IRENE CAESAR'S ESSAY "LEONARDO THE TRICKSTER" #3
LEONARDO THE TRICKSTER
MIKHAIL BAKHTIN VS. SIGMUND FREUD ON CREATIVITY AND RENAISSANCE
#3
Raptor, the Bird of Prey
To solve the enigma of Leonardoís childhood recollection of a Kite, one should take into consideration the three levels of Leonardoís signification. All commentators so far have analyzed only some of the levels, while dropping other levels. The result has been the controversy between the psychoanalytical and the art historical accounts, and the incompatible interpretations within each account as well. For Freud, Leonardoís mother is a pleasure-giving-mother, while for Schapiro, Leonardoís mother is a pecking-pain-giving-mother. After Shapiro's im-
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proving on "pain-giving", psychoanalytics have noticed the hostile quality of the verb per- cuotere ("to strike", "to beat") which Leonardo used in describing what the bird did to him125.
But nobody from this circle of scientists and specialists seemed to notice that a mother never strikes her infant with her nipple when she suckles him. This is so because a motherís nipple does not move itself when an infant sucks from it. While in fellatio (Freudian break-through), something aggressively penetrates from the outside and strikes within the lips. This percussive (percuotere) movement could be accompanied by the suckling of the person who is penetrated, but it is not necessary. That is why Leonardo wrote that a Kite struck him with its tail, but not that he, Leonardo, sucked his tail.
Moreover, Leonardo wrote: "a Kite opened my mouth with its tail". A mother does not open the mouth of her infant with her nipple, except maybe when the child is sick and unwilling to suck. Usually, infants aggressively take the nipple themselves. The very description of an event that "a Kite came to a cradle" gives an impression that it was an event, something not ordinary, but very extraordinary. Here, Schapiro's interpretations appear in their full light. This recollection signifies something intimately and at the same time fatally important -- something that determined Leonardo's destiny.
It is nothing of a revelation when Schapiro tells us that Leonardo connects his childhood recollection of a Kite with his study of avian birds and aviation; and that Leonardo finds the roots of his scientific interests in his intimate childhood recollection of a Kite. Because Leonardo himself tells us about this: "This writing distinctly about the Kite seems to be my destiny..." "The writing distinctly about the Kite" appears in his other records on this page, devoted to the scientific study of the Kite's flight. Schapiro tells us that there is nothing special about this record -- just birds that fly and just an artist who wants to become famous by solv-
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ing the mystery of their flight. Schapiro cares only about two levels of Leonardo-s significa- tion ñ the natural history level and the allegorical history level.
On the first level, the Kite signifies a real bird. On the second level, the Kite signifies, or rather symbolizes, some human quality (like the heraldic ermine). Schapiro tries to prove that Leonardo was conscious only of the first two levels of signification. Schapiro offers the second-level signifier precisely as some instrument for emphasizing or exaggerating the ego-syntonic pretences, as a cover or a disguise functioning in the definite hierarchical context. Here the allegory conceals the true nature of a real man, who ìimportsî some quasi-quality, and the true nature of a real beast, which ìexportsî some quasi-quality.
The heraldic or allegorical symbol could become a personal symbol, or gain some personal connotation. This happens to two Kites in Leonardoís notebooks. But, again, the allegory of the Kite-invert will mutate and fluctuate from context to context, from epoch to epoch, from individual to individual, from country to country. Its meaning will be unstable and unreliable, until finally, the cover-allegory will fail in establishing its meaning and will be forgotten. The conventional character of inverts also explains the fact that they are easy to use in any context as some kind of tokens, with their value dependent on the situation. They compose some allegorical, quasi-symbolic and trans-historical meta-language which is used without personal, historical or any responsibility as commonplace templet, pattern, mould or cliche, banality or stereotype. These are dead symbols that have lost their impact on reality. Freud went shopping as far back as Ancient Egyptian history, while Schapiro was satisfied with the Hellenistic period.
This record of Leonardo is striking in its simplicity. It does not appear to be over-allegorized, like Leonardoís experiments with allegorizing. It is as simple as his other per-
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sonal records directly corresponding to the real events of his life. At the same time it differs from other personal records by this word "destiny". The word "destiny" clearly demonstrates that the Kite is the central point of the different signifiers, a double-image. One can solve the riddle of Leonardoís double-image only when he unites the macrocosmic, the most universal meanings of the Kite, with the microcosmic, the most intimate meanings of the Kite. This record is as simple as Leonardo's best paintings, and precisely because it is of the same quality as his best paintings.
