25 / 148
“There is no tongue that moves”
25
Paracelsus asserts, then, that it is through a
local
process of
separation (“Scheidung”) that all products in nature emerge
(Pagel, 1982: 135-36). Here we note that the three Sicilian
royal family members are also separated, and thereby
preserved, following Paulina's medical treatment, herself a
“quasi magus” (Stockholder, 1992: 161). Their separation is
required in order to distill the quintessence, the therapeutic
substance.
The ultimate quintessence that will help to restore the
energy and health of the Sicilian court in
The Winter’s Tale
is
already perhaps to be seen in Perdita, the daughter of
Hermione and Leontes. Named after her fate as the
lost
child
—
perdre
,
perdita
, “to lose”
—
she is the embodiment of a
young life living and growing in an exotic garden of flowers
and herbs. Found along with gold and jewelry, Perdita
explicitly symbolizes gold, the most noble metal and thus the
most noble medicine according to Francis Anthony, a follower
of Paracelsus, in his influential work
Medicinae Chymicae
(1610).
22
Thus, we can see Paulina’s therapeutic art of
deception
—
in telling Leontes that his wife and daughter were
dead
—
as being analogous to the crucial separation and
distillation that is essential to the healing process. In fact she
“heals” the whole family by paradoxically emphasizing its
separation in order to bring it (them) together again. Paulina is
a true woman-healer, a “midwife” who transcends socio-
political and sexual boundaries to bring about the distillation
and regeneration of a family.
22
I am indebted to Allen G. Debus for this source, as in his words, in
Medicinae Chymicae
, Francis Anthony “referred repeatedly to Paracelsus,
Duchesne, Penotus, and other leading iatrochemists” (1965: 142). Debus
continues, Anthony “admitted that gold was a difficult metal to obtain in
solution, but he affirmed that by proper calcination it could be done and
that
aurum potabile
could be prepared” (Debus, 1965: 142). See Anthony
(1610: 25-31).