The following quotes are taken from the section of the
critical guide titled “The Anatomy of Desire” by Catherine Silverstone. It gets
pretty freaky…
Jonathan Sawday: “the
image of the body as a book, a text there to be opened, read, interpreted, and,
indeed, rewritten, was a persuasive one to the early explorers of the human
frame.”
[On dissection] moved to a process whereby the corpse
became the subject of inquiry and generative of new anatomical texts and forms
of knowledge.
Thomas Laqueur:
“the new science proclaimed so vigorously that Truth and progress lay not in
texts, but in the opened properly displayed body.”
Patricia Fumerton:
[On sonnets] never simply reveal the truth of the heart; rather they “’represent’
their private loves through conventional artifice that keeps them hidden.”
The body’s surfaces, both interior and exterior, were
available to be read and consumed as texts.
The heart is a token of exchange within an economy of
desire, where it is “constituted into a gift object – whether ignored or
rejected”, the play sets up an economy of hearts.”
The way Giovanni uses Annabella’s heart as a unit of
exchange graphically illustrates the lack of autonomy that Annabella has come
to have over her own desires: she literally has no heart to give as a token of
her desire.
The heart is also treated as a register of truth
concerning an individual’s desires.
Denis Gauer: “the
heart is supreme as the seat of truth, thus becoming a tell-tale heart which
may be read as easily as a book.”
When Giovanni offers the dagger to Annabella:
1. It is a precursor to what subsequently happens to
Annabella’s heart
2. He presents his heart as a text of truth concerning
his feelings
When Soranzo threatens to rip up Annabella’s heart it is
as though the truth of Annabella’s desire is contained within the heart of her
heart.
When Soranzo confides to Vasques that in the “faithless
face” of Annabella he “laid up/The treasure of my heart”, while he may be able
to see his own desire in the body of Annabella, Soranzo is unable to read
Annabella’s desires from her body.
Susan Wiseman: “even
a pregnant body does not tell all its own secrets, and incest is undiscoverable
from external evidence.”
The reality of the anatomized heart, then, is not so much
that it indicates the truth of desire, but that to see such a heart entails the
death of the physical body.
The body is literally anatomized in an extreme
manifestation of the metaphorical attempts to anatomize, discover and control
desire.
Lisa Hopkins: “in
ripping out the heart Giovanni attempts to force an equation between signifier
and signified”, he has a desire of wanting to control and expose Annabella’s
own desire
The subject of desire attempts to control and order
desire through anatomization, but desire refuses to be contained in this way.
There’s another section dramatically titled “The Death of
Desire” which I will be uploading notes from at a later period. But for now you
can indulge in the gore of ripped-out hearts eviscerated with incestuous desire.
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