Martina Lauster, Stone Imagery and The Sonnet Form. Petrarch, Michelangelo, Baudelaire, Rilke, Comparative Literature, Vol. 45, No. 2, Spring 1993, Pp. 146-174.

University of Oregon
Stone Imagery and the Sonnet Form: Petrarch, Michelangelo, Baudelaire, Rilke
Author(s): Martina Lauster
Source: Comparative Literature, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), pp. 146-174
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
MARTINA LAUSTER
Stone Imagery and th

Sonnet Form:
Petrarch, Michelangelo,
Baudelaire, Rilke
AESTHETIC REFLECTION, an immanent aesthetics and the
self-sufficiency of poetic form are among the recognized char-
acteristics of modern poetry since the mid-nineteenth century. As M.
H. Abrams says, the development of modernism was an achievement

of post-Romantic poets who "[shifted] the focus . . . from the poet,
regarded . .. as expressing a revelation to his fellow-men, to the
poem, regarded as existing in total self-sufficiency as an end in itself"
(130). On the other hand, such claims for an autonomous "text"

showing no reference to any level of meaning outside its own structure have also been made with regard to much older poetry. Thus
John Freccero in his study of Petrarch's poetics maintains that there
is no psychological content to be "reconstructed" from Petrarch's poems, but that "spiritual torment" (which critics have been inclined to
identify as their content) is in fact only a "reflection" or a "thematic
translation" of Petrarch's "autoreflexive poetics" (27). Whilst agreeing with Freccero's conclusion that Petrarch was the originator of an
autonomous poetic self in Western poetry, one need not share his
analytical premise, namely that "language . . . is the ultimate reality"
(25). Freccero's suggestion that Petrarch attempted "to create an autonomous universe of autoreflexive signs" seems as questionable as
his assertion that the creation of such a universe has been "the dream
of almost every poet since Petrarch" (27). To construct Petrarch's

poetics in such semiotic terms amounts to a projection of twentieth146
STONE IMAGERY IN THE SONNET
century theoretical assumptions onto fourteenth-centu

cal writing, which may serve to illuminate those assum
sults in a distorted picture of Petrarch's method of com
ondly, even if one concedes that, at least since Baudelair
sought to create a hermetic system of signs, it must be bo
that infinite semiotic self-referentiality is one but by

only characteristic of poetic modernism, as Michael Ha
reminded us in The Truth of Poetry, pointing, for ex
Anglo-Saxon line of development.
Among all the genres of poetry the sonnet form seem
have invited an immanent aesthetics. The fact is impl
M6nch's argument that "die Form das Wesen des Sonetts se
and can easily be appreciated when one thinks of the

sonnets on the theme of sonnet-writing and the sonn
present study is intended as a contribution to the discu
sonnet's tendency to reflect on itself as a poetic genre, not

at sonnets written about sonnets, but by considering the m
rifaction which lends itself particularly to such reflection
within the poem itself. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's well-kno

of the sonnet as a "moment's monument," from the i
poem to his sonnet sequence The House of Life (1870/8
the continuity and stability of the genre. It also illustr
thetic nature of the sonnet by linking through allitera
trasting ideas. The word "moment" relates to the conten
net, hinting at the intensity and fugitiveness of an exp
sparks off the creative effort; "monument," on the other

for the architecture of the sonnet, its time-resistant, ston
ture which encloses the transitory poetic moment, pres

"Memorial from the Soul's eternity / To one dead death
Rossetti's sculptural metaphor of the sonnet as a monu
morial can be accepted as a key to the critical approach
as such, then one could go a step further and tentative
any sonnet containing imagery of stones, monuments,
is in some way dealing with the hard form in which it is i
therefore offers a condensed form of reflection on po
hope to show that the Petrarchan sonnet did indee
model of self-referentiality in referring exclusively to

(and in this respect it is certainly "modern" in the sens
dieval"), but that it was Baudelaire's achievement to tur
into genuinely modern poetic form in which self-referent
one of the poetic self, but of pre-created form that sp
the self. Only after Baudelaire will language become "
147
reality."
I begin with Petrarch:
No. 51
Poco era ad appressarsi agli occhi miei

la luce che da lunge gli abbarbaglia,
che, come vide lei cangiar Thesaglia,
cosi cangiato ogni mia forma avrei.
Et s'io non posso transformarmi in lei
pii ch'i' mi sia (non ch'a merc6 mi vaglia),
di qual petra piu rigida si 'ntaglia
pensoso ne la vista oggi sarei,
o di diamante, o d'un bel marmo biancho,
per la paura forse, o d'un diaspro,

pregiato poi dal vulgo avaro et scioccho;
et sarei fuor del grave giogo et aspro,
per cui i' 6 invidia di quel vecchio stancho
che fa co le sue spalle ombra a Marroccho.
(70)
In this sonnet, as in many of his Canzoniere (written and rearranged

many times between c.1330 and 1374), Petrarch likens the beloved,
Laura, to Daphne. Ovid's Metamorphoses tell the story of Daphne's
change into a laurel tree to escape Apollo's amorous pursuit. It is,
however, not the beloved whose change and evasion are referred to
here, but the lover's own. Petrarch exploits his famous word play on
"Laura" and "lauro" which links the erotic theme of the Canzoniere to
that of poetic creation. As Nicholas Mann puts it, "Laura is seen and
at once her potential for poetry is developed" (58f.). The poetic "po-
tential" of Petrarch's love arises from an act of renunciation. As his
love must remain unfulfilled, so it may be spiritualized in poetry, that

is, mainly in the form of sonnets.
Petrarch's understanding of love and beauty as paths to spiritua

elevation is Christian as well as Platonic.' The beloved's eyes, whic
played a central role in medieval courtly love song as the source o
chastity, act as the initial spark of this sonnet and trigger the reflec-
1 The amalgam of Christian mysticism, especially the adulation of the Virgin, an

the early beginnings of a revival of Classical learning formed the background to th
rise of the sonnet in thirteenth-century Italy. The sonnet form was an original "inven
tion" of legal scholars associated with the Sicilian court of Frederick II. Cf. M6nch
55-57 and Hugo Friedrich, Epochen 21-23 and 30-34. The formal origins of the sonn
are discussed in detail by Ernest H. Wilkins 11-39. His suggestion that the genre's
roots are to be found in Sicilian folk song (the sonnet's octave deriving from th
eight-line canzuna, to which the sestet, an invention of the first sonneteer, wa
"added") seems to me less convincing than Friedrich's argument that the dynamis
of the bipartite structure, essential to the sonnet form from the very beginning, hin
at the genre's origin from the more elaborate form of the canzone.
148
tion on the lover's change of shape.2 This change takes

eral stages and is anticipated in the exchange of roles
pursuing lover and the escaping beloved in the first qua
the "I," finds himself playing the part of Daphne who o
ages to escape, whilst Daphne's/Laura's eyes in turn
burning force of the sun god's own pursuing passion. T

the lover has become identical with the beloved's laurel
made explicit in the second quatrain, "s'io non posso tra
in lei piui ch'i' mi sia," indicating that his renunciation
warded by poetic fame, that is, by the achievement of laur
However, this statement curiously contradicts the cond

of its context (I would have changed if the light had come
lyrical "I" is thus in an unresolved situation. His passion
not been laid to rest by poetic acclaim-he is still ch

laurel. Laura's light, referred to in the present indicative
"abbarbaglia" (dazzles, blinds), is and will continue to be a danger to
be averted by sublimation; it will therefore never lose its force as cre-
ative stimulus. "Laura" and "lauro" are thus inextricably fused; the
laurel tree, asJohn Freccero writes, becomes "the emblem" of a "mirror relationship" between the poetic idol, Laura, and the poet's fame.
Laura is "the poetic lady created by the poet, who in turn creates him
as poet laureate" (26f.). But apart from acting as a sign of this "selfcontained dynamism" (27), the emblem of laurel, by appearing in
relation to the initial spark of passion, also sheds a potentially critical
light on the circularity of poetic creation as a mechanism continually
excluding the vital erotic impulse that keeps it going.
Another complex of reflections on the subject of transformation is

