speculation: a metaphor of memory

SPECULATION: A METAPHOR OF MEMORY
Of all the Neoplatonic themes to fascinate Torquato Tasso, memory and
reflection appear among the most prominent. Both widely explored recreations, memory and reflection come to share a reciprocal relationship
in Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. I will argue that in Tasso's brilliant
and playful exploration of memory and reflection, he is able to use a
specific form of reflection, speculation, as a metaphor of memory;
further, I will argue that the impetus for this creative use of imagery lies
in the splendidly notorious but rather unanalyzed work of Giulio
Camillo, Theatro (1544). Camillo's memory theatre itself becomes a
topos underlying the episode of Armida and Rinaldo in the Liberata, an
episode in which memory is both lost and retrieved in a theatrical locus
amoenus.
Memory is a faculty which has much in common with language.
Both function along two axes. Memory entails the placement of an
image into a relation with at least one other image. The syntagmatic
relation necessarily places the pair of images into a temporal dimension.
One static image would not belong to memory proper, even if it were
an image seen in the past, for one must be aware of the distance
between that image and the present in order to consider it a memory. Of
course the second "image" may be a perception, an idea or even merely
a vague awareness of otherness separating the memory image from the
second concept.
One speculates about the future, past unknowns, or even about
present unknowns. Speculation however presupposes a distance or a
lack between the subject and object of that speculation. It therefore
necessarily enters into the dialectic of presence and absence, and of
signification. Speculation connotes both intellectual thought and,
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etymologically, those things involving vision (spectacles, "spettacolo,"
mirrors). Two conflicting Renaissance theories underlie these differing
connotations: the theory of prudence, which, as I will show, makes an
imagistic-temporal distinction between reason and memory; and
Neoplatonism, which connects the faculty of memory (of the Divine) to
divine reason (Intellect).
Speculation may belong to the mental faculty of abstract reason; it
may also, I will argue, be a metaphor of memory. Speculation as a
metaphor of memory is a literary manifestation of the Neoplatonic
themes of memory, on the one hand, and the mirror relation between
heaven and earth on the other.
The short episode of Rinaldo and Armida in Tasso's Gerusalemme
liberata illustrates an example of how speculation may be a metaphor
of memory. Before looking at the Liberata, I must specify certain
theoretical and genealogical connections. Some of these links lie in
another Neoplatonic poem of the early Renaissance, Boiardo's Orlando
innamorato. One image in particular from the Orlando innamorato
illustrates the connection between a mirror, the Neoplatonic loss of
memory, and the Renaissance locus amoenus.
In Book One of the Orlando innamorato the errant knight must
secure the powers of the golden bough before he can achieve his
amorous goal. As the wise old man warns the knight, the golden bough
lies in the garden of Medusa, under her protection. The punishment for
looking upon Medusa is not, however, petrification; it is the loss of
memory followed by a sort of insanity:
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Di questa dama tu non sai la istoria,
Ché ragionato non me n'hai niente;
Ma questa è la donzella che se gloria
Di avere in guardia quel Tronco lucente.
Chiunque la vede, perde la memoria,
E resta sbigotito nella mente;
Ma se lei stessa vede la sua faccia,
Scorda il tesoro e de il giardino se caccia.
A te bisogna un specchio aver per scudo.
Dove la dama veda sua beltade [...].
Sembrava quel giardino un paradiso
Alli arboscelli, ai fiori, alla verdura.
De un specchio avea il baron coperto il viso,
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Per non veder Medusa e sua figura;
E prese nello andar sé fatto aviso,
Che all'arbor d'oro agionse per ventura.
La dama, che apoggiata al tronco stava,
Alciando il capo nel specchio mirava.
(Canto ΧΠ, 34-8)
Presumably the image of Medusa guarding the golden bough is a
contamination of classical images of the golden bough and of golden
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apples. In the garden of Falerina, in the same poem, the golden bough
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contains golden apples. In the story of the twelve labours of Heracles,
the hero must prove himself by taking apples from the tree of golden
apples in Hera's garden on Mount Atlas. Hera entrusted the tree to
Atlas's daughters, the three Hesperides. One day, Hera discovered that
the Hesperides were pilfering the apples, and she set the ever-watchful
dragon Ladon to guard the tree. Boiardo's Medusa may be the
contamination between the three Hesperides, which recall the three
Gorgons, and the dragon, which recalls Medusa, once punished by
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Athene. The story of Perseus and Atlas may also underlie Boiardo's
imagery. Perseus, once he has Medusa's head, returns to Atlas to punish
him for his previous inhospitality. Perseus lifts the head from its bag
and changes Atlas into the mountain on which Hera's garden
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flourished.
