"The Baroque" (Donald McGinn & George Howerton)

THE BAROQUE

[Early and Classical]

Class Notes

(McGinn and Howerton)

As the religious phase of Mannerist art developed under the influence of forces of the Counter Reformation, the anxious tension and pessimism evident in the fine arts at the end of the sixteenth century gradually relaxed into a certain sense of balance and optimism, which are now generally considered as essential elements of the Baroque. The Mannerist preoccupation with the terrors of death was replaced by the anticipation of the joys of life everlasting. The artist's vision became extended, as it were, beyond the ugliness of the grave to the beauties of paradise. And in all manifestations of Baroque art one senses a constant yearning to reach into the infinite in order to reconcile it with the finite, or, as John Milton expressed it, to "justify the ways of God to men." The painters, sculptors, and architects seem to have sought to transcend the physical limitations of space and time.

The musicians and poets, in turn, seem to have longed for music of such divine sweetness that it would, again to quote Milton, "dissolve" them "into ecstasies" and "bring all heaven" before their eyes. As a result, the Baroque period achieved a balance between the secular and religious impulses not evident either in Renaissance art, often imbued with the love of worldly passion, or in the disillusionment of Mannerism--not that the Baroque artist despised the world of senses, but rather that he frequently used its imagery in order to describe the spiritual life. In fact, the constant awareness of the coexistence of these two worlds is the very essence of the Baroque.

But just as critics, noting differences in what once was regarded as a uniform trend, have divided the Renaissance into the Early Renaissance, the High Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, so it is now becoming evident that even in these divisions there may be subdivisions. Discernible in Baroque painting, architecture, and literature, indeed, are two distinct trends, which, for the purpose of analysis, may be termed the "Early Baroque" and the "Classical Baroque." The Early Baroque was essentially Roman Catholic in spirit in that it originated in Rome and reflected the artistic impulses generated by the Counter Reformation. directly stemming from Mannerism, it marked a resolution of the tensions found in the earlier trend. While striving to extend the bounds of the established forms, it always remained under control, its exuberance being held in check by the highly intellectual approach of the artist. For example, English religious poetry and prose during the first half of the seventeenth century were filled with a mystical fervor, which, no matter how intense, seldom exceeded the rhetorical limits set by the writer.

As the Baroque style spread northward through France, the Low Countries, and Germany, where it came into contact with Protestantism, it developed certain qualities that distinguish it from its southern European counterpart. Inspired by the Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi (1680-1743), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759) became the two foremost Protestant exponents of the Baroque style in music. While the title of Bach's B Minor Mass indicates the Catholic source of his inspiration, the masterpiece, in the Catholic sense, is not a Mass at all but rather an oratorio. Similarly, though the Dutch Protestant painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was in his early years influenced by the Flemish Catholic Peter Paul Rubens (1557-1640), Rembrandt eventually developed a distinctive style of his own. Perhaps the most marked innovation in literature was the re-emphasis of classical form. Certainly the poetry of John Milton would never be confused with that of his predecessor John Donne, who epitomized the mystical spirit of the Early Baroque in English literature. Therefore, because of the evidences of a gradual return to classical restraint, proportion, and balance in the art of such men as Milton and John Dryden in literature, as well as that of Andre Le Notre (1613-1700) in architecture and Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) in painting, their work may be termed the "Classical Baroque.

THE EARLY BAROQUE

In Donne's early religious poems, even though their preoccupation with death seems to outweigh their confidence in eventual salvation, may be seen the beginnings of his Baroque phase. Shakespeare, too, has left one sonnet, "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth," which illustrates the same trend; indeed, it could almost have been written by Donne. But the truly Baroque Donne appears in his sermons and devotions, in which faith in man and the and in matter is counterbalanced by a recognition of the insufficiency and instability of temporal things. Like all Baroque artists, he believed that "earth is the center" of the body but that this same center is the "true center" for a larger circle than the merely physical one, namely, that of the "heavenly creature." Man's existence in these concentric circles of the here and the hereafter makes it impossible for him to find satisfaction on earth. Hence, he longs for perfection of knowledge, of spiritual development, and of being, in which the limits of time and space will be surmounted. This faith in the possibility for perfection not only in the individual but in society as a whole, common to all Baroque artists, doubtless explains the exuberant optimism of the period--the anticipation of a "brave new world." In the secular sphere, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) aspired to draw up a complete outline for all future scientific achievement; the less worldly metaphysical poets sought a vision of heavenly wisdom.

