The Cream of the Jest · Chapter
III: Wherein a Clerk Appraises a Fair Country explained
Horvendile surveys the rich and noble land of Storisende from its highest turrets, reflecting on its beauty and the dignity of its people.
What happens
Horvendile surveys the rich and noble land of Storisende from its highest turrets, reflecting on its beauty and the dignity of its people. He recites a poetic lament about unrequited love, comparing his longing to the skylark's ecstatic flight and fall. Observing a troop of jongleurs approaching for a marriage feast, he acknowledges his role as the master of these 'beautiful fantastic little people' and resolves to renounce love and depart into eternal exile.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Idealization
Horvendile's poetic lament expresses an idealized, unattainable love that leaves him with only dreams and regrets, mirroring the theme of love as a consuming, fatal mirror.
Art and Illusion
Horvendile views the jongleurs as 'gay dolls, jerked by invisible wires' and himself as the master who shifts puppets, highlighting the artificial, crafted nature of the world he oversees.
Characters to notice
- Horvendile
The clerk who appraises the fair country from Storisende's turrets, recites a love lament, and resolves to renounce love.
- Count Emmerick
Mentioned as ordering the majordomo to prepare elaborate dishes for the marriage-feast.
Key passages
“When I behold the skylark move in perfect joy toward its love the sun, and, growing drunk with joy, forget the use of wings, so that it topples from the height of heaven, I envy the bird's fate. I, too, would taste that ruinous mad moment of communion, there in heaven, and my heart dissolves in longing.”
Seeing the skylark fly joyfully toward the sun and then fall, Horvendile envies its ecstatic, self-destructive union with its beloved, wishing for a similar moment of transcendent connection.
This paraphrase captures Horvendile's longing for a ruinous, mad communion with his beloved, echoing the skylark's fate.
“Never have I been able to recover my full senses since that moment when she first permitted me to see myself mirrored in her bright eyes. Hey, fatal mirrors! which flattered me too much! for I have sighed ever since I beheld my image in you. I have lost myself in you, like Narcissus in his fountain.”
Since first seeing his reflection in his beloved's eyes, Horvendile has been lost in self-absorbed longing, comparing his fate to Narcissus drowning in his own image.
This paraphrase highlights the theme of love as a fatal mirror, where the lover loses himself in the beloved's gaze.