Vapours and fumes, damps and qualms: Windy passions in the early-modern age (1600 – 1800)
2006; Routledge; Volume: 87; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00138380500490744
ISSN1744-4217
Autores Tópico(s)Humor Studies and Applications
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1.1.190 – 4, 62. 2Homer, 1.105, 25. 3This is an example of my cutting corners: besides the theory of humours there were alternative theories of disease. For a general introduction see Temkin; and Siraisi. 4In his poem “The Dissolution” John Donne enumerates his bodily elements as follows: “My fire of passion, sighs of air, / Water of tears, and earthly sad despair, / Which my materials be” (Donne, 52, lines 9 – 11). 5See Titus Andronicus 2.3.31 – 3. In The History of Leonora, Henry Fielding describes the hapless Horatio: “His temper was of the saturnine complexion” (Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 111, bk. 2, chap. 4). 6Anderson, 31, n. 10. The terms complexion and humour changed meaning around the beginning of the eighteenth century. Complexion took on the meaning of skin hue and especially facial skin hue. “Humour,” together with “wit,” became facetiousness, and “humorous” became the propensity to perceive and enjoy what is ludicrous or amusing. In the comedies of Ben Jonson we find the beginning of a shift in the meaning of humour from the bodily fluid to comicality. In 1695, when the two meanings were roughly equally valid, we find the highly interesting letter by William Congreve to John Dennis in which Congreve uses the two meanings almost indiscriminately (Congreve, 360 – 7). 7Temkin, 102. 8Beverwijck, Schat der Gesontheyt, 197 – 8, vol. 1, bk. 4, chap. 18. See: “seed retained overlong in the body was subject to corruption. Semen then became an irritant that required expulsion, failing which it produced vapors that could debilitate the faculties of the brain in a way paralleling the assault of the noxious vapors of adust bile” (Beecher and Ciavolella, 91). This idea can be traced via The Vademecum of Albucasis (written before 1009) and the fourth book of Galen's On the Affected Parts, to the Problems (XXX, I, 953B) of pseudo-Aristotle. 9Babb, 131, n. 31. 10Wine, or rather the alcohol in it, significantly termed “spirit” (Othello 2.3.273 – 4: “O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!”), was considered to contain surplus “air.” This air was thought to induce both melancholy and lust (pseudo-Aristotle, Problems, XXX, 1, 953B, 26 – 7; 955A, 35 – 6). See: “Now, Mrs Honour had unluckily poured so much of this liquid fire [punch] down her throat, that the smoke of it began to ascend into her pericranium, and blinded the eyes of reason which is there supposed to keep her residence, while the fire itself from the stomach easily reached the heart, and there inflamed the noble passion of pride” (Fielding, Tom Jones, 539, bk. 11, chap. 8). As late as 1902 William James described drunkenness as “being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the stomach” (James, 403). A further example of the association of “air” and lust is provided by the Pythagorean prohibition on eating beans. The eating of beans was forbidden by Pythagoras because, as reported by Plutarch and Cicero, they provoked lust. See for example: “wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!” (Empedocles, 289); lust and air or vapours were also directly linked by John Wilmot Earl of Rochester: “Vapours from idleness or loose desire” (Rochester, 110, 1.1.308); “But Claudia, why this sitting up all night / In groves by purling streams? / This argues heat, / Great heat and vapours, which are main corrupters. / Mark when you will, your ladies that have vapours, / They are not flinchers. / That insulting spleen / Is the artillery of powerful Lust” (ibid., 131, 3.3.7 – 12). 11Wack, 12 – 13. 16Hippocrates, 239. 