Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 8

NATURE CONTINUES TO ELABORATE the intricate grammatical instructions she conveyed to Venus her subagent. As we had discussed in our earlier posting, Nature had provided Venus many anvils and two hammers, presumably one hammer for the male and another for the female of each animal species. Nature had provided Venus blueprints of the species, and a special pen that would allow her to trace these ideal forms of the species into individuated particulars. Provided with all this was a Grammar, one with two genders, masculine and feminine. The Grammar provided that the genders were to be combined: masculine with feminine, and irregular combinations--of two feminines or two masculines or the odd neuter--were not to be countenanced. As the poem progresses Alain de Lille's Grammar of sex becomes ever more intricate.

Venus was instructed that the sexual Grammar should observe the "regular procedure in matters of subjacent and superjacent (suppositiones appositionesque ordinarias observando) and should assign the role of subjacent to the part characteristic of the female sex (rem feminini sexus charactere praesignitam, suppositionis destinaret officio) and should place that part that is a specific mark of the male sex in the prestigious position of superjacent (rem vero specificatam masculini generis, sede collocaret appositi) in such a way that the superjacent cannot go down to take the place of the subjacent nor the subjacent pass over to the demesne of the superjacent (ut nec appositum in vicem suppositi valeat declinare, nec suppositum possit in regionem appositi transmigrare; etiam cum utrumque regatur ab altero)." Venus explains: "Since each requires the other, the superjacent with the characteristic of an adjective is attracted by the law of urgent need to the subjacent which appropriates the special characteristics of a noun (appositum sub adjectiva proprietate, suppositum subjectivae proprietatis proprium retineret, exigentiae legibus invitatum)."

What on earth does all this mean? This is an intricate play on words by Alan de Lille, who toys with the etymological, grammatical, metaphorical, and ordinary meanings of the words suppositum and appositum. The matter is somewhat confused by Sheridan's not-quite-literal translation. Venus was here instructed to observe the ordinary rules of the suppositum and appositum. We are dealing here with grammatical concepts involving the construction of sentences. Generally, in modern grammatical terms, the term suppositum is the subject of a proposition, whereas the term appositum is the predicate of that proposition. The male is to have the office of the appositum, whereas the female is to have the office of the suppositum.

The term suppositum appears to have been a translation of the Greek term hypokeisthai, (ὑποκεισθαι) which means "to lie under," a combination of keisthai (κεισθαι, to lie) and hypo (ὑπο, under). It has a variety of uses in poetry, grammar, and logic. Rodríguez y Guillén, "'Suppositum' y 'Appositum' en la Teoría Sintáctica Medieval y su Projección en el Renacimiento," Minerva: Revista de Filología Clásica (No. 2, 1988), p. 290.

The term appositum is a purely grammatical term which is derived from from ad ("near") and positio ("placement"). It is a calque or translation of the Greek term epitheton (επιθετον) which means something attributed or added.

The terms suppositum and apppositum were therefore two great parts or offices of a sentence [Boethius: Pars orationis aut est suppositum aut appositum aut determinatio istorum], and each such office or part had a fixed position. Rodríguez y Guillén, 293. From one vantage point, the suppositum and the appositum were equal. From another vantage point, the suppositum necessarily occupied the first place in a sentence (the appositum especially in its verbal sense, required a suppositum; a verb required a subject), but its place is determined with reference to the appositum, which takes a verbal or active aspect or adjectival or descriptive aspect, and so, from this vantage point the appositum is preeminent to the suppositum. So Rodríguez y Guillén conclude:

Así pues, hemos visto cómo suppositum y appositum son los dos elementos básicos en cualquier oración. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de la posición y de forma implícita, convierten al segundo en el núcleo, en el centro de toda oración, alrededor y por referencia al cual se sitúan todos los demás, delante o detrás, de forma fija y obligatoria. En consequencia, llevando esto hasta el extremo, podemos concluir que, si bien desde el punto de vista de la significación y de la relación enter ambos, suppositum y appositum tienen la misma importancia, desde el punto de vista de la posición, al appositum (verbo) se le atribuye el lugar preeminente en toda oración.

So, therefore, we have seen how suppositum and appositum are the two basic elements of every sentence. Nevertheless [though the suppositum is, in one way, first in the sentence], from the point of view of the position and implicit form, the second is converted into the nucleus, the center of the entire sentence, around which and by reference to everything else is situated, before or after, in a fixed and obligatory way. In consequence, taking this to the extreme, we can conclude that, with respect of the point of view of the significance and the relations between them, suppositum and appositum have the same importance, but from the point of view of the position, to the appositum (verb) is attributed the preeminent place of the entire sentence.

What Nature is saying, then, is that the female and male of the species, as suppositum and appositum, respectively, are essentially equal parts of the sentence into which they are to be coupled, but that from the point of view of procreation or union, the male appositum, though he is in need of the female suppositum and without the female suppositum he makes no sense, the male appositum, in terms of position, plays the definitional or preeminent part of the sentence.

Further instructions were given by Nature to Venus:

In addition to this I gave instructions that the conjugations of Dione's daughter should restrict themselves entirely to the forward march of the transitive (conjunctio in transitivae constructionis habitum uniformem) and should not admit the stationary intransitive or the circuitous reflexive (reciprocationis) or the recurring passive (retransitionis), and that she should not, by an excessive extension of permission to go to and from, tolerate a situation where the active type, by appropriating an additional meaning, goes over to the passive or the passive, laying aside its proper character, returns to the active or where a verb with a passive ending retains an active meaning and adopts the rules of deponents.

