5 - Struggle, light, and love's “sainct lieu”

Summary

In this chapter, I wish to come back to Scève's so-called “darkness” and to the critical assessment of it which I presented in my introductory chapter. More than any other aspect of the Délie, this darkness has quite literally haunted Scève's readers and critics over the centuries, and even blinded some of them to this work's higher meaning. Some of Délie's most important and certainly most arresting poems have been and continue to be the object of rather severe criticism, and I wish to propose here a different reading of these poems. In the two preceding chapters, we considered Scève's concern with and success at developing the aesthetics of “showing,” his diaphoric art of showing the being/unity of Délie as poetic object and the identity/unity of poetic self. There is, of course, another kind of showing of light in the Délie, a very powerful one always associated with Délie herself and intended especially for the spiritual-psychological benefit and renewal of the poet. Indeed, as we shall see, these poems and the light images they contain are absolutely vital to helping Scève construct and enjoy a love psychology of transcendence and paradise. In Scève's own terms, it is this light that will lead him to find and affirm love's “holy place” (D330).