Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 43

Delicious Poison

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exile. Pope's easy acceptance of this flawed source is also typical of
his attitude towards his subject matter, and that of his age, of which
he was "the representative Augustan p>oet" (Auden 32). Then as now,
the larger consideration was not the facts of the story, but what was
made of them. Pope makes "Eloisa" a creature of great passion, for
whom Abelard was the one true god of her idolatry: "Still on that
breast enamored let me lie. Still drink delicious poison from thy eye"
(Pope 244 120-1). This vision was accepted as the true in his own
century, as Matthew Prior and James Delacour testified at the time
(Barnard 401-2), and has been accepted as received truth about
Heloise down to our own time. Attitudes toward Abelard have
changed more, and perhaps have more to tell us about ourselves.
In 1933 Helen Waddell wrote a novel which shifted the focus of
attention from Heloise back to Abelard. Peter Abelard, written by a
medieval scholar whose view has long been taken for an authentic
one, is based on "sentimental hunumitarianism" that is "completely
foreign to the twelfth century" (Robertson 221). It is, however, one of
the prevailing winds of our own time. In order to see how Waddell
imposes this modem value system upon the ancient story, it is
necessary to see how she too varies the story from the original.
For one thing, she creates a character who is irresistible, Gilles
de Vannes, Canon of Notre Dame. He is a cross between Falstaff and
the Buddha. He is the wisest of the wise, the most serene of the
serene, and the most fun of anybody. He is not an actor in the story so
much as the turning point around which all the other characters
revolve. Gilles is also made completely from scratch, as no such
person ever existed. He is the purveyor of twentieth century attitudes
in this twelfth century story; he has an insistence on individual
freedom that would have clashed harshly with the accepted
religious thought of the Middle Ages. He preaches subtly,
constantly, and quite beautifully that love between humans is the one
that matters, that a pleasure denied is an op|x>rtunity missed. He is
not a gross sensualist, but a man of exquisite sensibility whose
personal qualities makes this doctrine seem the only possible choice.
As Waddell draws him, it is Gilles who turns Abelard from his books
to the opportunities for the spirit that he says can begin in the flesh.
Waddell's Abelard is not loath to make this turn, either. He is
thirty-seven years old and ready. One of the first things he sees in
this tale is his manservant making love to a prostitute. Abelard feels