The Image of a Fountain in the Selected Lyrics of Pernette du Guillét and Maurice Scève

Prikhod'ko Kseniya Olegovna Postgraduate student, Department of History of Foreign Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1, building 51 beatrixter862@gmail.com

Water, along with other natural elements, plays an important role in the love philosophy of the XVI century. This is part of the universal life cycle, about which the Neoplatonist theorist Marsilio Ficino writes as follows: "... fire, communicating its heat, moves air, air — water, water — earth. And vice versa, the earth attracts water, water — air, he is fire, all kinds of herbs and trees greedily generate their likenesses, scattering their seeds. Animals and humans are carried away by the temptation of the same passion for procreation ..." ^{[4, p. 162]} Individual elements of existence are captured by the universal love attraction.

Maria Rodriguez-Navarra argues that water is polymorphic and ambivalent, and therefore the connotations of the water element can be both positive and negative, depending on what function to give them. Always moving, changeable, water appears as an image of time, as something that cannot be comprehended in its entirety, and that unevenly escapes, like life itself ^{[10, p. 574]}.

Clean and transparent waters give the flow of love a special expressiveness. According to Giselle Mathieu-Castellani, they carry a "r?ve de fra?cheur" — a dream of freshness, because near them the lover "plunges into a harmonious state of peaceful thoughtfulness, dreams of pure love, like a transparent wave" ^{[9, p. 392]}.

The canonical image of the fountain is found in The Novel of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Men. In it, a young man finds himself in a beautiful Garden of love, where he is looking for the most beautiful flower (an allegory of a beautiful lady). The path leads him to a marble fountain, on which the story of an unfortunate Narcissus is carved in stone, entangled in the nets of Love and punished for pride by falling in love with his own reflection. With the hero of the novel, sincerely eager to become a vassal of Cupid and find the happiness of mutual love, something completely different happens: thanks to the action of two crystals, or crystal stones, the world in the mirror of waters appears before him in a variety of facets. The waters of the fountain help the hero to achieve epiphany: among the many beautiful buds with the sweetest fragrance, he finds a single, much-desired Rose — the chosen one, surpassing all in beauty ^{[2, 3]}.

The image of the fountain is also important in the lyrics of Petrarch. By 1333, according to Afanasyev, there are two sonnets in which Petrarch writes about his passage through the Ardennes Forest, where he escaped from worldly glory. There, after the death of Madonna Laura, he finds solace in a kind of locus amoenus — a place called Fontaine de Vaucluse, which he describes idyllically in a Letter to Posterity: "I <...> found a tiny, but secluded and cozy valley, which is called locked (Vallis Clausa — Vaucluse), fifteen thousands of steps from Avignon, where the queen of all the keys of Sorga is born..." ^[1] Here he spends his days near the spring (the fountain after which the Fontaine de Vaucluse is named), thinking about his beloved, whose appearance is reflected for him in the faces of nature even after physical death:

The spring murmurs, the branch rings with foliage,

I hear the voice of my mistress,

And the forest bird imitates her.

The imagery of Petrarch is inherited by the poets of the French Renaissance. The fountain appears in the "Temple of Cupid" by Clement Marot, who mentions it as follows: "Les Fons du Temple estoit une Fontaine, / Ou decouvroit un ruisseau argentin: / La se baignoit mainte Dame hautaine / Le corps tout nud, monstrant un dur tetin. Lors on eust veu marcher sur le patin / Povres Amans a la teste enfumee…» ^{[8, c. 52-53]}

The head of the Lyon school, Maurice Sev, creates a dizen, the epigraph of which contains a dedication to Fontaines de Vaucluse and the lover Petrarch:

(pr?s laquelle, jadis, habita P?trarque) Quiconques voit de la Sorgue profonde

L'?trange lieu, et plus ?trange source,

La dit soudain grand merveille du monde,

Tant pour ses eaux que pour sa raide course.

Je tiens le lieu fort admirable, pour ce

Qu'on voit tant d'eaux d'un seul pertuis sortir,

Et en longs bras divers se d?partir;

Mais encor plus, du gouffre qui bruit l?,

Qu'oncques ne peut ?teindre et amortir

Le feu d'amours qui P?trarque br?la.

