return of the dantist

Yes, I have been neglectful.  I have been busy wokring on a presentation about Dante, so i haven't been removed from all things Dante. I will be posting bits and pieces from the talk in lieu of new material. Why you ask? I'm just gonna hang out in the circle of sloth for a bit.  Enjoy Danteans.

I cannot think of a more eloquent description of the Dante experience then that described by the luminous Jorge Luis Borges.  He said “I have fantasized a magical work, a panel that is also a microcosm: Dante’s poem is that panel whose edges enclose the universe.”  In true Borgesian fashion, my trip began to resemble a labyrinth of Dantean microcosms.  While the entire trip could be distilled into a trial and transformation of the body, mind and spirit, each day, and even each individual experience I bore witness to was in itself a Dantean microcosm.  My mind became accustom to this method of viewing the world and subsequently I looked at the journey as a garden of forking paths to be traversed as Dante and his guides traversed their own gardens of forking paths.  Layers formed upon layers of challenges, delights, lulls and moments of uncertainty, each having to be processed in the trinity of sensual experience.  The agony and the ecstasy occurred simultaneously and constantly.  Only the most rudimentary of analysis would proclaim that this epic poem is Dante’s firm claim that this is the exact architecture of the afterlife.  I like to look at the Divine Comedy as the “experience” of life, not death.  The journeys we all take, be they physical, psychological, metaphorical, literal, or any other way, require some form of transformation.  We make decisions based upon desires of the body, the mind or the soul, and each decision is reflected in the results of these decisions.  This isn’t just casual moralizing, but the prism from which I viewed this trip.  The trip itself was a suspension of reality.  I was unfettered from daily concerns of bills, relationships and job.  It was a series of decisions and desires.  In this state, I entered Siena.

Siena

First things first.  Siena is magical.  Not in the pre-fab imaginationland Disney way, where dreams come true.  No, Siena is magical in the New Orleans or Rio De Janeiro secretive way.  It is much more than it displays to the uninitiated.   The city, like many in Tuscany, is a walled city.  Behind these walls are many, many closed doors; doors that contain a people who are fiercely proud of their traditions and secrets.  There are four entrances into the city and  I felt like I was passing through a threshold when I walked through the gate that separated the Piazza Gramsci from Siena proper.  The first thing I saw was a sign depicting the city’s emblem: the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.  This sight put me immediately in the Dante space, as I was remembering Dante’s initial experience in Canto I of the Inferno before he is united with his guide Virgil.  Dante is startled when he emerges from the dark forest, in an attempt to begin his ascent up Mt. Purgatory,  to come face to face with three beasts.  Dantists have theorized that these beasts (a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf) represent lust, pride and avarice respectively.  While he managed to evade the Leopard and the Lion, the She-wolf denies his path up the mountain, forcing Dante to descend into Inferno before he is able to enter Purgatorio.  This is a powerful allegorical passage that Dante uses to declare that one must confront the demons inside in order to transform.  There are no shortcuts.

Before the trip, I knew next to nothing about Siena.  I knew of St. Catherine, as Professor Rutigliano has quite a fondness for her political acumen, as well as her mystical significance.  In several of the pre trip meetings, Professor also conveyed to me that I would grow to love Siena.  I had to take his word on this.  My mind was fixated on Florence.  It was my white whale and had been for many years.  I just had to see it.  What I wasn’t prepared for was how much more Siena resonated with me than Florence.   It’s a treasure trove of art and architecture almost on par with Florence, except the secret isn’t out.  Siena doesn’t flaunt like Florence.  It has held fast to its secrets. I looked at the she-wolf and the she-wolf looked back and seem to say:  ‘This is the path.  You must pass through Siena before you can get to Florence.”

Once I crossed the threshold, my journey began in earnest.  Luggage in tow, I schlepped from the Piazza Gramsci to the opposite end of the city where the hotel was located.  The group was convening later that evening and I had some time to absorb the vibrations of the town.  The day before I arrived was one of the two most important days in Siena.  It was the first race of the Palio, the horse race that takes place in July and August every year.  This race for the Sienese is akin to the Superbowl, election night and new year’s eve all rolled into one.  It’s a big deal.