found in the second quatrain, and with it another metaphor relating
to poetic creation: that of petrifaction. The more the lover is tormented by his desire to seek unification with the beloved, the harder
the form in which he takes refuge must become, "qual petra piui
rigida si 'ntaglia." Similar to the assonance of "lauro" and "Laura,"
the word "petra" establishes a link to the poet's own name. This indicates his determination to harden himself by perfecting his poetic
skill. The material of this exercise in self-abnegation now named, it is
for the sestet to present the forms in which it would appear-diamond, marble,jasper, all representing precious, artistically treated as
well as very hard stone.3 If-thus the concluding thought of the son2 The light metaphor appears frequently in connection with Laura's eyes, e.g.
Canzoniere 3, 9, 12, 128.
' In the Middle Ages jasper was a symbol of chastity. Friedrich points out that this
symbolic meaning was still known to Italian poets after Dante (Epochen 165).
149
net-the poet's art could achieve the hardness of sparkling an
lucent gemstones or of smoothly sculpted white marble, it woul
ever seal off and encapsulate, and thereby free him fro
unfulfilled worldly desire, the "yoke" of his passion. He wo

become like the stoic Titan Atlas, the bearer of Heaven in Gr
thology, who was transformed into a mountain by the head
dusa.
However, the durability and fixity afforded by sculpted stone are

not necessarily a positive achievement in poetry. In the first tercet two
ideas are presented which make the perfection to be attained in poetic form appear as a disadvantage. First, there is no certain way of
knowing whether this perfection is the result of genuine asceticism or
simply of fear, "paura," in which case the polished result would not be
as valuable as it looks. Secondly, technical brilliance is likely to attract
the esteem of the wrong people, the "vulgo avaro et scioccho," that is
to say those who judge art only at face value. The irony of this veiled
reference to the popularity of "precious" art lies in the fact that poetic perfection, provided it does result from a laborious denial of
desire, has no audience to appeal to. The transformation into a

sculpted poetic self, a process of painful detachment from life and
organic matter (laurel is replaced by stone, tree by rock) is a lonesome, "titanic" business linked to the temperamental condition of
melancholy which requires stasis within flux, death within life. The
line depicting the melancholy air of the lyrical "I" transformed into a
poetic self of stone, "pensoso ne la vista oggi sarei," is echoed both in
sound and content by the concluding reference to the crouched,
somber figure of Atlas, the endurer, "quel vecchio stancho," whose
shoulders will forever cast shadows, "che fa co le sue spalle ombra a
Marroccho." The human burden of unfulfilled love is replaced by the
gigantic task of petrifaction, of annihilating life in form. Freccero
does not mention the melancholic dimension of Petrarch's poetry;
he only states that Petrarch makes "self-alienation in life the mark of
self-creation in literature" (31).

Paul Fussell has compared the relationship of the octave and the
sestet in the Petrarchan sonnet to that of "inhaling and exhaling, or
to that of contraction and release in the muscular system," suggesting
that "one of the emotional archetypes of the Petrarchan sonnet struc-
ture is the pattern of sexual pressure and release" (116). Sonnet 51

bears out this observation beautifully. The tension of the octave
springs from the extremely condensed, dynamic first two lines, reprePetrarch may have chosen jasper not only for its hardness, but also with this symbolic
connotation in mind.
150
senting the initial spark of passion kindled by Laura's eyes,

Pocoverauad appressarsi agliocchi miei
la luce che da lunge gliuabbarbaglia
Holding back the subject, "la luce," until the beginning of t

line produces a syntactic tension that enacts the erotic tens
the approach of the beloved. Similarly the lyrical "I," hav
been hinted at in the possessive form of "occhi miei" in the fi
is not introduced until the very end of the stanza, in the

verb form "avrei." This expresses the narrow escape of the
the pursuing fire. Both content and syntax of the first quatra
ported by the tense rhythm created by the syllabic dens

opening lines, seem to illustrate Fussell's remark about co
and sexual pressure more clearly than the second quat
though this section repeats the pattern of syntactic tension

ing the finite verb of the main clause, it is no longer governed
immediacy of the erotic impulse. Its calmer rhythm reflects t
distanced perspective of the poeta laureatus who is consci
own status:
Et s'io non posso transformarmiin lei

piti ch'i' mi sia (non ch'a merc6 mi vaglia)
The original tension created by Laura's approach is still pre
the compact syntactic structure, but mitigated by its slower te

come back to Fussell's terms of contraction and release, this stanza
could be compared to an act of taking a deep breath before entering

the "exhaling" sequence of tercet lines.
Corresponding to the idea of transformation into passionless

stone, the rhythm of the sestet flows gravely, with vocalic slurs here
and there that produce a linking rather than compressing effect:
o di diamante o d'un bel marmo biancho,
per la paura forseo d'un diaspro,
pregiato poi dal vulgouavaro et scioccho
The rhythmic slowdown in the tercets is emphasized by the rough,
ponderous cadences (-ancho, -aspro, -occho). They bring out the

somber vowel sounds prevailing in the sestet (a, o, u), a reflection of
the melancholic condition that is the price to be paid for poetic perfection. In the last line, a caesura separates "spalle" from "ombra,"
isolating the phrase "ombra a Marroccho" as a final evocation of the
melancholy of petrifaction. Moreover, the rhymes of the sestet hark
back to the original model of "stony" diction in Italian poetry-
Dante's rime petrose (1296-97). Stylistic harshness, referred to by

Dante himself as asperitas in his later treatise De vulgari eloquentia, is
151
what, according to Robert Durling and Ronald Martine
guishes the petrose most markedly from the "cult of sweet
phony" typical of the dolce stil nuovo. But Dante's inno

merely one of style: "In the petrose we see Dante expand
tional range of love poetry to a degree unprecedented
and exploring the limits of poetic language with an ex
new intensity" (4). This intensity culminates in the fou
poem of the petrose, which in its first two lines addresses
asperitas as a poetic response to the cruelty of the gem

hearted Lady: "Cosi nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro/com
questa bella petra." Choosing harsh speech as a way of
his frustrated passion, the "I" or "speaker"-to quote

Martinez again-"may . . . obtain a measure of relief
induced catharsis" (168). Dante's poetological program,
itself in harsh rhymes, is explicitly taken up by the rh

diaspro" as well as "biancho/stancho" in Petrarch's sestet
its third "stony" rhyme, "scioccho/Marroccho," the sest
shows an accumulation of harsh-sounding consonant

nant groups (p, pr, f, s, sc, ch, st, sp, spr) and thereby
densation into stone form of the troubled emotion in the octave as
well as a form of "relief' or "catharsis."
Petrarch's sonnet thus both reflects upon and enacts the process of
sublimation which gives rise to (its) form. The relationship between
form-creating passion on the one hand and, on the other, form itself,
which is free from passion, corresponds to the relationship between

octave and sestet. The turning point from passion to form is subtly
anticipated by the second quatrain, which introduces the motif of
sculpted stone as well as the notion of melancholy, the words "petra
piu rigida" and "pensoso" prefiguring the style and atmosphere of
the sestet. Exploiting the "unequal relationship between octave and
sestet" (the very "essence of the sonnet's form" according to John
Fuller, 2) in order to address the theme of form-creation, Sonnet 51
proves to be a prime example of the formal perfection upon which
the lyrical "I" reflects. The conditional mode of the sonnet's content
(I would want to be of hard stone etc.) can therefore be seen to be in a
dynamic relationship with its form; what is contemplated as a possibility is made positive in the body of the sonnet. In his preoccupation
with poetic fame and his notorious cultivation of the sonnet form,
Petrarch appears most clearly as the founder of the "humanistic cult
of literary immortality," to use Durling's words (Petrarch's 33). Of the
Canzoniere's 366 poems, 317 are sonnets, and-as Durling points
out-even Petrarch's canzoni often show a sonnet-like structure (15).

