Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 7

NATURE ANSWERS THE POET'S QUERY regarding the nature of Desire with a poem in elegiac meter. Desire (cupido) or cupidity is equated with love (amor not caritas), and its largely irrational character is emphasized by the paradoxes through which it operates and in which it seems to relish. Nature ends her description of Desire on some practical advice on how to avoid Venus and her child, Desire.

Love is peace joined to hatred, Loyalty to treachery, Hope to fear and madness blended with reason. It is sweet shipwreck, light burden, pleasing Charybdis, Sound debility, insatiate hunger, hungry satiety, thirst when filled with water,deceptive pleasure, happy sadness, joy full of sorrow, delightful misfortune, unfortunate delight, sweetness bitter to its own taste. Its odour is savoury, Its savour is insipid. It is a pleasing storm, a lightsome night, a lightless day, a living death, a dying life, a pleasant misery, pardonable sin, sinful pardon, sportive punishment, pious misdeed, nay, sweet crime, changeable pastime, unchangeable mockery, weak strength, stationary movable, mover of the stationary, irrational reason, foolish wisdom, gloomy success, tearful laughter, tiring rest, pleasant hell, gloomy paradise, delightful prison, spring-like Winter, wintry Spring, misfortune. It is a hideous worm of the mind which the one in royal purple feels and which does not pass by the simple cloak of the beggar. Does not Desire, performing many miracles, to use antiphrasis, change the shapes of all mankind? Though monk and adulterer are opposite terms, he forces both of these to exist together in the same subject. When his fury rages, Scylla lays aside her fury and Nero begins to be the good Aeneas, Paris sword flashes, Tydeus grows soft with love, Nestor becomes a youth, Milcerta becomes an old man. Thersites begs Paris for his beauty and Davus begs the beauty of Adonis, who is totally transfromed into Davus. The wealthy Croesus is in need; Codrus, the beggar, abounds in wealth. Bavius produces poems, Maro's muse grows dull; Enius makes speeches and Marcus is silent. Ulysses becomes foolish, Ajax in his madness grows wise. The one who formerly won the victory by dealing with the tricks of Antaeus, though he subdues all other monsters, is overcome by this one. If this madness sickens a woman's mind, she rushes into any and every crime and on her own initiative, too. Anticipating the hand of fate, a daughter treacherously slays a father, a sister slays a brother, or a wife, a husband. Thus by aphairesis she wrongly shortens her husband's body when with stealthy sword she cuts off his head. The mother herself is forced to forget the name of mother and, while she is giving birth, is laying snares for her offspring. A son is astonished to encounter a stepmother as his mother and to find treachery where there should be loyalty, plots where there should be affection. Thus in Medea two names battle on equal terms when she desires to be mother and stepmother at the same time. When Byblis became too attached to Caunus, she could not be a sister or conduct herself as one. In the same way, too, Myrrha submitting herself too far to her father became a parent by her sire and a mother by her father. But why offer further instruction? Every lover is forced to become an item at Desire's auction and pays his dues to him. He carriers his warfare to all. His rule exempts practically no one. He lays everything low with the fury of his lightning stroke. Against his goodness, wisdom, grace of beauty, floods of riches, height of nobility will be of no avail. Deceit, trickery, fear, rage, madness, treachery, violence, delusion, gloom, find a hospitable home in his realms. Here reasonable procedure is to be without reason, moderation means lack of moderation, trustworthiness is not to be trustworthy. He offers what is sweet but adds what is bitter. He injects poison and brings what is noble to an evil end. He attracts by seducing, mocks with smiles, stings as he applies his salve, infects as he shows affection, hates as he loves. You can by yourself, however, restrain this madness, if you but flee; no more powerful antidote is available. If you wish to avoid Venus, avoid her places and times. Both place and time add fuel to her fire. If you follow, she keeps up the pursuit. By your flight she is put to flight. If you give ground, she gives ground. If you flee, she flees.

