[log in to unmask] wrote:
> 
> At 17:08 01.12.97 +0100, you wrote:
> >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:
> 
> Dear Tor,
> 
> Since nobody has complained, and since others have joined in (I am
> particularly  grateful for Gloria Allaire's pointer to the parallel between
> Pg 5 and If 5, something which I had not yet taken into account, and for
> John Barnes' reference to Peter Armours contribution), I think that we can
> confidently assume that this discussion is not unwelcome.
> 
> In your analysis of how much or how little the souls in Pg 3-6 expect from
> their living relatives, you wrote:
> 
> >[...] 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,
> 
> A small point, but maybe not entirely irrelevant for the understanding of
> Pg 5:  neglect which needs a reminder is not an issue in the case of
> Manfredi's "buona Costanza". I had earlier tried to explain how the problem
> of violent/premature death is connected with the problem of intercession:
> premature death was seen as a possible or even likely obstacle to
> salvation, because it prevented repentance in life and thus could lead to
> the assumption that the deceased was damned to Hell. In such cases
> (especially in the case of Manfredi, who had been excommunicated) the
> living had a reason -- though not a good or cogent reason -- to believe
> that their prayers would be wasted and would even be against God's will.
> This is why Manfredi and others who obtained salvation in their last hour
> want the "vero" about their salvation to be known among the living. The
> question how they expect the living and especially their living relatives
> to respond is another matter, and you are certainly right to infer from
> Manfredi's words that he is confident about Costanza's response.
> 
>  Belaqua implies, by his
> >lethargy, non-confidence;
> 
> Belacqua is a case per se, not only because he seems not to be a case of
> violent death, but also because not even the prospective of Dante-pilgrim's
> testimony seems sufficient to raise him from his lethargy. According to his
> own logic he is of course right not yet to change his attitude, because the
> pilgrim is still on his way up the mountain (and we know from Pia's later
> words that the way back to the living is long). But this should prevent us
> from inferring how confident or in-confident he is about the **future**
> response of the living.
> 
>  Iacopo implies confidence by his expression of
> >trust in Dante-wanderer's will to help 'pur che 'l voler nonpossa non
> >ricida',
> 
> This time I am with you, if you no longer insist that Iacopo clearly
> expects his relatives or compatriotes to be already praying for him.
> 
> > Buonconte is explicit that Giovanna and the others do not care.
> 
> Yes and no. He is explicit that "Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura". But
> he expresses his hopes, that Dante-pilgrim's testimony "tra' vivi" will
> provide help in the future. We don't know whether he expects Giovanna to
> respond, but somebody will, that much confidence we can infer.
> 
> >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.
> 
> Frankly, I see no "pressure" at all, not even weak pressure. All we can
> infer for the case of Pia is that a) she is in need of intercession
> (because she had suffered a violent death, and because she asks
> Dante-pilgrim for his help), and b) she hopes to obtain this intercession
> with Dante-pilgrim's help (because otherwise she wouldn't ask for it). If
> there is really a series of alternation at work -- which I doubt --, Pia is
> a case like Iacopo, but this would not yet tell us anything about the hopes
> she puts into her husband (Iacopo does not refer to his close relatives in
> particular, but to the people at Fano in general). She expects help from
> the "mondo" (like Buonconte), and her husband may or may not be a part of
> this mondo which will pray for her. There is certainly nothing in the whole
> development which supports your assumption that he is already praying for her.
> 
>  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.
> 
> Tor, when I say that you make too much **of your understanding** of the
> context I certainly do not say that you make too much of the context as
> such. May I remind you of my paper which you heard last May at Kalamazoo,
> and may I remind you of our private discussions from which you will
> probably remember that I have written one and a half unpublished books
> about the necessity of interpreting individual episodes as being
> constitutive elements of greater compositional units? My papers and books
> argue more specifically that in Dante's Commedia the smallest unit
> appropriate for scholarly treatment is an entire canto. So we certainly
> agree that individual episodes should **not** be understood in isolation,
> although we may disagree in our understanding of the given episode and of
> its context. In general, I am confident that we have or can have much more
> to work with than only the "subtle ebbs and flows of the poetry". In my
> work on Inf. 28 I believe to have worked out the precise plan of
> composition, a plan based on biblical, exegetical, arithmetical and
> aristotelian sources, and which allows, among other things, to correct the
> established historical understanding of two of the historical allusions in
> the text (the wars of the "Troiani" in v.10, mistaken by most modern
> commentators to be wars of the Romans, and the identity of the "Noarese" in
> v.59, mistaken by early and modern commentators as a synecdoche 'singularis
> pro plurali'). So I am certainly not hostile to attempts of clarifying and
> correcting our historical understanding by analyzing intratextual context.
> Yet it has taken me quite a number of years to work this out for one single
> canto (and with less reliable results for a few more episodes), and so I
> may have reasons to be a bit slower than others in trusting their or my own
> understanding of context in other episodes.
> 
> >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.
> 
> I and probably all of us share your strong feelings about the relevance of
> intratextual context. What regards me, I have equally strong feelings about
> the relevance of extra-textual contexts -- especially contexts in sources
> which Dante himself circumscribes as the "bread of the angels" -- if these
> contexts can be proven to be the ones which Dante wanted to be associated
> by his learned readers. "Old commentaries" are not top of my agenda,
> because in my opinion Dante's early commentators (and also their modern
> followers, who continue to gloss the text verse by verse) only divulgated
> an understanding which Dante himself foresaw for those of his readers who
> were travelling "in piccioletta barca". But I don't despise these old
> commentaries where their glosses seem to help our understanding, and in the
> case of Pia's reference to her husband I still fail to see how the early
> glosses are contradicted by the text and its intra-textual context.
> 
> >
> >>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. [...] 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.
> 
> I can follow your quantative analysis in the case of Iacopo and Buonconte,
> but there is simply **not one single word** in Pia's brief speech which
> deals with her present state specifically. She wants her present state to
> be known "al mondo", that much is clear from the first three lines. Yet the
> last three lines deal **exclusively** with her past life (and death).
> 
> >
> >>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.
> 
> If this is what you are arguing for, you seem to be addressing your
> argument to the wrong audience, because nobody here wants anybody "to check
> at the foot of the page and then go 'ahh' at the beauty of the poetry". But
> it had been your point that Dante would not have accused Pia's husband of
> murder without stating his accusation more clearly, and to this I had
> replied as quoted above. Let's avoid to construct each others arguments as
> being more nonsensical than they actually are, OK?
> 
> >
> >>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.
> 
> We are dealing with a case of intra-textual deixis. What we have is a
> pronoun "l(o)" referring back to something stated in the text before. It is
> certainly not "impossible", but quite to the contrary it is the least
> farfetched understanding to refer this pronoun to the directly preceding
> statement, "disfecemi Maremma", as most commentators do. It is also still
> possible to include the last but one statement, "Siena mi fe'", although we
> should be a bit more hesitant here, not only because of the strong caesura
> between "Siena mi fe'" and "disfecemi Maremma", but also and mostly because
> Pia's birthplace can be assumed to be a more common knowledge which does
> not need to be stressed as being a particular knowledge held especially by
> her husband. Nevertheless it is possible that "salsi" just means to say:
> 'my husband knows about my life and death'. In this case the statement
> would seem to be trivial and one might wonder why it is made at all, but I
> agree -- and I had agreed before -- that this understanding is still
> possible, although it seems less preferable to me. But I cannot follow you
> anymore if you want us to prefer the most farfetched solution by referring
> "salsi" to "Io son la Pia". By this latter statement Pia names herself,
> whereas it is only a guess -- or even less, a second guess, for which you
> have not adduced any reasons -- that it might also imply the meaning "I am
> the pious one".
> 
> Apparently -- but please correct me if I am wrong -- you want us to
> understand Pia's reference in the sense: "I am a pious person, and was
> pious in my life and death, and this can be testified by my husband (who is
> still hopefully praying for me)." But this understanding cannot hinge on
> anybody's "feeling", because it is clearly contradicted by the
> intra-textual context (beginning with "Noi fummo tutti ... peccatori infino
> a l'ultima ora" Pg 5,51s.).
> 
> >>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.
> 
> You obviously need to check your understanding of intercession. Members of
> the family have no more and no less power to alleviate the sufferings of
> the deceased than every other living soul has. Consanguinity is regarded as
> causing a natural bond of affection which usually makes one more prompt
> than others to pray for ones dead relatives. Marriage by vow and sacrament
> establishes a special bond of mutual service which does not expire for the
> remaining partner when one of the partners dies. That's why relatives and
> husbands are the first to be expected to pray. If they don't pray, others
> who had lived in less close relation or even in no relation at all with the
> deceased need very strong reasons -- like Dante-pilgrim's testimony -- to
> pray. We have consanguinity in the case of Manfredi and Costanza; we have
> civil bonds -- and maybe more -- in the case of Iacopo, who hopes that
> people at Fano (and maybe especially members of his own family) will pray
> for him when they learn about his actual state; in the case of Buonconte we
> have nuptial relations with regard to Giovanna (although we don't know
> whether he expects her, too, to pray in future) and no specific relations
> at all with regard to the "vivi"; and in the case of Pia we have no
> specific relations with the "mondo" where she hopes to find living souls
> ready to pray for her, and nuptial relations with her husbands, whom she
> does not address explicitly as somebody who would or who would not pray for
> her.
> 
> What regards the circumstances under which these persons were killed, there
> is absolutely no reason why death on the battlefield (Manfredi, Buonconte)
> and insidious murder for political motives (Iacopo) -- i.e. motives which
> for Dante are not something which could be seen as relevant only on the
> supra-individual level and disconnected from individual ambition and
> avarice -- should not be followed in Dante's text by a case of insidious
> uxoricide. On the other hand, there is also no reason why this uxoricide
> should not have had political implications, especially if it is true that
> Nello murdered Pia in order to marry Margherita Aldobrandeschi.
> 
> >
> >
> >>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.
> >[...]
> 
> Lana is not a "generally unreliable source", but only a source which cannot
> be trusted to give in every single case the exact historical informations
> which Dante himself took for granted or wanted to be taken for granted by
> his readers. Lana gives some correct historical details about Nello's
> person which he (or an earlier gloss which may have been his source) cannot
> have inferred from Dante's text. This does not yet prove that also the
> detail regarding Pia's death is correct (or is at least the one which to
> which Dante wanted to be understood), but as long as there is no
> contradicting evidence I do in fact trust this account more than your
> feelings about the flavour of it.
> 
> It is my impression that you are trying to turn more or less legitimate
> doubts into strong convictions or even facts. It is legitimate to have some
> doubts regarding the traditional understanding of Pia's words, because this
> understanding regards a historical rumour not attested by independent
> sources as a clue for the understanding of Dante's text. But in my opinion
> this traditional understanding is still in much better harmony with the
> text of the Pia episode and with its intra-textual context than your
> attempts of reinterpretation. If we have only doubts, but not much or even
> nothing to prove them, some moderation in the use of words like
> "impossible" or "dangerous" might be in place.
> 
> Yours,
> 
>   Otfried
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin
> Tel.: ++49 30 8516675 (fax on request), E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>   Homepage for Dante Studies:
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