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Sacred and profane love: four fountains in theHypnerotomachia
(1499) and the Roman de la RoseHester Lees-JeffriesPublished
online: 01 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Hester Lees-Jeffries (2006) Sacred and
profane love: four fountains in the Hypnerotomachia (1499) andthe
Roman de la Rose , Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual
Enquiry, 22:1, 1-13, DOI: 10.1080/02666286.2006.10435730
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- J - illclud(' 'L(' dC'Tllir du .iardin nll'di"""J: Du verger de
I" rmc it CythiTI. in 1'''ga.1
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apparent climax or Poliphilus's quest at the Fountain or Venus,
while the latter is yery near the beginning of the Romall comparing
them in terms grounded in their configuration of narrative and
erotic space points up their similarities. The Fountain of Adonis
is at the centre of a garden and at the heart of the
H)jJllerotomachia's structure; it is also the matrix in relation to
which the two parts of the book map on to each other: the fountains
encountered by Poliphilus in Book I arc mirrored in Book 2 by
intenst" Petrarchan imagery of ice, water and llre, and similes
drawn from Ovidian metamorphoses related to water. It is a place of
reflection, whereby Book 2 retells Book I in a different narrative
and aesthetic mode. In the Roman, the Fountain of Narcissus is at
the centre of the Garden of Delight. It has a catalytic function in
the narrative (like a romance knight, Amant 'discovers' his quest
at a fountain) that is apparently very different from that of the
Fountain of Adonis, which connotes narrative stasis. Both
fountains, however, are associated with the death of lovers, and
those lovers' subsequent metamorphoses into flowers. They are
memorial sites, sites of mourning, places where the competing
drives of Eros and Thanatos are not so much juxtaposed as overlaid,
made visible and, even more, made material. Both fountains, too,
are represented as art objects, things to be looked at. They arc
material records of narrative: tht" story of Adonis's death is
represented in the sculpted scenes which decorate his tomb, as well
as being dramatized in Venus's annual rite of commemoration and
mourning.
lVlore complex still is the situation at the Fountain of
Narcissus in the Roman: the story of his fate is inscribed into the
fabric of the fountain itself, and this real inscription therefore
frames the reflections, and so the imaginative, mimetic or erotic
experiences, of all who, wittingly or not, recreate 'his' story by
gazing into the fountain. They or their reflections are made art
objects as in turn they look at themselves: this is particularly
true of
2 HESTER I.EES-JEFFRIES
Figure J. Alllant at the Fountain of from a 1531 Paris edition
of the
Roman de La RO.II' in the Cambridg-e Uniwrsity Library. All
il1lag-es are reproduced by
or the Syndics of the Canlbridgc Uni'TTsily LiJ)rary.
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Figure :2 . .\lllant and the Rose: lrwll a 1.1:)1 Paris
f'Ciition uf tllt RumaJl rlf' 1/1 Rn.'i(J in the Cambridge
I.ibrary.
Figure 3. Thl" Fountain of Adonis, ltJjJllrrotollllu:hia
Poliphiii (Ltg'll, q, [rom a copy in the Calnbridge Vnin'rsity
Library.
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Chaucer's versIOn of the text, which describes the objects
reflected in the fountain as looking 'As though it were/Peyntid in
the cristall there' (1599-1600) [1567]. They read a narrative of
which they have become both subject and object.
Several observations can be made about the way in which the
Fountain of Narcissus appears in the Roman. It is both the location
of and the occasion for a digression, in this case the narration of
the story of Narcissus himself. The reader pauses, "",ith Amant,
beside the fountain and, as Narcissus's story is told, the story of
Amant is itself temporarily suspended in both time and space, while
a historical time and a mythical place are elided,
palimpsestically, into the temporal and physical space ofthe main
narrative. Emmanuele Baumgartner suggests that 'the Fountain of
Love is the crucial locus where the narrative refreshes itself and
begins anew'.4 The inscription on the fountain's rim makes it clear
that this is the actual fountain at which Narcissus met his end.