Pax odio, fraudique fides, spes juncta timori, est amor, et mistus cum ratione furor. Naufragium dulce, pondus leve, grata Charybdis, Incolumis languor, et satiata fames. Esuries satiens, sitis ebria, falsa voluptas, Tristities laeta, gaudia plena malis. Dulce malum, mala dulcedo, sibi dulcor amarus, Cujus odor sapidus, insipidusque sapor. Tempestas grata, nox lucida, lux tenebrosa, Mors vivens, moriens vita, suave malum. Peccatum veniae, venialis culpa, jocosa, Poena, pium facinus, imo, suave scelus. Instabilis ludus, stabilis delusio, robur Infirmum, firmum mobile, firma movens. Insipiens ratio, demens prudentia, tristis Prosperitas, risus flebilis, aegra quies. Mulcebris infernus, tristis paradisus, amoenus Carcer, hiems verna, ver hiemale, malum. Mentis atrox tinea, quam regis purpura sentit, Sed nec mendici praeterit illa togam. Nonne per antiphrasim, miracula multa Cupido Efficiens, hominum protheat omne genus. Dum furit iste furor, deponit Scylla furorem, Et pius Aeneas incipit esse Nero. Fulminat ense Paris, Tydeus mollescit amore, Fit Nestor juvenis, fitque Melincta senex. Thersites Paridem forma mendicat, Adonim Davus, et in Davum totus Adonis abit. Dives eget Crassus, Codrus et abundat egendo, Carmina dat Bavius, musa Maronis hebet. Ennius eloquitur, Marcusque silet; fit Ulysses Insipiens, Ajax desipiendo sapit. Qui prius auctorum solvendo sophismata vicit, Vincitur hoc monstro, caetera monstra domans. Quaelibet in facinus mulier decurrit, et ultro, Ejus si mentem morbidet iste furor, Nata patrem, fratremque soror, vel sponsa maritum Fraude necat, fati praeveniendo manum. Sicque per ascensum male syncopat illa mariti Corpus, furtivo dum metit ense caput. Cogitur ipsa parens nomen nescire parentis, In partuque dolos, dum parit ipsa parens. Filius in matre stupet invenisse novercam, Inque fide fraudes, in pietate dolos. Sic in Medea pariter duo nomina pugnant, Dum simul esse parens, atque noverca cupit. Nesciit esse soror, vel se servare sororem, Dum nimium Cauno Byblis amica fuit. Sic quoque Myrrha suo nimium subjecta parenti, In genitore parens, in patre mater erat. Sed quid plura docebo, Cupidinis ire sub hasta Cogitur omnis amans, juraque solvit ei. Militat in cunctis, ullum vix excipit hujus Regula, cuncta ferit fulmen et ira sui. In quem non poterit probitas, prudentia, formae Gratia, fluxus opum, nobilitatis apex. Furta, doli, metus, ira, furor, fraus, impetus, error, Tristities, hujus hospita regna tenent. Hic ratio, rationis egere, modoque carere Est modus, estque fides non habuisse fidem. Dulcia proponens assumit amara, venenum Infert, concludens optima fine malo. Allicit illiciens, ridens deridet, inungens Pungit, et afficiens inficit, odit amans. Ipse tamen poteris ipsum frenare dolorem, Si fugias, potior potio nulla datur. Si vitare velis Venerem, loca, tempora vita, Nam locus et tempus, pabula donat ei. Si tu persequeris, sequitur; fugiendo fugatur; Si cedis, cedit; si fugis, illa fugit.