152
Apart from the motif of changing into laurel, that of petr

sumes a central role in Petrarch as a vehicle for the self-assertion of
poetic form. It owes something to earlier literary models, e.g. Ovi

account and Dante's treatment of the Medusa myth, to the cour
lady's adamantine rejection of love as lamented by the Provenga
troubadours, and most directly to Dante's Rime petrose. Petrarc
handling of the motif is, however, surprisingly modern. Here I sh
Durling's view that Petrarch's poetry displays "an acute awarene
that writing poetry involves a kind of death," and, moreover, that th

very motive for killing off passion in order to escape into poetic form
is a dubious one ("per la paura forse"). Thus "Petrarch is always ca

ing attention to the psychologically relative, even suspect origin
individual poems and thus of writing itself" (33).
Sonnets and madrigals form the main body of Michelangelo's p

etic work, which was never published during his lifetime. By th
1530s and 40s, the decades in which he wrote the major part of
poetry, the sonnet had become firmly established in Italy as a clas
lyric genre, notwithstanding the emergence of an equally stron
parodistic current directed against the mannerisms of Petrarchis
As Hugo Friedrich has pointed out (Epochen 297), Lorenzo d
Medici's comment on his own love sonnets marks an important st

in the history of the genre inasmuch as the sonnet, on account of
brevity, is held to be the poetic form par excellence. Its limited sp
of fourteen lines, forcing the sonneteer to express complex thoug
in the most concise form possible and to avoid any "superfluous
word, predestines the sonnet for perfection. On the basis of his n
Platonic philosophical assumption-perfection is to be achieve
through "difficulty"-Lorenzo enthrones the sonnet, says Friedric

"als Gipfelform lyrischen Dichtens" (Epochen 298). It was, as Gira
points out, precisely this "difficulty" that attracted Michelangelo
the sonnet form: "ha bisogno di costringersi in poco spazio p
trovare la sua forza" (99).
No. 63
Si amico al freddo sasso '1 foco interno
che, di quel tratto, se lo circoscrive,
che l'arda e spezzi, in qualche modo vive,

legando con s6 gli altri in loco etterno.
E se 'n fornace dura, istate e verno
vince, e 'n piui pregio che prima s'ascrive,

come purgata infra l'altre alte e dive
alma nel ciel tornasse da l'inferno.
153
Cosi tratto di me, se mi dissolve
il foco, che m'? dentro occulto gioco,

arso e po' spento aver pia vita posso.
Dunche, s'i' vivo, fatto fummo e polve,
eterno ben sar6, s'induro al foco;
da tale oro e non ferro son percosso.

(33)
Here, in contrast to Petrarch's Sonnet 51, the stone motif signifies

both the result of a process of transformation, and its origin. From the
image of the "freddo sasso" the poem moves to an idea of hardened,

purified stone, first in the quatrains, then, transferring the process to
the lyrical "I," again in the tercets. Apart from the unusual and not
readily accessible imagery of burning stone, the sonnet presents
some difficult equations of contradictory ideas. Physical dissolution is
equated with the attainment of life, "se mi dissolve il foco ... aver pifi
vita posso." In the same fashion the cold rock is earlier referred to as
coming to life by being made red-hot and broken by fire. It "lives"
because in its calcinated form it serves as a medium for joining other
stones together to a durable edifice, "legando con se gli altri in loco
etterno." As RobertJ. Clements observes (273), the process of hardening and purifying thus bears connotations not only of the "art of
gold- and silversmith" and of "sculpture and architecture in making
the lime so necessary to knit stones together," but also-and explicitly-of purgation and resurrection (lines 7 and 8). Another example
of the sonnet's complexity is the way it deals with the Platonic notion
of the divine Idea that lies hidden in a being and is recognized and
called forth by a divinely inspired force. Thus the fire dormant within
the rock is, by implication, brought out by metal striking sparks from
the rock's surface, an analogy to the activity of the sculptor who "re-
leases" the inner form (concetto is Michelangelo's term) from the

marble block by carving it out. Likewise the fire hidden within the "I,"
"il foco, che m'e dentro occulto gioco," is drawn forth by precious
metal, "oro," turning outwards the potential of the "I" for purifica-
tion. The gold with which the "I" has been struck-an allusion to
Cupid's golden arrow-is comparable to the sculptor's chisel freeing
the concetto from the stone; the "I" can be seen as being "shaped" by
an intelletto, that of the beloved, which has recognized the lover's soul
hidden in its mortal husk and now frees it, purges it of its inessential
surplus, the superchio.4 As Clements puts it, "The katharsis accomplished by a noble love is similar to the creative process of sculpture,
4 Concetto, intelletto and superchio are terms used by Michelangelo in his famous
"sculpting" poem to Vittoria Colonna (No. 151), "Non ha l'ottima artista alcun
concetto. ."
154
in which the inner sensus visivus recognises only t
authorises only ideal creation" (61).

In Michelangelo's more explicit love poems to Tomm
and Vittoria Colonna the fire metaphor occurs as an e
the rejuvenating consuming, and destructive force of e
same time, for its power to transcend the earthly sphere

way to God. The fact that it is the noble Platonic eros t
the "I" and kindled the fire becomes clear from the central role of
the verb "durare" (to last, stand, endure) in the second quatrain
in the second tercet. In responding to sensual beauty (i.e. being
sumed by fire) and in resisting sensual desire (i.e. standing the
of the furnace) at the same time, the "I" achieves hardness and
nal life. Michelangelo's treatment of this subject differs f
Petrarch's in Sonnet 51 in that the erotic stimulus is not left behind
in the process but remains constantly present as the very medium

which stone is made durable. Each stanza therefore revolves around
processes associated with burning. The sestet does not introduce

new idea, but repeats and intensifies the theme and movement of
octave by transferring them to the "I." This results in a repetitiv
almost symmetrical sequence of verbal ideas in the sonnet as a wh
(rendered in the following irrespective of form, tense and mode):
drawing (fire from stone)
breaking first quatrain

gaining life
withstanding/lasting
gaining value second quatrain

purging
drawing (fire from "I")
dissolving first tercet

gaining life
lasting/withstanding second tercet

striking (fire from "I")
Fire appears as an omnipresent force in the poem, not only in the

repeated and prominent use of the word itself, but also in the domi-
nance of the hard fricative f which relates "foco" to "fornace" and
"inferno." The soft fricative v occurs mainly in connection with t

idea of "vivere," rebirth through purgation, which is equally, if l
directly, related to "foco." This relationship in sense and sound i
expressed most strikingly in "s'i'vivo, fatto fuJimmo e polve." The fir
and last lines especially show a combination of the fricatives f and

which are evocative of the hissing sound of fire, "Si amico al fred
sasso e '1 foco interno" and "da tale oro e non ferro son percosso
These dominant consonants, f and s, are joined by hard plosives, p,
155
and c, to reinforce the harshness of sound, "pitu pregio
s'ascrive," "arso e po' spento aver pil' vita posso," "cosi tratto (
me, se mi dissolve (disolue)."" In other words, the motif o

hardening medium produces a "hard" poetic form throug
only with regard to the poem's unvaryingly harsh phonet
but also to the toughness of its syntax (especially in the fi
as well as to its compact imagery and the complex intert
Christian and Platonic ideas.
Emphasizing the aspect of deliberate "oscuritSa e ambiguita" in

Michelangelo's poetry, Girardi (98) has shown that Michelangelo d
viates considerably from the "official" line of sixteenth-century
Petrarchism represented by Pietro Bembo, who celebrated the styli
tic smoothness, the "lingua 'regolata"' (64) of the Canzoniere as th
all-time model for Italian vernacular poetry. By contrast,

Michelangelo's indebtedness to Petrarch is not to the smooth surface, but rather to the constructive principle of his poetry,6 to the
"Petrarca piu riflessivo e insieme piu' artificiosamente costruito," the
poet who continues and develops Dante's "linea intellettualistica ed
ermetica" (212f.). The "hermeticism" of Sonnet 63 is borne out by its
pointe which well and truly locks the poem in itself as the motif of
striking fire links the ending with the beginning. Only in the last line,
through the mention of the sculptor's metal, "ferro," in comparison

with the "oro" of eros, is some light cast on the obscurity of the
poem's opening.
Although Michelangelo's sonnet thus presents its own form as
"hard" in the sense of both "difficult" and "resistant/durable," its
stone theme is not primarily linked to the notion of coldness, stasis,

death. The stone remains cold only as long as its potential, fire, is
dormant, and it turns into "pietra viva" as soon as it is tackled by the
productive eros.7 Even as a finished, hard, and pure result of the firI The variants in brackets show Michelangelo's original spelling as given in
Girardi's critical apparatus.
6 To illustrate the constructive side of Michelangelo's appropriation of Petrarch,

