perspective of theGenethliacon, that body becomes an opaque, clouded
history from which the future must be released, just as the commanding
word of Gigli’s Latin supersedes the mother tongue. The queen’s body,
scene of political risk, calls into being an answering risk, as Gigli’s word
warily assumes the generative powers of an idealized male royalty.
For André, desire and identification are intertwined in more oblique
ways, which turn on the status of his blindness. It is revealed in theVita, as,
about to tackle the strife between Edward IV and Henry VI, he introduces it
with an open digression:
Qua in parte lectores rogatos velim ut me excusatum habeant, si illorum temporum
procellas per gestorum seriem non exequar. Nam illis ego temporibus non aderam,
neque antea quicquam de his auribus acceperam...Certe dum haec scriberem
relatorem sive recensorem quempiam non habebam, qui mihi, ut principio opta-
veram, dicendorum materiam mihi proponeret. Quare ut caecus in tenebris
ambulans sine ductore, nihil praeter auditum habeo. Ad haec accedit hebes
tantarum rerum et obtusa malis mens atque memoria. Quas ob res si parum
ordinate singula carptimque non attigero, ignoscant mihi precor humillime qui
nostra legent. ( 19 )
[I would here ask my readers to hold me excused if I do not describe the troubles
of those times in the order in which events occurred. For I was not present in
those times, nor have I hitherto heard anything about them directly ...
Certainly while writing this I have had no oral informant or storyteller, who
might offer me, as I had originally hoped, the subject matter I was bound to treat.
And so, like a blind man walking in darkness without a guide, I have no
information besides what I have heard. And moreover my mind and memory
are dull in so many matters, and blunted by hardships. I therefore most humbly
beg my readers to pardon me if I touch on details in a piecemeal and somewhat
disorderly fashion.]
Whether or not André really was blind, by the time he arrives at these lines
the darkness (“tenebris”) in which his blind man walks is already tropolog-
ical. André writes:“si quid forte mansurum scripsero, his potissimum
inscribam, quorum gloriae quadam velut participatione clarescere tenebris-
que resistere valeam, quas mihi temporum fusca profunditas et nominum
consumptrix illustrium obliviosa posteritas intentat”“If by chance I shall
have written anything that will endure, let me ascribe it chiefly to those
through whose glory I may, as if by a kind of participation, have power to
shine and tofight that darkness with which I am menaced by the gloomy
depths of the ages and forgetful posterity, eater of illustrious names”.
André’s blindness signifies.^16 He looks on a darkness brought by devouring
time, which can only be dispelled by participation in the light of patronal,
Beginnings: André and Dunbar 25