SOURCE: "Static and Dynamic Images as Thematic Motifs in C. F. Meyer's Die Versuchung des Pescara," in Michigan Germanic Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring, 1990, pp. 44-67.

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's commitment to impart pictorial force to language is well known. Profoundly influenced by Romance literature with its accent on plastic form and sharp contours, and awed by the monumental grandeur of Michelangelo's statues which transmute emotion into compelling visual representations, Meyer found a locus for these ideals in Friedrich Theodor Vischer's teachings which emphasize the concretization of ideas. Gestures in Meyer's novellas become symbols of the inner man; scenic settings and costumes represent an obsession to unite the tangible in objects with their felt meanings. The metaphorical dimension of language is exploited to a degree rarely found in German literature. "In der deutschen Literatur empfinde ich einen Mangel," Meyer declared to Fritz Kögel, "das ist nicht scharf genug gesehen, nicht sinnlich herausgestellt, es ist unbildlich verschwimmend. . . . Die Gleichnisse und Bilder im Deutschen sind schwach, sie erhellen und beleuchten nicht." In his own work, intricately formed patterns of imagery are developed into a refined and recondite intellectual medium and impart to his prose its characteristic flavor. They set him apart among the poetic realists of his period.

In no other of Meyer's novellas does imagery occur in such quantity as in this late work, his third Renaissance novella, Die Versuchung des Pescara (1887). It is Meyer's most formalized work in which even minutiae of fictive reality—objects, paintings, colors—assume symbolic significance and in which form is submitted to extreme stylization. Metaphorical language bears the same visual and symbolic intensity. Images permeate the language. Concrete objects mutate into other concrete objects or are transmogrified into animation. Pale abstractions take on substance. In all, there are more than three hundred images in Die Versuchung des Pescara, which translate into more than two per page. If one considers that many of the images are extended, that is, they are developed into prolonged pictures, one readily sees why the pictorial effect of the novella is at first overwhelming. In part, the bravura of Meyer's metaphorical language is demanded by the opulence of the historical setting, the elegant courts and castles of Italy. It reflects also Meyer's highly cultured taste and sense of "Grosser Stil" and monumentality, which he declared were in his blood. The elaborate pictorial structure has drawn, however, much criticism. Meyer's publisher Haessel advised Meyer not to expect a large reception for his work: "Dazu ist der behandelte Gegenstand zu herb und leider wieder so kunstvoll zusammen gebaut,—ich fürchte den Vorwurf der Künstlichkeit!—dass sich nur wenige finden werden, die sich mit Liebe in Ihr Buch vertiefen." Modern critics have found the enormous pictorial force of the work at times unpalatable. Meyer himself was quick to rise up in angry self-defense. . . . "J'ai lu, dans la Biblioth. Univer., que je 'Continue d'exploiter ,ma veine,'" he wrote to Felix Bovet on January 14, 1888 upon reading that his novella was yet another tour de force. "On ne saurait s'exprimer avec moins de vérité, car je n'écris absolument que pour réaliser quelque idée, sans avoir aucun souci du public et je me sers de la forme de la nouvelle historique purement et simplement pour y loger mes expériences et mes sentiments personnels. . . . Ainsi, sous une forme très objective et éminemment artistique, je suis—au dedans individuel et tout subjectif." Stylistic brilliance was clearly not Meyer's aim, rather the expression of his most fundamental thoughts. The "eminently artistic form," which encompasses his use of elaborate and richly embroidered metaphorical language, is not parasitic, rather a means to epitomize the inner meaning of his novella. In the hands of this most conscious of artists, images play a part in the very fabric of the work.

In probing the metaphorical coloring of Die Versuchung des Pescara, one begins to discern significant patterns in what seems at first pictorial chaos. Clusters of imagery inundate the prose at times, yet the language is almost devoid of it in other instances. Some characters speak in bursts of metaphor; the hero does not. The key to Meyer's intent lies in the modifications he made in the historical events of the story. The novella is based primarily on Leopold Ranke's account of the final days of Fernando Avalos, the Marquis of Pescara (1489-1525), a general in Spanish service who won an important victory over France in the battle of Pavia in 1525. Half Italian and half Spanish, he was asked to become the commander of an Italian league against the Spanish Emperor Charles V and to establish an Italian state free from Spanish rule. The historical facts clearly suggest a fundamental struggle between loyalty and betrayal. The historical Pescara, in fact, joined the collusion but then carried out the emperor's orders and suddenly died, most likely of wounds received at Pavia. Meyer, after originally toying with the idea of treating the theme of "Willensfreiheit," strips the historical matter of its dramatic potential and focuses on the fact that Pescara is dying and, unknown to the conspirators, is beyond temptation. The heart of the novella becomes a static condition where potentially there could have been action. "Pescara hat nur wenig Handlung, nureine Situation," says Meyer in a detailed commentary on the novella. "Die Täuschung seiner Versucher und das allmälige Hervortreten seiner tödtlichen Verwundg. Er ist vorwiegend lyrisch." Meyer then continues to elaborate on the "grossen Momente" of the work:

1. Die männlich-rührende Ergebung des Helden in sein Loos.
2. Die Veredlung seines Characters (karg, falsch, grausam) durch die Nähe des Todes.
3. Die Aufregung und die leidenschaftliche Bewegung einer ganzen Welt um einen "schon nicht mehr Versuchbaren."
4. Die Fülle von Zeitgestalten. Sehen Sie nur die beiden spanisch en Typen (der D. Juan-typus und der Loyola-typus).
5. Die Symbolik. Das sterbende Italien bewirbt sich unwissentlich um einen sterbenden Helden.