Donne's religious prose is Baroque both in form and in content. Essentially Ciceronian and therefore highly rhetorical, quite unlike the simple conversational style of Plato, it possesses sonority, richness, and symmetry--three qualities that give it the impression of controlled power similar to the "ordered emotion" observed in Baroque painting and sculpture. In the following passage each of these qualities is to some extent revealed:

The dead hear not thunder, nor feel they an earthquake. In the cannon batter that church walls in which they lie buried, it wakes not them. Nor does it shake or affect them it that dust which they are to be thrown out. But yet there is a voice which the dead shall hear. "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God," says the Son of God himself, "and they that hear shall live."

And that is the voice of our text. It is here called a clamor, a vociferation, a shout, and varied by out translators and expositors, according to the origination of the word, to be clamor hortatorius and suasorius and iussorius, a voice that carries with it a penetration--all shall hear it--and persuasion--all shall believe it and be glad of it--and a power, a command--all shall obey it. Since that voice at the Creation, "Fiat" (let there be a world), was never heard such a voice as this, "Surgite mortui" (arise ye dead). That was spoken to that that was merely noting, and this to them who in themselves shall have no co-operation, no concurrence, to the hearing or answering this voice.

The power of this voice is exalted in that it is said to be the "voice of the Archangel." Though legions of angels, millions of angels, shall be employed about the Resurrection to re-collect their scattered dust and recompact their ruined bodies, yet those bodies, so recompact, shall not be able to hear a voice. they shall be then but such bodies as they were when they were laid down in the grave, when, though they were entire bodies, they could not hear the voice of the mourner. But this voice of the Archangel shall reinfuse the several souls into their bodies, and so they shall hear that voice, "Surgite mortui" (arise ye that were dead). And they shall arise! [John Donne, "Sermon XXVI]

In this passage Donne uses Latin words and phrases, as

well as long English derivations from the Latin, all of which appeal to the ear: clamor horatoirus, suasorius, iussorius, fiat, surgite mortui, vociferation, origination, penetration, persuasion, co-operation, concurrence. For ornamentation he employs euphonious repetitions and synonyms not entirely necessary to the meaning of the passage: the dead shall hear, the dead shall hear, they that hear; a clamor, a vociferation, a shout; translators, expositors; co-operation, concurrence. And pleasing the mind's eye through symmetrical construction, he balances grammatical elements in a sentence--words, phrases, clauses--and also entire sentences, one against another, according to their importance to the compositon as a whole. By skillful use of the tricolon he achieves an effective climax that enlarges and elevates the thought through a graded description of its varied aspects in balanced words, phrases, and clauses: penetration, persuasion, command; all shall hear it, all shall believe it, all shall obey it. Occasionally in other sermons this climax may extend through several sentences in order to rise to a powerful conclusion. Donne's famous example of antithteis is the off-quoted passage from his Devotion XVII:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

To an age that demanded pomp and magnificence in artistic expression, this skillful use of rhetoric made Donne's prose especially attractive.

Thus through the writings of Donne, England became acquainted with the Baroque spirit of the Counter Reformation as it revealed itself in literary art. A second Englishman, who even more strikingly than Donne shows the effect of the Roman Catholic reaction, was Richard Crashaw (1612-1649), the son of a bitterly anti-Catholic clergyman. Crashaw reversed the path of Donne and through contemplation of the life of St. Teresa of Avila became converted to Catholicism, went to the Continent, and never returned to England. As a result, whereas Donne is Baroque in a typically English fashion, Crashaw is as truly Baroque in a Southern European sense as Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who also celebrated the transverberation of the heart of St. Teresa in his famous alterpiece in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. the publication of a second edition of the second English translation of her autobiography, entitled The Flaming Hart or the Life of the Glorious S. Teresa (1642), seems to have been the occasion for Crashaw's interest in her. This interest has also been attributed by Austin Warren to Crashaw's acquaintance at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, with Joseph Beaumont, who, as quoted by Warren, introduced the saint to the university with an ecstatic Baroque flourish:

I see her whose pen, wet with divine dew, dripped I know not what sweeter than sweetness itself, and bathed the whole heaven? Do you await the name of the heroine? It is Saint Teresa, a name unheard of by you, I believe, and more familiar to angels than to our men. O, with what sweetness may you breathe your last in her writing! O, how least a death would it be in her writings to die! [Austin Warren, Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque Sensibility, p. 44.]