Girardi mentions Michelangelo's stone imagery. Apart from being a reflection of the
sculptor's professional experience, it links him, if not directly to Dante's petrose, to
that aspect of Petrarch which most clearly shows Dante's influence. Sonnet 51 is
among the poems from the Canzoniere Girardi mentions in this context.
7 Cf. madrigal No. 240 (to Vittoria Colonna?): "Sol d'una pietra viva/l'arte vuol che
qui viva/al par degli anni il volto di costei." In other words, her sculpted face preserves its youthful vitality, while her natural face ages and loses life-a dilemma indicating that not even "pietra viva" will ultimately be dynamic enough to remain true to
life and therefore has no claim to monumental durability. The sculptor's resignation
is expressed in the lines "Dal lato destro e zoppa suo ventura,/s'un sasso resta e pur
lei morte affretta."
156
ing process, stone appears animate in binding other s
shows its purifying effect solely in the lover's or artist's con
sure to passion. It is in this respect that death in "etern

equivalent to an intensified experience of life, "piu vita."
both life and death, process and result, the stone theme
comes the focus of a dynamic rather than linear treatment o
ject of form in the sonnet. The circular movement, crea

link between the final line and the opening, makes the fir
inevitable and inescapable, just as the imagery and phone
ture of the poem allow no escape from the fire. "Enduring
tion in aesthetic form, is not an exercise carried out by takin
in stoic brooding. In two sonnets to Cavalieri, Michelangel

denies the possibility of such an escape for the artist: "Pe
che pith sproni mie fuga" (No. 82); "Amor ... vuol ch'i' ar
(No. 81). Eros is the energy" on which the artist, especiall
artist, and first and foremost the sculptor, depends. His i
with visual beauty also makes him vulnerable; much as h
the vital power of eros, he may be destroyed by it if he fails
to its spiritual challenge. Thomas Mann has maintained t

tensely personal emotion in Michelangelo's poetry oversh
sonnet form in which it is-for form's sake-cast: "wiewohl die obli-
gate Sonettform vielfach eingehalten ist, haben wir es mehr noch

Ausbrfichen des Schmerzes, der Bitterkeit, der Liebe und des
Elends einer groBen, fibergroBen, leidend durchs Sch6ne zu Gott

strebenden Seele zu tun, als mit Gedichten" (247). Against this, however, one could argue that Michelangelo often chose the sonnet form
not despite, but because of the intensity of his suffering as a Platonic
lover and Christian, which he sought to express and make objective

in the hardest possible lyrical form.
The appearance in 1868 of a deluxe edition entitled Sonnets et

Eaux-fortes, featuring works by leading contemporary French poets,
documents the importance of the sonnet in the post-Romantic

French school of poetry which, following its collective publication
8 Girardi, who repeatedly refers to Sonnet 63 as an expression of Michelangelo's
radically constructive genius, sees the "foco interno" of the first line as a metaphor of
Michelangelo's "nativa energia poetica" which is stimulated by forms: "stimolata da

quelle congeniali presenze di pensieri poetici o di forme pensabili." The creative act
is therefore one of redisposing and reviving petrified forms in a new synthesis, as
expressed in line 4, "legando con s6 gli altri in loco etterrao" (67). This reading confirms my own understanding of the poem as a circular movement sustained by the
energy of eros, which takes its origin from and persistently results in created stone
form.
157
of poems in the Parnasse Contemporain of 1866, became k

the Parnasse. In M6nch's words, "Das Sonett (wird) zu einem
Kollektivunternehmen einer ganzen Dichtergruppe" (206). M6nch
also points to the fact that the significance Parnassians attached to
the visual arts is evident in the distinguished illustrations of the de-
luxe edition, commissioned etchings by famous artists including

Corot, Hugo, Millet, and Manet. The Parnassian aesthetic ideal was
that of impersonal, unchanging, sculpted beauty, described by
Edmond Eggli as "la forme impeccable, immuable, definitive"
(XXIII). The titles poets gave to their collections of poetry in the
1840s-60s show their preoccupation with poetic form and technique
in their predilection for stone metaphors, for example, Theodore de
Banville's Les Cariatides (1842), Les Stalactites (1846), Amethystes
(1861), or Theophile Gautier's Emaux et Camdes (1852).
Charles Baudelaire, who.was represented in the March and June
installments of the Parnasse Contemporain with sixteen poems altogether, seven of them sonnets, developed his "proto-modernist" aesthetics as an art critic within the context of contemporary Parnassian
"academism," to use terms from a recent article by David Scott.

Baudelaire's sonnet "La Beaute" (Fleurs du Mal No. 17), showing a
close relationship to the idea of marmoreal impassibilite, has caused
much critical debate about the possible Parnassian sources of the

poem and about the significance of Parnassian aesthetics for
Baudelaire's own surnaturalisme which so clearly points beyond the
mid-century L'art pour l'art school centered around Gautier.' I want to
show how the poem combines the heritage of nineteenth-century

aesthetic paradigms, Romantic and Parnassian, on the one hand, and
of the sonnet form and the motif of petrifaction on the other, to con-
stitute impersonal, self-consciously modern poetic form.

La Beaut6
Je suis belle, 6 mortels! comme un reve de pierre,

Et mon sein, ofi chacun s'est meurtri tour a tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au pokte un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matiare.
Je tr6ne dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;

J'unis un coeur de neige A la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui d6place les lignes,
Etjamaisje ne pleure etjamaisje ne ris.
9 As for the "source" of "La Beaut6," it has long been argued that the poe
more to Poe's story Ligeia and to Gautier's Symphonie en Blanc Majeur, both
on the Romantic topos of demonic snow-white beauty, than to Leconte de L
Banville's classically inspired poems on the Venus de Milo. Cf. the articles b
Fran-ois and EmanuelJ. Mickel as well as Antoine Adam's commentary, 294-9
158
Les poktes, devant mes grandes attitudes,

Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leursjours en d'austeres tudes;

Carj'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clart6s ternelles!
(20)
In numerous ways, the sonnet evokes the impression

with, associations of hard form. The key words of the f
"pierre" and "matiere," embrace the rhyme "tour a tou
form a classic closed quatrain, symbolizing the enclosur
the poet's love of Beauty. Paradoxically, the poet's e
proach her are at the same time constantly crushed by
surface of Beauty's breast, "mon sein, oir chacun s'est

This frustration of the poet's attempts to embrace Bea
serves to spiritualize his longing, "mon sein ... /Est fait
au poete un amour/Eternel." By adamantly rejecting s
Beauty teaches the poet to transform his desire into la
other words, into hard, silent, aesthetic matter, "matiere," which
rhymes with "pierre." In this way the sonnet's first stanza addresses
the artist's neo-Platonic ethos of renunciation. Yet it is important to
note that this is expressed not from the artist's own point of view, but
from that of the accomplished work of art (or all works of art for that
matter), represented in the allegorical figure of Beauty. It is she who

speaks-a characteristic shift of poetic perspective that will be discussed later.
The second quatrain shows a traditional progression from the

statement made in the first about Beauty's unapproachable nature,
"proving" it by concentrating on her statuesque qualities, 'Je tr6ne
dans l'azur," and-a clear allusion to the Parnassian idiom-"Je hais
le mouvement qui deplace les lignes." These sculptural characteris-
tics are joined by the allusion to her enigmatic self-absorption,
"comme un sphinx incompris," as well as by epithets of coldness and
whiteness. The line '"J'unis un coeur de neige a la blancheur des

cygnes" evokes the Romantic type of angelic-diabolic heartless fe-
male, epitomized in Keats's "Belle Dame Sans Merci" and in Poe's
"Ligeia," the dead woman who holds her lover in thrall. The "heart of
snow" is profoundly associated with the archetypal stone-hearted lady
of love song and thus with the very origins of the sonnet form. The
poets in Baudelaire's poem, appearing in this generalizing plural
only in the sestet, are conversely associated with the archetypal troubadours, flocking around their female idol of purity without the
slightest hope of, or even wish for, sensual fulfilment of their love,
159
consuming their days in austere aesthetic sublimation. Sonn

the Fleurs, "A une Dame Creole," deals with this long-establi
tern in a tongue-in-cheek way by addressing the lady:
Si vous alliez, Madame, au vrai pays de gloire,
Sur les bords de la Seine ou de la verte Loire,
Belle digne d'orner les antiques manoirs,

Vous feriez, l'abri des ombreuses retraites,
Germer mille sonnets dans le coeur des poktes,

Que vos grands yeux rendraient plus soumis que vos noirs.
(60)
The sonnet structure of "La Beaute" allows Baudelaire to group the

poets, as it were, in the "train" of the commanding lady that is Beauty
by making them the subject of the sestet, while Beauty herself

