Dante: Poeta Combinator

As we saw with Augustine and his numerous references to the biblical and classical traditions, intertextuality is a staple of both medieval texts and those of Late Antiquity. Medieval authors largely saw their own writing as palimpsestic, using the works of prior canonical authors to substantiate and validate their own authorial ventures while simultaneously rewriting those earlier works.

Dante takes this process a step further, referencing and rewriting not only those works which had inspired him to compose the Divine Comedy, but also undertaking the same process with his own purported autobiographical work, the Vita Nuova. An example of a prosimetron (a work containing both poetry and prose), Vita nuova is not easily categorized. The book combines many genres—from journal entries to spiritual autobiography; from Bildungsroman to a poetry collection of Dante’s earliest canzoni--complete with exegesis of both the poems, and the events which inspired them.  

One of several consistent threads within the text is an idea of "memory." In the prologue, the narrator refers to another “libro de la mia memoria” [lit. 'book of my memory,' perhaps a journal outside of this one] (Vita nuova I) from which the current work is a transcription. The scribe claims that he will transcribe all that appears under the Latin heading "Incipit vita nova" ['here begins the new life.'] Yet, as we read throughout the text, this definition of “memory”  seems to be informed by his own fragmented role as both the redactor and key personage within the text being redacted. Dante's intention is only “to copy into this little book the words [he] finds written under that heading.”[1] We learn that we will not to be given a full account of the author’s memory but an amended one, customized to fit his intention as to how the past should look. He modifies his original intention by saying “if not all of them [the words], at least the essence of their meaning [sentenzia].” This sentenzia is a telling word. The reader begins to inquire just whose meaning will be revealed, the meaning intended by the author of old, the meaning given by the current redactor, or rather a veridical synthesis of the two?  

Do you find this work more autobiographical in premise, or rather the more rigidly structured Divina Commedia for which the poet would rightfully receive more acclaim? It should be noted that the latter work is also a part of his personal narrative, a response to the various poetry of Dante’s youth, collected in the Vita Nuova, themselves given "new lives" by the commentary of the Commedia.  

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[1] Longer passages which I cite in English come from Mark Musa’s translation,  Dante’s Vita Nuova : Translation and an Essay (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973). Shorter translations are my own. Italian citations are culled from the Paternostro’s text La Vita nuova tra gesto e memoria (Roma: Lithos editrice, 2008).

   

Augustine of Hippo

Just how does one situate a "confession" as a literary genre, and how does it relate more generally to autobiography? Nearly one thousand years before the Church instituted the Sacrament of Penance, Augustine of Hippo rather disingenuously related the sins that he had committed in his pre-baptismal life within a greater biographical narrative. I say "disingenuous" because Augustine is incredibly selective about the details that he chooses to note. For example, he consciously omits any details about the woman with whom he had conceived his son, Aldeodatus, but speaking at great lengths about being stealing pears, being a disciple of the Manichees, and other carefully selected indiscretions. What is it that he confesses in this text and why does he do so? His motivation seems to morph dramatically throughout the text, a problem that makes any concise definition of a "confession" grow more and more elusive.

Like many of the texts that we will read this semester, the Confessions seems to be an attempt to follow the trajectory of psychological transformation, above and beyond a recitation of deeds. At the beginning of Book II, Augustine prefaces the narrative by writing, "I must now carry my thoughts back to the abominable things I did in those days, the sins of the flesh which defiled my soul[;]" yet, he explains that he does this for his God, "not because I love those sins, but so that I may love you. For love of your love I shall retrace my wicked ways" (II. 1). Does this suggest that the mental retracing of his steps is a prerequisite for solidifying his relationship with his God, or is it purely a therapeutic practice which he seeks to undertake in order to achieve at some sense of closure? If it is the former, why not as that famous confessional poet, Anne Sexton, once wrote in quoting Schopenhauer, "make a clean breast of it?" Augustine's selectivity implies that he really has another reason in mind for accounting his sins.

Perhaps his confessions seek to undermine the erroneous philosophical ideas that he had formerly held but has subsequently rejected. This would make his long discussions of the Manichees more pertinent (along with Theodosius' suppression of that group happening near contemporaneously with Augustine's composition of the Confessions). My proposition may be epitomized in the incessant theological questioning that accompanies Augustine's self-interrogation and revelation. He questions just why the Bible--if it is indeed the absolute truth, which for him it became--was not compelling for him in his youth, citing his love of rhetoric and the written word that could not be satisfied with the crude Latin of the Bible that he had read in translation. And from the very outset of his text, Augustine inquires about how pantheism truly functions, "You fill all things, but do you fill them with your whole self? Or is it that the whole of creation is too small to hold you and therefore only holds a part of you?" (I. 3), while simultaneously praising the God whose forgiveness he ostensibly seeks.

If this text is a confession, it is more of a confession of erroneous beliefs than of evil deeds. This assertion is substantiated by the famous Augustinian explanation of theodicy as prviatio boni, that is, that "bad" is but the privation or absence of good and doesn't really exist in and of itself. Perhaps Augustine mitigates his "sinful" action by simply asserting that they were committed from a misguided mind and are therefore not venial, i.e. not damning. If so, he had never been truly malicious, but rather unaware that only Good exists. This might help us to better explain his selectivity in discussing sins, for his carnal sins had nothing to do with thought, rather the absence of will and knowledge.