That historical narrative is thus inscribed into the materiality of
the physical, if fictional, present. Like the Fountain of Adonis,
therefore, where the history of Adonis's death is recorded in the
bas on his tomb, the Fountain of Narcissus is a parenthetical,
suspended space in its relationship to the main narrative. It is a
place where the constrictions of time and space, albeit those of a
dream, are not so much lifted as stretched or dilated to admit,
into the courtly garden, a fragment of Boeotia. In the
H)pnerotomac/zia, the intrusion of the apparent scene of Adonis's
death, which
4 HESTER LEES-JEFFRIES
Figure -t' Thc' Fountain of Adonis. another \'iew, showing the
scenes of .'\dunis's death which cll'corale the sides or his Lonlb.
1{J1!1leroI0lIlndll'n }Jail/liz iii i149'J!, zH. from a CDpy in the
Cambridge Cniwrsitv
.j. -- EmmanuCi" Baumgartner, 'The Play of Temporalities; or,
the Reported Dream of Guillaume De Lorris', trans. Benjamin Semple,
in R,tizillking tiz,' Romm,,:r of Ihe Rose: Te.I[, Image,
Reception, eds Ke,in Brownlee and Sylvia Huut (Philadelpllia:
Univcrsity or Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 31.
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5 SUZdllJ1(' Lcwis. '!lTlagl's uf ()pening. Penetration and
Closure ill the RUII/all De J../7 RrJl"f'. Tl 1m! a Jlllagr', a p.
2:22. See also David F. Hulr, 'The ;\llegorie,d FOlllllain:
Narcissus ill the Rmwm Dc La Ros(:, R()tnrlllit" Rrc';r;(', 72
([981), [)",id F. Hull, Pmj!hfril's: Renders"i/) and .illlhoril1'
ill Ihe fin! ROlli,'" D, La Ro.\,' (Cambridgl": Cambridge
LTniversity Prcf.;f.;, I9B6).
strictly speaking took place in a C)'1Jrian forest rather than a
C:ytherean enclosed garden, represents a similar disjunction,
althuugh a less jarring one. The sense uf the Garden of Adonis as a
'parenthetical' space is emphasized by the way in \\"hich it is not
included in the exhaustive gazetteer of the island that precedes
Poliphilus and Polia's arrival at the Fountain of Venus, and that
there appears to be no place where it 'fits'. In both the
J-{J'iJllcrotomacilia and the Roman, the fountain setting occasions
and represents the enlarging of the narrative in spatial terms:
just as the Fountain of Narcissus rt'tlects and so contains the
whole orchard, so the Fountain of Adonis reflects both halves of
the narrative, the erotic dream landscape of Poliphilus's quest and
the proto-magic realism of Polia's Treviso, making no clear
distinction bt'twt't'n 'real' and 'unreal'. Perhaps most
significantly, within the structures of both texts, and for both
protagonists and readers, these two fountains function as blank
spaces, spaces of temporal hiatus and flexibility, where the
self-contained world of the narrative is, for a time, permeable or
pregnable. In both romances, the self-contained world represented
at and by the limen of the fountain's surface figures the space of
fiction itself, whieh is also the space of art and of love.
In her discussion of manuscript illuminations of the Roman,
Suzanne Lewis suggests that 'the fountain was perceived by medieval
readers as an image of fiction itself - a deceptive surface
reflecting "truth", because it is at once transparent and opaque,
open and dosed'.5 The blank, but endlessly informable, space of the
fountain is where the narrative endures a hiatus: it is a lacuna
that connotes not loss but potentiality; not that something is
missing, but that an infinitude of coexistent perspectives and
narratives is possible. As the Fountain of Narcissus becomes known
as the Fountain of Love 'for the seed that heere was sowen', it
becomes a locus of intertcxtuality:
This welle is depicl, as well is knowen, The \Vcllc of Love, of
verray right, or which ther hath ful many a wight Spoken in bookis
dyversely. (1625-29) 9GJ
The Fountain of Adonis in the /-{l'jJlZemtomaclzia is also an
intertextual site, invoking the generic conventions of Boccaccian
storytelling --- it provides C:'xactly the sort of setting
encountered in the Decameroll. for stories not dissimilar to
Polia's - as well as Ovid's j\ietamoljJ/wses. The different
responses of Colonna and de Lorrisl de NIeun to this literal lacuna
in the text reveal some important ways in which the
J-{Jpnerotomaclzia is emphatically not a medieval text, in the way
it is read, its narratology and its ethical agenda.
