Troubled Ascent Towards Perfection: The Myth of Amor and Psyche

Troubled Ascent Towards Perfection: The Myth of Amor and Psyche in Giovan Battista Marino’s
L’Adone
Sofie Kluge
MLN, Volume 128, Number 1, January 2013 (Italian Issue), pp. 103-123 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2013.0010
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/505342
Accessed 16 Mar 2017 05:54 GMT
Troubled Ascent Towards
Perfection
The Myth of Amor and Psyche in
Giovan Battista Marino’s L’Adone
❦
Sofie Kluge
As I intend to show by a reading of its fourth canto, Giovan Battista
Marino’s L’Adone (1623) flaunts a paradoxical coexistence of what
appears to be mutually exclusive views of ancient myth. Pathetic, dramatic, humorous, and erotic uses of myth align with philosophical,
moral, and meta-aesthetic explorations to create a complex amalgamation of the two major postclassical mythographic traditions and
a peculiar hybrid of myth and allegory. In this juxtaposition of the
various trends of poetic and didactic mythography, Marino followed
the general tendency of the baroque literary writing of myth.
In the baroque period, the two major mythographic traditions renegotiated the terms of their relation. Since Antiquity, they had been
cultivated side by side in relative peace and harmony. However, at this
particular moment in history, didactic and poetic uses of myth grew
mutually hostile. The disinterested, scientific and historicizing outlook
guiding the humanists’ meticulous editions of classical texts and the
resulting new ‘disinterested’ poetic mythography were at odds with
the Inquisitors’ demand that art and literature reveal moral truths.
Transmitting pagan tales of rape and incest, lasciviousness and adultery,
baroque mythological literature became the principal scene of the
seventeenth-century polemic conference between delectare and docere.1
1
Compare Carlo Calcaterra’s view (Parnaso in rivolta, 1940) of Seicento literature not
as the product of moral disengagement or bad taste, but as the manifestation of an
MLN 128 (2013): 103–123 © 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The outcome of this conference was not immediately harmonious.
However, it was literary. In the seventeenth century, the two major
postclassical mythographic traditions fused into a binary, both poetic
and didactic, mythography. Their interaction and mutual relativization determined the literary expression of baroque mythological
texts, which display both a perplexing and fascinating mosaic of
mythographic traditions. Baroque mythological literature is a ‘mirrorof-myth’, in the same sense that a work on the various historical,
philosophical, moral, and political aspects of kingship is a ‘mirrorof-princes’. Sophisticated, intellectual, self-reflexive, erudite, and
tradition-conscious to the point of pedantry, it reflects all the various
forms in which classical myth had been transmitted through the centuries. However, most importantly, baroque mythography reflects the
contemporary tension between pagan myth and Christian allegoresis.
Bearing this in mind, I will subsequently analyse Marino’s rendering
of the Amor and Psyche story in the fourth canto of L’Adone. I will
consider the relationship between the morally ambiguous lyric part of
the canto and the more unequivocal moralism of the opening prose
allegory. In the fourth canto, the contemporary conflict between moral
and poetic attitudes toward classical mythology is discernible in the
ambiguous concern with the various material obstacles to the process
of spiritual ascent illustrated by the mythical tale. This concern, in
its turn, is reflected in the thematic preoccupation with the notions
of trial and discipline as well as in what may be termed the excursive
organization of the canto.
Myth as Veiled Truth
The lyric parts of Marino’s epyllion2 rest on what may broadly be
referred to as poetic mythography. This broad aesthetic current flourished from the twelfth century, and exploited classical mythology as a
historical-epistemological impasse resulting from the cultural and political tensions of
the age, and leading to a hiatus, a kind of collapsing within itself of the Renaissance
aesthetic based on emulation of the classics.
2
The ‘epyllion’ (‘minor epic’ in Greek, or mythological epic) may be defined as a
narrative poem with mythological content with a psychological take on events, written
in an ornamental lyrical style mixed with tragic notes, and favoring secondary plots
and the erudite digression (often in the form of ecphrasis). For a theoretical discussion of the Baroque epyllion and an ‘empirical’ study of an important specimen of
the genre, see Sofie Kluge, “Espejo del mito. Algunas consideraciones sobre el epilio
Barroco” (forthcoming, in Criticón, 2012) and “Un epilio Barroco. El Polifemo y su
género,” Rodrigo Cacho Casal and Anne Holloway (eds.), Centro y periferías (London:
Tamesis, 2012), forthcoming.
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storehouse of entertaining and moving stories about intriguing dark
passions and forbidden feelings, violent deaths and malevolent destiny. In this tradition, we find erotic as well as pathetic and dramatic
explorations of classical myth, which is not taken to mean anything
other than what it explicitly says, but rather to mean what it says very
seriously or unironically—melodramatically, even.
However, with each of the twenty lyrical cantos introduced by a
moral allegory in prose (text by Sanvitale with illustrations by Lorenzo
Scoto), L’Adone simultaneously shows influence from the multiform
didactic current, which dated back to the Stoic and Neoplatonic
mythography of late Antiquity and found its extreme expression in
the French fourteenth-century commentaries to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This tradition included both moral allegory proper (Venus as an
allegory of Lust), more temperate philosophical musing on the universal meaning of myth (Odysseus as an allegory of human reason),
Euhemerist riddling (Zeus as an allegory of some historical king),
and the satiric-burlesque ‘sugared pill’ (Hercules as an allegory of
the ridiculous surrender to Love).
More particularly, the prose allegories follow the mythographic
paradigm provided by sixteenth-century manuals such as Lilio Gregorio
Giraldi’s History of the Gods of the Gentiles (1548), Natale Conti’s Mythology
(1551), and Vincenzo Cartari’s Images of the Gods of the Ancients (1556).
Distant heirs to Fulgentius’ Mythologies (fifth or sixth century) and
Bersuire’s Ovidius moralizatus (around 1340), these works performed
allegorical interpretations of the ancient myths with varying degrees
of moral commitment. Even though we cannot know exactly what
Marino thought of moral mythography (if he considered it an obsolete
tradition or valued it as an noteworthy part of his cultural heritage),
the prose allegories are undeniable evidence that he knew it and
that he let his text reflect whatever he might have thought about it.3
Beyond speculation about authorial attitudes, the prose allegories
of L’Adone certainly suggest an overall complexity of the work, which
reflects the fact that the proverbial “poet of the senses”4 also authored
the Dicerie sacre (1614). Yet in their very kinship with the moral mythographic tradition, the allegories have proved an obstacle to many
3
Compare that one of the principal sources for Marino’s rendering of the Cupid/
Psyche episode—Ercole Udine’s La Psique (1599)—has allegories by Angelo Grillo, who
has emerged over the past decades of criticism (since Besomi’s 1959 study of the Lira)
as a major stylistic influence on Marino, and in some sense the missing link between
Tasso and Marino.
