The Many-Walled World of "Andrea del Sarto": The Dynamics of Self- Expatriation

Author(s): Keith Polette

Source: Victorian Poetry, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 493-507
Published by: West Virginia University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002263
Accessed: 24-01-2016 20:19 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

West Virginia University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Victorian Poetry.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
The World
Many-Walled of
"Andrea del Sarto":The
Dynamics of Self- Expatriation
KEITH POLETTE

Before I built a wall, I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out.
- Robert Frost

A PAINTER,ROBERTBROWNING'SANDREA DEL SARTO MIGHTHAVE

enjoyed greater success as a bricklayer.His monologue, erected as a
hollow edifice of self-definition, reveals itself to be a construct of imagina-
tive self-immolation and artistic immobility- a prisonhouse of creative de-
fault.1 Quartered in the cells of self-containment and locked in the lan-
guage of bathos, Andrea del Sarto displayshis linguistic self-portrait:a static
figure framed within a multiplicity of unyielding borders. Being "faultless,"
del Sarto has fabricated the perfect walls of self-enclosure with the most
sturdy of materials:bricks fired in the oven of egocentricity and fused into
place with the mortarof disaffirmation.Dwelling within this self-fashioned
structure of ennui and alienation, del Sarto delivers his monologue in an
attempt to justify his loss of inventive and innovative energies, a loss which
has been precipitated by his overwhelming impulse to retreat into a series
of dimly lit psychological bunkers.
Though much has been written about "Andreadel Sarto,"most criti-
cal readers agree that the poem is indeed a study of failure. Disagreements
generally occur as to what, or from whom, del Sarto's defects and disen-
gagements can be attributed. Most certainly, we will be unable to distill any
single cause or attribute. If we examine the poem as a network of destruc-
tive, imaginal relationships, however, we might construct a more advanta-
geous position from which to discover those essential elements which form
the interlockingsystemof Andrea del Sarto'sself-incarceration.Our probings
will lead us to see that the poem is, in fact, a multi-dimensional complex of
walls upon which an expanding succession of images project inward toward
a concentricity of progressivelydeeper significance.
In his article, "Andrea del Sarto' and the New Jerusalem,"George
Griffith correctly argues that "in a monologue otherwise characterized by
493

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
494 / VICTORIANPOETRY

resignation and despair,the apocalypticallusion [to the new Jerusalem]is a

glimmer of hope. Yet this hope is illusory, for the allusion comes as the
culmination in a series of references in the poem to walls, all of which are
symbolic of del Sarto's deficiencies."2Griffith makes specific references in
the poem to walls, but all of them refer to substantialstructures:the walls of
del Sarto's room which he will not vacate "Forfear of chancing on the Paris
lords" (1. 146) ;3 the walls that surround the convent which offer del Sarto
the fantasy of security because they hold "the trees safer" (1.43); the walls
of artistic success which Michelangelo painted for all of "Rome to see" (1.
187); and finally, the four walls of the "New Jerusalem"(1.261) to which he
aspires but will never reach because he has chosen Lucreziato be his less-
than-divine and imperfect inspiration.
Although these examples which Griffithpresents reveal an important
motif, it is possible to enlarge and extend our understanding of the images
of walls and the act of walling to achieve a keener and more expanded
vision of both how and why Andrea del Sarto has sealed himself within a
many-walled world. Walls operate not only as literal barriersin del Sarto's
monologue, but as metaphoricalones as well. These metaphoric encapsula-
tions which exclude the world and confine del Sarto within the frozen frame
of a false fiction all configure themselves into destructive, imaginal quater-
nities and forman ironic, mandala-likestructurearoundthe faultlesspainter.

Walls of Brick
Seated by the window of his "melancholylittle house" (1.212) where
"A common greyness silvers everything, - / All in a twilight" (11.35-36),
del Sarto has withdrawninto a pervasive dusk which functions as an opera-
tional correlative for the void between worlds of inclusion and exclusion
where image and word, action and cessation, and inspiration and tech-
nique will not cohere.4 Structurally mirroring his personality, del Sarto's
shadow-shrouded house operates as both a penitentiary and place of ref-
uge, and del Sarto plays the dual role of guard and inmate. Stationed by
the window, del Sarto surveys the scene through the twin perspective of
dread and longing: fear of what the world might bring- more news of
Rafael's success, King Francis' money collectors, the Cousin in quest of
Lucrezia,or requests for more paintings- and a desire to vacate the house
that he dares not leave. Mired in the spiritualmiasma between finitude and
infinitude, he speaks a languageloaded with declivity and despair,one whose
heavy freight causes it to sag in the direction of universal permanency:
And autumngrows,autumnin everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITHPOLETTE/495

