Relayed from Jim Nohrnberg:
Since the poet's beloved's being canonized or immortalized
literarily would indeed seem to require the/a lady's or
person's name, could a passage or two, on the naming of
Dante's Beatrice in that poet's poetry -- here taken from
"The Autobiographical Imperative and the Necessity of
'Dante': Purgatorio 30.55," Mod. Phil. Vol. 111, no. 1
(Winter 2003), 1-47 -- be at all suggestive here? The
first paragraph quoted cites Spenser's poem in the
Amoretti (that is, with ref. to Beatrice's name in Inf.
2.70[-72], Purg. 23.128-30, and esp. its [feigned]
self-declaration in Purg. 30.73). "Dictatorial" (last
sentence, in the second paragraph quoted) partly means or
refers to "a mistress-Muse who dictates to a poet [German
'Dichter'] what it is he will write or write about
(namely, her)."
... In the Vita Nuova [Dante] said he hoped "to write
[dire] of [Beatrice] what has never been written [detto]
of any woman," and that "his soul [should] have leave to
go and behold the glory of its lady --who is herself
gazing on the face of that God who is blessed through all
eternity."32 Near the end of the Purgatorio the momentous
rendezvous impends, and the poet boldly inscribes the
unprecedented composition as his own. His name being
spoken in the vocative, he re-acquires his vocation as a
love-poet celebrating a mistress, and keeps the promise
eternizing conceits make to a beloved, "in the heavens
[to] write [her] glorious name."33 But in the lower or
earthly paradise Dante has also written his own.
32. Dante, Vita Nuova xlii [tr. Thomas Okey in Dent edn.
of 1906], p. 153.
33. Edmund Spenser, Amoretti 75, lines 10-12, in
Poetical Works, ed. J.C. Smith and E.D. Selincourt (1912;
reprint, Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 575. Compare
the recognition of Spenser?s Redcrosse knight (or St.
George) with that of Dante?s crusading ancestor
Cacciaguida, as found in the heaven of Mars: "For which
enrolled is your glorious name / In heavenly Registers
above the Sunne / Where you a Saint with Saints your seat
have wonne" (The Faerie Queene, II.i.32, in Poetical
Works, p. 73). ...
... Dante?s "Dante" belongs to a much more scribal,
introverted, and courtly literary history than the early
modern one; the author?s name is uttered at the climax of
an extended sequence of poets, whose own names, in the
long run, only the Comedy has rescued from literary Limbo.
In point of chronology the latest is Casella, the
wait-listed singer Dante meets in Ante-Purgatory. Asked
to perform for the pilgrims, he picks Dante?s early piece,
"Love that discourses in my mind," and starts
rehabilitating the political exile from Farinata?s
egotistical Hell as a poet in the sweet new style of
Cato?s self-sacrificing Purgatory. This restoration will
not end until he is named by Beatrice, after he is
specifically identified with love-lyric by his fellow poet
Bonagiunta da Lucca, who recognizes him as the poet of
"Ladies who have intelligence of love" -- [this poem being
the] first fruits of the decision, precipitated in Vita
Nuova xviii, "to take evermore for the matter of my speech
that which should be praise of my lady." The events
coincide with Dante?s critical first-person declaration of
identity, "I? mi son un che, quando / Amore mi spira,
noto, e a quel modo / ch e ditta dentro vo signifcanto"
[I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes note, and, in
the mode it dictates within, goes signifying] (Purg.
24.52-54), thus surpassing Guittone and "the Notary" (56).
This self-declaration belongs to the more "descriptivist"
-- or definition and vocational -- of two types: "I am x
who does y, and goes about doing z." Thus Virgil
satisfies Griffolino: "I? son un che discendo / con
questo vivo" [I am one who descends with this living man]
(Inf. 29.94-95). Addressing Virgil, Beatrice speaks for
both this and the equation-type, "I am N -- I am ([the
one] named) so-and-so": "I? son Beatrice che ti faccio
andare; [...] amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare" [I am
Beatrice who bids you go; ... Love, which makes me speak,
moved me] (Inf. 2.70-72). Dante can claim Love to be his
very author, not merely his subject-matter: in Vita Nuova
xxiv Amor prescribes Love as the dictatorial lady?s other
name.
Jim Nohrnberg
>>> [log in to unmask] 02/20/04 04:31PM >>>
I suppose the following reading has already been implied, but "later
life
renew" may refer to producing children. Of course "later" may be an
adverb
("later on") as well as an adjective modifying "life." Either way the
words
can refer to having children.
Bill Godshalk
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* W. L. Godshalk
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* Professor, Department of English *
* University of Cincinnati
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* Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * Stellar Disorder
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