in Le Contemplateur, contrasts water and fire, with fire
triumphing over the sea by burning it as the painter Turner visualizes
this reversa] of the power of elements in his paintings when fire
destroys water. The dark Baroque landscape is lit by terrific flashes of
lightning. Heaven, in the sense of sky, containing the fiery bodies of
sun, moon, and stars, is usually identified with the heaven of the
apocalyptic world as in Di Pers:
t linguaggio del Ciel che ne riprende
il turbo, il tuono, il fulmine, il baleno;
or parla anco la terra in note orrende,
perch l'uom, ch'esser vuol tutto terreno,
n del cielo il parlar straniero intende,
il parlar della terra intenda almeno.B
In this poem, Di Pers reflects on the nature of life itself. Nature's circle
266 MARLIES KRONEGGER
of birth, procreation, and death continues regardless of the individual'.
fate and the rise and fall of civilization. So the destiny of man is seen a:
bound to nature. The poem is a philosophical reflection on the enigma
of being and existence, of earthbound man not listening to the language
of heaven. The earthquake with thunder and lightning is sent frorn
heaven to men and is presented as a punishment because man wished
to be independent separating their lives from divine nature.
Baroque poets embrace all that is primal, wild, inhospitable in a
world of nature, terrifyingly grand and supremely indifferent to the
conditions of human life and survival. The question arises, what is man
in the face of implacable forces? For Giovan Leone Sempronio, Luis de
Sandoval y Zapata, Drelincourt, Maynard, Le Moyne, man seems to
be fragile and impotent, barely clinging to his existence under constant
threat of catastrophe through fire and natural disaster, such as plague,
war, and earthquakes.
Sempronio asks himself, Quid est horno? Man is a lightning bolt,
which burns and cuts the air; the smoke, which rises in the sky and
fades; in short, he is impermanence:
E fior, che nell'april nasce e languisce;
e balen, che nell'aria arde e trapassa;
efumo, che nel ciel s'alza e svanisce. ~ 4 Une clart meurtriere; une flame sanglante;
For the Mexican poet Zapata, there is hope of breaking with that which
we have lived and turning into what we have loved.
En poco mar de luz ve obscuras ruinas,
Nave que desplegaste vivas velas;
la ms fnebre noche que recelas
se enciende entre la luz, que te avecinas.
Dichosamente entre sus lumbres arde:
porque al dejar de ser lo que vivias,
te empezaste a volver en lo que amabas.~ 5
Baroque poets went so far as to imagine catastrophes caused by
unleashed natural forces. With them the forces of nature are often out
of control and fire may easily destroy our fragile civilization. Thomas
de Viau depicts such a catastrophe:
FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 267
J'entends craqueter le tonnerre,
Un esprit se presente a moy,
J'oy Charon qui m'apelle a soy,
Je voy le centre de la terre.
Ce ruisseau remonte en sa source,
Un boeuf gravit sur un clocher,
Le sang coule de ce rocher,
Un aspic s'accouple d'une ourse.
Sur le haut d'une vieille tour
Un serpent deschire un vautour,
Le feu brusle dedans la glace,
Le soleil est devenu noir .. .U
As in a Rubens painting, there is a real macrocosm in which all the
elements are mingled. The elements have hardly cooled down around
an ideal center. Fire or heat becomes a simple metonym for war in both
French and German poetry. For Le Moyne, not only do heroes behave
like fire, but fire itself behaves like humans:
Que! spectacle de voir un flambeau quise plaint;
Un torche qui crie; un homme qui s'teint;
Un mort qui fait du jour; un feu quise lamente;
Et ne rougit pas tant de sa propre couleur,
Que d'un sang tranger qui nourrit sa chaleur.
La se trouvent encor ces mortiers a torture,
Ou les tourmens se font par art et par mesure. 27
Johann Klaj's Friedensgedichte are dedicated to Gustavus Adolphus
whose Swedish army, in Protestan! solidarity with Denmark and
Luthcran Germany had advanced as in a holy war against Catholic
Imperial ambitions, defended by Wallenstein. The fire of war is
compared to Mt. Etna, when a local German conflict inevitably turned
into a European War. Therefore, Klaj dedicates his Friedensgedichte to
Gustavus Adolphus, and addresses the "Geburtstag des Friedens" to his
opponent, the Holy Roman Emperor, pointing to the fact that fire has
destroyed fifty percent of German territory, and that once prosperous
towns are now charred collections of roofless houses where pestilence
rages:
268 MARLIES KRONEGGER
Ein Etna hat also gehitzet und gebrant
als von der Kriegeslglut das edle Teutsche Land
nun in die dreissig Jahr ...
Die Sidte stehn in Furcht/die Dorfer in den Flammen
... Das Teutsche Kriegesfeuer
hat zehnmal mehr gebrennl/mit wildem Ungeheuer
entzndet alle Welt/ unschwesterlich gehaust/
dass einem/der es sagt und der es horet/graust ...
Ach! Muuer Teutschland rufft: Ich bin im Brand versuncken/
ist niemand der mich trg auss Schwefelblauen Funcken? 2R
The prophetic vision of the inspired poet is placed under the sign of
the goddess Mnenosyne, Memory, the mother of the Muses. She gives
the poet, like the diviner, the privilege of beholding unchangeable and
permanent reality; she brings him into contact with the primeva!.
Baroque poets were fascinated with rainbows, an elusive vision born of
water and light. Real, but not quite tangible, rainbows bridge the worlds
of reality and illusion. They can neither be possessed nor captured ; yet
are a means of recreating cosmic order in detachment from the natural
realistic look at stars and fish . Von Spee, in Lob Gottes im Luftraum, is
fascinated by the rainbow after having been terrorized by flying fla mes
(thunder and lightning).
La Ceppede in "Le Vieux Are Bigarre" combines the rainbow, the
sign of the end of the deluge with the hope of Christian salvation.
The poet can recreate the original chaos at will: all elements are in
metamorphosis in Du Bois Hus' Nuict des Nuicts:
Les feux du ciel sans peur nagent dedans lamer,
Et les poissons sans crainte
Glissent parmy ces feux qui semblent les aimer.
Dans le fond de ce grand miroir
a
La nature se plaist voir
L'onde et la flamme si voisines,
Et les astres tombes en ces pals nouveaux,
Salamandres marines,
a
Se baignent plaisir dans le giron des eaux. 29
In a poem by Gryphius, "An Gou den Heiligen Geist", God is called
"fire of true love". 30
FROM FJRE TO FIREWORKS 269
Similarly, Le Moyne, in L 'Amour Divin prays for the fire of the
Lord to come. He can hope for no salvation arising from his own
actions. He realizes, however that the whole body of earth is com-
bustible by the fire of God's love; he implores release from the terrible
emptiness of human life and time in the hope that one day God's love
will burn him and others. The fire of the Lord could relieve his
sufferings.
Cosmic order with Baroque poets has as its center not the earth, but
fire. This central fire is not to be identified with the sun. Round this fire
revolve nine spheres. To Le Moyne it opens a Vesuvius of love, "un
Vsuve d'amour": The center of nature, the rubes and diamonds
hidden in the Vesuvius of love, is eventually united lo its circumference
in God. Hence there is a close association between the purifying of the
human soul and the transmuting of earth lo diamonds and rubes of
which heavenly bodies are made. As the constellations display their
pulsating, incandescent spheres against the dark curtain of the night,
they seem to invoke a vibrant response from earth in the flamboyant
heavenward movement of
mille nammes nouvelles. Tous les coeurs touchcz de ces feux se releverent avec eux ...
firent par la chaleur de laquelle ils brili.:rcnt, D'un Calvaire de mort, un Vesuvc
d'amour. 11
The luminous stars are shining emblems of eterna! continuity of the
universe and of human love. Often the cosmic order harmonizes in the
unity of sun, light, and fire. The Polish poet Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
addresscs himself to John the Baptist who sacrificed himself to his faith
and whose fate will always illuminate mankind:
Zas kiedy zarza ustepuje s1orcu,
Krwawym szkarfatem rudzi si~ przy koricu,
Ty, kiedy s1orce nowe swiat szeroki
Oswieca, krwie twej wylewasz potoki.32
At times, spiritual elevation is possible in the poet's conquering of
any antagonistic force on his climb to a coelum empyraeum, which
signifies heavenly fire, light, and the notion of God as light. For Labadie
a
in "Eivation gnrale d'Esprit Dieux, en vue de son unit di vine," the
strife of opposite values brings auunement. Wisdom is not a knowledge
of many things but the perception of the underlying unity of varying
opposites. The truth Labadie proclaimed was that the world is at once
270 MARLIES KRONEGGER
one and many, and that it is just the opposite tension of the opposites
that constitutes the unity of the one.
The poet regards the world as an ever-living fire and understands
how it is always becoming all things, while all things are always
returning to it:
Source de multitude! Adorable unit ...
a
Tout estre autre que toi se change tout moment
Acqurant ou perdant des qualits contraires ... )1
The whole of reality is like an ever tlowing stream. The need for love
here, combines with the search for eterna] divine love and the desire of
the poet to himself become divine too, burning in God's fire. The idea
of the infinite interpretation of natural and divine radiance concludes
the poem.
Fais queje ne sois plus en moi si divis,
Qu'estant un avec toi,je sois divinis. 14
By assuming a godlike viewpoint toward the world of nature and
human existence, Baroque poets appropriate to themselves a measure
of divinity, thus raising the artist to the leve! of philosopher, seer, or
even priest, one who has direct inspirational access to higher truths and
values, and the power to interpret them to ordinary mortals.
Now Jet us turn from the magic power of poets to the divine power
of the king who knows how to control and recreate al! thc elements in
the orchestration of all the arts and politics. Popes, kings, statesmen
have always wished to offer major celebrations of ritual, coronations,
peacc treaties, etc. to the public. Fireworks had long before the
invention of gunpowder involved the people in the cult of the pope,
king, or statesman. We shall focus on celebrations in both Germany and
France.
The fireworks in celebration of the end of the Thirty Ycars War are
best depicted in Johann Klaj's Friedensgedichte. Klaj, a Lutheran pastor,
evokes the peace treaties which were signed in Nrnberg after the
Peace of Westphalia in the years 1649- 50. These peace treaties
granted the three hundred and fifty heterogenous states of the Empire
complete territorial sovereignty under the authority of the Emperor and
gave freedom to the reformed churches throughout the Empire by
officially recognizing Calvinism as well as Lutheranism. Klaj's "Castell
des Unfriedens" is illustrated with an engraving by Johann Mller,
f-ROM HRE TO FIREWORKS 271
offering with factual details and thoroughness, a panoramic view of
fireworks at the "Schiessplatz of St. Johannis" in Nrnberg on June 16,
650. We see he re a fort and a castle symbolizing war and peace. The
fort is used for firing shells in spiral tlight, and rockets which leave
rathcr straight lines as tails. A turning time face turns over in the air.
Then, Klaj turns to a celebration of peace in a Bildgedicht, arranging
his verse in the form of a monument to peace, the fire of war is
replaced by the light of the sun, the moon, the stars.
Accomplishing with language what music and engraving were trying
10 cxpress in pure sound and lines, the poet creates a miniature drama:
At a banquet, Eris, who had not been invited, rolled the golden apple
of discord at the guests. We know that this apple was the provocative
cause of the Trojan War. Concordia and Astre grasp Eris' snake-like
hair and throw the Goddess of Discord into the eterna] tlames of
Pluto's empire. Then, in celebration of peace, both Mars and Cupid ask
Vulcan to create fircworks to be lit by Gustavus Adolphus.
Der schone Fried stund schon, in solchcn Freudentlammen/
damit nun allc Lust und Freude kam zusammen/
hat der Fried ein Racquet von seiner Hand gesandt/
der Zwitracht Mord/ Castell zu setzen in den Brand ...
Die Flammen wehren sich und flammen Himmelan/
als wollten sie nicht seyn den Flammen unterthan. 35
Finally, the last of a four part chorale, crosses the Friedenschrift (or is
it rathcr an oratorio?) with David's Orpheus, not only reconciling man,
nature, and God, but on the hopeful note that actually, Gustavus
Adolphus' premature death on 6 November J 632, sixteen years before
the cnd of the war, was not a disaster for the Protestants, but that his
life and fate will henceforth symbolize Redemption.
With "Castell des Unfriedens," painting and music flow naturally into
one another. Klaj's ode is superior to the cngraving: his mode of
conception is lyrical, visual, and plastic. His words and the engraving,
recreatc rhythm and sound effccts which are imitative of music. In
"Castell des Unfriedens," the confusion of the arts has arrived at a
complete synthesis of drama, engraving, music, and the art of fireworks,
combining elements of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry with musical and
painterly effects, rccreating even more beautiful fireworks with his
rhythmical and colorfullanguage.
The rhythm of his odes move from thesis, to antithesis, to synthesis:
272 MARLIES KRONEGGER
"Satz, Gegensatz, Nachklang." To Klaj, the strife of opposites, peace
and war, war and peace, is really an attunement. Peace is the perceptio n
of the underlying unity of the warring opposites. It is the tension of
opposites which constitutes the unity of eterna! life for Gustavus
Adolphus, of peace and harmony for the whole cosmos.
Klaj conceives of space as a continuous recession, toward infinity,
both horizontally and vertically. In "Castell des Unfriedens," visible
space ends in fireworks, inducing the spectator to conceive of space as
continuing into infinity. With fireworks the two directions of the
recession, horizontal and vertical, are fused into one. The total effect is
one of space without boundaries in any direction. Spatial recession is
thought of as occurring in repeated rockets.
Not only Germans enjoyed victory celebrations with feux d'artifice,
and enticing oratory, music, and poetry. With Mazarin and Louis XIV,
Versailles and Pars became the center of divine radiance - the heart
of France, Europe, and the un verse.
With them, the royal function and the cosmic order were associated
with one another. 1t is the king who gives divine birth to cosmic arder.
Every part of Versailles and of Pars had to be organized symmetrically
in relation to this center, the Sun King whose cratos of domination had
to always be explicit. Even natural order and atmospheric phenomena
(rain, winds, storms, fountains, the song of birds, waterfalls, and
fireworks) became dependen! on the function of the king. French
classical poets offer many Iyrical passages on the splendor of firewo rks
on the Seine, at Vaux-le-Vicomte, and at Versailles among other places.
Artificial fireworks were claimed to be more splendant than natural
ones and proved that fire can be controlled, possessed, and uscd at will.
Recall that fireworks in France were dominated by the tradition and
tcchniques of Italians who displayed them at observances of saints' days
and religious festivals. Following the Italian examples of temples or
machines, established for fireworks, the French embellished their
buildings with allegorical figures, flowers, Iamps, and pictures fo r
illumination from behind. From now on, not Gods, but the King could
impose order on the elements in royal rituals. Du Bois Hus, in La Nuit
des Nuicts (Pars, 1641) describes fireworks for the birth of the
Dauphin which was celebrated in severa) cities of France - it gave the
people a chance to indulge in fireworks that surpassed the splendors of
nature and brought more happiness than starlit skies.
FROM FIRI:. TO FIREWORKS 273
... Un escadron d'astres nouveaux
Faits d'artificieux flambeaux
Consomme les nuages sombres,
Tous les jours et les nuicts sont galement clairs,
Et pour bruler les ombres
Les estoiles de l'art allument tous les airs.
Les jours les plus dlicieux
Que les matins tirent des yeux
De tant de riantes aurores
N'ont point de beaux rayons qui ne paraissent noirs,
Au prix des mtores
Que I'art fait clater sur la face des soirs ... 3
In 1660 the triumphant entry of Louis XIV into Pars, accompanied by
his bride, Maria Theresa, was the occasion of an elaborate display in
the Italian manner, fired on the Seine opposite the Louvre. Corneille's
Dorante of Le Menteur refers to the enchanting fireworks after dinner
on a boat accompanied by four different orchestras:
Apres qu'on eut mang, mille et mille fuses,
S'lancant vers les cieux, ou droites ou croises,
Firent un nouveau jour d'ou tant de serpenteaux
D'un dluge de flamme attaquerent les eaux,
Qu'on crut que, pour leur faire une plus rude guerre,
Tout I'lment du feu tomboit du ciel en terre.
Apres ce passe-temps on dansa jusqu 'au jour,
Dont le solei jaloux avanca le retour;
S'il eut pris notre avis, sa Iumiere importune
N'eut pas troubl sitt ma petite fortune;
Mais n'tant pas d'humeur asuivre nos dsirs,
11 s para la troupe, et finit nos plaisirs. ]?
La Fontaine, in "Fete de Vaux," after a festive dinner for the illustrious
guest Louis XrY on August 17, 1661 reserves the triumph of entertain-
ment for the beginning of the presentation of Moliere's Les Fcheux in
the grotto of the garden with both fountains and the castle in the
background of the stage: the eyes of the spectator were dazzled with the
intensity of the Iight. Fountains in their brilliant hues transformed
274 MARLI ES KRONEGGER
themselves into torches, shells, tourbillons, pearls; their fireworks were
intended to outdo those of heaven: suns, stars, golden streamers, and
fiery serpents were chasing each other through the air. Even for La
Fontaine language fails to convey a vivid idea of the grand appearance
of la Bjart, Moliere's favorite actress, o n a rock transmuted into a
shell , then a pearl, later a coral with shifting lights, and fading by
degrees from sight, lost in the distance. The effect of the rockets - their
brilliancy, force, and the remarkable height they rose to, and then their
burst into different colored lights and graceful fall dazzled the onlookers;
the glare thrown at the castle of Vaux-le-Yicomte was more beautiful
than the brilliancy of the noon-day sun. Recreated by both Torelli and
Le Brun:
Deux enchanteurs pleins de savoir
Firent tant par leur imposture,
Qu'on crut qu'ils avaient le pouvoir
a
De commander la nature:
L'un de ces enchanteurs est le sieur To relli,
Magicien expert, et faiseur de miracls;
Et l'autre c'est Le Brun, par qui Vaux embelli
Prsente aux regardants mille rares spectacles ...
De feuillages touffus la scene toit pare,
Et de cent flambeaux claire:
Le Ciel en fut jaloux. Enfin figure-toi
Que, lorsqu'on eut tir les toiles,
a
Tout combattit Yaux pour le plaisir du roi:
La musique, les eaux, les lustres, les toiles.
Les dcorations furent magnifiques; et cela ne se
passa pas sans machines.
On vit des roes s'ouvrir, des termes se mouvoir,
Et sur son pidestal tourner mainte figure ...
. . . D'abord aux yeux de l'assemble
Parut un rocher si bien fait
Qu'on le crut roche r en effet;
Mais insensiblement se changeant en coquille,
11 en sortit une nymphe gen tille
a
Qui ressembloit la Bjart .. _Jx
FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 275
Recall how Fouquet invited 6000 people to Yaux-le-Vicomte and
entertained them with ballets and fireworks, while the young Louis XIV
was selling o ff his own belongings to help finance his armies. As we
know, Fouquet was put into jail, and the king from then on, dreamed of
what Versailles could become. He not only took material things from
Vaux (tapestries, paintings, orange treel) but Le Ntre, the landscape
expert; Le Yau, the architect; Le Brun, the painter; and also Vigarini
who had been responsible for the fire\\ orks. From then on, fireworks in
the gardens of Ye rsailles became an insutution. These aquatic fireworks
in thc Cana l and rockets bursting into many colors, honored the king.
In 1664 Yigarini provided the climactic scene of a festival entitled "The
Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle" to 11hich Louis XJV invited 600
guests fo r a three-day program of banquets, ballets, comedies by
Moliere, music by Lully. There was a phyrotechnical battle between
three sea monsters, an illumination of the palace of Enchantment by
fireworks, and the eruption in an upward flare of pyrotechnics of the
entire island.
11 semhlait que le ciel, la terre et l'eau fussent tous en feu, et que la destruction du
supcrhc palais d'Aicine, comme la libert des che\ahers qu'elle y retenait en prison, ne
se pt accomplir que par des prodiges et des nuraclcs. La hauteur et le nombre des
fuscc~ volantes, celles qui roulaient sur le rivage, et celles qui ressortaient de l'eau apres
s'y etrc cnfonces, faisaient un spectacle si grand et SI magnifique, que rien ne pouvait
m1eux tcrmincr les enchantements qu'un si beau feu d'artifice, lcquel ayant enfin cess
apr\ un hruit et une longueur extraordinaire~. b coups de boites qui l'avaient com-
mencc redoublerent encore.w
Their rockets in clusters like stars, in trees of all shapes, spreading
out like young stars in the making let the on-looker forget any religious
threat of "the deluge" or "the Day of the Last Judgment." The dazzling
splendor of fireworks and illuminations marked Louis XIY's victories;
aquatic fireworks in incessant and complicated display became more
and more dazzling; fountains and jets of fire threw up their blazing
cascades into the skies; the whole vault of heaven was scattered with
vivid fires and seemed to receive unto itselfinnumerable stars and suns .
Je voudrais bien t'crireen vers
Tous les artfices diver~
De ce fe u le plus beau du monde,
Et son combat avecque ronde,
Et le plaisir des assistants.