And all that I was born to be and do,

A twilightpiece. (11.45-49)
Del Sarto's condition reminds us of Kierkegaard'sdelineation of the
space between conscious and unconscious despair:
One must assumethat in most cases the state of the despaireris one of havingonly a dim
idea, though againwith countless nuances,of what that state is. He no doubt realizesin
himself to some extent that he is in despair;he is able to detect it in himself as one
detects a sicknessone goes aboutwith in one's body,but he won'treadilyadmitwhat the
sicknessis. At one moment he is almostclearthat he is in despair,but then at anotherit
is as though his indispositionhad some other cause, somethingoutside him, and if only
that were changed he would no longerbe in despair.5

Dwelling in a position of half obscurity,del Sarto inhabits the unfertile

ground between the conscious, mature detection and acceptance of his
situation and the childish, unconscious rejection of it. Untouched by, and
evading the kind of light which might bring reconciliation, del Sarto yearns
for the shielding peace of a fantasy which he hopes might grow inside the
convent walls "across the way" that "Holds the trees safer, huddled more
inside" (11.42-43). Del Sarto's dream is a child's dream of misappropriated
confabulation: to be secure and unfeeling as a tree and to be enveloped
(paradoxicallyand feelingly) inside a virgin-mother'ssanctifyingwalls. These
figurative misalignments reflect del Sarto's inability to distinguish fact from
affect as his retrogressioninto the chambers of self-pity confounds his sen-
sibilities and shutters him in a dull room.
In addition, del Sarto emphasizes that he is divorced from the kind of
light that is offered by, as well as the result of, clear-sighted differentiation:
"I'mthe weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt / Out of the grange whose four
walls makes his world" (11.169-170). As before, del Sarto'smetaphor breaks
down here too- most bats eschew the sun- and we see that he imagines
himself as neither human nor beast, but as some unsynthesized man-bat-
thing trapped in the grey rooms and words of his own inert imagination.
The breakage in del Sarto's language serves both to invert and subvert his
self-image: suspended from raftersof self-absorption, his feet cannot reach
beyond what they clutch as his thoughts droop and dangle down. Del Sarto's
desire for the insulation of suspension and self-encapsulation- hiding like
a bat in his twilight house- reveals the existential analogy between the
snugness and smugness of living within the bounds of brick and the suffo-
cating trap of inhabiting a tomb. For del Sarto, the entrenchment afforded
by physical immobility leads to an irrevocable foreclosure of possibilities
and the shutting-down of the spiritualself.
Walls of Failure
The first metaphoric enclosures wherein Andrea del Sarto has

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
496 / VICTORIAN POETRY

ensconced himself are the rooms of failure.6 Del Sarto has designed the
walls of his psychic house by adhering to the plans outlined in the blue-
prints of dereliction and dishonesty:
My fatherand my motherdied of want.
Well, had I richesof my own? you see
How one gets rich! Let each one bearhis lot.
They were born poor,lived poor,and poor they died:
And I have labouredsomewhatin my time
And not been paid profusely.Some good son
Paint my two hundredpictures- let him try!
No doubt, there'ssomethingstrikesa balance. (11.250-257)

Guilty of patricide and matricide through willful neglect, del Sarto carries
the disassociation of event and feeling even further:in seeking to justify his
actions, he melts down important categorical distinctions. Del Sarto dis-
solves the bordersbetween action and reflection and dismisses what should
have been the emotional shock of a failed familial obligation by re-encod-
ing it with the unsophisticated rhetoric of a rationalized declaration. His
actions and his subsequent structuralizinginterpretation of those actions
allow him to hollow out a niche in the actuality of the lived moment. Like a
crawfish skittering backwards,he retreats into the estranged seclusion of a
self-fashioned orphanhood. In this domain of disconnection, del Sarto can
do little more than spout explanatoryand excusatory statements which are
rooted neither in deeds nor in sympathetic understanding. Unlike Albert
Camus, for example, who suggested that "aman is more a man through the
things he keeps to himself than through the things he says,"7del Sarto keeps
little to himself and demonstrates that his manhood is all in his mouth. His
violation of filial bonds, underscored by the inflection and implication of
volition, comprises a distorted linguistic frieze- one which occupies a cen-
tral place on his darkest wall of failure.
Implicit in del Sarto's abrogationof the responsibilityof blood is con-
tinual deflection and sublimation. As a kind of surrogateson to his patron,
King Francis, del Sarto dishonored him and the relationship with him by
embezzling his money: "The very wrong to Francis!- it is true / I took his
coin, was tempted and complied, / And built this house and sinned, and all
is said" (11.247-249). For del Sarto, the act of admitting the truth of his
life's overt text at the expense (or the ignore-ance) of the subtext sustains
and reinforces the borders of his twilight existence. The occasion of fail-
ure- this time of honor- operates as another instance through which he
successfully shunts the world and its demands. On a literal level, he cannot
leave his house for fear of Francis'men, and on a metaphorical plane, he
cannot assume responsibilityfor his own shadowy impulses. As his moral
culpabilityis magnified- with Francis'coin jingling in his pocket, he might