Sev plays homophony in the name of the river (Sorgue), which is consonant with darkness, night and even the end of the world. From this almost infernal abyss, a stormy stream breaks out, worthy of admiration as a picturesque creation of nature. These waters not only do not reject the flame of passion — they accept it as fertile ground: Petrarch's sublime love for Laura is such that nothing can extinguish her fire, so it continues to burn in the middle of the fountain.

Dizen traces Sev's fidelity to the love philosophy of Leon Ebreo, or Yehuda Abrabanel. In Ebreo's Dialogues on Love, love is presented as a monumental desire (d?sir), an omnipotent desire to possess an object of adoration ^{[5, p. 310]}. Love passion, incinerating with fire (divine, but sometimes painful), as a metaphor fits such a desire as well as possible. Sev deliberately does not distinguish between "ferme amour" (reliable, durable, faithful love) and "ardent amour" (passionate and ardent love).

Pernette du Guillet, who is often primarily spoken of as a student of Maurice Seva, treats Petrarchist love concepts very freely — she often uses them to beat and create her own. The image of the fountain is included by her in elegy XLIII, which can be called a canonical example of her lyrics (traditionally it is called "elegy about the fountain"):

XLIII

Combien de fois ay je en moy souhaict?

Me rencontrer sur la chaleur d’est?

Tout au plus pr?s de la clere fontaine… ^{[7, c. 153]}

In the space where the lady turns out to be, there is a collision of two love-erotic topos — chaleur d'este (summer heat) and la clere fontaine (clear source). And if the first topos unambiguously symbolizes a sizzling love passion, then the image of the fountain is ambivalent. On the one hand, a lady seeks refuge from the heat in the waters of a clear spring — it would seem, in order to overcome the torments of sultry passion and conquer her ardor. On the other hand, as will be seen from the further text of the elegy, it is the clear source that becomes an intermediary and auxiliary means in seducing the beloved. Du Guillet borrowed this image, of course, from the "Novel of the Rose", where a fountain in the middle of a blooming garden helps a young man in love to get closer to revelation, to the knowledge of a sweet love feeling.

In the Neoplatonic tradition of Pernette, Ficino's interpretation is certainly closer, who believes that water extinguishes fire out of a thirst not to destroy, but to create: "... not out of hatred for fire, but out of a certain desire to spread its cold, seeks to generate water like itself from the body of fire. For, since every natural desire tends to good, and not to evil, the intention of water is not the extinguishing of fire, which is evil, but the generation of water like itself, which is good" ^{[4, p. 165]}. In the metaphorical plan of the poem, this means that, having extinguished the flame of destructive passion, water from a clear source seeks to expand its influence and make the passion of two lovers noble and sublime.

The central motif of the elegy becomes femme au bain — bathing of a naked lady, referring to the myth of Diana and Actaeon. The lyrical heroine, speaking about herself in the first person — so it may well be implied that this is the poetess herself — tries on the role of the goddess Diana, throwing herself naked into the waters of a clear spring:

L? quand j’aurois bien au long veu son cours,

Je le lairrois faire appart ses discours :

Puis peu a peu de luy m’escarterois,

Et toute nue en l’eau me gecterois… ^{[7, c. 154]}

In the image of Actaeon, Sev himself is guessed, although Rodriguez-Navarre believes that Sev is also Apollo ^{[10, p. 579]}. This is quite understandable, since the lyrics of Pernetta du Guillet contain numerous references to Sev as her lover. It is believed that the frequent nomination of the beloved — Jour, or Day — also refers to Seva, which naturally refers us to Apollo, whose main symbol is the Sun. At the same time, Pernetta plays with the name Seva, building a homophonic series Sc?ve-cerf-serf (Sev-deer-slave).