While these myths may account for the presence of Medusa in the
earthly paradise, they do not explain how she comes to cause memory
loss and madness. A possible explanation lies in the imagery of Homer,
Plato and Plotinus. While discussing the soul's descent through the
cosmos, Plato mentions the mixture of pleasure and intelligence that
constitute the soul. The ingredients are mixed (in the crater or cup) by
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Dionysus. The presence of Dionysus accounts for the intoxication of
the descending soul. Socrates notes that "it's just as if we were
supplying drinks, with two fountains at our disposal; one would be of
honey, standing for pleasure, the other standing for intelligence, a
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sobering, unintoxicating fountain of plain, salubrious water."
In his Enneads Plotinus further connects the notions of the crater
and intoxication. Plotinus however also adds a mirror. In his fourth
Ennead (3.12) he discusses the descent of the soul: "The souls of men,
seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered
into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are
not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect." As Plato
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hypothesized in his Phaedo, the descending soul, while it does not
forget its origin completely, does nonetheless suffer a loss of memory
as it enters into a sort of somnolent intoxication.
Boiardo's Medusa loses her memory when she beholds herself in
the mirror (the reflection in the knight's shield). In the Neoplatonic
vision, Divine Intellect is to human reason as memory of the Divine is
to human memory. Human memory, individual memory of the passage
of time, or simply, self-memory, is an essential part of human identity.
If the descent of the soul from immateriality to corporeality constitutes
madness (in that it is a loss of reason), then the further loss of its
human residue (self-memory or one's identity) constitutes the greatest
madness. When Medusa beholds herself in the shield, she further enacts
the loss of memory experienced first in the descent of the soul. What
remains of her memory, her identity or self, then ceases to be.
In his discussion of beauty (Ennead 1.6), Plotinus relates the story
of a man reaching out for his own reflection upon the water. His death
takes him to Hades (in Greek, the "unimaged"; here, the invisible
place), where he must remain blind. Plotinus warns against the
narcissistic seduction of appearances, and advises that we stay clear of
Circean charms. The mirror-water is therefore the entrance to Hades, to
a place where there are no images to behold, nor sight with which to
behold them if they did exist. The mirror encourages a loss of self.
Further, the connection of the mirror to Circe not only encourages the
narcissistic loss of self, but the amorous disintegration of the self
witnessed in the pleasure gardens of such witches as Boiardo's Falerina,
Ariosto's Alcina, and Tasso's Armida.
Lemmi has also suggested that, by virtue of these two Plotinian
descriptions, the mirror of Dionysus and the mirror of Circe are
related. This is most probable not only because both Dionysus and
Circe are related to mirrors and intoxication, but because they are
further tied together with cups, bowls and intoxicating mixtures of
honey and wine that cause the loss of memory. Mead has already tied
together Plato's crater-cup and Dionysus; to this one may add the
Homeric Circe, who prepared for her guests "a mixture of cheese,
barley-meal, and yellow honey flavored with Pramnian wine" in Book
X of the Odyssey. To this she added a powerful drug "to make them
lose all memory of their native land. And when they had emptied the
bowls in which she had served them," she struck them with her magic
wand and turned them into swine. Circe's bowls of intoxicating
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substance may well be related to the crater-cup of Dionysus.
The relationship between memory (or loss of memory) and the
reflection in Renaissance Neoplatonic poetry originates then in
Plotinus's contaminations of Plato and Homer. The Neoplatonic theme
of the reflection between heaven and earth encouraged not only
multifarious reflection images, such as ponds and mirror-shields, but
also a metaphoric mirroring of different loci in Renaissance poetry.
The theme of multiple metaphoric reflection is apparent in the
works of Torquato Tasso. Bruscagli has shown the affinities between
the Christian camp of the Gerusalemme liberata and the theatrical stage.
