2 - In search of love's epistemology: affirming the role of the creative imagination

Summary

In his desire to give a higher meaning to the experience of love and to express the sublime effect it can have on his judgment and feelings, Scève was confronted by a fundamental artistic problem which he had to overcome. When he tried with the critical precision usually afforded by logic and reason to translate the wonderful infinity of love and its ability to transcend a whole world of human measurements, he did indeed end up frustrated and disappointed. There are many reasons for this impasse and they all seem to point in the same direction: Scève's higher poetic meaning, aesthetically centered on the beauty and infinite mystery of the sacred that is Délie, relies less on the brain than on the imagination for its ultimate portrayal and value. A central lesson that the poet is forced to learn is that Délie's “haulte value” (D275) – her “deité,” her “diuine beaulté” her “beaulté esmerueillable Idée” – cannot adequately be measured by human logic:

Tout iugement de celle infinité,

Ou tout concept se trouue superflus,

Et tout aigu de perspicuité

Ne pourroyent ioindre au sommet de son plus.

Car seulement l'apparent du surplus,

Premiere neige en son blanc souueraine,

Au pur des mains delicatement saine,

Ahontiroyt le nud de Bersabée:

Et le flagrant de sa suaue alaine

Apouriroyt l'odorante Sabée.

(D166)

Délie's ineffable qualities – her sacred beauty, perfection, and infinity – go beyond the limits of the poet's intellectual comprehension.