Poetry is made of words in a certain language. There is nothing more than this but we can give it a special meaning based on a code and interpretation or association. Some people shoot at other people because someone else tells them. It even happens in our society when we send out the military. One could say the code of soldiers taking orders from staff personnel imposes its implications easily when we talk about friendly fire.
Dante stood at the basis of humanistic reasoning and the emancipation of the individual. The Belacua episode of the poem about (not) being seen, observation and astronomical knowledge, 'he hardly raised his head' and 'have you clearly seen now' can be seen as a pre humanistic approach to knowledge and faith.
Belacqua is convinced of his destiny on Purgatory Hill ('I just have to wait here') and he is hardly noticed himself at first; with his head between his knees he is hard to tell apart from the scenery. More than once we read about him as being lazy and hardly moving and he does not believe he'll ever go faster up to the martyrs unless good people living mention him in their prayers. There is also nothing said about his prayers so this personage is more or less opposite to the monks and their motto ora et labora. Indeed [quote] Dante is a bit amused by the knowledge and intimacy [quote] of Belacqua, although he 'looked sad'.
The humanist tradition can be seen as opposed to superstition and faith in the idea of icons as being or having (the power of) the Saint of worship. This opposition suits the notion described above of the meaning of a word being the word itself or it's represented idea of a higher level. But icons can still be seen in western culture as the value given to, say, the event of a match of FC Barcelona, or events in the life of one's children. Learned from an American election you can say the outcome of the match isn't determined by a group of individuals but by each and every vote. I'll now show you how Dante reflected on this idea of the individual and ME culture, the value of a friend vs. one's own individual poetical creation.
Is there one soul for a group of people who are with a singing and dancing act in a concert hall? Dante did not have this belief of an early 20th century poet.[quote] In fact he stood at the beginning of the popular belief of one’s souls intimate relation with it’s particular star. One can still see this in the political rhetoric that I picked from Twitter the other day in which a political career is thought of as a star: Fratello Silvio, la tua stella si è ormai oscurata / Brother Silvio, your star has died now. The origin of this idea is not so much platonic or christian but it was styled originally by Dante, the Florentine.
Dante, living the last years of his live as a political exile, was nothing like the many hermits in ME society and, as a meeting with Beatrice in Paradise can illustrate, he knew the human soul flourishes by love in between few people : [];
But on the other hand and as has been discussed many times Dante values his poetical career over friendship with his fellow poet, coming from the same city and of more importance to poetry by then, Guido Cavalcanti. []
Dante presents a logical world view in his magum opus. Homosexual love is seen as having a good cause, but because of it’s infertility it is valued less compared to heterosexual relations and the possibility of having children. For this construction the poet used the events of the lives of people as material for his poem. In this way the meaning of the episodes of meeting other people in Hell (and the inevitable question of why they are convicted) is an effect of a choice in an individuals life trying to form destiny. But choice implies being chosen. Or having a lottery.
Belacqua, with his popular believe in destiny [quote], is very close to the substance the poetry of the Dolce Stil Novo is made out of: the lives of the common people. The Dolce Stil Novo poets wrote in the language of the common people and they wrote about love in an abstract way to avoid the daily events in order to improve morally. The Commedia shares this moral aspect of forming the soul by poetry and uses language to form meaning in the human soul as love uses a particular heart to live in. Language can have more than one meaning in order to sharpen the individual mind and it can be used to have a certain meaning only for few people. Dante almost derived a communication theory from the Dolce Stil Novo.
[]
Dante's Aristotelian world view may very well have led him to know he was the first mover in the sense of knowing to be the first author of a book in history for an variety of readers. With a maritime code turning the meaning of sun into star in the intimacy of a question to the author-as-personage he intended to be understood by few (and that is not many [quote]). With modern realism [quote] and in various styles [quote] Dante an icon in western literature when he created the Comedy by showing it's readers the individual nature of their acts and destiny and how it could be. He knew the power of the prayer images was not their intrinsic value but the choice by an individual of one out of so many saints was: Follow your own star.
zaterdag 15 december 2012
II - In the beginning was the word
When we talk about the medieval world Dante Alighieri lived in we talk about a world being based more and more on the philosophy of Aristotle. (And less and less on the works of Plato [quote Störig]) Now part of this philosophy was the idea that meaning can only be conveyed with two or more words: a statement of one word is considered an exclamation. Seen this way words do not have meaning but they are meaning something to someone.
For ME philosophy this was a debatable point in a theological way. Is the blessing in church (I'm a bit of a lazy philosopher here) itself the real thing or does it create the blessing? Modern people may feel offended by someone cursing but I dont think many people would suppose a curse caused something bad by itself as a word because of the classification as bad as the premisses. Than half of society thought like this.
The Comedy shows an approach of an individual to be critical about ideas. The various popes, theologically the representatives of Jesus on earth, are being criticised more than once for their acts not suiting their words.
At the same time the theatre of the Comedy is ME society. None of the accused made on the journey through hell to the various people there seem invented but coming from a chronicler's knowledge of events. Instead of living like a hermit seeking the truth by force Dante lived a life of an exile. His whereabouts may be determined but up until the end of his live Dante fully made part of ME society. What was Dante's relation with ME people who in the end gave his magnus opus the criticism of being divine? []
For a lot of people historical poetical works about theology like the Comedy or Paradise Lost have become part of the Bible.[quote] What was the opinion of Dante about the beginning of The Gospel According to John? Was the discussion about the Unversalia really as black and white? Was Dante a modern individual disguised as a medieval christian?
The aristotelian interpretation of John would be something with cause and effect, a word as the cause of love. The platonic emphasis would be more on the divine nature of the Word. To proceed we need to determine Dante's position on this subject by looking into the historical data. []
In the times of Plato teaching Aristotle the philosophical debate was about the nature of written words. Both estimated spoken words higher than written words so Plato put his lessons in the form of dialogues between various people. Aristotle probably did not write his works by himself but he gave lessons to students and they have more or less created the corpus we now know as Aristotle [quote]. I gues this point is as obvious for anyone so keen ME students on the emerging (sunday) schools, like Dante, will have known at least some about the arguments in this debate. What people started learning was, and still is, the act of writing. Or anatomically : coordinate arm muscles to outline a thought with a pen on paper.
ME people lived in a pack society. Nowadays we don't have much news on people being excommunicated for religious crimes. To most of us modern people it seems irrelevant if you go to church or not. Then all your customers or your employers would have been christian talking only to other christians. Nowadays a fatwa would have been pronounced for someone. Being an exile Dante stood up to such rhetoric, validating the individual soul higher than friendship, and the struggle has been onging ever since.
For ME philosophy this was a debatable point in a theological way. Is the blessing in church (I'm a bit of a lazy philosopher here) itself the real thing or does it create the blessing? Modern people may feel offended by someone cursing but I dont think many people would suppose a curse caused something bad by itself as a word because of the classification as bad as the premisses. Than half of society thought like this.
The Comedy shows an approach of an individual to be critical about ideas. The various popes, theologically the representatives of Jesus on earth, are being criticised more than once for their acts not suiting their words.
At the same time the theatre of the Comedy is ME society. None of the accused made on the journey through hell to the various people there seem invented but coming from a chronicler's knowledge of events. Instead of living like a hermit seeking the truth by force Dante lived a life of an exile. His whereabouts may be determined but up until the end of his live Dante fully made part of ME society. What was Dante's relation with ME people who in the end gave his magnus opus the criticism of being divine? []
For a lot of people historical poetical works about theology like the Comedy or Paradise Lost have become part of the Bible.[quote] What was the opinion of Dante about the beginning of The Gospel According to John? Was the discussion about the Unversalia really as black and white? Was Dante a modern individual disguised as a medieval christian?
The aristotelian interpretation of John would be something with cause and effect, a word as the cause of love. The platonic emphasis would be more on the divine nature of the Word. To proceed we need to determine Dante's position on this subject by looking into the historical data. []
In the times of Plato teaching Aristotle the philosophical debate was about the nature of written words. Both estimated spoken words higher than written words so Plato put his lessons in the form of dialogues between various people. Aristotle probably did not write his works by himself but he gave lessons to students and they have more or less created the corpus we now know as Aristotle [quote]. I gues this point is as obvious for anyone so keen ME students on the emerging (sunday) schools, like Dante, will have known at least some about the arguments in this debate. What people started learning was, and still is, the act of writing. Or anatomically : coordinate arm muscles to outline a thought with a pen on paper.
ME people lived in a pack society. Nowadays we don't have much news on people being excommunicated for religious crimes. To most of us modern people it seems irrelevant if you go to church or not. Then all your customers or your employers would have been christian talking only to other christians. Nowadays a fatwa would have been pronounced for someone. Being an exile Dante stood up to such rhetoric, validating the individual soul higher than friendship, and the struggle has been onging ever since.
I - A footnote to Ulysses and Nescio
Nescio, Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (Amsterdam, 22 juni 1882 - Hilversum, 25 juli 1961), was a great fan of James Joyce because of the literary novelty and artistic genius he might have considered a relief in the days of the nazi regime. In the years after the WOII he kept a diary which is published in his Verzameld Werk (1996) as the Natuur Dagboek.
What do Joyce and Nescio have in common?
They both have had, as many artists and millions of others have had, a reading of the first book of human culture.
I should explain more about this. Scientists share the opinion (Curtius, 1948: Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter) that the first fiction book of human culture is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri from just before the year 1300. This is the first written representation of real life in the form of a different world (speaking from the readers perspective) created by a human being [].
In the year 2010 we can say that this text from the 13th century made the big hit and nowadays we all kind of live a life with access to and knowledge about and maybe from fiction, whether it's literature, advertisements or movies and etc. But in the year 1300 it was a novelty.
Now back to literature. Joyce and Nescio both knew about the Comedy as the text was originally called by the author (La Commedia di Dante Alighieri fiorentino). In Ulysses there are several italian italics, or better : passages in italic in some dialect of italian. Actually they are taken from the Hell of the Comedy but remade in some bastard form. Like the much talked about relation with the poetry of the contemporary english writer T.S.Eliot. 'Make it new' and they did. Nescio on the other hand only has one, as far as I know now, italian quote. Just in between the lines of the diary there is the word with so much literary connotations: `Beatrice`. And it really is like out of the blue in between the lines of the diary. Like sticking a yellow star on judes. Makes no sense no?
What do Joyce and Nescio have in common?
They both have had, as many artists and millions of others have had, a reading of the first book of human culture.
I should explain more about this. Scientists share the opinion (Curtius, 1948: Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter) that the first fiction book of human culture is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri from just before the year 1300. This is the first written representation of real life in the form of a different world (speaking from the readers perspective) created by a human being [].
In the year 2010 we can say that this text from the 13th century made the big hit and nowadays we all kind of live a life with access to and knowledge about and maybe from fiction, whether it's literature, advertisements or movies and etc. But in the year 1300 it was a novelty.
Now back to literature. Joyce and Nescio both knew about the Comedy as the text was originally called by the author (La Commedia di Dante Alighieri fiorentino). In Ulysses there are several italian italics, or better : passages in italic in some dialect of italian. Actually they are taken from the Hell of the Comedy but remade in some bastard form. Like the much talked about relation with the poetry of the contemporary english writer T.S.Eliot. 'Make it new' and they did. Nescio on the other hand only has one, as far as I know now, italian quote. Just in between the lines of the diary there is the word with so much literary connotations: `Beatrice`. And it really is like out of the blue in between the lines of the diary. Like sticking a yellow star on judes. Makes no sense no?
Introduction
Pur. IV 119-120 contain a question being asked to Dante and a contemporary comment uses the word 'bizar/bizzaro' for these verses. At first sight the lines are about the upside-down space-construction that is Purgatory: now we move uphill and what was on the left side is now on the right hand side.
"I came to him he hardly raised his head,
Saying: 'Hast thou seen clearly how the sun
O'er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?'"
But does this explain the contemporary use of the word bizarre? The question is being asked by a florentine and that should make us suspicious I think for another level of reading. One day I thought the meaning left shoulder referred to the left shoulder of the stellar constellation the Big Bear (ursula major) as a bear as one can see in all the stars of this constellation, which points to the the Little Bear (ursula minor) and finally to the Polar Star. This could be Dante's star in the sense of 'follow your own star', the poetical advise earlier in the poem. "Waitest thou an escort?" could perhaps also be interpreted as a reference to the poet Dante learning how en what to write.
Other people have had a similar reading experience of the work of Il divino Poeta as I'll illustrate in the first chapter. In the following part I'll describe the philosophical and theological nature of this reading experience and how it changed over time. In the last chapter I'll describe the episode in a literary and historical context.
"I came to him he hardly raised his head,
Saying: 'Hast thou seen clearly how the sun
O'er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?'"
But does this explain the contemporary use of the word bizarre? The question is being asked by a florentine and that should make us suspicious I think for another level of reading. One day I thought the meaning left shoulder referred to the left shoulder of the stellar constellation the Big Bear (ursula major) as a bear as one can see in all the stars of this constellation, which points to the the Little Bear (ursula minor) and finally to the Polar Star. This could be Dante's star in the sense of 'follow your own star', the poetical advise earlier in the poem. "Waitest thou an escort?" could perhaps also be interpreted as a reference to the poet Dante learning how en what to write.
Other people have had a similar reading experience of the work of Il divino Poeta as I'll illustrate in the first chapter. In the following part I'll describe the philosophical and theological nature of this reading experience and how it changed over time. In the last chapter I'll describe the episode in a literary and historical context.
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