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITH POLETTE/ 497

have forestalled his parents' unnecessary deaths- del Sarto redirects feel-
ing into thinking and subsumes both in the vague linguistics of causal pas-
sivity: "I ... was tempted . . . and all is said."The money, stolen and with-
held, becomes a peculiar method of construction and substitution, and del
Sarto uses it to rupture the relational fabricof being-in-the -world. By trad-
ing the potential long-term profits of integration for the quick returns of
heartless detachment, del Sarto establishes a zone of unremitting disjunc-
ture which becomes a barrierof almost limitless proportions.
Additionally, by allowing himself to be seduced by Lucrezia,del Sarto
transformshimself from betrayerand thief into a domestic, financial trans-
actor (or trans-actor), and utilizes the king's money to invest further in
failure as both husband and artist. Living in the house he built at Lucrezia's
behest and content to purchaseher time and attention, del Sarto has settled
into a posture of uxoriousness: "I'llwork then for your friend'sfriend, never
fear . . . accept too his own price, / And shut the money into this small hand
/ When next it takes mine" (11.5-9). Del Sarto's willing subordination sug-
gests that he actually enjoys a vicarious identification with Lucrezia'serotic
activities, for he refers to her as "Myface, my moon, my everybody'smoon,
/ Which everybody looks on and calls his, / And, I suppose, is looked on by
in turn" (11.29-31). If Lucreziais moon, then del Sarto must see himself as
sun (and ironically perhaps, son). As del Sarto's lunar object, she orbits
from his drab rooms to the world beyond and back again, and del Sarto
masochisticallysavors his role in this nightly ritual of the betrayer-betrayed.
In this role, del Sarto subtly uses Lucrezia's"face"(which he calls "myface")
as his chief means of commerce, or medium of reflection and transaction,
with the outside world by passivelyparticipatingin the delivery of her goods
and services.
Moreover, del Sarto's questions to Lucrezia about her nocturnal ad-
ventures are not queries for information, but verbal prods which stimulate
his own fantasy-production:"How could you ever prick those perfect ears"
(1.27) (here images of sex and the reception of sound subtly interpenetrate),
and "Ah, but what does he, /The Cousin! what does he to please you more?"
(11.242-243). The payment del Sarto receives for such allowances stems
from his own pain-inducing imagination: in deferring,that is, by not admit-
ting the answer to his own question, del Sarto frees himself to enact imagi-
natively the love scene between Lucrezia and the Cousin. By envisioning
and structuringthis psycho-erotic scene, one which carriesthe hint of sym-
bolic incest, del Sarto finds a way to direct and control, and thus more fully
relish, the drama of self-deceit. The exquisite currency which del Sarto
receives as payment is the self-styled victim's inversion of power: to con-
struct his life in such a way so as to obliterate any chance of entertaining or
admitting the reality of anyone or anything that does not contribute

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
498 / VICTORIANPOETRY

substantiallyto his own egomanicalimage of self-as-sufferer.While del Sarto

fails as husband, he succeeds as a kind of emotional money-changer who
delights in the deficits which he secretly forces others to inflict upon him
because he refuses to initiate a meaningful or mutually profitableexchange
with either his wife or the world.
Del Sarto'simpatiencewith, and fearof, the enduringobligationswhich
would connect him to people and things also establishes the foundation for
his failure as an artist. Even though he had perfected a flawless technique,
del Sarto could not sustain a correspondingtranscendent vision. He says of
his art, "All is silver-grey/ Placid and perfect with my art" (11.98-99), and of
other artists, "Thereburns a truer light of God in them" (1.79). Because he
only paints, as he says, from "myselfand to myself (1.90), he has trapped
himself in an empty, constricting loop where art is divorced from craft and
where a transpersonal vitality will never inflame a limited, idiosyncratic
talent. In opting for the perfection of finitude's immediate forms, which are
the debased and debasing variations of the theme of Lucrezia,del Sarto has
sequestered himself from a more radical kind of seeing. Immersed in alter-
nating pools of sentimentality and its twin, emotional self-brutality,del Sarto
exists between a tension of opposites that splits his being. Unable to find a
way of reconciling each to each, he resigns himself to painting figureswith-
out fault while knowing that his brush will never be quickened by any vi-
sion other than the common and profane property of Lucrezia'sface and
body. By refusing to reach beyond his grasp to touch the vivifying mystery
of dynamicism, del Sarto has reduced himself to painting pictures of husks
without souls and has consigned himself to leading a lackluster life inside
the walls of failure where hope has dwindled and died.
Girdledby tangible walls of brick in his "melancholy"house, del Sarto
is further surroundedby his four failures- as son, as a man of honor, as a
husband, and as an artist- which form an interlocking quaternity of im-
penetrable, psycho-static walls.

