In many medical treatises of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, love figures as a disease
closely related to madness or as a subdivision of
madness itself.1
Like any other malady, it has its own list of symptoms
and of cures, as well as an explanation as to how it
might be contracted. Most sources agree that love is
acquired upon contemplating a person of the opposite
sex, which means that the first cause of that particular
disorder is an image, that reaches the body through the
eye. This belief was shared by the realm of medical
science and that of literature and courtly love. The
idea that the lady’s image was the starting point of
love was given so much importance that Andreas
Capellanus, in his famous treatise De amore,
explains that a blind man is incapable of falling in
love with a woman. He can, however, continue to love
someone that he has seen and loved before losing his
sight, because it is possible for her image to remain in
his mind.2
According to Renaissance popular
beliefs, eyes were capable of emitting rays of light
containing very fine “spirits”, that could either come
out through them or move into them from outside.3
Leonardo da Vinci was the first to propose a new theory,
much closer to what science says today, in which light
only moved into the eyes and never out of them.
Regardless of what Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney
believed in Early Modern England, the notion that
“light” rays emerging from a beautiful lady’s eyes were
capable of moving a man into love had already been
established as a literary convention.4
A direct source of these ideas for Elizabethan poets
could have been Baldassare Castiglione’s Il
Cortegiano, which was translated into English in
1561 by Sir Thomas Hoby, and was very influential.
Castiglione mentions both the rays that come from the
eyes of the lady and those that come from the eyes of
the gentleman:
Cuando viere a alguna mujer hermosa, graciosa, de
buenas costumbres, y de gentil arte, y tal, en fin,
que [...] el alma comienza a holgar de contemplalla,
y a sentir en sí aquel no sé qué, que la mueve, y
poco a poco la enciende, y que aquellos vivos
espíritus que en ella centellean de fuera por los
ojos no cesan de echar a cada punto nuevo
mantenimiento al fuego...
[Algunos
sentimientos o fuerzas del alma del hombre] envían
fuera por los ojos aquellos espíritus, que son unos
delgadísimos vapores hechos de la más pura y clara
parte de la sangre que se halle en nuestro cuerpo,
los cuales reciben en sí luego la imagen de la
hermosura [de la mujer] y la forman con mil
ornamentos y primores de diversas maneras.5
The very title of Sidney’s Astrophel
and Stella is related to these notions. In
Petrarchan convention, stars —and more especially twin
stars— correspond to the lady’s eyes. Their rays guide
the lover, inspire him to elevate himself to the heights
of the lady (which never comes to pass, because she is
an ideal, and, as such, unattainable). Throughout
Sidney’s sonnet cycle, Astrophel (literally, “the lover
of the stars”) aspires to Stella’s light. She, in turn,
seems to play a game of “hide and seek” with the young
gentleman, appearing before him for short periods of
time and immediately shying away. It is the same thing
that happens with the stars of all Petrarchan poetry:
they show themselves for and instant and then they
disappear, tantalizing the lover and making him despair
and lose his way. Thus, sonnet XLVIII opens with the
line: “Soules ioy, bend not those morning starres from
me”6,
where Astrophel entreats his lady to stay, to exert her
luminous influence.
The lady’s light in Sidney’s
Astrophel and Stella and Spenser’s Amoretti
not only provokes desire; it represents a series of
moral values as well. In Sidney’s sonnet XLVIII, Virtue
is connected to Beauty in such a way that it is “made
strong by Beauties might”. The relationship between
these two qualities is interesting, especially since
less than two centuries later they will both be
considered entirely independent. However, in Early
Modern poetry there is a link between inner beauty and
outer beauty, between virtue and its symbolic
representation in the body. In Sidney’s poem, Stella’s
virtue is enhanced by her beauty because it is through
her outer radiance that Astrophel can contemplate the
luminosity of her virtue. It is in the light of the
“morning stars” (eyes) where the two attributes are
mixed. Symbolically, virtue will always be associated
with whiteness, with untainted purity and, most of all,
with light.
In both Sidney’s sonnet XLVIII
and Spenser’s sonnet VIII, Love is accompanied by
Chastity. “Love is chasteness”, says Sidney, and Spenser
explains that through his lady’s bright beams frail
minds are led to rest “in chast desires on heauenly
beauty bound”7.
