The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope

The tragic event that gives the title to this poem occurs just at the end of Canto III.

Before, we follow a young, beautiful Lady called Belinda in her typical day under the reign of Her Majesty Queen Anna. From the late awakening, urged by the tender lickings of her dog Shock, to the rites of a complicated toilette, whose result is a triumphant sortie along the sunny, silver Thames, heading for Hampton Court.
After, we hear her screams of rage and despair. The Baron, armed with malicious scissors and burning desire, had cut off one of the two shining curls that adorn her ivory neck. She looks for comfort and relief in the arms of Lady Brown, just to find the bitter confirmation of her dishonoured and shameful fate. Then, she addresses to Lord Plume for him to claim her precious lock. His words, not so well articulated, and the ironical but categorical refusal given by the Baron do not leave any hope. She does not succumb to such adverse circumstances. Ignoring the words of common sense and experience spoken by Clarissa, the Lady who offered the sharpened arm to the Baron, Belinda launches a proud assault against the mean, young man. She wins the fight with a clever move, a handful of snuff thrown in his nose, but she cannot have her lock back. This is ascended to the sky to celebrate her name among the brightest stars. Forever.

I will never get tired of the perfect rhyme of these lines. They have the joyful, carefree spirit of a lullaby, the magic, exquisite fancy of a dream and the careful, solid construction of a stately home.
They shape a world of luxury, wealth and amusement where everything is refined and precious. Displayed on the dressing table of this innocent Lady are glowing gems from India and “…Puff, Powders, Patches Bibles, Billet-doux”. They come from the far countries of an expanding empire that indulges, in declining afternoons, in the pampering rites of snuff and coffee. It is a world where elegant men called Florio and Damon are supposed to meet at court to spend in “various talk th’instructive hours” or to play cards. Ladies participated to all these activities with their rich brocade gowns, pricking words and fans; waved with intention and expertise, used as a secret language to be deciphered in the never-ending game of love. Under the glittering surface, it results a vain and superficial world, engaged in frivolous activities and useless chat. Worried for a “…manteau’s pinn’d awry” and a respectability made of appearances, of formal and polite behaviours. The verses celebrate beauty, but a fragile one.

This is a true story. Alexander Pope wrote these lines quickly in 1711. He accepted the invitation of his friend, Mr. Caryl, who wanted to reconcile two Catholic families, the Petres and the Fermors, offering them this amusing poem. They had broken their long friendship after the young Lord Petre had cut off one of the famous locks of Mrs. Arabella Fermor. The poem did not work in this sense but it was a great success. It was published in 1712, then revised and enlarged by Pope in 1714 and again in 1717.

The definitive version includes the Machinery: small, invisible, flying creatures that live in the air, in the earth and in the water. Their duty is to support and guide women:
“Instruct the eyes of young Coquettes to roll,
Teach Infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know
And little hearts to flutter at a Beau.”
They should protect the beautiful Belinda but they fail. The new, exciting emotions that agitate the young girl’s heart, uncertain and changeable as their fluid bodies and colours, cannot be ignored.

Sylphs, as supernatural, magic beings, represent the deities and the angels of the classical tradition. The poem presents all the elements of the epic conventions: the invocation to the muse, the preparation of the hero, the battles and more. Today’s readers probably are not aware of the complexity of the references to Greek and Roman epic contained in these perfect heroic couplets. The choice to use a form, a structure and a language traditionally referred to grand and important events for a trifle subject underlines the mock intention of the poem.

Nature has not a great importance in these verses, but this does not close the matter. With the income of this poem and of the English translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope settled in a house outside London, Twickenham. Here, he spent his days writing and gardening. His experience as gardener is considered a turning point for the garden style in England. He left the formal and severe rules of geometric garden to develop the idea of a more natural, pictorial environment that respected the characteristic of the place.
This happened later, after the rape of the lock.

Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock’d the ground,
And the press’d watch return’d a silver sound.
Belinda still her downy pillow prest,
Her guardian Sylph prolong’d the balmy rest…



Further reading:
The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope Oxford University Press, 1990

Photos:
Travel in a garden:
"Belinda embarking for Hampton Court", watercolour by Thomas Stothard from The Rape of the Lock Oxford University Press 1990;
Photos a-side: Hampton Court, August 2001.

Hunters in the Snow - Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.
In winter, on the wall opposite to the window, I would hang a picture: Hunters in the snow, by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder.


He was an experienced artist in his forties when, around 1565, he realized the series called “Months”, commissioned by a wealthy merchant of Antwerp. Today, just five of these pictures are left scattered among museums in different countries: “Hunters in the Snow”, “Dark Day” and “Return of the Herd” are in Vienna, “Hay Harvest” in Prague and “Wheat Harvest” in New York.


Every picture shows an ample landscape where peasants attend their work according to the seasons. High mountains close the horizon in the background, valleys, caressed by winding rivers and dotted with tiny villages, stretch in the back of golden fields and meek cattle. Trees are grouped in the foreground. People repeat gestures unchanged from centuries, wearing coarse clothes and caps that hide their faces. Every element, carefully proportioned and positioned, contributes to give movement, depth and height to the picture. A wise use of colours enhances the spirit of the seasons: the warm, dazzling yellow for summer and the vibrant green for spring, lightened with coloured fruits placed in baskets. Winter privileges the grey-green shades of a day with no sun and the black-brown of the trunks. These echo the outlines of three hunters that, followed by a rich pack of hounds, have reached the hedge of a hill. A consistent stratum of snow covers the far mountains, the valley, the rooftops of small houses and the steeples of churches. People are everywhere: some skate on an iced lake, others just look at them while a man drives a carriage nearby; two women walk near a frozen mill and another carries a bundle of sticks on a bridge. A blazing fire, surrounded by a family, explodes on the left of the picture. But, the list of smoking chimneys, of little horses, of people engaged in amusing or working activities in the cold, dim light should be longer than this to include all details chosen with a poetic but firm eye. The truth and harmony of this winter scene reveal, with the beauty of nature, the difficulties and joys of life.

Bruegel was attentive to nature, interested in its unavoidable cycle symbolized, as in medieval tradition, by the peasants’ work “… but (he) modernized the stylistic expression of the conception with consummate artistry” (Charles D. Cuttler, 1968, 480). Just from the XVI century, landscape, portraits of common people as well as objects, flowers and fruits began to be considered as possible subjects of a picture and not as mere backgrounds or accessories. The Netherlands was the country where this process began.

People are strange, the same details that create a true masterpiece to me, as this snow that lowers the sounds and creaks under the feet, for others are just boring.

“But what meaning have all these principles if taste is a caprice and if there is not an eternal and immutable rule of beauty?” (Denis Diderot, 1991, 102; tr. Travelinagarden).

Denis Diderot, the French philosophe, wrote these lines in 1766. In the previous 100 pages he had analyzed colours, perspective, design and composition, stating his idea of painting, ripened during his activity as art critic started in 1759. His answer involved experience, study, sensitiveness and sometimes the intervention of reason to learn to see the true, the good and the beautiful in a picture and enjoy from this delightful emotions.

In the evening I would light up my fireplace. Its waving flames would warm the room and give life to the picture and to the story it tells.


Museum visited:
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
http://www.khm.at/en/kunsthistorisches-museum

Further reading:
Northen Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, Charles D. Cuttler Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. New York 1968

Elogio del quotidiano, Tzvetan Todorov 2000 Apeiron Editori S.n.c. Roma

Saggi sulla Pittura, Denis Diderot, Aesthetica edizioni Palermo, 1991.

Photos:
Travel in a garden, Vienna February 2009.