Walls of Awareness
The ache of del Sarto's solitary confinement is heightened by the
emerging contours of self-awareness.He anguishes over what he might have
been when his life was still an open field of possibilities. The knowledge of
his own defections is a whetstone upon which he sharpens his self-pity. As
he acknowledges his shallow choices, his duplicities, and his false aspira-
tions, he creates another structurewherein he regretfullywallows. Beneath
the weight of this regressive inertia, del Sarto becomes further caught in a
constricting screen of words.
Del Sarto grants a passing nod to his own ignominy because he

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITH POLETTE/ 499

cannot deny the treachery which he directed against his parents and King
Francis.He also acknowledges the fact that he will never rise to the stature
of Rafael. He realizes, however, that the full weight of these self-disclosures
would be more than the veneer of his fictional self could endure. Thus he
weaves and bobs in an attempt to dodge the reality that his words might
contain and reveal. Moreover,when he says he cannot feel the "truerlight
of God" in the "brain"or "Heart"(11.79, 81) and that he cannot "Reach. . .
a heaven that's shut" (1.84), he concedes that his is a craftsman'sart, one
which accommodates neither genius nor passion. The consequence of this
concession is, however, an immediate rerouting of disconnective propensi-
ties: he attacks Rafael'spainting- "That arm is wronglyput" (1.111)- and
then blames Lucreziafor his inability to infuse sufficient life into his flaw-
lessly mediocre work: "Hadyou . . . given me soul, / We might have risen to
Rafael"(11.118-119). Unable to extricate himself from being possessed and
directed by puerile energies, half of del Sarto helplesslywatches as the other
half participates in widening the distance between inner and outer worlds.
Rather than offer a complete portrait of his own stultifying, bipolar
condition, del Sarto attempts to smear the distinctions between them by
using the language of duplicity and misdirection. At the outset of the poem,
he says to Lucrezia:
shouldyou let me sit
Here by the windowwith your hand in mine
And look a half-hourforth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as marriedpeople use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrowto my work
Cheerfuland freshas ever. (11.14-19)
Here del Sarto says one thing, but means another. Through a mode of deli-
cately aggressiveblackmail, he offers Lucreziahis hand but pushes her away
with his words. He knows she will not stay, but formulatesan illusion which
validates his actual intent. Del Sarto sidesteps the real issue by intimating
that the happy completion of his art, and the subsequent payment for it,
conditionally rests on the fantasy of a half-hour of matrimonial and mental
unity. In this deft maneuver, del Sarto shatters his own proffered bargain
and avoids having to confront his colorless talent in the morning.
Coupled with the cognizance that he can discern no method of inter-
vention between a fading existence and an untouchable essence are del
Sarto's false aspirations.He has exuberant dreams of glory: "Live for fame,
side by side with Agnolo! / Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!" (11.130-
131). But the colors on this particularcanvas fade under scrutiny. He also
conjures a paradisiacalpicture of the "Fourgreat walls in the New Jerusa-
lem, / Meted on each side by the angel's reed, / For Leonard,Rafael, Agnolo

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
500 I VICTORIANPOETRY

and me" (11.261-263). Both pictorial facades, however, dissolve like water-
colors in a heavy rain: "stillthey [Leonardo,Angolo, and Rafael] overcome
/ Because there's still Lucrezia,- as I choose" (11.265-266). And del Sarto
briefly and dimly apprehends that his dream is a two-dimensional tale told
by an artistic incompetent, full of light and splendor,but ultimately signify-
ing nothing.
His final awarenessis of a regret that stings with a certain acuity, the
glory he says he almost grasped in France: "I surely then could sometimes
leave the ground, / Put on the glory, Rafael'sdaily wear,I ... A good time,
was it not, my kingly days?" (11.151-165). Yet he relinquished his regal
position to skulk home to Lucrezia'sheart while clutching a handful of pil-
fered money. Because del Sarto understood that his art was not imbued
with the divine refulgence of Rafael's, he bolted after embezzling the only
things which he knew would shine for him in the lurid light of Lucrezia's
eyes: the coins of the king.
The effects of del Sarto's half-acknowledged awareness of his own
self-destructive tendencies are indolence and passivity. Consequently, del
Sarto is plagued by the pain of a personal and artistic incapacity to sustain
purposeful action and to meet challenges without swerving. Such effects
are expressed with the tone of sullen resentment, an emotion which ob-
structs further consciousness of the self's circuits by operating as a mental
dam. In Kierkegaard'sdescription of such a posture, we can glimpse the
double-thrust of del Sarto's walled-in and walled-out way of life:
He triesto keep his own condition in the darkby diversionsand other means . . . though
again in such a way that he is not altogetherclear that he is doing it to keep himselfin
the dark. Or perhapshe even realizeshe is doing this in order to immersethe soul in
darkness,does it with a certainperspicacityand shrewdcalculation,with psychological
insight, but in a deepersense does not fullyrealizewhat he is doing, how despairinghis
behavioractuallyis, etc. Forin fact there is in all obscurityand ignorancea dialectical
interplayof knowledgeand will, and one may make mistakesin tryingto understanda
personif one stressesonly knowledgeor only will. (pp. 78-79)
For del Sarto, the "dialecticalinterplay of knowledge and will" mani-
fests itself in his egocentric attempt to secure himself a safe place within the
walls of his house and to divert the awareness of his own interior
misalignments which is steadily rising within him. Such an effort, however,
results in the unconscious construction of another set of barriersin the
ever-widening mandala of his self-exclusion.

