T. J. Clark's Ravishing Style #7

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Land of Cockaigne (1567)

This is the seventh post in my monthly series “T. J. Clark’s Ravishing Style,” a consideration of what makes Clark’s writing so distinctive and delectable. Each month I choose a favorite passage from his work and analyze its ingredients. Today’s pick is from his splendid “Bruegel in Paradise,” included in his great 2018 collection Heaven on Earth. It’s a description of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Land of Cockaigne (1567):

At bottom left, especially, grass gives way to earth. But again, whatever upset and instability the tilt of the land may bring on is more than counteracted – this is my answer to the idea of Cockaigne as the world in the negative – by the painting’s relish for things, details, textures, contours. All the contents of the world’s full stomach.

There is no good way of repeating the relish in words. Pointing out and enumerating are what language is designed to do, whereas what is glorious in Cockaigne is just pointless endless proliferation. Look at the airholes in the cheese! Look at the excellent ironwork on the flail. Or the fine silver clamps on the Bible. How exquisite the man of letters’ face – pink cheeks and nose, glinting eyes, delicate nostrils and lips. Look at the flayed-flesh pink of his tunic and leggings, the latter like exposed tissue. Compare the furred lightness of the soldier’s chainmail. How beautiful the drawing of the young man’s shirt, especially its neckline and long liquid folds. Notice the roots of the tree by the mountain of gruel – a typical Bruegel interest here in the character of a particular root system, plus a specific kind of spreading into the surrounding earth, and a set of outrider saplings.

Two of the cactus loaves are half sunk in the grass, like tombstones. The peasant has a thick mane of hair. The soldier’s lance is steel-tipped, glinting even in the shadow. The egg in the foreground has yolk spilling down the right side of its shell!

I find this passage ravishing. Why? What makes it so? There’s poetry in it. Clark takes his cue from the picture: “the painting’s relish for things, details, textures, contours. All the contents of the world’s full stomach.” The key word here is “relish.” Clark, in describing Cockaigne, doubts whether he can convey Bruegel’s “relish for things, details, textures, contours.” He says, “There is no good way of repeating the relish in words.” But he tries anyway, and he magnificently succeeds, noting detail after vivid detail: “the airholes in the cheese”; “the excellent ironwork on the flail”; “the fine silver clamps on the Bible”; “the man of letters’ face – pink cheeks and nose, glinting eyes, delicate nostrils and lips”; “the flayed-flesh pink of his tunic and leggings, the latter like exposed tissue”; “the furred lightness of the soldier’s chainmail”; “the drawing of the young man’s shirt, especially its neckline and long liquid folds”; “the roots of the tree by the mountain of gruel”; “a set of outrider saplings”; “the cactus loaves ... half sunk in the grass, like tombstones”; the peasant’s “thick mane of hair”; the soldier’s steel-tipped lance, “glinting even in the shadow”; the egg in the foreground, “yolk spilling down the right side of its shell.”

Note the exclamation marks (“Look at the airholes in the cheese!” “The egg in the foreground has yolk spilling down the right side of its shell!”). Clark is excited. He relishes Bruegel’s “endless proliferation” of “things, details, textures, contours.” It’s double relish – Bruegel’s and Clark’s.