It is probable that Leonardo knew about the historical templates of destiny-signifiers which Schapiro is talking about, and which were connected with the mouth of the illustrious infant. Maybe, this idea was also what he was playing around with. But what opened his mouth and struck him inside his lips was not his motherís nipple. Here again the other Kite-signifier comes up -- that of Envy:
"We read of the Kite that, when it sees its young ones growing too big in the nest, out of envy it pecks their sides, and keeps them without food."126
Schapiro comes to the conclusion that Kite-envy is a woman. But Leonardo is very precise in the signification of gender in his "The life and habits of animals". When the gender is am- biguous, he writes: [On Chastity] "The turtle-dove is never false to its mate; and if one dies the other preserves perpetual chastity, and never again sits on a green bough, nor ever again drinks of clear water"127. It is as if allegorical Natural history has given an excellent opportunity to arbitrarily play with gender signification. When gender is supposed to be stressed ñ in the cases of the heterosexual monogamous families ñ he writes: [On The Viper] "She, in pairing opens her mouth and at last clenches her teeth and kills her husband."128 Comparing Leonardoís childhood recollection of the Kite with his "The Life and Habits of Animals", one
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can conclude that the sexual nature of the Kite in Leonardo's records is either not signified or ambiguous.
Freud was rather imprecise when he made a direct reference from the androgynous "Vulture" acting upon the Leonardo-infant, to the real mother of Leonardo, unambiguously female. The break-through of the Renaissance consisted in the actual realization of all modes of sexuality and all sides of human nature ñ unambiguously feminine, unambiguously virile (as that of Machiavelli), and ambiguously homosexual (both feminine and masculine as if androgynous). The Androgyne created a separate mode of life, being special not only in its sex- ual features (Ficino, Bruno), and based on the philosophy of Androgyny. And so the Renais- sance surmounted mere allegorical fantasizing about the Androgyne by alchemists.
The Renaissance was built on the foundation of already universally elaborated allegories. The essence of the Renaissance Titanism consisted in disallegorizing the quasi-divine allego- ries of the cosmos -- in the realization of what had seemed like a dream before and the materi- alization of what would seem later an illusion. This means that Leonardo did not "allegorize the allegory" of the Madonna, The Virgin Mary, into the allegory of his mother. But rather he would devote his entire life to the concern with Immaculate Conception, and would almost always draw androgynes. So he disallegorized the allegory of the Virgins conceiving immacu- lately as if they were androgynes, and actually transformed them into androgynes. Furthermore, he disallegorized angels, Bacchus, St. John and others and actualized their latent an- drogyny. And his personal life would also be contra naturam as if androgyny. In other words, he was interested in creating real androgynes in the virtual worlds of his paintings, and in living the life of androgyny, but not in masking his mother, a humble peasant woman, as androgyne, as if for one of the il Moro masquerades or pageants.
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In both Leonardoís references to the Kite, the Kite is something or somebody connected, in the first case, with Leonardoís early years with his family, and, in the second case, with the life of some family. The Kite, as well as the Vulture, is a bird of Prey, a Raptor. But in con- trast with the Vulture, the Kite does not feed on carrion. Freud was absolutely right when he connected a bird -- líuccello -- with a penis. Machiavelli gave the same reference in a letter, mentioned above, where he told to his friend Vettori a Carnival joke about Florentine sodo- mites. It is interesting that Machiavelli consciously used the allegorizing and then the sudden disallegorizing as a means of making a story funny and not less real. He starts his story:
"An amusing thing has happened, or rather, to call it by its proper name, a ridiculous metamorphosis, and worthy to be set down in ancient writings. Because I do not wish anybody to feel hurt, I shall relate it to you hidden under allegories. Giuliano Brancaccio for example, eager to go bird-hunting...seeing the weather dark... each sign for believing that all the birds would wait...-- took a fowling net, a little bell on his arm, and a good bird-swatter... He found a little thrush, which with the bird-swatter and the light and the bell he stopped, and cleverly brought it into the depth of the thicket... Detaining his bird there, and finding its disposition generous, and kissing it many times, he straightened two feathers of its tail, and at last, as many say, put it in the bird-basket hanging behind him."129
The bird, Uccello, signifies here an accessible boy; the tail signifies a penis; the bird-catcher or the bird-hunter, a raptor, signifies a sodomite. Machiavelli uses allegories actually not for disguising what he is talking about, because these references were well known, and pederasty was widespread. But he fills the commonplace allegories with such precise and characteristic details of real life that allegories finally get disallegorized, and transformed into the ambivalent double-images. Machiavelli says:
"But because the wind compels me to come out from under cover, and allegories are not enough, and this metaphor no longer serves me, Brancaccio wished to know... etc."130
And he goes on by giving the details of the anecdote about the famous question "Are you Brancaccio or are you Casa?" This example shows how the double-image absorbs all the allegorical disguises, only to focus them again in the individual center of the world, in one destiny-
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event, both universally and intimately significant. In this Carnivalesque event, all veils are drawn off in the boundary or ambivalent re-veil-ation. This event transforms the allegorical ñ ìridiculousî ñ metamorphosis into the real, cosmic metamorphosis where the personal destiny is to be changed.