276 MARLIES KRONEGGER
Figure-toi qu'en meme temps
On vit partir mille fuses,
Que par des routes embrases
Se firent toutes dans les airs
Un chemin tout rempli d'clairs,
Chassant la nuit, brisant ses voiles.
As-tu vu tomber des toiles?
Te! estle sillon enflamm,
Ou le trait qui lors est form,
Parmi ce spectacle si rare,
Figure-toi le tintamarre,
Le fracas, etles sifflements,
Qu'on entendait a tous moments.
De ces colonnes embrases
11 renaissait d'autres fuses,
Ou d'autres formes de ptard,
Ou quelque autre effet de cet art:
Etl'on voyait rgner la guerre
Entre ces enfants du tonnerre.
L'un contre l'autre combauant,
Yoltigeant et pirouettant,
Faisait un bruit pouvantable,
C'est-a-dire un bruit agrable.
Figure-toi que les Echos
N'ont pas un moment de repos,
Et que le choeur des Nrides
S'enfuit sous ses grottes humides.
De ce bruit Neptune tonn
Eut craint de se voir dtrn,
Si le monarque de la France
N'eit craint de se voir dtrn,
Si le monarque de la France
N'eit rassure par sa prsence
Ce dieu des moites tribunaux,
Qui crut que les dieux infernaux
Yenaient donner des srnades
A quelques-unes des Nai'ades
Enfin, la peur l'avant quitt,
11 salua Sa Majest:
FROM FIRE TO F IREWORK S 277
Je n'en vis rien, mais il n'importe:
Le raconter de cette sorte
Est toujours bon;et quant a toi,
N e t'en fais pas un point de foi:10
We are at the beginning of a new era, when all the elementary forces of
Jife aspire to be redeemed by human genius. The Sun King assumed
cosmic power to order the elements. Did he not modulate into his own
crown all the elements of fire: those of Christ's burning crown of thorns
as the only Christian ruler and the saint's halo, which both made him
analogous to the sun?
On the trip north in 1680, one town after the other welcomed Louis
with Jeux d'artiflce. Figures of Apollo, the Sun, or Hercules were central
themcs, fighting the hydra monster with three heads (Luther, Calvin,
and Jansenius). On March 16, 1686 Sieur des Jardins created a bronze
statue of the king crowned with victory. The dedication of the statue on
March 16, 1686 was ce1ebrated with a Jeu d'artiflce at the Hte1 de
Ville that reprcsented Louis' victory over heresy, now a headless hydra.
From now on, fireworks were used in abundance in all victory ce1ebra-
tions. All C hristendom rejoiced with fireworks the defeat of the Turkish
Army in 1683, and fireworks were used more and more to involve the
people in the cult of the ruler, in order that they might more readily
submit to his exercise of power.
In c;um, both fire and fireworks have always been a key element in
harmonizing Western civi1ization, reaching their highest peak in the late
Baroque music drama of Handel's "Royal Firework Music", an appre-
ciation of the pathos and grandeur of a struggling peop1e and the glory
of the monarch.
Michigan State University
NOTI::S
1 A\ ..:arly as Hcsiod the royal function was \cen to he unahlc to control thc cosm1c
ordcr. Hes10d. Theogony. Translatcd by R. Lattimore (Ann Arbor: The Univer~ity of
Mtchtgan Press, 1959). pp. 14, 83-99.
~ (,actanc Ruggicri and Giu~eppc Sarti, A /)escription of the Machine for the Fire-
works (A detail of thc manncr in which they are to be cxhibited in St. James Park.
Thursday. April 27, 1749, on account of the General Pcacc s1gned at Aix La Chapellc,
Octob..:r7. 1748.)(London: 1749).
278 MARLIES KR ONEGGER FROM FIRE TO FIREWORKS 279

' Gcorge Plimpton, New York: Doubleday, 1984 and Alan St. H. Brock. A Histo . e Corneille. "Le Menteur," Oeuvres Comptetes (Pars: Seuil, 1963), Acte 1,
Fireworks (London: G. G. Harrap, 1949). 'Y of 11 perr
S 11 264-296.
" Acschylus, "Thc Libation Bcarers," Thc Oresteia, Translated by R. Lattimo ;;e~:an' de' La Fonta~ne, "~es Mer~eil!es de ~aux: De Yaux Nant~s, Let.tre M. de
a
(Chicago: Thc University o f Chicago Prcss, 1952), 11 . 6290634, p. 115. re Relation d une fete donnee a Vaux, Oettvre.s Dnme1 (Pans: Ple1ade, 1958).
' Sophocles. "Philoctctes: The Complete Play\ of Sophoc/es, (Toronto: Bcntam Books \1aucr()IX
. ~24 525
1967~ ' ff'J.ean Baptiste P. :vtoliere. "Les Plaisirs de l'fle l:.nchante. La Princesse d'flide."
' Giscllcs Mathieu-Castellani. "Promthc: f:ro.1 11aroque (Pars: Union Gnrale Oeurres Completes ~'ol 1 (Pars: Pk1ade, 1971 ). p. 186.
d'Edittons, 1979), pp. 276-279.
40 tbitl., p. 526.
' Roben Graves, The Greek Myths, Vols. 1 and 2 (Balttmore: Penguin Books, 1968).
' Hcracles, m 1-nelon's Tlmaque, whcn about to pemh o n Mount Oeta, wished that
the resting-place of his ashes sho uld remain unknown. Philoctctcs swore to keep this
~ccrct, yet did not. Thc arrow of He racles, tinged wlth thc hydra's venom wounded his
fect, and this was Philocte tes' punishment from the gods for treason.
" Ovid, Metamorphoses (New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 209.
141
Jcan Rotrou, Jfercule mourant (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1971 ), pp. 62-65.
11
Racine, /phigenia, Trans1ated by John Cairncross, (New York: 1983), p. 125.
11
Metamorphoses, op. cit., p. 345.
11
ros lJaroque, op. cit., p. 269.
IJ /bid., p. 270.
1
< !bid., p. 273.
10
M. E. Kronegger, The Growth of Self-Awarencss in Saint-Amant's Le Contem-
plateur: A Raroque Vision." Papers on French Seventeenth Century French Literature,
Vol. Vlll, Nos. 14, 2, (1981) and 'The Orchcstration of Human Existence and
Dcvotion in Baroque Poetry,' Papers on Seventeenth Cenwry Jrench Literawre, Vol.
XIV, No. 2, ( 1985).
" f:ros baroque, op. cit., p. 273.
" Jean Rousset, Anthologie de la poste baroque fram;aise Vol. 11 (Pars: Armand
Coln, 1968), p. 275.
1
" J. P. Hill andE. Caraccio1o-Trejo, Baroque Poetry (London: Dent, 1975) pp. 23 1-
233.
~H /bid., p. 18.
11
!bid., p. 232.
11
!bid., pp. 226-228.
21
/bid. , p. 20 l .
1
" Ha rold 13. Segel, The Baroque Poem (Ncw Yo rk: Dutton, 1974), p. 220.
1
' /bid., pp. 205-206.
1
' Anthologie de la posie baroque franraise, Vol. 11, op. cit., p. 72.
27 /bid. , p. 149.
2
K Johann Klaj , Friedensdichtungen und kleinere poetche Schriften (Nuremberg: W.
Endters, 1650), p. 1Ol.
1
" Anthologie de la posie baroque franraise, Vol. 11, op. cit., p. 17 3.
111
Raroque Poetry, op. cit., p. 236.
1
' Artthologie de la posie baroque franraise, Vol. 11, op. cit., p. 28 l .
11
The Baroque Poem, op. cit., p. 183.
11
A rttho/ogie de la posie baroque fra n(atse, Vol. 11, op. cit., p. 264.
14
/bid., p. 264.
1
' Friedensdichtungen und kleinere poetische Schriften, op. cit., pp. 163-164.
10
Artthologie de la posie baroque franraise, Vol. /, op. cit., p. 171.
 MI:.E:.NA ALI:.XANDER

"FALLING FIRE": THE NEGATIVITY OF

KNOWLEDGE IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BLAK E

Printing in thc infernal method. by corrosives which

in He ll are \alutary and medicmal, melting apparent
;urfaces away ... 1
William Blake

To mythologize consciousness is the poet's privilege. For the Romantic

poet such an act becomes primary to the task of poetry itself, for
consciousness, crucial to the creation of poetic knowledge is itself
raised to a fiction, one central to the poetic oeuvre. The status of
consciousness can however differ. It might be Wordsworth's almost
naturalistic presentation, the "sad perplexity" of thought that he
recreates, as close an approximation as possible to the quick com-
plexities of reflection that struggles for the truth.2 Or it might be
deliberately surreal, a Symbolist "dereglement" of all the senses, with
the poet, as Rimbaud had him, cast as Other, witness of a divine
madness- "C'est faux de dire: Je pense. On devait dire: On me pense."
As witness - "Car JE est un autre" - wrote Rimbaud - consciousness
becomes a careful recorder of knowledge the ordinary world cannot
easily harbor.J
Within the scope for English Romanticism, the poetry of William
Blake provides a clear case of a consciousness that is mythologized, its
meaning-making powers enshrined at the heart of a unique and at times
hermetic system of poetic knowledge. In this brief essay l shall try to lay
bare two strands of Blake's mythic consciousness: a fiery knowledge
essential to the fresh vision of poetry and an image of the flesh,
mate rnal, originary, a being rather than a knowing, its very stuff a
portion of the pre-given world.