I myself have argued that Tasso's Aminta reflects the already richly
specular relationship between the locus amoenus (as a garden but also
as a garden containing a theatre) and the theatre (the theatre in the
garden of Belvedere and the theatre in general). There are still other
affinities between the Liberata and the theatre. The spectator
perspectives of Erminia in the third canto and Solimano, who beholds
the fighting from a tower in Canto XX, are theatrical in nature. Even
more to the point is the explicit theatrical terminology used to describe
certain scenes. For instance, in the Liberata the locus amoenus of
Armida is presented as a theatre the moment the Christian hero Rinaldo
arrives (Canto XIV, 59). Banished from the Christian camp, Rinaldo has
departed from his epic goal in pursuit of more personal pleasures. In
Canto XIV we catch up to him as he discovers the magical boat which
will carry him to Armida's islands, where he will ultimately be joined
and reclaimed by his fellow epic knights. Rinaldo leaves the tiny boat
that brought him to the paradise island and walks along the rocks and
caverns. He is met by a singing nymph: "Così dal palco di notturna
scena/o ninfa ο dea, tarda sorgendo, appare." He is beguiled by the song
and awaits only the seduction of Armida's eyes. The episode of Rinaldo
and Armida (Cantos XIV-XVI) takes place then in an earthly paradisetheatre, the stage of which is set for a love scene.
For Tasso, the memory-mirror is more than a decorative curio: it
is a textual device. The memory-mirror is a place; it is where identity
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is both lost and found. It is where the epic knight is transformed into
a romantic lover and, conversely, where the romantic lover returns to
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his former, epic self. The change engenders more text. The mirror of
the lost identity or loss of memory is distinct from the mirror where the
memory is recovered.
In the fourteenth canto of the Gerusalemme liberata, Rinaldo reads
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the promising obelisk-like column and, enchanted, takes leave of his
attendants in a tiny boat. Back at the Christian camp, Goffredo has
decided to absolve Rinaldo, and sends Carlo and Ubaldo to find the
errant knight. Carlo and Ubaldo learn from the magus Ascalona that
Rinaldo has been taken away in the tiny boat to the paradise islands of
the sorceress Armida.
The episode of Rinaldo and Armida is a romantic episode woven
into the epic fabric. According to Auerbach, the nature of the romance
conventionally calls for the use of subordinate clauses, local description,
psychological description, and an illusion of a lack of passage of time
created by these descriptions (often rendered in the present tense). The
sense of purposeless meandering in an eternal present is inherent to the
locus amoenus, the romantic place of love. The time pattern of the epic
is, on the contrary, based on the passage of time communicated by the
passage of events, epic events that exclude romance. In the
Gerusalemme liberata there is no emphatic distinction between events
relayed in the present tense and those relayed in the past tense. The
quiet transition is therefore marked with images that subtly reinforce the
illusion of a specific temporality. Tasso dramatizes the timeless nature
of the episode with numerous images of mirrors as well as with the
traditional image of eternal spring.
Repetition, paradoxically, is used as a device for securing the
illusion of a lack of change and therefore of timelessness. Rinaldo is
seduced into the little boat by the promise of adventure and happiness;
when he arrives at the first paradise island, Armida falls in love with
him and decides to hide him even further out in the ocean, and takes
him to a second paradise island. Ascalona describes what has happened
to Rinaldo and prophetically advises Carlo and Ubaldo on their future
course of action. What Ascalona describes (the gardens, mirror ponds,
etc.) we experience once again in the actual events of the two rescuers.
Ascalona warns the two knights to avoid the most dangerous part
of the earthly garden, the mirror-pond. This is the mirror in which
desire leads to thirst and then to a fatal frenzy of laughter:
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Poi via maggior (se dritto il ver s'estima)
si troverà il periglio in su la cima.
Un fonte sorge in lei, che vaghe e monde
ha l'acque sì, che i riguardanti asseta:
ma dentro ai freddi suoi cristalli asconde
di tòsco estran malvagità secreta;
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ché un picciol sorso di sue lucide onde
inebria l'alma tosto, e la fa lieta;
indi a rider uom move; e tanto il riso
s'avanza al fin ch'ei ne rimane ucciso.
(Canto XIV, 73-4)
Madness and death are the result of an inward seduction, a seduction
into one time, an impossible time. The seduction pulls the beholder into
a loss of focus, into a collapse between subject and object, the way
Narcissus was drawn into the water. The mirror-pond closely recalls not
only the story of Narcissus but also the substance that Circe offered her
guests in order to make them lose their memory and purpose. The
knight's seduction causes the loss of focused temporality, of the
temporal integration needed for identity. His identity is a string of epic
conquests, a future of conquests, and an outward appearance (a
perception), his armour. His identity is based on memory, perception
and fantasy; it is based on the integration of the three time frames. The
epic knight cannot survive in love because love strips him of his armour
and memory, from the signs of time. Ravished of time, the epic knight
no longer is. The clothing of Rinaldo the lover, for example, is not
armour but an "abito molle" ( X I V , 77).