4
See Carlo Calcaterra, “Il poeta dei cinque sensi” Il Parnasso in rivolta (Milano:
Mondadori, 1940) 11–82.
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modern interpreters. Twentieth-century scholars have either passed
them over as mere paraphernalia essentially irrelevant to the work,5
or regarded them as posing an ironic interpretative challenge to the
reader. Most recently, the allegories have been seen as the necessary
apologetic correlate of the poet’s controversially carefree exploitation
of classical mythology.6
However, if we disregard the moral allegories we run the risk of
anachronistically projecting a nineteenth-century ‘impulsive’ and
un-conceptual concept of literary art onto a seventeenth-century text.
Even if the view, that these allegories represent Marino’s attempt to
explain away the sensual explicitness of the work faced with Inquisitorial charges, may be correct,7 the ‘apology argument’ surely has its
own debatable axioms. It implies, for instance, the notion—foreign to
Baroque literature—of the inspired poet writing in a state of frenzy,
who only retrospectically stops to consider the meaning of his text.
This picture is surely familiar, but is it true? Indeed, the persistent
denial of what is undeniably a part of the printed text is significant
and points to larger issues concerning the concept of baroque and
its evaluation in modern-day aesthetics, which I cannot address in the
present context.8
5
A most thorough, several hundred pages long examination of L’Adone, Pozzi’s “Guida
alla lettura” (in Marino, Tutte le opere, ed. Pozzi (Milano: Mondadori, 1976) 11–166, for
instance, devotes a mere half page to the prose allegories (173). See also Harold Martin
Priest’s incomplete translation in Adonis. Selections from L’Adone of Giambattista Marino
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1967) to my knowledge the only existing English version), which
leaves the moral prose allegories out without even commenting on this considerable
severing of the original text neither in his “Notes on the Translation,” nor in the “Basis
for the Selection of Passages” paragraph.
6
Clizia Carminati, Giovan Battista Marino tra Inquisizione e censura (Rome-Padua:
Antenore, 2008).
7
Carminati’s book makes quite a convincing case.
8
I am referring to the fact, that the scholarly discussion of L’Adone for many years
remained bound to the evaluation of that elusive and controversial Baroque literary
aesthetics that it was always—from the poet’s own time through today—seen to epitomize. See Franco Croce, “I critici moderato-barocchi. I – La discussione sull’Adone,”
Rassegna della letteratura italiana 59 (1955): 414–39 and “Nuovi compiti della critica del
Marino e del marinismo,” Rassegna della letteratura italiana 61 (1957): 459–73. Thus, over
the centuries, the scholarly evaluation of Marino’s work has changed with the changing
view of stylistic features such as sensual descriptiveness, elaborate ornamentation and
rhetorical virtuosity: whereas these features were celebrated by (most of) the poet’s
contemporaries as the height of sophistication, they were vituperated as symptoms of
aesthetic and moral decadence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with
a persistent marginalization as the unfortunate result; and then they were, conversely,
praised as the quintessence of modern worldliness by twentieth-century academics. Yet,
notwithstanding the overall constructive shift away from the detraction and negligence
of earlier ages, this development did not lead to the anticipated general reassessment of
Marino’s Baroque poetry. Subjecting the pejorative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
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Considering Marino’s overtly premeditated manner, the hypothesis
that the allegories had some kind of aesthetic function may at least
be tried out. Although il cavalier was perhaps not the literary genius
he was held to be in his own day,9 there can be little doubt that his
work reflected contemporary aesthetic taste, however hard this taste
may be to grasp from a modern point of view. It is not at all certain,
as Benedetto Croce thought, that Marino’s famous words, that L’Adone
shows how “immoderate indulgence ends in pain,” was insincere.10
At this point in literary history, allegory was not merely something
imposed from the outside, but also an aesthetic mode consciously
cultivated by European poets, including Tasso11 and Marino.12
As I will show by my reading of the fourth canto, the traditional
moralism of the prose allegories is deconstructed, as it were, by the
essential ambiguity of the lyric parts. However, this process is not
view to a reverse evaluation, the mid-twentieth-century vindication of L’Adone merely
confirmed the indictment that the Baroque was all about appearances and generally
indifferent to substance—although this now meant something unequivocally positive.
Subjecting the pejorative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century view to a reverse evaluation, the mid-twentieth-century vindication of L’Adone merely confirmed the indictment
that the Baroque was all about appearances and generally indifferent to substance;
except this now meant something unequivocally positive. See, for example, the work
of Carmela Colombo, Cultura e tradizione nell’ L’Adone di G. B. Marino (Padova: GBM,
1967), especially the conclusion and Marziano Guglielminetti, “L’Adone poema dell’arte”
Tecnica e invenzione nell’ opera di Giambattista Marino (Firenze: Casa Editrice G. D’Anna,
1964) 107–41. Further, James V. Mirollo, The Poet of the Marvellous, Giambattista Marino
(New York: Columbia UP, 1963). Most recently, Rainer Zaiser, “Inszenierte Poetik: Metatextualität als Selbstreflexion von Dichtung in der italienischen Literatur der frühen
Neuzeit” Ars Rhetorica 22 (2009), especially pp. 156–57. Following the outline of Giovanni
Getto’s essay “Introduzione al Marino” Opere scelte di Giovan Battista Marino e dei Marinisti
(Torino: U.T.E.T, 1949) republished together with other texts in Il Barocco letterario in
Italia (Milano: Mondadori, 2000), which presented Marino’s poetic as “la poetica del
sapere e del sapore” (6), scholars such as Giovanni Pozzi and, recently, Marie-France
Tristan , La scène de l’écriture: essai sur la poésie philosophique du Cavalier Marin (Paris:
Honoré Champion, 2002) are among those to have challenged the picture of Marino
as an aestheticist. Recent criticism points in a number of different directions, its very
diversity defying, as it were, the dead-end dichotomy of earlier criticism. This positive
development no doubt reflects the development of the concept of the Baroque, as
testified to by Andrea Battistini’s Il Barocco (Rome: Salerno, 2000).
9
See Priest: “As to the merits of Marino’s book, there is general agreement that its
reputation was inflated in its time” (xi).
10
See Benedetto Croce’s famous Aesthetic as a Science of Expression and General Linguistic,
trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: Macmillan, 1909), 56.
11
See Mindele Ann Treip, Allegorical Poetic & the Epic. The Renaissance Tradition to
Paradise Lost (Lexington,: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), chapter 5.
12
Claudio Moreschini has a very good description of Marino’s balancing of traditional
allegory and “the new sensitivity of the seventeenth century.” See “Towards a History
of the Exegesis of Apuleius: The Case of the ‘Tale of Cupid and Psyche,’’’ trans. Coco
Stevenson. Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. Heinz Hofmann (London:
Routledge, 2004) 215–28.
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unequivocal, nor does it eliminate the moral element of the text
altogether. Indeed, judging by this canto, what is at stake in L’Adone
is exactly the relative strength of myth and allegory: in the fourth
“Novelletta” canto we find a virtual dramatization of the conflict
between both these modes, reflecting the Baroque conflict between
the aesthetic and moral functions of art.
While the lyric part of the canto—as I will subsequently show in
detail—offers an ambiguous examination of the relation between
proliferating mythical fancy and transcendental allegorical sternness,
the allegoria presents this relation more unequivocally in terms of the
moral conflict between luxurious flesh and virtuous spirit. According
to the manifest moralization of the prose allegory, the Psyche myth is
concerned with the human condition (“La favola di Psiche rappresenta
lo stato dell’uomo”). The figure of Psyche is an allegory of the soul
who, after many trials and tribulations arranged by Destiny, arrives at
sublime pleasure (“tipo della istessa anima, che per mezzo di molti
travagli arriva finalmente al godimento perfetto”). In the end, she is
happily married to Amor (“agitata dalla Fortuna per diversi pericoli
e dopo molte fatiche e persecuzioni copulata ad Amore”), a figure
of Desire (“la Cupidità”). It is further said that the young protagonist
is fairer than her two elder sisters and envied because of her beauty
by none other than Venus, who signifies Lust (“la Libidine”). While
Psyche’s parents, God and Matter (“Iddio e la materia”), are presented
as morally neutral, the sisters, Flesh (“la Carne”) and Free Will (“la
Libertà dell’arbitrio”) appear as tempting instigators of concupiscence.
Thus, they urge Soul to defy her husband’s explicit prohibition and
secretly behold his face while he sleeps, an act said to signify the
adherence to the delights of sexual pleasure (“attenersi ai diletti
della concupiscenza”). Finally, the central narrative prop of the oil
lamp, whose flickering flame causes it to drop burning wax on Amor’s
shoulder, is interpreted as an allegory of the heat of passion that leaves
the mark of sin on the flesh (“dimostra l’ardore della concupiscibile,
che lascia sempre stampata nella carne la macchia del peccato”).13
Transferred to aesthetic terms, the prose allegory underscores the
necessity of pagan myth to become an edifying allegory. It urges the
departure from the lascivious sensualism incarnated in ancient mythol13
See Bruno Porcelli, “Amore e Psiche da Apuleio al Marino” Le misure della fabbrica. Studi sull’ “L’Adone” del Marino e sulla “Fiera” del Buonarroti (Milano: Marzorati,
1980) 43–64: “In realtà, l’allegoria del canto segue Beroaldo [Filippo Beroaldo’s Latin
commentaries on Apuleius’ work [1500]] in maniera cosí pedissequa da ridursi quasi
ovunque ad una vera e propria traduzione letterale” (63).
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ogy and advocates the embrace of an ideally exponential ascent toward
spiritual perfection. Myth—it is implied—is the aesthetic equivalent
of an obsolete (primitive and immoral) intellectual stage. However, if
the pagan elements are duly abolished through moralization, it may
serve the spiritual agenda of more highly developed eras in the form
of allegory. Read as a poetological manifesto, the prose allegory points
to the importance of the relation between both these modes to this
particular canto. As such, it repeats the message of L’Adone’s dedicatory
letter to Maria de’ Medici, which underscores the relation between
myth and allegory as a major issue of Marino’s epyllion.
After rehearsing the conventionalities of seventeenth-century literary dedications (unworthiness of the poet and hyperbolic celebration
of the noble benefactor; enumeration of famous patronages; humble
recommendation of the work offered), at considerable length and in
a very sophisticated manner, Marino finally addresses the recipient
of his poem, the long-time queen regent of France whose son, Louis
XIII, is the subject of the extensive Hercules allegory of the dedication.
The poet resumes the idea introduced in the opening lines of the
letter, that the imaginative Greeks disguised mysteries under the veil of
their fabulous fictions: “La Grecia, di tutte le bell’arti inventrice, laqual
sotto velo di favolose fizzioni soleva ricoprire la maggior parte de’ suoi
misteri, non senza allegorico sentimento chiamava Ercole musagete,
quasi duce e capitano delle Muse” (3).14 Thus, Marino expresses his
expectation that Maria will understand the double nature of his own
mythology, as against those who hold that the mythical fables contain
no moral whatsoever:
Oltre che, per essere il componimento ch’io le reco quasi un registro delle
sue opere magnanime, delle quali una parte, ancorché minima, mi sono
ingegnato d’esprimere in esso, e per avere io ridotto il suggetto che tratta,
como per l’allegorie si dimostra, ad un segno di moralità la maggiore che
peraventura si ritrovi fra tutte l’antiche favole, contro l’opinione di coloro
che il contrario si persuadevano, giudico che ben si confaccia alla modesta
gravità d’una prencipessa tanto discreta. (9)
Via his interpretation of the Hercules myth as a complex allegory and
through the definition of ancient myth as veiled theology (“misteri”
under the “velo di favoloso fizzioni”) and “moral cipher” (“segno di
moralità”), Marino points out the way he wants his own text to be read.
He explicitly refers to the methodology of the moral prose allegories
14
Tutte le opere di Giovan Battista Marino. A cura di Giovanni Pozzi. Vol. II, Tomo 1
(Milano: Mondadori, 1976).
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as an interpretative paradigm (“como per l’allegorie si dimostra”). Far
from the defensive position of an apologist, the dedication expresses
the somewhat superior attitude of someone initiated into the divine
mysteries and familiar with the secret truth contained in the pagan
myths.
According to both the ensemble of moral prose allegories and the
dedication, then, the lyric passages of L’Adone should be seen as containing something more than its sensual poetic beauty. Although the
prose allegory of the fourth canto on the surface presents this ‘more’
in moral terms, and its deciphering as a straightforward business, the
use of terms such as “rappresenta,” “dinota,” “significano,” “cioè,”
“si finge per,” “s’intende,” “cioè a dire,” “dimostra” indicates a basic
awareness of the hermeneutic problem. As the ingenious Hercules
allegory of the dedication suggests (on the basis of Hercules’ epithet
musagetēs [“leader of the Muses”] developing the image of Louis as a
warrior hero plus aesthete), allegorical signification is never unequivocal, but infinitely prolific and ambiguous.
In a text concerned with the exponential ascent toward moral
perfection—that of the soul, that of the text—such ambiguity poses
a problem. For what becomes of spiritual progress if the way is full of
exasperating trials? What becomes of narrative evolution if digression
turns into a consolidating structural principle? And what becomes of
moral transparency and allegorical decipherability if the materiality of
poetic language presents a hindrance to the very act of reading? Do
not such features essentially prevent the text from accomplishing its
transformation from pagan myth to edifying allegory after the paradigm of the allegoria? Or do they on the contrary, as the poetic prelude
claims, further it? These are some of the issues that the fourth canto
addresses on the basis of its superordinate inquiry into the relative
strength of myth and allegory.
Trail as Theme, Discipline as Plot
At its outset, in what may be termed the lyric prelude (4.1–6), the
poem of the fourth canto reassumes the moral agenda of the prose
allegory. Here, an anonymous third-person narrator circumscribes
the Stoic-Christian idea of constancy in detached moral-philosophical
terms: “È di dura battaglia aspro conflitto / questa che vita ha nome,
humana morte / . . . / Ma fra l’ingurie e fra i contrasti invitto / non
però sbigottisce animo forte, / anzi contr’ogni assalto iniquo e crudo
/ s’arma e difende, e sua virtù gli è scudo” (4.1).
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Subsequently, the notion of ‘discipline’ as spiritual nurture is
developed through an array of emblematic images: the grafting that
revitalizes the tree; the scalpel that turns the craftsman’s material
into a beautiful artefact; the flint stone that strikes sparks when hit
with another piece of stone; the chord that responds to the musician’s strokes with arguta armonia; the grape that releases purple wine
when pulverized by the tooth; the coal that blazes up into a great
fire when poked; the ball that bounces vigorously when hit with the
willow (4.3–5). Then follows another aloof moral-philosophical passage contemplating the fruits of trouble and suffering: “La fatica e ’l
travaglio è paragone, / dove provar si suol nostra finezza; / né senz’
afanno e duol, premi e corone / può di gloria ottener vera fortezza”
(4.6). This largely concludes the role of the anonymous third-person
narrator who will not return until the last stanza and then only for a
brief closing remark.
Like the abstract figurative pantomimes, mimes or playlets that
preceded contemporary plays and operas, setting the mood by anticipating the central theme of the main performance and sketching
its plot (as the narrative elaboration or temporal unfolding of the
theme),15 the impersonal, emblematic, and quasi-proverbial prelude
introduces the thematic core of the subsequently recounted Amor
and Psyche myth: the progressive ennoblement of the soul through
the hardships of love.16 It does so in strictly moral terms, referring
the crucial role of trial and discipline in the process of unbearable
yet ultimately redemptive mortification that is human life.
Somewhat surprisingly, considering Marino’s persistent reputation
as a worldly aestheticist poet, this prelude anticipates the general treatment of the Amor and Psyche myth in the poem. It remains true to
the spirit of prose allegory and poetic prelude in regard to theme and
plot. Describing Psyche’s exposure on the mountain, her psychomachy,
her temptation by the sisters, her search for Amor, and the ordeals
imposed on her by Venus, the poem quite obviously revolves around
the theme of ‘trial’. Modelling the development of the narrative around
Psyche’s advancing physical and spiritual regimenting—with her growing belly as a sort of inverted symbol of her progress—it may be said
to turn ‘discipline’ into the governing principle or hinge of the plot.
15
This function of plot as a narrative elaboration or temporal unfolding of the theme
is quite characteristic of contemporary opera: consider, for instance, how the theme of
‘Fragilità humana’ treated allegorically in the prologue to Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse
in patria (1640) is subsequently elaborated in the plot of the opera.
16
Most readers will agree to this ‘minimal interpretation’. See, however, Erich Neumann’s Amor und Psyche. Deutung eines Märchens; ein Beitrag zur seelischen Entwicklung des
Weiblichen (1952), for an entirely different approach.
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Although Jupiter’s interference as a deus ex machina in stanzas
288–90 may appear to challenge the debasement/ascent logic implicit
in the notions of trial and discipline, it is still reasonable to assert
the fundamental conformity of theme and plot to this logic and,
hence, to the idea of exponential ascent toward perfection proposed
in prose allegory and poetic prelude. Indeed, the vengeful Venus is
finally satisfied by Psyche’s indomitable steadfastness: “La dea l’ascolta
e di stupore impetra, / che ‘n tanti rischi indomita la trova; / ma
‘l petto a quel parlar l’apre e penetra / un non so che di tenerezza
nova” (4.287). The protagonist’s constancy finally secures the story’s
dénoument, even if Amor is not sufficiently convinced of his mother’s
appeasement to let events take their due course: “In questo mezzo
io pur temendo in vero / il minacciato mal, con tanta fretta / rivolo
inverso il ciel [ . . . ]” (4.288). In the end, it is the protagonist’s sublime
discipline that moves the plot toward its fulfilment, thus affirming the
fundamental conformity of the narrative to the explicitly proposed
moral of the canto.
The conformity of theme and plot means that we will have to
look elsewhere for that complexity and subtlety of expression, which
separates the ambiguous poem from the more unequivocal moralism
of the allegoria. Leaving the prelude and proceeding to Amor’s lively
first-person narration, a genuine textual innovation on Marino’s part,
is a good way to begin. Although this narration also essentially sticks
to the theme and plot indicated by the third-person narrator of the
prose allegory and prelude, it by far exceeds the conceptual limits of
this narrator’s moral interpretation of the material.
Spiced up with digressive passages of grandiloquent eulogy, tearjerking pathos, piquant voyeurism, and horror effects, it contrarily
suggests that the overall interpretation of the myth in the canto may
not be as simple as prose allegory and prelude suggest. The passionate,
deviating descriptiveness dominating these excursuses fundamentally
jar with the idea of the Amor and Psyche myth as a straightforward
moral allegory of spiritual ascent. In fact, these eccentric or centrifugal
passages suggest that the text not only operates in terms of exponential
ascent, but also implies a notion of digression as progress, progress as
digression. Reviewing the poet’s principal deviations from his main
sources, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (second century A. D.) and Udine’s
Psiche, provides a sense of this paradoxical notion.17
17
See Ottavio Besomi’s “Composizione a intersio nel c. IV dell’Adone” Esplorazioni
secentesche (Padua: Antenore, 1975) 9–52; Carmela Colombo, Cultura e tradizione nell’
L’Adone di G. B. Marino (Padova: GBM, 1967) 11–84; Porcelli 43–64, “Amore e Psiche da
Apuleio al Marino;” Giorgio Barberi Squarotti, “Psiche e Adone: il lieto fine e la morte”
Studi di onomastica e letteratura offerti a Bruno Porcelli (Pisa-Roma: GEI, 2007)145–61;
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Digressive Poetic
The first significant deviation in relation to the sources of the fourth
canto is found in stanzas 38–42.18 Here we have Amor’s enthralled
rendering of his first view of Psyche, whose beauty—depicted from
breast to hair using a more or less conventional array of rhetorical
figures and poetic images—first distracted him from the duty imposed
on him by his jealous mother: “Vuol che di stral villano il cor le punga,
/ e ch’a sposo infelice io la congiunga” (4. 34).
Amor’s description of “quel sovruman, sovradinivo oggetto” (37)
is traditional in the choice of imagery, innovative in the elaboration
of inherited images.19 It exercises the vocabularies of courtly poetry
and Petrarchism, which had by Marino’s time merged into a somewhat cliché-ridden yet also highly sophisticated and self-conscious
aesthetic idiom. First, we have the hyperbolic paraphrase of Psyche’s
eyes as “dobbio oriente,” “dui cieli,” and “dobbio sol” (4.38) resuming
a familiar topic of Western love poetry, but giving it an extravagant
baroque twist through the superimposition of as much as three different cosmological images.
This praise is concluded with the ingenious exercise of a related,
equally traditional theme: the killer eyes of the lady (“lumi perfidi”),
destroying first and declaring war later (“uccidon prima e poi bandiscon guerra”), thus occasioning the death of the unwise lover (“il
malaccorto [ . . . ] si trova morto”) who does not even get to beg for
mercy before he drops dead, stricken by love. Then follows a highly
stylized description of Psyche’s face (4.39–40), rehearsing yet also
elaborating the inherited registers of amorous-laudatory formulas: the
bright red of her cheeks described as a sunrise (“aurora”) that gives
way to the sunlight of the eyes (“al sol degli occhi [ . . . ] cede”); the
brightness of which brings out a delicate blush of the cheeks, subsequently compared to the rubescence of the wild apple (“qual in non
colto ancor pomo si vede”); the whiteness of her skin metaphorized
into snow (“neve”); the fragrant mouth resembling the flower of the
Salvatore Ussia, Amore innamorato - Riscritture poetiche della novella di Amore e Psiche. Secoli
XV–XVII (Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio, 2001).
18
See Besomi’s synoptic paradigm 15.
19
The non-traditionality of Marino’s metaphors is a standing discussion in Marino
scholarship, compare Eugenio Donato, “Tesauro’s Poetic: Through the Looking Glass”
MLN 78 (1963) 15–30; Susanna N. Peters, “Metaphor and ‘Meraviglia’: Tradition and
innovation in L’Adone of G. B. Marino” Lingua e stile 7 (1972) 321–41; and Frank Warnke,
“Marino and the English Metaphysicals” Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955) 160–75, with
exclusive reference to Marino’s early poetry.
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tender rose gently opening its petals (“ch’apra le labra dele fresche
foglie”).
Exploring the sexual connotations of the image, suggested by the
metonymic relation petals-lips and underscored by the use of the word
“intatto” in relation to the flower, Amor fantasizes about the impact of
this mouth kissing (“che farà poi baciando? i cori uccide”). In stanza
41, he then proceeds with a description of Psyche’s hair—soft and
blonde, of course (“più ch’ambra molle e più ch’elettro bionda”)—and
her different hair styles (“o stretta in nodi, o in vaghe trecce accolta,
/ o su gli omeri sparsa ad onda ad onda”) introducing the current
poetic image of the lady’s hair as an ocean for the lover to drown in
(“tra procelle dorate i cori affonda”), subsequently given a surprising
twist with the conventional marine imagery metamorphosing into the
sails of a ship (“L’aure imprigiona, se talor si spiega, / e con auree
catene i venti lega”).
Finally, in stanza 42, the image of Psyche’s bosom as a tender bed
(“morbido letto”) for Amor’s languishing heart is developed in a
rather unconventional direction as her breasts are described as two
lily pillows (“guanciali di gigli”), the colour of the lilies leading, by
way of metonymy, to the snow and hoare that the girl’s breast is said
to look like (“in vista”) while it is in its effect (“nell’effetto”) fire and
burning flame.
In summary, Amor’s enamoured picture of Psyche, which in a typical baroque manner employs a range of poetic forms while elaborating these with surprising twists and turns, represents a noteworthy
deviation from the main line of the plot, characterized by abundant
descriptiveness and passionate absorption in aesthetic detail. It has the
immediate effect of distracting the reader’s attention away from the
progression of the plot, leading him astray in exactly the same pleasurable manner that Amor himself is led astray by Psyche’s beauty. It is, in
other words, a deviation in the most fundamental sense of the word.
Marino’s next significant deviation from his main source, Apuleius,
is found in stanzas 52–79, a lengthy exploration of the mourning
of Psyche’s family at her exposure on the mountain. It features the
eloquent lamentation of her father (4.55–60) and the protagonist’s
realistic, moderately grieving response.20
I will not go into the rhetoric-stylistic details of this extensive passage, but merely note 1) the potential conflict between the tragedizing, horizontal perspective of elegy forcefully invoked in this part of
Besomi, Composizione 15–16.
20
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the poem and the apotheosizing, transcendental outlook propagated
elsewhere in the canto, and 2) the transferability of this potential
conflict to the fourth canto as a whole, suggested in the memorable
lines “non sa fra i tanti orrendi oggetti / se ‘l talamo o se ‘l tumulo
l’aspetti” (4.53): the plunge into the abyss of sorrow represented by
the father may not be all that conducive to the spiritual ascent around
which the text revolves. Hence, Psyche, the paradigm of this ascent
and bearer of the moral agenda of the canto, corrects her progenitor’s
unconstructive approach to misery: “Che val pianger (dicea) che più
versate / lagrime intempestive e senza frutto?” (4.62).
She even confidently points out the reason for her misfortune: “I’ so
pur ben, che l’usurpato nome / dela celeste Venere m’uccide” (4.64),
demonstrating that very exemplary constancy vis-à-vis trials and adversities, which will eventually lead to her apotheosis. However, conspicuously contrary to the steadfast determination of the protagonist, the
narrator excels in deviating from both plot and moral agenda of the
canto (according to which trials serve the progression of discipline,
not as an excuse for making excursuses). Thus his rather long-winded
description of the ‘gothic’ setting—the rocky slope and dark caves, the
gloomy sea, impenetrable woods, the rumbling wind, the sad procession that slowly climbs the mountain—and the detailed elaboration
of the classic elegiac topos of the lament by the sea in stanzas 69–77.
As with the description of Psyche’s beauty, the deviation from the
main line of the plot represented by this passage appears to endorse
an alternative logic of immersion or absorption in descriptive detail
and aesthetic materiality, which rivals the official logic of progress
and exponential ascent. Stanzas 84–87—Amor’s representation of the
sleeping Psyche—provide another excellent example of this ‘secret’
poetic of digression. This passage, without precedent in Marino’s
sources,21 confirms the narrator’s inconstant disposition while relating
this temperament to a well-developed attentiveness to details.
It begins rather innocently with a description of Psyche’s closed
eyes, resuming the light metaphors of the previous description (“soli,”
“luci”). Then it continues with a sensual yet decorous depiction of the
heroine as florid Spring all abloom (“Vedesti ala stagion quando le
spine / fioriscon tutte di novella prole, / . . . / Dirai ben tal sembianza
assai conforme / ala leggiadra vergine che dorme,” 4.85). Then, finally,
it takes a surprising turn with the voyeuristic description of how the
breeze first plays with her hair (86) and then blows up her dress just
Besomi, Composizione 16.
21
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enough for the lover to see “il confin del bianco piè” and “del’ignuda
carne / quanto a casta beltà lice mostrarne” (4.87).
Distracting the narrator’s attention from the main thread of the
story and simultaneously shifting the reader’s attention away from
the moral agenda of the text, this elegant miniature piece of lyric
poetry represents another important example of that undirected or
excursive, sensual and emotional, ‘material’ and descriptive poetic of
digression that I am tracing here. This poetic marks a more or less
latent counterweight to the official moral-transcendental purposiveness of the text.
The last example of this type that I will discuss here is the sisters’
vivid description of the monster to which they imagine Psyche married
(4.135–47). This description begins by following the path indicated
by Apuleius, with the lover symbolically described as a snake (“Sappi
che quel, che ‘nsu la notte oscura / giacer teco si suole, è un fier
serpente,” 4.135). However, it soon turns into a virtual tour de force of
horrifying details unprecedented by the sources: wriggling its supple
torso (“divincolando il flessuoso seno,” 4.137), the monster appears in
most inconstant forms (“più volubili volumi,” ibid.), its menacing and
dreadful eyes spewing a strange light that burns the ground in front
of it (“Da minacciosi e spaventosi lumi / esce strano fulgor, ch’arde il
terreno,” ibid.) as it snortingly spreads a mortal mist of turbid, pestiferous and venomous smoke around it (“di nebbia mortal torbidi fumi
/ infetti di pestifero veleno / sbuffando intorno,” ibid.) before it lies
down beside Psyche in the marriage bed (“a lato a te si caccia,” ibid.).
Then follows a series of unpleasantly detailed descriptions of the
monster’s vermicular movements (“a sé si sporga e ‘n sé rientre / e
ne’ lubrici tratti onda somiglia, / e fuggendo e seguendo il propio
ventre, / lascia sestesso e sestesso ripiglia” 4.138), the multi-coloured
dewy dragon wings and back (139), and how it vomits the human
flesh and blood it has consumed only to lick it up again (“e poiché
vomitata ha dala strozza / carne di gente uccisa, ei la lambisce”
4.140), its back and chest covered with plates and stiches, conches and
flakes (ibid.). As if these disgusting details were not enough to scare
Psyche off, the sisters go on to describe the monster’s three vibrating
tongues and tripartite ‘comb’ of teeth (“tripartito pettine di denti,”
4.141) withholding the bloody foam and deadly breath of the mouth
corrupting the breeze, destroying the flowers and herbs, and laying
the land desolate (ibid.).
Then they hypocritically ask Heaven to guard Psyche from her
husband’s anger, launching another vivid description of the monster’s
body in contorted movement, raising the neck up high, erecting
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the ‘ruthless crowns’ of its head (“erge del capo le spietate creste”
4.142), and shaking its noisy scales. After voicing the conviction that
the monster may temporarily hide its “natural brutezza” (4.143), but
will not contain its “cruda rabbia” (ibid.) for long, the wicked women
intensify the psychological pressure bringing the pregnancy into play.
They now suggest that Psyche’s growing belly will only make her an
even more attractive prey (“Allor fia, chi nol sa? che fuor d’inganni,
/ preda a suo modo opima, ei ti tracanni,” 4.144).
Invoking the oracle’s omen, they now raise the stakes presenting
their sister with the choice between escaping or being buried among
the feral bowls of the “osceno mostro” (“o col tuo scampo a noi /
consentirai, d’ogni sospetto sciolta, / o tanto attenderai che tu sia
poi / nele ferine viscere sepolta?”, 4.146). Finally, they remind her
that, in case she should choose the latter destiny, the monster will not
only swallow her, but also her unborn innocent child (“teco trangugi
l’innocente pegno”, 4.147).
There can be no doubt that this indulgence in the wealth of descriptive detail marks a significant deviation from the main line of the plot.
It represents an important facet of Marino’s poetic of digression, the
constitutive elements of which may be summed up as: fascination with
external beauty (Amor’s first view of Psyche), horizontal, earthly perspective (Psyche’s exposure on the mountain), idle sensuality (sleeping
Psyche) and exaggerated, violent materialness (the monster). While
not completely cancelling it out, these characteristics fundamentally
challenge the exponential ascent toward perfection through purposeful suffering proposed as a both aesthetic and moral ideal in the prose
allegory and poetic prelude of the text. They hence become a vehicle,
in the text, for testing the relative strength of myth and allegory.
The resulting ambiguity of perspectives reflects the generic double
bind of the canto. Digressively descriptive in structure yet, at times, also
demonstratively didactic,22 the fourth canto oscillates between proliferating, sensual, material myth and teleological, moral, transcendental
allegory with a concluding—but certainly not definitive—propensity
toward the ideal of exponential ascent suggested by Psyche’s final
apotheosis (“e meco dopo tante aspre fatiche / nel teatro del ciel
sposata è Psiche,” 4.290).
This oscillation marks the canto as a text that finds its identity
somewhere between both symbolic modes. It is an allegory with
‘mythomaniac’ tendencies or a myth that is more than a myth. This
22
See, for instance, the moralizing maxim concluding the sisters episode: “E così chi
di fraude si diletta / ne’ propri lacci suoi cade ale volte” (4.195).
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interpretation appears to be confirmed by its mise-en-abîme insertion into
the macrostructure of L’Adone. A myth-within-the-myth, the “Novelletta”
(the only canto entirely occupied by a single mythical narrative)23 is
cast within a reflexive framework that renders its mythicalness different from that of traditional myths and highlights its potential as a tale
that points beyond itself toward its spiritually fulfilling transformation
into an edifying moral allegory.
Rhetoric of Ambiguity and Hindrance
The discursive double bind of the fourth canto is echoed on multiple levels in the text, notably in what may be termed its rhetoric of
ambiguity.24 Illustrating both the psychomachy of a protagonist who
stands at a crossroad in her life (“Contrarie passion, tra cui s’aggira,
/ in quel semplice cor fan guerra interna,” 4.149) and the ambiguity
of a text that oscillates between myth and allegory, we find a number
of rhetorical figures relating to schism or suggestive of discord. As the
following list demonstrates, antithesis characterizes the canto from
beginning through the end:
“altra Venere novella / casta però, modesta e verginella” (4.14); “lo sdegno
/ che siam dette io lasciva, ella pudica” (4.18); “Dato al lungo digiun breve
ristoro” (4.95); “Caldo desio rinvigorisce il sesso, / freddo timor le calde
voglie opprime; brama e s’arretra, ardisce e si ritiene, / bollon gli spirti
e gelano le vene” (4.161); “io stabil tronco e tu volubil fronda?” (4.168);
“seco d’amor le dimostranze alterna, / e d’allegrezza astutamente infinta”
(4.186); “un mostro scorsi, / ma mostro di beltà pur troppo bello” (4.187);
“fervido sol gelida bruma” (4.216); “Di nozze tali / figlio nascer non può,
spurio più tosto” (4.244)
The antithetic makeup of the text evolves around conceptual dichotomies such as lasciviousness-chastity, desire-fear, volatility-constancy,
sorrow-joy, monstrosity-beauty, and hot-cold. Essentially supportive of
the black-and-white moral logic of the prose allegory and poetic prelude, these dichotomies may be related to the question of the relative
strength of myth and allegory. Unlike the oxymoron and chiasm, both
of which suggest a dialectical intertwinement of opposites that points
23
Compare cantos V and XIX, both of which contain a whole range of different myths
functioning mostly as exempla to illuminate, ex contrariis and ex similis, the main action.
24
Compare Pozzi’s observation (“Guida”, 75–87), that the linguistic-semantic structure
of L’Adone is built around the dichotomy eccessi armonici (symmetries, “bimembration,”
correspondences, “dittologies,” diptychs, chiasms, bifocality, etcetera) / eccessi disarmonici
(change of normal syntactic order, antithesis, etcetera).
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beyond contradiction, antithesis represents a static contraposition of
opposites that underpins the moral dichotomies of the allegoria.
Nevertheless, antithesis is an important element of that rhetoric
of ambiguity, which dominates the lyric canto, where the, as it were,
‘frozen’ dichotomies are complemented by the more dynamic relation of opposites implied in such figures as the oxymoron and chiasmus. Whereas I have only found a few pure examples of the former
(“cadavere vivo” (4.35); “qualunque umanità fora inumana” (4.154);
“l’amaro addolcir” (4.217)), the latter occurs quite frequently in more
or less perfect forms:
“tu dunque onda alo scoglio, io scoglio al’onda?” (4.168); “spendendo i
giorni in gemiti dirotti / e consumando in lagrime le notti” (4.196); “se
sia del popol dele ninfe alcuna / o dele dee nel numero s’ascriva” (4.199);
“amar ciò ch’ama e ciò che vuol volere” (4.212); “Con cor tremante e con
tremante piede” (4.229)
Graphically and semantically suggestive of crux, chiasm is thus the
more frequent in the second half of the text. This may indicate an
intensification of psychomachy and schism, yet, remembering the
dialectical element of this figure, it may also suggest an impending
synthesis of opposites. If it is allowed that the rhetoric of ambiguity
emerging from the occurrence of antithesis, oxymoron and chiasm
reflects the generic double bind of the canto, the important thing is
not so much to decide between these interpretations. The important
thing is to recognize how the frequency of such figures underscores
the importance of this issue, pointing to the canto’s essentially unresolved tension between myth and allegory.
A symptom of the same tendency that determined the digressive
structure of the text, the rhetoric of ambiguity represents an, as it were,
discreet questioning of the moral agenda of the text. It is essentially a
symptom of the indecision that characterizes the deeper levels of the
text and counterbalances its outward confidence (as flaunted by the
prose allegory). Even if trial and discipline, according to the explicit
argument of the text, must be considered catalysts for and not hindrances of progress, the notable occurrence of figures of discord hints
at the potentially equivocal nature of these phenomena as agents of
both promotion and obstruction, progress and retardation.
This leads us to the most characteristic stylistic feature of the text,
the hyperbaton. A transposition of words into abnormal syntactic positions, the hyperbaton is, in its moderate version, characteristic of all
poetic expression, which often needs to subordinate word order to
the demands imposed by meter, rhythm and rhyme. However, when
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transposition becomes so elaborate that it obstructs the act of reading, the hyperbaton must be considered an important clue to something beyond such decorative considerations. As the following list of
examples suggests, such obstruction is quite frequent in the fourth
canto of L’Adone where words that belong together syntactically are
sometimes extremely wide apart:
“Crede ciascun, che stupido s’affisa / . . . / novo germe di stelle in nova
guisa / veder” (4.14); “Deh, che mi val [ . . . ] / poter dela via bianca e
stellante / a mio senno varcar l’eccelse cime?” (4.19); “Dal carro, che con
morso aureo l’affrena / scioglie, ciò detto, le canute guide” (4.37); “Deh
placa, o mare, i tuoi furori alquanto, / . . . / . . . / . . . . , accogli.” (4.72);
“Se provocò del ciel l’ira severa” (4.76); “Dela vista il difetto adempie il
tatto” (4.98); “è più ch’altro leggiadro un giovinetto” (4.110); “Già più volte
predetto il ver ti fue” (4.171); “fa la ninfa degli antri aspro tenore” (4.179);
“e vince ogni dolor saggio consiglio” (4.182); “dal cui dente crudel morte
non scampa / chiunque il morso avelenato offenda” (4.257); “orribil sì
che poco è più l’inferno” (4.266); “Io, sano già dela ferita e molto / da sì
lunga prigion stancato omai.” (4.279)
The text abounds in examples of this phenomenon and I only reproduce the most extreme cases to demonstrate the point that I want to
make concerning the poet’s use of this stylistic device. The abundance
of hyperbata in the text is a very graphic way for him to illustrate the
difficulty he finds in accomplishing that transformation of myth into
allegory, which is enforced in the prose allegory and poetic prelude,
but problematized in the lyric part of the canto.
When the poet lays out hindrances for the reading and interpretation of his text it is, in other words, a way of illustrating the difficulty
he finds in producing that moral transparency and allegorical decipherability, which the more unequivocal parts of the text present as
a both moral and aesthetic ideal. This ideal reflected a contemporary
spiritual ideal of exponential ascent toward perfection through trial
and discipline. In parallel with the challenging of this ideal through
the hedonist trend of contemporary aristocratic culture, the moral
decorousness of poetry was challenged through what may be termed
the pleasurable liberation of the material elements of poetic language
(vehicle of a metaphor from the tenor; noun from apposition; subject
from predicate, and so on).25
25
Thus, Marino’s insistence on Psyche’s material effort and suffering may potentially
be seen as a critique of the contemporary aristocratic values (beauty, luxury, as markers
of innate superiority) that the extravagant style of L’Adone apparently espouses.