Although in Spenser’s sonnet “chast desires” does not
work as an oximoron, it is, in the end, desire —carnal
desire— that both Sidney and Spenser are trying to
overrule. They face a problem: even though love is made
up of more than just desire, the two are not easily
separated. Spenser, however, seems to accomplish the
separation better than Sidney does; his sonnet speaks of
nothing except the extraordianry elevation of the poet
under his lady’s heavenly influence, whereas Sidney’s
sonnet carries on in a tone that contains a high level
of despair and want for Stella. This feeling can even be
read in the agitated rhythm of verse eight: “O look, O
shine, O let me die, and see”. There are other poems in
the same sonnet cycle in which the yearning for Stella’s
attention and pity is linked to strong desire. In sonnet
V, for example, a series of Christian “truths” are
enumerated, only to finish with the line: “True, and yet
true that I must Stella love”.
According to Sidney, in Stella’s
eyes “Humbleness grows one with Maiesty”. Again, the
lady’s luminosity stands for a moral value. It is
interesting to observe that the lady is seldom
characterized as “humble” throughout the rest of the
sonnet cycle. In fact, convention leads more towards the
depiction of the lady as proud, because she never
condescends to satisfy the desperate poet’s love. As the
first quatrain advances, Sidney gradually accentuates
its moral tone, until he delivers the fourth verse with
a decidedly Christian turn: the great awe the lady
inspires is accompanied by an equally great humility on
her behalf.
There is a fundamental
difference in both poets’ treatments of “the wound of
love”, one of the favorite figures in Early Modern
Poetry. Sidney follows the well known literary tradition
in which Cupid pierces the lover’s heart with one of his
arrows. He is also true to convention when he compares
Love’s darts to the beams of light that come from
Stella’s eyes; “Through my heart their beamy darts be
gone”, says Sidney in verse ten. Spenser, in his own
sonnet, goes somewhat further: he takes the same
convention as a starting point, but he gives it a new
turn when he says that it is not the “blinded guest” who
shoots out his darts through the lady’s “bright beams”,
but a host of Angels. As opposed to the Cupid of
Sidney’s poem, they come not to wound and torment the
lover with their “sweet-cruell shot”, but to “lead frail
mindes to rest / in chast desires on heauenly beauty
bound”. The two effects could not be more distant: one
provokes confusion and pain, whereas the other provides
the needy mind with tranquility and the heavenly peace
of “chast desires”.
In Spenser’s sonnet VIII, the
light emerging from the lady’s eyes works as a metonymy
for her entire inner light. In the first two verses, the
poet establishes the idea that his lady is filled with
the “liuing fire” that is kindled close to the Maker
himself (of the four elements, fire is the purest and
the lightest, and because of that the one that occupies
the highest sphere). This is as hyperbolically elevated
a description as it can possibly be, and, as such, it is
designed to produce a great deal of awe. More than her
beauty, it is her power —her moral, spiritual power—
that Spenser exalts. According to the poet, she has “no
eies but ioyes, in which al powers conspire.”8
The allegory of the lady’s
elevation works to such an extent that she is considered
to exert a similar influence to that of the stars and
the high spheres of the Universe with which she is
associated. As with the macrocosm and the microcosm, in
a world that is organized by the principle of analogy,
the lady attracts the gentleman who is in love with her
and moves him to elevation. Although in Petrarchan
tradition he can never possess her, he can never come in
direct contact with her light, at her same level, the
lover feverishly longs for whatever the lady may deign
to show. And any portion of herself that is thus
revealed will inspire the gentleman to elevate and
improve himself in order to deserve her grace. In
Sidney’s sonnet, after Astrophel enumerates the values
contained in Stella’s light, he expresses his desire to
share those values through her influence: “Whatever may
ensue, O let me be / Copartner of the riches of that
sight.”
The entire third quatrain of
Spenser’s sonnet is about how the poet is elevated
through the contemplation of his lady. “You frame my
thoughts and fashion me within”, he says in verse nine.
Throughout Spenser’s sonnet cycle there is a constant
aspiration to rise morally and spiritually. The moral
character of the poet, at least at the level of fiction,
is crucial, since it is believed that there is a
connection between the quality of the work and the
quality of the character of he who produces the work.
The shaping and perfecting of the self is one of the
central themes in Early Modern poetry. In verse ten, the
lady teaches the writer to look into his inner self and
to speak from thence: “you stop my toung, and teach my
hart to speake”. The process of fashioning oneself is
related to inwardness, to subjectivity, and,
consequently, to the lyrical mode of poetry. As a
vehicle through which the highest forms of refinement
may be reached, poetry can be part of an integral effort
of self-fashioning.9
In his Canzoniere, Petrarca establishes the final
turn towards that rich representation of inwardness that
is the lyrical; whether it is experiential or not,
however, is unimportant. That which is valuable is the
testimony literature gives on how human beings define
themselves within a certain culture and time period.
