THE L I G H T IN T R O Y

Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry

THOMAS M. GREENE

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Contents

Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Historical Solitude 3 Imitation and Anachronism 4 Themes of Ancient Theory 5 Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutic 6 Petrarch: T h e Ontology of the Self 7 Petrarch: Falling into Shadow 8 Poliziano: T h e Past Dismembered 9 Sixteenth-Century Quarrels: Classicism and the Scandal of History 10 Imitative Insinuations in the Amours of Ronsard 11 Du Bellay and the Disinterment of R o m e 12 Wyatt: Erosion and Stabilization 13 Accommodations of Mobility in the Poetry of Ben J o n s o n Notes Index

xi 1 4 28 54 81 104 127 147 171 197 220 242 264 295 339

IX

One

Introduction

T h i s is a book about the literary uses of imitatio during the Renaissance era in Italy, France, and England. T h e imitation of models was a precept and an activity which during that era embraced not only literature but pedagogy, grammar, rhetoric, esthetics, the visual arts, music, historiography, politics, and philosophy. It was central and pervasive. T h e period when it flourished might be described as an era of imitation, but this description would have value only if the concept and praxis were understood to be repeatedly shifting, repeatedly redefined by the writers and artists who believed themselves to be "imitating." T h i s is true even when the imitation of models is distinguished from the imitation of so-called nature, a distinction that could not always be maintained since some theorists, from Lodovico Dolce to Alexander Pope, held that to imitate the greatest masters was only another way of imitating nature at its highest and most characteristic. But despite all redefinitions and variations, enough remained constant to constitute a real subject, whose literary applications lead deep into the imagination of a civilization. From one perspective a good deal is known about imitations in the literature of these three countries: who modeled himself upon whom, who made certain pronouncements, who debated over which issues, even which children were taught the technique in school. But from another perspective we know very little. We cannot say with assurance why imitation flowered so brilliantly for a period and then lost its vigor; we cannot say what profound needs of the era it answered or was intended to answer; in analytic terms, we are not skilled in discussing imitative works as imitations. Once we have noted a so-called model or source, we are only beginning to understand the model as a constitutive element of the literary structure, an element whose dynamic presence has to be accounted for. We have not been adept as literary critics at accounting for imitative successes as against the many failures, or at recognizing the variety of strategies imitative writers pursued. T h e present study sets out to sketch suggestions which might solidify a little these areas of insecurity. For these methodological suggestions to carry any authority, even for the terms used to be clear, a certain grounding in theory has seemed to me desirable. For once the positivist stage of investigation is passed, then the structures of imitative texts confront one with the enigmas of literary history, enigmas that transcend the praxis of any era and call into question the meaning of periodization, the nature of historical understanding, the precise operations of change, the diachronic dimension of language. To reflect upon one large but more or less localized phenomenon of literary history, I have discovered, is to stumble upon the central riddles of all