It is at the Fountain of Narcissus in particular that Amant
becomes a surrogate reader, just as at the Fountain of Adonis
Poliphilus notionally becomes part ofthe audience of Po Ii a's
story_ "Vhile it is unclear whether the story of Narcissus is
narrated by him (Amant) or by a more impersonal narrative persona,
both Amant and the reader project themselves into Narcissus's
narrative space, represented by the reflective surface of the
fountain itself Like the Garden of Delight and the Garden of
Adonis, and indeed the Roman and the J-{ypnerotollZachia
themselves, the two fountains, which are at their centres, are both
places (and spaces) for talking, hearing
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about, and meditating on, love. IVIuch later in the Roman, its
future readers are referred to as reading Le mime}" aus amoureus.
This primarily refers to the commonplace genre of the sjJeculum
but, given the importance of the Fountain of Narcissus to the
narrative and, later, the importance of the Fountain of the Lamb,
it also subsumes the whole narrative into the alternative reality
of the fountain space, and attests to the primacy of love among the
Roman's concerns.
In particular, the story of Narcissus and his fountain in the
Roman de fa Rose represents the temptation to, or seduction by, the
endless solipsism and self-referentiality of worldly, erotic love.
As Strubel puts it, referring to Amant's initial reluctance to look
into the fountain [ISIl-IS], 'la fontaine est d'abord rcssentie
comme un avertissement, une voie a eviter, celie de la
contemplation passive, ou du desir cultive pour lui-meme. Narcisse
represente une tentation permanente du lyrisme courtois, pure voi."
d'un
tournec vers un objet absent' (the fountain is at first sensed
as a warning, a path to avoid, that of passive contemplation, or of
the fostering of desire for one's self. Narcissus represents a
perpetual temptation of courtly poetry, the pure voice of a subject
directed towards an absent object).G Amant need never leave the
garden; given that the whole of the garden is contained in
mirror-image in the lountain, he need never leave the fountain
either. His own reflection, implicitly visible in the fountain as
Narcissus's
6 HESTER LEEScJEFFRIES
FigUl'1' 5. I'olia prepares trJ lell her slOry. beside- the
Fountain uf .-\CkJllis. H.ljlll/Tulolllat"hia P"lil,hili ([+99).
z9' f;'D>lJ a copy in the Cambridge l:ni\Trsity Library.
6 -- Armand Strubel, cd .. ie Romall De i.a Rose (Paris:
Librailie Cencrale Fran,aise. 1992), P117
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\\'as, at the same time as he see, the Rose and the rest of the
garden, figures the way in which erotic experience in the narratiw
will be filtered through his own subjectivity, and framed as the
object of fiction and of art. This is Vel)' much the way in which
Poliphilus views the world, especially shown in the way in which
his desire for Polia is elided into his passion for the art and
architecture of antiquity. The Fountain of Narcissus is also a
point of access, both experiential and interpretive, to an
eroticized world and landscape of love, which is both intcrior and
exterior. Both Amant and Poliphilus undertake quests or pilgrimages
that are to some degree internal, involving the shaping and
alteration of their own perceptions, and the pursuit and
realization of thcir desires, Especially obvious in the Roman is
the way in which the fountain acts as a limen betwecn, and a
catalyst for, various states of perception. Amant's vision in the
fountain is richer and more intense than his previous experience of
the garden itself, and thus he sees the Rose. This is shown in the
sequence of illustrations in a manuscript copy of the Romall in the
Cambridge University Library. In the first, Amant sees his
reflection (which could also be Narcissus's); the second is
identical in almost every respect, savc that the rose has appearcd,
and in the third, Amant is shot, through the eye, by the god of
love with his arrow. One of the functions of the lountain,
therefore, is the provision of a space for the projection,
realization and pursuit of desire. Amant is looking for love: that
he eventually sees an object for his desire reflected in the
fountain figures thc perceptual shift that characterizes the gaze
of love. The experience is dramatic and not unambivalcnt. The
setting, the frame, the associations, resonances and potentialities
of the fountain space facilitate all of this.
