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Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry
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Sacred and profane love: four fountains in the
Hypnerotomachia (1499) and the Roman de la Rose
Hester Lees-Jeffries
Published online: 01 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Hester Lees-Jeffries (2006) Sacred and profane love: four fountains in the Hypnerotomachia (1499) and
the Roman de la Rose , Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 22:1, 1-13, DOI: 10.1080/02666286.2006.10435730
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2006.10435730
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J - illclud(' 'L(' dC'Tllir du .iardin
nll'di"""J: Du verger de I" rmc it CythiTI. in
1'''ga.1 <'I.Jmdin.l rla//I re//;",'r.1 J IMii,'al (. \i.,< en
PrownlY PublicatiollS ,It- 1a c: LTER :\ IA.
[990). pp. 'L'esLhfliquc de l'hlig1TIl':
lc 'I"Ttdcil' I't II' ,cm dam Ie Song" ric PoII/,lIite.
Rir:i.lfn di fJ'ftnnlllrr IJInr/f'm/' I' ((IIII/lom/I'. 'NS -1T.3
(lg88), pp. 'Le Plllij)},,}r flU I'Id,;,' du
jardin: pour lIIlt' analyse litteraire de
l'csthetiqur CnlonicuIlc' . r I &' inlflgl'. Il
(1998), PI'. 61-ill; 'Le S'mgr rI,' Polij)},ilc:
rhlO\"ation on metamorphose clu genre
litle-fairc', in Lr ,\()ngr II In Rl'nrzissrU/(/', eel.
Fran\oi,, ChaqJ!'ntiIT (Saint-Etienne:
lnstitut d'etudes de b Renai"ancc el de I'agl'
classiqlle. lTniwrsitl' dt' S"int-Etienne, 1(190),
Pl'. R:;-97 SCI' also Polizzi's edition of the
SongI' de Poil/J/"'!,, the si.xteclllb-ccntury
French translation of the f1l'jJllerololllaclli,,:
hanasm (,'010111"': u: SongI' ric P,dijJhif,:
Tiadlldion de l'H.ljmaolom({rhi({ Poliphili dr .Jean
Jlwtin (Paris. A<'17in; 15.]6) (Paris:
Nationale Ediliom, 199+).
- J I urrl & fmngf, 1+ I :2 was a special issue
devoted to the f11'illlerolo"",cliia.
3 Quotations [rolll the Rvman d,. /" Ro.lt art'
given from lhe Chauct"l'lall translation or (fi.JI"
the pans llot tramlalcd illto Middle English)
in a modern translation. The Romallc, 0/ the
Rose. trallS. FrmlCt's Horgan (Oxford: Oxlonl
Univcnily Pn'ss, 199+)' Both have been
checked against the Old French. and thl'
nriginalliul' nunlhcrs are hriYen in square
bracket,.
Sacred and profane lo-ve: four
fountains In the Hypnerotomachia
(1499) and the Roman de la Rose
HESTER LEES-JEFFRIES
As other cntles havc observed, notably Gilles Polizzi in his many valuable
studies of the S07lge de Polij)/Zile/ the l{11Jllerotomac/Zia (I499t draws on the
medieval Roman de fa Rose as a source, most obviously in its consummation
scene at the Fountain of Venus. Like the Roman, thc /-{Jiplll'Totomadzia is a
dream-vision relating the story of a lover's quest for his beloved, unfolding in
a dream landscape, a single garden in the former and a series of gardens and
idealized landscapcs in the latter. Polizzi has argued that the /-{)1merotomachia
has many medieval features, some of which he traces specifically to the
Roman, and it is true that, for example, the l{vpnerotomacizia has the episodic
structure 1:)lJical of medieval romance. It is also a narralive that is, like the
Roman (although to a far greater degTee), significantly structured and shaped
by the fountains encountered by its protagonist. VVithin the /{ypllerotonzaclzia,
fountains have very particular narratological, aesthetic and ethical hmctions,
and to compare 1:\-\'0 of them with their analogues (and perhaps sources) in
the Roman clarifies some specific issues concerning fiction, love and art in
both the individual romances themselves and the relationship between them.
Colonna draws obliquely on the Roman in creating a structural parallel
between Guillaume de Lorris's Fountain of Narcissus and his own Fountain
of Adonis; furthermore, in the Fountain of Venus, he rejects, or at least
radically reconfigures, Jean de Meun's Fountain of the Lamb. To look back
from Colonna's text, and not least its illustrations, to one of his key sources is
therefore to understand it more deeply, and to gain a richer appreciation of
its status as a quintessentially Renaissance text.