Critics have repeatedly referred to these "grossen Momente" in analyzing the symbolic intent of the novella. They have not fully recognized, however, the degree to which movement around a person who has reached a state of rest (the "leidenschaftliche Bewegung") governs the inner structure and thematic matter of the narrative. The novella is governed by static and dynamic configurations. Structurally the work may be likened to a hurricane which swirls around an eye of quiet. At the center stands Pescara who is dying. An array of subordinate characters surround him in a whirlwind of activity. Unknowing of Pescara's imminent death, they try to entice, even coerce, him to betrayal. Thematically seen, the hero represents death, for Meyer a state of rest and equilibrium where man escapes from the unsolvable conflicts of life and is without suffering. It is the state of "Leidlosigkeit" So often portrayed in Meyer's poems. In contrast, the subordinate characters, representations of the Machiavellian excesses of the Renaissance, symbolize in the author's pessimistic view the brutality and immorality of life, a state of frantic activity which in the end is illusion.

That this basic dichotomy of motion and rest represents the fundamental philosophical core of the novella is substantiated by a second significant change that Meyer made in the historical material. In fashioning the figure of Morone, Pescara's chief antagonist and the principal conspirator, Meyer exercised telling poetic license. In historical accounts Morone appears as a personage of noble background, a brilliant but amoral lawyer who performed duties at the various courts of Italy. Meyer's Morone becomes a figure of low birth, a blend of idealist and fool, who manipulates his way into kingly circles and who in every aspect, moral and physical, represents movement. Morone's face is in continual motion and he gestures so wildly that others call out to him not to gesticulate "wie ein Rasender." Movement lies at the essence of his amoral character and governs his twirling thoughts and emotions. The idea of motion, particularly when contrasted with the stasis of the hero, is so insistent, that one senses that one has arrived at an underlying narrative pattern which is symbolic of the meaning of the entire novella. Viewed within this context, the seemingly overwhelming imagery in Die Versuchung des Pescara takes on new meaning and cohesion. Harnessed to give powerful aesthetic representation to the thematic matter of the novella, a kaleidoscope of metaphorical language underscores in contrapuntal manner, both through content and form, Meyer's dualistic view of existence. Images are interwoven throughout the narrative like complex arabesques and play a vital role as a cohesive force in shaping the inner structure of the novella. Dynamic images of life, images of energy and motion, underscore again and again the grandiose but illusory quality of existence. Static images of death, images of equilibrium and rest, probe the core of the novella, a center where man has reached fulfillment.

By far the largest number of images in Die Versuchung des Pescara gives visual and emotive impact to the negative pole of Meyer's antithetical theme, that of worldly corruption. Profoundly influenced in his later years by Jacob Burckhardt's work, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860), with its view of the Renaissance as an age of amoral, power-hungry individuals, Meyer poses the lonely, ethical man, a bearer of the most modern agnosticism and nihilism, against this great tableau to give voice to the theme of the novella. The Renaissance was for Meyer, as for Nietzsche, who also learned from Burckhardt, "great" in an aesthetic rather than a moral sense. Meyer viewed it as an era of brutal excesses and decadence which both fascinated and repelled him. In Die Versuchung des Pescara he submits the epoch to biting irony in stressing through imagery its iridescent, but morally dubious character. Transcribed into terms of motion and rest, the Renaissance represents chaos which the author pits against harmony and quiet. The sheer numerical weight of images of earthly corruption reflects the boisterousness of life and ultimate illusion. Meyer places them into narrative description where the images comment on the basic personality traits of the characters and serve, at times, as incisive authorial value judgment. Swirling metaphorical language also colors the speeches of the subordinate characters, who represent "types of the Renaissance," patterned after that great but morally dubious archetype, Machiavelli. These images form a vibrant negative pole which Meyer poises against the silence of death. In their pictorial and decorative grandeur, images of earthly corruption reveal Meyer's fascination with the aesthetic side of the period. Their capacity to manipulate and their strident rhetoric depict the questionable morality of "Realpolitik." Through the voice of Pescara, Meyer offers an alternative which he consecrates through simplicity and eloquence of picture.

In transmuting the theme of wordly illusion and deception into imagery, Meyer resorts to his favorite technique, the leitmotif, to establish a clear metaphorical link between certain realms of experience and dominant ideas in the novella. Two major leitmotifs of imagery interlace the narrative to portray a world of pretense and evil.

Theater images, a familiar motif in Meyer's novellas, underscore again and again the concept of the human condition as a bitter comedy or tragedy. War, the most brutal of man's activities, stares "wie eine Maske mit leeren Augen." Pescara, dying, expresses toward the end of the novella his weariness of the "menschliche Komödie." Subordinate characters don masks and cloaks to win support for their interests. Morone, the protean master of masks, goes to the closet of his imagination to pick a suitable costume to influence his listeners:

Schnellen Geistes wählte der Kanzler unter den Truggestalten und Blendwerken, über welche seine Einbildungskraft gebot, eine hinreichend wahrscheinliche und wirksame Larve, um sie seinem beweglichen Gebieter entgegenzuhalten und ihn damit heilsam zu erschrecken.

In Meyer the very identity of a person is a mask which is deceptive and impenetrable. Conjecturing about Pescara's true motives, Moncada, a Spanish nobleman, wonders: "Eine Maske . . . eine durchdachte Maske. Welch ein Antlitz verbirgt sie?" Pescara himself adopts an ironic stance as he urges Morone to assume the mask of Machiavelli while the Chancellor attempts to justify the dubious morality of betrayal. Pescara compares Morone's efforts to win his allegiance to the conspiratorial league to a theatrical performance. It is given a title and attended by an audience:

"Herrschaften," sagt er [Pescara], "hier wurde Theater gespielt. Das Stück dauerte lange. Habt Ihr nicht gegähnt in Eurer Loge?"