Given the volume of criticism cxclusively devoted to it, it is
easy to forget that the Fountain of Narcissus is not the only
fountain describcd in the Roman. The other is the Fountain of the
Lamb, or of the Trinity, which is found near the end of the Roman,
well into the section by Jean de Nfeun, in the part known as the
Sermon of Genius. The Fountain of the Lamb is described in terms
that explicitly oppose it to the Fountain of Narcissus: 'This is
not the same spring that the young man sa,,, welling up from the
marble stone beneath the tree. He deserves to be mocked for
praising that spring, the perilous spring, so bitter and venomous
that it killed fair Narcissus when he gazed at his reflection from
above' (314) [2040916]. The Fountain of Narcissus is situated
beneath a pine tree, while that of the Lamb is shaded by an olive
tree (20501); the former gushes out in two channels which, despite
appearing to originate there, in fact spring from elsewhere
120429-20434J, but the latter 'wells up continually through three
skilflilly constructed channels. These are so close together that
they all become one, and if you see them all and choose to amuse
yourself by counting them, you will find both one and three. You
will never fmel four, but always three and always one, this is a
characteristic that they share' (315) [20473-82]. The tw"O crystals
on the bottom of Narcissus's fountain are replaced by 'a carbuncle
more wondrous than any other marvellous stone' (316) [20532-20533J
and, to complete the diametric opposition constructed betwcen the
two fountains, the inscription on the rim of Narcissus's is
replaced by a scroll hanging from the tree over the fountain,
reading "'Here runs the spring oflife, beneath the leafy olive that
bears the fruit of salvation'" (316) [20525-20527 J.
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. R I .EES-J EFFRIES
Fig;ul't: IJ .. \..tHallt looks intu tht" Fountaill of and sees
his fJW ll (which illso
;\arcisslIs'S i. Ii-mn a ll1i.lIlUsrript n1' thr' H'JlII(lIf
rit- la ROSt' ill thl' Ctll11briclgt" Uni\Trsity Lihl"i.lly.
I:igurt' 7, :\m(lm set's the Rose, fnllll a ll1anwKripl oj" the
ROII/(fll
,It Rus,' ill til!" Cambridge UllivCl',ily
Fih'l.l1T 8 .. .'.\nlanr is shot in the heart by the arrow
..,flh" God of Lu\'l', from a fOllrteenth-centlll)llnanuscripl or
the Romrlll dr la Ro.\"(' ill the Ullive.r,ilY Librar), .
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The fact that tl1f' Fountain of Narcissus is referred to
extensively by Jean as \Nell as by Guillaume suggests that it can
be read in tvvo separate, but related, ways. It has an important
narratological function in the text as a whole. It opens the text
for protagonist, narrator and reader, functioning as a metatextual
imagc for the shifting, subjective experiences of fiction, art and
love. Like the J-{vpnerolomadzia's Fountain of Adonis, it is the
matrLx for reflections and recollections, the retelling of stories
and the fashioning of new identities, and the dizzying alteration
of the erotic perceptions of self and othcr. Many of these
qualities and principles hold true for, and indeed frame, the whole
romance, including Jean's continuation. In that continuation,
however, the Fountain of Narcissus is also reconstructed as the
specific and inferior opposite of the Fountain of the Lamb.
Although this implies a moral principle that can be seen as
underlying the entire romance, it is presented as a local allegory,
a particular point of view voiced by only one character, Genius,
among many. That thc Fountain of the Lamb can be seen as ultimately
implying that fiction and art are deceptive and that worldly love
is inferior to divine, does not necessarily invalidate the Fountain
of Narcissus's demonstration of some of the ways in which fiction,
art and love can actually operate.