The episode of the Fountain of Narcissus in the Roman de la Rose has been
exhaustively discussed by critics. VVandering in the Garden of Delight,
Amant comes to a fountain:
And so betyl, I rested me
Besycles a wei, under a tree,
VVhich tree in Fraunce men cal a pyn ...
And springyng in a marble stan
Harl Nature set, the sothe to telle,
Under that pyn-tree a welle"
And on the border, al withoute,
"Vas written in the ston aboute,
Letters smal that sayden thus,
'Here starf the fayre Narcisus'. (LJ.SS-S7, q.62 -68):;
The Roman's Fountain of Narcissus and the Fountain of Adonis in the
l{JjJnerotomadzia occupy similarly central places or spaces. Although at first
glance the two fountains seem quite different - the former comes after the
\\"ORD & J1\JAGE, VOL. 22. NO. 1. l\IARCH 2006
Tl"rllrl & imnC;I' I."'iS'\J (l:..:tiG-iJ::!H(i ,I' :.:'1)111) &
11l111:1/\\" I'", t;llldr.L.:u.
nOI:
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apparent climax or Poliphilus's quest at the Fountain or Venus, while the
latter is yery near the beginning of the Romall comparing them in terms
grounded in their configuration of narrative and erotic space points up their
similarities. The Fountain of Adonis is at the centre of a garden and at the
heart of the H)jJllerotomachia's structure; it is also the matrix in relation to
which the two parts of the book map on to each other: the fountains
encountered by Poliphilus in Book I arc mirrored in Book 2 by intenst"
Petrarchan imagery of ice, water and llre, and similes drawn from Ovidian
metamorphoses related to water. It is a place of reflection, whereby Book 2
retells Book I in a different narrative and aesthetic mode. In the Roman, the
Fountain of Narcissus is at the centre of the Garden of Delight. It has a
catalytic function in the narrative (like a romance knight, Amant 'discovers'
his quest at a fountain) that is apparently very different from that of the
Fountain of Adonis, which connotes narrative stasis. Both fountains,
however, are associated with the death of lovers, and those lovers'
subsequent metamorphoses into flowers. They are memorial sites, sites of
mourning, places where the competing drives of Eros and Thanatos are not
so much juxtaposed as overlaid, made visible and, even more, made
material. Both fountains, too, are represented as art objects, things to be
looked at. They arc material records of narrative: tht" story of Adonis's death
is represented in the sculpted scenes which decorate his tomb, as well as
being dramatized in Venus's annual rite of commemoration and mourning.
lVlore complex still is the situation at the Fountain of Narcissus in the
Roman: the story of his fate is inscribed into the fabric of the fountain itself,
and this real inscription therefore frames the reflections, and so the
imaginative, mimetic or erotic experiences, of all who, wittingly or not,
recreate 'his' story by gazing into the fountain. They or their reflections are
made art objects as in turn they look at themselves: this is particularly true of
2 HESTER I.EES-JEFFRIES
Figure J. Alllant at the Fountain of
from a 1531 Paris edition of the
Roman de La RO.II' in the Cambridg-e Uniwrsity
Library. All il1lag-es are reproduced by
or the Syndics of the Canlbridgc
Uni'TTsily LiJ)rary.
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Figure :2 . .\lllant and the Rose: lrwll a 1.1:)1
Paris f'Ciition uf tllt RumaJl rlf' 1/1 Rn.'i(J in the
Cambridge I.ibrary.
Figure 3. Thl" Fountain of Adonis,
ltJjJllrrotollllu:hia Poliphiii (Ltg'll, q, [rom a
copy in the Calnbridge Vnin'rsity Library.
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Chaucer's versIOn of the text, which describes the objects reflected in the
fountain as looking 'As though it were/Peyntid in the cristall there' (1599-
1600) [1567]. They read a narrative of which they have become both subject
and object.
Several observations can be made about the way in which the Fountain of
Narcissus appears in the Roman. It is both the location of and the occasion
for a digression, in this case the narration of the story of Narcissus himself.
The reader pauses, "",ith Amant, beside the fountain and, as Narcissus's story
is told, the story of Amant is itself temporarily suspended in both time and
space, while a historical time and a mythical place are elided,
palimpsestically, into the temporal and physical space ofthe main narrative.