The Wallsof the MasculineArena

Overshadowing all of del Sarto's rhetoric is his assertion that he had
not necessarily chosen his life, but that God had forced his fate upon him.

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITHPOLETTE/50J

Del Sarto does not understand, as Camus tells us, that "a fate is not a pun-
ishment" (p. 55), and unconsciously aligns himself with Job by offering a
report of life as a sentence of forced labor: "we are in God's hand. / How
strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; / So free we seem, so fettered
fast we are!" (11.49-51). And later, "God, I conclude, compensates, pun-
ishes" (1. 141). Del Sarto'simplication is clear: he believes that he has been
pitched into hell's isolation by an Old Testament jailkeeper.By espousing a
victim- centered theology, del Sarto strives to convince himself that hell is
the gray existence which a divinely demonic playwright has scripted for
him. Del Sarto's theology fails, however, because it does not admit the pos-
sibility that hell is the self-induced spiritualvoid in himself where nothing
connects with nothing.
Fantasizingfurther that he has been pummelled into place by the di-
rective of a supremelymasculine God, del Sarto, through the application of
his own version of Ramisticlogic, cannot defend himself againstother imagi-
nal pugilists. A life predicated on universal defeat, one ordered and ar-
rangedby sacred sanctions ("Godover-rules"),must then admit lesser types
of the same. Delimiting himself as one of the "half-men,"del Sarto employs
a diminished method of defense against what he conceives of as competi-
tion with the likes of Rafael, King Francis, and the Cousin: the shrill lan-
guage of personal unaccountability and immature fault-finding. Del Sarto
has no mettle to prove in this space which is seeded with the dangerous
possibilities of multiple masculine confrontations.
At best, for example, del Sarto can make an unconvincing attempt to
erase and rechalk Rafael's "wrong"arm, to attack a part, an extremity,
because the whole is too large to eradicate. Or he can hide, defeated and
fearful, and hope for the King's future forgiveness- an act which seems as
unlikely to occur as a divine dispensation which would grant him one of the
walls of "New Jerusalem."Or he can offer Lucrezia modest payments for
her time and empty pleas for her attention, but when alerted by the Cousin's
sharp whistle, which signals the entrance of a vital, physical presence, he
must end his contentions and retreat into sullen silence.
Taking refuge behind another series of self-willed walls, del Sarto en-
acts the double part of protagonist-antagonist.Walling himself in in a world
of martial, marital, and emotional collapse, he, in turn, walls out the world
of creative, spiritual attainment.8In the quiet chaos of self-inflicted defeat
and the accompanying defensive denials, del Sarto directs his energies to-
ward the erection of an additional set of borders which protect him from
encountering any form of masculine energy.

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
502 I VICTORIANPOETRY

Walls of Lucrezia
Feelingvanquishedby men both naturallyand supernaturally,del Sarto
amplifies the resulting split in sensibility even furtherby immersing himself
in a woman's world.9By assigning a variety of roles to Lucrezia- Madonna,
wife, objet d'art, and temptress- which gather together in the poem as im-
ages and symptoms of his own falsity and failure, del Sarto mentally fash-
ions a multifaceted caricatureupon whom he can project his soul's disaffec-
tions and disabilities.
Importantlyfor us, Henri Bergson writes: "The art of the caricaturist
lies in his ability to seize that frequently imperceptible movement, and to
make it visible for all to see by inflating it."10What del Sarto seizes and
magnifies is not necessarily an objectively recognized aspect of Lucrezia
herself, but rather his own subjectively felt limitations dilated and rendered
in an exaggeration of her likeness.
As the embodiment of sensuality,Lucreziais everything that del Sarto,
through a strict adherence to a shallow, fissured perspective, refuses to ac-
cept and experience. The zest with which she pursues carnal engagements
in the world finds its oppositional correspondence in his isolated ineffectu-
ality. Because he cannot deflate the inflation of self-imprisoningdespair,he
likewise cannot moderate the hyperbolic accusations which he directs to-
wards Lucrezia:"So- still they [Rafael,Agnolo, and Leonardo] overcome /
because there's still Lucrezia- as I choose" (11.265-266); to which we are
invited to add, "As God, who over-rules,forcedme to choose.1'
Such a choice on del Sarto's part is not without further irony. As
model for his paintings of the Madonna- "the other's Virgin was his wife"
(1.179)- Lucrezia,is at best, a dubiousone; for del Sarto, however, Lucrezia
is a kind of virgin. In being usurpedby the Cousin, he intimates that he and
Lucreziano longer enjoy sexual relations. As such, she is wife to del Sarto in
name only; in actuality, she is more wife to the world than she is, or will be,
to him. And as his art is a faultless replication of external reality- he does
not and cannot draw from internal visions as do Rafael and Agnolo- it
must also subtly, but exactly, reveal Lucrezia'sworldly focused attitudes
and inclinations. Even though del Sarto mentally and verballycaricaturizes
Lucrezia'sphysical perfection, he is too impotent to spiritualize it.11This
kind of imaginative malaise, bound and directed by a self-induced craving
for affect only, is described by William Lynch in Christ and Apollo as an
attitude which desires
to touch the finite as lightlyas possiblein orderto rebound,not into a quick eternityof
beauty, but back into the self. [The] aim is to create states of affectivity,areasof para-
dise, ordersof feelingwithin the self. . . . Intensifiedor orderedsubjectivityis the goal of
this attitude; again the means are the exploitation, the manipulation, distortion,