12 Venus and Adonis 387 – 8: “Affection is a coal that must be cool'd; Else, suffer'd, it will set the heart on fire.” 13Thomas Elyot considered some humours to be of a vaporous nature themselves: “Of humours some are more grosse and colde, some are subtyl and hot, and are called vapours” (Elyot, 53). This shows the multifarious and sometimes confusing use of the concepts within the theory of humours. 14Wack, 50. 15 Sonnet CXLVII 1: “My love is as a feaver”; Venus and Adonis 149: “Love is a spirit all compact of fire.” 17Plutarch described this case in Demetrius and Antony, 274 – 75. Henry Fielding used the same idea in Tom Jones: “‘You blush, my dear Sophia. Ah! child, you should read books, which would teach you a little hypocrisy, which would instruct you how to hide your thoughts a little better.’ ‘I hope, madam,’ answered Sophia, ‘I have no thoughts which I ought to be ashamed of discovering.’ ‘Ashamed! no,’ cries the aunt, ‘I don't think you have any thoughts which you ought to be ashamed of; and yet, child, you blushed just now when I mentioned the word loving. […] Nay, nay, do not blush again. I tell you it is a passion you need not be ashamed of.’” (Fielding, Tom Jones, 265 – 6, bk. 6, chap. 5). In fact, it is hard not to divulge a passion: Ulysses states: “There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip; / Nay, her foot speaks. / Her wanton spirits look out / At every joint and motive of her body” (Troilus and Cressida 4.5.55 – 7); Olivia concedes: “Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide” (Twelfth Night 3.1.157); and Polixenes presumes “I saw his heart in 's face” (The Winter's Tale 1.2.446). On the other hand, a passion that is not there may also be feigned, thus Leonato comments on Beatrice: “There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it” (Much Ado About Nothing 2.3.110 – 12). 18The same idea was conveyed by Robert Southwell (1561 – 95): “Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke” (Southwell, 15, line 19). And Philip Sidney wrote on sighing: “Breathe out the flames which burn within my heart” (Sidney, 179, strophe 28, line 13). 19Laurence Babb noted (Babb, 15, n. 60): “Fortunately the sighs and lamentations which usually accompany grief lessen the danger of its proving fatal: ‘For howsoeuer griefe shutteth vp the heart … yet by groning, sighing, and weeping, least being wholly shut vp with sorrow it should be stifled’” (Primaudaye, 468). On the other hand Shakespeare wrote: “[a] heart in love with sighs himself doth smother” (Sonnet XLVII 4). Abraham Cowley, too, maintained that sighing could kindle the flames: “Hee sigh'd, as if they'd coole his torment's ire, / When they alas, did blow the raging fire” (Cowley, 18, strophe 49, line 5). This is another illustration of the sometimes contradictory ideas within the theory of humours. 20 Euery man in his Humour, 5.3.344 – 8 (Jonson, 286). 21Beecher and Ciavolella, 115. See: Titus Andronicus 2.3.33: “cloudy melancholy”; “that mist which dims the intellects of mortals” (Fielding, Tom Jones, 608, bk. 13, chap. 1). 22It is not by chance that blushes can be “quenched” (The Winter's Tale 4.4.60 – 1: “Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself”; Venus and Adonis 49 – 50: “she with her tears / Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks”). See: The Squire's Tale 2.12 – 13: “Their heads were full of the fumosity / That causes dreams which are of no account” (Chaucer, 416); Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, 5.7.26.8: “the dampe of drouzie sleepe”; John Milton, Paradise Lost, 9.1049 – 51: “grosser sleep / Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams / Encumber'd”; John Dryden, All for Love, 1.1.38 – 9: “A foolish dream, / Bred from the fumes of indigested feasts / And holy luxury.” The fifteenth-century author, William Vaughan, had a practical solution for such fumes: “[…] let your night cappe haue a hole in the top, through which the vapour may goe out” (Vaughan, 253). In older texts, for example in Arabic commentaries, the growth of hair, especially that of the beard, armpits, and pubic area was ascribed to fumes. Konrad von