"fronts" the procession in the octave.10 The poets are thus formally
submitted, "soumis," to her; their action, expressed in the habitual
future "consumeront," is compelled by her "grandes attitudes" and
her "larges yeux," as it is by the Lady's "grands yeux" in No. 61. Beauty
can be imagined as dwarfing her admirers ('"Je tr6ne dans l'azur"),

while they cower around, steeped in earnest study of her grand pos-
tures. The impression the reader gains of Beauty in the octavehard, cold, white, mysterious, perching on high-culminates in that
of monumentality and impassivity:
Je hais le mouvement qui d6place les lignes
Etjamaisje ne pleure etjamaisje ne ris.
The element of impassibilite' rounds off the octave in such a definitive
way as almost to make the two quatrains into a finished poem in its
own right. Beauty's monumental self-containedness could not be expressed more strikingly. Her figure can now be seen to be related to
that of the mythical "Geante" presented in the next but one poem of
the Fleurs, at whose feet the poet would have liked to spend his life
"comme ... un chat voluptueux" or "comme un hameau paisible au
pied d'une montagne." Apart from the imaginary giantess, Beauty
has yet another Titanic relative who appears in the sonnet immediately following "La Beaute": Michelangelo's sculpture La Notte, whose
charms are described as "fagonnes aux bouches des Titans."
The multitude of Beauty's associations with traditional stone imagery (snow-white marble statue, adamantine Lady, passionless giant)
seems to give her the quality of a synthetic figure without firm contours, of an ambiguous "dream" very much in the Romantic fashion.
10 The terms frons and sirma or cauda (train, trail), describing the two parts of the
medieval canzone, are used by Friedrich in his discussion of the origin of the sonnet's
bipartite structure (Epochen 31).
160
The sphinx simile and the allegorical presentation of
speaking statue seem to give further emphasis to the figu
tic portrayal. Prominent though they are, however, the Rom
tures form only part of the conglomeration of qualities c

Beauty. She appears to borrow styles, gestures, postures ("
from all great monuments, not only Romantic ones; and
her seeming indefiniteness she introduces herself as
pierre," proudly rejoicing in her own hardness and immortali
an abstraction of all imposing stone images-in other word

total of aesthetic petrifaction, the monument of monume
lossal character is that of an absolute result; she is the ver
hard form from which the slightest trace of a creative ef
inspirational spark and erotic stimulus, has evaporated.
The formal perfection of this sonnet corresponds to th
tious "perfectedness" of Beauty. There is no sign of an initial
impulse from which form arises-at least not at the beginn

sonnet where it would be expected. On the contrary, the
the opening lines is beautifully relaxed, swaying sinuousl
two short syllables and one long:
Je suis belle, o mortels! comme un re ve de pierre,
U
--
Et mon sein, oui chacun s'est meurtri tour A tour

U
The
U_
first
two
lines
sh
syllables
divided
by
two
equal
parts),
a
sy
to
emphasize
its
clos
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.
U
The
classic
marks
the
rhyme
octave
sc
off
fr
the sharp incision betw

separates Beauty from
rhythmic suppleness o
tion achieved by the p
tion of the articulated
consumeront, toutes ch
gravity of adjectives w
articulated e." Beauty'
has its equivalent in t
weighed
down
by
the
161
sl
showing their devotion:

Con su me ront leursjours en d'au ste: res ktudes.
U
In
UUV
its
-U
--
rhyme
U-
structure
th
of the Pleiade, which in

couplet. Baudelaire place
(efe/fgg), in the manne
punch line this couplet
denying subjection to B
her, which happens to b
true Platonic fashion th
surprising turn-not of B
transformation is the o
choses plus belles." When
a clarity of outline that
filled with "clartes tern
ensure that poets will n
final couplet, expressin
the same time, is a mas
significance of all the f
allegory
of
strange
contradiction
share
Beauty,
in
Beauty
as
who
an
is
th
The answer lies in the concealed circular movement of the sonnet.
This makes it possible to see that in the process of creation the poet is
not separated from Beauty, but rather from his own self. The lin
"Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartes eternelles" does act as the sig
nal of a quasi-erotic initial spark, especially since the plural "clartes
also has a figurative meaning, namely "bright ideas," inspiration. Th
fact that Beauty's eyes will inspire poets to write poetry is, however
not made explicit (as in "A une Dame Creole," "vous feriez germer
mille sonnets"). In its opening words "La Beaut' " hints at its own
origin in the eyes of the statue of Beauty, since the hemistich '"Je suis
belle, 6 mortels!" constitutes an internal rhyme corresponding to

that of the concluding couplet, "belles/ ternelles," the very word
that contain the key to Beauty's function as a clarifying mirror. Th
internal rhyme at the beginning is itself a "mirror image" of Beauty's
secret disclosed to the poet by her eyes. In the act of writing poetry
that is to say, as poetic self-the poet becomes a mirror of Beauty
1 Clive Scott examines the specific value of Baudelaire's prepositioned adjectives

lengthened by a pronounced e, observing that "the articulated eprotracts the syllab
preceding it, particularly when that syllable is accentuated" (99).
162
speaking (here literally) with her voice. His love has n

mental about it, but is as hard, lasting, and wordless as
eternelles" in the stone eyes of the beloved by which it
"un amour/Eternel et muet ainsi que la matiere." The
tant aspect of the "hardness" of this love is the hard labor
of the poet. In a painful, ascetic process ("auste:res etud

leave behind his natural self and become a mirror and m
eternal Beauty. The act of speaking with Beauty's imp
'"Je suis belle. . ." reconciles, by rhyming with "belle," the
"mortels/eternelles." The poet's mortal self is eternaliz

etic voice. More often than not, however, he will be unsuccessful in
his attempts to achieve a poetic voice. Any hope for quick, comforting results is crushed by Beauty's hard breast. His empirical self, in
association with other poets or maybe a whole school of poets, will
have to "consume its days" in painstaking observation before one unexpected moment-represented in the imprevu effect of the sonnet's
final couplet-triggers a poem. This frustrating, tedious, empirical
side to poetic activity is the main emphasis of the sestet. The fact that
poets are shown as melancholic aesthetes brooding away whole days

over the posture of a statue, waiting to be struck by inspiration
through art and only art, may be seen as an allusion to the contempo-
rary Parnassian school with which Baudelaire clearly associated himself by dedicating the Fleurs du Mal to Gautier. The depiction of poets
as docile laborers in the service of Beauty contains an unmistakeable

element of self-irony. However, the poet's total self-submission to the
aesthetic principle has, in Baudelaire's case, an existential and quasireligious dimension alien to the Parnasse--the modernized Christian
and Platonic ethos of turning life into form in order to be saved, if
only from the burden of ennui.12
Baudelaire's consciousness of form is very much that of an heir to

aesthetic paradigms, as becomes clear from "Les Phares" (Fleurs No.
6) with its tableau of visual artists. What gives them paradigmatic
status is not only the modern type of beauty they are concerned with,
the "visages ronges par les chancres du coeur" or "beautes de

langueur" of '"J'aime le souvenir de ces epoques nues" (Fleurs No. 5),
but, most importantly, the fact that they are selfless. Each is totally
identified with his work, e.g. "Rubens, fleuve d'oubli, jardin de la
paresse," "Michel-Ange, lieu vague ofi l'on voit des Hercules/Se

12 Cf. "Hymne A la Beaut6," Fleurs 21: "Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer,
qu'importe,/O Beaut6! ... Si ton oeil, ton souris, ton pied, m'ouvrent la porte/D'un
Infini que j'aime et n'ai jamais connu? . . . Qu'importe, si tu rends . .. L'univers
moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?" (24).
163
mler ai des Christs," "Delacroix, lac de sang hante de mauvais

(12f.). It is this selflessness, their human and artistic ability t
themselves up to "toutes choses," or, to use Baudelaire's formu
from the Salon de 1859, "a tout ce qui est humain" (1087), that
these artists into giants of the modern age, "beacons" illumi
the darkness of the centuries with the flames of their suffer
ecstasy. Among the painters and sculptors of "Les Phares,"

Michelangelo, who dynamized and spiritualized the painted and
sculpted body yet depended like no one else on the hardness of
sculptural matter, is most obviously a model for Baudelaire's own aesthetics. This is evident not only in the "rive de pierre" of "La Beaute,"
but also in the reference to the contorted repose of his sculpture La

Notte, which Baudelaire significantly places alongside the figure of
Lady Macbeth, "ame puissante au crime," in the next sonnet,

"L'Ideal" (Fleurs No. 18). As has been shown, "La Beaut6" gives expression to the modern poet's experience of the autonomy of poetic
form in which the individual poetic act merely participates instead of
playing a constitutive role. What Baudelaire says about sculpture"elle donne ia tout ce qui est humain quelque chose d'6ternel et qui
participe de la durete' de la matiere employee" (1087f., emphasis added)--
applies equally to his handling of the theme of poetic form in "La

Beaute." The hard poetic matter pre-exists and the poet makes him-
self part of it, just as "toutes choses" are made to participate in
Beauty. As Friedrich has remarked with regard to the aesthetics

Baudelaire learned from Edgar Allan Poe, the traditional sequence
of poetic acts (inspiration followed by creation of form) is exactly
reversed: "Was Resultat scheint, die 'Form,' ist der Ursprung des
Gedichts; was Ursprung scheint, der 'Sinn,' ist Resultat" (Struktur der
modernen Lyrik 51). For the poet, therefore, the emphasis lies not on
hardening himself to become resistant in the process of form-creation, but on losing himself in the process to the pre-created form
whose language he speaks. The extremely supple, effortless flow of
language in the octave of "La Beaute," with its long, light nasal and
oral vowels (-ein, -in, -un, e:, :, i:), suggests the poetic voice which no
longer belongs to the empirical self and therefore speaks with dreamlike ease and assurance. The moment it speaks, the poetic voice has
"monumental" status, being "reve" and "pierre" at the same time.
What the poets of the sestet seek to fathom by studying Beauty is
therefore not least the mystery of the autonomy of their own finished
work. This paradoxical phenomenon of modern poetry was to be expressed by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in terms very similar to the statu-
esque image of poetic form in "La Beaut ": "Ins Innere der Poesie
164
kommen wir nie, aber es ist schon ein seltenes und hohes
Vergnfigen, um ihre Sch6pfungen herumzugehen und ihnen
manches abzumerken" (243).

