Emblematic ecstasy

Excerpt from the book 'Théâtre d'amour. The garden of love and its delights'. By Carsten-Peter Warncke

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In the Théâtre d'Amour, however, their place is taken by anonymous French verses which are not translations but commentaries in their own right. This was characteristic of publishing of the day, when book production was dominated by reprints, revised editions and compilations from earlier manuscripts given a new interpretation - by no means always authorized. This type of intellectual exchange, practised across national and linguistic boundaries, finds one of its finest expressions in the emblem literature of the 16th and 17th centuries. Its products also demonstrate a concept of wit and intellect quite different to the modern belief that originality lies in what has never been seen or known before. Holding sway in those days, by contrast, was the ideal of the "ingenious invention", the extraction of something new from what was familiar and established, and which consequently already held authority. This ideal also permeates the Théâtre d'Amour, which takes up many of the motifs and subjects found in earlier works of symbolism. In programmatic fashion, Heinsius begins with an emblem that is a variation upon another (fol. 7). Under the revealing motto Omnia vincit amor (Love conquers all) we see a mighty lion who, with Cupid at the reins, has been transformed into a meek mount for a boy. This is without question a reworking of the symbolic illustration of the power of love employed by Alciato. The accompanying text has also been changed, and just as with Alciato much thought has gone into the choice of an appropriate new motto. Omnia vincit amor is in fact a quotation from Virgil's eclogue (Bucolica, X, 69) and thus assumes a certain level of education on the part of the reader.

Tellingly designated a "jest" under the revised Badineriees title, this witty characterization of one of the many aspects of love thus quickly reveals itself as by no means shallow and superficial, but as a meaningful conversation between initiates sharing the same breadth of scholarship. Nor was this the first time that the Virgil quotation had been used to accompany an emblem. The same motto had already appeared in one of the earliest German books of emblems, published in Frankfurt am Main in 1581 by the German humanist Nikolaus Reusner. Virgil's lines here accompany a heavily-laden donkey symbolizing parental love: donkeys - according to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (Historia naturalis, VIII, 169) - are constantly alert to any danger threatening their young and will always protect them and save them from peril. The credit for interpreting the motto from a different angle cannot be given to Heinsius, however. In the border surrounding the emblem picture, the motto is followed by a Latin distich signed "H. Grotius". This signature points to none less than Hugo Grotius (actually Huig de Groot), the famous Dutch lawyer and father of international law, who was at that time one of Heinsius' close friends.

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