Siena is divided into 17 neighborhoods, or Contrade.  For each running of the Palio, there are 10 horses, each one representing a specific contrada.  To maintain some sense of equality, every year, the seven contrada that did not compete the year before are invited, and the remaining 3 spots are filled by a lottery.  Yesterday’s race was won by the Goose Contrada.  Throughout the city, the red, white and green seal was hanging proudly.  People everywhere were rejoicing.  As I reached the cross street and could see the sign for my hotel, I was confronted with a gathering of about fifty people.  A victory parade, one of many, was initiating.  There were drummers and people from the goose contrada adorned in medieval outfits of green leggings and red sashes.  They began singing what seemed like to me the anthem or fight song of the contrada.  It would not be the last time I heard this song on this day.

I managed to get to the hotel and check in.  The group arrived a short time later and we all went out for a wonderful dinner.  After dinner, Professor Rutigliano informed us that we were going to go on a midnight tour of Siena.  We walked past the Duomo and found ourselves in the Piazza del Campo, the de facto town center and the space where the Palio is held.  There were young people out and about, drinking and reveling.  Then I heard a familiar tune.  The anthem I had heard earlier today was being chanted in the distance.  Around the corner came about 50 mostly younger women chanting the victory song at the top of a set of stairs leading down into the Piazza.  I was mesmerized, enchanted by the sight of this assemblage of fiercely proud women glorifying their contrada and taunting the losing contrade.  This single line melody, song on a loop for what must have been an hour, echoed through the Piazza.  It was a powerful, visceral moment, reinforcing to me that I had entered a different space.  I was in a liminal state and was transfixed by this gathering of muses, of Beatrices. 

The next day we went to the Duomo, where I was confronted with the Medieval philosopher Boethius, who had a profound influence on Dante and The Divine Comedy.  He wasn’t actually there, nor was there any mention of him at the cathedral, but his Wheel of Fortune was prominently displayed in the marble floors. There has been quite a bit written about Boethuis’ influence on Dante.  Dante called Boethius in Paradiso’s Canto X “ The blessed soul who exposes the deceptive world to anyone who gives ear to him.” Fortune personified is a prominent theme in both the Divine Comedy as well as in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and it was exciting to see a visual representation of the circular nature of Fortune.  The marble displays a series of figures in various stages, some in the midst of good fortune, others bad fortune.  This wheel also reminded me of another concept that Boethius proclaimed and Dante was certainly influenced by.  Boethius’ concept of anima mundi, that is the medieval theory that there is an interconnectivity between all living things, much in the same way that the soul is connected to the body.  It is a cosmic relationship, one that mirrors the interplanetary movements.  Former NYU professor John Freccero makes the direct connection, relating a passage from The Consolation of Philosophy (You release the world-soul throughout the harmonious parts of the universe as your surrogate, threefold in its operation, to give motion to all things.  That soul, thus divided, pursues its revolving course in two circles, and returning to itself, embraces the profound mind and transforms heaven to its own image) and a passage from Paradiso Canto 2 (with your divine power you govern the heaven with double motion so that you incline to the left and to the right).  Boethius is quite fond of circular imagery, and to see the painstaking work of done in the style of graffito (i.e. drilling and scratching holes into the marble and filling them with pitch) makes the floors striking even 700 years after they were designed.   

Across the street from the Duomo is the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, a museum housing the frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti.  These frescoes, as Professor Rutigliano pointed out, are visual representations of the Aristotelian Philosophy of Governing and the Golden Mean.  They are Allegories of good government, displaying scenes of people working together in both urban and pastoral scenes for the greater good of the public.  In the frescoes, people share equal loads in farming duties; gather in democratic scenes of governance and just in general visual depictions of communities.  While Dante tended to be a bit more imperialistic in his ideas towards government, there is a connection between Dante and Lorenzetti’s frescoes.  Both artists use their respective mediums to display to a public examples of ethical and moral behavior.  The pride of the artist is represented by both individuals, who felt compelled to display a particular world view to a larger public.  While I am used to seeing displays of Christian virtue in Cathedrals, it did take me by surprise to see a secular display, commissioned by the city.  My time in Siena was filled with these and more artistic displays of virtuous displays and ideals.  I had grown to appreciate and love this city that has sat patiently in the shadows of its more flashy Tuscan neighbor Florence.  I would come to realize that Siena is has its own special charm, one that in many ways supersedes that of Florence.

Happy Wednesday

I haven't had the time (or, to be frank, the motivation) to post anything this week, so I figure I needed to add something.  So here's a quote and a pic.  Safe journeys fellow Danteans.

"L'esperienza di questa dolce vita"
The experience of this sweet life.
- Paradiso Canto XX

1st page of La Commedia

I don't know why, but this is just beautiful.  I had the great privilege of seeing this parchment in Dante's house in Florence.  I've red these words many times, but seeing the source, the original, does something to an enthusiast.  All of the imperfections, the traces of age and antiquity exist on the page.  My imagination runs wild with all of the eyes that over the centuries bore witness to this.  Happy tuesday.

We three beasts

So I am still stuck in Canto I of the Inferno.  Strange in that The Inferno is my least favorite of the books, but if I am going to milk this blog (and book), then I have to address what jumps out for me.  And recently it's been hanging out inthe dark forest.  Anyways, just before Dante is united with Virgil, he encounters three beasts; a Leopard, a Lion and a  Wolf.  There have been a variety of interpretations of what these beasts symbolize, but the common line is they represent lust pride and avarice respectively.  This is relatviely easy to recognize.  In Canto I, Dante meets the leopard, who is "very quick and lithe and covered in spotted hide."  The leopard, in all of its lusty litheness, obstructs Dante from his path several times.  It's fascinating that even before Dante is allowed to begin true physical, psychological and spiritual transformation, he is obstructed from initiating the process. 
After becoming frustrated at trying to find the path, the sun arises and Dante seemed to be looking forwarded to seeing the leopard again, which strengthens the case that the leopard does indeed represent lust.  However, Dante doesn't see the leopard.  He comes face to face with a lion. Dante says that "his head held high and ravenous with hunger-even the air around him seem to shudder."  It's the head held high line that clues most folks into the pride sin.  Well, that and the fact that we are trained to associate the lion with pride (it is, afterall, what we call a whole bunch of them).  Dante cowers before this menacing symbol, but is quickly confronted by the third beast, the wolf. He says that "she seemd to carry every craving in her leanness; she had aleady brought dispair to many."  So this is avarice, the unquenchable greed that has afflicted many before Dante. Dante was so afraid of the wolf that she actually scared him out of the light back into the darkness.  Very fascinating symbolic imagery.  Dante is clearly struggling with the very idea of examing these very human tendencies.  He is at the place so many of us are when we see the need to change.  We recognize our lives are filled with happiness, which is a great first step.  But that second step, actually doing something about it, is filled with fears.  We have to acknowledge the things that make us unhappy, even if it means staring down leopards, lions and wolves. Oh my.


        

botticelli's dante

I have looked at this drawing many times.  It's pretty intense, right?  It is impossible for us, with the bombardment of images that assault our eyes, to understand the visual power of Dante's writing.  I have seen first hand how the architecture that Dante describes affects even those who grew up with a playstation and ipod in hand.  Imagine what it must have been like for Botticelli in renaissance Florence.  I would imagine he spent many a night terrified of Dante's work.  But really look at what Boticelli has created here.  This is one powerful image, with Lucifer front and center, devouring Judas while gripping Brutus and Cassius in hand, perpetually in agony for their respective treacheries.  The souls surrounding the focal point of the image are literally crawling on top of each other. Each figure is lush in brutal detail, and Botticelli has done an outstanding job of capturing the organized chaos of Dante's narrative.  The figures seem ready to explode off of the page.  The sense of claustrophobia exudes off the page.  It is rare indeed to witness a work of art that comes close to capturing the spirit of the original work it was inspired, but this piece...If one never read a page of the Inferno and saw this, I would have to believe that they would feel the Inferno.