Having developed his skill as a sonneteer when translating Eliz
beth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, Rilke adopted

form in 1906 as, in the words of Sigrid Kellenter, "das ... geeignet
Mittel, mit dem er etwas so Dauerhaftes ... schaffen konnte wie Ro-
din mit seinen Skulpturen" (45). The formative influence not only of
Rodin, but also of other visual artists like Cezanne and Van Gogh, on
Rilke's aesthetics is complemented by that of Baudelaire's poetry, especially his sonnets. Describing the affinity between Rodin's sculptures and Baudelaire's sonnets, Rilke wrote, "In diesen Versen gab es
Stellen, . . . die nicht geschrieben, sondern geformt schienen, ...
Zeilen, die sich wie Reliefs anffihlten, und Sonette, die wie Saulen
mit verworrenen Kapitdilen die Last eines bangen Gedankens trugen"

(V, 152). Rodin and Baudelaire are important aesthetic models for
Rilke's Neue Gedichte. Within the first part of this collection (1907),
the sonnet sequence "Das Portal I - III" forms a miniature cycle which
is in turn part of a group of poems on the subject of medieval cathedral architecture and masonry. The sonnet discussed here, the first of
the "Portal" poems, appeals to the reader's visual imagination with its
very first word.
Das Portal I
Da blieben sie, als wire jene Flut

zuriuckgetreten, deren groBes Branden
an diesen Steinen wusch, bis sie entstanden;
sie nahm im Fallen manches Attribut
aus ihren Hinden, welche viel zu gut

und gebend sind, um etwas festzuhalten.
Sie blieben, von den Formen in Basalten
durch einen Nimbus, einen Bischofshut,
bisweilen durch ein Licheln unterschieden,
fiur das ein Antlitz seiner Stunden Frieden
bewahrt hat als ein stilles Zifferblatt;
jetzt fortgeritckt ins Leere ihres Tores,

waren sie einst die Muschel eines Ohres
und fingenjedes St6hnen dieser Stadt.

(I, 499)
The unidentified subject of the poem, "sie," is sighted immediately

("Da blieben sie") and yet not until the end of the second quatrain
are "they," who are never explicitly named, finally made visible as the
sculpted figures adorning the recess of the porch. The first quatrain
concerns itself with the energy that created "these stones," not by way
165
of traditional eye or fire metaphors, but by the idea of a

surf."1" In the preceding poem, "Die Kathedrale," this idea
the context of a historical consideration of medieval life and architec-
ture. The building of Gothic churches of overpowering dimension

resulted from the community's belief in God, which inspired its g
gantic collective effort; this combined energy ("Geburt," "Kraft,
"Andrang") formed the foundation ("Unterlagen") of cathedrals an
made their mighty towers rise ("Ragen"). Cathedrals were therefor
an expression as well as an integral part of men's physical and spir
tual lives: "Da war Geburt in diesen Unterlagen,/und Kraft un

Andrang war in diesem Ragen/und Liebe fiberall wie Wein un
Brot,/und die Portale voller Liebesklagen" (I, 498). Although th
first quatrain of "Das Portal I," in its imperfect perspective, builds on
the historical understanding of "Kraft und Andrang" as the creati

powers of the Middle Ages, '"jene Flut ..., deren groles Branden/a
diesen Steinen wusch, bis sie entstanden," the idea of sea waves wash-
ing against stone also has a destructive and ahistorical connotation

The movement of the receding or "falling" tide blurs the distinctio
both in the sculpted stone figures and in the stanzas of the sonn
itself, which are linked by enjambement or continued sentenc

throughout, even across the division between octave and seste
Washing away the attributes of stone figures, the falling of the ti

may thus be equated with the erosive action of time, an associati
that also seems etymologically legitimate, as "Zeit" and "Gezeiten
are cognates.
Gradually emerging within the stream of enjambements, the stone

figures barely seem to withstand the current, despite the variation on
the words "Da blieben sie"' in their hovering stress by means of the
assertive form "Sie blieben" of line 7. The sculptures are not immediately recognizable as figures of saints, for the second quatrain first
fixes on the "giving" gesture of their hands. Corresponding to the
"goodness" of these hands that refused to hold on to any objects of
distinction, the bodies of the figures are reluctant to show their indi-
viduality within the ensemble of weathered and darkened, rock-like

masonry ("Basalte") forming the porch. What is perceived at first are
their typical accessories-nimbus and mitre-before the first tercet
" The Sculpting Surf is the title of Ernest M. Wolf's detailed interpretation of "Das
Portal I." His studies, as well as the others I have consulted on the Cathedral Poems
(by Theodore Ziolkowski, Brigitte L. Bradley, Jacob Steiner), are chiefly concerned
with the imagery and, occasionally, with the time structure of the poems, without
specifically considering them as sonnets. For an admirable analysis of Rilke's handling of the sonnet form as such, see Gerhard Kaiser's article "Stein und Sprache,"
which deals with "Archaischer Torso Apollos."
166
captures an individual face: "Sie blieben, von den Formen in

Basalten/durch einen Nimbus, einen Bischofshut,//bisweilen durch
ein Lacheln unterschieden." Although the syntactic flux ignores the

threshold to the sestet, both tercets retain their function of resume
and conclusion.
The first tercet summarizes the selflessness of the figures, r

from the gestures of their hands and the unobtrusiveness of t
bodies, in the bliss of a facial expression, "ein Licheln ..., ffir da
Antlitz seiner Stunden Frieden/bewahrt hat." If the figures were
before as statues unable to insist on their monumentality (in o
words, happily waiving their hardness to erosive time), an indivi
face now does show an intention of lasting. It has saved up the
of its hours for its smile. The metaphor of "stilles Zifferblatt
presses the peacefulness of both the face itself and the time it
cates-a time of silence in which hours and minutes are not mea-
sured by hands ("silent dial" suggests an atavistic instrument

measurement, similar to the sundial held by the "Ange du M
in the opening poem of the cathedral cycle).Just as individual
have come to life in the sympathetic reconstruction of their
obliviousness to the world, the second tercet brusquely aban
intimate perspective by reverting to a historical consciousn
time. The temporal adverb 'jetzt," breaking the iambic meter
cessitating two successive stresses ('jetzt fortgeriickt"), mar
acoustically painful transition to the awareness of the observ
times with which the times of the porch figures, "einst,"
sharply. In the Middle Ages the porch and its figures were a
organ connected with the life of the town, "Muschel eines
The double meaning of "Muschel," seashell and auricle, mak
porch both a property and a receptacle of the tidal energy wh
ated it. Medieval life communicated with the stones, as the po
a place to which lovers could confide their sorrows ("und die
voller Liebesklagen," "Die Kathedrale") and the figures of the
in turn "fingenjedes St6hnen dieser Stadt." Nowadays the po
resents only an empty space, "Leeres," in which the figures
existence remote both in spatial and temporal terms, "fortge
This harsh-sounding past participle also expresses the sudde
tance between the sculptures and the observing eye, contrast
the softness of the present participle "gebend," which earlie
fied the sympathetic closeness and immediacy of the visual
ence. Moreover, the second change of meter in this stanza
sizes the imperfect tense in "waren," making the phrase "w
einst" the most strongly stressed unit in the whole poem. T
167
second tercet closes off the sonnet by drawing what appea

firm line between the object of observation and the obse
ject. The tide has retreated forever from the stones it created,
their husks to the destructive forces of time. Are the por