INTRDUCTIQN 2 INTRODUCTION

such history and to look for the bases of a future historiography. T h u s chapter 2 of this study is devoted to a theoretical prolegomenon which then leads in chapter 3 to a tentative theory of imitation and its methodological correlatives. After this, theory tends to give way to history and analysis proper, but the shift is only relative since history includes the development of Renaissance imitative theory. After a glance at several ancient and a few medieval discussions of imitatio, there follows an extended section on Petrarch, whose written opinions on this subject and whose poetic practice on the eve of Renaissance h u m a n i s m are both rich and crucial. Petrarch is and deserves to be the central figure of this book. It has occurred to me that some of my remarks might be taken to express hostility toward this infinitely complex, volatile, and egoistic genius. Let me state at the beginning my belief that he was the greatest of those who receive major treatment here. T h e section on Petrarch is followed by shorter chapters dealing with five later imitative poets. T h e texts in each instance are so rich that they could furnish, and in some cases have furnished, material for one or more books. T h e intent here is again to suggest orientations and to offer methodological illustrations rather than to exhaust the inexhaustible. In the case of each poet the reading of poems as imitations has been inextricable from their reading as poems. It is precisely my argument that this is inevitable, just as theory, history, methodology, and exegesis seem to me equally inextricable. Imitatio was a literary technique that was also a pedagogic method and a critical battleground; it contained implications for the theory of style, the philosophy of history, and for conceptions of the self. In practice it led not infrequently to sterility. It led also, if less frequently, to a series of masterpieces. Situated at the core of Renaissance civilization, it can be traced through manifold forms and influences, extraordinarily complex and multifarious, which no single book could trace. What is perhaps more feasible is an attempt to discern whatever a twentiethcentury scholar can make out of the uses of imitatio for those cultures touched by humanism, as well as its structural function in representative texts. Imitatio produced a vast effort to deal with the newly perceived problem of anachronism; it determined for two or three centuries the character of most poetic intertextuality; it assigned the Renaissance creator a convenient and flexible stance toward a past that threatened to overwhelm him. For these reasons and others, it deserves our interest. It can never of course be isolated in its pure workings as an ideal force, but only as it was colored by local embodiments. It needs to be seen as a European phenomenon making a markedly different imprint on each particular nation and vernacular it touched. T h e goal in this book will be some sort of holistic view of that phenomenon refracted by three sharply individual national traditions. No attempt has been made to be truly inclusive or conclusive. In defense of the neglect of other literatures, most notably Hispanic, I can only say that my incompetence to deal with them has saved a long book from growing longer. T h e decision to focus mainly on lyric poetry was made in part to facilitate exposition and provide continuity. Other studies of the same problems clearly could be written with
differentfocianddifferentlimits.

It is true that my own reflection has been heavily influenced by the thought of the Renaissance itself. It is also true that this study is intended to give comfort to those who believe in the unity of so messy and shifty a block in time. T h e most acerbic polemics over the relation of a so-called Renaissance to a so-called Middle Ages are behind us, although the question in some form will doubtless prove to be long-lived. No informed scholar today can blind himself or herself to the powerful lines of continuity binding the two eras; if many of these lie outside the boundaries of this study, the omission corresponds to no desire to deny them. Still, my work began and ended with the belief that to speak of a civilization nameable as "the Renaissance" is a reasonable act. Indeed this study aims to enlarge the grounds of this rationality. One obvious point of reference, particularly on the Continent, is the will of Renaissance cultures to distinguish themselves diacritically from their immediate past. T h e Renaissance, if it did nothing else that was new, chose to open a polemic against what it called the Dark Ages. T h e ubiquitous imagery of disinterment, resurrection, and renascence needed a death and burial to justify itself; without the myth of medieval entombment, its imagery, which is to say its self-understanding, had no force. T h e creation of this myth was not a superficial occurrence. It expressed a belief in change and loss, change from the immediate past and loss of a remote, prestigious past that might nonetheless be resuscitated. " T h e men of the Renaissance,"wrote Franco Simone, "saw a rupture where earlier there had been a belief in a smooth development, and from this rupture they took the origins of their enthusiasm and the certitude of their originality." 1 A civilization discovered its cultural paths by the light behind it of a vast holocaust, and it used this mythical light as the principle of its own energy. It made its way through ruins by the effulgence cast in their destruction, finding in privation the secret of renewal, just as Aeneas, sailing westward from the ashes of his city, carried with him the flame that had consumed it burning before his Penates.

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ch n u l l o effetto m a i razionabile, per lo piacere u m a n che rinovella

Two

Historical Solitude

s e g u e n d o il cielo, s e m p r e fu durabile. O p e r a naturale c h ' u o m favella; m a c o s i cosi, n a t u r a l a s c i a poi fare a voi s e c o n d o che v'abbella.

[Par.

