CLC
334G
Last week
- the terms for last week were potentiality and actuality
- while these terms came from Aristotle, Dante will have taken them from the Scholastic Philosophers
o Dante didn’t have direct access to Aristotle because Dante didn’t speak Greek, but at that time he could have read the Latin translation
Who are the Scholastic Philosophers?
- not “Academic” like Plato
o Plato was a student of Aristotle and founded the “Lyceum” (or peripatetic (wandering) philosophers)
- they were Aquinas, Bonaventure, Abelard (in the 12th and 13th) and Duns Scotus later
o there is a link with these philosophers and Arabic philosophy (Averroes and Avicenna – also commented on Aristotle)
Why does Dante learn all this?
- after the death of Beatrice Dante converts to Philosophy as he loses his faith
- he is strongly influenced by Boethius and Cicero (1290s) but by the time he writes the Divine Comedy, his faith is restored and he reevaluates the roles of the philosophical authors he has studied and such philosophers as Averroes, Avicenna, Plato, Virgil, Ovid etc., are placed in the Inferno, in Limbo
Significance (and Virgil)
- in Canto 2, Virgil sounds like the Scholastic Philosophers, but what is astounding is because Virgil wouldn’t know them
- the tragedy of Virgil is that he has the language of the Christian faith, but born before them (see the 4th Eclogue – prophetic, but damned), but could be because trying to sound Christian because they are now in that realm
o at the literal level this intensifies the dramatics
o he speaks, sounds and reasons just like them, but not SAVED
o also makes Virgil as a guide uncomfortable (he has never been to Purgatory and since he is damned, should he really be there anyways?) (power shift between guide and pilgrim)
Terms for Today
- Canto 2: canto
o general term that includes psalms and songs
o 2 song sung at beginning and end of canto 2
§ psalm 114 and Dante lyric poem(composed for Convivio) (sung by Casello)
o also, each section of the Divine Comedy
- Canto 3: corpo
o Many different bodies that appear here
§ Virgil’s body (all Purgatorians as well)
§ Dante pilgrim’s body
§ Manfred (transparent with wounds)
§ Collective body (souls that move together)
Link between Canto and Corpo
- relation between corporeality and "cantacality"
o how work allegorically as tenor and vehicle
- a canto becomes such when it is performed (actualized)
o potentially as memory and then actualized in performance (performative utterance or, speech act)
- corpo (we will discuss later on) but, suggests gestation (vehicle to understand creation of poem)
- also require body to perform canto
- songs and bodies are traces of a person
- both need animation to be actualized (corpo needs a soul, and canto needs poetic creation/inspiration)
o a soul is:
§ to Plato: a governing body (created first and sewn into vehicle)
§ to Aristotle: actualization of living body (matter and form) (body and soul)
- the Divine Comedy is a body of literature when words formed together become a “canto”
o incarnational poetics à stay tuned, it will be imitated later
§ Dante view point of how creation of poetry (practically) is performable by humans, related to function of creativity itself à word is made flesh
· incarnation mystery (how is that done?)
· part of this is also determining what kind of poet he is becoming
- potential to be poets and how they actualize this
o David (psalms)
o Casella
o Virgil
o Dante
- these four poets are actualized (we have their poetry), but during the Divine Comedy, Dante is still working it out
Canto 2
- Psalms
o Hymns and anthems of Jewish faith
§ ritualistic
§ Christian psalms an reiteration of Jewish psalms
o Davidian and Mosaic (typological)
§ Commemorating liberty of bondage
§ Nature itself reacts to it
· sea flees
·
mountain skips like lambs (jubilation for
Egyptians and dance when cross the
§ The end provides a Metamorphosis (hard rock turns to water)
· run out of food and water later (water comes from rock)
· Presumption = death before promised land
o Literal level:
§ Purgatorial souls à journey of souls
o Typological:
§ Moses et al. à promise land (but Moses, because of presumptions, does not make it to the promise land)
§ therefore, Dante = Moses and et al. = readers (Dante will actualize his journey though)
§
§ Sinai à tablets were written (10 Commandments) but were broken
· what was said was preserved, but not the actual text
§ Purgatory à struggle
· every step must keep hope, faith (don’t backslide)
o the end of the psalm:
§ presence of rock changed to water
§ hard and unsustaining in presence of God becomes flowing and dynamic
§ journey hard in beginning
§ rock’s don’t produce, bare, but God creates fertile places
§ presence of divine makes the impassable passable
§ tropologically:
· more you sin the harder your hear gets (experience of Purgatory will again soften it)
· flowing fountains (water in presence of lord)
o inspiration, flowing of words
§ typologically:
·
muses and
· Purgatory
· Sinai
o why compare pagan and Christian stories?