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITH POLETTE / 503

or reduction o{ the real. ... Its disdain or impatience with the world is implicit in its
images; there is no confrontation of reality.12

Unwilling and unable to confront the reality of Lucrezia, del Sarto

likewise never offers a complete description of her, but only selected parts:
But had you- oh, with the same perfectbrow,
And perfecteyes, and more than perfectmouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler'spipe, and followsto the snare-
Had you, with these same, but broughta mind! (11.122-126)
This languageanticipatescubismby accenting the culled details of a glimpsed
object which are lifted out of context and then re-inserted onto the flat-
tened space of del Sarto's lifeless, mental canvas. Additionally, by thrice
intoning the imageless word, "perfect,"del Sarto effectively strips it of ref-
erential meaning. In the process, he severs adjective from noun and turns a
human being into a partiallyrealized,but idealized, abstraction.Such think-
ing points to the ruptureof person and world by using the language of mere
commodity: words that separate the world into a thing-partially-observed
and a thing-poorly-described.Particularitiesdo arise in del Sarto'slanguage,
but only in syntactic self-referencewhen he imagines the destructive mind-
lessness of his life lived as a less-than-human being where the other is a
tempting trap and the self is the prey ensnared.
Seeing the world, and his marriage,as what Martin Buber calls an "I-
It" composition,13del Sarto is easily beguiled by Lucrezia's "serpentining
beauty." Del Sarto is desperate for, but terrified of, an "I-Thou"relation-
ship. As a result he has allowed himself to be seduced by the imagined
perfection of form which masks the stagnation of an inner emptiness; and
in this case, the interior zero registersas del Sarto's own. Consequently, he
tells Lucreziaat the end of the poem to "Go, my love," (which may also be
a command directed towardhis own emotions) and exercises the only choice
he has left himself: rather than admit his culpability in his own self-be-
trayal, he must send away the caricaturedvessel into which he has child-
ishly poured his anger and his guilt.
We turn to Kierkegaardfor a final delineation of how far someone
like del Sarto has removed himself from the realm of meaningful relations:

The immediateperson (in so far as immediacycan occur entirelywithout reflection) is

specifiableonly as soul ... in immediatecontinuityof the temporaland the worldly,in
immediatecontinuitywith . . . the Other,and it presentsonly an illusoryappearanceof
having something eternal in it. Thus the self coheres immediatelywith the Other-
desiring,craving,enjoying,etc., yet passively;even in its cravingthis self is in the dative
case, as the child's"me."Its dialectic is: the pleasantand the unpleasant;its concepts:
good fortune,misfortune,fate Whateverbrings[the immediateself] to despairmust
come fromthe outside, and the despairis merepassivity.That which for the immediate