Emmanuele Baumgartner suggests that 'the Fountain of Love is the crucial
locus where the narrative refreshes itself and begins anew'.4 The inscription
on the fountain's rim makes it clear that this is the actual fountain at which
Narcissus met his end. That historical narrative is thus inscribed into the
materiality of the physical, if fictional, present. Like the Fountain of Adonis,
therefore, where the history of Adonis's death is recorded in the bas
on his tomb, the Fountain of Narcissus is a parenthetical, suspended space in
its relationship to the main narrative. It is a place where the constrictions of
time and space, albeit those of a dream, are not so much lifted as stretched
or dilated to admit, into the courtly garden, a fragment of Boeotia. In the
H)pnerotomac/zia, the intrusion of the apparent scene of Adonis's death, which
4 HESTER LEES-JEFFRIES
Figure -t' Thc' Fountain of Adonis. another
\'iew, showing the scenes of .'\dunis's death
which cll'corale the sides or his Lonlb.
1{J1!1leroI0lIlndll'n }Jail/liz iii i149'J!, zH. from a
CDpy in the Cambridge Cniwrsitv
.j. -- EmmanuCi" Baumgartner, 'The Play of
Temporalities; or, the Reported Dream of
Guillaume De Lorris', trans. Benjamin
Semple, in R,tizillking tiz,' Romm,,:r of Ihe Rose:
Te.I[, Image, Reception, eds Ke,in Brownlee
and Sylvia Huut (Philadelpllia: Univcrsity or
Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 31.
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5 SUZdllJ1(' Lcwis. '!lTlagl's uf ()pening.
Penetration and Closure ill the RUII/all De J../7
RrJl"f'. Tl 1m! a Jlllagr', a p. 2:22. See also
David F. Hulr, 'The ;\llegorie,d FOlllllain:
Narcissus ill the Rmwm Dc La Ros(:, R()tnrlllit"
Rrc';r;(', 72 ([981), [)",id F. Hull,
Pmj!hfril's: Renders"i/) and .illlhoril1' ill Ihe fin!
ROlli,'" D, La Ro.\,' (Cambridgl": Cambridge
LTniversity Prcf.;f.;, I9B6).
strictly speaking took place in a C)'1Jrian forest rather than a C:ytherean
enclosed garden, represents a similar disjunction, althuugh a less jarring one.
The sense uf the Garden of Adonis as a 'parenthetical' space is emphasized
by the way in \\"hich it is not included in the exhaustive gazetteer of the
island that precedes Poliphilus and Polia's arrival at the Fountain of Venus,
and that there appears to be no place where it 'fits'. In both the
J-{J'iJllcrotomacilia and the Roman, the fountain setting occasions and represents
the enlarging of the narrative in spatial terms: just as the Fountain of
Narcissus rt'tlects and so contains the whole orchard, so the Fountain of
Adonis reflects both halves of the narrative, the erotic dream landscape of
Poliphilus's quest and the proto-magic realism of Polia's Treviso, making no
clear distinction bt'twt't'n 'real' and 'unreal'. Perhaps most significantly,
within the structures of both texts, and for both protagonists and readers,
these two fountains function as blank spaces, spaces of temporal hiatus and
flexibility, where the self-contained world of the narrative is, for a time,
permeable or pregnable. In both romances, the self-contained world
represented at and by the limen of the fountain's surface figures the space of
fiction itself, whieh is also the space of art and of love.
In her discussion of manuscript illuminations of the Roman, Suzanne Lewis
suggests that 'the fountain was perceived by medieval readers as an image of
fiction itself - a deceptive surface reflecting "truth", because it is at once
transparent and opaque, open and dosed'.5 The blank, but endlessly
informable, space of the fountain is where the narrative endures a hiatus: it is
a lacuna that connotes not loss but potentiality; not that something is
missing, but that an infinitude of coexistent perspectives and narratives is
possible. As the Fountain of Narcissus becomes known as the Fountain of
Love 'for the seed that heere was sowen', it becomes a locus of
intertcxtuality:
This welle is depicl, as well is knowen,
The \Vcllc of Love, of verray right,
or which ther hath ful many a wight
Spoken in bookis dyversely. (1625-29) 9GJ
The Fountain of Adonis in the /-{l'jJlZemtomaclzia is also an intertextual site,
invoking the generic conventions of Boccaccian storytelling --- it provides
C:'xactly the sort of setting encountered in the Decameroll. for stories not
dissimilar to Polia's - as well as Ovid's j\ietamoljJ/wses. The different
responses of Colonna and de Lorrisl de NIeun to this literal lacuna in the text
reveal some important ways in which the J-{Jpnerotomaclzia is emphatically not
a medieval text, in the way it is read, its narratology and its ethical agenda.