26.127-32]

[ For no p r o d u c t whatever of r e a s o n s i n c e h u m a n c h o i c e is renewed with the c o u r s e of

T h e specific imitative structures found in literary texts of the Renaissance serve both to distinguish it as a period and to align it in a long, disorderly history of western intertextuality. If the Renaissance era (very roughly: in Italy, Petrarch to Tasso; in France, Lemaire de Belges to d'Aubign; in England, Wyatt to Milton) produced structures that for all their diversity reveal certain c o m m o n patterns, the cultural pressures and impulses behind them need first to be considered. If some of these pressures appear to be, in our tradition, pervasive and continuous, this continuity is itself an important context for the understanding of a specific, finite phenomenon. T h e chapter that follows attempts to sketch both a historical and theoretical prolegomenon to th study of imitatio, attributing to the Renaissance text a privileged but circumscribed role in a vaster story. It takes as its point of departure a world artist writing a little before the decisive changes occurred which would determine the subject of this study.
1

h e a v e n c a n last f o r e v e r . I t i s a w o r k o f n a t u r e t h a t m a n s h o u l d s p e a k , b u t w h e t h e r i n this w a y o r that n a t u r e t h e n l e a v e s y o u t o f o l l o w y o u r o w n p l e a s u r e . ]

To attempt to create a language free of caprice and free of the interference of the stars ("il cielo") would approximate the folly of a Nimrod; it would involve an "ovra inconsummabile." Nature, the source of language, leaves man free to make an endless series of linguistic choices too unpredictable to be called judgments and perhaps too determined to be called art. Nature dissociates herself from the aimlessness of human whim, and yet as Adam goes on to recall his own experience of linguistic transience, he finds a natural analogy to carry its instability:
Pria ch'i' scendessi all' infernale ambascia, I s ' a p p e l l a v a i n terra i l s o m m o b e n e o n d e v i e n l a letizia c h e m i f a s c i a ; e El si c h i a m p o i ; e c i c o n v e n e , ch l'uso de' mortali c o m e f r o n d a in r a m o , c h e s e n va e a l t r a vene.

[Par.

26.133-38]

[Before I d e s c e n d e d t o the a n g u i s h o f Hell the S u p r e m e G o o d f r o m w h o m c o m e s the j o y t h a t s w a t h e s m e w a s n a m e d I o n e a r t h , a n d later H e w a s c a l l e d E l ; a n d that i s f i t t i n g , f o r t h e u s a g e o f m o r t a l s i s l i k e a leaf o n a b r a n c h , w h i c h g o e s a n d a n o t h e r c o m e s . ]

In the twenty-sixth canto of the Paradiso, Dante meets the soul of Adam. T h e poet is full of questions for the patriarch, who is aware of them without needing to hear them expressed and who goes on to answer four. T h e longest of his replies concerns the language first spoken in Eden. It was a language, Adam says, that quickly disappeared, well before the building of the tower of Babel.
L a l i n g u a c h ' i o p a r l a i f u tutta s p e n t a innanzi che all'ovra i n c o n s u m m a b i l e fosse la gente di N e m b r t attenta. u n a c c o m p l i s h e d task.]

[Par.

26.124-26]1

[ T h e t o n g u e I s p o k e w a s all extinct before N i m r o d ' s race g a v e their m i n d to the

Adam's denial of authority and permanence to the first of all languages, his own first language, reverses an affirmation made in Dante's earlier work, the De vulgari eloquentia, where it had expressly been stated that the Adamite language remained current until Babel, and even after Babel, a m o n g the Hebrews. T h i s denial also omits reference to that language, Latin, which the same treatise had excluded from linguistic mutability and praised for its enduring continuity. T h e reversal of the Paradiso seems to stem from a deeper sense that all h u m a n things are capricious and unstable, subject as they are to the alterations of astral influence and historical vogue. 4