Venus and Amor (Cupid) by Hans Holbein the Younger

Desire, Venus's child, is thus a false, or more accurately, unreliable or traitorous friend. Desire is an oxymoronic guide, both sharp and dull, in character. Desire is a paradoxical compass. It is both the unnatural natural and the natural unnatural in us, and is both unnaturally natural and naturally unnatural in its promptings and in its effects. That is why, a few lines later, Nature notes that Desire "is connected with me by a certain bond of true consanguinity," ipse mihi quadam germanae consanguinitatis fibula connectatur. Its basic or fundamental nature is, if it remains within its proper bounds, good, honestate. The problem with Desire is that it seems to elbow everything else out. It oversteps its natural boundaries in excessive ardor, and so what should but but a tiny flame, a scintilla, turns into a destructive conflagration. What should be a tiny stream, a fonticulus, turns out to be a torrent, torrentem. To flee Desire, one must flee his mother Venus. Desire must be restrained with the "bridle of moderation," frenis modestiae, it must be checked with the "reins of temperance," habenis temperantiae. It is not desire that is vicious, but excess desire, a desire not in accord with temperate mean, that is vicious. "For every excess interferes with the progress that comes from the temperateness of the mean and distension from unhealthy surfeit swells and causes what we may call the ulcers of vice." Quoniam omnis excessus, temperatae mediocritatis incessum disturbat, et abundantiae morbidae inflatio quasi in quaedam apostemata vitiorum exuberat.

Nature then returns to the intended role of Venus, in particular in the area of sex. Nature explains that when she made Venus her subagent, she provided her with a workshop of many anvils, (incudis) and two approved hammers (duos legitimos malleos) one hammer specifically for man, and the other for the rest of the creation. These hammers were to be the tools of Venus, the tools of an interested Providence to overcome disinterested Fate. With them she was to be faithful to God's forms. Venus was not to allow "the hammers to stray away from the anvils in any form of deviation." Venus was also provided with a pen to trace the classes of things, and with which she was to f0llow the blueprints of the forms by which things were to be made. Venus was not to deviate from the norms of orthography "into the byways of pseudography," in falsigraphiae devio. And it was understood that the propagation of the various species was to be accomplished by the joinder of two genders, and that this was to be accomplished within regular constructions of the art of Grammar.

Since the plan of Nature gave special recognition, as the evidence of Grammar confirms, to genders, to wit, the masculine and feminine . . . I charged the Cyprian [Venus] with secret warnings and might, thunderous threats, that she should, as reason demanded, concentrate exclusively on the natural union of masculine and feminine gender. Since, by the demands of the conditions necessary for reproduction, the masculine joins the feminine to itself, if an irregular combination of members of the same sex should come into common practice, so that appurtenances of the same sex should be mutually connected, that combination would never be able to gain acceptance from me either as a means of procreation or as an aid to conception. For if the masculine gender, by a certain violence of unreasonable reason, should call for a gender entirely similar to itself, this bond and union will not be able to defend the flaw as any kind of graceful figure, but will bear the stain of an outlandish and unpardonable solecism.

Cum enim attestante grammatica, duo genera specialiter, masculinum et femininum, ratio naturae cognoverit . . . tamen Cypridi sub intimis admonitionibus minarum tonitru ingessi, ut in suis conjunctionibus ratione exigentiae, naturalem constructionem solummodo masculini femininique generis celebraret. Cum enim masculinum genus suum femininum exigentia habitudinis genialis adsciscat, si eorumdem generum constructio anomale celebretur, ut res ejusdem sexus sibi invicem construantur, illa quidem constructio nec evocationis remedio, vel conceptionis suffragio, apud me veniam poterit promereri. Si enim genus masculinum genus consimile quadam irrationabilis rationis deposcat injuria, nulla figurae honestate illa constructionis junctura vitium poterit excusare, sed inexcusabilis soloecismi monstruositate turpabitur.

(continued)

Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 1

ALAN DE LILLE (ca. 1116-ca. 1202 A.D.) will be the focus of our next several postings. Specifically, we will spend some time on his famous De Planctu Naturae or Plaint of Nature. Alain (or Alan) de Lille (Alanus ab Insulis) was born in Lille in Flanders sometime before 1128. Though not much is known of his personal life, Alan was a highly-reputed theologian who taught in the famous Paris schools, and attended the Third Lateran Council of 1179, an ecumenical council that repaired the breach in the Church caused by the schismatic election of antipope Callistus III. The Council, called by Pope Alexander III, instituted legal reforms to prevent such an incident from happening again. It also addressed issues arising out of the heretical Waldensians and Cathars. From Paris, Alan eventually lived and taught in Montpellier (which is why he is sometimes called Alanus de Montepessulano). Towards the end of his life he retired to the Cistercians in Citeaux, and it was there that he died sometime in between 1202-03. His epitaph reads, in part:

Short life brought Alan to a little tomb.
He knew the two,
He knew the seven,
He knew all that could be known . . . .