It is at the Fountain of Narcissus in particular that Amant becomes a
surrogate reader, just as at the Fountain of Adonis Poliphilus notionally
becomes part ofthe audience of Po Ii a's story_ "Vhile it is unclear whether the
story of Narcissus is narrated by him (Amant) or by a more impersonal
narrative persona, both Amant and the reader project themselves into
Narcissus's narrative space, represented by the reflective surface of the
fountain itself Like the Garden of Delight and the Garden of Adonis, and
indeed the Roman and the J-{ypnerotollZachia themselves, the two fountains,
which are at their centres, are both places (and spaces) for talking, hearing
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about, and meditating on, love. IVIuch later in the Roman, its future readers
are referred to as reading Le mime}" aus amoureus. This primarily refers to the
commonplace genre of the sjJeculum but, given the importance of the
Fountain of Narcissus to the narrative and, later, the importance of the
Fountain of the Lamb, it also subsumes the whole narrative into the
alternative reality of the fountain space, and attests to the primacy of love
among the Roman's concerns.
In particular, the story of Narcissus and his fountain in the Roman de fa Rose
represents the temptation to, or seduction by, the endless solipsism and self-
referentiality of worldly, erotic love. As Strubel puts it, referring to Amant's
initial reluctance to look into the fountain [ISIl-IS], 'la fontaine est d'abord
rcssentie comme un avertissement, une voie a eviter, celie de la
contemplation passive, ou du desir cultive pour lui-meme. Narcisse
represente une tentation permanente du lyrisme courtois, pure voi." d'un
tournec vers un objet absent' (the fountain is at first sensed as a
warning, a path to avoid, that of passive contemplation, or of the fostering of
desire for one's self. Narcissus represents a perpetual temptation of courtly
poetry, the pure voice of a subject directed towards an absent object).G
Amant need never leave the garden; given that the whole of the garden is
contained in mirror-image in the lountain, he need never leave the fountain
either. His own reflection, implicitly visible in the fountain as Narcissus's
6 HESTER LEEScJEFFRIES
FigUl'1' 5. I'olia prepares trJ lell her slOry.
beside- the Fountain uf .-\CkJllis.
H.ljlll/Tulolllat"hia P"lil,hili ([+99). z9' f;'D>lJ a
copy in the Cambridge l:ni\Trsity Library.
6 -- Armand Strubel, cd .. ie Romall De i.a Rose
(Paris: Librailie Cencrale Fran,aise. 1992),
P117
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\\'as, at the same time as he see, the Rose and the rest of the garden, figures
the way in which erotic experience in the narratiw will be filtered through
his own subjectivity, and framed as the object of fiction and of art. This is
Vel)' much the way in which Poliphilus views the world, especially shown in
the way in which his desire for Polia is elided into his passion for the art and
architecture of antiquity. The Fountain of Narcissus is also a point of access,
both experiential and interpretive, to an eroticized world and landscape of
love, which is both intcrior and exterior. Both Amant and Poliphilus
undertake quests or pilgrimages that are to some degree internal, involving
the shaping and alteration of their own perceptions, and the pursuit and
realization of thcir desires, Especially obvious in the Roman is the way in
which the fountain acts as a limen betwecn, and a catalyst for, various states
of perception. Amant's vision in the fountain is richer and more intense than
his previous experience of the garden itself, and thus he sees the Rose. This
is shown in the sequence of illustrations in a manuscript copy of the Romall in
the Cambridge University Library. In the first, Amant sees his reflection
(which could also be Narcissus's); the second is identical in almost every
respect, savc that the rose has appearcd, and in the third, Amant is shot,
through the eye, by the god of love with his arrow. One of the functions of
the lountain, therefore, is the provision of a space for the projection,
realization and pursuit of desire. Amant is looking for love: that he
eventually sees an object for his desire reflected in the fountain figures thc
perceptual shift that characterizes the gaze of love. The experience is
dramatic and not unambivalcnt. The setting, the frame, the associations,
resonances and potentialities of the fountain space facilitate all of this.
Given the volume of criticism cxclusively devoted to it, it is easy to forget
that the Fountain of Narcissus is not the only fountain describcd in the
Roman. The other is the Fountain of the Lamb, or of the Trinity, which is
found near the end of the Roman, well into the section by Jean de Nfeun, in
the part known as the Sermon of Genius. The Fountain of the Lamb is
described in terms that explicitly oppose it to the Fountain of Narcissus:
'This is not the same spring that the young man sa,,, welling up from the
marble stone beneath the tree. He deserves to be mocked for praising that
spring, the perilous spring, so bitter and venomous that it killed fair
Narcissus when he gazed at his reflection from above' (314) [2040916]. The
Fountain of Narcissus is situated beneath a pine tree, while that of the Lamb
is shaded by an olive tree (20501); the former gushes out in two channels
which, despite appearing to originate there, in fact spring from elsewhere
120429-20434J, but the latter 'wells up continually through three skilflilly
constructed channels. These are so close together that they all become one,
and if you see them all and choose to amuse yourself by counting them, you
will find both one and three. You will never fmel four, but always three and
always one, this is a characteristic that they share' (315) [20473-82]. The tw"O
crystals on the bottom of Narcissus's fountain are replaced by 'a carbuncle
more wondrous than any other marvellous stone' (316) [20532-20533J and,
to complete the diametric opposition constructed betwcen the two fountains,
the inscription on the rim of Narcissus's is replaced by a scroll hanging from
the tree over the fountain, reading "'Here runs the spring oflife, beneath the
leafy olive that bears the fruit of salvation'" (316) [20525-20527 J.