The fact that most of the elegy is written in the subjunctive mood suggests that the lady is dreaming, modeling an imaginary situation. She enriches the mythological canvas with motives of love punishment, love slavery and love retribution. The lady is waiting for her lover in the waters of a clear spring in order to make him a hostage of the love feeling. Her burning desire is to take possession of all the thoughts and feelings of her lover, turning him into her slave. She is pleased, first of all, that he will serve her, and not Apollo and the muses. In her dreams, she competes with the goddess Diana and surpasses her:

Tant que Dyane en eust sur moy envie,

De luy avoir sa puissance ravie. Combien heureuse, & grande me dirois ! Certes Deesse estre me cuyderois ^{[7, c. 155]}.

Rodriguez-Navarre notes that, despite the undoubted similarity with Diana, the lady in the elegy differs from the goddess in that she provokes a similar situation herself. She voluntarily initiates a scene with herself-Diana, caught off guard while bathing, and her lover-Actaeon, in order to have an excuse to take out her insult and passionate anger on her. According to Rodriguez-Navarre, the goddess and the lady are united by the extreme strictness of chastity; they are both rebellious, indomitable as water, insensitive, cruel and prone to tyranny. Not obeying the desires of the beloved, the lady seems to remain indifferent to his suffering. She triumphs over carnal love, giving herself exclusively to intellectual love ^{[10, p. 579]}.

The intellectual component is really important here. The story of the young Actaeon, turned into a deer and torn to pieces by his own dogs, stirred the minds of the Renaissance. To lose speech — the main tool of self—expression for a person in general and for a poet in general, the main way to share the creations of his mind with the world - seemed to humanistic thinkers a terrible punishment.

Nevertheless, the component of bodily, erotic sensuality cannot be discounted. The very nakedness of the lady speaks in favor of her, as well as her contact with water — ablution, which has the character of a loving caress, because these are waters from the very source of love. She dreams of how her lover will touch her: "Je le lairrois hardyment approcher: /

Et s’il vouloit, tant soit peu, me toucher…» ^{[7, c. 155]}. The lady scoops water from the fountain in her palm to splash her lover in the face:

Luy gecterois (pour le moins) ma main pleine

De la pure eau de la clere fontaine,

Luy gectant droict aux yeulx, ou a la face  ^{[7, c. 155]}.

For a moment, she deprives him of sight. The love blindness goes back to the image of Cupid himself (Dieu aveugl?) randomly shooting arrows at his victims. This time, the wave acts as Cupid's arrow:

? qu’alors eust l’onde telle efficace

De le pouvoir en Acteon muer…  ^{[7, c. 155]}

Rodriguez-Navarre writes that extreme coquetry of a lady leads to provocation: she allows him to commit an audacity — to approach her, and then pushes him away by splashing water in his eyes to "wash away" impiety from his gaze ^{[10, p. 579]}. Water serves both purification and a kind of initiation: from its touch, the beloved becomes a slave to his mistress. Considering that the lady has become a goddess, contact with water can be considered almost a religious revelation, the beginning of spiritual service, but with a strong erotic connotation. At the same time, the lady herself is subject to carnal attraction, because at the end she says: "Ostez, ostez, mes souhaitz" ^{[7, p. 156]}, as if disowning her own, by no means chaste impulses.

There is also a play on the myth of Actaeon in Sev's lyrics, only this time on behalf of a loving male poet. In his dizen CCCXXXV, the situation is almost mirrored: the poet speaks on behalf of a hunter who caught his beloved (Delia) while bathing. Delia is partly identified with Diana, partly with Pernette du Guillier, to whom, according to most researchers (starting with the hypothesis of Joseph Boucher), the collection "Delia" is dedicated. The lover himself appears in a double image: Actaeon and Cupid. Both are armed with a bow, both participate in a love hunt. Actaeon is attracted by the bait in the form of Diana-Delia, who has fallen asleep in the waters of the spring; Cupid wounds himself with love, not noticing that his own mother (i.e. Venus) is lying in wait for him in the waters of the spring: "Car en ce lieu sa mere il souspe?onne, /

Dont il se lance au fond pour la baiser» ^{[11, c. 230]}. The lover throws himself into the waters of the fountain to kiss his beloved; the water is the space of an intimate fusion, a love act. This is a trap for him, because he is clearly suffering and trying to appease his lady, asking her to take pity on his love. The tears of lovers flow from their eyes, which are identified with the sources of love:

H?, dy je lors, pour ma Dame appaiser,

Tu pleures bien cest Amour en ces eaux,

Et si ne plaings le mien, qui pour se ayser,

Se pert du tout en ces deux miens ruysseaulx ^{[11, p. 230]}.