Sheridan,* 2-3. Alan of Lille's Plaint of Nature is a genre of literature called Menippean satire (from the Greek Cynic and satirist Menippus or Menippos of Gadara fl. 225 B.C.), and it is a combination of both prose and verse. The main argument of the Plaint is the writer's complaint of his contemporaries' contempt for the natural law. He is particularly upset at the disrespect for nature shown by homosexuality, which he sees rampant in society, and which he sees as symbolic of the intellectual and spiritual infertility that has also infected his society. As if seized by a trance, the writer enters a dream-like state, and a beautiful maiden,--a personification of Nature--visits him. She is beautiful, but she shows signs of great grief, and she shares with the dreaming poet the reasons why. Her garment is rent because man has appropriated to himself parts of her that he has no right to. Everywhere man acts against Nature, and, as a result, justice has disappeared, and crime and fraud everywhere abound. There is no more law, and man, from the dignity of rationality where Nature has placed him, has reached the nadir of irrationality. Though the vice of lust is everywhere prevalent, by disregarding Nature man also suffers from other vices, which Nature discusses with the poet. She shares with the poet some remedies to such vices in the forms of maxims. Then, during the course of the dream, comes Hymenaeus, representative of Christian marriage, and following close behind him, the virtues: Chastity, Temperance, Generosity, and Humility. Towards the end of the dream, Genius appears, and Truth, the daughter of Nature and Genius, shows herself opposite Falsehood, who is bald, and exceedingly ugly and rattily dressed. Eventually, the poet awakes from his trance-like state, and Alan of Lille's Mennipean ends.

Menippus by Diego Velázquez

The De Planctu Naturae begins with verse, as the poet expresses his sorrow at how Nature is disregarded by the mores of his time, most notably in the disregard of Nature in the area of sexual behavior. It is a plaint that well accords with the sentiments of any modern man who views the deviancy advanced as normative ushered by the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s: the rampant use of artificial contraception, of serial polygamy, of premarital sex and concubinage, of homosexuality, of abortion . . . some of which perversions are now classified as Constitutional in dignity, have now the protection of law, and are touted as being fundamental moral rights. Vices that cry out to heaven with a vengeance (cf. Gen. 18:20-21) are fundamental moral rights? O tempora! O mores!

In lacrymas risus, in fletum gaudia verto: In planctum plausus, in lacrymosa jocos, Cum sua naturam video secreta silere, Cum Veneris monstro naufraga turba perit. Cum Venus in Venerem pugnans, illos facit illas: Cumque suos magica devirat arte viros.

I turn from laughter to tears, from joy to grief, from merriment to lament, from jests to wailing, when I see that the essential decrees of Nature are denied hearing, while large numbers are shipwrecked and lost because of a Venus turned monster, when Venus wars with Venus and changes "hes" into "shes" and with her witchcraft unmans man.

"Hes" turned into "shes," and "shes" into "hes." If there was gender and sexual confusion in Alan's day, there is a fortiori such confusion in ours. And where there is gender and sexual confusion, there is sure to be intellectual confusion. Venery and the intellectual and the spiritual life do not mix, for her witchcraft unmans man, devirat arte viros. Man was meant for God, and an unmanned man, that is a man who tends towards another man's anus, is a man that does not tend toward his proper end.

Heu! quo naturae secessit gratia? morum Forma, pudicitiae norma, pudoris amor! Flet natura, silent mores, proscribitur omnis Orphanus a veteri nobilitate pudor.

Alas! Where has Nature with her fair form betaken herself? Where have the pattern of morals, the norm of chastity, the love of modesty gone? Nature weeps, moral laws get no hearing, modesty, totally dispossessed of her ancient high estate, is sent into exile.

