Dante
Allegory
A language of metaphor and allegory based on ‘natural symbols’ would be possible
- thus making a truly completely artistic society possible
Allegorical figure
- personified abstraction
- death riding a pale horse
Symbolic image
- using a contemporary figure to represent a host of qualities that the figure represents (see conventional image)
- Hell
- a pit beneath Jerusalem
- a mountainous island in the Antipodes
- located among the celestial fields
Meaning
- literal
- allegorical
- moral
- anagogical
- All can be put into one sentence
- The last three all apply to allegory
And if James Joyce was writing about his own life in general, abstract terms, in an Adamic langauge of allegory and world influences, then Finnegans Wake, while alot of work, would have been fun for him and easy in the bargain. He’d be flashing the whole world and no one would know what they were looking at.
- Steven Runciman
- “The Medieval Manichee”
- a description of the dualist churches in the middle ages
Phrase
- ‘Stupor Mundi’
- Wonder of the world
- Pun and play on words in the spirit of The Wake
Beatrice
- Dante loved her his whole life. Met her when she was 9y old?
- Died 1292 – how old was she?
- La Vita Nuova
- his text and verse on Beatrice
- Bice
- her name was actually Bice. Only Dante called her Beatrice. I like the name Beatrice better anyway
Buondelmonte
- good of the mountain?
- beautiful of the mountain?
- mountain of the beautiful?
Simon de Montfort
- really should read more about this guy.
Gemma
- Why does that name have evil connotations for me?
Books
- 13th century
- sold in apothecary shops
- funny. We still sell them in drug stores
- being on drugstore bookshelves is then a time honoured practise
- wonder why, though?
Dante
- member of the guild of physicians and apothecaries
- merchants, jewellers, painters, booksellers
Guelfs
Ghibbilenes
- war amongst themselves
- even the Guelfs split among themselves.
- Bianca Guelfs(white)
- Neri Guelfs(black)
- Can’t remember if that was one of the triggers for writing Romeo and Juliet. Surely Shakespeare would have heard about that in his time and maybe he wondered ‘what if’?
Boniface VIII
- simoniac
- him of anagni (alagna)
- and because Dante was a Guelf (more church than empire) sullying the papal seat was disgusting and hell worthy
- and personally, Boniface was a politician and while religious to a degree in his own mind, becmng part of the church was a means to an end
- to an idealized member of the Guelfs, supporting politically what they thought was too secular a concern for the church, this was blasphemy
- thought to me, it’s funny and ironic
Dante
- The Banquet
- Il Convivio
- translation anywhere?
- Writing in the vulgar tongue
- De vulgari eloquentia
Universal Law
- enforced law among the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’
- an elected monarchy, I wonder? An elected tyrant?
Canto I
Beasts
Sin
- leopard
- self indulgence
- incontinence
- violence
- ‘beastiality’
- she wolf
- malicious
- ‘fraud’
- (Penny)
- my story?
- wolf spider?
- more for my short story than for anything Dante
- greyhound
- historical
- politcal messiah who will establish a just World Empire
- ‘Stupor Mundi’
- (or Stupid Monday)
- (there’s a short poem hidden up in those four words)
- spiritual
- attributes of God
- ‘wisdom, love and power’
Hell
Canto III, lines 25 -27
- that’s what casinos sound like to me. Hell’s Vestibule (for the futile)
Hell
Canto VI
Circle III
The Gluttonous
The rain / Cerebus
- I like the image of Virgil shutting up the Hound of hell by choking it on dirt
- I like the image of rain dripping off of Cerebus
- 3 headed and dog-like (referred to as ‘The Great Worm’)
- and he doesn’t guard the gates of Hell – he guards the gluttons
- image of uncontrolled appetite (allegory)
- ‘worm’ = old english for monster
- ‘vermo’ = italian for monster
- and worm or vermo is another name for monster and does not necessarily mean dragon
- ‘ciacco’ = dig