Here, the reve du fraicheur, which Mathieu-Castellani wrote about, also manifests itself (Delia is surrounded by the freshness of the spring, and reve — a dream — turns into a dream, a dream). The water becomes a bed on which Delia dreams of love, and at the same time a love bed for her and the poet, a kind of shelter. There is also another important function characteristic of the image of the fountain: a mirror that displays internal and external beauty. According to the text of the poem, we understand that the sleeping Delia is at least partially immersed in the waters of the spring. It turns out that the Cupid poet who found her looks at her as if through a prism - a mirror of waters, whose purity conveys and captures her beauty in the most perfect form. The same motif is played out by Sev in dizen CCXXXV, in which a lady comes to the waters of a clear spring to wash. The source serves here not only as a mirror, but also as a vessel that is able to "remember" beauty, capture and preserve it:

Aumoins toy, clere, et heureuse fontaine,

Et vous, ? eaux fraisches, et argentines,

Quand celle en vous (de tout vice loingtaine)

Se vient laver ses deux mains yvoirines,

Ses deux Soleilz, ses l?vres corallines,

De Dieu cr?ez pour ce Monde honnorer,

Debvriez garder pour plus vous d?corer

L’image  d'elle en voz liqueurs profondes.

Car plus souvent je viendroys adorer

Le sainct miroir de voz sacr?es undes ^{[11, c. 164-165]}.

The description of the lady at Seva corresponds to the traditions of Petrarchist iconography: hands — ivory, lips — coral, eyes — suns. Here is how T. V. Yakushkina writes about it: "On the one hand, rubies, sapphires, topazes and other stones through their characteristic feature – luster – enhanced the motif of radiance and the associated idea of the divinity of beauty. On the other hand, the objects of the physical world: the sun, stars, snow, roses, lilies, precious stones, taken out of their connection with specific details of the appearance, in their multitude represented the idea of beauty in its inclusiveness. Donna's beauty embodied the Neoplatonic understanding of beauty as a universal property of all nature, of the entire divine cosmos" ^{[6, pp. 61-62]}. Continuing to symbolize purification, water also becomes a mirror and a vessel: washing away the vices from the beloved's body, leaving her infallible, the contents of the source immediately appropriates her beauty, preserving and imprinting. The bright appearance of the lady, the colors of her image, comparable to the brilliance of precious stones, are contrasted with transparent water — it reflects the true essence of beauty in the best possible way.

The "Holy Mirror of Sacred Waves" becomes a place of pilgrimage and worship, to which the poet in love comes. This is a tribute to Petrarch, who in Fontenay de Vaucluse comes to the spring to remember Madonna Laura. The water was awarded the epithet argentin (silver), dating back to the description of the fountain of love in the "Temple of Cupid" by Clement Marot. Clere et heureuse fontaine — this description again refers to the "Novel of the Rose". In the reflection of the waters, the poet sees not himself (like a Narcissus in love), but a beautiful lady, a Rose, an object of sublime desire. At the allegorical level, a Rose is also a flower of mystery, the phraseology "to do something sub rosa" (under a rose) means "in complete secrecy". Accordingly, in the love of the Rose, the mystical initiation of the poet and creator takes place in the world of sublime, divine love. Seeing the image of the beloved in the mirror of the waters, the poet dissolves into her; this corresponds to the Neoplatonic idea that the lover dies in himself and lives in the beloved being, loses his own identity, merging with the object of love and dissolving into the feeling of love: “[mon Amour] se pert du tout en ces deux miens ruysseaulx”.

