“To See Feelingly”: The Language of the Senses and the Language of the Heart

“ To See Feelingly” : The Language of the Senses and the Language of the Heart Judith Dundas To set Lear IV.vi in the context of the paragone of the senses is to grasp the step-by-step rejection of these senses, in order to affirm one thing: the heart and its affections as the seat of moral life. For Lear above all, but for Gloucester too, the heart has to be educated through a disorientation or loss of the senses and even, in Lear’s case, of reason. And the language of the heart, as compared with the language of the senses and of reason, can sometimes only be silence—like the silence of Cordelia at the beginning of the play when asked by her father how much she loves him. But beyond its significance for this particular play, the rivalry of the senses has implications for Shakespeare’s own art as a dramatist, in which he competes with the painter. This single scene from King Lear not only suggests, but also demon­ strates a nexus of ideas touching the very heart of his poetry; it is indeed a paradigm for the painting that is, like nature, “dumb.” The schematic aspects of Shakespeare’s play are all too apparent: the parallel plots of Lear and Gloucester; the blinding of Gloucester with its too obvious symbolism. But great litera­ ture can be made from just such banalities, including the eye/ ear debate.1 To show these senses being rejected, Shakespeare must show them in operation, which gives us the poetry that mere silence cannot give. It is the account by others of Cordelia’s silence that enlightens us, not the silence itself. When she receives word of her father’s plight, she again finds speech difficult. In JUDITH DUNDAS, who is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the author of a recent book entitled The Spider and the Bee: The Artistry of Spenser’s Faerie Queene as well as of articles on Ren­ aissance subjects in various journals. 49 50 Comparative Drama IV.iii, Kent asks the Gentleman who reports the scene, “Made she no verbal question?”2 We are told that she “heav’d the name of ‘father’/ Pantingly forth, as if it press’d her heart,” with a few other exclamations and tears, “then away she started/ To deal with grief alone” (11. 25-26, 31-32). It was thus that she showed that “she was a queen/ Over her passion, who most rebel-like,/ Sought to be king o’er her” (11. 13-15). In contrast, Lear, who had said that he would be “the pattern of all patience” by saying nothing in the midst of his afflictions, was incapable of silence. Ironically, when Kent is banished and, in disguise, meets Lear, he says as part of his profession of faith that he wishes “to converse with him that is wise and says little” (I.iv. 15-16). This is hardly applicable to Lear, whom he intends to serve. But through these glancing remarks, the ideal of silence is turned round and round, like a crystal ball, to see what truth it holds.3 If we look back at Shakespeare’s love poetry for his allusions to the paragone of the senses, the silence of the lover is again the clearest spokesman for the heart, but with the difference that this silence is accompanied by the eye that speaks; thus the knowing Boyet in Love’s Labor’s Lost refers to “the heart’s still rhetoric, disclosed with eyes” (II.i.229). More directly, the lover in the sonnets pleads with the beloved to recognize the language of the eyes: O, iearn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit. (23) In this traditional hierarchy of the senses, the eyes are truthful messengers of the heart of the lover and are to be read in turn by the eyes of the beloved. As Castiglione puts it, the lover is to make his eyes “faithful messengers in bearing the embassies of his heart, since they often reveal the passion within more effectively than...