and the form-creating energy, '"jene Flut," therefore of m
torical relevance? And if not, in what ways does the sonne
the theme of creation and created form to its own form? As in
Baudelaire's "La Beaute," the second tercet contains the clue to the
self-reference of the sonnet.14 In contrast to Baudelaire's second
tercet, however, this one refers to the poem itself not by means of
circular link with the first line, but rather through its phonetic a
syntactic contrast with the first three stanzas. Its long vowel soun
(Leere, St6hnen), dominated by the resonant long o of the rhym
words Tores and Ohres, contrast in their forcefulness with the gen
short a and i of "Antlitz" and "stilles Zifferblatt" in the two preceding

lines, as well as with the vocalic quality of the rest of the poem, which
is made up of a, a:, d, e:, i, i: and u:. The resounding o: and 6: of th

second tercet corresponds to the image of the porch as an auricle
capturing the city's groans. By vocalizing the sounds once received
the porch, the poem makes audible what-according to its content
can no longer be heard. More importantly, by transferring these
sounds to the porch itself (Tor, Ohr), it gives to the mute and emp
cavity the language it has lost, namely that of an echo of "St6hnen
and "Liebesklagen."
The conclusion of the sonnet thus clearly translates the silence o
the stone figures summed up in the words "ein stilles Zifferblatt," and
hints at the poem's own form as a receptacle of the language of mu

things. In a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome of 8 August 1903, Rilke
wrote, "Nur die Dinge reden zu mir. Rodins Dinge, die Dinge an de
gothischen Kathedralen, die antikischen Dinge . . . Ich fange a

Neues zu sehen. . . " (Briefwechsel 98f.). These words point to the
double nature of the "new" poetic language of the Neue Gedichte, as
language of speechless things and as a linguistic way of "seeing," th
is, both recognizing and visualizing. However, while making the la
guage of the porch audible, the conclusion of "Das Portal I" ceases
make its figures visible. On the contrary, it negates their visual su
stance in the word "Leere." Precisely through this negation of th
porch's visual significance (a negation brought about by historica
1" The self-referential importance of Rilke's sonnet endings has recently be

pointed out by Dirk Schindelbeck: "Die ... Aufwertung der finalen Struktur geht b
Rilke ... so weit, daB eigentlich nicht mehr von Pointe gesprochen werden kann;
groB ist die gedichterzeugende Leistung der finalen Struktur" (129).
168
awareness), the second tercet refers to the sonnet form
as a way of seeing things. The sudden painful consciousnes
ures' historical remoteness at the beginning of the se
('jetzt fortger-ickt") coincides with a total disruption of th

two- and three-line enjambements; this points, ex negativo
respondence between the intimate perspective in the fir

zas and the "falling" movement of the tide, in other w
structive action of time. The erosive dynamism that po
the stone figures proves to be the very condition of the
by the observing eye and their reconstruction in poeti
the statues' physical details gradually emerge within th
enjambements, their psychological significance as unsel
obliviously happy beings also becomes apparent.
This psychological reading of their gestures and facia
shows the figures to be meaningful for the Jetztzeit of th
the second "Portal" sonnet makes clear:
Denn nur noch so entsteht (das wissen wir)
aus Blinden, Fortgeworfenen und Tollen

der Heiland wie ein einziger Akteur.
(1,500)
It is because they are damaged by the current of time and condemned

to insignificance ("fortgerfickt," "fortgeworfen") by modern times
that "die Dinge an den gothischen Kathedralen" become significant
to modern aesthetic perception. Their fragmentary status constitutes
not only a "Faszination fihr die Moderne," as Gerhard Kaiser remarks
with regard to "Archaischer Torso Apollos" (116), but also their com-
patibility with the social outcasts of city life-poor, old, blind,

crippled, and insane people, the "dtbris humain" of Baudelaire's
"Tableaux Parisiens." Their "holiness" lies in their loss of personal
dignity and identity which challenges the poet's own capability of los-
ing himself, giving himself up to that which suffers. In this respect,

according to Rilke, the fathers of literary modernism-Baudelaire
and Flaubert- have set an example of quasi-religious aesthetic discipline which, as the words "das wissen wir" indicate, is well-known and
normative to the third generation of modern poets.
Erinnerst Du Dich an Baudelaires unglaubliches Gedicht "Une Charogne"? Es
kann sein, daB ich esjetzt verstehe... Es war seine Aufgabe, in diesem Schrecklichen,
scheinbar nur Widerwirtigen das Seiende zu sehen ... Auswahl und Ablehnung gibt
es nicht. Hdiltst Du es ffir einen Zufall, daB Flaubert seinen Saint-Julien-l'Hospitalier
geschrieben hat? Es kommt mir vor, als wire das Entscheidende: ob einer es fiber
sich bringt, sich zu dem Aussitzigen zu legen und ihn zu erwirmen...
(Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge VI, 775)
To achieve this self-sacrifice the poet's task is that of "sehen lernen,"

169
as Malte keeps reminding himself. In "Das Portal I" the

posure of the damaged stone figures constitutes a chal
poetic self's ability to "see," to recognize and answer them i
linguistic selflessness analogous to Christian charity. T

poem, Dinggedicht, thus takes on the role of "Heiland," the
savior of things damaged, outcast and forgotten. Stone

of the Middle Ages are restored and saved in the hard
sonnet. However, itself a medieval monument, the sonnet form also
undergoes a process of reconstruction. As Ernest M. Wolf has shown,

"Das Portal I," when divided into syntactic units, consists of a couple
of initial tercets, a main body of five lines, and a concluding tercet
(Sculpting Surf I 16f.). Thus the outlines of the sonnet are blurred by
its syntax in the same way time renders the features of sculpted stone
less distinct.
I have argued that destructive dynamism is the condition of the

stone figures' recognition and reconstruction in poetic language.
The poem's syntax, which erodes the sonnet form, therefore represents both a destructive force and the reconstructive mode of perception in which the damaged object is salvaged. Each of the syntactic
sections corresponds to a different phase of "sehen"-the sighting of
the figures from a historical perspective (first three lines), the histori-
cal perspective giving way to an immediate and detailed perception

(next three lines), the recognition of the figures' religious attributes,
followed by the empathetic understanding of their "intention" (next
five lines), the sudden distance through heightened historical awareness, resulting in a resume of the porch's lost function (last three
lines). Each of these phases of cognition ends with a reference to the
static nature of form, coinciding with the end of a syntactic section:
... bis sie entstanden;
... um etwas festzuhalten.
... bewahrt hat als ein stilles Zifferblatt;
... und fingenjedes St6hnen dieser Stadt.
Thus the process of "sehen" reconstructs syntactically the essence of

stone form-to seal off and encapsulate-which has been taken away
from the stone objects themselves. This reconstructive perception
moves along with time, as it corresponds to the "falling tide." It repre-
sents the modern equivalent of the creative "Flut" of the Middle

Ages, a strem of consciousness destroying and at the same time constructing the sonnet form. Its ancient order of stanzas is reaffirmed
line by line in classic closed quatrains (abba/acca) and in Frenchtype tercets (dde/ffe), not despite, but because of the form's incongruity with the current of perception.
170
The friction created between its syntax and the architect

stanzas makes the sonnet an ideal vehicle for the express
namic movement and consciousness of time. Thus the full
"festzuhalten," anticipating the end of the octave by two line

a strong forward thrust. By contrast, the beginning of th
"Sie blieben," harking back to the opening of the poem, s
belated start into the second quatrain, which traditionally
theme of the first. This backward drift overlaps, however, th
ning of the third phase of perception in which time comes to
still over the contemplation of a figure's smile. Prolonged
two lines of the second quatrain, the first tercet-a resum
figures' obliviousness of time-enacts the lingering of a s
tense moment of empathy. The second tercet, coinciding
last phase of perception, shows no friction with the strea
and consciousness because the incongruity between the o
own dynamic time(s) and the static time of the porch is
the dichotomy of "'jetzt" and "einst." Eroded by the dynam
modern consciousness of time, the sonnet nevertheless em
monument to a moment, a moment not of creative inspiration
sympathetic recognition and reconstruction.
The interpretation of sonnets by Baudelaire and Rilke h

how excellently the ancient poetic form and the stone mo
the expression of their distinctly modern consciousness of
the other hand, it has also become evident from the analy
nets by Petrarch and Michelangelo that self-referentiality
meticism are not per se a privilege of modern poetry sinc
four sonnets are concerned with the relationship between
creating energy of the poetic self and the form of the sonnet
more, Petrarch's and Michelangelo's sonnets do not mere

