#26 Sun (7/17/22) - The Mirror: A History by Sabine Mechior-Bonnet, Hynero-tomachia Poliphili and Rabelais

After considering William Egginton's statement regarding the purpose of fiction, and considering the question of What is True in fiction?, I was searching for works on mimesis, particularly Kendall L. Jackson's Mimesis as Make-Believe that I remember reading years ago, and serendipitously came across The Mirror: A History by Sabine Mechior-Bonnet in the CPL catalog. A quick perusal lead me to the conclusion that this is a fascinating engagement with both the artifact itself and its fabrication, their appearance in literature and art, and their impact on our understanding of the world and our own sense of identity.

I was thrilled to see Francesco Colonna's Hypnero-tomachia Poliphili (1499) in the chapter The Renaissance and Looking at Self.

                                            Poliphilio's Vision

 

With regard to the emotion experienced at one’s first encounter with the
mirror, there exists no definitive text, only some scattered allusions. A few
lines from Francesco Colonna’s Hypnero-tomachia Poliphili (1499), the
strange romantic tale of Poliphilo’s quest for his beloved Polia, incidentally
reveal initial reactions to confronting the mirror, and its author already
sensed the mirror’s significance in the consolidation of identity.

The hero discovers his image as he undertakes an initiatory voyage in
search of love and wisdom, and comes upon a preliminary checkpoint that
allows him to measure his strengths: before entering the palace of Queen
Eleutherilida, Poliphilo passes between two marble walls “in the middle of
which, on each side, was a great round jet stone, so black and polished that
one could see oneself as in a crystal mirror. I would have gone through
without taking much notice, but when I was between the two, I saw my face
from one side and the other, and became in no small way frightened,
thinking there were two men there.”13 

 

The experience of dividing or
splitting in two, and the confrontation with these twin likenesses first incites
terror. But terror can include a touch of admiration. Dread emerges when
Poliphilo discovers the copy of his twin in the second mirror, in other
words, when he catches in his reflection of the reflection another face that
he doesn’t recognize. This discrepancy provokes such a malaise that the
mirror image frees itself and is no longer perceived as a phenomenon of
reflection, but as a three-dimensional reality. The phenomenon of copies, or
twins, threatens one’s identity. Subsequently, when the image is recognized
for what it is, Poliphilo discovers in the reflections’ reversibility a space of
play between what he is and what he is not, a theatrical stage where he can
try out several fictional identities. He leaves strengthened and composed.
 

If Poliphilo so easily overcomes his terror, it is because the test comes
just after an initial reassuring experience. Indeed, before the encounter with
the mirror, he entered a gigantic hollow bronze statue of a man lying down,
and from the orifice of the mouth “through all the other parts of the body to
the intestines and the bowels, “ he examined human anatomy, “so that one
could clearly see bones, arteries, nerves, veins, muscles and intestines.”
 

This methodical exploration resembles that of Andreas Vesalius (1514–
1564), author of the first complete textbook of human anatomy, whose
scalpel sought parts of the body exposed beneath the skin. It also brings to
mind the experience of Montaigne, who, after a fall from a horse which left
him near death, described the symptoms of his injury and claimed, by the
authority of Socrates, the right to examine himself, body and soul: “I am all
on display, like a mummy in which you can see the veins, the muscles and
the tendons in one glance, each piece in its place” (Essays, II, 6). 

 

This visit
to the heart of man gave Poliphilo a familiarity with tactile experience, and
taught him good use of the carnal body. Before the “mirror stage,” he
experienced a group of muddled impressions that the anatomical promenade
allowed him to categorize. The doubling of his reflection assured him an
overview and visual mastery of the body.

A restored Poliphilo sets off to face the other tests that guard the gate of
Mystery. Five nymphs, the five senses, lead him to an octagonal pool so
that he can quench his thirst, for the appetites of the body must be satisfied
for the voyage to proceed. His gambols among the nymphs take place
between walls “of very black and very polished limestone that shines like
glass,” and statues of small, naked cherubs. Horasia, the nymph of sight,
always holds a mirror. 

 

Mirror, water, polished glass—here man has nothing
to fear from his reflection. The gaze upon the self, as with Benoît de Sainte-
Maure, is not that of the imprudent Narcissus, whom Poliphilo encounters
during his journey. Instead of dooming man to immobility, the specular
encounter multiplies his strength by inviting him to both cast himself upon
the world and study himself within it.

This is followed immediately by a passage on The Mirrors of Thélème from Rabelais' Gargantua.

                                            The Mirrors of Thélème

 

In the sixteenth century, with the gradual furnishing of private space out of
sight and sheltered from prying eyes, the right to a solitary tête-à-tête was
won with the aid of the mirror, but according to estate inventories, the
mirror was still rare. It took the audacity of François Rabelais (c. 1494–
1553) to put a mirror in every bedroom in his fictional, utopian Abbey of
Thélème described near the end of Gargantua: “a crystalline mirror set in
fine gold, garnished with pearls and so large that it could represent the
whole person.”14 There were 9,332 mirrors for 9,332 bedrooms—every-
one’s privacy was respected.

I need to look at Gargantua and Pantagruel, everything I hear about it seems worth digging deeper.