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. R I .EES-J EFFRIES
Fig;ul't: IJ .. \..tHallt looks intu tht" Fountaill of
and sees his fJWll (which illso
;\arcisslIs'S i. Ii-mn a
ll1i.lIlUsrript n1' thr' H'JlII(lIf rit- la ROSt' ill thl'
Ctll11briclgt" Uni\Trsity Lihl"i.lly.
I:igurt' 7, :\m(lm set's the Rose, fnllll a
ll1anwKripl oj" the ROII/(fll
,It Rus,' ill til!" Cambridge UllivCl',ily
Fih'l.l1T 8 .. .'.\nlanr is shot in the heart by the
arrow ..,flh" God of Lu\'l', from a fOllrteenth-
centlll)llnanuscripl or the Romrlll dr la Ro.\"(' ill
the Ullive.r,ilY Librar), .
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The fact that tl1f' Fountain of Narcissus is referred to extensively by Jean
as \Nell as by Guillaume suggests that it can be read in tvvo separate, but
related, ways. It has an important narratological function in the text as a
whole. It opens the text for protagonist, narrator and reader, functioning as
a metatextual imagc for the shifting, subjective experiences of fiction, art and
love. Like the J-{vpnerolomadzia's Fountain of Adonis, it is the matrLx for
reflections and recollections, the retelling of stories and the fashioning of new
identities, and the dizzying alteration of the erotic perceptions of self and
othcr. Many of these qualities and principles hold true for, and indeed
frame, the whole romance, including Jean's continuation. In that
continuation, however, the Fountain of Narcissus is also reconstructed as
the specific and inferior opposite of the Fountain of the Lamb. Although this
implies a moral principle that can be seen as underlying the entire romance,
it is presented as a local allegory, a particular point of view voiced by only
one character, Genius, among many. That thc Fountain of the Lamb can be
seen as ultimately implying that fiction and art are deceptive and that
worldly love is inferior to divine, does not necessarily invalidate the Fountain
of Narcissus's demonstration of some of the ways in which fiction, art and
love can actually operate.
In drawing his comparison between the Fountain of Narcissus and the
Fountain of the Lamb, Genius considers at SOllle length the cliITerence
between the 1\0/0 crystals at the bottom of the former and the single
carbuncle of the latter. In contrast to the crystals, which can only reflect half
the garden at once, and which arc wholly dependent on the sun's rays in
order to reveal anything at all ('They are so dark and murky as to be
insufficient in themselves for the man who looks at his reflection in them, for
their brightness comes from elsewhere. If the sun's rays do not strike them in
such a way that they can catch them, they are powerless to show anything'
(3I5) [20+58-64]), the Fountain of the Lamb contains a carbuncle: 'I tell you
also that in this spring (foolish people will fmd this hard to believe and many
will take it for fiction), thcrc shincs a carbunclc morc wondrous than any
other marvellous stone' (316) [20529-33]. The stone is set high in the
fountain, rather than at its bottom; it has three facets and, by some divine
arithmetic, each facct is 'worth' as much as the remaining two. Like the
three streams that well up from the spring, which are always three and
always one, the carbuncle is clearly a symbol of the Trinity. Perhaps most
significantly, the carbuncle does not reflect light, but is itself the source of it:
'its shining can plainly be seen from everywhere in the park .... No sun but
that resplendent carbuncle shines in thc park' (316) [20536-37, 20558-59]. It
is a symbol of the glory, omniscience and omnipotence of God. To look at it
confers true sight and self-knowledge: 'it has such marvellous power that as
soon as those who go to see it turn towards it and look at their own faces in
the water, whatever side of it they are on, thcy are alvvays able to see, and
rightly to understand, all the things in the park and themselves as well. Once
they have seen themselves there, they become such wise masters that
nothing that exists will ever be able to deceive them' (:JI6) [20571-20582]. In
Genius's own words, 'Anyone making a comparison between the beautiful
square garden closed by the little barred wicket where this lovcr saw
Pleasure and his people dancing in a ring, and the fair, thc utterly and
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perfectly 100Tly park of which I speak, would he guilty of serious error if he
did not makc the same comparison as he would hetween truth and fiction'
(312) [20283-92j.