Da schlug der Bourbon in plötzlich umspringender Stimmung eine gelle Lache auf. "Trauerspiel oder Posse?" fragte er.

"Tragödie, Hoheit."

"Und betitelt sich?"

"Tod und Narr," antwortete Pescara.

While the motif of the worldly masquerade is traditional, Meyer, a master of revitalizing conventional analogies, makes the extended metaphor memorable by fashioning it as an ironic exchange between characters and by placing it prominently at the end of a chapter to give it further emphasis.

Imagery dealing with games and playing, the second principal leitmotif in the novella, forms an extension of Meyer's theater imagery. Cards, dice and chess recur as motifs to underline metaphorically that life and human interaction are a pretense, a game in which one person tries to outwit the other. Action lies again at the root of the analogies. "Wie wirst du spielen, Pescara?" ponders one character. "Man blickt uns in die Karten," frets another. The game of politics runs like a persistent thread throughout the novella, filtering down even to dead metaphor which Meyer imbues with new significance. War is a game of dice or a cunning game of chess. Images provide analogies for the relationships between characters. Significantly, Meyer first introduces Pescara through the use of a symbolic picture where the General is depicted playing a game of chess with his wife Victoria. Meyer forces the reader to ponder along with the subordinate characters as to whether Pescara will participate in worldly intrigue. Translated into the realm of the animal kingdom, game imagery becomes the tormenting and deadly game of cat and mouse. The motif is first associated with the cruel and sensual Don Juan, Pescara's nephew, one of the Spanish types of the Renaissance. The imagery reflects Meyer's virulently anti-Catholic bent to associate Spain with particular cruelty. Using personification, Meyer lets Don Juan envision Pescara caressing and subjugating a sensuous Italy and then tossing her away like a wanton woman. "[O], er wird mit ihr spielen wie die Katze mit der Maus!" he calls out, making a snatching motion with his hand, a typical Meyerean gesture. Other characters echo this motif later, imprinting it on the reader's mind. Pescara's physician Numa, fearing the Spanish side of Pescara, begs Pescara not to play a "grausames Spiel" with his beloved Italy. "Ich spiele mit Italien, sagst du?" responds Pescara. "Im Gegenteil, deine Landsleute, Numa, spielen mit mir: sie heucheln Leben und sind tot in ihren Übertretungen und Sünden." The image is an ironic reversal of the motif of the deadly game between cat and mouse. While a mouse simulates death in an attempt to save its life, the Italians here pretend to be alive, when, in fact, they are morally dead, as is their collusion to overthrow the emperor.

Subsidiary motifs interlace with these images of playing and play-acting to underline and elucidate the over-arching themes and to impress them on the reader's mind. The motifs are many, yet are drawn together thematically in that they portray a world of frantic action. Strong characters manipulate the weak like wax puppets; evil stretches out its roots like a giant tree which must be torn out to eradicate the malignancy. The idea of spinning portrays worldly action. Events turn on a wheel of fortune and encircle the man of action. Making use of repeated harsh "r" sounds to imitate the roar of a storm, Meyer gives pictorial form to the idea of events whipping and tossing man by combining wheel and storm imagery. Fire imagery adds an element of danger:

". . . ich glaube nicht, dass mein Italien untergeht, denn es trägt Unsterblichkeit in sich; aber ich möchte ihm das Fegefeuer der Knechtschaft ersparen. Gib acht, Söhnchen: ich lese zwischen deinen Augen, dass du noch eine Rolle spielen wirst in dem rasenden Reigen von Ereignissen, der über meinen lombardischen Boden hinwegfegt."

Elsewhere Meyer develops the idea of storms by depicting man being tossed about on the waves of life. Powerful individuals like Luther, he tells us, can stand firm against "den aufspritzenden Gischt des Jahrhunderts." Images of dirt and filth focus in on the unsavory nature of human dealings. Politics are likened to the mercantile—concepts of buying and selling—to describe human interaction. Pescara views political maneuverings as "ein schmutziger Markt und sein Weib dürfe nicht einmal die helle Spitze ihres Fusses in den ekeln Sumpf tauchen." War leads "zu der roten Lache einer Schlachtbank." No realm of society escapes condemnation. Meyer submits the Catholic church to particular irony: "Unsere kluge Kirche öffnet ihre Buden und legt verständig ihren Vorrat an guten Werken zum Verkauf aus." Popes are belittled through imagery. Pope Clemens is compared to a cunning sailor; Pope Julius thunders like Zeus on a cloud, only to crash down in Hades.

Chasm imagery, which depicts characters falling into an abyss, a realm of lies and deception, develops Meyer's pessimistic evaluation of existence further. The images play with the idea of imbalance, the precariousness of existence, darkness and danger. In a striking extended metaphor, Italy is first compared to a morass which is hollowed out by its own morally corrupt excesses. Then Meyer associates it with a malicious woman, who is seemingly beseeching, but is actually trying to "pull away solid ground from under Pescara" in order to force him to jump into a chasm. The ethically indifferent Morone is seen as an "Abgrund von Lüge, in welchem der Blick sich verliert." The human condition leaves man chronically poised at the edge of the precipice. The danger may also take the form of treacherous quicksand. In an image which becomes the basis of dialogue, Pescara warns Morone of the perils of disloyalty:

"Fusset Ihr auf diesem Undanke des Kaisers und auf diesem Grolle Pescaras, so tut keinen Schritt weiter: Ihr würdet in den trügerischen Boden versinken."