Rinaldo of course did not drink from the mirror-pond. His epic
future, prophesied at the Christian camp, is the reason for which Carlo
and Ubaldo are sent on their mission. Rinaldo loses his identity before
he even has a chance to drink from the deadly pond. Rinaldo is already
seduced into a loss of exterior values and a loss of both the past and the
future as soon as he hears the nymph sing:
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[...]
Nome, e senza soggetto idoli sono
ciò che pregio e valore il mondo appella.
La fama che invaghisce a un dolce suono
voi superbi mortali, e par sì bella,
è un'eco, un sogno, anzi del sogno un'ombra,
ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua e sgombra.
Goda il corpo sicuro, e in lieti oggetti
l'alma tranquilla appaghi i sensi frali:
oblii le noie andate, e non affretti
le sue miserie in aspettando i mali. [...]
(Canto XIV, 63-4)
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Rinaldo is lulled into the illusion of the eternal present through the sleep
induced by the song. The fact that he is seduced into this illusion at the
very moment the paradise island is presented as a theatre is an apt
metaphor of the seduction of the theatre itself. The spectator, like
Rinaldo, participates in this very seduction.
Just as the repetition of imagery and episodes creates the timeless
illusion, so must the garden continually regenerate:
Nel tronco istesso e tra l'istessa foglia
sovra il nascente fico invecchia il fico:
pendono a un ramo, un con dorata spoglia,
l'altro con verde, il novo e 'l pomo antico:
lussureggiante serpe alto e germoglia
la tòrta vite ov'è più l'orto aprico:
qui l'uva ha in fiori acerba, e qui d'or l'have
e di piropo e già di nettar grave.
(Canto XVI, 11)
Rinaldo awakens on the paradise island. He is held captive not only by
the island but by Armida's eyes. Because Rinaldo is already a prisoner
of desire, he is spared the temptation of the mirror-pool. Armida's eyes
are now the mirrors which will hold him from himself. Like the locus
of the eternal present, the eyes too attempt to create the illusion of one
time. The reflection, like the fruit trees, is forced into an act of
becoming eternally. The viewer is drawn into an infinite splitting of his
image and that of the lover, of reality and the veils of desire. The lovers
reflect in each other's eyes; Armida's eyes reflect in a crystal, which
reflects her eyes and his in them:
[...]
Sovra lui pende: ed ei nel grembo molle
le posa il capo, e Ί volto al volto attolle:
E i famelici sguardi avidamente
in lei pascendo si consuma e strugge.
[...]
Dal fianco de l'amante (estranio arnese)
un cristallo pendea lucido e netto.
Sorse, e quel fra le mani a lui sospese,
a i misteri d'Amor ministro eletto.
Con luci ella ridenti, ei con accese,
mirano in vari oggetti un solo oggetto:
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ella del vetro a sé fa specchio, ed egli
gli occhi di lei sereni a sé fa spegli.
(Canto XVI, 18-20)
The lovers gaze amorously into each other's eyes, forming an
apparent closed circle between subject and object, which dramatizes the
circle of time. The closed circle is merely an appearance. The subject
and object do not mutually support each other; the reflection is not a
temporally integrated representation. The motion of splitting does not
stop and therefore has no center. The lack of temporal centrality
precludes an organization of the imagery; to this extent it precludes
identity. In the continual act of genesis, the reflection cannot hold up
the signs of otherness, of outward appearance, of wholeness implied in
the integration of time frames. In other words, there can be no
perception of the self as a whole object. Madness lies in the illusion of
the eternal moment, in the lack of a differentiating relationship between
subject and object.
The illusory closed circle formed by the subject and object may be
broken by the reintegration of Rinaldo's identity. Restoring Rinaldo's
memory will engender this reintegration. In the Renaissance theory of
prudence, that part of ethics which consists of memoria, intelligentia,
and Providentia, three time frames are associated with three mental
faculties: memoria is the metaphor of the past tense, intelligentia of the
present tense, and Providentia of the future. Both memory and foresight
are considered imagistic, while, apparently, intelligentia is not.
