A legend goes that in India there is a verdant leafy tree that in Greek is called Paradision. On its right side live the doves, who never move from the shade it spreads; if they were to leave the tree, they would fall prey to a dragon, their enemy. But the dragon’s enemy is the tree’s shade, and when the shade is to the right, he lies in ambush to the left, and vice versa.
Still, trepid as the dove is, it has something of the serpent’s cunning, and if on the Island there was a dragon, the Orange Dove would know what to do. It seems a dove always flies over water, for if a hawk attacks, the dove will see the raptor’s reflection. In short, does the bird defend itself or not?
With all these various and even extraordinary qualities, the dove has also been made a mystic symbol, and I need not bore the reader with the story of the Flood and the role played by this bird in announcing peace, calm, and newly emerging land. But for many sacred authors it is also an emblem of the Mater Dolorosa and of her helpless weeping. And of her it it said Intus et extra, because she is pure outside and inside. Sometimes the dove is portrayed breaking the rope that keeps her prisoner, Effracto libera vinculo, and she becomes the figure of Christ risen from the dead. Further, the dove arrives, it seems certain, at dusk, so as not to be surprised by the night, and therefore not to be arrested by death before having dried the stains of sin. And it is worth mentioning, as we have already indicated, the teaching of John: “I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove.”
As for the other beautiful Columbine Devices, who can say how many Roberto knew? Like Mollius ut cubant, because the dove plucks out its feathers to soften the nest of its young; Luce lucidior, because it shines when it rises towards the sun; Quiescit in motu, because it flies always with one wing folded so as not to tire itself. There was even a soldier who, to crave indulgence for his amorous excesses, chose as his emblem a helmet in which a pair of doves had nested, with the motto Amica Venus.
In short, the reader may think that the dove has all too many meanings. But if a symbol or hieroglyph must be chosen as something to die for, its meanings should be multiple, otherwise you might as well call a spade a spade, an atom an atom, a void a void. Something that would please the natural philosophers Roberto met at the Dupuys’ but not Padre Emanuele— and we know that our castaway was inclined to be influenced by both. Finally, the wonderful thing about the Dove, at least (I believe) for Roberto, was that it was not only a message, like every Device or Emblem, but a message whose message was the undecipherability of clever messages.
When Aeneas must descend to Avernus—and also find the shadow of his father and therefore somehow the day or days now past—what does the sibyl do? She tells him, true, to go and bury Misenus and to make various sacrifices of bulls and other livestock, but if he really wants to perform a feat that no one has had the courage or the luck to attempt, he must find a leafy, shady tree on which there is a golden bough. The wood hides it and dark valleys encircle it, and yet without that “auricomus” bough no one can penetrate the secrets of the earth. And who is it that enables Aeneas to discover the bough? Two doves, who are also—as we should know by now —maternal birds. The rest is familiar to the bleary aged and to barbers. In short, Virgil had never heard of Noah, but the dove bears a warning, points to something.
It was thought, moreover, that doves acted as oracle in the temple of Jove, where he replied through their mouth. Then one of these doves flew to the temple of Ammon and another to that at Delphi, whence it is clear that both the Egyptians and the Greeks told the same truths, even if darkly veiled. No dove, no revelation.
But today we are still here, asking ourselves what the Golden Bough meant. A sign that doves carry messages, but the messages are in cipher.
I cannot say how much Roberto knew about the kabbalas of the Jews, which were, however, very fashionable in that period, but if he saw much of Monsieur Gaffarel, he must have heard something about these arcana: the fact is that the Jews constructed whole castles based on the dove. We referred to this, or, rather, Father Caspar did: Psalm 68 mentions the wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold. Why? And why, in Proverbs, does a similar image recur when “a word fitly spoken” is likened to “apples of gold in settings of silver”?
And why in the Song of Solomon, addressing the girl “who has doves’ eyes,” does the speaker say to her, “O my love, we will make thee circlets of gold with studs of silver”?
The Jews commented that the gold here is scripture and the silver refers to the blank spaces between the letters and words. And one commentator, whom perhaps Roberto did not know but who was still an inspiration to many rabbis, said that the golden apples in a silver setting mean that in every sentence of Scripture (and surely in every object or event in the world) there are two faces, the evident face and the hidden face, and the evident one is silver, but the hidden one is more precious because it is of gold. And he who looks at the picture from a distance, with the apples surrounded by its silver, believes that the apples too are of silver, but when he looks closer, he will discover the splendor of gold.
All that the Sacred Scriptures contain prima facie shines like silver, but its hidden meaning glows like gold. The inviolable chastity of the word of God, hidden from the eyes of the profane, is as if covered by a veil of modesty and remains in the shadow of mystery. It says that pearls must not be cast before swine. Having the eyes of a dove means not stopping at the literal meaning of words but knowing how to penetrate their mystical sense.
And yet this secret, like the dove, eludes us, and we never know where it is. The dove is there to signify that the world speaks in hieroglyphics, and there is a hieroglyph that itself signifies hieroglyphics. And a hieroglyph does not say and does not conceal; it simply shows.
And other Jews said that the dove is an oracle, and it is no accident that the Hebrew word tore, dove, recalls Torah, which is their Bible, sacred book, origin of all revelation.
The dove, as it flies in the sun, seems simply to sparkle like silver, but only one who has been able to wait at length to discover its hidden face will see its true gold or, rather, the color of a shining orange.
From the time of the venerable Isidore, Christians have recorded that the dove, reflecting in its flight the rays of the sun illuminating it, appears to us in different colors. It depends on the sun, and its Devices are Dal Tuo Lume i Miei Fregi (From Your Light Comes My Ornament) and Per te m’adomo e splendo (Through You I Am Adorned and Shine). Its neck is sheathed in the light of varied colors, and yet the dove remains always the same. And thus it is a warning not to trust appearances, but also to find the true appearance beneath the false ones.
How many colors has the dove? As an ancient bestiary says:
Uncor m’estuet que vos devis des columps, qui sunt blans et bis: li un ont color aierine, et li autre l’ont stephanine; li un sont neir, li autre rous, li un vermel, l’autre cendrous, et des columps i a plusors qui ont trestotes les colors.
What, then, will an Orange Dove be?
To conclude, assuming that Roberto knew something about it, I find in the Talmud that the powerful chiefs of Edom, Israel’s enemies, decreed that they would tear out the brain of any man wearing phylacteries. Now Elisha put them on and walked out in the street. A guardian of the law saw him and pursued him when he fled. When Elisha was overtaken, he took off the phylacteries and hid them in his hands. The enemy said to him: “What do you have in your hands?” And he replied: “The wings of a dove.” The other man forced open his hands. And there were the wings of a dove.
I am not sure what this story means, but I find it very beautiful. And so must Roberto have found it.
Amabilis columba, unde, unde odes volando? Quid est rei, quod altum coelum cito secando tam copia benigna spires liquentem odorem?
Tam copia benigna unguenta grata stilles?
What I mean to say is this: the dove is an important sign, and we can understand why a man lost in the Antipodes might decide he had to train his eyes carefully to understand its meaning.
The Island beyond reach, Lilia lost, his every hope beaten, why should the invisible Orange Dove not be transformed into the golden medulla, the philosopher’s stone, the end of ends, volatile like everything passionately wanted? To
