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September 9, 2010
Danteblogging Purgatory Canto X
Purgatory Canto X
Dante and Virgil begin the ring where Pride is corrected - and I noticed for the first time (though once I thought about it I realized it's been going on for a little while) Virgil seems less assured. In X.19 they are both uncertain of their way. Towards the end of the canto, Virgil says
. . . these eys of mine,"
said he, "first had to tussle with my thought." (Purg X.116-117)
We are reaching places where Virgil's human senses (even those of a Limbo-dwelling virtuous pagan) are failing.
This confusion of senses also runs through Dante's first use of the visual arts in the Commedia (I think!). There was an inscription on the gate of Hell, but there were no pictures -- just as there was no singing. But now the pilgrims see relief sculpture carved into the rock face of the ledge of Pride.
It was all gleaming marble and adorned
with figures so well carved that not alone
would the great Polycletus* there feel scorned
But Nature too. (Purg X.31-34)
The confusion of the distinction between Art and Nature, or Perception and other senses, continues through the canto. First they see an Annunciation, and Dante confuses the pose with the spoken word:
. . . he did not seem
A silent form. You'd swear you heard him say "Hail!"---for the one who opened Heaven's high love
was there in image, she who turned the key,
And in her pose was stamped the spoken word,
exactly as a seal in molten wax:
"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord." (Purg X.39-45)
Of course in the slightly later Renaissance it was not at all uncommon to paint the dialog between the Angel and Mary as issuing from their mouths (I'm not certain about c. 1300 - I don't remember any just off hand), but Dante is not visualizing an inscription. The next panels, showing scenes of the Ark of the Covenant and of King David dancing before it confuse both hearing and smelling! Talk about synaesthesia!
[images of people] who made one sense
of mine say, "No," the other, "Yes, they're singing,"
And so too with the smoke of frankincense--
the image set at strife the eyes and nose
with yes and no. (Purg X.59-63)
And here we see, too, the valorization of "it looks just like reality." As an art historian I find that kind of depressing. I spend way too much of my time convincing students that art, even art they think is Realistic (their word) is at best an abstraction from nature.
*Esolen nods. Policleto in Italian looks like Polycletus in English, but we really call him "Polyclitus" or "Polykleitos" in Art History. You know, the sculptor of the Doryphorus.
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 9, 2010 8:19 AM