Dear members of the Italian studies list
This particular discussion may now be outstaying its welcome on the list,
but I still want to reply to some of Otfrieds latest points, so here goes:
>a) You infer too much from your understanding of the context, urging this
>context in certain points (especially when you interpret Iacopo's reference
>to Fano in the sense that "people in Fano are doing something for him, but
>they may not be doing it well enough": as far as Dante's text goes, the
>necessity of providing for intercessional prayers is a fact, whereas your
>assumption that such prayers are already beeing done for Iacopo is only a
>possibility which can be inferred by comparison with the more explicit case
>of Buonconte)
When it comes to the role of intercessionary prayer, four things are clear,
from what has been said thus far in Purgatorio, and from what will be said
in the opening of Purg 6. 1: The souls in Ante-Purgatory desire
intercessionary prayer. 2: Not evereybodey gets it. 3: 'Sub specie
aeternitatis' it doesn't really matter all that much; all the souls in
Purgatory are saved, and all intercessionary prayer can do is to shorten
their wait or their punishment. 4: Some souls are cheerfull about their
prospects for intercession, others are unhappy, or despairing. This bit of
Purgatorio, from Purg. 3 to 6 is that bit of the Commedia which is most
preoccupied with the question of intercession, as all the souls
Dante-wanderer meets between Manfredi and Pier da la Broccia speak of it.
In those encounters which are referred in some length there is an
alternation between confidence and non-confidence. Manfredi is confident
that his daugher will, when reminded, pray for him, Belaqua implies, by his
lethargy, non-confidence; Iacopo implies confidence by his expression of
trust in Dante-wanderer's will to help 'pur che 'l voler nonpossa non
ricida', Buonconte is explicit that Giovanna and the others do not care.
Which would lay a pressure, as it were, on my reading hypothesis that the
next soul would be one confident of intercession. I will accept, however
that the pressure is weak, and that this is not a point on which my
argument can rest. But, to make a more general point of this, these subtle
ebbs and flows of the poetry are all we have to work with. You seem to
imply, when you say that I infer too much from my understanding of the
context here, that each individual episode of the poem should be understood
in isolation. This is an understanding to which I very much take exception.
One of the great things about Dante's poetic mastery, as I see it, is that
all the wonderfully strong poetry is made to fit into the great scheme of
the whole work. So, while I am quite willing to accept that I might at any
one point (such as here in Purgatorio 5) have misunderstood where the poem
is going, as it were, I really feel rather strongly that analysis of
context should have far more weight than analysis of extra-textual
material, such as old commentaries or other archival material.
>and using too much psychology in others (esp. in your
>interpretation how much the three persons are still concerned or not
>anymore concerned with their former lives).
Actually I don't use any psychological reasoning there at all. It's more
like a word count. Iacopo "has" the text from line 64 to 84. Of these 21
lines 3 are the 'captatio benevolentiae' 6 lines specify, explicitly where
Dante-wanderer should fulfil his promise of helping him, and implicitly the
locality of his earthly life. Finally 12 lines which deal with where and
how he died. Buonconte has the 45 lines from 85 to 129. 3 lines are
'captatio benevolentae', 1 line identifies the soul in the contrast between
the first name that he is and the surname that he was, 2 lines lament the
lack of intercession. The next 3 lines contain Dante-wanderer's question
about Buonconte's death. 9 lines then define the place and the manner of
Buonconte's death. 6 lines follow which describe how Buonconte's soul was
saved after his death, whereas 21 lines describe the fate of Buonconte's
body after his death. When it comes to Pia's 7 lines, she uses 2 lines for
an implied 'captatio benevolentiae', but where Iacopo focusses on
Dante-wanderer's good will when it comes to helping him, and Buonconte on
Dante-wanderer's eventual salvation, Pia focusses on the long distance he
has to travel to get home, in other words on the distance between Purgatory
and the inhabited world. After the narration of line 132 she both directs
her request to Dante-wanderer and identifies herself, in the present tense.
Only after these 4 verses does she turn to her earthly existence, life and
death in line 134, and focus on what she defines as the temporally distant
event of her marriage. Pure quantity tells me that Iacopo's bit of text is
most about life before death, Buonconte's most about life immediatly after
death, and Pia's more about her present state, as a disembodied soul
waiting to enter Purgatory proper. And I maintain that what they say bears
out their different perspectives, their different degree of maturity.
>b) You base too much on your assumptions on what Dante would have done or
>would not have done. Pia's reference to her husband is placed in the
>closing lines of the canto, in the textual position of greatest possible
>effect, and we simply cannot expect that Dante never leaves anything to be
>figured out by his readers.
Of course I am assuming what Dante would or would not have done. In one
sense literary critcism is all about second-guessing authorial intent. But
your last point is, in fact, an argument for "my" interpratation. I am
arguing precisely that Dante expects his readers to figure out what each
bit of text means, not to check at the foot of the page and then go "ahh"
at the beauty of the poetry.
>c) You still seem to have difficulties to understand the traditional
>understanding of the phrasing "salsi colui": these words do **not** express
>that Pia's husband knows "who she _is_", but they refer to the preceding
>verse which describes who she **was** and how she **died**, and the
>traditional reading relates "salsi" especially to this latter point, to her
>violent death.
Well, yes, I find it impossible, in fact. I feel that making the object of
Nello's knowledge only the single clause 'disfece mi Maremma' is governed
not by the text itself, but by the perceived need to make Pia refer to her
murder by Nello. It would be more natural for the object of Nellos
knowledge to be the clause "son la Pia" in v. 133, or both the clauses in
v. 134: 'Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma', or all three affermations as a
whole, rather than making it refer to the single clause 'disfecemi
Maremma'. Here again there is no objective criterion on which to base the
reading, it all hinges on a feeling of what the poem "is doing" here.
>It is true that the way how Pia refers to her husband does
>not necessarily imply that he was responsible for this violent death, but
>in my opinion it would be far more speculative to understand her as
>referring to a loving widower who is praying for the salvation of his
>somehow violently deceased wife.
Yet that is the relation between politics and domestic life for the other
encounters here. Iacopo, native of Fano, killed on the orders of the
prince of Ferrara, seeks intercession from the people of Fano. Buonconte,
killed in battle at Campaldino, laments the lack of due intercession from
Giovanna. The 'forza' here is always political. Members of the family have
the power, which, granted, they do not always use, to alleviate the
suffering after death. About Pia's death we must assume that it was in some
way an act of political violence, and that it took place, or had its cause
in Maremma. Domestic violence is not a theme here, intercession by the
living, based on affective links, is.
>d) Lana's words "e seppelo fare si segretamente, che non si sa come
>morisse" do not imply that there were no rumours about Pia's death. While
>it is possible that Lana and his followers (I have not checked Cioffari's
>Anonymus Latinus, who might have a gloss on Pia predating Lana's) inferred
>their understanding of Nello's guilt only from Dante's verses, this
>possibility nevertheless is only a possibility, and nothing more. As long
>as we don't have better, independent sources, these early glosses are the
>best we have, not good enough for us to reach a safe understanding of the
>'intentio auctoris', but certainly good enough to document how Dante's
>contemporaries understood the implications of his verse. And this should
>have at least a certain weight, although it cannot be conclusive.
Again here there is only guesswork (and I feel that there can only be
guesswork). To my ear Lana's gloss has the flavour of gratuitous
invention, and as to how he arrived at it one can but speculate. You seem
here to come dangerously close to arguing that a generally unreliable
source can be taken as reliable when nothing explicitly contradicts it.
>In my opinion, it is obvious from the context that Nello is presented as
>one of those who don't care or don't care enough for the salvation of their
>former relatives, and there is a good possibility that he is also implied
>as being responsible for Pia's death, but I see no way to interpret him as
>a caring widower who would not even need Dante-pilgrim's testimony as a
>reminder to make him pray for the salvation of his murdered wife.
Again I feel that the only context which argues for this understanding of
Pia's husband is extratextual. There is no place in the text where the
husband murders the wife.
>If you regard our discussion as a quarrel which already exceeds the amount
>of time you can to devote to the problem in question, I will of course not
>urge you to go on with it. We both have probably said what we have to say.
>Notwithstanding our disagreement, you have certainly enriched my
>understanding of the episode. I am looking forward to reading your diss (in
>the hope that it will be written in a language which I can read...)
Well, I haven't really brought in any new arguments, but I couldn't resist.
My dissertation (about the Beatrice-character in the Commedia) is being
written (albeit too slowly ...) in English. Which you seem to be able to
read quite well ...
Tor
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tor Torhaug
Research fellow
University of Oslo
Department of Classical and Romance Studies
Postboks 1007 Blindern
0315 Oslo
Norway
Phone: +47-22 85 71 28
Fax: +47-22 85 44 52
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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