Whereas in Spenser’s sonnet the
lady’s influence is entirely beneficial to the poet, in
the sonnet from Astrophel and Stella the rays
from the lady’s eyes can also have a painful effect. The
first half of Sidney’s poem talks of Stella’s splendor,
but the second half (starting with verse eight) is also
about Astrophel’s torment; “O let me die, and see”, he
says, implying that her image can be deadly as well as
edifying. The young poet is aware that love’s wounds
have no cure (“I oft myself of them bemone / That
through my heart their beamie darts be gone, / Whose
cureless wounds euen now most freshly bleed”), and yet
he seeks that same dart, that same ray of light that has
slain him. This is the paradox that, according to
convention, lies in the very core of love. Because “Pain
doth learn delight”, as Sidney says in verse three. To
be shot again, to be kept within the reach of the rays
that both pain him and delight him, is understood by
Astrophel as “A kinde of grace” on behalf of his lady.
Since he has already contracted love —a love that,
figuratively speaking, kills him— he begs her to finish
what she has started, because, as he says in the poem’s
last paradox, “A kind of grace it is to slay with
speed”.
In Spenser’s sonnet, not only is
the lover not tormented by his lady, he is even calmed
by her. This goes against the usual convention and has
more to do with a Christian understanding of virtue and
self-control. The poet says to her: “you calme the
storme that passion did begin, / strong thrugh your
cause, but by your vertue weak.” Her splendor is capable
of awakening a great storm of passion, but at the same
time her virtue is strong enough to appease that storm.
It is not mere passion that the lover seeks as a fruit
of his love, but something much less base: the eternal
contemplation of his beloved, from whose light he
derives the elements he needs to “frame” his “thoughts”,
to give shape to his self, to his spirit; to “fashion”
himself “within”.
The lover in the absence of his
lady can be symbolically represented as he that has been
left in darkness, lost and blinded because he is far
from his beloved one’s rays. Sidney’s Astrophel begs not
to be left in that state: “Let not mine eyes be
hel-driu’n from that light”. It is the same situation
that Castiglione explains: “Así que el enamorado que
contempla la hermosura, pierde este bien luego a la hora
que aquella mujer a quien ama, yéndose de donde él está
presente, le deja como ciego, dejándole con los ojos sin
su luz y, por consiguiente, con el alma despojada y
huérfana de su bien.”10
In the final couplet of Spenser’s sonnet there is a
similar play on the contrast of light and darkness and
what they imply: “Dark is the world, where your light
shined neuer; / well is he born that may behold you euer.”
Although the Amoretti cycle stands out for being
the story of a triumphant love, in this particular
sonnet what Spenser looks for is pure, elevating
contemplation.
Spenser speaks only of a
positive, enlightening, virtuous influence derived from
his lady’s light. He responds to Neoplatonic ideas
regarding the contemplation of beauty, the influence
from above and the desire of elevation. As a protestant
author and a gentleman, he gives an important place to
Christian values and the process of self-fashioning. The
most notorious difference between the two sonnets is
that Sidney makes the light from the lady’s eyes
represent the contradictory essence of love. He is true
to the tradition that praises love and at the same time
speaks of its tortures, most of the time through the
figure of the oxymoron, the most famous of which is the
“icy fire”. Astrophel accepts this ambivalent nature of
love when, in the final couplet, he wishes to remain
under the influence of the lady’s eyes: “Deere killer,
spare not thy sweete-cruell shot”, he says.
The comparison of Sidney’s
sonnet XLVIII and Spenser’s sonnet VIII reveals the
myriad of possibilities offered by an ars poetica
that relies to a great extent on convention. Because
convention is not meant to be a frozen, defined,
finished model, but rather a way of understanding poetry
in a world reigned by analogy, where everything is
related to everything else, where all things are
symbolic and they all have an order within the
“intelligent design” of Nature. Within convention, as
with this particular view of the universe, every element
has its right place, every symbol has to fit perfectly
into a wider scope —the scope of allegory— where it
belongs. In the end, although there is a notorious
distance between what the two poets are saying, they
both take the same allegory as a starting point, the
same set of symbols and ideas: there is a lady —a
splendid, beautiful lady— from whose eyes emerge shining
rays of purest light, in representation of all her
virtues. Her light-shafts pierce the gentleman to the
very heart and make him fall inevitably, even willingly,
in love.
Appendix
Sir Philip Sidney,
Astrophel and Stella
XLVIII
Soules ioy, bend not those morning
starres from me
Where Vertue is made strong by Beauties
might;
Where Loue is chasteness, Paine doth
learn delight,
And Humbleness growes one with Maiesty.
Whateuer may ensue, O let me be
Copartner of the riches of that sight.
Let not mine eyes be hel-driu'n from that
light;
O look, O shine, O let me die, and see.