In drawing his comparison between the Fountain of Narcissus and
the Fountain of the Lamb, Genius considers at SOllle length the
cliITerence between the 1\0/0 crystals at the bottom of the former
and the single carbuncle of the latter. In contrast to the
crystals, which can only reflect half the garden at once, and which
arc wholly dependent on the sun's rays in order to reveal anything
at all ('They are so dark and murky as to be insufficient in
themselves for the man who looks at his reflection in them, for
their brightness comes from elsewhere. If the sun's rays do not
strike them in such a way that they can catch them, they are
powerless to show anything' (3I5) [20+58-64]), the Fountain of the
Lamb contains a carbuncle: 'I tell you also that in this spring
(foolish people will fmd this hard to believe and many will take it
for fiction), thcrc shincs a carbunclc morc wondrous than any other
marvellous stone' (316) [20529-33]. The stone is set high in the
fountain, rather than at its bottom; it has three facets and, by
some divine arithmetic, each facct is 'worth' as much as the
remaining two. Like the three streams that well up from the spring,
which are always three and always one, the carbuncle is clearly a
symbol of the Trinity. Perhaps most significantly, the carbuncle
does not reflect light, but is itself the source of it: 'its
shining can plainly be seen from everywhere in the park .... No sun
but that resplendent carbuncle shines in thc park' (316) [20536-37,
20558-59]. It is a symbol of the glory, omniscience and omnipotence
of God. To look at it confers true sight and self-knowledge: 'it
has such marvellous power that as soon as those who go to see it
turn towards it and look at their own faces in the water, whatever
side of it they are on, thcy are alvvays able to see, and rightly
to understand, all the things in the park and themselves as well.
Once they have seen themselves there, they become such wise masters
that nothing that exists will ever be able to deceive them' (:JI6)
[20571-20582]. In Genius's own words, 'Anyone making a comparison
between the beautiful square garden closed by the little barred
wicket where this lovcr saw Pleasure and his people dancing in a
ring, and the fair, thc utterly and
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perfectly 100Tly park of which I speak, would he guilty of
serious error if he did not makc the same comparison as he would
hetween truth and fiction' (312) [20283-92j.
The reader, the observer or the lover, thcrefore, must be able
to distin,guish between the things of the world, howcver beautiful,
which, although supcrficially 'rear are in fact fictional, thc
products or constructs of human nccd, desire or imagination, and
the beauty of God's truth, a deeper reality created by God for His
faithhll people. In Genius's formulation earlier in the sermon,
human craft and skill, art and ingenuity, while not in themselws
bad, came into being at the end of the golden age; the)" arc signs
of the fall. As Peter L. Allen suggests, Jean's continuation shows
that Amant's subjective, solipsistic experience of love is 'a
fantasy, a literary construction that can exist only with the
confines of the dream, the page, or the mind of the reader. Jean
suggests that the world outside the frame is more important than
the one inside il.'7 Art, fiction and worldly love are not bad in
themselves, but they are limited, and the inability to perccivc
their limitations, or to distinguish between them and that which
they shadow, is dangerous. This is why Narcisslls died alone beside
his fountain.
It is surprising that no one seems to have commcnted on these
aspects of Jean's Fountain of the Lamb in rc!ation to Colonna's
Fountain ofVcnus, for there are somc significant points of contact
between them. In the Preface to his 1999 English translation of the
f{vpnerotolll(lrhia (the first completc translation in its
five-hundred-year histOlY), Joscelyn Godwin says of the vision
ofthe goddess in the Fountain of Venus that 'Superficially, this
recalls the symbolic deflowerment at the cnd of the Romanre qf the
Rose, but a closer analogy is thc cpiphanic Book XI of Apuleius's
JlIetamorplwses',s and this is indeed the case regarding many of
the details of the dcscription of thc goddess herself. Although
Apulcius describes various aspects ofIsis's clothing and
accoutrements as shining or sparkling," nowhere does he attribute
that quality to her body itself, and this is one of the most
important features of Colonna's Venus. Furthermore, the 'summit' of
the fountain structure itself 'blazed forth in the form of a proud
cupola of the fin cst unveined crystal, pure and transparent ....