11

The great cleansing at the world's end was for William Blake a function
of fire rather than water. He had a vision of flame licking at the world's
surface, eating away the corrupted skin of perception. "The fire, the
281
A-7: Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol XXIII, 28 1-288.
1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
282 ME ENA ALEXANDER
fire, is falling!" is the simple eleventh section of "A song of liberty"
which stands as the culminati?n of the visionary bricolage of poetry,
aphorism, prose, and surreal _1magery that co~poses The Marriage of
Heaven and He/l. Befare Emptre and all the evtls of human exploitation
can cease, befare the "lion and wolf shall cease" - the verb alludes
not to a quiescence, for that would be unimaginable given Blake's
tumultuous sense of spiritual power, but evokes rather a hitherto
unspelt world of bliss, a realm of desire luminous and fulfilled - the
fire must fall. (Biake, 43-4)
Falling fire, a Biblical and apocalyptic invocation scarcely to be
glimpsed in na ture yet part and paree! of earlier descriptions of cosmic
and political unrest, enters powerfully into Blake's vision of the end.4
Indeed the flames of destruction are essential to the psychic liberation
he envisaged. The citizen of London is exhorted to gaze upwards,
together with the Jew and the African:
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of L ondon, enlarge thy countenance; O Jew leave
counting gold! Rcturn to thy oil and winc; O African! black African! (go. wingcd
thought widcn his forehead.)
13. The ficry limb~. the flaming hair, ~hot like the sinking ~un into the western sea.
(Biake, 43)
The "Song of Liberty" which was completed befare England declared
war on revolutionary France in February 1793, presents a "son of fire,"
Ore, the young spirit of revolution who appears in more detail in
Blake's America, a Prophecy. In the "Song of Liberty" Ore is flu ng into
the abyss by the "gloomy old king" who presides over the restrictive old
arder. Y et Ore emerges out of the watery chaos. Rising from the east
like a sun god, his fire crowns the clouds. His emergence signals a new
world, a paradise that les beyond the curses of "the stony law." Yet the
revelation of paradise is not simple. lt requires a death , an erosion of
thegiven.
In Plate 14 of The Marriage of Heaven and He// Blake writes of the
"infernal method" required for poetic knowledge: the use of symbolic
corrosives to cut away the surfaces which are given to o rdinary percep-
tion. The metapho r for method is drawn from Blake's labors asan artist
and refers to the use of acids to cut away the surface of copper plate so
the image might be printed in its literal negativity. The "infernal
method" of poetry emerges as function of creative consciousness, one
that permits Blake to organize his unique visions. The method is
"FAL LI NG FIRE" 283
"infernal" - born of the inte rno, since we are, as it were in Hell and the
condition of flame is requisite to our knowledge. In paradise the
infernal method would scarcely be required. It is a means to poetic
knowledge based on o ur historicity; it emerges from the constitutive
power of point of view.
Indeed the perspectiva! eye is crucial to the "infernal method" which
both strips apart the layers of received knowledge and grants the self a
numinous vision, the one and the o the r co-existent in Blake's difficult,
visionary resol ution. "Every Eye Sees differently. As the Eye, Such the
Object," he writes in the "Ma rginalia On Reynolds." (Blake, 634) While
pointing o ut the primacy of perspectiva! knowleuge, the realm of the
supersensuous is no t cut off. A "world" as he so delicately put it in
"Auguries of lnnocence" might be glimpsed in a "grain of sand" or
"Heaven in a wild flower" (Biake, 48 1) On the same theme, the tone
turns more fiercely rhetorical as in the question: "Where is the
Existence out of Mind or Tho ught." (Biake, 555) Obviously nowhere
for Blake, for mental space is the only reality, all that is, residing there,
as eidetic possibility. But this question is merely the prelude in his
Vision of the Last Judgement to the introduction of a fire that can
consume all error - bad art as well as wrong-headed notions about the
real. The fi re, the harbinger of 'Truth or Eternity" is an apocalyptic
manifestation, yet at the very same time exists as a mental product,
intrinsic to the perceiving consciousness. lt is precisely this equation -
of the apocalyptic with what exists within and for consciousness - that
permits Blake to forge what 1 view as his governing phenomenological
imperative: the co-givenness of the destruction of the world and the
creation of the work of a rt. Work and world then stand in adversary
relation one to anot her with fire (it embodies both desire and the
genesis of the imagination) destroying the given world even as it begets
the work of art. "Erro r or Creation will be Burned Up" continued
Blake in A Vision of the Last Judgement "and then and not till then
Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Mo ment Men cease to
behold it." (Biake, 555)
The consumption of error in the flames of the imagination signals the
birth of the poem. The work crystallizes a truth that will be manifest to
all at the end of the world. Obviously the wo rld which is burnt up is not
the realm of direct sensuo us perception, which Blake celebrated. It was
revealed to the innocent eye that reigned in a Golden Age whose "Poets
animated all sensible o bjects with Gods or Geniuses." (Blake, 37) The
284 MEENA ALEXANDER
world that is destroyed is the realm of societal oppression and its
psychic counterpart - "the mind-forg'd manacles." It is a realm where
abstraction rules and innocence is victimized. By gripping the destruc-
tion of this world at its very core, the work comes into being, the
negativity of its genesis being crucial to the validity of its symbolic
knowledge.
111
William Blake's radical humanism involves him in a unique vision of
embodiment, one that inverts the assumptions of Cartesian dualism. In
The Marriage of Heaven and He// the voice of the Devil, after setting
forth the conventional wisdom that "Man has two real existing prin-
cipies Viz: a Body and a Soul" - with the soul, of course, allied to all
that is spirtually good, the body to the evils of flesh - continues
presenting then the contrary position, overturning thc previous state-
ment. "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a
portian of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in
this age." (Blake, 34) Thus energy and with it desire, become the life of
the body, the true source of imaginative power. Rcason, commonly
held to be the vehicle of soul, path of true knowledge, is now trans-
formed into merely the "bound or outward circumference of Energy" -
in other words its stopping place, its rim of exhaustion.
Yet the embodiment that is vital and powerful, with dcsire encoded
within it as the key to spiritual truth, is not sustained in a clear and
simple fashion in Blake's work. There are flaws, ruptures to his vision
of embodiment. A fierce battle breaks out at the very heart of his
radical vision of the bodily self. "To Tirzah," a poem added to later
versions of the Songs of lnnocence and Experience has a voice haunted
by both birth and mortality; they are welded together in the notion of
"Mortal Birth." To be born, in this version of Blake's thought is to be
betraycd into death with embodiment itself as a closure of spiritual life,
a crossing out of immortality. Maternity then takes on an aspect of
terrible cruelty with the speaker struggling against Tirzah, the "Mother
of my mortal part." The reader is witness to the poet's ontological
outrage. Blake's ongoing struggle with "things as they are," with the
oppression he saw so clearly both in society and within the human
psyche, has been displaced onto maternity, the source of human life,
the genesis of being-in-a-body.
.. FALLING FIRE" 285
, A symbolic misogyny is visible in the poet's rage at being born. The
f 11 into birth is also the fall into sexual distinction. "Generation" - the
~~ of sexual reproduction - and its accompanying cycle of birth and
~eath must be broken. In the design that accompanies the poem, Blake
inscribed a line from the Bible: "It is raised a spiritual body." The
quotation from 1 Corinthians 15:44 underlines the pre-givenness of
death and the necessity for spiritual survival.' Yet the bitterness at the
f)eshly "Mother," her very substance a portian of Nature, cannot be
sloughed away. In an implicit deployment of the Romantic trape that
identifies the female with Nature and its material substance, setting her
then in opposition to the maJe mind and its spiritual or imaginative
powers, Blake's speaker struggles to free himself:
Thou Mother of m y Mortal part
With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears,
Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes and Ears.
Didst clase m y Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free,
Then what have 1 todo with thee?
(Biake, 30)
When the mother betrays who can save? The great cry in the Preludium
to Europe a Prophecy springs to mind: "Then why shouldst thou
accursed mother bring me into life?" (Biake, 59) Life here is lived out
in the closed round of the senses. Man's being is cut from the purifying
fire of The Marriage of Heaven and He/1, cleft too from the "infinite"
which the cleansed doors of perception lead into, a realm where soul
and body are united in a full "sensual enjoyment." (Biake, 38-9) In
"To Tirzah" the revolutionary fervor that is characteristic of Blake turns
tail, consuming itself in rage at the givenness of bodily birth, a fact that
the imagination which had sought to recreate heaven and earth cannot
overcome. The mother, identified with the fleshly body absorbs the
brunt of anger. Wordsworth's "shades of the prison-house" that clase
around the growing boy - his vision of the child who must lose,
through the very linearity of mortal life, that bond with a spiritual
"palace" he inhabited befare birth - receives its counterpart in Blake's
thought. But while Wordsworth's voice is characteristically elegaic, in
 286 MEENA ALEXANDER
Blake there is fury. No recompense can be discovered for the fe rocit
of fate. Questioning the very nature of human being, the speaker rnu~
struggle against his bonds, with only salvation in the next life, a
salvation through death, providing an outlet.11
Continuing with the theme of death and the manner in which it is
stitched into the perception of the Mate rnal Female, we come upon the
"Door of Death" in Blake's cryptic poem entitled "For the Sexes: the
Gates of Paradise" The speaker sees the "Door of Death" laid wicte
open and the worm that consumes all flesh quite visibly at work. The
invocation of the Maternal Female follows swiftly on, for as in 'To
Tirzah," death is inherent in the very fact of giving birth. The pain of
mortality into which the Mothe r has hooked and snared the speaker
can in no way be diluted . The passage from womb to tomb is shon .
Both woman and Nature - the flesh that gives life and the earth that
clases over its ending - conspire both to embody and blunt the fiery
spirit. The paradox is like a knife edge and cannot be overcome:
Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life
(Blake 266)
Sexual tension overwhelms even dream, consuming in grief the very
stuff of life. For Blake the fall of man is the fall into sexual division, a
fact implicit in the very nature of human embodiment. The "dark
hermaphrodite" previously invoked in the poem as "Rational T ruth
Root of Evil and Good" remains in mind, but is absorbed though into
the maternal image. Hence in th e keys to the poem there is the
evocation of "thy Mother's grief" and the design of the infantile curled
caterpillar, its helpless state akin to that of the newborn infant who is
granted life through thc pain of childbirth. The llames of knowledge
cannot consume that helpless creature, nor kindle the fl esh out of which
poetic knowledge must struggle forth.
IV
It would be inadequate to thc complexity that Blake's work requires of
th e meaning-making consciousness of his reader to set forth an either/
or questio n: does either the fiery consciousness or the fleshly embodi-
"FAL LING FIRE'' 287
nt emerge victorious? It seems to me that the quarrel with embodi-
rnent a quarrel with the very self - out of which as Yeats reminds us
rne , . .
mes poetr; - underpmned the powerful and ftery forms of the
~~agination. The negativity Blake required of his poetic knowledge
~ould not subsist without embodiment against which the flames work,
destroying the o ld, remaking the new. Out of the "Falling, rushing,
ruining!" as he so evocatively named it, the "new born fire" must
emerge. (Blake, 43) The grief of old embodiment then - of which the
Maternal Female stands as surest symbol - must underwrite the
"infernal method" so the corrosives of poetry might reveal if not in fact,
then in imagina ti ve necessity, the flames of a new order.
Hunter College
City University of New York
NOTES
The Poetry ami !'rose of Willwm 8/ake. ed. David E rdman (Ncw York: Doubleday.
1970). p. 3R. All subsequcnt page references are to this edition.
2 The phrase is from Wordsworth's pocm "Tinte rn Abbey," Se/ected l'oems, ed. Mark
Van Doren (Ncw York: Random H ouse, 1950), p. 105.
' A. Rimhaud, OeuvreJ, cd. Suzannc Bc rnard (Paris: Garnier Fri:res, 1960), pp. 344-
5.
Jmhua Barncs 111 the Hisrory of Edward 111 ( 1688) which was o nc of Blake's sources
writcs of "a Pilla r of fires" and then again of "a ccrtain Igneous Vapour or Sulphurous
Firc, horrihly hrcaking forth from the Earth; or ... descending from H eaven." Ouoted
in David Erdman IJ/ake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University
Prcss. 1977). p. SR.
~ Thc cxact quotation from thc Bihlc- Authorizcd K111g James Version, 1 Corinth1ans
15, 44 is "lt is sown a natural hody; 11 is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body,
and there is a spmtual body." The verse was to ha unt Blake. H b use of it however 111
thc dcsign that accompanies the poem "To Tirzah" could be conMrued as resurrecting
in suhtle form thc dualbm that he - through the voice of Devil - argues against in The
'>famage of 1/eal'en and lfe/1. lf man is not divided into spirit and flesh, thcn he is
d1vided into two hodics, the onc carthly. and herein Blake identified with the "Mo ther
of my Mortal part" and the o ther, '>piritua l and avmlable o nly aftcr thc death of the
mortal hody. The na tural body identificd with sexuality and generauon must perish
hcfore the immortal hody can rise. In opposition to thi s point of view it cou ld be argued
that thc spiritual hody evoked in the inscription of Blakc's accompanying design is an
1con of the imagination which must rise o ut of thc dehris of the given, constricting
Y.orld.
In ! he \fermaid ami the .'>1inouwr, Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New
York: H arper and Row. 1977). Do rothj D111nerstem argues that the mother, out of
288 MEENA ALEXANDER VICTOR CARRABINO