The reader, the observer or the lover, thcrefore, must be able to
distin,guish between the things of the world, howcver beautiful, which,
although supcrficially 'rear are in fact fictional, thc products or constructs of
human nccd, desire or imagination, and the beauty of God's truth, a deeper
reality created by God for His faithhll people. In Genius's formulation
earlier in the sermon, human craft and skill, art and ingenuity, while not in
themselws bad, came into being at the end of the golden age; the)" arc signs
of the fall. As Peter L. Allen suggests, Jean's continuation shows that
Amant's subjective, solipsistic experience of love is 'a fantasy, a literary
construction that can exist only with the confines of the dream, the page, or
the mind of the reader. Jean suggests that the world outside the frame is
more important than the one inside il.'7 Art, fiction and worldly love are not
bad in themselves, but they are limited, and the inability to perccivc their
limitations, or to distinguish between them and that which they shadow, is
dangerous. This is why Narcisslls died alone beside his fountain.
It is surprising that no one seems to have commcnted on these aspects of
Jean's Fountain of the Lamb in rc!ation to Colonna's Fountain ofVcnus, for
there are somc significant points of contact between them. In the Preface to
his 1999 English translation of the f{vpnerotolll(lrhia (the first completc
translation in its five-hundred-year histOlY), Joscelyn Godwin says of the
vision ofthe goddess in the Fountain of Venus that 'Superficially, this recalls
the symbolic deflowerment at the cnd of the Romanre qf the Rose, but a closer
analogy is thc cpiphanic Book XI of Apuleius's JlIetamorplwses',s and this is
indeed the case regarding many of the details of the dcscription of thc
goddess herself. Although Apulcius describes various aspects ofIsis's clothing
and accoutrements as shining or sparkling," nowhere does he attribute that
quality to her body itself, and this is one of the most important features of
Colonna's Venus. Furthermore, the 'summit' of the fountain structure itself
'blazed forth in the form of a proud cupola of the fin cst unveined crystal,
pure and transparent .... It tapered toward the summit, where a miraculous
ornament was attached: an egg set in gold, made from a carbuncle that
flashed in all directions, the shape and size of an ostrich egg' (360). When
Venus herself is reveakd, stanns 'naked in the middle of the transparent
and limpid waters of the basin, which reached up to her ample and divine
""aist, reflecting the Cytherean body without making it seem larger, smaller,
doubled or refracted; it was visible simple and whole, as perfect as it was in
itself. ... The divine body appeared luminous and transparent, displaying its
majesty and venerable aspect with exceptional clarity and blazing like a
precious and coruscating carbuncle in the rays of the sun; for it was made
from a miraculous compound which humans have never conceived of (362).
Again, 'the part of her body that was above the water shone no more nor less
than the splendid rays of the sun in polished crystal' (363). Colonna's
description of the goddess's glowing body as being like a carbuncle, and of
the carbuncle on top of the fountain that 'flash[es] in all directions', is
strongly reminiscent of the carbuncle that is inJ ean's Fountain of the Lamb.
Furthermore, that her body is not at all distorted by reflection or refraction
10 HESTER LEES-JEFFRIES
7 - Pl'lt:r L. Allen. 77" _4/"1 of Lm'f'.'
Fidio/l jiWI/ (!rid If! /h{' R'f/I/Il/lf'f' of Ihl' Rv.,.,
(Philadelphia: Univer,ity of Pellnsyil'ania
PITS<, Pl' B3 +. III my rli';ClI"ion of the
limitations of" pt'lTt"ptl0!1 and of the Iictions
or lo\"c ill tiIl' Romall r/f fa R()l"e, I ha\T" blTl1
innUl'll('l'cl by Allnl's
S - Colonna, J-{11J/1l'/"vlo/llachi" PnLij;hili
(London: Thames and Hudson). p. "ii.
y -- Including the Inoon/rnirrur ill her crOW11,
the stars and moon that embellish her cloak
and the nIlI moon which rises from the sea at
the hcginniug- of the l'pisodl' (II.I, pp. 3 ---l- in
the Loeb edition).
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III - Carol Fah-II HdTnnall, '\Yells and
"tl'CaIllS in thrcC' Chaucerian g'ardcns'. Prlj)l'I:1
Oil I.GIl.!!lIagl' and Liltralllrr, t,) (1979), p. 3.1-5.