"Da fusse ich nicht."

Snake and poison imagery symbolize betrayal. Meyer focuses in on the twisting and turning of snakes to refract the idea of spinning from yet another angle. A certain fascination with evil, a sign of Meyer's love-hate relationship with the Renaissance, emerges from the pictures. Morone becomes enthralled by a painting of the coat of arms of the Sforza family, a gruesome and twisting wreath of snakes, brought to life by the "süsse" Leonardo da Vinci in a "Spiel einer grausamen Laune." Pescara turns to snake metaphor to give voice to his negative view of betrayal. He has learned that defaming letters have been disseminated about him to coerce his defection from the emperor. He has sent these letters to the Emperor. The reader learns about Pescara's action for the first time in this image which serves to summarize events:

"Ich habe vorgebeugt und die arglistigen Schriften wie in einen Käfig eingesperrte Schlangen dem Kaiser überliefert. Habet Ihr Eure Finger auch in dieses Gift getaucht, Morone?"

The image of the basket of snakes depicts grisly motion. The repeated "s" sounds imitate the hissing of snakes and synecdoche focuses in on the evil, the poison of betrayal. Elsewhere disloyalty takes the shape of slithering fogs and mists or flicks like a tongue from under the earth's surface. The latter motif is associated with Bourbon, the archetypical betrayer, whose undulating and volatile moods reflect his tormented conscience.

As can be seen from the examples cited, Meyer's metaphorical language of worldly corruption partakes linguistically of a grammar of movement. Most frequently the image is located in a verb, with the verb metaphor serving as the originator of the image, changing nouns implicitly into something else. Verb metaphor also supports other types of analogies, helping to fashion highly graphic pictures charged with inner movement. Language is transmuted into action. The technique is a favorite one of Meyer, who equated movement with beauty. In Die Versuchung des Pescara, however, verb imagery appears in greatest number and highest ratio of all of his novellas. Here analogies of action assume a higher significance, becoming bearers in linguistic form of thematic matter. All manner of metaphoric transformations strike Meyer's imagination. At times, a simple metaphoric verb transmutes one thing into another. Don Juan, for example, "pants for prey" thereby mutating into an animal; the papal seat "spits out heresy" thus becoming a gigantic monster. Complex verb metaphors, each of which makes use of a more intricate relationship between metaphorical verbs and other elements of the sentence, far outnumber simple verb metaphors in fashioning detailed pictures of action. In an ironic image, which reflects Meyer's condemning attitude toward dreams of temporal grandeur, he plays with the idea of Victoria's vanity by turning loyalty to the state into a corpse and then describing how Victoria steps over it: "Sie schritt mit einer geraubten Krone wie die erste Tullía, nicht über den Leichnam des Vaters, sondern über die gemeuchelte Staatstreue . . . ." Betrayal is a distorting vapor and repulsive fog which creeps into each and every relationship of a betrayer, making him hideous.

As can be seen, verb metaphor lends itself well to personification, and Meyer uses it frequently to animate the inanimate and to mutate one thing into another. As touches of cultural milieu, images in the Renaissance tradition attribute actions to personified abstractions like death, virtue and justice: death lowers its torch and snuffs it out, or it knocks at marble portals. Virtue marches forth in person. In the same tradition, particular actions are attributed to ready-made personifications such as gods and demons, which are changed anthropomorphically.

Morone thus envisions the goddess of victory, betrayed by the Spanish emperor at Pavia, marching forth and choosing out Pescara to lead the fight for a free Italy. Meyer depicts Italy, a symbol of the Renaissance in its beauty and moral decay, in leitmotif fashion to paint a canvas of grand proportions. Italy throws itself defenselessly at Pescara's feet, and lies in painful chains. Seemingly innocent, she maliciously hollows out the ground from under Pescara to try to force him to jump into a chasm of betrayal. She offers her bridal ring to him but is in fact a prostitute who must learn virtue in chains.

Frequently Meyer harnesses similes to his verb metaphors to add visual impact. A striking simile depicts Luther, a dynamic force in the course of history, bracing himself against the events of his time. Sound adds to the richness of picture:

". . . er vollzieht, was die Zeit fordert, dann aber—und das ist ein schweres Amt—steht er wie ein Gigant gegen den aufspritzenden Gischt des Jahrhunderts und schleudert hinter sich die aufgeregten Narren und bösen Buben, die mittun wollen, das gerechte Werk übertreibend und schändend."

The image is a typical Meyerean allegory, a story that unfolds before the mind's eye. The gigantic Luther, who in the simile calls to mind the colossus of Rhodes, first stands firm against the foaming battering of his time, a metaphor of the ocean. The hard "g" sounds and repeated sibilants onomatopoetically repeat the chopping and frothing of waves. Luther then tosses aside the insignificant men of his generation, the fools who dare to meddle in great events. Always sensitive to the pitch and quality of vowels, and to the character of consonants, Meyer—though considered primarily an "Augenmensch"—finds a wealth of opportunity in assonance and alliteration in creating his tableaux charged with inner movement. Metaphorical adjectives serve as a pithy way to animate the pictures further. The image "foam of events" is enlivened by the adjective "spraying." Similarly Meyer speaks of "der verröchelnden Republik" and of "einen in Monddämmerung kriechenden Hinterhalt," turning the abstract concepts into animate beings.

