人妻少妇专区

In Review

Saying good-bye鈥攊n life and in art鈥攊sn鈥檛 easy.

For Jane Tylus, a professor of Italian studies and comparative literature at New York University, the idea that there鈥檚 a convergence between both forms of parting became clear when she saw a 15th-century painting that she describes as 鈥減robably the most beautiful and thought-provoking painting I鈥檝e seen in a long time.鈥�

It was Congedo della Vergine, by Sano di Pietro, at Villa I Tatti, near Florence. The painting depicts a non-Biblical story of the Virgin Mary鈥檚 leave-taking from the disciples as she prepares to be reunited with Jesus Christ. In one panel of the painting, Saint Peter stands at the threshold of her house鈥攖here to say good-bye, but hesitating at the moment of doing so.

鈥淭his gesture of Saint Peter, who knows what is in front of him, but isn鈥檛 ready to go in just yet鈥攖his, to me, captures the posture of the poet who is ready to say good-bye to a poem but hasn鈥檛 sent it off yet,鈥� says Tylus, who also is faculty director of the NYU Center for the Humanities. Like Saint Peter, she says, the artist stands before a work, declaring, 鈥溾�業鈥檓 about to say good-bye鈥攂ut not yet. I can鈥檛 bear to say good-bye yet.鈥欌��

The painting led Tylus to what she calls a 鈥渘ew way of thinking鈥� about 鈥渨hat a lot of visual and literary art is doing in the Renaissance.鈥�

As this year鈥檚 keynote speaker for the Ferrari Humanities Symposia, Tylus outlined some of her new ways of thinking about how artists and others depicted rituals of separation in early modern Europe. Tylus鈥檚 lecture, 鈥淪aying Good-bye in the Renaissance: Leave-Taking as a Work of Art,鈥� was one piece of a three-day visit that involved a variety of activities, including a meeting with humanities graduate students, a public talk on the future of the humanities, and a presentation and roundtable conversation on the city in history with faculty and students from a multidisciplinary undergraduate course, Cities: Contested Spaces.

In her recent work, Tylus has written about the most significant women writers in Renaissance Italy, including Catherine of Siena, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, and Gaspara Stampa. Thomas Hahn, a professor of English and the organizer of the symposium, praises her skill as a translator whose work 鈥渆xtends far beyond linguistic expertise and elegance鈥� in books such as Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (Chicago, 2009)鈥攚inner of the Modern Language Association鈥檚 Howard R. Marraro Prize鈥攁nd Siena: City of Secrets (Chicago, 2015).

鈥淗er purpose in these books wasn鈥檛 just to recover the past but to situate these writers alongside the monuments and poetry that we all regard as a common heritage鈥攆or example, the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Michelangelo,鈥� he says. 鈥淪he 鈥榯ranslates鈥� not just the words of individual writers, but a full sense of an age, a city, a work of art.鈥�

The topic of Tylus鈥檚 keynote address was spurred by personal experience: coming to terms with the loss of parents and reflections on mourning and grieving. But her scholar鈥檚 mind soon ranged beyond her private sadness to thoughts about how contemporary beliefs and practices surrounding loss differ from what they were centuries ago.

A practicing Catholic, Tylus says she realized that 鈥渋n my life, there鈥檚 a lot more continuity with the Middle Ages. There are sharp differences that Protestantism introduces to Catholic practices of not really saying good-bye.鈥�

With the Protestant Reformation came enormous departures from Catholic religious practice, including a rejection of the idea of purgatory, where souls would be purified before ascending to heaven. Practices such as allowing the living to shorten, through paying for indulgences, the deceased鈥檚 time in purgatory meant that relationships continued, in some fashion, after death, Tylus says.

At the same time, artists were carrying on a long poetic tradition of pausing before the end of a work to contemplate the act of letting go. With many names鈥攁mong them, the congedo in Italian and the envoi in French鈥攖he end of a poem was often a place where poets would turn to address the work itself and consider what might happen to it once it leaves them.

惭颈肠丑别濒补苍驳别濒辞鈥檚 non finito, or unfinished, sculptures for the tomb of Pope Julius II鈥攊tself unfinished鈥攁re one example Tylus points to of a similar phenomenon in the visual arts. The figures 鈥渓ook like they鈥檙e imprisoned in the stone because they鈥檙e not finished,鈥� she says. Late in his life, Michelangelo wrote a series of sonnets about his art鈥檚 lack of value when it comes to his life beyond death. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a sad kind of rejection of the meaning he鈥檚 had as an artist, as he鈥檚 also saying good-bye to that life itself in his poems,鈥� she says.

Produced a century later, Shakespeare鈥檚 work is 鈥渞iddled with questions about when and how we say good-bye to loved ones,鈥� she says. One particularly well-known example is Polonius鈥檚 comically excessive leave-taking from son Laertes in Hamlet, but Tylus finds particular meaning in the famous closing speech of Shakespeare鈥檚 final play, The Tempest. Prospero implores the audience to 鈥渞elease me from my bands/With the help of your good hands.鈥�

鈥淭here鈥檚 a real sense that Prospero is going to die and is calling to the audience for life beyond death,鈥� she says.

For Michelangelo, who was heavily influenced by some tenets of the Reformation, these radically new ideas struck at the roots of a sense of human community extending beyond death.

What was at stake, Tylus says, was nothing less than 鈥渢he worth of a work of art in the face of the Reformation.鈥