Thus, the relationship between the female suppositum and the male appositum was to remain one where the male was active relative to the female, and where the relationship was transitive, not intransitive. This means the sentence was to be incomplete unless it had a direct object. Coupling was not to be had without both parts: the suppositum and the appositum were both required in the Grammar of sex. There was not to be a suppositum or an appositum by itself, nor was there to be two supposita or two apposita joined in any sentence. The male appositum was to be joined to the female suppositum, and that relationship, though one of equals, was one where the appositum would have an active role relative to the suppositum.

More, however, than just rules of sexual Grammar was Venus given by Nature. Nature also supplied her with the rules of logic, of argument, of syllogism, so that she would be fully armed against the Fates, and would be able to best them in argument and so detect the "lurking places of fraud and fallacy in her opponents' arguments." Nature's instructions in the Grammar and Logic of sex were precise, and those forms that were grammatically incorrect or logically fallacious were excommunicated and anathematized.

For a time, Venus did her job well and within the restrictions that Nature laid before her. But she soon grew tired of the routine and the labor required in assuring the discipline of grammar and logic. So Venus grew lax and laxity, like too much food and drink, led to her adultery. So Venus cheated on her husband Hymenaeus, defiled her marriage, and "began to live in fornication and concubinage with Antigenius," cum Antigenus coepit concubinarie fornicari. [Here the manuscripts are not consistent. The majority use "Antigenius," but some use the term "Antigamus." Thus, Venus may have either been "opposed to Genius" (Antigenius) or "opposed to marriage" (Antigamus). The former reading stresses her dislike of procreation and pursuit of sterile, anti-natural sex, whereas the latter would stress her dislike for the confines of marriage and its ends, which includes procreation. For a description and role of Genius in Alan of Lille's De Planctu Naturae, see the first posting of this series, Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 1]

The adultery with Antigenus (or Antigamus) corrupted her mind, corrupted her work, corrupted the workshop and tools. The entirety of sexual Grammar and Logic was bastardized. Indeed, the coupling of Venus and Antigenus (or Antigamus) resulted in the birth of the bastard Jocus (or Pastime or Sport), the half-brother of Cupid (or Desire). Sex became a pastime, a sport, to be engaged in as play without regard to its intrinsic ordering toward procreation which is what gives it dignity and purpose. It became Sport or Pastime, rather than a fulfillment of a natural desire for marriage, conjugal union, and progeny. "The adultery with Antigenius," Hugh White tells us, "signifies Venus' turning away from her task of procreation, Genius, Nature's priest and 'her other self', being a power presiding over reproduction. . . . [W]hat is at issue being that non-inseminative sexual activity standardly understood as contra naturam." Hugh White, Nature, Sex, and Goodness in Medieval Literary Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 90. What, then, is Alan of Lille's message?

We may then conclude that fully natural sexual behaviour is not over-passionate, occurs within marriage (Alan tells us that Cupido is the legitimate son of Venus and Hymenaeus, the god of marriage), and aims at, or is at lest open to, procreation (as we have seen, Venus' revolt from Nature involves the desertion of Hymenaeus for Antigenius, which implies a contempt for the procreative purpose of marriage).

White, 92. Venus concludes with a comparison of Cupid, the legitimate son of Hymenaeus and Venus, and Pastime or Sport, the bastard child of Venus and Antigenus or Antigamus:

The former's [Cupid's] birth finds its defence in solemnised marriage, the commonness of a commonly-known concubinage arraigns the latter's descent. In the former there shines the urbanity of his father's courteousness; the boorishness of his father's provincialism denigrates the latter. The former dwells by the silvery fountains, bright with their besilvered sheens; the latter tirelessly haunts places cursed with unending drought. the latter pitches his tent in flat wastelands; the former finds his happiness in sylvan glades. The latter forever spends the entire night in his tents; the former spends day and night without interruption in the open air. The former wounds the one he chases with spears of gold; the latter pierces what he strikes with javelins of iron. The former makes his guests merry with nectar that is not gone sour; the latter ruins his guests with a bitter portion of absinthe.

Illius nativitatem, matrimonii excusat solemnitas; hujus propaginem divulgati concubinatus accusat vulgaritas. In illo, paternae civilitatis elucescit urbanitas; in hoc, paternae inurbanitatis tenebrescit rusticitas. Iste inargentatos nitoribus argenteos fontes inhabitat; hic loca perenni ariditate damnata indefesse concelebrat. Iste in grata planitie fixit tentoria; huic vallium complacent nemorosa. Iste in tabernaculis indeficienter pernoctat, hic sub dio dies noctesque continuat. Iste aureis venabulis vulnerat quem venatur; hic, quem ferit, ferreis jaculis lanceat. Iste suos hospites debriat nectare subamaro, hic suos absynthii potu perimit acetoso.

So it was idleness and the indulgence in food and drink that brought out lust in Venus, to the ruin of mankind, and to the perpetual sorrow of Nature who makes her plaint to the poet, and which explains her sorrow. And the sorrow is amplified all the more because, as Nature now explains, breach in one virtue, chastity, results in breach in the other virtues. Put another way, indulging in the vice of unchaste, sterile or unnatural sex results in the increase of the other vices.

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)