Noun metaphors, the most complex of metaphors grammatically, make up about one half of the images in Die Versuchung des Pescara. Almost all of these analogies, images depicting various modes of worldly activity, receive support from verb metaphors, being prolonged into optically clear pictures in which a series of actions unfold. Making use of parallelism to equate a chasm with Pescara's secretive soul, for example, Meyer first pairs the abstract term (the soul) with the noun metaphor (the chasm). Then he prolongs the analogy with verb metaphors to create an image of manipulation:

So schaukelte Pescara sein Weib über dem Abgrund und dem Geheimnis seiner Seele und hinderte sie, Fuss zu fassen, die mit dem ganzen Ungestüm ihres Wesens Boden suchte, den Sieg erstrebend, den zu erringen sie nach Novarra geeilt war. Auf immer neuen Wegen verfolgte sie das Ziel von welchem Pescara sie ferne hielt.

The idea of Pescara's lofty vantage, his wife's helplessness in the face of it, and a certain degree of playful cruelty give shape to the image. Movement is also intrinsic to noun metaphors which make use of the different types of genitive links to associate the proper term or "tenor" with the metaphoric term or "vehicle" (e.g. "Gesicht der Zeit," "rasender Reigen der Ereignisse"). These types of noun metaphors usually depict a functional relationship in addition to a sensuous relationship between tenor and vehicle (e.g. in the image "rasender Reigen der Ereignisse" the events are the roundelay, both of which spin). Motion is thus present in the idea of the noun metaphor itself. Meyer develops these images by adding metaphoric verbs to intensify action:

. . . [sie flehte], dass Rom und Italien nicht versinke in das Grab der Knechtschaft.

". . . ich möchte ihm das Fegefeuer der Knechtschaft ersparen. . . . [I]ch lese zwischen deinen Augen, dass du noch eine Rolle spielen wirst in dem rasenden Reigen von Ereignissen, der über meinen lombardischen Boden hinwegfegt."

In the images above, the metaphor expresses the identity of the tenor and vehicle (e.g. the "Fegefeuer" is the "Knechtschaft"). Images which express attribution depict even more specific actions. By assigning a quality to a proper term (e.g. in the image "Gesicht der Zeit" the capacity of seeing is attributed to time, thus turning "Gesicht" into a face), especially by means of a verb plus a preposition which expresses exactly what one thing is doing in, with, or out of another, Meyer creates intense dynamic formulations. The formula is used as a main means of personification. Vanity is thus endowed with arms which she uses to squander her earthly possessions. A cloak is wrapped around the shameless exhibitionism of Italy to give her more dignity. At times, noun metaphors simply replace a proper term with a more poetic one. Verbs again support the noun metaphors. A colorful array of imagistic heroes, gods and half-gods from Greek mythology and Roman history capture the flavor of the Renaissance. Pescara is Achilles who "zürnt im Zelte. "Der garstige Leyva," Pescara's crude but loyal general, and Pescara's wife Victoria are "Mars und Muse" who both feel insulted by betrayal.

As can be seen, each of the images of worldly corruption cited above embroiders a picture of movement within the content of one analogy. Others become dynamic in development. The original analogy, produces through some association a new analogy and then yet another in a kind of chain-reaction. A sequence of images thus pushes the narrative forward, intensifying and propelling the sense of action. The intrigant Nasi uses such an image to describe his plan to coerce Pescara to join the Italian league. He will bribe a disreputable poet to write and circulate letters about Pescara which will proclaim the probability of Pescara's betrayal of his emperor:

"Ich will ihm eine sehr starke Summe senden, und ihr werdet euch über die Saat von schönfarbigen Giftpilzen verwundern, die über Nacht aus dem ganzen Boden Italiens emporschiesst: Verse, Abhandlungen, Briefwechsel, ein bacchantisch aufspringender, taumelnder Reigen verhüllter und nackter, drohender und verlockender Figuren und Wendungen, alle um Pescara sich drehend und um die Wahrscheinlichkeit und Schönheit seines Verrates."

The images are charged with association and compress complex thought into vivid pictures. The movement of mushrooms springing from the ground suggests the image of dancing figures. The beauty of the colorful mushrooms leads Meyer in association to naked circling bacchanalian characters. The dancers are threatening and dangerous, as are the poisonous fungi, yet they are alluring as are the colorful mushrooms. The moral ugliness of betrayal is clear, yet it entwines with enticing expediency. Once again ethical decay and aesthetic voluptuousness symbolize visually Meyer's mixed feelings about the Renaissance.

It is important to note that Meyer's dynamic images are not only found in narrative description, but are placed into the speeches of his Machiavellian subordinate characters. Meyer was well aware of the efficacy of metaphor in the delineation of characters, and used images vivid in movement, both in structure and thought content, as signs of the outlook and temperament of the subordinate characters who view the world as an every-changing scene of conflict. Laden with pictorial force, these images become rhetorical devices by which one character attempts to capture the imagination of the other and thereby to sway him. A whirlwind of verbal activity surrounds Pescara. Meyer ascribes some of his most rhetorical metaphorical formulations to the speeches of the secondary characters who as a group serve as a foil against Pescara. They have a compulsion, even as Meyer himself, to give concrete shape and outline to their thoughts and use imagery consciously to give vivid and dynamic form to their impassioned feelings. A higher percentage of emphatically rhetorical imagistic formulations occurs in Die Versuchung des Pescara than in any other of Meyer's novellas except for his last work Angela Borgia. The subordinate characters employ images for hyperbole, periphrase, repetition and syllogistic argument. They build crescendos, retards and climaxes in a manner found in Renaissance tracts. Having been schooled in rhetoric, they love to display their metaphors and use the most clear and emphatic grammatical formulations to achieve emotive power. Highly rhetorical pictures of action unfold. Nasi's image of the poisonous mushrooms, as we have just seen, is formulated first as a declaration and then a visually intense variation: "Ich will ihm eine sehr starke Summe senden . . . die Saat von schönfarbigen Giftpilzen. . . ." Then Nasi adds an apposition, a clarifying "that is," strengthened by a colon, for explicit rhetorical intensification of picture: "Verse, Abhandlungen, Briefwechsel, ein bacchantisch aufspringender, taumelnder Reigen verhüllter und nackter, drohender und verlockender Figuren und Wendungen . . .". The demonstrative formula of imagery, making use of either the definite article or "diese" to specifically point out the image, serves characters for imagistic repetition:

"Hier ist ein Sieg davonzutragen, grösser als der auf dem Schlachtfelde. . . . Ich sehe sie vor mir, diese Königin der Tugend, die Priesterin, die das heilige Feuer hütet, die Erhalterin der Herrschaft, und, hosianna! ganz Italien wandelt hinter ihren Schritten, lobpreisend und frohlockend!"

Copula, the most direct and emotionally strong type of rhetorical analogy, occurs in highest percentage in Die Versuchung des Pescara of all of Meyer's novellas. In this type of figure of speech the tenor and the vehicle are equated point blank with the verb "to be" to proclaim identity:

"Ich bin Italien und liege zu deinen Füssen: erhebe mich und nimm mich an deine Brust!"

"Dieser Mensch ist ein Abgrund von Lüge, in welchem der Blick sich verliert."

Such dynamic images serve as climaxes in speeches of high emotional impact. In a particularly striking example, the Florentine Guicciardin uses such an analogy for calculated effect as he builds his rhetorical oration to his listeners. Meyer provides no less than five exclamation points to indicate the intensity of Guicciardin's emotions. The Italian's speech culminates in an image. In Meyer the characters are attentive to each other's metaphorical language and are verbally responsive to it. Many images, as we have seen, even become the subject of dialog. Pushed to the extreme, the intensely rhetorical dynamic analogies become a sign of the hollowness of language per se. This happens in the idiom of Morone, Pescara's chief adversary, whose imagery becomes empty theatrics. Here Meyer reaches for the tool of linguistic irony to suggest that human communication and interaction are intrinsically false and without meaning.

In many ways Morone is the novella's most interesting character. His figure serves, as we have seen, as the clue to the static and dynamic configurations of the narrative. His highly excitable and many-faceted character resonates with movement. Morone's physical mannerisms—rolling eyes, grimaces and gestures—are so pronounced that other characters become disturbed, even irritated, by them. They call out repeatedly: "Lass die Grimassen, Narr!"; "ich kann nicht sprechen, wenn Eure Gebärden so heftig dareinreden." Even in disguise Morone is readily recognized by his vehement movements. Images of motion portray the Chancellor's twirling thoughts and emotions. His ideas "wimmeln wie in einem Ameisenhaufen" and brew as if in a witch's kettle. Morone is capable of the noblest and basest emotions, and as a true man of the Renaissance, springs to either extreme as expediency demands. Analogies of jumping depict his volatile nature and his amoral flexibility. "Von den steilsten Dächern herabrollend, kommst du wie eine Katze immer wieder auf die Füsse zu stehen," proclaims Duke Sforza, Morone's master, in envious wonderment. Guicciardin, too, sizes up Morone's character: "Ein Phantast wie du, Kanzler, mit den unbändigen Sprüngen deiner Einbildungskraft ist dazu da das Unmögliche zu erdenken und auszusprechen." Morone is the embodiment of the actor, a Proteus, a black magician who adopts whatever mask necessary to achieve his political aims. He picks out suitable costumes from the "closet of his imagination" to impress his listeners and changes his cloaks as quickly as his concepts of morality. Morone is the mastermind of the Italian league, at once noble and eloquent in his love of Italy and possessed by the dream of national unification. At the same time, he is a caricature of Machiavellian "Realpolitik," "der tolle Kanzler," the "Narr," "Buffone," "Gaukler," who carries his "klassischer Bocksfuss unter der Toga."

For Morone, the master rhetorician, imagistic language is the most expedient way to fulfill his goals, and he uses it consciously, actually altering it for calculated effect. In speeches early on in the novella, Morone's idiom is very much like that of the other characters. Images occur, but not with more frequency than in the speeches of the other characters. When adopting the role of the temptor, however, his idiom changes radically. It becomes highly rhetorical and laden with dynamic images which accumulate to build emotional climaxes. The other characters respond to this according to their own dispositions. Realists like Guicciardin are not emotionally swayed. "Genug deklamiert!" he calls out as Morone begins to laud the concept of the Italian league too ecstatically. On the other hand, rhetoric completely wins over the highly imaginative and temperamental Victoria. Morone builds his oration to her by creating an allegory which appeals to her "altertumstrunkenes Auge." Emotive and culturally laden images play upon her vanity. Movement characterizes the analogies. Morone first paints a picture of the grand triumphal parade of the century and the revolving wheel of fortune. Victoria is the "Königin der Tugend, die Priesterin, die das heilige Feuer hütet." She will lead the jubilant processional and throw herself in front of Pescara, exhorting: "Ich bin Italien und liege zu deinen Füssen: erhebe mich und nimm mich an deine Brust!" The vivid pictures couched in rhetorical phraseology overwhelm her feelings and appeal to the poetess in her who is keenly attuned to the melody and rhythms of language. Morone's temptation is as much linguistic as philosophical. Highly emotional himself, he joins Victoria in moving to a rarefied atmosphere beyond the realm of truth and reality. Meyer sums up Victoria's reaction with irony in a passage which parodies the temptation of Christ:

Victoria senkte die Augen, denn sie fühlte, dass sie voller Wonne waren und brannten wie zwei Sonnen.

