Chapter 13 - Genius and Genius
Dr Janet Spens, who has done so much in her Spenser’s Faerie Queene to recall Spenserian criticism to paths unwisely neglected since the seventeenth century, is rightly troubled (p. 22) by the double role of Genius in Spenser’s allegory, as the doorkeeper to Acrasia in II, xii, 47 and to Adonis in III, vi, 31 et seq. There is a mystery about the first of these two passages which I do not believe that I have solved; but the two-edged use of the name Genius, in general, is explicable by his history.
Mr W. Warde Fowler (in his Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 74) finds the origin of the ‘Genius’ of early Roman belief in the world-wide conception of a man’s spiritual double or external soul which constitutes his higher self. If this were all, the development of the Genius into a familiar δαίμων such as Socrates enjoyed, and thence (under Christianity) into a guardian angel, and so finally into the poetic self of a poet and into all the familiar modern usages, would be simple enough. But Mr Warde Fowler also tells us that for Roman thought the Genius, or higher self, of the pater-familias was specially connected with his function of carrying on the family: in fact, with the reproductive power. Such a peculiar conception leaves the way open for two different developments according as the emphasis is laid on Genius = higher self in general, or on Genius = reproductive power. And the two developments both occurred.
St Augustine (De Civit. Dei, VII, 13), criticizing Varro, writes as follows: Quid est Genius? ‘Deus,’ inquit [sc. Varro] ‘qui praepositus est ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum’ . . . alio loco genium dicit esse uniuscuiusque animum rationalem et ideo esse singulos singulorum. Here we have pretty clearly the two senses developed. Genius A is the universal god or spirit of generation. Genius B is the higher self, familiar, or δαίμων of any individual man. (It will be clear, of course, that while there is only one Genius A, there are as many genii BB as there are human beings.) St Augustine, if I follow his argument rightly, regards the double sense as an inconsistency in Varro and so perhaps it was; but in Martianus Capella two separate beings are described. He is speaking of the infra- solar deities whom he distinguishes from the higher gods: De Nupt. Merc. et Phil. II, 38, 39 G. Sed quoniam unicuique deorum superiorum singuli quique (i.e. of the infra-solar gods) deserviunt, ex illorum arbitrio istorumque comitatu et generalis omnium praesul et specialis singulis mortalibus Genius ammovetur. Here we might be quite sure that the generalis praesul was Genius A (as we are that the other is Genius B), if Martianus said anything about generation. In fact, he makes his praesul provide gerundis omnibus, not gignendis omnibus as we should expect and are tempted to read. But fortunately later authorities leave us in little doubt. In Bernardus Sylvester’s De Mundi Universitate we have a descent from heaven to earth, in which the travellers, on reaching the aplanon, or sphere of fixed stars, are met by a venerable person described as Oyarses et genius in artem et officium pictoris et figurantis addictus (Prosa III ad fin., p. 38 in Barach and Wrobel’s ed., Innsbruck, 1876). His pictorial art consists, we are told, in inscribing the Forms, conceived in heaven, upon the phenomenal world, which is precisely what every instance of reproduction does: that, in fact, is why he is called genius—Genius A. His other name Oyarses, as Professor C. C. J. Webb pointed out to me, must be a corruption of οὐσιάρχης and he had kindly drawn my attention to a passage in Pseudo-Apuleius, Asclepius (XIX), where we find an ‘Ousiarch’ in the sphere of the fixed stars qui diversis speciebus diversas formas facit—though he is not here called Genius. Finally we may note that Isidore (a good witness to the accepted usage of any word) explains Genius exclusively in sense A (Genium autem dicunt quod quasi vim habeat omnium rerum gignendarum seu a gignendis liberis unde et geniales lecti dicebantur a gentibus qui novo marito sternebantur. Etymolog. VIII, xi, 88).
It will readily be seen that Genius A counts for much more than Genius B in medieval literature. In Alanus, De Planctu Naturae, the Genius who appears as the priest of Venus to curse unnatural loves is clearly Genius A, who, as the patron of generation and therefore of heterosexuality, has an obvious concern in the matter. He also retains from Bernardus the officium pictoris et figurantis and carries a scroll in his left hand and a pen in his right (De Planct. Nat. Pros. ix, p. 517 in Wright’s Anglo-Latin Satirists). From him descend the Genius of the Roman de la Rose and the Genius of the Confessio Amantis—beings whose association with Venus and Nature is perfectly intelligible when once we have learned of the existence of Genius A, though it might perplex a modern reader familiar only with Genius B. It is now time to turn to Spenser, but before doing so we must remind ourselves that Genius B is itself divided into two classes, the good and evil genius: each man apparently having both the one and the other. Natalis Comes (whom Spenser had almost certainly read) in his Mythologiae (IV, iii) writes: crediderunt singulos homines statim atque nati fuissent daemones duos habere, alterum malum, alterum bonum. The two angels of Faustus provide a familiar example. The full scheme, therefore, is:
Genius A God of Generation.
Genius B Second self, individual δαίμων
{I Good. II Bad.