Megenberg, a German compiler of the fourteenth century, wrote: “Der part an dem menschen bedäut mannes gesläht. er wechst von rauchiger überflüzzichait als daz hâr auf dem haupt, und ist grœzer part an den haizen mannen dann an den kalten dar umb, daz mêr dunsts und rauchs in den haizen ist wan in den kalten. iedoch vint man etleich frawen, die part habent oben an dem mund, und daz ist ain zaichen, daz si gar haizer nâtûr sint und gæchzornig” (Megenberg, 12). The association between the growth of facial hair and fumes, which nowadays seems rather far-fetched, can be traced at least as far back as Aristotle's Generation of Animals. I did not find this association in works from the early-modern age. 23 Volpone 2.2.106: “ill vapours of the spleene.” 24 King Lear 2.4.54 – 5: “O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio!” 25Wyatt, 5. 26Congreve, Semele, 1.1.32 – 7: “I can no longer hide my Passion; It must have Vent—Or inward burning will consume me.” 27Fielding, Tom Jones, 689, bk. 14, chap. 9: “After the first gust of her passion was a little over, which she declared, if she had not vented, would have burst her.” 29Daniel, 21. 30 Faerie Queene 4.12.8.6 – 9. 31Beverwijck, Schat der Gesontheyt, 118. 28 Faerie Queene 1.3.6.8 – 9: “Her hart gan melt in great compassion; / And drizling teares did shed for pure affection.” 32When we say: “I'm moved” do we really mean: “My spiritus (animalis) is moved”? “les passions de l'âme sont causées, entretenues et fortifiées par quelque mouvement des esprits” (Descartes, 109). The spirit or spirits have a natural motion (The Merchant of Venice 5.1.86: “The motions of his spirit are dull”) that the passions interfere with. In fact, the relationship between the terms “passion” (i.e. being moved), “action” (i.e. moving spontaneously, through the faculty of the will) and “motion” are worth closer scrutiny. 33Drayton, 28, line 282. 34 As You Like It 1.2.254. 35Fielding, Tom Jones, 303, bk. 7, chap. 2. 36On metaphorical and literal: Onians, 50, 76; Frye, “The Mythical Approach to Creation,” 239; Padel, 9 – 10, 27, 33 – 4, 36, 75 – 6, 86, 157 – 8. 37Padel, 3 – 10. 38It was thought that the eyes do not only passively receive light, but also actively emit spirit, damp, etcetera. Thus the eyes of one person could emit a very subtle substance that through the eyes reached the heart of another person: “angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, / Hath shot himself into me, like a flame; / Where, now, he flings about his burning heat, / As in a furnace, an ambitious fire / Whose vent is stopped” (Volpone 2.4.5 – 9). “On this he thanked me, with a sweetness perfectly agreeing with that of his features and eyes; the last now broad open, and eagerly surveying me, carried the sprightly fires they sparkled with directly to my heart” (Clelland, 73). This idea, which may be called the emanation-theory of vision, can be traced at least as far back as Alcmaeon and Empedocles, who were the first to treat it “scientifically.” It played an important role in medicine and literature until well into the modern age. As late as 1659 Niels Stensen wrote: “Pungent vapors are emitted by an eye so that they excavate spectacles. Thus the vapors from our body are sometimes stronger than nitric acid and other pungent substances” (Stensen, 57, §67). The superstitions concerning the evil eye and the basilisk are closely related with this idea. 39“Man nennt dies ‘Analogiedenken,’ aber offenbar liegt hier keine Analogie, sondern eine Gleichsetzung vor: Dünste und aufsteigender Rauch stören die Sicht direkt; das Sehen ist Beispiel für Wahrnehmung überhaupt. Es ist offenbar nicht gemeint, daß die Störungen durch schlechte Verdauung ‘wie Rauch’ wirken, sondern sie erzeugen einen rauchartigen Spiritus, der die Sicht trübt oder als Zorn zu starken Muskelbewegungen führt” (Putscher, 53). 