In a Tortoiseshell
This excerpt is from the beginning of a close reading I wrote for HUM 216-HUM 217: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture I: Literature and the Arts, History, Philosophy, and Religion. This paper was one of five close readings we wrote throughout the fall semester of 2022 and was the only one I wrote on a work of art opposed to literary texts. After visiting the The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York through the class, I decided to write my close reading on a Roman wellhead figural relief sculpture from 150-200 A.D. that depicted the myths of Narcissus and Hylas, titled the Gosford Wellhead. The wellhead connects the two myths on either side through water carved along its circumference, but in analyzing the sculpture’s carving technique and depiction of both myths, I contend that the Gosford Wellhead moreover speaks to a shared loss of control in both myths.
Excerpt
In both the myths of Narcissus and Hylas, the characters seal their demises through water—Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection and Hylas is abducted by water nymphs. This is represented in a second century A.D. wellhead where water flows in carved marble lines along the bottom of portrayals of the two myths. Yet, more than drawing us to recognize the connection of water, the Gosford Wellhead speaks to a loss of control. The Gosford Wellhead centers the viewer’s attention to both characters’ individual losses of bodily autonomy, while also illuminating this point of comparison between the stories.
The Gosford Wellhead is a cylindrical wellhead, carved out of a single block of marble (Hemingway). The middle of the wellhead is concave with ridges on the bottom and top. Mid relief trees decorate the background, while the scene’s figures are depicted in mostly high relief. The wellhead weaves in scenes of Narcissus and Echo—on one side it portrays Nemesis pouring water into Narcissus’ reflection. Echo is laid on the ground behind him, separated by a tree and gazing towards Narcissus. Directly on the other side of the wellhead, Hylas is gripped by two water nymphs. Another nymph lays to their right, looking at the three figures with her body and feet pointing towards Nemesis. The rest of the background is negative space.
While the cylindrical form of the wellhead factors in chance in what scene the viewer approaches, it indicates two focal points on either side of the wellhead—Narcissus’ reflection and Hylas’ face. Approaching the wellhead on the side with Narcissus, both his and Nemesis’ side profiles are both tilted downwards, gazing at Narcissus’ reflection. This angular focus is also supported by Nemesis’ diagonal form and both characters’ feet pointing towards Narcissus’ reflection, altogether compelling us to focus on what traps Narcissus—his reflection in the water.
The sculpture clarifies Narcissus’ lack of control through the fluidity of the water, specifically poured by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. Instead of capturing Narcissus stumbling upon his reflection in a desolate area of the forest, the wellhead portrays Nemesis pouring the water, indicating that there is another figure catalyzing his demise. The pool of water that Nemesis creates by pouring additionally has no other carvings around it to indicate that it is a pond or lake. Instead, the wellhead emphasizes that Nemesis is not just the one pouring a spring into an already existing body of water but creating the source of his reflection. While his reaction to the water that leads him to fall in love with himself is already in the hands of fate and his curse as according to myth, the wellhead takes it even more so out of his hands, by portraying someone else causing his trapping. The water Nemesis pours is also extremely fluid—the smaller repetitive streams flowing out of the water are carved with wavy lines. The sculpture juxtaposes the moving and infinite volume of water pouring to the comparatively smaller jug that it flows out of, evoking a sense of seeming permanence—Nemesis is somehow able to infinitely pour water into his reflection, infinitely trapping him.
The varying levels of movement expressed by both figures’ body language emphasize that Narcissus’ fate is not just in the hands of someone else, but so is his bodily autonomy. Nemesis is reclined—her diagonal form may indicate instability, but upon closer examination one can see that she is resting on a tree supporting her body and arm. In contrast, Narcissus is frozen mid-movement. His arm is turned upwards, with his palm facing outwards, creating a sense of surprise and that he just stumbled upon this reflection. Likewise, the implied texture of Nemesis’ clothing connotes a sense of movement like the water—the repetition of the fluid folds of her clothing are more emphasized than Narcissus’ clothing, accentuating his stasis. His hair in the reflection of the image does blend into the water, and yet, the one element of Narcissus that has movement is the reflection that traps him. Thus, the sculpture depicts the twofold causes of his trapping—Nemesis and his reflection—as comfortable and mobile, in contrast to his paralysis. This amplifies his lack of control over his movement and bodily autonomy.