a valentine for beatrice the muse

Beatrice, as anyone who has read The Divine Comedy knows, is the object of affection for Dante the protagonist.  There is no other topic which creates such heated discussion as the role of Beatrice in Dante's life both within the text and in externally in his living world.  The problem is so little is known about Dante the man with respect to his personal life that so much conjecture and emotive pontification leads scholars and enthusiasts to make incredible leaps of logic for the sake of creating their own narratives about the role of a muse in an artist's life.  Dante is important to a great number of people, and as happens too often with figures held in high regard, there are huge emotional stakes for the individual interesting in exploring the man alongside the "artist."  Look, from what little i know about Dante the man, he was kind of an ass.  He was incredibly arrogant and confident in his talents at the expense of other aspects of his life.  He was married, and yet he does not expend a single line of poetry in any of his works to his wife.  And yet, he creates a three volume epic  (as well as his first long form poem Vita Nuova in which the source of all inspiration and his final guide through paradise is a woman named Beatrice.  He saw her once as a 8 year old girl, supposedly at a May Day party.  He became fixated upon her for the rest of her brief life (She died at the age of twenty-four).  He claims in the Vita Nuova  to have seen her only twice, but was so enraptured by her presence that he remain in may ways devoted to her throughout his life. This is kind of creepy by today's standards.  There are folks out there whose inner world has transformed a human to an object of affection.  This can be harmless, or it can grow to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver levels of obsession and scariness.  To have a muse is a curious thing.  Being an artist myself, there have been people who have come into my world that I have claimed were muses.  Technically speaking, a muse is an entity to be admired from afar.  It is, in the greek myth sense of the word, a non-sexual relationship, but usually with a supernatural being that takes the form of the opposite sex.  They are the source of knowledge, the resevoir from which an artist taps for his or her inspiration.  They are the personification of the arts in human form. 
The question for Dante enthusiasts becomes murky because modernity has great difficulty grasping non-sexual relationships between men and women, especially when one has been very affectionately described.  Dante may or may not have desired Beatrice.  He was married, sure, but chose not to use his wife as a source of inspiration for his art.  Modernity views this as Dante never married his "true love."  He was stuck with another and chose to use his art to express his true feelings.  This very well may have been true.  But what if Dante really did find Beatrice to be his Platonic idealized female aspect of humanity.  What if she was the source of unattainablilty, to be admired from afar as one admires a great painting or piece of music?  Could Beatrice just be a symbol of feminity, one that left such a profound impact upon him as a youngster that she unknowingly became his muse?  Dante may have been a very happily married man who just so happened to devote his life to writing about another.  One wonders what Mrs. Alighierri thought about her husband's work.

The Guide

One of the many, many astounding things about The Divine Comedy is it's remarkable ability to exist both within and removed from the narrative.  People speak adoringly about the David Foster Wallace's and Thomas Pynchon's and their ability to craft a "postmodern" novel.  What exactly does postmodern mean in literature?  From my understanding (and i am quite certain that an expert would tell me that I simplify this concept), postmodernity's strength is it's ability to transcend the page and comment on the process itself.  Question everything and deliver that to the page.  While Dante's work doesn't really challange the conventions of writing an epic as he redefines the entire genre.  In fact, Dante is so commanding and sure of himself that on one level his style could be considered the antithesis of postmodernity. 

What I am trying to get at here is Dante's very conscious choice to use the narrative to throw the literary gauntlet down and declare that a new sheriff is in town.  As with any journey or quest, no hero or protagonist can make a go of it alone.  One of the basic human conditions is the idea of community, however small, is essential for survival.  Yes there are the occasional recluse hermits who live perfectly content, but theirs is essentially a selfish retraction from humanity.  The people who effect and change society need connections with other humans to acheive success in their journeys.  Dante understands that he is lost and in need of a guide, someone that Dante the poet and Dante the protagonist will listen to and respect.  Who better to guide an Italian poet than the grandfather of Italian literary artistry, Virgil.  Virgil was the creator of the first Italian epic, The Aeneid.  Virgil is for Dante "the glory and light of other poets."  He is, along with Homer, the gold standard by which any aspiring epic poet judges themselves.  Unlike Homer, who to Dante was unknown and (worst of all) Greek, Virgil is a paison.

Dante is nothing if not full of hubris.  I mean, he started out by wishing to create a work that should be a part of the bible!! He chooses as his guide the father of Italian poetry!!  By using Virgil, Dante is basically telling his readers 'hey check this book out.  i'm such a baddass that my work should be comparable to The Aeneid.  Harold Bloom speaks about a psychological condition in artists which he coined The Anxiety of Influence . Bloom states that every writer is born upon the ashes of his predecessors.  The most original and sucessful (artistically, that is) wrtiers are the ones who recognize the weight of the literary canon and manage to metaphorically slay the writers of the past and forge ahead on their own path.  Dante chooses Virgil as his target, inserts him in his narrative as his guide, the one for whom he learned both writing and the path through his dark forest (a forest inhabited by the ghost of Virgil.  Dante's crisis is as much about him as an artist as it is about him as a man).  Dante is using his story to comment upon his own process and the tradition from which he is writing.  Sounds pretty postmodern if you ask me.

more thoughts on the dark forest

From darkness to light.  Isn't this a goal all of us strive for?  In our most humbled, pained moments, when we are immersed in the darkness, we search for the light.  The dichotomy of light and dark permeates the human condition.  When we meet our protagonist, who operates not only as the main character of the story, but also as a metalinguistic symbol of everyman (and woman)'s struggle to break free of their own darkness, he is at the edge of dark forest consumed in his own darkness.  Jospeh Campbell speaks at length about finding your bliss, but how can one find that until they recognize the darkness as well.  http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php   Now that darkness may not be inherent to humanity, but all humans are touched by darkness, or have the capacity to be swayed by it, just as I believe we are all capable of being engaged in bliss. 
The first book of the Divine Comedy takes us straight to hell.  Do not pass go,  do not collect $200.  Inferno is the blockbuster of the trio of books.  Lots of fire and brimstone, with a dash of sex as well (although one would truly have to be unique to find any sort of eroticism in the story of Paolo and Francesca, who are subject to spend eternity in perpetual coitus.  Really think about that one before uttering the very dude-like 'that'd be sweet!!') .Paolo & Francesca  Plenty of pyrotechnics.  It's the page turner, the one all of is are exposed to in high school and college lit classes.
But Inferno is the first step on his transformational journey, and the first step of Inferno is to step in the dark forest.  In Empire Strikes Back, before Luke can battle Darth Vader, he must venture in the cave in the swamp to face the Darth Vader inside of himself.  He must confront his own darkness before transforming into the hero.  This thematic element of humanity's journey is a vital step in so many of the sotries we tell ourselves.  When I read the first part of the bible, I always wonder what the universe must have been like before God said let there be light.  That's the story I really want to read, God's journey through the dark forest, because just uttering let there be light is kind of a cop out to the struggle that we humans are subjected to go thru.  The stories that resonate are the stories in which illustrate the anguish and pain and finally the triumph of the darkness over the light. 
There is a great book I read years ago entitled In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley.  In the book, Kingsley has found an ancient poem by the enigmatic pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides.  The poem speaks of a place of incubation in which seekers of wisdom must go to escape the darkness in the soul.  For Parmenides, one breaks thru the trappings of humanity's shortcomings by entering the dark cave of the psyche and confronting in this state the demons.  It is a subconscious descent into the mystical underworld.  Sound familiar?  Dante did it.  Luke Skywalker did it.  I think I even saw an episode of the Smurfs like that (well maybe not, but how cool would that be?!?! I say do it smurfs! confront you inner gargamel!) 
I guess what I am blathering about here is the idea that nothing transformative is an easy process.  The dark forest is a scary place, but so is the idea of trasnformation.  Most humans cannot look themselves in the mirror because the dark forest is so visible in that mirror.  It certainly scares me.  But whoever said that the journey would be all rainbows and unicorns?
Here's a link to Kingsley's book for purchase:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781890350017-0
        

Round one - The dark forest

So a guy is walking through the forest...
Basically Dante begins his materpiece this way. (When I journeyed half of my life I found myself in a dark forest). 
Dante is many things to many people.  He is a master poet, one that creates a bridge between the epics of Homer and Virgil, and the novel.  His story is both a narrative and a poem.  He is a historian.  The Divine Comedy was the Google of its time. A who's who of historical and mythical characters, all known in Dante's Italy, inhabit the journey. Imagine writing a story that includes not only George Washginton and Abraham Lincoln, but also Snookie and the Kardashians (a frightening thought we should all hope never manifests itself in the written word.)  That is the scope of his work.  It was considered as close to sacred scripture for its time as any fictional work has acheived.  The work survived the Bonfire of the Vanities while so many of its contemporaries perished.  Dante himself had the hubris to set out writing the work as an addendum to the Bible.  That, my friends, takes considerable hutzpah.  The Divine Comedy is an intricate coded work, filled with hidden messages written acrostically.  He also utilizes the italian language itself for aural effect.  When Count Ugolino is suffering deep in the recesses of hell, we readers can hear in the language the sounds of the crunching bones as he devours his children (This is a much disputed passage by Dante scholars.  Did Dante truly wish to convey that Ugolino is spending eternity eating his kids.  I side with Jorge Luis Borges, who sees it both as poetic metaphor and  morality play.  By being nebulous, Dante managed to provide scholars centuries of debate.  Take note aspiring epic creators.  Make you work both explicit and nebulous if you want to acheive immortality.) 
But the Dante in the first several stanzas is pure new age Dante.  He is having a mid-life crisis.  What does a guy do when he looks around at his life and feels unfilled in 1300?  I mean, you can't just go out and get a Ferrari.  And although I have a theory that Dante's Beatrice obsession could be correlated to the 40 year who cheats on his wife with the 20 year old (more on this another time), actualized infidelity was a big no no for the Catholic Mr. Alighieri.   Unfortunately for Dante, Deepak Chopra was still a ways off.  Tuesdays With Morie? Nope.  Dr. Phil and Oprah couldn't help him.  Shoot, even Freud couldn't tell him about his mommy issues.  So Dante had to write the book himself.  And write it he did.  100 Cantos of inspired genuis, all because he turned 35 and wondered what had become of his life.  If all of us could acheive such an astounding work of genius from the most human of actions, the self-reflection, well this would be a very different world than the one we currently inhabit. As it stands most mid-life crises follow the predictable patterns mentioned above.  I say forget about the sports cars and let's all write epics.

the journey begins

Hi there fellow Dante enthusiasts! 

The name's Blair.  I have spent a few too many hours with a dead Italian and figured i needed some format in which to begin regurgitating ideas.  This blog will be dedicated to all things Divine Comedy.  
Let me divulge a few things i plan to discuss and what I (hopefully) envision will evolve in this space.  First off, this is not going to be a summary breakdown of individual Cantos.  There are many, many resources available, both online and in dusty volumes, written by people far smarter than myself, deconstructing the Divine Comedy.  (one such resource which I would highly reccommend would be   http://www.worldofdante.org/ .  Informative, essential reading for those who wish to decipher the many names, places and events that enrich the text.) 
What this blog will try to be is a prism in which to look at today's society with respect to the world of Dante.  The Divine Comedy is one man's journey inward.  Dante used this piece of literature as a form of self-reflection.  He looked at humanities' flaws and  he looked at his own flaws.  He used the stories and events of his time to create an architecture of morality.  He elevated the virtues and castigated the vices.  
It seems to me that today's society, while exponentially more complex, is not much different than Dante's.  We still see constant examples of virtuous and vice-filled behavior on an individual as well as communal level.  Perhaps by looking back to Dante we can look forward to a better world.  Perhaps there is some method of reading Dante that can inform individuals searching for internal happiness in today's outwardly materialistic world.  Is this thinking utopian?  Possibly, but who wouldn't want to live in a society actively engaged in a process to become better humans?  This blog will only survive with the input of others, so for those six or seven of you reading this, please infiltrate me with ideas, criticisms and other musings.  I want this to be bigger than me.

I will leave you with a short passage from Paradiso, Canto I, translated into English.
O godly force, if you so lend yourself
to me, that I might show the shadow
of the blessed realm inscribed within my mind,

then you would see me underneath the tree
you love; there I shall take as crown the leaves
of which my theme and you shall make me worthy.