whosc flesh all beings come, is id~ntified by the individ~ating consciousnes~ as Nature,
a~ pan and paree) of the surroundmg and even coi;stncttng context, so that m this guise
she must be overcome. Consciousness thus conceivcs of her in tcrms of an irreducible THE POETICS OF FIRE IN JEAN GIONO'S
antagonism. For Dinnerstcin, this antagonism spills over into the imaginative a ttitude LE CHANT DU MONDE
towards womcn in general, but can be ovcrcome if nurturing is shared. "lt is true then"
she wntes "that we are born mortal and born of womcn .... Woman is now the focus or
our ambivalcnce to the flesh .... "(p. 155)
l'he quotations are from William Wordsworth\ Ode: lmunatiom of lmmortality Much has been written on the power of fire. Fire imagery can be traced
from Recolleuions of arly Childltood, stanzas V and VI.
13irth m thc fifth Manza of the poem Is conceived of as "a slccp and a forgetting~;
as far back as prehistoric times. Bachelard notes that "in our conscious
prc-cxistence m other words is the reality. with thc cmbod1ed \late rcdeemed to the Jives, we have broken off direct contact with the original etymologies.
cxtcnt that mcmory of it is possible. But the prehistoric mind, and a fortiori the unconscious, does not
detach the word from the thing. If we speak of man as full of fire, it
wills something to the burning within him." 1 Fire, for example, apart
from its kindling, burning and metamorphic quality has been associated
by the imagination, as Northrop Frye suggests, to the interna! fire: "its
sparks are analogous to seeds, the unity of life; its flickering movement
is analogous to vitality; its flames are phallic symbols, providing a
furthcr analogy to the sexual act, as the ambiguity of the word 'consum-
mation' indicates, its transforming power is analogous to purgation." 2
In archetypal language, fire stands for strength, courage, ardor, and
virility. For Heracleitus fire was the "the agent of transmutation": "Fire,
in its combination of movement in flickering and its apparent identity
and pcrmanence, and in its consumption of fuel and its giving off of ash
and smoke, would appear to be an adequate manifestation of the
principie or substance maintaining its identity despite transformation." 3
Fire is a symbol of transformation and regeneration. Bachelard echoes
the alchemist's concept of fire as the element in the center of all things.
Firc, as an archetypal symbol appears in the opening lines of a Vedic
hymn, addressed to Agni, the god of Fire. Fire as the agent of destruc-
tion and regeneration is reproduced in Hindu Puranic accounts of
world creation. The Puranas, as we know, deal with the Hindu
mythography as to the creation or recreation of the universe, especially
with the awakening of Visnu as thc beginner of the creative process
from the primal egg.
lt is precisely this Puranic account of the divine role of fire that leads
to our study of Jean Giono's Le Chant du monde. It is my task in this
study to analyze to what extent fire imagery as found in Le Chant du
monde is directly associated with or perhaps even influenced by the
Hindu philosophy of the Puranas and the Upanishads.
That fire plays an importan! role in Giono is without question. In
289
A-1. Fymteniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana , Vol XXIII, 2H9-298.
19S8 by Kluwer Academic Publisher~.

290 VICTOR CARRABINO
fact, the five elements of nature, air, wind, water, earth, and fire
constitute the very cosmological framework on which the novel is built.
Critics such as Maree! Arland, Christian Michefelder, Maxwell
Smith, Hallam Walker have, each in his own way, failed to detect this
Hi_ndu presence in Giono's opus. Maree! Arland claims, for example,
that "Comme l'Odysse autour de la Mer, Le chant du monde, se
trouve done construit autour du Fleuve . . . Le chant est . . . la
symphonie . . . laissons Giono faire de Manosque une souveraine
4
lthaque." Similarly, Hallam Walker echoes Arland when he states that
"a mythical strain runs vigorously through Giono's works .... Le Chant
du monde has an Odyssey-like theme narrated with poetic sensitivity
and sharp imagery . . . drawn from the store of European myth." 5
Maxwell Smith agrees with all those critics who have dealt with the
mythic and epic Western tradition, especially with Henri Peyre who
stresses the epi e element of the novel.
However, upon closer scrutiny of the text, the reader is suddenly
aware that rather than relying so heavily on the Western mythology,
one may analyze the text from the Hindu philosophical point of view.
We can perhaps arrive at the very heart of Giono's imagery as
embroidered by the author and in fact understand the novel as a world
of divinities directly associated with nature as reported in Hindu
Puranic texts.
Let us look briefly at the novel. Antonio (associated with water -
the river) and Matelot (associated with the forest) set out on a long
journey to the Rebeillard country searching for "le besson" - the only
surviving twin son of Matelot. The voyage lasts from Fall to Spring. "Le
besson" is a red-haired young man, full of life, courage, and strength.
He is associated with fire. During their journey, obviously reminiscent
of a Greek odyssey, Antonio and Matelot meet a young woman who is
giving birth in the open field to a child. Antonio and Matelot finally
reach "le besson." Befare their return to their native land (the other
side of the river), Matelot dies. Clara finally joins Antonio and "le
besson" returns home with Gina - the daughter of a tyrant-like
Maudru.
The comparison with Greek mythology is quite obvious. "Le besson"
can be easily associated with the golden tleece, Antonio and Matelot
with Jasan. Gina, on the other hand, would remind the reader of Helen
and "le besson" of Pars. However, what makes the novel different fro m
other works published by Giono's contemporaries, is not so much the
\
THE POETICS OF FIRE 291
resence of the human characters, but in fact, the anthropomorphic
~ualities which Giono gives to the elements of nature. Their voice is
constantly heard throughout the novel. The title itself, Le Chant du
monde, implies not a human voice but the voice of nature that
participates in the harmony of the universe. In fact, trees, logs, wind,
water, have a special voice that can only be felt in a synesthetic
baudelairian correspondence. The elements of nature are then the
characters of the novel which blend with humans in a common voice.
That a Hindu world dominates the aesthetic dimension of the novel,
is without any doubt. Giono himself, a conteur n, delighted in telling
Hindu stories when imprisoned. In his often-easily dismissed text, Les
Vraies Richesses, Giono goes at length in singing the joys of nature in
contrast with the city-life:
Les forme' de socit dans lesquelles nous avons vcu jusqu"a maintenant ont install
sur la terrc le malheur des corps. Qui, dans la socit moderne, peut avoir asscz de
libert pour connaitre le monde? Des hommes existent qui ne savent pas ce qu'est un
arbre, une feuille, une herbe, le vent de printemps, le galop d'un eheval, le pas des
boeufs, l"illumination du ciel. Les plus libres meme ddaignent la vritable scicnce et
passent leur vi e a jouer avec des spculations mtaphysiques.6
Discouraged with city-life, progress, science, and most of all with the
machinery of war, on September 1, 1935 Giono with other writers
retired to a solitary place in the mountains near Manosque to be in
direct contact with nature. While nature does not play the role of a
refuge in which man hides, as seen with the Romantics, Giono sees
nature as an extension of being. Nature and man are one. Organic and
inorganic nature form the total being as identified with Hinduism.
That Giono was familiar with Hindu philosophy is told by himself in
the Preface to his Les Vraies Richesses. Upon the questions asked to
him by his friends on the joy which be found in nature, Giono replies:
Ce livre ici est la rponse. Jc vous rpondais dja quand je racontais les histoires
indoues des vncments arrivs pendant le sommeil de Rama, le repos de l"arme
d'lndra sous les eaux du lac forestier, le barratement de la mer, la Victoire de Vichnou
sur les Asuras. (Les Vraies Riche>se, p. 13).
To assume that Giono was not intluenced by these Hindu stories, is to
negate an importan! element of Giono's "univers romanesque." Yet, we
find that criticism of Giono's works is deficient of this Hindu intluence.
In his chapter "Fire and reverie," Bachelard emphasizes the role that
 292 VICTOR CARRABINO
fire plays in the call of the funeral pyre. Destruction is to Bachelard
change and renewal. Fire is the only agent that allows such a phoenix-
like rebirth. Death and life are two integral, inseparable qualities
associated with fire. Giono himself recognizes this divine property of
fire when discussing the "four banal, the four commun." This common
oven is understood by the peasants as a temple, a sacred place: "ll est
exactement comme un temple grec." (Les Vraies Richesses, p. 131) No
one is allowed to enter it, save the bread - life given to wheat by tire -
to be metamorphosed into food : "Le four occupe toute la place dans
les quatre murs. Les humains doivent rester sur le seuil." (p. 132) Only
those who wish to meet death, therefore, a new life, are allowed to
en ter:
Le~ hommc~. les fcmmes nc peuvcnt pas entre r. a moins de dsircr mourir, et encore,
faudrait-il le dsircr fort. ... Le fcu cst un dieu noh/e, il n'a pas d'accueil .... Le feu,
cette cruaut qu'on recherchc a ces momenb la, il vous la lance tout de suite vers la
chair, et ~a fait qu'on recule - instinctivcment. E t pour se tuer avec du feu , on ne peut
le trouvcr que dans de vieilles races comme che7 les lndiens de l'lnde ou chez les
Azteques, chc7 des gens que leur philosophie et leur cruauts religeuses ont anmis
jusqu'a l'a\scchement total, ne laissant plus au sommet de tte qu'un globe intelligent,
ceux-la ct ceux qui leur ressemblent - peuvent forccr la porte du four et entrer dans
le mystere du fcu. (Les Vares Richesses, p. 133-34. M y italics.)
Fire, for Giono, is then a god - the god Agni, the messenger
between man and the Supreme Being. Giono's understanding of Fire as
a God, joins hands with the Hindu veneration of Agni. Fire, as Giono
sees it, is deity, a means by which man enters into the kingdom of death
to be purified into a new life, another kingdom - the world of the
mystere.
Seen in this light, Le Chant du m onde is closer to an Eastern
philosophical view than the Weste rn one suggested by many critics. We
know to what extent nature plays an important role in Hind u
philosophy. According to Sarrepalli Radhakrishnan:
An importan! phenomcnon of nature raised to a deity is Firc. Agni is second in
importance only to lndra, heing addressed in at leaM 200 hymn s. The idea of Agni
arose from the scorching sun, which by its heat kindlcd intlammahle stuff. lt carne from
thc clouds as lightning. lt has its origin in tlintstone. lt comes fro m fire sticks.
Mtarisvan, like Pro metheus, is supposed to havc brought fire back fro m the sky. The
physical aspects are evident in the descriptions of Agni as possessing a tawny beard,
sharp jaws and burning teeth. Wood or ghee is his food. He shines like the sun
dispelling the darkness of night. His path is hlack when he invades the forest and h.is
THE POETI CS OF FlRE 293
voice is like the thunder o f heaven. (He is dhmaketu, having smoke for his banner. ...)
."re is thus seen to dwell not o nly on earth in the hearth of the altar but also in the sky
. ~d the atmosphcre. as the sun and the suprcme god, stretching out heaven and earth.
~s the concept grew more a nd more abstrae! it also became more a nd more sublime.
He becomcs the mediator hetween gods and mcn, the helper of all. 7
Agni, Hindu divinity, fire, Radhakrishnan tells us, is pervasive through-
out the vedic, puranic, and Upanishads texts. In the Kena-Upanishad,
we are once again told of the di vine entity of Agni:
Once upon a time, Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, won a victory fo r the gods. And the
gods thought in their pride: 'We alone attaincd this victory, o urs alone is the glory.'
Brahman saw it a nd appeared to them, but thcy knew him not. 'Who is that being that
fill s us wl!h wonder?' they cried. And they spoke of Agni, the god of fire: o god
all-knowing, go and see who is that being that fill s us with wonder.' Agni ran toward