The fountain in this paradigm is realized as the center of the world, since it is around it that all the harmony surrounding the lover is built and the garden grows, which is a direct reflection of human feelings. The allegorical characters inhabiting the garden are the properties of the human soul, designed either to bring the arrival of love closer (Beauty, Simplicity, Sincerity, Friendship, Charm), or to turn it away (Arrogance, Meanness (Treason), Shame, Despair, Contempt, Treachery, Anger, Meanness, Greed, Envy, etc.). — a mirror containing all the perfect and beautiful properties, it is often compared with eyes, spiritual eyes, thanks to which the poet is able to discern the true appearance of a beloved being. At the same time, he is also a vessel that keeps beauty in itself.

There is also an image of a vessel in Pernetta's elegy. The fountain itself becomes such — if we take into account that it becomes a receptacle and shelter for a lady — and her lover, the poet. In the final part of the elegy, renouncing overly sensual and possessive impulses, she releases a poet worthy of serving Apollo and the muses. Filled with divine wisdom and virtue, the beloved will be transformed, becoming the creator himself, and will return to her in order to achieve satisfaction and mutual pleasure (contentement) together:

Laissez le aller, qu’Apollo je ne irrite

Le remplissant de Deit? profonde,

Pour contre moy susciter tout le Monde,

Lequel un iour par ses escriptz s’attend

D’estre avec moy et heureux, et content ^{[7, c. 156]}.

Bearing in mind that both Actaeon and Apollo can equally point to Seva, one can interpret the plot of the elegy as a mystical union of spirit and body. The poet, whose body and soul are initially captivated by carnal passions, later connects with his own spirit (esprit) and the sun of reason (raison). His personality becomes whole and harmonious, thanks to which he will be able to create freely. Returning to his beloved, he will share with her the bliss of creativity, creating for her a whole new world in which they form a union of a man and a woman, merge into a single perfect being — a neoplatonic androgyne.

Pernetta's poet is a divine spirit enclosed in a mortal body, and virtue flows through his veins. According to Ficino's teaching, water appears to be a more perfect substance than earth, matter. Accordingly, virtue is represented in the form of water: "Water is a more perfect body than the earth, and should be no less than the earth, equipped with a reasonable beginning..." ^{[4, p. 191]}

The poet's creativity and gift acquire a fluid, changeable appearance, like the water of a spring. In Pernetta's dizen IV ^{[7, p. 120]}, the pen as a poet's instrument and the high style of presentation are marked by the rhyming epithets fluante–affluante. In this way, the external essence of poetry is also rhymed with the internal (a pen with a poetic manner). The pen is smooth, the manner of speech is sublime and at the same time rich, abundant, "full—flowing" — both are somehow connected with the image of water, its flow. At Seva in dizen XXIII we also meet the image of a feather — plume — from which praises of the lady are poured out: this can be interpreted literally, because ink is also a liquid, and figuratively, linking it with the image of the source of love. The poet admits that he cannot properly portray the beauty of a lady, even thanks to his gift; nevertheless, he will continue to sing her praises, pouring out his feelings, because he cannot do otherwise — he sings her praises so that her flame will shine to posterity: "Doncques en vain travailleroit ma plume/ Pour t'entailler a perpetuit? / Mais ton sainct feu, qui a tout bien m'allume, / Resplendira a la post?rit?" ^{[11, p. 21]}. In love, there is always a symbolic union of water and fire.

Having examined in detail the image of the fountain in the lyrics of Pernette du Guillier and Maurice Seva, we can conclude that the fountain is a complex image reflecting the harmony of internal and external ideas about the beautiful. The fountain simultaneously fills a person, feeding him with its waters, and is filled from him: the waters give insight and bring communion closer to the truth of love, at the same time accumulate the memory of divine beauty. In a metaphorical sense, the fountain performs the functions of purification and initiation, a mirror of the soul and a vessel. The source of love is the receptacle of the intellectual and spiritual wealth of lovers and lovers; their eyes, pouring out tears of love, become extensions of a large source, turn into its streams. Thus, the fountain is an allegory of the expression of feelings through the body, the connection of body and soul: contemplating the external beauty, lovers are also imbued with spiritual beauty. It is a universal receptacle of beauty and a kind of center of the world around which the consciousness of the lover is built.