§ keep value and use for own good
§ while we can’t help but carry out idols, we can reiterate them and make them useful
- the angel
o sees 100 spirits coming (sees the Divine Comedy coming at him)
§ divine momentum moving ship (Ulysses contrast)
o monotony for Divine Comedy (as gets closer can hear the words)
§ docking is the performance/publication
o the root of the angel boat is the creative process (makes full voyage)
§ see the Divine Comedy actualizing itself (statement of who is moving him to be a poet)
§ prophetic vision of completion of D.C. [Hope]
o at the literal level, 3 different people are gaining hope from this boat
§ pilgrim (watching the boat)
§ poet (completing the Divine Comedy)
§ reader (retracing the writers steps)
o typologically
§ Geryon (from Inferno)
· Potentially hopeful actualized in Purgatory
§ “always already”
· the Divine Comedy is so miraculously unified that Purgatory is a poem in potential from the Inferno
· self referentiality when Dante quotes own poem in 2
o Divine Comedy always already there in early works
Pg 24 – BVM
- line is “…parturir Maria;”
- quia (few lines above): the way things are
o the way of faith is through the BVM, through pure acceptance
- immaculate conception: Mary born without original sin (therefore, she was pure to receive)
- spiration: word became flesh (inside corpo)
- this is where Incarnational Poetics comes from
o flesh becoming word is Dante and Divine Comedy (because in potentia)
- NOTE: same force for BVM and Dante for the impregnation
Smiles
- 1st à Casello
- mount of Venus
o Cythaeron
- all other mountains (qualities) actualized here
- warmer/softer place in Purgatory, and receiving light from Goddess of Love
Casella
- initially like Brunetto
- sodomidical
o hurling onto sand (is the right action here)
o too dangerous to embrace before, but can now
o while the actions happen here it is not in an earthly manner (part way actualized, but not completely)
- typological:
o Aeneus tries to hug father and it’s futile
o Aeneus tries to hug wife and it’s erotic but she’s lost (link here with the sodomidical mention above)
- can’t hold onto the dead, just different, their minds are lost (vanitas (emptiness) à like a lobotomy)
o almost as if you’re left with a melancholic after taste
- pg 19
o Dante recognized first and Casella comes to him
o aspect (misreading): can see/connection from outward form
§ desire to respond to affection but at moment of affection to have Virgilian reflex
§ different than a Virgilian reflex though
§ Casella isn’t empty, he has hope
§ Must learn to take similar and construe differently
§ Social connection preserved between Casella and Dante (desire to hug)
§ Previous friendship increased because their in Purgatory now
-
Casella waited on the
o absolution (immediate as it was the Jubilee), but waited 3 months
o sluggish for zeal of purgation (like Dante pilgrim, needs an impeto to go on the journey)
- the song
o it was written as an allegory of philosophy
o “…what my intellect does not grasp;” à what not grasped now might be able to later
o “…messengers full of longing, which gather air and turn into sighs.” à implying “love talking” but reiterating with relation to intellect and transcendental to knowledge
§ connection between loving and knowing
o “…vie with each other in calling on Love with such a voice…” à identified with anagogic energy
o “…nobility in woman is what is found in her, and beauty is all that resembles her.” à stimulus for attraction and infuses faith
§ at the bottom of Purgatory, this is all we have! We need it to move on!
o “…her aspect helps to induce belief” à recontextualize
§ aspect inspires the memory, meditation of love with Casella
o “I cannot look steadily at them I must be content to write but little of them” à I can love transcendent objects of knowledge but language and reason limits this
o “…fire alive with a lofty spirit…they shatter the inborn vices that debase one” à In Inferno, punishment, here, revive knowledge
o “”she it is who brings back to humility…mind of Him who set the universe in motion.” à Lady Philosophy with idea in divine mind and impetus that sets world in motion (amore at end of Paradiso)
§ love inseparable from dynamic of universe
- what is done when rewriting this into the canto?
o what sets apart the song here and in the Convivio?