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Read as a dramatization of the troubles associated with the transformation of the proliferating and sensual aesthetic material into an
edifying moral allegory, the “Novelletta” canto turns into a complex
allegory of both these processes. As such, it illuminates the Adone’s own
trajectory, which may be seen as a kind of failed journey to knowledge.
Ambiguous Baroque Mythography
As suggested at the beginning of this essay, the proposed complexity
of the fourth canto of L’Adone needs to be seen within the context of
the period’s literary mythography, which was shot through with the
essential ambiguity of moral and aesthetic perspectives that characterizes postclassical use of Greco-Roman mythology. In the CounterReformation period this ambiguity grew into a virtual aporia.
Now, the ‘disinterested’ mythography cultivated by Renaissance
humanists and poets was increasingly confronted with the animadversion against the immorality of the pagan gods characterizing
Counter-Reformation cultural politics. Once again, as in the days of
early Christendom, ‘purification’ of the ancient pantheon through
allegorization (even, in extreme cases, the total abolition of pagan
imagery)26 was on the agenda. However, seventeenth-century literary authors were apparently determined to overcome this unfruitful
impasse. With the advent of baroque literature, the two mythographic
ramifications merged again to form a wholly equivocal unity of myth
and allegory, a mythology that carried with it an implicit critique of
myth. Literary representations of myth became necessarily two-faced
as the opposition between aesthetic and moral interpretations of classical mythology moved inside the individual work.
As such as mediation, baroque mythological literature in its various
forms (dramatic, epic, lyrical) became a prism for contemplating the
problematic interaction of the various forms of myth, an aestheticreflective taking into possession of the various facets of this complex
tradition. The result was an aesthetic expression that is simultaneously traditional and innovative, an early modern reconciliation
of apparent contradictions through literary art: the ‘modernity’ of
26
Cardinal Paleotti’s De sacris et profanis imaginibus (1582) and chapter 37 of the Jesuit
Antonio Possevino’s Bibliotheca selecta (1593) provide examples of this tendency, which
Sebastian Neumeister has accurately described as “die Tendenz [ . . . ], im Einklang mit
den Beschlüssen des Tridentiums die mit der Ästhetik der italienischen Renaissance
eingedrungene ‘heidnische’ Bildlicheit zu reduzieren und, wenn möglich, ganz durch
eine genuin christliche Metaphorik zu ersetzen” in Formen & Funktionen der Allegorie,
ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979) 293.
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L’Adone does not consist in the rejection of moral mythography and
the embrace of sensuality or vice versa. Meta-moral rather than antimoral, meta-sensual rather than pro-sensual, it encompasses the two
things presenting its mythical subjects in an equivocal and nuanced
manner. Instead of easy solutions, Marino’s epyllion offers complex
statements, adding layers and layers of signification and compiling
semantic forms upon semantic forms.
This encyclopedic or polyhistoric attitude essentially reflected the
mediation of Renaissance literary heritage and Counter-Reformation
suspicion of ancient myth. Yet it also reflected a renewed enquiry
into the ontological status, cultural function, and adequate aesthetic
representation of myth, arisen with the new humanist translation of
the great ancient mythological texts (including Apuleius’ novel as well
as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides). What was the legitimacy, role,
and value of this quintessence of unrestrained human imagination?
Even though we find such enquiry at the basis of all the mythological
genres of the period, the erudite mirror of myth created by Marino
arguably took pride of place as the medium for this meditation.
A testimony to the poet’s wrestling with pagan myth in order to
subject it to the ideological control represented by moral allegorization—as expected of, or directly imposed on authors during this
period—the “Novelletta” canto explores ancient mythology on the
backdrop of ambiguous postclassical mythography. It epitomizes the
baroque dialectical entwinement of both major trends of this tradition. Putting moral and poetic versions of the same myth into play,
juxtaposing them without choosing definitively between them, the
fourth canto reflects the period’s conflict between moral and aesthetic
approaches to pagan culture as well as the solution of this conflict
through literature. It presents a baroque, non-conciliatory synthesis of
the opposing parties that is not an aestheticist solution to contemporary
cultural dichotomies, but an aesthetic reflection of them.
The “Novelletta” canto does not claim the convergence of poetic
and moral mythography and the cultural paradigms they represent.
Instead, it lets their confrontation reflect various contemporaneous
conflicts associated with the aesthetic writing of myth. And by so doing,
it points, however obliquely, toward literary modernity. A tale of the
precarious situation of pagan myth in the heated religious climate of
the seventeeth century27 and a complex allegory of the unresolvable
27
See Rainer Stillers, “Mythologische Poetik in der Dichtung Giovan Battista Marinos”
in Mythos und Text, ed. Sigfried Jüttner (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997)1–17, which presents
Marino’s use of myth as an overcoming of the dichotomy of ‘philosophical’ content
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conflict in baroque poetic between the aesthetic and moral functions
of art, Marino’s version of the Amor and Psyche myth indirectly suggests one of the great aesthetic, social, and political utopias of early
modernity: the establishing of literature as a (potentially) critical
institution (ideally) exempt from the agendas of political and religious institutions.
However, as is well-known, and as the preceding analysis confirms,
the dream of aesthetic independence was far from realized when
Marino wrote his L’Adone in the early 1620s, and would not be so for
the next couple of hundred years. Although it anticipated important
features of literary modernity, the baroque remained a period of
transition, documenting contemporary tensions through an aesthetic
reflexion of these that took the indirect forms of self-reflection,
ideological indecision, generic double bind, and rhetorical ambiguity.
These meta-aesthetic qualities, which are, of course, universally
characteristic of Baroque literature, essentially represented an act
of mimicry: faced with the contradiction between Renaissance and
Counter-Reformation views of ancient culture, especially myth, literature withdrew into itself. Not—it is imperative to stress—into escapist
self-absorption, but into a contemplation of cultural contrasts, controversies and divisions that assimilated to them exactly in order to be
able to reflect them and, in the long run, transgress them. Perhaps it
is not wholly adventurous to speculate, that the Holy Office intuited
the subversive element thus ultimately inherent in Marino’s Baroque
mirror-of-myth judging it yet another evidence of the poet’s ‘heresy’.28
University of Stockholm
versus aesthetic form characterizing the mythological tradition of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance (9–10). As allegories of beauty/art/poetry, he argues, Marino’s myths
achieve a “Konvergenz von Darstellunsgform und Darstellungsinhalt” (10).
28
As the polemic surrounding the work of the Spanish Baroque poet, Luis de Góngora
(Marino’s contemporary and very likely influenced by him), shows, the seventeenthcentury line between aesthetic innovation—particularly as based on formal matters—and
heresy was very fine indeed. See Sofie Kluge, “Góngora’s Heresy: Literary Theory &
Criticism in the Golden Age,” MLN 122 (2007): 251–72.