him antl Brahman asked: 'Who are you?' '1 am the god of firc,' he said, 'the god who
knows all things.' 'What powe r is in you?' asked Brahman. '1 can burn all things on
earth .'"
In anothe r account of the re-beginning of the universe, Agni once again
plays an important role in which we learn that fire is even more
important than water:
Fire. mcreasing, devoured a great quantity of the cosmic water. And where the water
had disappeared, there remained a mighty void, within which carne into existence the
uppcr sphcrc of heaven. The Universal Being who had permittcd the elements to
procecd from his essence, now rejoiced to hehold the formation of hcavenly space."
It is at this point superfluous, 1 believe, to cite more Hindu texts to
further pursue our thesis. Let us now take a look at the novel and in
fact see how clase Giono's pantheistic world is to the Hindu world
where deities partake in the very existence of daily life. After all, as
Deussen tells us, "In the whole of nature no distinction is so sharply
drawn as that between the inorganic and the organic; and this distinc-
tio n dominates the Indian view of nature also, is so far as they both, the
inorganic no less than the organic, are derived from the atman .... All
organic bodies, and therefore all plants, animals, men and gods, are
wondering souls, are therefore in essence the atman itself... . Inorganic
bodies, ... i.e., the five elements, ether, wind, fires water, earth, though
they are ruled by Brahman, and remain under the protection of
individual deities, yet not wondering so uls, as are all plants, animals,
men, and gods, but are only the stage erected by Brahman on which the
souls have to play their part." 10
294 VICTOR CA RRABINO
A pantheistic world is set at the very beginning of the novel, for god
as in Hindu philosophy, "creates the universe by transforming himself
into the universe. Since it is real and also infinite, there is no room for
God independently of the universe, but only within it. The terms God
and uni verse become synonymous, and the idea of God is only retained
in arder not to break with tradition." (Deussen, p. 160)
We learn from the very beginning of the novel that "le besson" is a
god-like figure. Matelot asks Antonio to accompany him in this quest
for his lost son: "J'ai plus de nouvelles de mon besson aux cheveux
rouges." (p. 7) Matelot, the father, "a la barbe blanche," sets forth on a
long journery to find his son. However, the reader should focus on the
richness of nature in which Giono bathes his characters. As previously
mentioned, the elements of nature are one with men: "La nuit, le fleuve
roulait a coups d'paules a trave rs la foret. ... 11 [Antonio] couta dans
sa main les tremblements de l'arbre. C'tait un vieux chene plus gros
qu'un homme de la montagne." 11
Nature is personified to live side by side with man: "11 sentait la vie
du fleuve." ... "11 avait regard tout le jour ce fleuve qui rebroussait ses
cailles dans le soleil, ces chevaux blancs qui galopaient dans la gu,
avec des larges plaques d'cume aux sabots, le dos de l'eau verte,
la-haut, a u sortir des gorges avec cette colere d'avoir t serre dans le
couloir des raches, puis l'eau voit la foret large tendue la devant elle et
elle abaisse son dos souple et ell e entre dans les arbres." (p. 9) "Je sens,
c'est ma foret," says Matelot. (p. 11 )
Antonio, "la bouche d'or," as he is known, recognizes his clase
association with nature. "C'est pas pour rien que nous t'avons appel
Bouche d'Or," dit la voix de Junie. C'est paree que tu sais parler. Non,
dit Antonio, c'est paree queje sais crier plus haut que les eaux." (p. 15)
The wind joins Matelot's cry for his son: "C'tait dans ce creux que
venait s'enroute r comme une algue la longue plainte du vent," (p. 22)
"... et puis le ronflement du fl euve." (p. 23)
"Le besson," "aux cheveux rouges," a fire imagery, is alive. Imagery
of fire abound in the novel, galloping through the universe: "Des
chariots de feu, des barques de feu, des chevaux de lumiere, une large
tude d'toiles tenaient tout le ciel." (p. 7 4)
Nature wakes up touched by the wings of Agni. Here we have a
poetic representation of the birth of the day where all elements of
nature contribute to the death of the night and the re-birth of the dawn.
All elements, fostered by Agni, welcome the arrival of the new-born:
THE POETICS OF FIRE 295
b'tement il fit tres froid ... Le venl sonna plus profond .... Des a rhres parleren1 ...
5
~ venl passa en ronflanl sourdement. ... Les chenes parlaienl, puis les saules, puis
1
:ulnes: les peuphers sifflaient de gauche el de droite comme des queues de chevaux
les la nu 1t gcmis'>ml toul doucement. ... Une colline de l'esl sortll de l'ombre .... Une
f l gronda. pUis elle mergea lentement de la nuit avec son dos pelucheux. Un
formi ssement de lumiere grise coula sur la cime des arbres .... Le rocher s'claira.
~; Jum1rc venai t de la colline. Sortie la premiere de la nuil, noire comme une
charbonmrc. elle lan~ail une lumi re douce vers le ciel p lal: la lumierc relombail sur la
terre avec un pcli l gmissement, elle saulait vers le rocher, il la lan<;ait de la nuit sur des
collines rondes.... Le jour coula d'un seul coup tres vi te sur le fl euve jusqu'fw loin des
eaux. Les monis s'allumerent. Les collines soudain emhrases ouvrirent leur danse
ronde autout d e'> champs e t le soleil rouge sauta dans le ciel avec un hcnnissement de
cheval. Le jour, dlt Matelot. (pp. 78-79).
The fire image immediately evokes in Matelot's mind his son: "Oui
sait s'il peut se faire du feu, mon besson." (p. 79) The whole community
is mobilized and terrified by Maud ru, the powerful tyrant. Yet "le
besson," the hero, the solar hero, like Prometheus o r Matrisvan has the
couragc to defy the gods. Not o nly does he take away Gina and make
her his wife, but he kills the nephew. "Le besson" is then more than a
mere character. His association with courage, passion, make him a god:
"Je suis part de notre foret pour chercher le babouin, le petit, l'enfant,
du temps que je passais ma main dans ses cheveux rouges. Et voila que
je me trouve le pere d'une espece de !ion fou." (p. 1 18) His strength
and courage are testified to by Matelot himself: "Je veux qu'il soit ce
qu'il s'est imagin d'etre et qu'il m'a fait croire." G ina says to Matelo t.
"Qu'est qu'il t' a fait croire? dit Matelot. 'Qu'il tait fo rt!' dit-elle. '11
l'est,' dit Matelot. 'Qu'il tait plus fo rt que mon pere!' '11 est plus fort
que ton pere'" (p. 127). "Le besson" will eventually prove to Gina that
indeed he is stronger, that he is capable of destroying Maudru by
destroying with fire his houses, his cattle, his property and finally, by
successfully returning with Gina lo his homeland. "Le besson," a
god-warrior, leaves his imprint wherever he goes; once again, he is
associated with fire: "11 avait fait un fe u et il y avait mis a rougir son
paisse marque de fer. ... Et je vis que cet homme avait les cheveux
tout rouges comme la grande marque de feu." (pp. 130-31) His
god-likc qualities, in addition to his hair, associated with fire imagery,
are further strengthened by his physical appearance: "Le besson tait
fort en reins et en cuisses. 11 avait un petit buste terrible et nerveux et
toute la force de son sang de poivre tait la sur ses hanches accumule
en deux normes muscles au milieu de lui comme la force de l'arc est
296 VICTOR CARRABINO
au milieu de l'arc ... JI pouvait regarder en plein soleil." (p. 14 3) The
whole community is aware of his presence. His physical traits make hirn
a special being: "II avait une tete d'enfant, ronde, tres petite, enflamme
de cheveux et de sourcils rouges, pour le reste, bras et jambes scells
dans son bloc comme dans un rocher." (p. 164)
Passion, love, ardor are other qualities associated with fire and
indeed with le besson: "Depuis trois jours, lui et Gina sont comme des
poissons pleins d'oeufs. lis se tournent autour, ils se suivent, ils se
sentent. lis sont couchs. Ils font de la lumiere rien qu'en passant." (p.
192) The torch, as instrument of fire, is instrumental in igniting in an
orgiastic dyonisian scene, "la mere du bl." Everyone in to wn is
watching this evenlful destruction and re-birth. It is the commemo ration
of the arrival of spring and the death of winter. Once again fire is
understood both as a positive and negative element. It destroys yet at
the same time it brings life. Passion, love, death are lraits again blended
in the pyre reverie: "Un bouvier avait pris une torche de lavande. 11
souleva les jupes de la mere du bl. 11 se mit a lui faire l'amo ur par
dessous avec sa torche enflamme el soudain elle s'mbrasa." (p. 224)
Fire imagery takes over the whole town: "Des reflels rouges trainaienl
dans le ciel." (p. 225) The same night when le besson puts o n fire
Maudru's belongings, hence freeing himself from Maudru's yoke and
terror, another form of life is attained. As his father Matelot dies once
again a new life begins. Malelol dies, le besson is freed in his new
acquired freedom. Death is associaled with re-birth.
The rage of the besson becomes one wilh lhe rage of fire: "il n'y a
plus rien dans la ferme que de la colere de feu el de fume." (p. 248)
With the orgiastic scene of the "mere du bl," severa! re-births have
laken place. But mosl of all, the fire reverie Ieads us to the change
evidenl in nature, for now, spring is born from winter: "C'tait seule-
ment le prinlemps qui sortait de la terre ... Alors arrivait le soleil, un
soleil pais et de triple couleur, plus roux que du poi! de renard, si
lourd et si chaud qu'il teignait tout, bruits et gestes." (p. 255-56)
The association between the sun's rays and the besson "aux cheveux
rouges," is quite evident. At the end of the novel le besson returns with
Gina and Antonio with Clara. The elements have joined to produce a
true harmony. Both le besson and Antonio have reached their tman
(self knowledge). Their return is also facilitaled by the fire that le
besson has lit: "Et maintenant, viens ma petite filie. En bas le besson a
allum du feu." (p. 272)
THE POETICS OF FIRE 297
A world of harmony and unity is achieved not only on the psy-
hological leve) bul also on lhe spiritual leve! - a representation of the
~indu cosmic cycles. As Heinrich Zimmer instructs us: "According to
the mythologies of Hinduism, each world cycle is subdivided into four
yugas or world ages .... According to the Indian conception, the ideal
of total, or totality, is associated with the number four. 'Four square'
signifies 'totality.' Anything complete and self-contained is established
firmly on its 'four legs' ( catuh pada)." (Zimmer, p. 13)
The novel ends with an atmosphere filled with love, passion,
sensuality. Antonio, too, has finally found his love, to whom he would
make love in direct contact with nature - !erre: "11 pensait qu'il allait
prendre Clara dans ses bras et qu'il allait se coucher avec elle sur la
terre." (p. 278)
Finally, there is no doubt that Giono has drawn most of his images
for his Le Chant du monde from Hindu sources. His emphasis on
nature in which deities share the harmony of the One Brahman is
striking. To our question to Giono, what is god, or what is nature,
Giono would respond with the same answer that a guru once gave as to
the nature of Brahman: "neti neti," not just that, not just that. God is
everywhere in nature, and one can find him in nature, albeit in one's
own nature, for the true answer lies inside, where one can still hear the
true voice of Le Chant du monde.
Florida State University
NOTES
1
Ga~ton Bachelard, '!he Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 8.
Northrop Frye in Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ibid .. p. vi.
' Milton C. Nahm, ed., Selections from !:arly Greek Philosophy (Ncw York: Appleton-
Ccntury Crofts, lnc., 1962), p. 85.
4
Maree! Aland, "Le Chant du monde," Nouvel/e Revue Fran~aise, No. 9 (Scptcmbcr
1953), p. 504.
j Allam Walker, "Myth in Giono's Le Cham du monde," Symposium, Vol. XV (Spring
1961 ). p. 139.
'' Jean Giono, Les Vraies Richesses (Paris: Grasset, 1937), p. 20. (Hereafter referred to
in the text as Les Vraies Richesses.)
' S. Radhakrishnan, lndian Philosophy (New York: MacMillan, 1951 ), pp. 82-83.
" Juan Mascar, ed., The Upanishads (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 52-53.
298 VICTOR CARRABINO