§ in the Convivio, song presented and then immediately glosses
§ here, we stand back and see D and V(everybody around) have forgotten about struggle ahead (like Ulysses and Sirens)
· rapt (even Dantean lyric) dangerous!
o danger in Dante getting wrapped up in his own life (as he writes it_
o dangerous to meet old friends in new settings (nostalgia à this doesn’t belong in Purgatory)
§ need Tropological level to push you on
· don’t sit back and listen to music, you have work to do (real project)
· Cato becomes soul guide (power shift between guide and pilgrim)
o Still have reflex but not sure if should use it
o Virgilian poetry…should we move on? Danger in reading without reflection à the “che bella” effect
· is the Divine Comedy like this?
o Yes, each canto leaves a “cliffhanger”
o Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a continuous poem, but DC is not
o Strategically, written to be recited in squares
§ Here, even at rhyme level have interruptions (when walking to, something surprising)
· Integrated into topology
· Interruptions are important to keep going
Interruptions
- repeated sense of actualization
- end seems like impediment but is really stimulus for new creation
o interruption of song continues creation of Purgatory
- corpo: continual gestation metaphor must first get something out (cut cord) to begin
The 3 “poets” in Canto 2
- David
o wrote
old psalms (history of
§ mentions the old song
§ final psalm about New Song (blessed in revelations)
· not displacement though, the new psalms coexist with the older ones
§ instead of a displacement, it is a sequence of fulfillments
· potentially illuminating in old songs are fulfilled in incarnation (thanking for fulfillment of prophecy)
- Casella/Dante (Casella sings Dante’s song, and is therefore, considered, here, a younger Dante) à really then, it is “younger/older Dante”
o combination of David and Virgil (relation between the two, as in fulfillment and displacement)
§ while Dante for sure is a displacement, he also looks back at the old texts and retains them in the Divine Comedy (but, now it’s recharged with new significance à like “modernizing” the psalms
§ project is to reconcile the two different approaches
- Virgil
o well known and charted à on tomb said “cano canere pascua rura duces” (he sang of flocks, countryside and leaders)
§ Flocks = Eclogues
§ Countryside = Georgics
§ Leaders = Aeneid
o a career with increasing grander
§ goes from low to high poetry
o from short, lyric, humble works to complex lyrics and then to large narrative poem
o idea of displacement (and in potentia seen here)
§ new adopted style displaces previous (always in potentia for epic poet (career is an actualization of the epic poet))
§ this is the same idea as Dante (and the idea of keeping icons), displacing predecessors and himself, but taking the “good stuff” with him
Onto Corpo and Canto 3
- 3 corpora
o Dante’s body
o Virgil’s body
o Manfred’s body
§ Hylomorphic compound (not excavated)
· matter = air (sea air) in Purgatory
· form = soul (actualize a new body immediately)
o anima fashions new bodies from psychological repentant state
o shows to spectator (although Dante here, really for God) wounds
§ in part to honour death in battle, but placement of scars important
· head wound for excommunication
·
wound in side to represent
· Tropological meditation of these wounds
o pride of politics
o
Old Man of
o signing consciousness of own pride with first wound and identification with Christ for second
§ repentance is thanking God and imitating Christ
§ in the Inferno, souls manifest their resistance to God and therefore the manifestation becomes part of the punishment
· Typological
o Mohammed (Inferno 26)
§ split by Angel and then he, himself, rips the entrails out for pride
· Manfred has fissure for repentance (need weakness, not hardness) à in potentia saved (salvation a process)
· refashion body in penance is a willingness to imitate Christ
o Manfred corpo = new song from old psalms
§ why Dante poem like David but still Virgilian (displacements form fulfillment)
Linking corpo to canto
- back to Casella, song gets cut (divisions)
- to Manfred division is good because shows repentance (MUST read each Purgatorial body as implication to the poem)
-
o views on the shadow of a hylomorphic compound
§ Plato
· blinding to truth (inferior to model)
· things that are less
§ Aristotle
· not so pessimistic
· (shadow is after all something that comes from form)
· shadow is a lack of matter but has a form à we can see it)
o importance: light makes the air truly actualized as transparent to allow form to imprint image on eyeball (impression)
o darkness = potentia for transparency
o Aristotle believes you can’t have one without the other, but they are conceived differently
§ with canto, you also can’t separate the object from form
· matter = canto
· form = creative intelligence (when actualized in the meaning)
§ canto itself is hylomorphic
· hylo = language
· form = poet’s mind
Final Notes
- death for Dante is souls potential for another body (as the soul manifests itself differently in Purgatory for Manfred then it did on Earth)
- relation between canto and corpo is a very important one that should be kept track of (it is after all placed at the beginning of Purgatory)
- the wounds:
o mortification (designed to make you meditate on fragility of your body)
§ voluntary process here, but with Mohammed it wasn’t
§ form of “martryrus in spiritu” (humanity invested in body through spirit)