T h i s image of the transient leaf that issues from a soul bound in ecstasy ("letizia") would sound in any other context with a note of sorrow, intensifying the accent of regret that would normally be present in the participle "spenta" at the o p e n i n g of Adam's little disquisition. T h a t first Adamite language had been extinguished or had burnt itself out with a loss of ardor and energy that from a less celestial perspective might emerge as momentarily tragic. So the loss of the leaf on the branch might appear tragic, the loss of a beauty that is perhaps hinted at punningly in the adapted verb "abbella." 2 T h e entanglement of mere fashion, astral determination, creative energy, and verbal loveliness, however, fails to concern Adam; he is bound in joy, protected from an aimlessness that discovers, makes, admires, and abandons. His joy, unlike the reader's, is unaffected by his imagery. Despite this joy, Adam's discourse remains a classic statement of a perception that has troubled men since Plato: the scandal of the mutability, the ungrounded contingency of language. Dante's image of the leaf that falls and is replaced echoes a well-known meditation in Horace's Ars poetica (11. 60-72) on the brief life span of the word. There is something like an analogous recognition in Chaucer (Troilus and Criseyde 2.22ff.; 5.1793ff.), a recognition that became a clich in T u d o r and

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HISTORICAL SOLITUDE

Stuart England. 3 To cite a particularly bleak example, Samuel Daniel closes his powerful "Defence of R y m e " with a warning against the coinage or importation into English of alien words, and then concludes with grim despair: "But this is but a Character of that perpetuali revolution which we see to be in all things that never remaine the same: and we must herein be content to submit our selves to the law of time, which in few yeeres will make al that for which we now contend Nothing."* 4 We meet the same recognition in the first book of Castiglione's Cortegiano, which, echoing again the Horatian organic image, evokes the pathos of noble, forgotten words that wither and die, a loss felt as a special case of that larger fragility inherent in civilization which it is the work's deepest purpose to dramatize. A quieter formulation appears in Montaigne, who wrote quite simply: " O u r language flows every day out of our hands." 5 T h e tone in Montaigne is characteristically serene, but for most medieval and Renaissance writers, the recognition of linguistic mutability was a source of authentic anxiety. T h e fear of the premodern writer that his temporal dialect would become utterly indecipherable has not yet been confirmed. But we can discern in that particular and acute distress one form of a vaguer and deeper concern that appears to be permanently human. Plato in the Cratylus is tempted by a conception of uncentered linguistic flux, associating the etymology of aletheia (truth) with ale (wandering) (421b) and the etymology of onoma (name) with words suggesting motion and flux (436e). But the Cratylus, deeply ambivalent as it is and perhaps ironic, also testifies to Plato's felt reed for an extraliliguistic grounding of the word. T h a t need is manifest in Plato's effort to root the phonic structure of signifiers within what he apparently considered the natural associations of verbal sounds. T h e same need is manifest in the persistent Renaissance belief, lingering at least as late as Jean Bodin, that Hebrew was a "natural l a n g u a g e " whose names for things corresponded to their true nature. 6 T h e need is still manifest in N o a m Chomsky's universal grammar, which posits on somewhat shaky conceptual bases a deep mental structure common to all human beings. T h e pages of George Steiner's After Babel record the recurrent quest through western history for a fixed linguistic ground, a Grund des Wortes, which begins with Genesis and moves down through Paracelsus, Bhme, and Kepler, to end with Walter Benjamin and Chomsky. Saint Augustine, despite his unbridgeable division between our words and the Word, also belongs finally to this tradition. Its existence needs no elaborate explanation. T h e quest for a transcendental or universal authority for the word is so recurrent an impulse because without it we seem condemned to the mere accidents of usage, a pure linguistic contingency that divides us from each other and from our forefathers. But fully to confront the anxiety of linguistic mutability, I think that first one has to see it as synecdochic. And fully to understand that synecdochic relationship, one is led back again to Dante and to the h u m a n i s m of the quattrocento which in this area he can be said to have anticipated. In the Paradiso, the impermanence of