Whatever may have been the cause of Crashaw's conversion, about a third of his themes have to do with St. Teresa. Another saint almost equally popular with Baroque artists, pictorial as well as literary, was St. Mary Magdalene, perhaps because of the combination of the sensual and the spiritual in her life. Among the many painters who chose her as their subject was Peter Paul Rubens, who epitomized the Catholic Baroque in the Low Countries. Likewise in her honor Crashaw wrote a long poem entitled "St. Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper" which, like Donne's sermons, was lavishly decorated with such striking rhetorical devices as antithesis, alliteration, and

Oxymoron. In keeping with the spirit of the Counter Reformation, Crashaw through sensuous imagery sought to evoke in his reader a religious experience. Since he himself was musical, he especially appealed to the sense of hearing....

Also expemlifying the Baroque desire to delight more than one sense at a time, George Herbert (1593-1633) combined visual with aural appeal. His poem "The Altar" is shaped like an altar, and another poem, "Easter Wings," actually resembles outspread wings. Furthermore, much of his imagery that at first might seem bizarre is a translation into words of illustrations from religious and devotional books of the day. In fact, many of his conceits or displays of intellectual wit, like those of his contemporaries, may be traced to the emblem-books which the Jesuits had popularized as an aid to teaching religious and moral values. In these the emblem, which consisted of a picture and an accompanying epigram, analogized the spiritual rather than physical qualities. As a result, both picture and epigram were needed for an understanding of the artist's thought. Here again occurs that interdependence of sensuous impression which contributes to the close relationship among the arts in the Baroque period.

Illustrations

THE USE OF SENSUOUS IMAGERY IN THE HEBRAIC-CHRISTIAN TRADITION

RICHARD CRASHAW

"THE FLAMING HEART"

"A HYMN TO THE NAME AND HONOR OF THE ADMIRABLE SAINT TERESA"

"AN APOLOGY FOR THE FOREGOING HYMN, AS HAVING BEEN WRIT WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS YET AMONG THE PROTESTANTS"

"IN THE GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION OF OUR BLESSED LADY"

AN APPEAL TO THE SENSE OF HEARING

RICHARD CRASHAW

"TO THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME, THE NAME OF JESUS: A HYMN"

"MUSIC'S DUEL"

THE APPEAL TO THE SENSE OF SIGHT

GEORGE HERBERT

"EASTER WINGS"

The Classical Baroque

John Milton (1608-1674) is Baroque in a way quite different from Crashaw. Whereas Crashaw, with mystical devotion, sought to affect the religious sensibilities of his reader through the verbal portrayal of his personal religious experience, Milton was concerned with the intellectual problems of the religious life. Indeed, a great part of Milton's mature literary effort was spent in religious controversy. As a result, he was trained to reflect on the conflicts of doubt and faith and hence to appeal to the intellect rather than to the emotions. In addition, his fanatical hatred for Catholicism naturally rendered him unsympathetic with the mystical writings of the Spanish saints.

Nevertheless, his kinship with the earlier Baroque artists is seen in his craving for perfection. From his youth he was conscious of his vocation and had dedicated himself to it. In a sonnet written at the age of twenty-three he complains of his lack of accomplishment, and he utters a similar complaint after he had become blind. His consolation in both instances is his confidence that God has confesses his ambition for fame, "that last infirmity of noble mind." And in Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671), written under the most trying circumstances (he had gone completely blind and was forced to dictate to his daughters), he realizes this ambition in his sublime assertion, or vindication, of "Eternal Providence."