It tapered toward the summit, where a miraculous ornament was
attached: an egg set in gold, made from a carbuncle that flashed in
all directions, the shape and size of an ostrich egg' (360). When
Venus herself is reveakd, stanns 'naked in the middle of the
transparent and limpid waters of the basin, which reached up to her
ample and divine ""aist, reflecting the Cytherean body without
making it seem larger, smaller, doubled or refracted; it was
visible simple and whole, as perfect as it was in itself. ... The
divine body appeared luminous and transparent, displaying its
majesty and venerable aspect with exceptional clarity and blazing
like a precious and coruscating carbuncle in the rays of the sun;
for it was made from a miraculous compound which humans have never
conceived of (362). Again, 'the part of her body that was above the
water shone no more nor less than the splendid rays of the sun in
polished crystal' (363). Colonna's description of the goddess's
glowing body as being like a carbuncle, and of the carbuncle on top
of the fountain that 'flash[es] in all directions', is strongly
reminiscent of the carbuncle that is inJ ean's Fountain of the
Lamb. Furthermore, that her body is not at all distorted by
reflection or refraction
10 HESTER LEES-JEFFRIES
7 - Pl'lt:r L. Allen. 77" _4/"1 of Lm'f'.' Fidio/l jiWI/ (!rid
If! /h{' R'f/I/Il/lf'f' of Ihl' Rv.,., (Philadelphia: Univer,ity of
Pellnsyil'ania PITS
-
III - Carol Fah-II HdTnnall, '\Yells and "tl'CaIllS in thrcC'
Chaucerian g'ardcns'. Prlj)l'I:1 Oil I.GIl.!!lIagl' and
Liltralllrr, t,) (1979), p. 3.1-5.
II - Allen, p. 9(i,
recalls Genius's attribution of the quality oftme rd1ection to
the Fountain of the Lamb.
The Trinity in vvhich Venus appears is completed by Ceres and
Bacchus, and she is not the spring of life but 'the delicious
source of every beauty': seeing her confers not self-knowledge and
the ability to disting'uish between illusion and reality, but
sexual ecstasy. In the climax of Colonna's romance, worlcUy, erotic
love is claimed as divine and transcendent, in much the same
imagery as Jean de lVIcun employed to describe the profoundly
Christian, and corrective, Fountain of the Lamb in the R()man de fa
Rose. In her essay on Chaucer's use of wells and fountains, Carol
Falvo Heffernan observes almost in passing that 'as de Lon-is
orients his fountain to the services of amour courtois, Jcan de
Meun redirects his fountain to minister to the stability of divine
love'. III It is clear that the principle underpinning the
opposition of the two fountains and therefore, perhaps,
representing the Roman's final position (or one of them) regarding
the nature of love, perception and art is the familiar text from I
Corinthians 13.12: 'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but
then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even
as also I am known.' Strubel describes the comparison of the two
fountains as 'une sequence essentielle pour la signification du
texte deJean .... C'est 1
-
more than do its various reinyentions of Christian rites and
sacraments or its sexual explicitness. If Guillaume's Fountain of
Narcissus has as its ccJUnterpart in the /fJ'/JllfIDtomadzia
Colonna's Fountain of Adonis, then Jean's Fountain of the Lamb is
matched by the Fountain of Venus. In Colonna's scheme, the love
that is ultimately divine and transcendent is also erotic and
worldly. As Colonna describes its revelation to Polia and
Poliphilus in the form ofa naked pagan goddess in thc Fountain of
Venus, it is also the ultimate art object, a literal shrine to thc
love of worldly beauty. At the Fountain of Venus the Divine is
emphatically flesh, and her surroundings represent the utmost in
human craft and art. At the Fountain of Adonis, the story 'told' by
Polia concerns a 'reality' no more (or less) 'real' than
Poliphilus's in the preceding Book: it simply narrates human erotic
experience Ii"om another point of view, and olfers a perception as
subjective, partial and unrevealed as Poliphilus's has heen.
Polia's story, as she herself admits, is no more transcendental or
less narcissistic than is Poliphilus's: both relate the utterly
subjective and worldly experience of erotic obsession. In the
/fljJlZemtomadzia, the things most highly prized are of the v"orld:
a desire for and a pleasure in the beauty of things madc by human
hands. 'Vhat it presents as being ultimately transcendent are
erotic love and the human capacity for imagination and
invention.
As the similarities between Guillaume's Fountain of Narcissus
and Colonna's Fountain of Adonis, and the similarities and
differences between Jean's Fountain of the Lamb and the Colonna's
Fountain of Venus show, the Roman de fa Rose and the
/fl'pnerotomacllia have much in common narratologically, but they
are ethically very different. vVhile both share a conventional
dream-vision frame, they put forward strongly contrasting views of
fiction, art and love. Although it is bawdy, decadent, and
encompasses the expression of a variety of perspectives on sexual
morality, the Roman (j)(lce Allen) retains, notably in the 'Sermon
of Genius', a moral core that is essentially Christian. It opposes
the sacred to the profane, and places a Christian allegory in the
midst of its allegory of the world. The /fYjmerotomadzia is profane
and worlcliy throughout, offering no locus of an alternative moral
perspective, Christian or otherwise. It sanctifies only art, the
body and carnal love .