Intelligentia would therefore belong with abstract reason. This cluster
of associations presents a rather dangerous adventure because it implies
that as soon as one leaves the realm of the present tense, one also
leaves reason and enters madness. In fact, the theory of prudence, with
the aforementioned associative groups, underlies the theory of Ficino's
prophetic madness. The mind is able to "depart from reason," that is,
from the present, and escape into the luscious fantasies of the future.
The future is seen in images in the imagination. An "incorporeal eye"
sees images in absence. The escape from the reasoning present into
fantasy as a form of madness is actually capable of saving reason by
giving it a needed rest. And if a mental move from the present to the
future is a passage into a form of madness, then so is a move from the
present into the past. It would still follow that mental balance (Ficino's
ideal temperament) consists of an integration of all three time frames.
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While Armida's garden would seem just the opposite of this
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Situation in which only the present tense is associated with reason, there
remains the fact that mental temperament requires all three time frames
with their different modes of action. While trapped in the eternal
present, Rinaldo does not have use of any such "incorporeal eye" with
which to see images of his future and past. Throughout the entire
episode there is neither physical nor imaginative action on his part.
In the shift from intelligentia to memoria, ideas become images.
Conversely, it would seem, the present lacks substantial images.
Memory brings materiality. I would argue that, in certain instances,
reflection takes on more than a rational role; reflection takes on the
materiality of the image when reflection becomes speculation (an
imagistic reflection). This visible reflection is retrospection. In the
mirror, for example, there is retrospection; it is the object that "reflects
back" or "looks back." Thus retrospection and, in this sense, reflection,
are metaphors of memory. It is precisely this form of memory, literal
(or mirror) retrospection, that will restore Rinaldo to himself.
Ascalona gives Carlo and Ubaldo the secret to rescuing Rinaldo:
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[...]
Siede in mezzo un giardin del labirinto,
che par che da ogni fronde amore spiri:
quivi in grembo a la verde erba novella
giacerà il cavaliero e la donzella.
Ma come essa lasciando il caro amante
in altra parte il piede avrà rivolto,
vuo' ch'a lui vi scopriate, e d'adamante
un scudo ch'io darò, gli alziate al volto,
sì ch'egli vi si specchi, e Ί suo sembiante
veggia, e l'abito molle onde fu involto:
c h ' a tal vista potrà vergogna e sdegno
scacciar dal petto suo l'amor indegno.
(Canto XIV, 76-7)
It would seem that if the memory can be lost in the mirror, as it was in
the case of Medusa, then it can also be restored there. Though Rinaldo
had not lost his identity by looking into a mirror, he had lost his
memory and identity due to the intoxicating seduction of the Circe-like
sorceress Armida, who then kept him from himself with her deceptive
mirror-eyes.
The shield is a mirror and a mnemonic cue. Its reflection is
retrospection. The memory engenders a realistic view of the present,
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and recalls the knight to his destined future. His identity as an epic
knight is based on the reintegration of time engendered by the memorymirror. The shield is both the symbol of the epic hero and a symbol of
consciousness; it is part of his clothing and identity. Through the
presentation (and representation) of the shield, Rinaldo recovers himself
psychologically, as he soon must do physically:
In tanto Ubaldo oltra ne viene; e Ί terso
adamantino scudo ha in lui converso.
Egli al lucido scudo il guardo gira;
onde si specchia in lui qual siasi, e quanto
con delicato culto adorno: spira
tutto odori e lascivie il crine e Τ manto,
e il ferro, il ferro aver, non ch'altro, mira
dal troppo lusso effeminato a canto;
guernito è sì ch'inutile ornamento
sembra, non militar fero instrumento.
Qual uom, da cupo e grave sonno oppresso,
dopo vaneggiar lungo in sé riviene,
tale ei tornò nel rimirar se stesso:
ma se stesso mirar già non sostiene;
giù cade il guardo; e timido e dimesso,
guardando a terra, la vergogna il tiene. [...]
(Canto XVI, 29-31)
The paradise garden of Armida is not only a theatre but a theatre
of memory. The locus amoenus is a locus memoriae, a place where
memory is temporarily lost for the sake of pleasure. The theatre is a
locus where anything can happen and everything goes. The adventure
into madness is ironically also the guardian of sanity, as Tasso knew
tragically well.