In addition to portraying Narcissus’ paralysis, the sculpture enables the viewer to experience it. Narcissus’ reflection is especially high relief, to the extent that the reflection becomes almost horizontally protruding from the wellhead. As such, especially as the wellhead is naturally below the viewer due to its proportions, the viewer can peer into Narcissus’ reflection and experience his point of view, but then move away while he is trapped staring at his reflection. This interactive element of the piece also amplifies the inescapability of his fate—the viewer can look at his reflection from an authoritative position and escape, but he cannot.
Author Commentary / Olivia Roslansky
Prior to writing this paper, I had never written a close reading of a sculpture nor a wellhead. This paper was the fourth close reading that I wrote for the Humanities Sequence during the fall of 2022, my first year. After taking a trip to the Met and observing different sculptures and paintings, I was intrigued to engage with sculpture by applying what I had learned about close reading for literary texts thus far. I was particularly drawn to the wellhead due to its interactive form—to ‘read’ it, I had to traverse it in a circle, observing the different carvings and the stories they told. As I observed the wellhead, I wondered—what does it mean to perform a close reading of sculpture? For our previous close readings of text, I interpreted the meanings of short passages through literary mechanisms such as imagery or alliteration. Moving to art, we received guidance in terms of different elements to pay attention to, like scale, material, composition, and context. We were advised to spend at least 20-30 minutes observing the art, interacting with its features and context. In the time that I traversed the wellhead, I made note of different focal points through the composition of sections of the wellhead and began to notice its depictions of losses of control, and how I was drawn to observe them. While writing my essay, I struggled most with writing a cohesive analysis and structuring my argument. While performing a close reading of a literary text I could analyze a passage in chronological order, but the interactivity of the wellhead implied that a viewer could approach the sculpture from any point, so I felt that I could begin my paper at any point. Yet, upon analyzing the sculpture, I noticed the two portrayals of the two myths on opposing sides of the wellhead, as well as where my eyes were drawn and how I moved along the wellhead, connecting the myths, regardless of where I began. Thus, I wrote the paper in that form—observing both myths and how the wellhead emphasizes and connects them. Ultimately, it was both engaging and challenging to perform a close reading of a wellhead, and it drew my attention to the importance of interdisciplinary writing. While a different form, I was able to apply similar skills I had since developed while analyzing literary work to the sculpture, like in terms of synthesizing the effects of different artistic elements. The sculpture, too, told a story through the two myths, illuminating a comparison between them through its carvings.
Editor Commentary / Nadja Markov
Writing a compelling close reading can be a daunting task for first-year students—especially if the close reading is not that of a text, but of a sculpture. The pictures of the sculpture on the first page of Olivia’s paper were what initially sparked my interest in it. Olivia starts off the essay by discussing the parallels between the myths of Narcissus and Hylas and using this vivid imagery to introduce her thesis. As such, she managed to set the tone for the rest of her paper and spark my interest as a reader very early on in her work, which in turn elevated my reading experience and the amount of information I got out of the text.
From here we can see Olivia clearly defining the object that she is focusing on—describing the sculpture while focusing on the details that will be important for the rest of her analysis. The relevant information about the piece is made explicit to the reader—there is no second guessing about where to look. This also sets the stage for the beginning of her analysis. With the readers familiarized with the piece itself, she can now delve into the details and explore how they relate to her thesis.
Within the analysis itself, we can see that the approaches might be different than what we are used to when doing a close reading of a text—rather than analyzing specific sentences, Olivia is analyzing angles and focal points. Although the medium is different, the methods used are rather similar—we start from a question, and look for answers within the piece.
By looking at the structure of the analysis paragraphs, we can see that Olivia starts them with a sentence that summarizes the most important points of the paragraph itself. As a reader, this helped me understand what to focus on and also provided me with a foundation with which I could follow Olivia’s line of reasoning. Choosing to emphasize certain words in the essay by italicizing them also made her points clearer to me as a reader, as it once again told me what to focus my attention on.
