Fortune's Faces: The Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of Contingency

4 Through the Looking-Glass: The Knowledge of Contingency

I Toward the end of the Roman de la Rose Nature, encouraged by Genius, gives her “confession” (v. 16696), which the narrator of the romance, in turn, recounts “word for word, just as she said it” (mot a mot, si conme el l’a dite, v. 16698).1 Nature’s first subject, the “beautiful form” (bele fourme, v. 16702) of creation, leads her to consider the “beautiful golden chain” (la bele chaene doree, v. 16756) which binds the four elements of the world, the “cold and hot and dry and moist” (froit et chaut et sec et moeste, v. 16931).2 The balance between them, Nature explains, is delicate. Their slightest displacement results in the death of sublunary beings; even the harmonious alteration of the four elements may cause creaturely life to end (vv. 16946‒52). Among human beings , however, the cause of death may also lie beyond the realm of physical occurrences . A decision of the will, not Nature, ended the life of Empedocles, for example, when he decided to leap into Mount Etna, “in order to show that those who fear death are indeed of weak mind” (por montrer que bien sunt failli / cil qui mort veulent redouter, 286; vv. 17016‒17); and Origen, not the order of the elements, was responsible for the violence he suffered when he decided to cut off his testicles “so that he could serve the religious ladies with devotion and so that there would be no suspicion that he might ever lie with them” (por servir en devotion / les dames de religion / si que nus soupeçon n’eüst / que gesir avec eus peüst, 286; vv. 17025‒28). Death, like all human occurrences, thus appears as the immediate result of one of two forms of causation, which 100 Through the Looking-Glass The Knowledge of Contingency 4 remain irreducibly distinct. Although inevitable among sublunary creatures, the end of life, once determined by the golden chain of nature, can always also be “hastened for some other reason” (par autre cas haste, 285; v. 16953) by the acts of men. Discussing the terrain of life within her control, Nature thus also indicates a dimension within the physical order which exceeds all natural necessity as such: human action. But the text’s invocation of this dimension is not simple; it is immediately followed, in Nature’s discourse, by the expression of uncertainty as to its very existence. Calling into question the autonomy of human action in the very moment in which she first invokes it, Nature suggests that apparently unforeseen acts may in fact be predicted and, therefore, necessary. “Fate” seems to rule out the very possibility of there being, in human action, such a thing as possibility: Si dit l’en que les destinees leur orent tex morz destinees et tel eür leur ont meü des lors qu’ils furent conceü, et qu’il pristrent leur nacions en teles constellacions que par droite neccessité, sanz autre possibilité, (c’est san poair de l’eschever), conbien qu’il leur doie grever, leur convient tel mort recevoir. (Vv. 17029‒39) It is said that the fates had decreed such deaths for them and had set up such destinies from the times when they were conceived. And since they took their births under such constellations that by strict necessity, without any other possibility (that is, without being able to avoid it), they must accept such a death, however much it should grieve them. (286) Nature is quick to reject such a view, denying the reality of the droite neccessité claimed by those who would ascribe all occurrences to the destinies (destinees) decreed by fate. By means of “good teaching” (par doctrine, v. 17047), “by clean, pure nourishment” (par nourreture nete et fine, v. 17048) “by following good company” (par sivre bone compagnie, v. 17049), and “by certain medicines ” (par aucunes medicines, v. 17051), men may alter the course of events, such that “it will be otherwise” (qu’il soit autrement, v. 17054). The capacity to be “otherwise” (autrement) is precisely what is at issue here, for it constitutes The Knowledge of Contingency 101 the essence of an event not determined by the forces of nature. Human action shows itself as indeterminate—as unconstrained by nature—precisely in ensuring that events “happen otherwise, since they may well be otherwise than they are” (Lors ira la chose autrement, / car autrement peut il bien...