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
504 I VICTORIANPOETRY

person is his whole life or, providedhe has a modicumof reflection, that part of it to
which he is peculiarlyattached, is snatched away from him by "a stroke of fate." In
short, he has, as he says,suffereda misfortune;his immediacyreceivessuch a jolt that it
is unable to reproduceitself:he despairs,(pp. 81-82)
A twilight isolatotwitching with the jolt of "fated"despair,del Sarto
whines that he has been wounded by woman. Contending that his "misfor-
tune" is rooted in Lucrezia'sbeguilement and emotional abuse, del Sarto is,
however, not skilled enough at verbal sleight-of-hand to hide the fact that
his adversityis self-scripted and self-inflicted. His yearning, and his failure,
to transform Lucrezia'sprofane sensuality into the Madonna's transcen-
dent sanctity certainly suggests that he is repelled by matters of flesh in
general and by sexuality in particular.By striving to revise and recreate that
which he fears and abhors, del Sarto manufactures a psychological barri-
cade which disrupts the intimate distance between spirituality and
instinctuality. In his refusal to accept, grasp, or balance the numinous and
the corporeal, del Sarto succeeds in walling himself away from the unreal-
ized harmonizingpropertiesof his own body and soul.
Unlike an artist of an earlierRenaissance,Dante, who consciously and
courageouslypenetrated the circles of hell for the sake of a Beatific vision,
del Sarto has unconsciously cast himself into his own expansive, concentric
underworld where he is confronted and stymied by the fleshy images of
Lucreziawhich he has conjured, but which he is unable to synthesize: Ma-
donna, wife, objet d'art, and temptress. These disparateimages are the last
in a succession of unyielding cinctures which comprise the outer limits of
del Sarto's multi-dimensional complex of metaphoric walls.
Having immuredhimself within a "faultless"system of walls, del Sarto
is possessed by self-generated daemons and dwells in his own private hell.
As the single and central occupant of this devilish design of default and
defeat, del Sarto becomes an incarnationalillustrationof one of Browning's
chief themes: the secession of sense from sensibility. What remains of del
Sarto after his numerous secessions from both the deep self and the world
may be likened to a living cadaver quartered in a multi-sided emotional
tomb. In his death-in-life configuration which has resulted from his pro-
gressive wall-erecting secessions, we can see that del Sarto will certainly
never gain one of the walls of the "New Jerusalem." In place of a heavenly
wall, del Sarto will most likely secure himself a place among the ranks of
"The Sullen" in Circle Five of Dante's Inferno where he may indeed make
their bitter motto his own:
Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun;
in the gloryof his shining our heartspoured
a bittersmoke. Sullen were we begun;
sullen we lie foreverin this ditch.14

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITHPOLETTE/505

Because del Sarto could only attain and sustain a "sullen"and "weak-
eyed" perception of the structuralizingdynamics which inform his self-ex-
patriating tendencies, he projected them into (and surroundedhimself by)
the imaginatively altered forms of Lucrezia, the masculine world, his own
self-awareness, and his failures. As a result of such myopic imagining, he
has walled himself in a metaphoric realm which imprisons him and which
he dreads exiting. In turn, he has walled out the world beyond by opting for
the illusion of safety in physical sequestration. Housed inside this mandala-
like series of inert, life-sapping structures, del Sarto yearns for succor and
solace but only succeeds in finding a pernicious, self-fashioned fate from
which he cannot escape: to suffera ceaseless shrivelingof the soul where he
thought no soul was.15

Notes

1 The term "creativedefault"suggeststhat Andrea del Sarto is unable to engage the

kind of artistic energies that RobertBrowningdescribesas being able to "put the
infinite into the finite" (William Raymond, "The Infinite Moment," in Robert
BrowningsPoetry,ed. JamesLoucks [New York: Norton, 1979], p. 502). Conse-
quently,del Sarto'sworkis static and does not contain or convey the kind of "efflu-
ence" that Browningdiscusses in his "IntroductoryEssay to the Letters of Percy
Bysshe Shelley" (RobertBrowningsPoetry).Moreover,del Sarto indeed may be a
man who is trappedin immediateknowledgeand only knows, as William Barrett
suggests, "one thing at the cost of not knowing something else" (IrrationalMan
[New York:Doubleday, 1985] p. 39). Additionally,in Livesof the Most Eminent
PaintersSculptorsandArchitects,trans.Mrs.JonathonFoster(London,1890), Giorgo
Vasaridescribesdel Sarto as an ineffectualartist.Finally,it is clear fromJacobKorg
(RobertBrowning[Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1983]) and Dougald B. McEachen
("Browning'sUse of his Sources in Andrea del Sarto,'"VP 8 [1970]: 61-64) that
even thoughBrowninghad readVasari'saccountof del Sarto'slife, he did not merely
seek to reconstructthe personageof the Renaissancepainter,but attemptedto give
an intimatehumanaccount of the experience- the lived causesand effects- of del
Sarto'sartistic,emotional, and spiritualfailures.
2 GeorgeGriffith,"Andreadel Sarto'and the New Jerusalem,"VP 15 (1977): 371.
3 All citationstaken fromRobertBrowning:thePoems,ed. JohnPettigrewand Thomas
J. Collins (New Haven: YaleUniv. Press, 1981).
4 Del Sarto finds his existence to be one where, in Schopenhauer'swords, pain is
dominant:"Weonly observethat days of our life were happyafterthey have given
place to unhappyones" (TheWillToLive,trans.RichardTaylor[New York:Frederick
Unger Publishers,1967], p. 201).
5 S0ren Kierkegaard,The SicknessUnto Death, trans. Alastair Hannay (New York:
PenguinBooks, 1989), p. 78.
6 Ian Jack suggests that "Andreadel Sarto"is a "studyin failure, and the tone is
correspondinglymuted"(Browning andItaly[Oxford:ClaredonPress,1973], p. 224).
Robert Pearsall argues that "Andreadel Sarto" is a poem of "degeneration and

