The Elm and the Vine were associated particularly by
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
authors. Because pruned
elm trees acted as
vine
A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselv ...
supports, this was taken as a symbol of marriage and imagery connected with their pairing also became common in
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
literature. Various fables were created out of their association in both Classical and later times. Although
Aesop was not credited with these formerly, later fables hint at his authorship.
Marriage imagery
The 'marriage' of elm trees and vines continued in Italy from Roman times into the 20th century. There are references to this both in works on husbandry and in poetry. The most famous of the latter was
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's account of the myth of
Vertumnus and
Pomona in his ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
''. Vertumnus takes the shape of an old woman and urges the reluctant goddess to marriage by pointing to the vine in her orchard. In the version by the work's first English translator,
Arthur Golding
Arthur Golding (May 1606) was an English translator of more than 30 works from Latin into English. While primarily remembered today for his translation of Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' because of its influence on William Shakespeare's works, in his ...
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The subject was commonly painted in Europe between the 16th - 18th centuries, and there are examples which feature a vine trained up an elm from Italy, the Netherlands, France and England (see the Gallery below).
The theme's continuing popularity was partly encouraged by the entry of the imagery into
Emblem books, beginning with the most popular of them all,
Andrea Alciato
Andrea Alciato (8 May 149212 January 1550), commonly known as Alciati (Andreas Alciatus), was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists.
Biography
Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, nea ...
's ''Emblemata'', in which it figures under the title ''Amicitia etiam post mortem durans'' (Friendship lasting even after death). This interpretation had been influenced by a first-century CE poem by
Antipater of Thessalonica
Antipater of Thessalonica ( grc-gre, Ἀντίπατρος ὁ Θεσσαλονικεύς; c. 10 BC - c. AD 38) was a Greek epigrammatist of the Roman period.
Biography
Antipater lived during the latter part of the reign of Augustus, and perha ...
in which a withered plane tree (rather than an elm) recounts how the vine trained about it keeps it green. Alciato was followed in this interpretation by
Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey (then spelt Geffrey) Whitney (c. 1548 – c. 1601) was an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the ''Choice of Emblemes'' that he compiled.
Life
Geoffrey Whitney, the eldest son of a father of the sa ...
in England, using Alciato's illustration but accompanied by verses of his own. It has been argued that
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
borrowed from this source of imagery for his ''
The Comedy of Errors
''The Comedy of Errors'' is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It ...
'', in which Adriana reasons with Antipholus of Syracuse,"Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine./ Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,/ Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,/ Makes me with thy strength to communicate" (2.2.166-169).
Other emblem writers who took up this theme include Otto Vaenius in his ''Amorum emblemata'' (1608), where it is interpreted as love continuing after the death of a partner; by
Jean Jacques Boissard
Jean-Jacques Boissard (1528 – 30 October 1602) was an antiquary and Neo-Latin poet.
Life
He was born at Besançon and educated at Leuven; but he secretly left the seminary there, and travelled through (Germany) to Italy, where he remained seve ...
in his ''Emblemes latins'' (1588), where he takes it as a sign of undying friendship; and by
Daniel Heinsius in his ''Emblemata Amatoria'' (1607), where he makes the tree a plane, following the Greek epigram, and interprets it as the sign of undying love. The French version of his Latin poem reads
::::
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- as the vine survives about the plane, So will my love the stroke of fate. Similarly
Konstantin Batyushkov
Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov ( rus, Константи́н Никола́евич Ба́тюшков, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbatʲʊʂkəf, a=Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov.ru.vorb.oga; ) was a Russian poet, e ...
, with a history of borrowings from foreign sources, will later speak of receiving a beloved's last embrace "as the tendrils of the vine around the slender elm go winding" in his Russian poem "Elysium" of 1810.
Grateful dependence of a different sort was signified by the French emblem of
Gilles Corrozet
Gilles Corrozet (1510 - 1568, Paris) was a French writer and printer-bookseller.
Life and works
Corrozet’s printer’s mark was a rose enclosed in a heart, punning on his name (''Coeur rosier''), and accompanied by the Biblical motto ''In corde ...
in his ''Hecatomographie'' (1540), where a fruiting vine acknowledges its debt to the 'little tree' that supports it. In the following century an adaptation of the emblem was adopted as printer's mark by the
House of Elzevir for their press in
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
. There a scholar picks grapes from the vine trained round the tree, on the other side of which is the Latin device ''Non Solus'' (not alone), pointing to the alliance between learning and literature.
Vertumnus and Pomona from the 16th – 19th century
File:Melzi - Vertumnus and Pomona.jpg, Francesco Melzi 1517-20
File:Vertumnus en Pomona Rijksmuseum SK-A-2217.jpeg, Hendrik Goltzius
Hendrick Goltzius, or Hendrik, (; ; January or February 1558 – 1 January 1617) was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his ...
1613
File:Bloemaert, Abraham - Vertumnus and Pomona - 1620.jpg, Abraham Bloemaert 1620
File:Vertumnus and Pomona 1630 Paulus Moreelse.jpg, Paulus Moreelse 1630
File:Francois Boucher - Earth- Vertumnus and Pomona (1749)01.JPG, François Boucher
François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...
, 1749
File:Hamilton Vertumnus and Pomona.jpg, William Hamilton, 1789
File:Westall Vertumnus and Pomona.jpg, Richard Westall
Richard Westall (2 January 1765 – 4 December 1836) was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary events, best known for his portraits of Byron. He was also Queen Victoria's drawing master.
Biography
We ...
, early 19th century
The fables
A fable, or at least a parable, of the mutual support of the unfruitful elm and the fruiting vine appeared early on in the quasi-Biblical
Shepherd of Hermas. The interpretation given it there was that the rich are in need of the prayers of the poor, which they can only acquire by acts of charity. There is a return to the association with marriage in the anonymous poem "The Elm and Vine", first published in England in 1763 and reprinted elsewhere for some fifty years both there and in the USA. The story is set "In Aesop's days, when trees could speak" and concerns a vine that scorns the tree's proposal, only to take it up when beaten down by a storm. Much the same story was versified in the 19th century by the Mexican fabulist
Jose Rosas Moreno, then in turn translated in a condensed version by the American poet
William Cullen Bryant.
A different fable appeared in prose in
Robert Dodsley's ''Select Fables of Esop'' (1764). This, however, was an adaptation of the fable of
The Gourd and the Palm-tree
The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance a variant appeared in which a pine took the palm-tree's place and the story was occasionally counted as one of ...
and appeared in the book's third section of 'modern fables'. There the pert vine refused the elm's proposal and boasted of being able to rely on its own resources. The elm replies to the 'poor infatuated shrub' that misapplication of its resources will soon bring about its downfall. The text was reissued in a 1776 edition of Dodsley's work illustrated by
Thomas Bewick and again in John Brocket's ''Select Fables'' (Newcastle 1820), also with Bewick's woodcut.
Google Books
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elm and the Vine, The
Fables
Works about marriage
Fictional trees
Literary duos