What differentiates Milton from the earlier poets of the period is his re-emphasis on form, which seems to bring his closer to Spenser and the art of the Renaissance than to Donne and the other metaphysical poets. Actually the symmetry of his great epic resembles that of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" rather than that of The Faerie Queene, which in its medieval setting has more in common with Malory's Morte d'Arthur than with Milton. The formality of Milton's twin epic is due, in part, to the fact that it is modeled on the classical epic. For example, he uses blank verse, which the Elizabethans considered the English equivalent of the dactylic hexameter, in which the epics of Homer and Virgil were written. The Earl of Surrey, indeed, had introduced it into English poetry in his translation of the Aeneid. Like all classical epics Paradise Lost opens with an invocation of the Muse. Typical of Milton's Protestantism he invokes either the Muse than inspired Moses and David or else the Holy Spirit. Then follows his statement of theme: "to assert Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to men." Next he discloses the malign supernatural force that puts the plot in motion, namely, Satan, the "infernal Serpent." Then, plunging in medias res, again like Homer and Virgil, Milton narrates the evolution of Satan's campaign to avenge his defeat at the hands of the Almighty by seducing Adam and Eve. Later, in a conversation with Adam, the archangel Raphael describes the revolt of the angels and the war in heaven which had resulted in the downfall of Lucifer, afterward known as Satan. Of divine parentage like Achiles and Aeneas, the hero of Paradise Lost is Adam, a son of God and the first man. Just as the troubles of Achiles and Aeneas were attributed to dissension among super-natural beings, so the primary cause of Adam's fall was Satan's treachery prompted by his hatred for the Most High. Finally, Milton follows the classical form by dividing his epic into "books."

In spite of Milton's return to classical form, he is impelled by the Baroque urge to transcend the physical limitations of space and time in order to render the infinite in terms of the finite. The almost superhuman task that he sets for himself has its counterpart in the other arts: for religious intensity , Rubens' "Crucifixion"; in the secular sphere, the architect's plans for the palace and gardens at Versailles. In order to suggest infinity, Milton intentionally portrays his supernatural figures with a vagueness that frequently disconcerts his critics. For example, he never gives a clear picture of his Satan, who first appears as a gigantic sea monster, lying on the "fiery gulf" of Hell--

With head uplift above the wave, and eyes

That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides,

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge

As whom the fables name of monstrous size

Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

Levianthan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.

[Book I, lines 193-202]

After Satan has exhorted his fallen companions, however, he "upright" rears "his mighty stature" and flies to the shore. Then he marshals his diabolical "legions," who, in turn, are as innumerable as "autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in "Vallambrosa" or the locusts called up by Moses in Egypt. His shield resembles the moon, and his spear, with which he walks, is far taller than "the tallest pine hewn on Norwegian hills." Apparently he has a face like that of a man, or rather, like that of an "archangel ruined," for it is scarred with thunderbolts:

Darkened so yet shone

Above them all the Archangel: but his face

Deep scars of thunder had intrechned, and care

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows

Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride

Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast

Signs of remorse and passion to behold

The fellows of his crime...

[Book I, lines 599-606]

Considered, therefore, as an illustration of the Baroque attempt to portray the infinite, which cannot be perceived by the senses, Milton's vagueness would seem to be an outstanding artistic achievement rather than, as some scholars contend, a fault attributable to his blindness.

Another characteristic of this epic, best understood when looked at as Baroque art, is its ornamentation, which might well be compared to than in a Bach fugue or a Handel oratorio. Milton's redundancy through repetition of the same word or of synonyms--a rhetorical device already observed in Donne's sermons--resembles the verbal repetitions set to music in the fugal choruses of Bach's St. Matthew Passion or in the aria "Rejoice greatly" from Handel's Messiah. For example, with reference to the "infernal Serpent," Milton writes "the Archenemy, and thence in Heaven called Satan." And Satan addresses Beelzebub:

If thou beest he--but O how fallen! how changed

From him, who in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads, though bright--if he whom mutal league,

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope

And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

Joined with me once, now misery hath joined

In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest

From what highth fallen.

[Book I, lines 84-92, italics added]

Just as Crashaw heaps up rhetorical figures, so Milton encloses similes within similes. In quick succession Satan is compared to the Titan Briareos, to Typhon, and to "that sea-beast Leviathan," which, as a further complication, is compared to an island:

Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind

Moors by his side under the lee, while night

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

Finally, the poet returns to Satan with:

So streched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay

Chained on the burning lake.

[Book I, lines 203-10]

Like Donne, Milton employs long euphonious words derived from the Latin, but to these he gives his own peculiar twist--an exaggeration intended to enrich his style for his "adventurous song":

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

[Book I, lines 14-16]

Though he uses familiar English words of Latin origin, he retains their original Latin meaning. For example, he refers to the "broad circumference" (meaning the round shield hanging upon Satan's shoulders "like the moon"). Again, his "universal host" utters a shout that "frighted the reign -[from regna meaning "kingdom"] of Chaos and old Night." This elaborate diction again suggest the development of Bach fugue, the enjoyment of which must perforce be highly intellectual and therefor, as Milton himself puts it, restricted to the "fit though few."