~ Heinrich Zimmer, Myth and Symbo/s in lndian Art and Civi/ization (Princeto .
Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 51. (Hereafter referred to in the text as Zimrnen. PART SIX
Myths.) r,
10
Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1919)
pp. 186-87. (Hereafter referred to in the text as Deussen, the Upanishads.) '
11
Jean Giono, Le Chant du monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 5. (Hereafter referred
to in the text as Le Chant du monde.)

THE ELEMENTAL EXPANSE

 PETE:.R MORGAN

RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR

"1 still dream of an element," Gaston Bachelard, The

Poetics of Space, transl. Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969119581), p. xxxiv.

1. INTRODUCTION: GLIMPSI:.S OF PHENOMI:.NOLOGY IN

RELATION TO RUSKIN

The use of the word "phenomenology" stems from the wntmgs of

Hegel. According to Ricoeur, Hegel "of course, understood phenome-
nology to be a thorough inspection of all the varieties of human
experience." 1 This ambitious undertaking it can be said at the outset is
a Ruskinian one. 2
In the twentieth century, Husserl, in his late lecture "Phenomenology
and the Crisis of Philosophy," asserts that the crisis stems from the
triumph of reason in the study of the natural world. Reason has to
extend its sway, or draw back in order to survey, the spiritual world,
where the methods used to come to grips with the natural world are
inappropriate. Husserl remains supremely confident in the power of
reason. It deals with an environment which has been demythologised,
freed from the totalized "mythical-religious" poetic view of the primi-
ti ve. J What is valuable here from the point of view of the student of
Ruskin is the acknowledgment of the need to know the spirit, and of
the priority of its relations with others and with the world. However,
the insistence on the power of reason in its quest for truth does not
take us beyond the narrowly philosophical ken. As Anna-Teresa
Tymieniecka points out, Husserl "never broke through the screen of
reason."~ It is noteworthy that Derrida contrasts the "univocity" of
Husserl with the "equivocity" of Joyce, the latter setting itself "within
the labyrinthine field of culture."~
In this respect the teachings of the later Heidegger and of Merleau-
Ponty are of value. Heidegger recognizes the inadequacy of the
philosophical approach to understanding as it has been pursued since
the time of the Greeks. He seeks to look behind them, at the same time
301
1-7. lymieniedw (ec/), Ana/ecta lln\serlicma, ~'o/ XXIII. 30 1 307.
1988 by f..lmn!r Amdemic l't~bli1hen .
 302 PI:.TER MORGAN
as he looks away from the confines of rational discourse to the pu
gnomic utterances of the poet. He shows a mystical reliance o n the vit~~
human power of the word itself. Merleau-Ponty, however, is attractj:
because he really enters into the world of phenomenological experienc:
and insists on finding value there. He puts on one side the causal
explanations of "the scientist, the historian or the sociologist."6 l-le
asserts that "all the convergen! and discordant action of the historicaJ
community is effectively given me in my living present''; "we live in the
unity of the one single life all the systems our culture is composed of."
Interestingly and attractively from the standpoint of one like myself
who is a student of the arts rather than of philosophy, this leads
Merleau-Ponty to turn away like Heidegger from philosophizing in the
traditional sense to go in the direction of the arts, not poetry as with
Heidegger, but painting. The painter for Merleau-Ponty is in "a zone of
the fundamental, peopled with dense, open, rent beings of wh ich an
exhaustive treatment is out of lhe question." 8 This is the zone that
Ruskin is exploring. Finally, Heidegger is most attraclive, because of lhe
radical characler of the choice thal he presents and makes.
What one wants is for none of the paths of these philosophers to be
reductive of the options open lo the reader. Husserl sees this danger
when in lhe classical spiril he insists on lhe many-sidedness of truth.9
The framing on which the phenomenologists insist is not helpful if it
leads to a delimitation and narrowing of the experienlial range. In this
respect Ruskin is perhaps pre-phenomenological, since he goes back to
the primitive stage which Husserl had eschewed. But his retum is a free
and individual one. He is a phenomenologist as one concerned with
phenomena. If lhe lagos in lhe word "phenomenology" is not unde r-
stood in lerms of any particular philosophical melhod, but as con-
sliluting whal Heidegger defines as "discourse," 10 Ruskin provides such
discourse. His discourse is open and associative. It reveals a pattern as
il proceeds in lhe spirit of the poet who is concerned for the word
bul/and also for lhe world. Ruskin is exploring a palh which younger
phenomenologisls seem to yearn to follow. For example, Don lhde
writes of a movement towards "poly-morphic mindedness" 11 ; and
David Levin says that "we need to embrace a poetizing lruth." 12
2. SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT OF T/11:. QUEEN OF TI/E AIR
Ruskin exclaimed, "1 wanl only to know what is" (xxxvii, 526, 1885)Y
RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 303
giving this paper because I am intrigued by the most importan!
1 a:n and physical phenomenon of the air, radically important to all of
0 0 11
Like Ruskin 1 feel "lhe ruling power of lhe air" (xix, 31 9), lhough of
us. rse am not as sensitive as he to ils "sculpturing power upon lhe
co~h and sea." (xx, 265) The lit le of The Queen of the A ir suggests that
~ais relevant to this topic. Though very influential during his life time on
~ Ulevels of British society as a critic of culture in both the narrow and
~he broad senses, and a specific influence in literalure written in English
(on Pound and on Lawrence), 14 and in French lilerature (on Proust),
Ruskin went through a period of neglecl in lhe firsl half of the lwenlieth
century, so strong was lhe reaclion in lhat modernisl period against
all things Yictorian. The tide is now turning with an outpouring of
scholarly studies. However, il is slill necessary lo defend such a work as
The Queen of the A ir against lhe charge of madness. 1' All 1 can hope to
do here is to outline the conlents of a work which will be unfamiliar to
most readers, lo commenl briefly on it, indicating what 1 lake to be its
sanity. however challenging and unusual lhal mighl be. 1 will have lo
leave a serious phenomenological inlerprelalion of lhe lexl to others,
authorities in the field. However, l may say inilially, though from the
standpoint of philosophical naivet, that Ruskin is certainly dealing with
experienced phenomena, eschewing the methods of the empirical
sciences which he recognized to be growing more and more powerful in
his day. The specific antagonist whom he names here is the physicist
Tyndall. Ruskin presents the particular phenomena of the air against
the total field of his own consciousness of phenomena. There is a
certain arbitrariness as he grasps at this field - hence the accusation of
madness which is brought against him (going along with the actual
madness to which he fell prey) - lhough what he is doing also
produces a sense that he is anticipating both surrealism and futurism,
the first in its disjunctiveness, the second in the rapidity of its movement
from notion to notion. His sense of the "field" also suggests that he is a
precursor not only of the surrealists and the futurists, but also of the
Gestalt psychologists, and most importantly of early twentieth-century
poets, that is, Eliot and Pound. There is also a pre-Bergsonian preoc-
cupation with process and will.
From his experience of the air Ruskin reaches out, as 1 have said,
to lhe surrounding field. This field has to be, as with the romantic
Wordsworth, an - initially at least - subjective one, since it surrounds
the person himself, it exists in the person's consciousness. This has been
304 PETER MORGAN
recognized in the constan! attention readers have given to Ruskin'
autobiography Praeterita. For Ruskin personally the field extends bac~
to his childhood, that of an only child, the focus of the attention of two
doting parents, both devout, the father a puritanically energetic busi-
nessman. This devoutness remains entrenched in Ruskin, undercut as it
may be as he grows up and is assailed by the waves of mid-Victo rian
infidelity and the challenge of the empirical science of the period.
Perhaps the second strand in the Ruskinian field which we will be
examining can be identified with his years as a student at Oxford - and
not so much with his scientific study there, under the influence of the
pre-Darwinian geologist Buckland; as with the classical education which
would bear fruit in The Queen of the Air whose subtitle is "a study
of the Greek myths of cloud and storm." Feeling his Christianity
challenged by developments in newer scientific thinking, Ruskin was
able to extend his purview in the latter part of his career to include
the classics, especially the mythology of the Greeks. Respect for
phenomena always had in him a religious fervor. This unq uenchable
fervor found expression, if not altogether satisfyingly in Christianity,
then in an invocation of the old Greek gods, here Athena as present in
the element of air. (xx, plate iv) Thus in his claim for the vitality of faith
in the presence of the gods in the world Ruskin challenges a European
tradition which extended from Schiller through Nietzsche to Max
Weber. Like Heidegger, Ruskin refers back to the elemental world of
the Greeks. No wonder that his challenge can be read by those who
inhale the atmosphere of modern nihilism as an almost hysterical and
strident one, and that it was not enough appreciated during the first half
of the twentieth century, dominated as that was by empirical science.
No wonder also that there is now generally setting in, as there needs to
be, and partly under the auspices of phenomenology, a strong reaction
which can gain succor by referring back to the eloquent discourses of
Ruskin which seek to embrace phenomena as part of a total conscious-
ness of being.
The book, published in 1869, is called The Queen of the A ir: being a
swdy of the Greek myths of cloud and storm. The three parts of which
it is made up comprise a lecturc previously delivered; one undelivered;
and a third consisting of disparate fragments (suggestive of the tech-
nique of Pound's Gaudier-Brzeska 119161 16 or of Aragon's Le Paysan
de Paris 119261). The three parts are entitled "Athena Chalinitis,"
Athena in the air; "Athena Keramitis," Athena in the earth; "Athena
RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 305
E ane," Athena in the heart. These divisions indicate lucidity itself in
: : overall ~rganization o.f the book. T~e o~ly difficult~ lies in t~e
1
Greek adjecttves that Ruskm uses. These gtve hts presentattOn a gnomtc
ra since even if one understood Greek the translation would be
aU ' .
dubious. They also add tremendously to meanmg from the word go. In
a note helpfully provided by Ruskin himself "Chalinitis" is explained as,
"The restrainer. The name is given to her as having helped Bellerophon
10 bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud." At once a didactic tone is intro-
duced, sincc Athene is not just there, but she has a corrective, dis-
ciplinary, controlling power. This first section is called "Lecture on the
Greek Myths of Storm." Ruskin is concerned not only with the air when
it is innocently benign, but also when it is dangerous and threatening.
The second heading "Keramitis" is explained as "fit for being made
into pottery." It suggests Ruskin's interest not in the fixed, but in the
dynamic and changing, which is appropriate in view of his topic, his
personal situation, and also in the light of the times in which he and we
live. This section is called "Study, supplementary to the preceding
lecture, of the supposed, and actual, relations of Athena to the vital
force in material organism." This suggests an anticipation of Bergson.
In his last section Ruskin finally moves, again with perfect appro-
priateness, from the influence of the air on the heavens and the earth to
its influence on the human heart as, he explains further, "the Directress
of Imagination and Will." The English phrasing is again at once
qualified by the Greek "Ergane," explained as "having rule over work."
"The name was first given to her by the Athenians." Still the futuristic
swiftness of Ruskin's thought and his attempt at comprehensiveness is
revealed, as he moves from the sense of the freedom of the air, to its
dimension of (often healthful) limitation, restraint, and direction.
I will now attempt to summarize what cannot be summarized,
because of its denseness and diffuseness, and the rapidity of its move-
ments, the contents of the work.
The first part presents heaven, pure and polluted, in its dimensions
of sound and light. Ruskin makes the traditional connection between
sound and the human art of music, but he extends this originally by
considering the relation between the light of nature and artificial light as
presented in pictorial art. This insight is extraordinarily suggestive in
view of the technological development of artificial light and its use in
the modern media of film, television, and video. As the lecture
progresses, the feminine image of Athena yields to the powerful

306 P ETER MORGAN
masculine o ne of Hercules with his triumph over the lion, as repr _
sented on Greek coins. Ruskin's view is extending with dazzli~
rapidity, in order lo approach more dosely a sen se of the whole. Thg
coin image provides a final link from the air, through the arts of musie
and pictures, lo the economic syslem of society, a connection whic~
Ruskin has to make, which is valid, and which Po und will make later.
The triumph of Hercules is signaled by a wreath of parsley, so the
vegetable domain is finally brought into play as part of the vast moving
panorama breathing with life that Ruskin presents us with.
Section Two presents the earth, firstly the plants which grow on it
thanks to the influence of the air. Ruskin provides his own elaborate
and suggestive bo tanical and zoological analyses, in which the earth
appears as humanly alive. Thus, starting from himself he leads to the
generally human, which is seen to be universally present. The objective
scientific concern yields to a subjective o ne, which brings along with it
emotional, aesthelic, and moral preoccupations. Thus in his presenta-
tion of the animal world Ruskin picks out two as representative, the
bird and lhe serpent: these are at lwo poles physically and Ruski n has
to say spiritually, indeed ethically, lhe one embodying soaring virtue
and the other grovelling vice. Having started with lhe innocenl air and
lhe Greek goddess, Ruskin ends embroiled in the problems of the
Christian challenge, represented by the conflict between good and evil,
which goes on universally, in the natural as well as in the human world.
At the same time, Ruskin presents the co-presence of animals and
plants not o nly as they signal profound ethical conflict, but also as they
contribute to what he calls "our country feast," (375) such as that of the
human community which William Morris poignantly celebrates at the
end of his News from Nowhere ( 1890).
In the third part of this work Ruskin approaches a conclusion by
resort to a series of fragments. This procedure can be seen as a sign of
his inability to achieve obviously coherent form, but it is also a sign of
his recognition of the dauntingness of his integrative task, given the
abundance, even the apparent chaos, of the world bathed by the air.
Ruskin insis ts on incorporating more and more important features into
his recreation of the world: political, social, and ethical, involving the
political economy of art as well as of society. This is the conclusion that
his study appropriately leads him to. T he air cannot be apprehended as
an isolated phenomenon, but only as a vital, all-pervading constituent
part of a vast, hardly comprehensible system. This truth is what Ruskin
gives us a prophelic glimpse of. He refers daringly to the impingement
RUSKIN'S QUEEN OF THE AIR 307
f the air on the mythic, physical, meteorological, biological, ethical,
0
Jitical, economic, artistic, and personal dimensions of Iife. This is
P~enomenological I would say because Ruskin is attempting to present
~n indication of the dynamic structure of the interplay of all the
phenomena lhat he knew.
University College ofToronto
NOTES
Paul Rtcocur. 1/usser/, 1ransl. !:.dward G. Ballard and Lc~lcr E. !:.mbrcc (!:.van~ton:
Northwc>lcrn Umvcrsity Prcss, 196 7 119541), p. 3.
On Ru\ktn's Hcgclian philosophy of arl see W. G. Collingwood , Art Jeaclung of Jolm
Ruskn (London: Pcrcival, 1891 ), p. 16.
!:.dmund Husserl, f'henomenology and the Crisis of f'hilosophy. transl. Laucr (Ncw
York: Harpcr. 1965119351), p. 171.
' Anna-Tcrcsa Tymicniecka, " lmaginalio Crca1rix." Analecta Hu.\serliana, Vol. 111,
1974, p. 3. Compare Andr Brc1o n\ Nadja who "thrust hcr head out of 1he jail of
logtc," 'Vcula. lransl. Howard (Ncw York : Grove Prcss, 1960 !19281), p. 143.
j Jacques Derrida, Edmund llusserl's Origin of Geometry, 1ransl. Jo hn P. Lcavey
(Siony Brook. N.Y.: Hays. 1978! 19621). p. 102.
Mauricc Mcrlcau-Ponly, f'henomenology of Perception, lransl. Colin Smilh (London:
Roulledge. 1962). p. vii.
7 Mauricc Merleau-Ponly. Sigm, 1ransl. Richard C. McCicary (Evanston: Northwestern
Univcrsily Press, 1964 119601), pp. 112, 119.
x Mauricc Merleau-Ponty. Essemial Writings, ed. Fishcr (New York: Harco urt, Brace,
1969!19611). p. 285.
Y !:.dmund Husserl, op. cit., p. 181.
111
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. 1ransl. John Macquarric and Edward Robinson
(New York: H arpcr, 19621 19271), p. 55.
11
Don Ihdc, Experimenwl Phenomenology (Ncw York: Putnam, 1977). p. 75.
1
~ In Phenomenology in a f'luralstic Context, ed . William McBride (Aibany: SUNY
Press. 1983), p. 223.
11
Such refcrences in thc 1ex1 which follow a re 10 John Ruskin, Work.l, ed. Cook a nd
Wcdderburn (London: Allcn, 1903- 12).
" 1-or the influence of Ruskin on Lawrence, ~pecifi cally The Queen of the Air. scc
George P. Lando w m D. /l. Lawrence and Tradition , cd. Meyers (London: Athlonc
Pn:s~. 1985),p.l37.
1
' l'his charge b made by Richard Jenkyns, The Victoriam and Ancient Greece
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 183. On 1he contrary i1 could be claimed 1ha1 Ruskin likc
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponly in the vicw of David Lcvin, shows "a human existencc
fearlc\s cnough to ri\k madncss ... in ordcr lo e nler 1hc labyrinth of meaningfu1ness in
whtch our human cxpcricncc i~ siluated." In l'henomenology in a Pluralistic Context,
op cit., p. 227.
l'hi~ is discusscd by Marjoric Perloff. The Dance of lntellect (Cambridge: Cam-
bndge U nivc rsily Prcss, 1985), ch. 2.
 VICTOR CA RRABINO

JEAN GIONO'S LE CHA NT D U MONDE:

T HE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS

[1 was Giono's ambition to write a novel in which man is o ne with

nature. Every elemental force would have a particular value and a
particular voice stronger than that of the human characters. These
voices join in an ha rmonious song in Le Chant du Monde.
In an interview with Christian Michelfelder in 1937 Giono declared:

Born in a poor family, the ~on of a shoemaker, then a clerk in a ~mall hank, 1 bought
one da) the ancient classics in the cheap Garnier Collection. The Greeks were revealed
10 m\ dazzlcd mind .... 1 have rcvived, or rather made actual, the heroes of Homer and
of St;phocles whom 1 found unchanged in my na tive province.... From that day on, 1
have found my path: to re new the great G reek tragedics. to revive Pan and the
terrcstnal mysteries of marve lo us paganism, to ahstract thc soul and substa nce from
everythmg alivc, the clouds, the plain, the wind, the Marry sky.... Aml mo re precisely 1
wish to speak to you of the eterna) veritics of the earth and bring you close to joys of
such quality that thosc you already know will fade away as the grcatest sta rs when the
sun springs up above the mountains.1

Dissatisfied with a mechanized world, where man is ''chosifi,"

disillusioned by the destructive forces of war, saddened by treeless
cities such as Pars, Giono's voice is prophetic in that he foresees our
modern world's contamination by evil forces. Yet, Giono never lost
hope for humanity. In fact, througho ut his works, runs a thread of
optimism nurtured by his pagan vision of the world, for if atheism
refuses, paganism libe rates.
Giono found the freedom and the harmony to which he aspired in
the liberating forces of nature the appreciation of which can be traced
back to pre-Socratic philosophical thinking, namely the Pythagorian
cosmogony:

Thc first principie of all things is the One. From the One carne an lndefinite Two, as
mauer for the One, which is cause. From the One and the lndefinite Two carne
numhcrs; and from numbers, points; from points, lines; from solid figures, sensible
hodies. The elements of these are fo ur: fire, water, earth, air. 2

Giono rediscovered the harmony of the universe in his Manosque, in

Provence, where man is in touch with nature. This harmony has the

343
\-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta 1/usserliana, Vol XXIII, 343-354.