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LISA JEPSON
Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut
NOTES
1
One has only to think of Tancredi's encounter with Clorinda's voice
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(embodied in a hieroglyphic tree-tomb) which comes back to haunt him in canto
thirteen of the Gerusalemme liberata; and Freud's immortalizing use of the
tragic Tassian image as his example of the repetition compulsion — a form of
memory — in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Norton, 1961), pp.
16-17. And of course Tasso's delight in the reciprocal relationship between
textual imagery and external conditions is well-known.
Elsewhere I have argued that Tasso's hieroglyphic memory-tree (embodying
Clorinda) may well have been influenced by Camillo's memory theatre, a
conglomerate of images designed to mnemonically strike the memory with the
immediacy that only images have. As in the theory of hieroglyphic symbolism
from which it is partly derived, the memory theatre conceals sacred wisdom
from the profane while surrendering it to the philosopher via-subtle revelation.
The philosopher must intuit the entire content of the hieroglyph (or theatre
image) from the immediate, (nondiscursive, visual) mnemonic form. In addition
to concealing alchemical processes, the theatre's images reflect the Neoplatonic
stages of the creation of the universe. At the centre of Camillo's amphitheatre,
where the descending soul loses its memory, lies an image of the Golden
Bough. Tasso's hieroglyphic-tree also stands at the centre of a clearing which
is, strikingly, in the form of an amphitheatre ("Al fine un largo spazio in forma
sorge/d'anfiteatro" — Canto XIII, 38) and is, as I have already mentioned, an
image of memory. For a comparative study see my "Giulio Camillo and the
Rhetoric of Memory" (Yale, 1990). Also see Camillo, Tutte le opere, ed.
Lodovico Dolce (Venezia, 1552). For a sketch of Camillo's memory theatre,
with its various images laid out in place, see Frances Yates' The Art of Memory
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 144.
For studies of the locus amoenus see A. B. Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise
and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); H.
Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1969); R. Poggioli, The Oaten Flute (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1975); G. Venturi, "Pictà Poesis" in Storia d'Italia V (Torino:
Einaudi, 1982).
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3
4
Memory may also, of course, entail kinesthetic sensations, uncanny sensations
of déjà-vu and several other forms of recall. I am, however, limiting myself to
memory as an imagistic system.
The connection between Medusa and the golden bough lies also at the center
of Camillo's theatre; it is under the row of the Gorgons, precisely in the central
column, that the golden bough is imaged for the second time in the memory
theatre. Camillo, like Boiardo, associates Medusa and the Golden Bough with
memory loss, as it is at the level of the Gorgons (row 4 in his theatre) that the
memory is both lost and recovered as the soul enters and leaves the Lower
World. Boiardo, Camillo, and Tasso all associate memory loss with images
drawn from the earthly paradise. Boiardo and Camillo use the golden bough
(associated above with golden apples and sacred gardens) while Tasso
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dramatizes Rinaldo's loss of memory precisely within the context of an earthly
paradise. This is perhaps because in the original Eden, there was no temporal
dimension.
For a study of the relation between the two images see Gladys Martin,
"Golden Apples and Golden Boughs," in Studies Presented to David Moore
Robinson (St. Louis, 1953), pp. 1191-7.
Orlando innamorato II, Canto V, 2-8.
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths II (New York: Penguin, 1955), p. 145.
Graves, I, p. 239.
Plato, Philebus (60-61), The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 1142-4. For an examination
of the relationship between the image of the cup and the crater in Plato and the
cave of Bacchus see G. S. R. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes I (London: The
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), pp. 450-6.
Philebus 61c; Porphyry also studies the relationship between honey and
Dionysus and wine. See Porphyry, L'antro delle ninfe, trans. Laura Simonini
(Milano: Adelphi, 1986), cap. 34.
Neoplatonism plays an additional role in the Medusa image: the
inaccessibility of the woman within the framework of Neoplatonism is built into
the Medusa image. While the Neoplatonic woman may only be seen, Medusa
represents the further interdiction of disallowing others to look at her. She is
also the hideous interdiction separating the knight from his angelic Angelica.
The golden bough recalls the Biblical Tree of Knowledge, a metaphor of desire.
There are resonances not only of Eden but also of oedipal desires in the image:
An interdiction separates the naked man from the magic bough with the
forbidden fruit (and this is the literally forbidden fruit in the garden of Falerina)
and the desired woman. The punishment for her further interdiction is that she
herself must pay her price. Medusa, "the cunning one," must be outsmarted. The
shield, a reminder of battle and aggression is held against her. Ironically,
however, it is Medusa who is aggressed against. The shield, while masking its
assault as a defense, is a weapon against her.