Many years before Milton wrote his great epic, he accomplished a tour de force which, though in a lighter vein, is no less Baroque--namely, his twin poems "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (1631, see pp. 142 and 145). Indeed, they bear somewhat the same relationship to his epic as Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No. 5" bears to the B minor Mass. At first glance either poem might be considered light, even frivolous--and hence 'Rococo instead of Baroque nature is evident. Both are almost identical in form but entirely opposite in content in that they celebrate the pleasures of opposing moods. Each is introduced by ten lines written in alternating trimeter and pentameter, in which the poet dismisses the mood opposed to that being summoned: in "L'Allegro," it is "loathed Melancholy," and in "Il Penseroso," "vain deluding joys." Then he completes his introduction with the invocation of the desired mood: in "L'Allegro," "heart-easing Mirth,: and in "Il Penseroso," "divinist Melancholy." For the purpose of ornamentating the thought, Milton in each instance gives the classical parentage of both pairs of moods and elaborates on the companions of the one being invoked. From the invocation onward to the end of the poem Milton uses a tipping, mainly iambic, tetratmeter. In the main part, or body, of each poem he enumerates the specific occasions that evoke the mood being celebrated. For example, in "L'Allegro" he begins with the pleasures of early morning.

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And signing startle the dull night.

Then he describes the activities of an outdoor day for the "happy" man--the extrovert. After his friends have retired, this type of individual goes to the world of books where he enjoys happy romances and comedies, or he listens to "soft Lydian airs."

In "Il Penseroso," apparently for the sake of a variation that serves only to emphasize the amazing construction of the poems, Milton first recounts the outdoor evening pleasures, beginning with the joy of hearing the song of the nightingale:

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, Chauntress, oft the woods among

I woo, to hear thy even-song.

But the pensive man withdraws to his study where he reads either serious treatises on astronomy and philosophy or classical tragedy. In the morning--preferably cloudy and dull as contrasted with the cheerful dawn of "L'Allegro"--he will seek a dim forest where he can dream away the day, or he will retire to a dimly lighted cathedral where he may listen to sacred music. This last diversion suggests the attractiveness of a hermit's life, which extends the scope of this poem beyond the single day of "L'Allegro" and indicates Milton's personal preference for the thoughtful, the pensive, mood. And "Il Penseroso" ends with --

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,

And I with thee will chose to live-

as contrasted with the ending of "L'Allegro":

These delights if thou canst give.

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

In this masterpiece of parallelism reappears the idealism, or yearning for perfection, of the Renaissance now expressed in ever-increasingly rigid adherence to classical form.

Indeed, as the Baroque style developed under the influence of Milton and John Dryden (1631-1700) in England and Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) and Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699) in France, the artist's preoccupation with the balance produced by the equalization of the two opposing forces--the material and the spiritual, the secular and the religious--was gradually replaced by an emphasis on form. The heavenly visions of St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and the metaphysical poets seem to have been rationalized into a delight in the formal as it appears in classical art. Unlike Crashaw, whose enthusiasm for St. Teresa inspired several poems, Dryden in his two poems for St. Cecilia's Day adds only a few lines at the end of each in honor of the saint herself. And in his A Parallel of Poetry and Painting he approvingly quotes the theory of the Italian painter Bellori that God from reflection on His own excellence "drew and constituted those first forms which are called ideas." Thus identifying the formal with the ideal Bellori also upholds the Platonic principle, popular in the Renaissance, that the purpose of the artist is to derive from individual beauties the ideal, or universal, beauty:

Though Nature always intends a consummate beauty in her

productions, yet through the inequality of the matter,

the forms are altered; and in particular, human beauty

suffers alteration for the worse, as we see to our

mortification, in the deformities and disproportions

which are in us. For which reason, the artful painter

and sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to

themselves, as well as they are able, a modle of the

superior beauties; and reflecting on them, endeavour to

correct and amend the common nature, and to represent

it as it was at first created, without fault, either in

colour or in lineament [pp. 117-18].