language is associated with the greater impermanence of all human constructs: "nulloeffetto mai r a z i o n a b i l e . . . sempre fu durabile." In the De vulgari eloquentia, the same synecdochic conclusion is drawn; language is represented as that most visible element of a larger phenomenon embracing all culture:
C u m i g i t u r o m n i s n o s t r a l o q u e l a , preter i l l a m h o m i n i p r i m o c o n c r e a t u m a D e o , sit a n o s t r o b e n e p l a c i t o r e p a r a t a p o s t c o n f u s i o n e m i l l a m , q u e nil a l i u d f u i t q u a m p r i o r i s o b l i v i o , e t h o m o sit i n s t a b i l i s s i m u m a t q u e v a r i a b i l i s s i m u m a n i m a l , nec d u r a b i l i s nec c o n t i n u a esse potest, sed sicut a l i a q u e n o s t r a s u n t , p u t a m o r e s e t h a b i t u s , per l o c o r u m t e m p o r u m q u e d i s t a n t i a s variari o p o r t e t . . . . N a m , s i a l i a n o s t r a o p e r a p e r s c r u t e m u r , m u l t o m a g i s discrepare videmur a vetustissimis concivibus nostris q u a m a coetaneis perlonginquis. [ T h u s , s i n c e all o f o u r dialects (with the e x c e p t i o n o f that o n e created b y G o d a l o n g with the first m a n ) were r e f a s h i o n e d a c c o r d i n g t o o u r p l e a s u r e a f t e r that c o n f u s i o n , w h i c h w a s n o t h i n g other t h a n f o r g e t f u l n e s s o f the f o r m e r l a n g u a g e , a n d s i n c e m a n i s the m o s t u n s t a b l e a n d v a r i a b l e a n i m a l , the l a n g u a g e c o u l d not either e n d u r e o r b e u n i f o r m , but, like other o f o u r characteristics, s u c h a s m a n n e r s a n d f a s h i o n s , i t necessarily d i f f e r s w i t h the c h a n g e of t i m e or p l a c e . . . . F o r if we l o o k closely at o u r other activities, w e w o u l d s e e m t o b e m o r e a t v a r i a n c e f r o m o u r fellow-country m e n o f very a n c i e n t times than f r o m o u r c o n t e m p o r a r i e s at a g r e a t d i s t a n c e f r o m us.

T h i s passage helps to define the nature of that mutability which the Commedia at once evokes and dismisses. T h e temporality of language is here linked with the temporality of h u m a n customs and styles"mores et habitus"and with that of other human works"alia nostra o p e r a " (translated above as "characteristics"). Aristide Marigo suggests that " o p e r a " should be construed primarily, though not exclusively, as extant architectural structures dating from antiquity, since these would be the most visible products of ancient workmanship in the trecento and would have furnished strong contrasts with the style of medieval buildings. 8 If we follow this plausible suggestion, we must see in Dante one of the first medieval men to draw this contrast. T h e phrase "l'uso de' mortali" thereby gains a deeper resonance. Dante was evoking through Adam's voice the mutability not merely of specific words and dialects but of styles, the "mores et habitus" of culture, those styles by which civilizations in their temporality can be distinguished from one another. 9 It is doubtless significant that Dante could face the unqualified instability of this most variable animal's culture only at the end of his career. T h e earlier treatise does except the stable continuities of Latin and Hebrew. Only in the last poem, from the vantage of the eighth sphere, could he bear to acknowledge without exception the absolutely ungrounded historicity of the word, the element of stylewe would say the historicity of the signifier. He saw this and he felt a disquiet which is a valid accompaniment to the perception. Both the perception and the feeling would become constituent experiences of the humanist Renaissance. In his exemplary anticipation of that movement, Dante was protohumanist.