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
506 I VICTORIANPOETRY

failure"and labelsdel Sarto as a beaten masochistwho is completely"unmanned"

by his failings and his longing for domestic fidelity (RobertBrowning[New York:
Twayne, 1974], p. 79). In "Andrea,Raphael,and the Movement of Andrea del
Sarto,'"MP 81 (1983): 38-46, Allen C. Dooley suggeststhat del Sartostruggleswith
his own personaland artisticsituation. In Poetryand Repression: Revisionism
from
Blaketo Stevens(New Haven:YaleUniv. Press,1976), HaroldBloomstates that the
most importantaspect of del Sarto'sfailureas an artiststems fromhis purposeless-
ness or ennui, two maladieswhich he saysRobertBrowningalso wrestledwith. John
Woolfordstates that a "transaction" of simplecommercewhereindel Sartoexchanges
money for Lucrezia'ssmiles markshim as a failure (Browningthe Revisionary[New
York:St. Martin'sPress, 1988], p. 113).
7 Albert Camus, The Mythof Sisyphusand OtherEssays,trans.Justin O'Brien (New
York:RandomHouse, 1955), p. 63.
8 WalterOng informsus that an importantaspectof male insecurity,one which may
help us understanddel Sarto'sseclusion,is the tendencyto become a loner (Fighting
for Life [Amherst:Univ. of MassachusettsPress, 1989], pp. 67-68, 80-83). This
tendency becomes for del Sarto a way of disengagingfrom an environmentwhere
conflict is bound and joined.
9 Criticismis richwith referencesto Lucreziaandherfunctionin the poem.E.Warwick
Slinn holds that Lucreziais a "meansof indicatinghow [del Sarto's]limited imagi-
nation is related to the essential stasis of his self-conception" (Browningand the
Fictionsof Identity[Totowa:Barnesand Noble, 1982], p. 62). Constance W Hassett
asserts that Lucreziaplays the role of del Sarto's "artisticnemesis"and that "his
confession to her is an act of aggression"(The ElusiveSelf in the Poetryof Robert
Browning[Athens:Ohio Univ. Press, 1982], p. 92). Ian Jack says that because del
Sarto "livesin the eye,"he is held prisonerby the "beautyof Lucrezia'sbody,"and
that Lucreziais "reminiscentof the serpentwho led to the Fall of Man" (Browning
and Italy [Oxford:ClaredonPress, 1973], pp. 227-228). Echoingthis note is Roma
King,Jr.,who tells us in "Eveand the Virgin"(RobertBrowning'sPoetry,ed. James
Loucks [New York:Norton, 1979]) that LucreziarepresentsEve and also playsthe
role of the serpentwho corruptedEve. Norton B. Crowellarguesthat "Lucreziawas
and remainsthe greatcauseof [delSarto's]ruin"(A Reader'sGuideto RobertBrown-
ing [Albuquerque:Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1972], p. 170). Crowellfurtheras-
serts that del Sarto chose Lucreziaas a kind of punishmentfor his lack of moral
responsibility.
10 Henri Bergson, he Rire(Paris:PressesUniversitairede France, 1969), p. 4.
11 Aldo Carotenutostates that impotence is quite often a "radicalway of refusinga
relationshipin which the male feels overwhelmed"(TheVerticalLabyrinth[Toronto:
Inner City Books, 1981], p. 57). By adopting a position of impotence, del Sarto,
ironically,is able to asserthimselfthroughacts of negation.
12 WilliamLynch, ChristandApollo (New York:Mentor-OmegaBooks, 1963), p. 24.
13 MartinBuber,I andThou,trans. RonaldGregorSmith (NewYork:CharlesScribner's
Sons, 1958).
14 Dante Alighieri,The Inferno,trans.JohnCiardi(New York:New AmericanLibrary,
1954), 11.121-124.
15 C. G. Jung writes: "A modern mandalais an involuntaryconfession of a peculiar
mental condition"(Psychology andReligion[New Haven:YaleUniv. Press, 1938], p.
99). He adds:"As a rule a mandalaoccurs in conditions of psychicdissociationor

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 KEITHPOLETTE/507

disorientation,forinstance ... in adultswho . . . are confrontedwith the problemof

oppositesin humannature. . . . [The mandala]compensatesthe disorderand con-
fusion of the psychicstate- namely throughthe constructionof a central point to
which everythingis related,or by a concentricarrangementof the disorderedmulti-
plicity and of contradictoryand irreconcilableelements. This is evidently an at-
tempt at self-healingon the part of Nature, which does not springfrom conscious
reflectionbut froman instinctiveimpulse"(MandalaSymbolism,trans.R. F.C. Hull
[Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press,1959], pp. 3-4). In del Sarto'scase, however,no
such self-healingtranspires;rather,a progressivepsycho-spiritualmeltdownensues.

This content downloaded from 138.73.1.36 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:19:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions