Stanza One of The Gallery, page 40 (lines 1-8):

1. Clora, come view my soul, and tell
2. Whether I have contrived it well.
3. Now all its several lodgings lie
4. Composed into one gallery;
5. And the great arras-hangings, made
6. Of various faces, by are laid;
7. That, for all furniture, you’ll find
8. Only your picture in my mind.

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel “The Imaginary Library-Literature 1” The Imaginary Library. http://www.desk.nl/~library/Bib06.html (21 January 1997).

When Borges uses the image of the gallery, he infinitely expands the image as to imagine the very structure of the universe; when Marvell uses the gallery, imagination turns infinitely inwards into the mind itself. Marvel envisions the mind as a visual storage space where imagination often supplants reality: in the scape of memory, image can become reality.

In the first stanza of The Gallery, Marvell sets up the duality of design and discovery.

The couplet structure suggests the unity of a pair. Whether they be Clora and the poem’s speaker, the soul and body, image or reality, Marvell works for a connection. The poem’s first couplet introduces the design and discovery of the soul and seeks a judgement from the one whose image helped establish this gallery of imagination.

(l.1-2)

The apostrophe to Clora is inviting; it is as if the speaker invites either the image of Clora or the actual living Clora into his soul’s gallery, into his mind, to judge whether or not his creation is just. Clora is being asked to revisit herself seen through the mind of a man in love with her. When Marvell uses the word “contrived” he remarks on the mental design that went into the creation of his soul gallery, but as the root of the word is ‘trouver’, that is ‘to find’, the gallery takes on a sense of discovery. Clora is asked to discover how she is imagined by him and he discovers the various ways he can imagine her image.

The second couplet condenses — it takes multiplicity and unifies. Here, the connection between soul and mind establishes how the gallery represents imagination.

(l.3-4)

The gallery is each the mind, the imagination, and memory; chords is a means by which to arrange. The speaker takes the “several lodgings” of his soul, as though it is the scattering of his thoughts, and incorporates his imagination into a single unifying body — the gallery. He structures imagination as a mental room hung with images. Memory links to sight which has been transformed. ‘Composed’ integrates imagination, but also suggests ‘the pose’ or figure which has been taken from reality and transformed into a picture. His gallery hangs with mental portraits painted by imagination stored in memory. Art has shaped a new reality, “now.”

In the third couplet, Marvell introduces a complementary image to his gallery of imagination — “the great arras.”

The woven tapestry demonstrates how reality becomes art within the realm of imagination.

(l.5-6)

The tapestry fabric is imprinted with Clora’s “various faces” or perhaps it is her various images which the speaker has woven together to create a composite image of his desire. Like the gallery itself, image has found unity. The arras suggests woven thoughts, woven images, woven depictions of reality that become integrated within the mind. Clora’s “various faces” suggest how reality can deceive, for in the next five stanzas the speaker endeavors to reconcile the various images of reality she takes as he considers her with the composite artifact he has created in his mind. He wonders if his gallery composite is more real to him than she appears in the world. He has assembled her various images, woven them into his thoughts, and stored them on display in his mind’s gallery.

The final couplet develops Clora’s transformation into art. Within the speaker’s imagination, she becomes, as though a portrait, a “picture in [his] mind.”

(l.7-8)

Placing her together with furniture, Marvell suggests that Clora has become an object of art — a possession. She is stripped of her reality and exists solely as an artifact of imagination. The ambiguity of line eight’s “only” reveals Clora’s transformation into memory. “Only your picture in my mind” suggests, first, that her image is the single, dominating feature in his mental gallery, but it also suggests that she is only a “picture in [his] mind.”

He recognizes the distinction between reality and imagination, but that is exactly why he calls for Clora to view his gallery: he needs to know if what he has created is equal to what she really is.

In The Gallery, image, reality, and memory shape themselves into the mind’s art. Within the gallery of imagination, art challenges reality, but never forgets that reality is its inspiration.