Space
The poet has in mind a garden map 13,14 which he conveys to his readers. Guided by his description, one is able to stroll through this garden, hither and thither. The notion is that of a space both vast and privileged. 15 One is able to go, in that garden, to quite a few different places. It has many different corners. There are alleys to walk along, there are also numerous small channels filled with running water. The combination of these rivulets and of the furrowed earth (30) amounts to earth and water being the two main elements, here, from the four Aristotelian elements.
The important feature of this garden for Scève is this is an architectured space. 16 The key words for this contention are berceaux voutoyés (“barrel vaults”), “invention” and “artifice.” The barrel vaults bring to mind Empson’s reading of Shakespeare’s metaphor for leafless woods, “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” This metaphor, groups of trees resembling the pillars in the nave of an abbey, instills a church-like reverence. This is not an ordinary space, it is one which has been sculpted into becoming a very special place or rather an admirable set of different views, smells and sounds. 17
The verb agencer (31) determines my reading of the garden space, rather than being an untouched natural space, to the contrary having been arranged by man, having been grown and disposed in order to create a feeling not only of religiouslike awe, also of sheer delight. The Trésor de la langue française expresses the main meaning of this verb as Ordonner les parties d’un tout de manière à en assurer la coordination, i.e., “to set the parts of a whole in such a manner as to ensure they are well coordinated.”
A contemporary of Scève’s, Robert Estienne, 18 gives instruere as the Latin equivalent to agencer (Estienne, Robert I, Les mots francois selon lordre des lettres, ainsi que les fault escrire : tournez en latin, pour les enfans, A Lyon : Chez Thibauld Payen, 1552). The verb Instruo, instruere in Latin had, as one of its meanings, “to set” as in “setting up soldiers in line for a battle,” or “setting up ships in battle order.”
The verb agencer is important because of both its occurrence, at the very be-ginning (31) of the description Scève makes of a Renaissance garden, and right next to the word jardins (“gardens”).