For though I oft myself of them bemone
That through my heart their beamie darts
be gone,
Whose cureless wounds euen now most
freshly bleed,
Yet since my death-wound is already got,
Deere killer, spare not thy sweete-cruell
shot:
A kinde of grace it is to slaye with
speed.
Edmund Spenser,
Amoretti
VIII
More then most faire, full of the
liuing fire
Kindled aboue vnto the maker neere:
no eies buy ioyes, in which al powers
conspire,
that to the world naught else be
counted deare.
Thrugh your bright beams doth not
[the] blinded guest,
shoot out his darts to base affections
wound;
but Angels come to lead fraile mindes
to rest
in chast desires on heauenly beauty
bound.
You frame my thoughts and fashion
me within,
you stop my toung, and teach my hart to
speake,
you calme the storme that passion did
begin,
strong thrugh your cause, but by your
vertue weak.
Dark is the world, where your
light shined neuer;
well is he borne that may behold you
euer.
1
See, for example, André du Laurens,
A Discourse on the Preservation of the Sight; of
Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes; and of Old
Age,
en Stanley Jackson,
Historia de la melancolía y la depresión: Desde
los tiempos hipocráticos a la época moderna,
tr. de Consuelo Vázquez de Parga, Madrid:
Turner, 1989, p. 327; and also Marie-Paule
Dumnil, “La mélancolie amoureuse dans
l’Antiquité” en Jean Céard (ed.), La folie et
le corps, Paris: Presses de l’École Normale
Supérieure, 1985, p. 102.
2
See Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly
Love, introduction, translation and notes by
John Jay Parry, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1990, p. 33.
3
This physiological conception of the eye has a
long tradition in Western medicine: “Los
científicos árabes conocían y habían heredado
del Occidente medieval la teoría pitagórica y
epicúrea. Para Pitágoras, y más tarde para su
discípulo Euclides, el ojo emitía un haz de
rayos que, viajando por el espacio, llegaba a
chocar con los objetos. El choque entre rayo y
realidad producía la visión” (Fernando Delmar,
El ojo espiritual: Imagen y naturaleza en la
Edad Media, México: UNAM, 1993, p. 15).
Mariapía Lamberti explains in her notes to
Marsilio Ficino’s Sobre el amor that “la
teoría de los “espíritus vitales”,
personificación de las fuerzas prepuestas a cada
sentido o función del cuerpo y de la mente, tuvo
gran relieve a partir de Guido Cavalcanti, en la
escuela poética del Dolce stil novo y en
la literatura florentina del primer Renacimiento”
(Sobre el Amor: Comentarios al Banquete de
Platón, traducción de Mariapía Lamberti y
José Luis Bernal, presentación y notas de
Mariapía Lamberti, México: UNAM, 1994, p. 111).
4
Elias Rivers says in his notes to Garcilaso’s
Obras completas con comentario: “era un
tópico ya consagrado de la poesía amorosa el
tema de los rayos “visivos” que salen de los
ojos de la hermosa dama y que a través de los
ojos de él hieren en el corazón al enamorado que
la contempla” (Madrid: Castalia, 2001, p. 87).
See Petrarca, sonnet CCLVIII: “Vive faville
uscian de’ duo bei lumi / ver’ me sí dolcemente
folgorando”, (Cancionero, preliminares,
traducción y notas de Jacobo Cortines, texto
italiano establecido por Gianfranco Contini,
estudio introductorio de Nicholas Mann, Madrid:
Cátedra, 1999 p. 762).
5
Baltasar de Castiglione, El Cortesano, (traducción
de Juan Boscán [1534], presentación y notas de
Sergio Fernández, México: UNAM, 1997, pp. 496-7;
501-2).
6
All quotes from Astrophel and Stella are
from the online text prepared from Alexander B.
Grosart’s The Complete Poems of Sir Philip
Sidney [1877] by R. S. Bear at the
University of Oregon, 1995 (available at:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu).
7
All quotes from Amoretti are from the
online text prepared from Alexander Grosart’s
The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Edmund
Spenser [1882] by R. S. Bear at the
University of Oregon, 1996 (available at:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu).
8One
of the examples under the definition of Joy
in the Oxford English Dictionary is: “Joyes
of the Planets, are when they are in those
houses where they are most powerful and strong,
as Saturn joyeth in Scorpio” (Edward Phillips,
The New World of English Words: Or, a General
Dictionary, 1658). There could be a link
between this particular definition of joy and
the sense of the word in Spenser’s poem,
because, syntactically, it is in the “ioyes”
where “al powers conspire”.
9
See Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance
Self-Fashioning. From More to Shakespeare,
Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press,
1980.
10
Baltasar de Castiglione, op. cit. p. 502.