II - Allen, p. 9(i,
recalls Genius's attribution of the quality oftme rd1ection to the Fountain of
the Lamb.
The Trinity in vvhich Venus appears is completed by Ceres and Bacchus,
and she is not the spring of life but 'the delicious source of every beauty':
seeing her confers not self-knowledge and the ability to disting'uish between
illusion and reality, but sexual ecstasy. In the climax of Colonna's romance,
worlcUy, erotic love is claimed as divine and transcendent, in much the same
imagery as Jean de lVIcun employed to describe the profoundly Christian,
and corrective, Fountain of the Lamb in the R()man de fa Rose. In her essay on
Chaucer's use of wells and fountains, Carol Falvo Heffernan observes almost
in passing that 'as de Lon-is orients his fountain to the services of amour
courtois, Jcan de Meun redirects his fountain to minister to the stability of
divine love'. III It is clear that the principle underpinning the opposition of the
two fountains and therefore, perhaps, representing the Roman's final position
(or one of them) regarding the nature of love, perception and art is the
familiar text from I Corinthians 13.12: 'For now we see through a glass,
darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even
as also I am known.' Strubel describes the comparison of the two fountains
as 'une sequence essentielle pour la signification du texte deJean .... C'est 1<\
que l'entrcprise de la continuation se devoile definitivement com me une
reecriture, qui tOllche aux sources memes de la fiction de Guillaume: Ie
songe n'a apporte que des leurres et des illusions, la vraie vie est ailkurs' (an
essential passage to the meaning ofJ ean 's text .... It is there that thc purpose
of the continuation is definitively revealed as a rewriting that goes back to
the same sources as Guillaume's fiction: the dream has brought nothing but
snares and delusions, the real life is elsewherc, lOS1). Although Allen suggests
that 'thc Christian rewriting of the scene and all its elements which Genius
offers is undermined by his sexual licentiousness, and readers are left to
make their own meanings' /r Genius's specific opposition of the two
fountains, his rejection of Narcissus's as deceptive and dangerous, and the
text attached to the Fountain of the Lamb, are surely unambiguously
Christian in their import, whatever the views put forward by Genius
elsewhere in his 'sermon'. Furthermore, it is not simply the specific verse
from I Corinthians 13, just cited, that is relevant to the Roman, especially in
comparison with the If,Vjmemtomadzia, but the whole chapter, with its vast and
multiple connections made between the things of the world and divine
things, human and divine love, and the ability to see and to speak clearly.
Divine love is mature love, undiminished or distracted by worldly things:
together with the self-knowledge that is true perception, it is the ultimate
Christian goal. To seek it is a constant process of revelation. As the
experience of Narcissus, of Amant and, indeed, of the reader, attests, worldly
or erotic love is a state of altered and heightened perception, a superficial
fusion of subject and object in the imperfectly mimetic mirror surface of art
and literature. But to see and be seen clearly and truthfully is an ever-
expanding ability conferred by divine love alone.
This underlying Christian seriousness concerning the finite worth of art
and literature, of human concerns and aspirations, and of worldly love,
found (albeit not in its conclusion) in the Roman de La Rose, in comparison with
the H.vpnerotomac/Zia, reveals the pervasive profanity of Colonna's romance far
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more than do its various reinyentions of Christian rites and sacraments or its
sexual explicitness. If Guillaume's Fountain of Narcissus has as its
ccJUnterpart in the /fJ'/JllfIDtomadzia Colonna's Fountain of Adonis, then
Jean's Fountain of the Lamb is matched by the Fountain of Venus. In
Colonna's scheme, the love that is ultimately divine and transcendent is also
erotic and worldly. As Colonna describes its revelation to Polia and
Poliphilus in the form ofa naked pagan goddess in thc Fountain of Venus, it
is also the ultimate art object, a literal shrine to thc love of worldly beauty. At
the Fountain of Venus the Divine is emphatically flesh, and her
surroundings represent the utmost in human craft and art. At the
Fountain of Adonis, the story 'told' by Polia concerns a 'reality' no more
(or less) 'real' than Poliphilus's in the preceding Book: it simply narrates
human erotic experience Ii"om another point of view, and olfers a perception
as subjective, partial and unrevealed as Poliphilus's has heen. Polia's story, as
she herself admits, is no more transcendental or less narcissistic than is
Poliphilus's: both relate the utterly subjective and worldly experience of
erotic obsession. In the /fljJlZemtomadzia, the things most highly prized are of
the v"orld: a desire for and a pleasure in the beauty of things madc by human
hands. 'Vhat it presents as being ultimately transcendent are erotic love and
the human capacity for imagination and invention.