reflections on the subject of hard form but, like their mo
terparts, enact through their own structure and texture
flected upon. The decisive difference between pre-modern
ern self-referential sonnets lies in their specific weighting of
and its creative energy on the one hand and, on the othe
form in which the self is absorbed. The lyrical "I" in Petrarch

longs for a hardened poetic self in order to be saved from the
yoke of erotic passion, while the form of the sonnet eme

such a petrified monument of the self. Michelangelo's lyri
sents itself as exposed to a process of constant self-hard
purification through the fire of eros, a process that result
tainment of eternal life. Here the sonnet form enacts the circular,
171
endless life of the hardened self. In both sonnets the creat
of the "I," sparked by a moment of passion, is shown to be in

hard poetic self granted by the sonnet form. By eternalizing
the pre-modern sonnet acts both as a heightened, spiritual
mated form of life and as a form of anticipated heavenly salv
the two modern sonnets the relationship between subjecti

and objective form is reversed. The "I" in Baudelaire's son
longs to the finished product, to hard form itself, which
energy of the depersonalized poetic self as an agent. The se
only inasmuch as it becomes the mouthpiece of pre-create
similar kind of selflessness-both in the linguistic sense (
the absence of a first person) and in terms of poetic eth
observed in Rilke's sonnet. Here pre-created form requires
ization, or more precisely its reconstruction and salvation
the perceptive and sympathetic energy of poetic language
pre-modern sonnets give transcendental status to the poet
turning into hard form the moment of erotic inspiration
the two modern sonnets monumentalize the moment in which the
self is lost to Form that contains and (re)creates its own mea
Here the only transcendental function is that of language its
which guarantees linguistic moments and monuments their tim
existence.
Keele University
Works Cited
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Asthetische Reflexion: Lyrik als Paradigma der Moderne (Poetik und Hermeneutik II
Ed. W. Iser. Munich: Fink, 1966. 113-38.
Adam, Antoine, ed. Charles Baudelaire: LesFleurs du Mal. Paris: Garnier, 1961.
Baudelaire, Charles. Oeuvres completes. Ed. Y.-G. Le Dantec, rev. Claude Pichois.
Paris: Gallimard, 1961.
Bradley, Brigitte L. "The Internal Unity of Rilke's Cathedral Poems." German Quarterly 41 (1968): 207-21.
Buonarroti, Michelangiolo. Rime. Ed. Enzo No? Girardi. Bari: Laterza, 1960.
Clements, RobertJ. The Poetry of Michelangelo. London: Peter Owen, 1966.
Durling, Robert M., ed. and trans. Petrarch's Lyric Poems. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1976.
-- and Ronald L. Martinez. Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's Rime
Petrose. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
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Eggli, Edmond, ed. Charles Leconte de Lisle: Poemes choisis. Manche

University Press, 1959.
Fran<ois, Alexis. "Le sonnet sur 'La Beaut6' des 'Fleurs du Mal'
expliqu6 par lui-meme." Mercure deFranceJune 1954: 259-66.
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Renaissance Texts. Ed. Patricia Parker and David Quint. Baltimo
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. 20-32.
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--- . Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik: Von der Mitte des neunzehn
des zwanzigstenJahrhunderts. Revised edition. Hamburg: Rowohlt,
Fuller,John. The Sonnet. London: Methuen, 1972.
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and PoeticForm. New York: Random House, 1
Girardi, Enzo No&. Studi su Michelangiolo scrittore. Florence: Olschk

Hamburger, Michael. The Truth of Poetry: Tensions in Modern Poetry
to the 1960s. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.
Hofmannsthal, Hugo v. "Gedichte von Stefan George." Gesam
Einzelausgaben. Ed. Herbert Steiner. Prosa I. Frankfurt a.M.: Fische
Kaiser, Gerhard. "Stein und Sprache. Rilkes Sonett 'Archaischer

LiteraturfiirLeser 2 (1988): 107-18.
Kellenter, Sigrid. Das Sonett bei Rilke. Berne and Frankfurt a.M.: Lang,
Mann, Nicholas. Petrarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Mann, Thomas. "Die Erotik Michelangelos." Altes und Neues. F

Fischer, 1953. 247-58.
Mickel, EmanuelJ. "Concerning the Source and Date of Baudelair

Romance Notes 14 (1972): 299-303.
M6nch, Walter. Das Sonett. Gestalt und Geschichte. Heidelberg: Kerle

Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere. Ed. Gianfranco Contini. Turin: Einaudi, 1964.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Sdmtliche Werke I - VI. Ed. Rilke-Archiv in cooperation with Ruth
Sieber-Rilke and Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1955-66.
- and Lou Andreas-Salom&. Briefwechsel. Ed. Ernst Pfeiffer. Zurich: Max
Niehans, and Wiesbaden: Insel, 1952; revised edition 1975.
Schindelbeck, Dirk. Die Verdnderung der Sonettstruktur von der deutschen Lyrik der
Jahrhundertwende bis in die Gegenwart. Berne and Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1988.
Scott, Clive. "A privileged syllable: The articulated e in 'Les Fleurs du Mal'." A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Art." New Comparison 5 (1987): 75-88.
Steiner, Jacob. "Kunst und Literatur. Zu Rilkes Kathedralengedichten." Wissen aus
Erfahrungen. Werkbegziff und Interpretation heute. Festschriftfiir Herman Meyer. Ed.
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Wolf, Ernest M. "The Sculpting Surf: An Interpretation of Rilke's 'D

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174

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University of Oregon

Stone Imagery and th

acteristics of modern poetry since the mid-nineteenth century. As M.

H. Abrams says, the development of modernism was an achievement

regarded . .. as expressing a revelation to his fellow-men, to the

poem, regarded as existing in total self-sufficiency as an end in itself"

(130). On the other hand, such claims for an autonomous "text"

of almost every poet since Petrarch" (27). To construct Petrarch's

STONE IMAGERY IN THE SONNET

century theoretical assumptions onto fourteenth-centu

sought to create a hermetic system of signs, it must be bo

that infinite semiotic self-referentiality is one but by

M6nch's argument that "die Form das Wesen des Sonetts se

and can easily be appreciated when one thinks of the

sonnet's tendency to reflect on itself as a poetic genre, not

within the poem itself. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's well-kno

sparks off the creative effort; "monument," on the other

ture which encloses the transitory poetic moment, pres

is in some way dealing with the hard form in which it is i

therefore offers a condensed form of reflection on po

hope to show that the Petrarchan sonnet did indee

model of self-referentiality in referring exclusively to

Poco era ad appressarsi agli occhi miei

per la paura forse, o d'un diaspro,

In this sonnet, as in many of his Canzoniere (written and rearranged

tential" of Petrarch's love arises from an act of renunciation. As his

love must remain unfulfilled, so it may be spiritualized in poetry, that

Petrarch's understanding of love and beauty as paths to spiritua

1 The amalgam of Christian mysticism, especially the adulation of the Virgin, an

STONE IMAGERY IN THE SONNET

tion on the lover's change of shape.2 This change takes

ages to escape, whilst Daphne's/Laura's eyes in turn

burning force of the sun god's own pursuing passion. T

warded by poetic fame, that is, by the achievement of laur

However, this statement curiously contradicts the cond

lyrical "I" is thus in an unresolved situation. His passion

not been laid to rest by poetic acclaim-he is still ch

Another complex of reflections on the subject of transformation is

Canzoniere 3, 9, 12, 128.

net-the poet's art could achieve the hardness of sparkling an

lucent gemstones or of smoothly sculpted white marble, it woul

unfulfilled worldly desire, the "yoke" of his passion. He wo

However, the durability and fixity afforded by sculpted stone are

desire, has no audience to appeal to. The transformation into a

self-creation in literature" (31).

ture is the pattern of sexual pressure and release" (116). Sonnet 51

STONE IMAGERY IN THE SONNET

senting the initial spark of passion kindled by Laura's eyes,

Holding back the subject, "la luce," until the beginning of t

been hinted at in the possessive form of "occhi miei" in the fi

is not introduced until the very end of the stanza, in the

ported by the tense rhythm created by the syllabic dens

and sexual pressure more clearly than the second quat

though this section repeats the pattern of syntactic tension

Et s'io non posso transformarmiin lei

The original tension created by Laura's approach is still pre

the compact syntactic structure, but mitigated by its slower te

could be compared to an act of taking a deep breath before entering

Corresponding to the idea of transformation into passionless

The rhythmic slowdown in the tercets is emphasized by the rough,

ponderous cadences (-ancho, -aspro, -occho). They bring out the

back to the original model of "stony" diction in Italian poetry-

Dante's rime petrose (1296-97). Stylistic harshness, referred to by