Da sagte der Kanzler: "Ich habe Euch ermüdet, edle Frau, die Augen fallen Euch zu. . . ." Und der Listige trat in die Nacht zurück, die sich inzwischen auf die ewige Stadt gesenkt hatte.

In contrast to Victoria, Morone fails in his verbal temptation of Pescara. Endeavoring to get the General to switch allegiance, Morone begins his oration once again by painting an allegorical canvas of a magnificent processional. He envisions the goddess of victory of Pavia, having been insulted by the Spanish emperor, leading Pescara into battle on behalf of the Italian league. "Mein Pescara, welche Sternstellung über dir und für dich! Die Sache reif und reif du selbst!" As Morone's emotions come into full swing, he begins to leap from metaphor to metaphor, carried away by the momentum of his own language. A world of gigantic deeds and actions awaits Pescara. Morone implores Pescara to play along in the grandiose happenings:

"Eine entscheidende Zeit, ein verzweifeltes Ringen, Götter und Titanen, Freiheit sich aufbäumend gegen Zwingherrschaft, die Welt heute noch Bewegung und Fluss, morgen vielleicht zur Lava erstarrend! . . . Zuckt dir die formende Hand nicht danach? . . . Blick auf die Karte und überschaue die Halbinsel zwischen zwei Meerfarben und dem Schnee der Gebirge! Befrage die Geschichte: ein lebendiges Geflecht, oft gewaltsam zerrissen und immer wieder zusammenwachsend, von Republiken und Fürsten, mit zwei alten Feinden, zwei falschen Ideen, zwei grausamen Chimären, Papst und Kaiser! Siehe den ausgestreckten Finger Gottes, daran sich ein neue Menschheit emporrichtet: eine sich selbst regierende und veredelnde Menschheit ohne höchstes Amt, weder weltliches noch geistliches, ein Reigen frei entwickelter Genien, ein Konzert gleichberechtigter Staaten—"

Morone's style, a combination of rhetorical question, exhortations and analogies, is impossibly inflated. Images of spinning and motion—melting lava, nations twisting and turning like a living wickerwork, God's outstretched finger creating a new humanity, a roundelay of superior men, a concert of states—are heaped to a degree where they can no longer be visualized. As their proliferation becomes irrational and the Chancellor reaches the point of hysteria, Pescara takes Morone by the hand, saying: "Fliege mir nicht davon, Girolamo!" Dying and beyond temptation, Pescara sees Morone's language, a symbol of the unrealistic folly of the Italian league itself, clearly for what it is: empty theatrics. Language per se, Meyer tells us, is a sham. Human interaction is futile and hollow. At the end Morone becomes the fool, a jumping "Paillasse" who is led away straddled backwards on a donkey, roaring at his own misery. The scene represents the pinnacle of Meyer's irony.

If one now contrasts these images of excess, hollowness, and feverish activity with the cluster of images which typifies Pescara, a dramatic difference can be noted. In the first three chapters of the novella, Pescara's own idiom remains terse and relatively unadorned and is characteristically tinged with irony. Metaphorical language making use of dynamic formulations swirls around Pescara, conjecturing about his motives and character. These images are spoken, however, by other characters who—typical Meyerean figures—can not probe the center of the hero's consciousness. Victoria laments that even though she knows the least of her husband's gestures, facial expressions, and habits by heart, his mind and soul remain full of closed doors and chambers which prevent her from reaching him. The image aptly conveys the plight of all the other characters who find the hero's nature unfathomable. Pescara is a "Sphinx" whose motives remain shrouded in mystery. He seems, in fact, to be playing a game with the other characters. The General is introduced into the novella in a picture which portrays him playing chess with his wife. Meyer describes him dangling her over an abyss, his secretive soul, and intentionally preventing her from reaching solid ground, the truth of his motives. Meyer, who loved the ambiguous hero, the "what if of situations, can not resist casting oblique perspectives on his protagonist. He spoke of a "geheime Basis" of the novella. "Vielleicht unterlag Pescara, ohne die Wunde." Characters make metaphorical suppositions as to whether Pescara, too, isn't a cunning man of the Renaissance.

From the first, however, Meyer associates Pescara with death and the reader becomes gradually aware that Pescara's stance is different from that of the subordinate characters. Unknown to the others, Pescara is dying. Death has sharpened his perception of political maneuverings and made him aware of the futility of human action. Pescara's characteristically ironic language reflects this superior vantage which merges with that of Meyer the author. Death images, at times thematically interwoven with play images—as in the extended metaphor of death and the fool, or the reference to Pescara playing chess with his wife "blass wie der Tod"—occur at regular intervals to cast light on Pescara's inner state. Pescara's bitter lucidity about the brutal nature of human activity overlaps with Meyer's own pessimistic attitude. In a scene that is crucial to the meaning of the story, the crust of Pescara's irony breaks and an elegiac mood overcomes him. A series of lyrical images expresses his acceptance of death and his view of it as a benefactor who will deliver him from moral conflict. Character and author merge to hallow the release from earthly existence. Images paint a picture of beauty, rest and quiet. In contrast to the profuse and often strident analogies of the other characters, these images are few. Their form is characterized by utmost simplicity. Many are simple similes, which Meyer elevates through eloquence of language and symbolic intent. When Pescara finally clarifies his true motives, he reaches for a simile to tell his wife that he has been fully aware of the political maneuverings. Not only the thought content of this critical image, but also its acoustical shape encapsulates the static and dynamic configurations of the novella:

"Ich sah die Versuchung lange, ich sah sie kommen und sich gipfeln wie eine heranrollende Woge, und habe nicht geschwankt, nicht einen Augenblick, mit dem leisesten Gedanken nicht."