Of course, in this search for ideal beauty the artist must have guides. These, according to Dryden, are the ancients, "who are and ought to be our masters," whose rules he himself admits following in his play All for Love . From classical models the artist is to derive rules for the imitation of nature, which Aristotle holds to be true art. "If Nature be to be imitated," Dryden therefore concludes, "then there is a rule for imitating Nature rightly." In his vocabulary the word "nature", thus personified, becomes synonymous with the Ideal. From Dryden to the Romantics, indeed, "nature" generally means the right conception of the true character of the subject by the reason of the poet--hence, a due subordination of the ordinary details of reality, the abstraction of universals from these details, and, as a result, a highly selective and logical method of treatment. For example, Dryden insists that the painter "will not take that side of the face which has some notorious blemish in it." The real artist, he maintains, strives for perfection:

...both these arts [poetry and painting]... are not

only true imitations of Nature but of the best Nature--

of that which is wrought up to a nobler pitch. They

present us with images more perfect than the life in

any individual, and we have the pleasure to see all

the scattered beauties of Nature united by a happy

chemistry without is deformities or faults [p. 137].

Thus the last of the great Baroque poets restates the claims of the Ideal in art, which Sir Philip Sidney a century earler had eloquently defended against all who expect art to be an exact rendering of sense perception.

vociferation, origination, penetration, persuasion, co-operation, concurrence. For ornamentation he employs euphonious repetitions and synonyms not entirely necessary to the meaning of the passage: the dead shall hear, the dead shall hear, they that hear; a clamor, a vociferation, a shout; translators, expositors; co-operation, concurrence. And pleasing the mind's eye through symmetrical construction, he balances grammatical elements in a sentence--words, phrases, clauses--and also entire sentences, one against another, according to their importance to the compositon as a whole. By skillful use of the tricolon he achieves an effective climax that enlarges and elevates the thought through a graded description of its varied aspects in balanced words, phrases, and clauses: penetration, persuasion, command; all shall hear it, all shall believe it, all shall obey it. Occasionally in other sermons this climax may extend through several sentences in order to rise to a powerful conclusion. Donne's famous example of antithteis is the off-quoted passage from his Devotion XVII:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

To an age that demanded pomp and magnificence in artistic expression, this skillful use of rhetoric made Donne's prose especially attractive.

Illustrations

THE USE OF SENSUOUS IMAGERY IN THE HEBRAIC-CHRISTIAN TRADITION

RICHARD CRASHAW

"THE FLAMING HEART"

"A HYMN TO THE NAME AND HONOR OF THE ADMIRABLE SAINT TERESA"

"AN APOLOGY FOR THE FOREGOING HYMN, AS HAVING BEEN WRIT WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS YET AMONG THE PROTESTANTS"

"IN THE GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION OF OUR BLESSED LADY"

AN APPEAL TO THE SENSE OF HEARING

RICHARD CRASHAW

"TO THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME, THE NAME OF JESUS: A HYMN"

"MUSIC'S DUEL"

THE APPEAL TO THE SENSE OF SIGHT

GEORGE HERBERT

"EASTER WINGS"

The Classical Baroque

J.S. Bach

Nevertheless, his kinship with the earlier Baroque artists is seen in his craving for perfection. From his youth he was conscious of his vocation and had dedicated himself to it. In a sonnet written at the age of twenty-three he complains of his lack of accomplishment, and he utters a similar complaint after he had become blind. His consolation in both instances is his confidence that God has confesses his ambition for fame, "that last infirmity of noble mind." And in Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671), written under the most trying circumstances (he had gone completely blind and was forced to dictate to his daughters), he realizes this ambition in his sublime assertion, or vindication, of "Eternal Providence."

What differentiates Milton from the earlier poets of the period is his re-emphasis on form, which seems to bring his closer to Spenser and the art of the Renaissance than to Donne and the other metaphysical poets. Actually the symmetry of his great epic resembles that of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" rather than that of The Faerie Queene, which in its medieval setting has more in common with Malory's Morte d'Arthur than with Milton. The formality of Milton's twin epic is due, in part, to the fact that it is modeled on the classical epic. For example, he uses blank verse, which the Elizabethans considered the English equivalent of the dactylic hexameter, in which the epics of Homer and Virgil were written. The Earl of Surrey, indeed, had introduced it into English poetry in his translation of the Aeneid. Like all classical epics Paradise Lost opens with an invocation of the Muse. Typical of Milton's Protestantism he invokes either the Muse than inspired Moses and David or else the Holy Spirit. Then follows his statement of theme: "to assert Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to men." Next he discloses the malign supernatural force that puts the plot in motion, namely, Satan, the "infernal Serpent." Then, plunging in medias res, again like Homer and Virgil, Milton narrates the evolution of Satan's campaign to avenge his defeat at the hands of the Almighty by seducing Adam and Eve. Later, in a conversation with Adam, the archangel Raphael describes the revolt of the angels and the war in heaven which had resulted in the downfall of Lucifer, afterward known as Satan. Of divine parentage like Achiles and Aeneas, the hero of Paradise Lost is Adam, a son of God and the first man. Just as the troubles of Achiles and Aeneas were attributed to dissension among super-natural beings, so the primary cause of Adam's fall was Satan's treachery prompted by his hatred for the Most High. Finally, Milton follows the classical form by dividing his epic into "books."