Rocke says that sodomites were called in Florence the Owls131. But Machiavelli signifies sodomites with all the names of Raptors, the Birds of Prey:
"...Our Filippo is like a Vulture, which when there is no carrion in the region, flies a hundred miles to find some, and when he has his crop full, he sits on a pine and laughs at the eagles, hawks, falcons and like who, since they eat delicate foods, are for half the year almost dying of hunger. So Magnificent Ambassador, let one squawk and the other fill his crop..."132
Here it is important to see that Machiavelli discriminates between two kinds of Raptors -- those who hunt for carrion, that is poor boys prostituting on the streets, and those who "eat delicate foods", and "for half the year are almost dying of hunger". The eagles, hawks and falcons are those of the upper classes, who would refer to themselves as the proper divine Raptors of the Greeko-Roman mythology. In Ovid, Gods could have metamorphosed into any animal form and any form, but usually they took the disguises of birds, in order to travel over great distances: Appolo as a Crow; Mercury as an Ibis133; Phoebus as a hawk134; and Jove as an Eagle135. During the Renaissance, not the references suggested by Schapiro, as to the mouth of the illustrious infant, but the other references were much more actual -- as to the Rape of Ganymede by Jove-Eagle136. Or, in other words, here the human illustrious infant also got his initiation by mouth, but in a radically different way.
Saslow remarks that Leonardo never depicted the Rape of Ganymede, which was a very popular theme for the Renaissance artists. He says that the Rape of Ganymede meant something intimately painful for Leonardo, but Saslow complies with the nipple-udder-penis-
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hypothesis of Freudianism, while the failure in its historical and social foundations would become evident after Rocke's research on Florentine pederasty.
First of all, homosexuality in the Renaissance was an androgynous-like ambivalent combi- nation of the effeminate and masculine features. It did not compromise virility, while sup- plementing it with some kind of male fertility. Vasari indeed depicted Leonardo as a virile man: "In him was great bodily strength, joined to dexterity"137. So Leonardo stayed virile and contrasted his virile fertility against the fertility of women giving birth to men who were worse than beasts, bastards. Second, there were no strict borders between homosexuality and bisexuality. So Leonardo designed a bordello138. It is doubtful that he was admitted there just for scientific field research. Third, in the Renaissance, a homosexual developed not from sucking a motherís nipple to sucking a penis as a passive homosexual, as Freud envisages it; but rather, from being sucked or fellated in oneís teenage years to sucking or fellating in oneís virility years.
The event that Leonardo is describing probably corresponds to the age of 4, when the child still sleeps in his cradle, but his memories are already quite conscious. The Kite who opened his mouth and struck with its tail inside his lips was a sodomite from a circle of relatives, friends of the family, or neighbors. It happened in the house of his father, where Leonardo, as Schapiro stressed, was taken much earlier than Freud thought. Somebody used the boy whose position in the family was ambiguous. This man was not a Vulture feeding on carrion, but was from a flock of the eagles, hawks, falcons, and Kites, who, as Machiavelli ex- plained to us, ate the delicate food, and for half the year almost died of hunger.
It is improbable that it was an adult, if Rocke is right, and role reversal was impossible in the homosexual relationships of the Renaissance, so that a boy was passively fellated, and an
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adult was active both in penetrating and sucking. Rocke says that "adolescents perhaps had slightly more freedom to experiment and to exchange roles, and among adults there were rare exceptions to the norm, usually viewed with horror or disgust."139 So a Kite who opened Leonardo's mouth and struck Leonardo several times with its tail inside his lips was "a thrush", sodomized already by Brancaccio or Casa. Leonardo called him not the thrush, but the Kite because when Leonardo made his record, the thrush had already metamorphosed into the Kite, thus transforming the sodomized boy into the sodomite. The Kite here is a double-image, first of all, in a sexual sense -- it is a fellated sodomite transgressing the norms of Renaissance homosexuality and premeditating modern interactive homosexuality. In the Renaissance, again, such transgression and experimenting was allowed only for a specific age -- the age of the actual metamorphosis from the passive fellated boy to the active fellating sodomite.
But Leonardoís Kite is a double-image in all the other senses offered by his interpreters. His Kite unites all the religious and mythological, social and historical allegories, and brings them to a new level of conceiving the universal as the most intimate. The double-image of the Kite means: To fellate and to subsist; to fly and to penetrate into everything, to transgress all the limits of time and space; to understand everything by uniting with everything through the literal emanations spreading from you and revitalizing everything in the world; to subsist on the world and then to impregnate the world with something that only you could originate and do it contra naturam; to impregnate the world and to be the bearer of the fetus.
The Kite of Leonardo is a double-image of the pain and pleasure of life, of tears and laugh- ter over the awful and ridiculous inverts grimacing from the slick mirrors of il Moro, Borgia and Freud, over his own maybe sinful or maybe blessed protest against the norms of nature and society, and the dogmas of religion and science.
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The Kite rises to the sky, and a man flies with it. The man flies not away from the earth to the sublime aether, but over the earth, to see and love it from all its sides.