The Head of a (French?) King Revisited

In looking back at my object of beauty post with a critical eye, I immediately thought that my comparison between the fragmented head of a French king and medieval poetry was a bit contrived. There seemed to be too many differences between the sculpture and the poetry I had learned about in class to justify using this object to represent the world of the poet. Yet, as I thought further about these “flaws” in my reasoning, I began to realize that the sculpture’s connection to poetry truly is a natural one. In fact, as I attempted to reconcile these differences, I stumbled upon one overarching similarity: both the sculptor and the medieval poet were simultaneously confined and free in their work. I leave this statement intentionally vague, as I wish to return to it at the end of this blog post when it will have greater meaning.

The first glaring difference that I observed between my object of beauty and poetry is that poetry, in the Middle Ages, had a largely oral and performative tradition. Moreover, poetry and music were often passed on orally, as Alexander Lingas notes regarding Byzantine music (and in particular Byzantine melodies). How can we reconcile this with a static object to be viewed, not heard? I believe the connection lies in the fact that oral performance, of necessity, involves multiple people interacting at the same time with the given art form. This joint experience is mirrored in my object. The larger-than-life head was part of a series of statues on the west façade of the important church of Saint-Denis, so it was highly visible to the public. Thus, it lent itself to communal observation and, furthermore, to public engagement if we consider its role as part of the church’s portals. This partially addresses the issue of transmission as well; perhaps, due to the statues’ prominent display, nearby residents and travelers spread the word of the church’s façade. Were I to research this object further, I would certainly be curious as to this matter: how far did tales of the exterior of Saint-Denis travel, if at all, and how accurate were these tales? One final point I would like to mention is the concept of meter in poetry. Meter can be viewed as the underlying structure that gives the foundation for a particular poem. I believe this concept exists for my object in the sense that the sculpture had to fit certain conventions. The façade on which it was located gave the sculpture a set form and the holiness of the church dictated its degree of propriety.

Another apparent problem in relating my object to poetry is the matter of creativity and improvisation. Nizami Aruzi in the Four Discourses emphasized that poetry does not need to stick to reality and that the poet can exercise his imagination. On the other hand, in my previous blog post I noted the naturalism that my object displays. I struggled to reconcile these conflicting notions without success until I found out that with my object, all was not as it seemed. As I will discuss later, the statues on the façade of the church of Saint-Denis were not necessarily of contemporary French kings.¹ In fact, there is some doubt as to whether they were French at all. Nevertheless, their garb is distinctly of “twelfth-century Parisian style,” in line with the twelfth-century creation of the statues.¹ If the kings were not from the twelfth-century or if their identity was ambiguous even to contemporary viewers, then this is an interesting and certainly creative choice on the part of the sculptor. It would have given the kings modern-day relevance while connecting the past to the present. Furthermore, this matter of clothing speaks to the issue of improvisation. As we have seen in class, improvisation in medieval poetry was a balance of being free to come up with and combine material while staying within certain bounds. Likewise, the creativity regarding the kings’ clothing stays within the limits of propriety and dignity set by the subject matter of the sculpture and the sculpture’s holy location.

Finally, in my previous blog post I noted that the sculptor may have crafted my object in the likeness of a French monarch to curry the favor of the current French monarch, and here I drew a connection to poetry in the Middle Ages. Yet, as certain scholars have noted, the statues may actually depict kings from the Old Testament.¹ Is the connection to poetry then lost? I think the resolution lies in considering Nizami Aruzi’s argument that a king needs a poet to preserve the king’s fame. If we extend this to past kings, as seems reasonable, we see that poets can serve the same purpose for rulers of bygone eras. They preserve the stories, the legends, and the splendor of those otherwise-forgotten leaders. Hence, the sculptor who crafted my object was working in the same way: to memorialize kings, whether they are of past or present.

It seems, then, that the connection between this twelfth-century limestone head and medieval poetry is not as artificial as my first blog post may have led one to believe. However, the relationship runs still deeper. In the first paragraph of this blog post I mentioned that the artist of my object and poets in the Middle Ages were both “confined and free in their work.” Throughout this blog post, I believe that this has been demonstrated in multiple ways. Taking the generalized concept of meter, for example, we have seen that it provided works with certain conventions, but the artist was free to act creatively within those bounds. In discussing improvisation, too, we have noted how the Saint-Denis statues and poetry played a balancing act between invention and the limits of propriety. Moreover, any such creativity was placed in check by the subject matter, such as the royal one presented by my object. Perhaps I did not see this overarching connection at first because when the head was severed from the remainder the church’s façade, it lost its confines along with its context.

¹Little, Charles T. Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture. Yale University Press, 2006.