As the similarities between Guillaume's Fountain of Narcissus and
Colonna's Fountain of Adonis, and the similarities and differences between
Jean's Fountain of the Lamb and the Colonna's Fountain of Venus show,
the Roman de fa Rose and the /fl'pnerotomacllia have much in common
narratologically, but they are ethically very different. vVhile both share a
conventional dream-vision frame, they put forward strongly contrasting
views of fiction, art and love. Although it is bawdy, decadent, and
encompasses the expression of a variety of perspectives on sexual morality,
the Roman (j)(lce Allen) retains, notably in the 'Sermon of Genius', a moral
core that is essentially Christian. It opposes the sacred to the profane, and
places a Christian allegory in the midst of its allegory of the world. The
/fYjmerotomadzia is profane and worlcliy throughout, offering no locus of an
alternative moral perspective, Christian or otherwise. It sanctifies only art,
the body and carnal love .
. More subtly, the /fvjJllerotomac/Zia portrays a world, and especially a
landscape, thal is morally rlang('rous precisely because it is so concrete. With
its straightforward, morally emblematic characters and its conventional,
spatially incongruous, largely unparticularized settings, the Roman conforms
to the rules of both dream-vision and allegory, and remains generally two-
dimensional. The /fJ1Jnerotomadzia does not: even at its most fantastic, it is
dangerously realistic. Poliphilus does not merely describe his surroundings in
minute detail, he explores them, inside and out. ''''hen confronted with
constructions such as the jJue/' mingens ('pis sing boy') fountain, he speculates
about their mechanics. The complete integration of the woodcuts into the
text is telling: Poliphilus's world and adventures can be depicted in pseudo-
realistic detail in a way that Amant's cannot. Cytherea can even be mapped.
That the Fountain of Venus is not illustrated, although it is initially
surprising, in fact draws the reader into Colonna's celebration of the human
capacity to imagine. In a way that is reminiscent of the narrative function of
12 HESTER LEEScJEFFRIES
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12 'Pnliphili h)VIlt'rotrJmacilia, \I'herein he
sht\\'eth that all bllrnainc and \\urldlie tiling-'
are but a and hut a \,i:1niti(' it 111
thr sdtil/gjoorth ,,hupofl/wlIl' thil/g' are figured
\\"()rlhic or ITlTH'lllbranu", in R[oJ)(,rt]
Dr"llingtonj, Hlj!ILPI'O{ollZ",hiu: Iii. Ilri!e "flu",' ill
u dreallll' (London, l3lr.
the fountain of :'.JarcissLls and the Fountain of .-\donis, the' mirror-like walls
and 1100r of the theatre, into which Poliphilus fears to fall, create a space' for
the reader in the narratin', perhaps to imagine thc details of his or her own
erotic epiphany. Through the sermon of Genius, Jean asserts that the
difference between the twu gardens, and especially between their re'spective
fountains, is that betvvecn truth and fiction. In the J-{fjJflcrotumadzia everything
is a liction, and at times an ostentatiously, worryingly three-dimensional one,
and thus a product of human ingenuity. This last quality is reflected even at
the micro-level of Colonna's own linguistic inventiveness. For both Jean and
Guillaume', the description of things tends to be so much amply/catio. For
Colonna, it is a celebration or the material and the corporeal and of the
human capacity to invent, describe and experience.
If the Romall is read from the standpoint of the Fountain of the Lamb, and
with rcference to the Fountain oL\!arcissus, then the text fi'om I Corinthians
13 might well serve as its epigraph, an assertion that, amongst the bawdy, it
does at kast gcsture at the possibility of a higher moral ami spiritual truth.
As an epigraph to the J-{fiJllf'r()tomar/zirz, Colonna supplies the following:
HYPNEROTOl\lACHlA POLlPHlLI, VBT HV
MANA Ol\INV\ NISI SOMNTVM
ESSE DOCE'!'. ATQVE OBITER
PLVRIl\lA senv SANE
QUAl\I DIGNA COM
MEIV[ORA T.
It could be argued that this claims a Platonic agenda for the itJjJnerotomac/Zia.
But what Colonna depicts is a world of utter moral relativism, where the
transcendental is elided into thc erotic, and the human capacity to invent
and for pleasure is fetishized as the ultimate good, the real and the ideal.
Offered a choice between Theodoxia, C:osmodoxia and Erototrophos,
Poliphilus chooses the latter: to gesture at a higher reality in the Christian or
Platonic sensc is futile, for the most intense and revelatory experiences
possible an' the human ones of love and imagination. It is the
J-{yjJ7Ie1"olomadzia's interaction with the ROil/all de La Rose, at their respective
central fountains. that makes this especially clear.
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