HISTORICAL SOLITUDE 8 HISTORICAL SOLITUDE ers; b u t rather all the m o r e w o r t h y o f eternal h o n o r s are t h o s e w h o i n w h a t e v e r d e g r e e 2 have succeeded in understanding things so remote a n d forgotten ("assequi tam remota tamque oblivia").12

T h e disquiet stemming from the historicity of the signifier adumbrates a pathos that is translinguistic, that embraces "mores et habitus," the historicity of culture. For Petrarch, a generation after Dante, the intuition of this pathos was no longer redeemable; it was tragic. It bespoke not only the impermanence but the solitude of history. T h i s was a solitude which Petrarch lived out existentially, as estrangement from the ancients who were dearer to himin the images he created of them than all but a few of his contemporaries. T h e perception of cultural as well as linguistic distance, glimpsed briefly in the De vulgari eloquentia, became for Petrarch a certainty and an obsession; the discovery of antiquity and simultaneously the remoteness of antiquity made of Petrarch a double exile, neither R o m a n nor modern, so that he became in his own eyes a living anachronism. "I am happier," he wrote, "with the dead than*with the living," 1 0 but of course he was no more truly happy with his ghostly and imperfect intuitions of Virgil and Cicero than he was with his own Avignon and Milan. We have only to read his letters to his ghosts to feel the sorrow of his converse. T h e humanists of the quattrocento did not suffer so intimately or so intensely from the knowledge of loss, partly because they devoted so much of their careers to the repossession of the lost. But the pathos is unmistakably there in Bruni, in Valla, in Alberti, in Poliziano, to speak only of the greatest." Moreover it is in the work of the same humanists, most notably Valla and Poliziano, that the intuition of cultural historicity is definitively documented and codified. As the new science of philology, studying systematically the process of linguistic change, was firmly established, as this change was recognized to reflect the profound social and spiritual life of a people, as the concept of period style emerged from the new learning with growing clarity along with the corollary concept of anachronism, then the true problematic of historical knowledgeand literary knowledgehad to be faced. If a remote text is composed in a language for which the present supplies only a treacherous glossary, and if it is grounded in a lost concrete specificity never fully recoverable, then the tasks of reading, editing, commenting, translating, and imitating become intricately problematizedand these were the tasks that preoccupied the humanists. There was of course pride in the acquired learning and the skill that dealt with these problems: there is a magnificent and fierce arrogance in Valla's Declamatio on the Donation of Constanti ne as there is a more subdued arrogance in Pico's De hominis dignitate. But there is also an anger in the humanists' antimedieval polemic that is not purely perfunctory, since for them it was precisely the crime of the Middle Ages to have stood between the modern age and that which it hypostatized as lost. There is a revealing remark by Poliziano in a letter to Pico about the honor due to philologists:
N o t o n l y m u s t they n o t b e s c o r n e d w h o , h o w e v e r p a i n s t a k i n g a n d s c r u p u l o u s , fail t o r e c o n s t r u c t that w h i c h f l e e t i n g o b l i v i o n a s V a r r s a y s h a s t a k e n f r o m o u r forefath-

Poliziano's verb " a s s e q u i " could mean either "to pursue" or "to comprehend" or "to attain after great striving," and all three of these meanings seem to overlap and to challenge each other in his letter as in the entire humanist enterprise. Did onedoes one?attain the remote and the forgotten after great striving, or does one only pursue? Literally for a millennium before Poliziano, no one had achieved his philological precision, as no non-Greek had achieved the fluency of his written Greek; no one knew better than he the remoteness of the remote. His quiet remark to Pico registers his pride in an attainment that he and his fellow strivers understood to be honorable because threatened by impossibility. "There is no single lxK)k of Roman antiquity. . . , " he admitted, "which we professors fully understand." 1 3 T h e mingled courage and despair of that confession recall the calmly shattering comment of Valla: " N o t only has no one been able to speak Latin for many centuries, but no one has even known how to read it." 1 4 Poliziano, considered not as a poet but as philologist, embodies with singular clarity that rage for contact with the past which remains unblinded by its partial success and recognizes any mitigation of its estrangement as an achievement. Humanist pride and humanist despair emerge really as two faces of a single coin. T h e satisfaction of learning is repeatedly subverted by the confrontation with its tragic limits. Here is the architect and scholar Fra Giocondo writing to Lorenzo de' Medici.
T h e a n c i e n t a p p e a r a n c e o f the city o f R o m e , m o s t e x c e l l e n t L o r e n z o , i s c h a n g e d t o s u c h a n extent, a n d its p l a c e n a m e s s o f o r g o t t e n , that w e c a n scarcely u n d e r s t a n d w h a t w e read i n the b o o k s o f the a n c i e n t s , a n d o f t e n t h o s e very s c h o l a r s w h o p r o f e s s t h e m s e l v e s t o b e best i n f o r m e d c o n c e r n i n g a n t i q u i t y , p r o v e t o k n o w less t h a n o t h e r s , s i n c e the a u t h o r s w h o s e w r i t i n g s h a v e t r a n s m i t t e d l e a r n i n g t o u s a r e s o f a u l t y a n d c o r r u p t ( " m e n d o s i et c o r r u p t i " ) that if they t h e m s e l v e s were to be r e b o r n t h r o u g h s o m e V a r r o n i a n p a l i n g e n e s i s , they w o u l d n o t r e c o g i n z e themselves. B u t even i f these a u t h o r s were n o t c o r r u p t ,