"Memory is connected with our whole experience of time. It is not merely a
faculty of reviving or reproducing the past, nor is it simply the faculty of
recording and retaining present but fleeting perceptions so that they may last in
some other form. By virtue of memory, our experiences become connectable,
are woven into a context, and extend into a past and a future. In an important
sense, memorial activity is linking activity. A before, now, and after are created
in this linking and become mutually influential; continuity of our life as
individuals comes into being." Cf. Hans Loewald, Papers on Psychoanalysis
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 149.
Charles Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
Press, 1933), p. 204.
See also Porphyry's analysis of the water vases and honey in the Homeric
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cave in L'antro cap. 34.
Homer, The Odyssey, ed. Rieu (New York: Penguin, 1946), pp. 161-2.
Camillo's theatre is also a mirror of the chronological order of the creation
of the universe.
The Aminta is structured as a reflection of a fresco that in turn reflects the
centrality of the privileged spectator, the duke. See my "The Aminta: A Tragic
Vision," in Rivista di Studi Italiani VI, No. 2 (1988), 23-34; see also Riccardo
Bruscagli "Il campo cristiano nella Liberata," in La corte e lo spazio (Roma:
Bulzoni, 1982); for a study of the relationship between the city and the theatre
see L. Zorzi, Il teatro e la città (Torino: Einaudi, 1977).
Tasso's use of the memory-mirror motif echoes that of Giulio Camillo in that,
for both writers, the memory is associated with specific spaces (mnemonic art's
loci, the seat-boxes of Camillo's theatre, etc.) while combining the motifs of
time and mirrors. Camillo's theatre, I have stated, mirrors the chronology of the
creation of the universe. Further, both Tasso and Camillo utilize Neoplatonic
conceptualizations of the memory. For Camillo, the theatre represents pictorially
(or would have were it still extant) the descent and ascent of the soul with its
corresponding loss and gain of memory; for Tasso the memory is not so much
depicted figuratively in its wax and wane as dramatized literally. The literary
dramatization of the loss and gain of memory tilts memory from its two
linguistic axes (as a spatial paradigmatic image and a temporal, syntagmatic
flow for that image) to a dual but predominantly temporal orientation. Thus the
episode of Rinaldo and Armida is the story of the loss and gain of memory
dramatized in terms of temporality — Rinaldo's being trapped in the present
tense. For studies of loci in mnemonic theory see Aristotle's De memoria, trans.
Hett (Cambridge: Loeb, 1935) and his Topica, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge
(Oxford, 1928); also see Ad Herennium (attributed to Cicero), ed. Harry Caplan
(Cambridge: Loeb, 1957).
While the mirror is obviously spatial in nature, and while it is where the
memory is lost and retrieved, one must not lose sight of the fact that memory
is also a temporal phenomenon and a necessary part of human identity.
These observations stem from Auerbach's study of the paratactical structure
in poetry. See E. Auerbach, "Roland Against Ganelon" in Mimesis (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 96-122.
For a study of the problem of time and identity see S. Korchin, Modern
Clinical Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 60.
Italo Calvino also toys with this problem of the outward identity in his Il
cavaliere
inesistente.
Also see G. Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Éditions de Minuit,
1969).
In Cesare Ripa's iconography, for example, the figure of Memory has two
heads because she can see both into the past and into the future. I would argue
that the connection between the past and future is their shared ontological status
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as imagistic, precisely what separates them from what is associated with the
present tense in the theory of prudence: intelligentia. In fact, Ripa himself
would appear to confirm this hypothesis in his gloss of his memory image: "La
Memoire a un double visage, pour ce qu'elle est un don particulier de la Nature,
d'autant plus considerable, que par son moyen, & par les règles de la Prudence,
elle comprend toutes les choses passées, & celles de l'avenir," in iconologie,
trans. J. Baudouin, ed. S. Orgel (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), p. 111.
Yates studies the shift memory makes from one of the five parts of classical
rhetoric to one of the parts of medieval ethics in The Art of Memory, pp. 50-81;
see also Erwin Panofsky's study of Titian's Prudence in Meaning in the Visual
Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 146-68; cf. also Victoria
Kahn's Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press).
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Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York: Icon, 1972). Also see Ficino's
Comm. in convivium.