What is the cause of the poet's lamentations? "The active sex shudders in disgrace as it sees itself degenerate into the passive sex." Activi generis sexus, se turpiter horret, sic in passivum degenerare genus. Homosexuality runs rampant, and it butchers nature as much as a barbarian butchers grammar. "Becoming a barbarian in grammar, he disclaims the manhood given him by nature." Se negat esse virum, naturae factus in arte Barbarus. A vice that lapses into natural fallacy, a natural illogic, a barren, futile, senseless, vain execrable act, that replaces man's natural desire for woman. "No longer does the Phrygian adulterer [i.e., Paris] chase the daughter of Tyndareus [i.e., Helen of Troy], but Paris with Paris performs unmentionable and monstrous deeds." Non modo Tyndaridem Phrygius venatur adulter, sed Paris in Paridem monstra nefanda parit. There is no excuse for it.

(One is reminded here of Hilaire Belloc's famous ditty:

The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy of self-abuse.)

Something is wrong in a world that lapses into sodomy and self-abuse, homosexuality and pornography, where, in a very vivid image, the "little cleft of Venus has no charm for him," huic Veneris rimula nulla placet. At its most fundamental, rejection of the natural role of man and woman, beginning in the area of the use of sexual faculties, is a rejection of the natural law, and with it the rejection of the one true God. It is a lapse into moral, intellectual, and spiritual darkness. It robs mankind of his Genius.

A Genii templo tales anathema merentur, Qui Genio decimas, et sua jura negant.

Men like these, who refuse Genius his tithes and rites, deserve to be excommunicated from the temple of Genius.

The invocation of "Genius" by Alain is intended to show the intricate relationship between homosexuality, the loss of reason, and the ultimate infertility in thought that results from an acceptance of such a vice as right, whether de facto or de jure. Etymologically, the word "genius" is related to gignere, to bring forth, to give birth to. Sheridan, 59-60. The word genius was frequently linked with the Greek word "daimon" (δαίμων), a lesser god, guiding spirit, or tutelary deity, unique to each man. The daimon, made famous by Socrates who followed it to his death, was, perhaps, the pagan precursor to the notion of a guardian angel.

Winged Genius from villa of P. Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale, near Pompeii.

The linkage of this intellectual component to the generative component in the notion of Genius may be seen in a fragment of Valerius Soranus that has been preserved by St. Augustine in his De Civitate Dei. Soranus describes a Genius as "a God who is in charge of, and has power over, the birth of all things." De civ. Dei, 7.13 (Quid est Genius? "Deus, inquit, qui praepositus est ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum.") Likewise, St. Isidore in his Etymologies describes "Genius" so as to make the relationship between intellectual and procreational fertility even more apparent. "They give him the name of Genius because, so to speak, he has power over the birth of all things, or from the fact that he brings about the birth of children. Thus the beds prepared for the newly-wed husband, were called 'genius' couches." Etym., 8.11.88-89 (Genium autem dicunt, quod quasi vim habeat omnium rerum gignendarum, seu a gignendis liberis; unde et geniales lecti dicebantur a gentibus, qui novo marito sternebantur.) Genius, then, had a double duty. It was charged with keeping the human race in existence, both in his body and in his spiritual soul. In assuring both the spiritual and the physical fertility of mankind. Genius was seen as intricately bound to Nature; indeed, Genius was Nature's great high priest.

It can easily be seen that Genius has a very close kinship with Nature, particularly with Nature as described by Alan in the De Planctu. Both have the same interests--that like shall produce like, that sexual relations shall follow the norms of Nature, that those born shall grow up to live a life in accord with Nature as understood by right reason, that the human race shall not die out. Nature may well call Genius her other self. Genius gives the final form to the things of Nature.

Sheridan, 61-62. One wonders whether Genius has departed from any country that has adopted homosexuality as a fundamental legal right, or has signed the United Nations declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity. Have we been excommunicated from the temple of Genius? Along with Alan of Lille, we have cause to issue our modern Plaint:

In lacrymas risus,
in fletum gaudia verto:
In planctum plausus, in lacrymosa jocos,
Cum sua naturam video secreta silere . . .

*Sheridan refers to James J. Sheridan, trans., Alan of Lille: The Plaint of Nature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980). Translations of Alan of Lille's De Planctu are taken from this text.