With the tonal and rhythmic thrust of a poem, the image of the wave repeats the motif of the tossing ocean seen earlier in the novella. The rhythm of the language peaks three times as the metaphorical wave, the temptation, builds to engulf Pescara. Pescara, however, prevails as the wave washes away to nothingness, represented by the threefold retard at the end of the simile. "Meine Gottheit . . . hat den Sturm rings um meine Ruder beruhigt," says Pescara, responding imagistically to the motifs of storms and struggle seen previously in the story. The lilting rhythm of the analogy and the repeated sonorous "r" sounds unite sense and sound to convey the picture of a man at peace. The motif of the boatsman with oars at rest is a familiar death symbol in Meyer's poems and novellas where it depicts a state of equilibrium, a sense of welcome release and mood of unconcern in the face of temptation and intrigue. The quietness of Pescara's death, a blend of pseudoreligious fatalism, escapism and resignation, resembles the realm of sleep and dreams where the contradictions of existence disappear and where a secretive, dark and gentle god saves man from irresolvable contradictions. As death now makes its appearance to Pescara and he struggles for his life and breath, he becomes for his wife like a dream, a bloody winter sun which has set with splendorous finality. The glow of the setting sun associated with blood symbolizes death at the moment of life's greatest magnificence, a concept which fascinated Meyer. Riding together for the last time to a cloister where Victoria is to await Pescara's summons, Pescara and Victoria enter a world of silence:

Kein Windhauch und nicht der leiseste Versuch einer Wolkenbildung. Keine Lerche stieg, kein Vogelsang, es dämmerte ein stilles Zwielicht wie über den Wiesen der Unterwelt.

The verbless first sentence of the image, followed by the short clauses of the second, retard all action. The repeated sibilants and the lingering "i" sounds evoke breathless silence. The image conjures up a time when light hangs in balance and no motion or sound disturbs the uncanny stillness. The scene in its nakedness is intensely visual, the mood almost surrealistic in its suspended animation. The images of grinding action which have traversed the novella like vivid bits of cinema, portraying turbulent life, give way. Pescara is filled with a sense of streaming calm, "das Fluten der Ewigkeit." "Ich bin jenseits der Kluft," states Pescara, posing an antithesis imagistically to the motifs of precarious instability and danger. "Was soll dieser Sturm?" he asks his wife as they view a painting depicting human activity. "Alles in rasender Tätigkeit." Death, a "Todesengel," will cut through the unsolvable knot of his existence. Death is Pescara's "Befreier," the "Schnitter" who brings down what has come to fruition. His dark "Beschützer" means him well, believes Pescara, and will take him tenderly from here. "Wohin? In die Ruhe." When Pescara dies, the novella closes with a simile of sleep which hallows his release from the conflicts of existence:

Pescara lag ungewaffnet und ungerüstet auf dem goldenen Bette des gesunkenen Thronhimmels. Der starke Wille in seinen Zügen hatte sich gelöst, und die Haare waren ihm über die Stirn gefallen. So glich er einem jungen, magern, von der Ernte erschöpften und auf seiner Garbe schlafenden Schnitter.

The image is rich in association. The background of the golden bed is reminiscent of the setting sun of Meyer's harvest poems where it pours down over reapers when they return from their toils. It envelops them in a heavenly halo and consecrates their life's work even as the golden glow of the bed does here. Rest and peace dominate. Bathed in warm golden light like the yellow of ripened fields of grain or the golden background of old religious paintings, action is frozen at this epiphanic moment as in a painting, more beautiful than life itself. Suffering and tempestuous emotion are distilled into an aethetic form which objectifies pain and, by doing so, transcends it. The image, the final sentence of the novella, climaxes the images of death. In number they are few, yet in their intensity and symbolic value, they bring us to the thematic core of the novella.

Meyer's method is conscious. He was not what Bruneau terms an "inspired imagist" whose imagery grows from intuitive and visionary perceptions, but rather a "chimiste" whose creation is tempered by a rational process. By chiseling consistent and pronounced metaphorical patterns to contrast life and death, Meyer creates a substructure which counterpoints the dramatic structure of the novella. Images become symbols which far transcend their individual existence. Functionally, dynamic metaphorical language serves as an instrument of actual temptation which the protagonist rejects. Through the juxtaposition of realms from which images are drawn, as well as their tone and distribution, Meyer also fashions a political allegory of an entire era and reveals his ironic attitude toward the Renaissance. Above all, the complex metaphorical arabesques, crystallizations of repose poised against vibrant pictures of action, become instruments of probing and analyzing complex experience. Firmly attached to the dominant themes, static and dynamic images play a compelling part in conveying the meaning of the novella and deepening its artistic effect. They become symbols of metaphysical and moral values. "Vor dem Tode erschrecke ich nicht," wrote Meyer, "warum auch? Habe ich ihn doch—nach meinen Kräften—verherrlicht in den Gedichten und im 'Pescara'." Images weave a rich tapestry of Meyer's fundamental mode of vision and provide the poignant symbols for his view of life and death.