Genius, as I have said, occurs twice in Spenser: in II, xii as the porter of Acrasia, and in III, vi, 32 as the porter of Adonis. The second passage presents no difficulties. It is as clear as can be desired that we have there a portrait of Genius A:
A thousand thousand naked babes attend
About him day and night, which doe require,
That he with fleshly weedes would them attire—
which is just what the god of generation ought to do. The whole passage, as Warton (ad loc.) points out, is closely connected with the first-century Cebetis Tabula—a popular schoolbook in Spenser’s time, mentioned by Milton as an ‘easy and delightful book of education’. In it we find a περίβολος, or enclosure, representing Life, and a crowd of the unborn besieging its gate, which is guarded by a γέρων called Δαίμων. His position at the gate of birth and the scroll (χάρτης) which he holds in his left hand leave us in no doubt that he is Genius A. The Genius of the garden of Adonis is the god of generation.
It is at the entry to the Bower of Bliss that the trouble begins. Here we read:
They in that place him Genius did call:
Not that celestiall powre, to whom the care
Of life, and generation of all
That lives, pertaines in charge particulare,
Who wondrous things concerning our welfare,
And straunge phantomes doth let us oft foresee,
And oft of secret ills bids us beware:
That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see,
Yet each doth in him selfe it well perceive to bee.
Therefore a God him sage Antiquity
Did wisely make, and good Agdistes call:
But this same was to that quite contrary,
The foe of life, that good envyes to all,
That secretly doth us procure to fall,
Through guilefull semblaunts, which he makes us see. . . .
What we expect is a contrast between Genius A and Genius B II: for it must be the god of generation who keeps the gate to the garden of Adonis and it must be a man’s evil Genius who ushers him into the garden of Acrasia. What we seem to get is an identification of A and B I, and a contrast between this composite figure and B II. Let us begin with the second stanza. It is certain that the good Agdistes is the good individual Genius (B I), for him must refer to the subject of the last lines of the preceding stanza; it is tolerably certain that Spenser has got the name Agdistes from Natalis Comes (loc. cit.) and from nowhere else—since a further acquaintance with this deity is hardly compatible with the use of the word ‘good’. It is certain again, that the ‘foe of life’ contrasted with Agdistes, is the individual evil Genius: and his activity in ‘procuring us to fall’ by ‘guilefull semblaunts’ is in full accordance with the doctrine of spectra given by Natalis Comes (see Warton’s note). The whole of the second stanza, in fact, is occupied with the contrast between Genius B I (= Agdistes) and Genius B II. What of the first? It looks, as I have said, like an account of Genius A (the powre in charge of life and generation) conflated with Genius B I (our Selfe). This is certainly, I think, how Warton understands the passage, for he begins his quotation from Natalis Comes with the words Dictus est autem Genius, ut placuit Latinis a gignendo, vel quia nobiscum gignatur, vel quia illi procreandorum cura divinitus commissa putaretur. It would seem the obvious conclusion that Spenser in fact did not draw, as Natalis Comes does not draw, the medieval distinction between Genius A and Genius B. Against this conclusion the following considerations, however, may be opposed.
(1) Neither here nor on III, vi, 31 does Warton show himself aware of the medieval double use: he would therefore easily fail to notice it even if it were present.
(2) The proposed interpretation compels us to accept a very odd structure of sentence: the parenthesis beginning at Not that celestiall powre is continued for ten lines, and is quite disproportionate to the original statement in one line.
(3) Why is the individual δαίμων (Genius B I) called a celestiall power? The epithet is not entirely inappropriate to such individual genii, but it is more appropriate to the august ‘Oyarses’ in the sphere of the fixed stars.
(4) How can Genius B possibly be described as providing for the generation of ‘all that lives’? There must be as many genii BB as there are men (twice as many if we include the evil genii) and each of them, at most, can provide only for the generation of his own charge or his own charge’s offspring. I will grant the poetic use of singular for plural: but this will not do. Even if such a collective Genius B (i.e. the sum of all genii BB) can be said to provide for the generation of all human beings, he cannot do so for all that lives. In other words, what is said of Genius in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines of the stanza is quite incompatible with what is said of him in the last two lines. The former plainly refer to Genius A, the latter as plainly to Genius B.
I therefore propose a device by which we can make Spenser consistent at once with himself and with the tradition, at the cost of a sentence no more awkward than the Wartonian interpretation attributes to him. It consists in bracketing lines 2, 3, and 4 of this stanza. These lines would then merely serve to warn the reader that we are not talking of Genius A and the whole of the rest of the stanza would refer to Genius B. The difference between my interpretation and Warton’s (or what I suppose to have been Warton’s) can be best brought out by a paraphrase.
Warton’s: They called him Genius (not the good Genius who is our second self and whom the ancients called Agdistes, but on the contrary) the bad and beguiling Genius.
Mine: They called him Genius (not of course Genius A) who is our second self and whom the ancients called Agdistes. But this was the bad and beguiling Genius.
It is needless, I trust, to add that I put forward this suggestion with no claim to certainty. I am certain (by the fourth argument above) that the text as ordinarily punctuated and understood is self-contradictory, and I am certain that the Middle Ages distinguished Genius A from B (or even forgot about B in their concentration on A) as I have described. The application of this distinction to Spenser, and still more the particular mode in which I have applied it, are naturally much more speculative.