40Babb, 154: “Elizabethan Englishmen think of passion as a physical state, or as a physical process. When love overpowers reason, flesh overpowers spirit, the subhuman element in human nature vanquishes the human. With this idea, Tamyra in Bussy D'Ambois, attempts to justify her unlawful love: ‘O, how can we […] / Disperse our passions’ fumes, with our weak labours, / That are more thick and black than all earth's vapours?'” 41 Hamlet 3.2.6 – 7: “in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion.” Samuel Daniel in his To Lady Margaret speaks similarly of “stormes of passion” (Daniel, 111). 42We also find terms that appear to be derived from water: drift, stream, torrent, current, flood, sluices, etc. “Our Passions are most like to Floods and streames” (Ralegh, 106). These terms can be understood, analogically, as referring to movements of the liquid phase or humor: “This honest, friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my passions” (Defoe, 271). Moreover, many more metaphors concerning the heart were in use: a heart could be golden, or someone could have a lion's heart, and so forth. Comparable “metaphor” existed in the classical Greek period (Padel, 81 – 8). This does not contradict the central idea of my thesis—the evolution of the term passion from literal to metaphorical use—but supplements it. 43When applying the term spirit to air we find that René Descartes proposed a similar idea: “[les passions de l'âme] sont causées par quelque mouvement particulier des esprits” (Descartes, 115). 44 Faerie Queene 3.8.26.4 – 5. 45 Faerie Queene 2.4.11.8: “the tempest of his passion.” 46 Henry IV (Part II) 1.1.165. 47 Astrophel and Stella 62.10. 48Ibid., 23.3. Sidney wrote Sonnet XXIV to the tune of a contemporary popular song called The smokes of Melancholy (Sidney, 153). 49 Henry IV (Part I) 2.3.57 – 61. 50 Love's Labour's Lost 1.2.116. 51 Much Ado About Nothing 4.1.109 – 11. 52In that case, is it possible that when the vapours and fumes interfere with the spiritus vitalis, it is a passion of the heart, and when, on the other hand, they interfere with the spiritus animalis, it is a passion of the mind? 53 Much Ado About Nothing 3.1.35 – 6. 54 Much Ado About Nothing 2.3.105 – 6. 55For an example in Dutch literature, see Seuntjens. 56Wittkower, 309. 57Nuland, 125. 58For the association of heart and furnace see for instance: Robert Southwell, “The burning Babe” (17): “My faultless breast the furnace is”; Henry Constable, Diana, 5.1.8 – 11: “Loue, a continuall fornace doth maintaine. A fornace, well this a fornace may be call'd, for it burnes inward, yeelds a smothering flame, sighes which like boyld leads smoking vapor scald”; As You Like It 2.7.148: “the Louer, / Sighing like Furnace.” 59Boy George, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, 1982: “In my heart the fire's burning.” 60Coe, 138. See: “the untamed passions that seethed in his breast” (Maugham, 447). 61Elton, 303: “[…] unlocking the door to her heart and letting the passion out.” 62Hardy, The Woodlanders, 231: “Winterborne's heart had swollen big and his eyes grown moist by this time.” 63 Venus and Adonis 554 – 5: “With blindfold fury she begins to forage; / Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil.” 64 The Merry Wives of Windsor 1.3.96: “My humour shall not cool.” 68“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” from the musical Roberta (1933), text by Otto Harbach, music by Jerome Kern. Sung by The Platters (1959). Otto A. Harbach (1873 – 1963), the composer of the lyrics, was a professor of English at Columbia University from 1895 till 1901. 65Beecher and Ciavolella, 115. 66 Henry VI (Part 2) 1.1.50 – 2. 67Dahl, 96. 69Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 138 – 9: “What a wicked worthless fellow he had been to give vent as he had done to an animal passion for a woman.” 70Penn, no. 271. 71Padel built on the work of many, for instance Richard B. Onians and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd. 72Frye, “Northrop Frye on Religion,” 25: “[…] nor were these conceptions metaphors to Homer, though they are metaphors to us.”
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