On the last, less philosophical note, in the autobiographical genre we are constantly confronted with the question of authority. We must ask what alternate perspectives the author of autobiography is allowed to relate in his or her text, and which aspects of the self are equally off limits. Augustine pushes these boundaries by writing about his infancy (I. 7), and claiming the authority to relate and interpret his mother's dreams. How do these readings of others and projections of their motives affect your reading of the text? Does the author of autobiography have free license to speak about the motives and experiences of others? Does this affect the veracity of an already dubiously "true" genre? How is it even more problematic in a text which is dubbed to be a confession? How do Augustine's Confessions compare to Boethius' Consolatio, either as a literary genre or a philosophical approach to understanding the self?

What Did Ezekiel See?: Intertextuality and the Merkabah Tradition

What did Ezekiel see? As we begin our short but chronological examination of the genre of spiritual autobiographies, I think it is important to acknowledge the great role that both intertextuality and prophetic texts play in the Western branch of spiritual autobiography. Loosely defined, intertextuality is a term used to define the relationship between texts to one another. Intertextuality has a particularly complex relationship with spirituality. Although scholars of comparative religion such as Steven Katz or Evelyn Underhill argue about whether mystics who speak of satori, moksha, or d'vekut, are truly speaking about the same phenomenon when they write about no-self, liberation, or cleaving, respectively, in many Western mystical texts, even the very language used to convey these experiences is a palimpsest of stories and images.

The Book of Ezekiel and the vision of the Merkabah in the first chapter of his prophetic narrative has been the model for later expressions of Jewish mysticism as well as John of Patmos' Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. In the essay, "The Problem of Pure Consciousness," Katz has famously argued that "there are no unmediated religious experiences." Though Katz' argument pertains more directly to the phenomenology of religious experience, we might apply it to the material culture and literary depiction of mysticism as well. Hence John of Patmos' written testament of  visionary experience echoes Ezekiel's because he has inherited the archetypal images from a cultural tradition, namely that of the Jews. It should of course be conceded that John's vision differs slightly from Ezekiel's, but they notably  share much of the same language.

The religious language of the West--mystical or not--is largely intertextual. Indeed, even Ezekiel's Hebrew mirrors that of Jacob's vision of the ladder from Genesis 28:10-22. One could claim that these writer's are speaking about the same experiences and as such, their language mirrors each other. On the other hand, one could also make the counterclaim that an ineffable experience requires the language of a culturally authenticated other experience for validation.

What do you think about the role of literary models in spiritual texts? Do these models and the appropriation of their imagery make novel depictions of spiritual experience seem any less or more convincing?          

Saul/Paul in Galatians

In reading Paul's Epistles the reader is confronted with the problem of how an intended audience informs and forms the medium, style, and message of an autobiographical narrative. Sacrosanct to the majority of Christians, these letters are also seminal to the genres of memoir, spiritual autobiography, and even the epistolary novel form of the nineteenth century.

Scholars debate over whether the recipients of Galatians are Christian Jews or messianic gentiles, but it seems to me that Paul's recounting of his own  μετάνοια (metanoia; Greek for "turning around") is certainly strategic. In the context of discussing how much of the הלכה (halachah; Heb. "Jewish Law") a gentile should follow, Paul advances a theological idea that will ultimately become a sine qua non to the Christianity that he pioneered--namely, that Christianity is a new paradigm that has been established which lessens the legalistic demands of Judaism.

As critical literary readers of this narrative, after having read Ezekiel, we see Paul affecting the prophetic voice and donning the mask of prophetic messenger in order to confirm his message. He explains that he had been the Pharisee par excellence, but a vision from the Jewish Messiah has given him the authority to dictate the next stage of Mosaic Law--abrogation.

For Paul, the autobiographical narrative and the details that frame it are only as important as their utility in conveying the message of his prophecy. In other words, his use of autobiography is purely instrumental, for Paul only needs to tell the Galatians that he had been a zealot and the foremost persecutor of the Jews in order to exaggerate the vicissitude which came from his conversion.  He illustrates that he had been and perhaps continues to be a credible Pharisee and the law to which he had once fervently adhered has been superseded. We learn little details concerning his life that depart from this overarching narrative and its intent.

In this context, the medium is more intuitively not the message, but rather authenticates that message. Even Paul's invocation of the deity at the beginning of the letter--which both echoes prophetic texts and the classical convention of imploring the Muses to aid in the composition of poetry--seems instrumental; namely, praising God suggests a relationship that Paul later uses to confirm his prophetic authority.

As we continue to explore autobiographies this semester, we should also continue to scrutinize the motives for autobiographical narratives. What prompts the creation of autobiography? If an autobiographical snippet is included in a broader narrative for expressly didactic purposes, can it be veracious or is it simply crafted in order to instruct or orient readers on a given path? Can autobiographies which have a tacit agenda (Read: ALL autobiographies!) ever be an objective record of a given life?