they would not sufficiently f i l l our need unless we could see the
(my italics) 1 5

things which they saw.

T h i s text is characteristic in several respects: in the intimate relationship it postulates between the written work and the encompassing civilization (place names, the physical appearance of the city); in the hypothesis of rebirth, here played with only to be denied; in the sharp distinction between reading ("legim u s " ) and understanding ("intelligere"); most significantly, in the awareness revealed at the end of the passage of inevitable hermeneutic anachronism. T h e physical transmission of correct texts is not enough; the final enemy of historical knowledge is not simply the carelessness of scribes and clerks but history itself. Not to have seen the place, not to possess the names, constitute fatal disqualifications for the belated interpreter. T h e transmission of knowledge, which was the hu-

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manist vocation, is perceived as inevitably blocked. Yet Fra Giocondo is not actually tempted to give up the effort. It was the riddle of hermeneutic anachronism that possessed Valla. How is one to follow Aristotle if one cannot read him in his own language? And if in fact many things can be said elegantly in Greek for which no adequate Latin expressions exist? And if in any case the Latin versions we possess are wretched? And if, still worse, the modern audience is incapable of reading Latin properly? And if one reads Aristotle through the eyes of Avicenna and Averroes, who knew no Latin and insufficient Greek? T h e concrete knowable actuality of the text-in-itself fades away behind a series of distorting lenses so insidious that the firm possession of Aristotle's Greek becomes a quest requiring intellectual heroism. Some of those distorting lenses no longer baffle our modern eyes. But the advances of latter-day philology have not truly dispelled the radical problem of anachronistic reading Valla insisted on with all the energy of his formidable mind. We have not yet put to rest the problematic first lucidly and self-consciously exposed in the fifteenth century, neither as philologists nor as men and women living within a history. We have not conjured the riddle of historical knowledge, which must remain in some degree anachronistic. T h e problem of historical understanding is doubtless even more complex than Valla and his contemporary humanists understood. As individuals and as communities, we learn who we are by means of private or collective memory. An amnesiac is considered sick and unfortunate because he doesn't know who he is. When he recovers his memory, he recovers his identity. Communities feel the same need. When they suffer from the unavailability of written history, they invent myths to define their origin, which is to say their identity, as tribe and nation, and belief in these myths persists of course even when writing becomes possible. Not to remember is intolerable because a past is formative: visibly or obscurely, it shapes us, filling our names with content and setting the conditions of our freedom. Yet neither as individuals nor as communities can we remember all of that past which has made us what we are and has bequeathed us those instruments, institutions, and languages which allow us the chance to survive. We cannot remember all as individuals because our memories are mercifully selective, because the critical years of infancy are somehow blocked from retrospection and because most of the formative past preceded our birth. We cannot remember all as communities because much that is formative has been written down inaccurately or not at all and because the language of past observers diverges to some degree from our own. T h u s we are formed by a past that is slipping into indistinctness, playing roles whose rationales are fading, moving into a future with leaking signifiers. At the close of his essay " T h e Way to L a n g u a g e " (Der Weg zur Sprache) Heidegger quotes Wilhelm von Humboldt.
T i m e will o f t e n i n t r o d u c e i n t o l a n g u a g e w h a t i t d i d not p o s s e s s before. T h e n the o l d shell is filled with a n e w m e a n i n g , the o l d c o i n a g e conveys s o m e t h i n g different, the o l d l a w s of s y n t a x are u s e d to hint at a differently g r a d u a t e d s e q u e n c e of ideas. All this is a