. More subtly, the /fvjJllerotomac/Zia portrays a world, and
especially a landscape, thal is morally rlang('rous precisely
because it is so concrete. With its straightforward, morally
emblematic characters and its conventional, spatially incongruous,
largely unparticularized settings, the Roman conforms to the rules
of both dream-vision and allegory, and remains generally
two-dimensional. The /fJ1Jnerotomadzia does not: even at its most
fantastic, it is dangerously realistic. Poliphilus does not merely
describe his surroundings in minute detail, he explores them,
inside and out. ''''hen confronted with constructions such as the
jJue/' mingens ('pis sing boy') fountain, he speculates about their
mechanics. The complete integration of the woodcuts into the text
is telling: Poliphilus's world and adventures can be depicted in
pseudo-realistic detail in a way that Amant's cannot. Cytherea can
even be mapped. That the Fountain of Venus is not illustrated,
although it is initially surprising, in fact draws the reader into
Colonna's celebration of the human capacity to imagine. In a way
that is reminiscent of the narrative function of
12 HESTER LEEScJEFFRIES
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12 'Pnliphili h)VIlt'rotrJmacilia, \I'herein he sht\\'eth that
all bllrnainc and \\urldlie tiling-' are but a and hut a
\,i:1niti(' it 111 thr sdtil/gjoorth ,,hupofl/wlIl' thil/g' are
figured \\"()rlhic or ITlTH'lllbranu", in R[oJ)(,rt] Dr"llingtonj,
Hlj!ILPI'O{ollZ",hiu: Iii. Ilri!e "flu",' ill u dreallll' (London,
l3lr.
the fountain of :'.JarcissLls and the Fountain of .-\donis, the'
mirror-like walls and 1100r of the theatre, into which Poliphilus
fears to fall, create a space' for the reader in the narratin',
perhaps to imagine thc details of his or her own erotic epiphany.
Through the sermon of Genius, Jean asserts that the difference
between the twu gardens, and especially between their re'spective
fountains, is that betvvecn truth and fiction. In the
J-{fjJflcrotumadzia everything is a liction, and at times an
ostentatiously, worryingly three-dimensional one, and thus a
product of human ingenuity. This last quality is reflected even at
the micro-level of Colonna's own linguistic inventiveness. For both
Jean and Guillaume', the description of things tends to be so much
amply/catio. For Colonna, it is a celebration or the material and
the corporeal and of the human capacity to invent, describe and
experience.
If the Romall is read from the standpoint of the Fountain of the
Lamb, and with rcference to the Fountain oL\!arcissus, then the
text fi'om I Corinthians 13 might well serve as its epigraph, an
assertion that, amongst the bawdy, it does at kast gcsture at the
possibility of a higher moral ami spiritual truth. As an epigraph
to the J-{fiJllf'r()tomar/zirz, Colonna supplies the following:
HYPNEROTOl\lACHlA POLlPHlLI, VBT HV MANA Ol\INV\ NISI SOMNTVM
ESSE DOCE'!'. ATQVE OBITER
PLVRIl\lA senv SANE QUAl\I DIGNA COM
MEIV[ORA T.
It could be argued that this claims a Platonic agenda for the
itJjJnerotomac/Zia. But what Colonna depicts is a world of utter
moral relativism, where the transcendental is elided into thc
erotic, and the human capacity to invent and for pleasure is
fetishized as the ultimate good, the real and the ideal. Offered a
choice between Theodoxia, C:osmodoxia and Erototrophos, Poliphilus
chooses the latter: to gesture at a higher reality in the Christian
or Platonic sensc is futile, for the most intense and revelatory
experiences possible an' the human ones of love and imagination. It
is the J-{yjJ7Ie1"olomadzia's interaction with the ROil/all de La
Rose, at their respective central fountains. that makes this
especially clear.
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