....._____________
1988 by Kluwer Academic Publi:,hers .
 344 VICTOR CARRABINO
imprints of baudelairian "correspondences." As Maree! Arland clairns
"A la flute se substitue la lyre, et c'est la lyre de Pan, celle que devan~
les dieux inquiets le Satyre fait sonner. Le prelude s'acheve; voici
l'norme symphonie - toutes les voix, hommes, betes et plantes
a
orages, sources et fleuves; tous les accents: de la douceur l'angoisse'
de la plainte au joyeux dlire; tous les lments, toute !'ame d~
monde." -~
In fact, men are only an extension of nature. Mountains, fo rests
rivers, wind, earth, fire, and water are the true characters of Le Chan;
du Monde. They dialogue, they sing, they whisper. What has become of
men'? They witness the magnificent consonance of "correspondences."
They echo the voices of nature. They form an overwhelming whole
( tolll), an harmony which reminds us of the lndian Upanishads.
An epic poem, Le Chatlf du Monde draws elements from the store
of European myth. It is a world in which man and nature are one. In
fact, a mythical strain runs throughout the work. Le Chant du Monde
takes us back not to the primitive world of man but to a pristine state
whcre instincts prevail. The characters are set in motion in a physical
and spiritual odyssey. However, vicissitudes are imposed by the very
condition of the seasons which make man impotent before the massive
force of change. Every character is then caught in the cosmic flow of
life.
The novel opens with a magnificcnt autumn scene in the night.
Antonio, a fisherman - "the man of the river" - scts on a long journey
along the river banks to hign mountain. He is accompained by an older
man, Matelot - a former sailor who has become "the man of the
forest." They leave in search of Matelot's twin son, the red-haired twin,
"le besson," as he is known, always associated with the sun or the fire
element. This red-haired twin has mysteriously disappeared into the
upper reaches of the country, into thc land of the much-feared tyrant
by the name of Maudru.
On their way they meet a robust man-like woman "la mere de la
route" who feeds them and gives thcm direction. Thcy meet another
woman, Clara who is blind. She is giving birth to a child on the earth in
thc most natural way.
Antonio and Matelot finally arrivc at the house of a wise, hunch-
backed healer, Toussaint who, frustrated in sorne early !ove, has
devotcd his life to healing the sick and the lunatics who cometo him in
long caravans from the countryside. Toussaint - this saintly man -
THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 345
"Toussaint" has given refuge to the red-haired youth who had dared to
fall in !ove with Maudru's niece, Gina, and had eloped with her. "Le
besson" has in fact dared to steal the sacred fire and has defied the god,
Maudru. He had promised her freedom and joy. But freedom is slow in
coming and the girl's hot temper is endemic to her "bullish" personality,
the symbol of the family's name.
The couple is forced to pass the winter in Toussaint's house until the
sno~ mclts and uncovers a raft which the twin has built and concealed
in a lonely creek. Meanwhile Matelot is killed. The twin, angry at his
father's death, sets fire to Maudru's stable and frees the bulls which,
maddencd by the smell of fire, race wildly across the fields. In a pagan,
orgia.,tic scene where the "mere du bl" made of straw burns, announc-
ing thc arrival of spring, Antonio and "le besson" launch their raft and
float down the swollen river. They are finally free.
However, as we have previously mentioned, the true characters of
thc novel are not the humans, but the very clements of nature which
Antonio, Matelot, "le besson," Clara, or Gina symbolize. They are the
voices of the different elements. Their life and welfare is determined by
nature.
The novel opens with a signigicant scene of perfect harmony, the
juxtaposition of the female and the male element. "La nuit. Le fleuve
a a
coulait coups d'paules travers la foret." 4 Set in an epic framework
the novel suggests Giono's ability to create new myths, as Germaine
Bre or Hallam Walker claim. They focus on the myth of the adolescent
sun-god who disappears with the winter and resurrects with the coming
of spring.
We must realize, however, that what we cal! nature, Giono prefers to
cal! Earth. lt is this telluric quality which gives the novel the very poetic
scxuality normally associated with the female. In fact, Antonio and
Matelot's quest centers on the search for "le besson" who has fallen in
!ove with Gina, the cause of the twin's mysterious disappearance.
Antonio, a Virgil-like poet, "la bouche d'or," as he is known, knows
thc sccrets of the river - the flux of life. Matelot, like Dante, sets out
on his long journey only to find in his odyssey his own death. Antonio
is directly associated with the river. In fact the whole novel is structured
around the river. It is the river that divides the two countries. The river
is what brings Antonio and "le besson" back to their home, hence the
river of life, the eterna! flux which echoes Giono's optimism in his
"vision romanesque" of the world.