With head uplift above the wave, and eyes

That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides,

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge

As whom the fables name of monstrous size

Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

Levianthan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.

[Book I, lines 193-202]

Darkened so yet shone

Above them all the Archangel: but his face

Deep scars of thunder had intrechned, and care

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows

Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride

Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast

Signs of remorse and passion to behold

The fellows of his crime...

[Book I, lines 599-606]

Another characteristic of this epic, best understood when looked at as Baroque art, is its ornamentation, which might well be compared to than in a Bach fugue or a Handel oratorio. Milton's redundancy through repetition of the same word or of synonyms--a rhetorical device already observed in Donne's sermons--resembles the verbal repetitions set to music in the fugal choruses of Bach's St. Matthew Passion or in the aria "Rejoice greatly" from Handel's Messiah. For example, with reference to the "infernal Serpent," Milton writes "the Archenemy, and thence in Heaven called Satan." And Satan addresses Beelzebub:

If thou beest he--but O how fallen! how changed

From him, who in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads, though bright--if he whom mutal league,

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope

And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

Joined with me once, now misery hath joined

In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest

From what highth fallen.

[Book I, lines 84-92, italics added]

Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind

Moors by his side under the lee, while night

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

Finally, the poet returns to Satan with:

So streched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay

Chained on the burning lake.

[Book I, lines 203-10]

Like Donne, Milton employs long euphonious words derived from the Latin, but to these he gives his own peculiar twist--an exaggeration intended to enrich his style for his "adventurous song":

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

[Book I, lines 14-16]

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And signing startle the dull night.

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, Chauntress, oft the woods among

I woo, to hear thy even-song.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,

And I with thee will chose to live-

as contrasted with the ending of "L'Allegro":

These delights if thou canst give.

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

In this masterpiece of parallelism reappears the idealism, or yearning for perfection, of the Renaissance now expressed in ever-increasingly rigid adherence to classical form.

Indeed, as the Baroque style developed under the influence of Milton and John Dryden (1631-1700) in England and Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) and Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699) in France, the artist's preoccupation with the balance produced by the equalization of the two opposing forces--the material and the spiritual, the secular and the religious--was gradually replaced by an emphasis on form. The heavenly visions of St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and the metaphysical poets seem to have been rationalized into a delight in the formal as it appears in classical art. Unlike Crashaw, whose enthusiasm for St. Teresa inspired several poems, Dryden in his two poems for St. Cecilia's Day adds only a few lines at the end of each in honor of the saint herself. And in his A Parallel of Poetry and Painting he approvingly quotes the theory of the Italian painter Bellori that God from reflection on His own excellence "drew and constituted those first forms which are called ideas." Thus identifying the formal with the ideal Bellori also upholds the Platonic principle, popular in the Renaissance, that the purpose of the artist is to derive from individual beauties the ideal, or universal, beauty:

Though Nature always intends a consummate beauty in her

productions, yet through the inequality of the matter,

the forms are altered; and in particular, human beauty

suffers alteration for the worse, as we see to our

mortification, in the deformities and disproportions

which are in us. For which reason, the artful painter

and sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to

themselves, as well as they are able, a modle of the

superior beauties; and reflecting on them, endeavour to

correct and amend the common nature, and to represent

it as it was at first created, without fault, either in

colour or in lineament [pp. 117-18].

...both these arts [poetry and painting]... are not

only true imitations of Nature but of the best Nature--

of that which is wrought up to a nobler pitch. They

present us with images more perfect than the life in

any individual, and we have the pleasure to see all

the scattered beauties of Nature united by a happy

chemistry without is deformities or faults [p. 137].

Rembrandt

The Return of the Prodigal Son

For a larger image, click on the painting.