One could study, for instance, the term "rear guard" (retro guardia) as another
metaphor of memory or retrospection. In this sense, the position of the knights
in the Chanson de Roland (in the front, middle and rear of their formation)
imitates spatially the concepts of future, present and past.
This is the logic we find in Pirandello's Enrico IV, in which a portrait, a
mirror of another time, is presented to Enrico and is supposed to be a
metonymy that jolts the mind of the king and forces him into that other time,
that other mind, and somehow bridges the gap of difference that separates him
from his society. Time does not work this way but Enrico appreciates the
gesture.
The use of the shield as a mnemonic cue may well be another way in which
the episode of Rinaldo and Armida stems from Camillo's memory theatre. The
very structure of the memory theatre was in itself a mirror of the chronological
steps involved in the creation of the universe. It mirrored pictorially a temporal
evolution. In this sense it attempted to offer a concrete ladder to the celestial
powers. More importantly, however, the memory theatre of Camillo was
designed to elicit hermeneutic (and genealogical) associations by mnemonic
devices (tropes). Thus Tasso's space of memory, like that of Camillo, is
accompanied by an internal use of mnemonic cues intended to evoke mental
operations other than the imagination. In the case of Camillo those mental
operations are linguistic associations that connect images to alchemical texts;
for Tasso, who probably did not know Camillo's secret, the mental faculty to
be elicited remains a mysterious faculty, that of the memory seen as part of the
identity of man. See my "Giulio Camillo and the Rhetoric of Memory," cit.
For accounts of Tasso's life see G. Getto, Storia della letteratura italiana
(Firenze: Sansoni, 1983); N. Sapegno, Disegno storico della letteratura italiana
(Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1980); A. Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso (Torino:
Ermanno Loescher, 1895).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
Aristotle. De memoria, trans. Hett. (Cambridge: Loeb, 1935).
. Topica, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge. (Oxford, 1928).
E. Auerbach. Mimesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953).
G. Camillo. Tutte le opere, ed. Lodovico Dolce. (Venezia, 1552).
Cicero. Ad Herennium, ed. Harry Caplan. (Cambridge: Loeb, 1957).
G. Deleuze. Différence et répétition (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969).
S. Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Norton, 1961).
G. Getto. Storia della letteratura italiana (Firenze: Sansoni, 1983).
A. B. Giamatti. The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966).
R. Graves. The Greek Myths (New York: Penguin, 1955).
Homer. The Iliad, trans. E. V. Rieu. (New York: Penguin, 1950).
. The Odyssey, trans. E. V. Rieu. (New York: Penguin, 1946).
L. Jepson. "The Aminta: A Tragic Vision," Rivista di Studi Italiani 6, No. 2
(1988), 23-34.
. "Giulio Camillo and the Rhetoric of Memory" (Dissertation, Yale
University, 1990).
V. Kahn. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, n.d.).
S. Korchin. Modern Clinical Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
C. Lemmi. The Classical Deities in Bacon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1933).
H. Levin. The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1969).
H. Loewald. "Perspectives on Memory," in Perspectives on Psychoanalysis.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
G. Martin. "Golden Apples and Golden Boughs," in Studies Presented to
David Moore Robinson. (St. Louis, 1953).
G. R. S. Mead. Thrice-Greatest Hermes (London: The Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1906).
E. Panofsky. Studies in Iconology (New York: Icon, 1972).
Plato. The Collected Dialogues, ed. E. Hamilton. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1961).
Plotinus. Enneads, trans. S. Mackenna. (London: The Medici Society, 1924).
R. Poggioli. The Oaten Flute (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
Porphyry. L'antro delle ninfe, trans. Laura Simonini. (Milano: Adelphi, 1986).
C. Ripa. Iconologie, trans. J. Baudoin, ed. S. Orgel. (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1976).
Ν. Sapegno. Disegno storico della letteratura italiana (Firenze: La Nuova
Italia, 1980).
A. Solerti. Vita di Torquato Tasso (Torino: Ermanno Loescher, 1985).
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T. Tasso. Gerusalemme liberata (Torino: Rizzoli, 1950 ).
E. Vance. "Roland and the Poetics of Memory," in Textual Strategies.
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979).
G. Venturi. "Picta Poesis," in Storia d'Italia. (Torino: Einaudi, 1982).
L. Zorzi. Il teatro della città (Torino: Einaudi, 1977).
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