346 VICTOR CARRABINO
Antonio becomes then the interpreter of the river; the poet that
translates the uncanny world of nature. The river and Antonio become
one. The river, though at first seen to be a hostile force, becomes the
image of the Absolute. The river is animated and anthropomorphized.
The river lives and palpitates with life, becomes angry, flirts with the
wind, plays with Antonio who is the only one who understands it:
Tous les matins Antonio se mettait nu. D'ordinaire sa journe commen~ait par une
lente traverse du gros bras noir du Oeuve. 11 se laissait porter par les courants;
sentait, avec son ventre, si reau portait, serre a bloc, ou si elle avait tendance a ptiller.
... N u. Antonio tait un homme grand et muscl en longueur. ... La caresse, la science
et la colere de l'eau taient dans cette carrure d'homme.... 11 avait un ventre de beau
nageur plat et ~ouple. (pp. lll-19)
Antonio blends with the river. Antonio and the river are one. His sense
of direction is felt only through his intimate contact with the water: "11
sentit que l'eau glissait sous son ventre dans la donnc direction .... Le
froid va venir. Les truites dorment, le courant est toujours au beau
milieu." (p. 24)
Giono has introduced Antonio, the interpreter of the river. lmmedi-
ately follows the description of the river, justas detailed and important:
Le fleuve qui sortait des gorges naissait dans un boulis de la montagne. C'tait une
haute valle noire d'arbres noirs, d'herbe noire et de mousses pleines de pluie. Elle tait
creuse en forme de main, les cinq dmgb apportant toute reau de cinq ravinements
profonds dans une large paume d'argile el de roehes d'ou le Oeuve s'lan~ait come un
cheval en pataugeant avec ses gros pieds pleins d'cume. Plus bas, reau sautait dans de
sombres escahcrs de sapins vers l'appel d'une autre hranehe d'eau. Elle sortait d'un val
qu'on appelait: la JOIC de Marie.... le neuvc entrait da m, le pays Rebcillard. (p. 26)
This is the river that leads to the Pays Rebeillard, the impenenetrable
domain of Maudru. Only Antonio is capable of entering it: "Le fleuve
traversait tout le Pays Rebeillard, tendu sur la terre avec ses affluents,
ses ruisseaux et ses ramilles d'eau comme un grand arbre qui portait les
monts au bout de ses rameaux .... Antonio entra dans les gorges du
fleuve un peu apres avoir vu Matelot sur l'autre bord." (p. 29) In fac t,
Matelot refers to Antonio as a fish: "Tu es souple comme un poisson."
(p. 97)
The awakening of spring is first announced by the movement of the
river which gives life and continuity to Giono's work:
On ne voyait pas le fleuve. 11 tait sous la brume. Puis il commcn~a a remuer ses grosses
cuisses sous la glace et on entendit craquer et bouger et un bruit comme le ronOement
TIIE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 347
de grosses cailles contre les graviers des rives. On n'en pouvait pas douter: malgr
rhiver le neuve s'chauffait dans de grands gestes el, quand la brume monta boucher
le c1el. qu'a la place du gel tincelant s'tendit cette blme lumii:re grise, louche et
1001
preque ui:de. on aper~ut que toute la glace du fleuve descendait lentement vers le sud.
. .. Le temps len temen! les arbres approche du rveil. (pp. 172-73)
The river breathes with life. Jt is the hope for Antonio, Matelot, and
Gina's attaining freedom. It is the river that controls them:
M<untenant, le ncuve soubresautait. De temps en temps on le voyait faire un geste. 11
rallatt le regarder un moment: il tait toujours immobile sous le froid, puis on entendait
comme la course d'un souffle qui descendait de la montagne .... Tout le long des rives,
a rcndrot ou le Oeuve avait puse frotter contre les arbres durs, il y avait dja une bellc
allonge d'cau noire, toute hhre .... Ce jour-la le Oeuve se gonfla d'une oie sauvage.
... Du fond du pays bas monta la plainte des collincs. On entendait que le Oeuve les
servall pour les craser. De la falaise de l'arche les 01seaux arrivi:rent. (pp. 205-206)
"Le printemps, dit Antonio en descendant l'escalier. Le printemps?" (p.
209) Now the river is no longer somnolent, but quick like a horse: "le
fleuve galopait, apleines sabots." (p. 212) The river is rushing -
affirming once again its continuity and force like life itself. "Le fleuve,
tout de suite apres le pont, creusait des reines boueux." (pp. 212-13)
Thc river joins the voice of the wind in affirming the rebirth of nature:
"Le grondement du fleuve souffla en plein avec des embruns et du vent
tiede." (p. 217) This awakening into new life, the burst of energy, is felt
by Antonio: "Antonio sentit en lui tout son fleuve clair, son fleuve d't
qui berc,:ait sur ses eaux maigres de large palets de lumiere." (p. 220)
Only through the river can the lovers reach their new home: "Ce qui les
intressait tous surtout c'tait le fleuve." (p. 258) In fact the river takes
over the whole environment: "Le debordement du fleuve les entourait
de tous les cts." (p. 265) Their immersion in the water is a baptism in
water which will consecrate the characters by giving them life and hope.
The river provides then, as it did for Heraclitus, a unity dependen!
upon the regularity of the flux. The river provides an image of the
balance and continuity in the world.
Juxtaposed to the imagery of fluidity and rebirth, generally associated
with the omnipresence of the river, another element of significan! value
is fire. In fact the relationship between water and fire is very clase. Fire,
however, which is normally associated with an element of renaissance,
is here also passion, love, and vengeance. Fire is the most free and the
most violen! element. lt is "le besson" who symbolically translates the
inherent qualities of the poetics of fire. A red-haired youth, "le besson
348 VICTOR CARRABINO
aux cheveux rouges" (p. 7), stands in archetypal language for strength
courage, ardor, virility. Sexuality is even attributed to tire. According ~~
Northorp Frye, "fire's sparks are analogous to vitality, its flames are
phallic symbols, providing a further analogy to the sexual act, as the
ambiguity of the word 'consummation' indicates." 5
Fire is also the archetypal symbol which appears in the opening lines
of a Vedic hymn, addressed to Agni, the God of Fire. Fire is also fo und
in Hindu Puranic accounts of the world's creation.
For Heraclitus fire is the basic element, the universal Lagos con-
trolling all things. The idea of unity and harmony is precisely expressed
by the idea of Lagos which gives meaning to the coherent complexities
of life. Lagos was conceived by Heraclitus as an actual constituent of
things, and in many respects it is co-extensive with the primary cosmic
constituent, fire. Fire is then for Heraclitus the archetypal form of
matter. The cosmos consists according to Heraclitus of the masses of
earth understood as secondary fire (as in volcanoes) and sea, sur-
rounded by the bright integument of fire. This fire was regarded by
Heraclitus as the motive point of the cosmological process.
In Le chant du monde the red-haired twin motivates Antonio and
Matelot's quest. Whether or not we see "le besson" as Heracles, as
Hallam Walker sees him, it is undeniable that this elemental force as an
integral part of Giono's poetics. In addition, whether we lean more
heavily toward seeing the influence of Hindu philosophy or that of
Western philosophical thinking, or even Western mythology, we cannot
deny the importance that Giono gave lo fire - closely linked with the
other elements.
While "le besson" is presented at first in a dormant state, he is
waiting to strike at the right moment. It is fire that controls the flow of
the river. The heat of the sun allows the snows to melt, the river to
thaw, the fish to jump and finally the destruction of evil - Maudru. lf
fire destroys, it also, brings rebirth. Matelot dies. He is killed during the
pyric orgiastic night - the welcoming of spring. "Le besson" burns the
stables of Maudru. The old dies (Matelot) and the new is reborn ("le
besson") - spring itself. The sun is responsible for giving birth to the
day. In a very poetic description of the dawn, when all the elements of
nature partake to bring about that birth, Giono excels in giving fire its
prominence as the source of energy and movement. The tongues of tire
gently touch the mountain tops, waking nature up toa new rebirth:
THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 349
5
bitement il fit trs froid .... Le vent sonna plus profond .... Des arbres parlerent. ...
L~ vent passa en ronflant sourdement. ... Les chcnes parlaient, puis les saules, puis les
ulnes; les peupliers sifflaient de gauche et de droite comme des queues de chevaux ....
~a nuit gmissait tout doucement. ... Une colline de l'est sortit de l'ombre .... Une
fort gronda, puis elle mergea lentement de la nuit avec son dos pelucheux. Un
frrnissemcnt de lumiere coula sur la cime des arbres .... Le rocher s'claira. La
lurnirc venait de la colline. Sortie la premire de la nuit, noire comme une charbon-
niere, elle lan<;ait une lumiere douce vers le ciel plat: la lumiere retonbait sur la terre
avec un petit gmissement, elle sautait vers le rocher, il la lan<;ait de la nuit sur des
collines rondes .... Le jour coula d'un seul coup tres vi te sur le fleuve jusqu'au loin des
eaux. Les monts s'allumerent. Les collines soudain embrases ouvrirent leur danse
ronde autour des champs et le soleil rouge sauta dans le ciel avec un henissement de
cheval. "Le jour,' dit Matelot. (pp. 78-79)
"Le besson" defies Maudru. It is the solar hero, also associated with the
lion, who eventually brings about peace and freedom: "Je suis part de
notre foret pour chercher le babouin, le petit, l'enfant, du temps que je
passais ma main daos ses cheveux rouges. Et voila que je me trouve le
pere d'une espece de lion." (p. 118) This solar god is protected by
another god-like figure, Toussaint. "Le besson" will prove his courage
and strength to Gina who challenges him to prove himself against her
father: "Je veux qu'il soit ce qu'il s'est imagin d'etre el qu'il m'a fait
croirc .... Q'uil tait plus fort que mon pere." (p. 127)
It is "le besson" who at the end is the catalyst that allows the
destruction of the malefic forces of Maudru and the triumph of lave. In
fact Gina first saw le besson in his god-like qualities associated with
fire. As he kindled the trees with fire, he had kindled in Gina's heart
passion and love:
11 avait fait un feu et il y avait mis a rougir son paisse marque de fer. Je le regardais
d'entre les saules. Il saisit la marque avec sa grande main nue et il l'enfon<;a, blanche de
feu. dans le tronc tout vivant. Au milieu de la fume je le voyais pousser de toutes ses
forccs. la sve criait. 11 se releva. 'L'arbre tait marqu de son nom. Et je vis que cet
homme avait les cheveux tout rouges comme la grande marque de feu?' (pp. 130-3 1)
Once fire has unleashed its tongues, the whole town undergoes
change. It is the torch which ignites "la mere du bl," a phallic symbol,
which adds to pleasures of this pagan imagery announcing the coming
of spring: "Un bouvier avait pris une torche de lavande. 11 se mit a lui
faire l'amour par dessous avec sa torche enflamme et soudain elle
s'embrasa." (p. 224) From this moment on, fire imagery embraces the
whole town: "Des reflets rouges trainaient daos le ciel." (p. 225)
350 VICTOR CAR RAB I NO
Passion, violence, and anger, take over and fire asserts its met _
morphic force: "Il n'y a plus ren dans la ferme que la colere du feu" a
248) This anger is the image of "le besson" who will finally overthr~~
Maudru - the symbol of evil - thus showing himself to be the true
he ro.
Another element closely associated with fire and to which it gives its
"lan" is the wind. In fact the voice of the wind is the message that
comes from the uncanny bowels of the earth and gives them expression
and meaning. Without the wind, Fire will not be revived. The wind
however, in Giono's poetic reverie, is associated with the fores t whos~
maste r is Matelot. Not oblivious to the importance of the wind when he
was a sailor, Matelo t is the interpreter of the forest, the one who speaks
its tongue. It is the wind which is the voice of the night, the unknown,
the abyss, and the Absolute.
Once again, in Heraclitian cosmology, air is an integral part of Fire.
Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all things, He racli tus wrote
that the world order is an ever-living fire. He extended the manifesta-
tion of fire to include not only fue!, llame, and smoke but also the ether
in the upper atmosphere. Part of the air, or pure fire, "turns to" ocean,
presumably as rain, and part of this ocean turns into earth.
That air is associated with Fire in Giono's poetics, is justified by the
powerful presence of the night, and the thunder through the fo rest.
Most of the novel in fact takes place during the night. The night is an
image of evasion, of hiding. The night invites man to a poetic trip, to
the call of the unknown, the realm of death. Matelot dies during the
night. It is the night which gives birth to the day. The wind is the voice
of the night:
Suhitcmcnt il fit tre' fro id. Antonio 'cntit que sa lhre gclait. Le vent somna plus
profond; sa voix s'ahaissait puis montait. De-, arhres parli:rcnt; au-dcssus d es arbres le
vent passa en rinnant sourdement. 11 y avait des moments de grand silence, puis les
chnes parlaicnt, puis les saulnes, puis les a ulnes. Les peuplicrs sifnaient de gauche et
de droite comme des queues de chcvaux, puis tout d'un coup ils se taisaient tous. AJors,
la nuit gmissait tout doucement du fond du silence .... Au sud. une forct gronda, puis
e lle emcrgca lcntement de la nuit avec son dos peluchcux. (p. 7i!)
The wind becomes the voice of Matelot "L'homme de la foret" who
calls his own son:
Anton1o entendit le bruit de la foret. 11\ avaient dcpa"c le quartier du 'ilcncc ct d'ici on
entendait la nuit vivante de la forct. <;:a venait et ~a touchail l'oreille comme un doigt
froid . C'tail un long 'oufne 'ourd. un hruit de gorgc. un hruit profond. un long chant
THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 351
tone dans une bouche ouverte. <;:a tenait la largeur de toutes les collines couvertes
~~;b~es. C'tait dans le ciel e t sur la terre comme la pluie, ~a venait de tous les cts a
d f is et Ientement ;a se balan;ait comme une lourde vague en ronnant dans le
la ~dor des vallons. Pres de son oreille il (Matelot) entendit un petit sifflement. ...
cor . M
'C't!Sl rna foret' ... , dil ate1o t. (p. 11)
The forest signs its melodious verse thro ugh the wind: "On entendait
chanter les pins !a-bas devant et une autre odeur venait aussi, avive et
pointue." (p. 12) "Le chant g rave de la foret ondulait lentement et
frappait la-haut dans le nord, contre les mo ntagnes creuses." (p. 12) It
is in fact the wind that announces the night: "La nuit arriva dans un
grand coup de vent: Au premier vent elle avait saut. Elle tait dej loin,
Ja-bas devant, avec son haleine froide." (p. 60)
It is also the wind that announces springtime and wakes the river up
from its dormant state: "Le ciel entier bruissant dans les frmissements
d'un vent un peu lourd faisait chanter au balancement de la pluie les
sombres vallons de la montagne et l'aigre lyre des bois nus. Ce jour-la
le fleuve se gonfl a d'une joie sauvage." (p. 206)
The elements are interrelated to the point that their mutual presence
takes on the aspect of a game. The wind plays with the river: "Le vent
trop lourdement charg flotta un moment, grappant l'eau du marais
avec son odeur d'arbres." (p. 236) It is once again the wind that gives
energy and strength to fire. During the night when Antonio and "le
besson" set fire to Maudru's land, the voice of the wind dominates the
whole night: "Dehors le bruit s'enflait et retombait comme le langage
d'un grand vent. C'tait, au plus haut, le ronflement des flammes, le
craquement des murs, des poutres, des po rtes. L'cho des hangars, le
mugissement des taureaux, et la sourde cavalcade des betes dans les
pres contre." (p. 246)
Giono has been able to solidify all the elements of nature and has
givcn them a voice. He has animated them. However, if Giono's poetics
are based o n a dynamism of materiali zati o n, the privileged substance is
the carth, another elemental force which in Giono's poetics spells
nourishment, peace, fertility, offspring, !ove, and stabil ity. As Jacques
Pugnet states in his lean Giono: "Peut-on ici parler de nature? A ce
mot affaibli par l'usage et qu'il vite, Giono prfere celui dont se
servent les paysans: la terre. La terre est cette chair vivante qui porte
toutcs les cratures. Le monde o u cosmos, !'ensemble des lments, des
cratures, et leurs multiples relations, la vie qui les unit. Ceci est le
domaine du poete, le personnage paysan ne connc1it bien que la terre." 6
 352 VICTOR CARRABINO
Al! other elements seem to gather around the majestic presence of la
terre in order to sing its praise, Le Chant du Monde. The first direct
encounter with the earth takes place when Antonio on the way in his
quest, meets a woman, Clara, giving birth to a baby. Clara, though
blind, is able to see better than anyone else, has a better control of the
earth, for she sees not with her eyes but through a baudelairian
synesthetic sense. She hears the odors of the earth.
The stability of the earth is also portrayed by Giono in the masculine
appearance of "La mere de la route": "C'tait une femmc forte et brune,
avec de la moustache et de gros sourcils." (p. 39) Mother earth, the
womb that harbors all sorts of life is poetically depicted by Giono in a
natural state through Clara.
C1ai1 une fe mme lendue sur le dos. Ses jupes laient loules releves sur son ventre el
elle plrissail ce las d'loffes el son ven1re avec ses mains, puis elle ouvrail ses bras en
croix el elle criait. Elle banda ses reins en arriere. Elle poussail de loulcs ses forces en
silence, sans respirer, puis elle reprenail haleine en crianl et elle retombait sur la
mousse. Sa tete battait dans l'herbe de droite et de gauche .... Antonio essaya de
rabattre les jupes. 11 sentit que la-dessous le ventre de la femme tait vivant d'une vie
houleuse comme la mere ... 'Elle va faire le petit.' (p. 37)
Clara is the earth. Clara stands for strength, Jife, matrLX naturae, and
the plenty that is normally associated with the pagan goddess of
fertility: "11 y avait une norme vie daos ces seins. 11 n'en avait jamais vu
d'aussi beau." (p. 42) Antonio's encounter with Clara stirs in him
sensuality and rekindles in him the flame of passion and love. However
discreet in his description, Giono never falters in erotic imagery. It is
rather the gentleness of the woman, the sensuality of the body being
touched by Antonio's virile hands that becomes, in the eyes of Antonio,
by poetic transposition, another earth. Clara's body is described in
terms of the beauty of nature and its sinuous curves:
Antonio faisail la coupe avec la paume de sa main. 11 y versait de l'eau-de-vie chaud e el
frottait des flanes de la femme. 11 avait pcur de ses longues mains 1ou1cs rougueuses.
Cette peau qu'il frottait lait fine comme du sable. JI 1ouchai1 le dessous des seins.
Ctail soyeux. 11 frotta doucemenl le globe en remontan! vers le dessous des bras.
Toutes les valles, tous les plis, toutes les douces collines de ce corps, il les sentait dans
sa main, elles cntraient dans lui, elles se marquaienl dans sa chair a lui a mesure qu'il
les touchail avcc leurs profondeurs et leurs gonflemenls et <;a faisall un tout petit peu
mal, puis <;a clatait dans lui comme une <;erbe trop grosse qui carte son len et qui
s'tale. (pp. 42-43)
That Clara represents the goddess Earth is evident in Antonio's
THE HARMONY OF THE ELEMENTS 353
rception of her body as valleys and hills. This woman "aux yeux des
r: ullies de menthe" (p. 49) is blind, yet she is able to Jead Antonio, the
oet, "la bouche d'or," to penetrate the uncanny mysteries of the Earth.
~he is his goddess, his inspiration. She is the guide that shows him the
richness and the opulence of nature:
(Gina) se serrait contre Clara. Laveugle lui touchail les mains, lui tatait les pigneis sous
les manches. 'C'est le printemps, disait Clara, <;a va etre le coeur du prin1emps.' A quoi
le sais-lu? El Gina regardait les yeux morts loujours pareils a des fueilles de menthe.
El de wn doigl, elle montrait le bruil des eaux, le bruil des eaux grasses dans le
n~~ve, le bruil des eaux claires ruisselant des rochers el des montagnes, Ja-bas sur les
rives. Elle monlrall des paisseurs de pluie dont le battemenl d'ailes tait plus sombre,
des croulemenls de lerre - el elle monlrait les croulements de 1erre avanl que Gina
ail enlendu le brull . ... L'odeur, dit Clara. L'odeur de 1erre est venu. (p. 261)
Clara is in fact closer to the Earth than any other female character: "Je
marchais dedans a
quatre pattes quand j'tais petite." (pp. 261-62)
Clara is mother earth with its cycles. Her life corresponds to the flux of
life:
Toutes les chose<, du monde arrivent a des endroits de mon eorp<, - elle toucha ses
cuisses, ses seim, son cou, ses joues, son fronl , ses cheveux - c'esl attach a moi par
des peliles ficcelles tremblanles. Je suis printemps, moi mainlenanl. je suis envieuse
comme toul <;a aulour, je suis pleine de grosses enves comme le monde mainlenant. (p.
262)
Antonio's attraction to Clara is more than a physical one. Through-
out his journey, which lasts three seasons, his mind quite often wonders
to Clara who was left behind and who is awaiting for his return.
Antonio's journey is then twofold - his search for the twin and his
return to Clara. She is waiting for him. The cosmic union finally takes
place between the man and the woman, between the river and the earth.
Antonio at the end of the novel once again thinks of Clara: "ll pensait
qu'il allait prendre Clara dans ses bras et qu' il allait se coucher avec elle
sur la terre." (p. 277) That the last word of the novel is "earth" is very
significant in Giono's poetic world.
Here is the cosmic union of the female with the male, the river,
Antonio, which will fertilize the womb of Clara - the earth. This
nurtures the characters with new "nourritures terrestres."
In conclusion, Giono in Le Chant du Monde has successfully made
the elemental forccs of nature the true characters of the novel. The
human counterparts are the muscles and the song of these forces.
..:~'. '- vr t.
.:;.":,
ah,
~ '-'
q ti
354 VICTOR CARRABINO

Water, fire, wind, and earth form the very architecture of the nove)
PART SEVEN
Each element has been given its distinct voice, manifested this time no;
through nature itself, as in the pathetic fallacy, but through men as the
interpreters and translators of a baudelairian world:
La nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paro les;
L'homme y passe a travers des forets de symboles THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
AND RELATED TOPICS
Comme de longs chos qui de loin se confondent
Daos une tnbreuse et profonde unit
V aste comme la nuit et comme la clart
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se rpondent.
(Baudelaire, "Correspondances", p. 11 .)

The Florida State University

NOTES
1
Christian Michelfelder, lean Giono et les religiom de la terre (Paris: Gallimard,
1938), p. 52.
~ As quoted in Franci~ MacDonald, Plato and Parmenide5 (New York: The Bobbs-
Merril Company. 1965). p. 3.
' Maree! Arland. "Le Cha nt du Monde." Nouvel/e Revue Franraise (Sept. 1953),
p. 498.
Jean G iono, Le Chant du Monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 5. (AH quotes from this
work wtll be included in the text.)
Northrop Frye in Gasto n Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Bosto n: Beacon
Press. 1964 ), p. vi.
" Jacque~ Pugnet, lean Giono (Paris: Classiques du XXe sieclc, 1955), p. 49.