l a s t i n g fruit of a p e o p l e ' s literature, a n d within literature especially of poetry a n d philosophy.16

One would want only to write "nearly always" in place of "often." T h e signifier is rooted in the activity of a society which alters, but the word in its apparent stability fails to respond sensitively to that alteration. Beneath the apparent constancy of the verbum, the res of experience is sliding into new conformations with the immense complexity of history.

T h e problem of linguistic drift has been radicalized by Jacques Derrida, whose philosophy of language extends still further the groundless instability of the word affirmed by Dante's Adam. Derrida may well extend it as far as it can be taken. In the representative essay "Signature vnement contexte," he describes the word as an orphan ("orpheline"), cut off necessarily and inevitably from its original progenitor, context, and intended meaning, and goes on to coin the term itrabilit for the incipient drift structurally inherent in all language, the drift not only from its original speaker and social context but also from its original referent and signified: "Cette drive essentielle tenant l'ecriture comme structure itrative, coupe de toute responsabilit absolue, de la conscience comme autorit de dernire instance, orpheline et spare ds sa naissance de l'assistance de son pre." 17 Derrida's coinage, itrabilit, depends on the derivation of the Latin verb iterare, "to repeat," from the Sanskrit itara, meaning "other": the repetition of a word or a text for Derrida involves its alteration, its wandering free from any home base, and its conceivable grafting on to a new text. Dante of course would have insisted on the writer's responsibility for his own work, but in his stress on the radical instability and variability of language, he could be said to anticipate the rupture Derrida sees between sign and context as structural ly necessary to the sign, a rupture extending to the even tal loss of a determinate signified. "Cette unit de la forme signifiante ne se constitue q u e par son itrabilit, par la possibilit d'tre rpte en l'absence non seulement de son 'rfrent,' ce qui va de soi, mais en l'absence d'un signifi dtermin ou de l'intention de signification actuelle." 1 8 T h e implications of Derrida's thought lead in many directions, but it is worth lingering on this central problem and its consequences for the reading of literary works. We are faced with the historical frailty of the word and its slippages of signification stated in their most extreme form. There is no easy way to deny this errancy of word and text, but as we reflect on it we are obliged to ask ourselves, What are the properties of language that resist drift sufficiently to enable us to use it at all? Absolute and immediate iterability, after all, would make language into a nonlanguage; if each repetition involved a total transformation, a word as such could not exist. Communication would always fail. Even if the word survived for a generation, no tradition would be conceivable, certainly no imitation. Before

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examining the practice of imitation, we shall find it useful to consider how it is possible at all, to consider in other words what are the limits of historical solitude. What is it that permits cultures to communicate across time, even to survive, if in fact language is so radically unstable as Derrida argues? In the search for a reply, one place to begin would be that twenty-sixth canto of the Paradiso already known to us. It is in fact a richer but also more problematic meditation on language than I have yet indicated. At the opening, Dante the pilgrim is subjected to a kind of oral examination on the nature and object of love. He begins his first answer with an elaborate reference to G o d as the ground of all his writing on this subject.
L o b e n c h e f a c o n t e n t a q u e s t a corte, A l f a ed di q u a n t a s c r i t t u r a mi l e g g e A m o r e l i e v e m e n t e f o r t e . [dictates] to me in tones l o u d or low.]

Yet this divine grounding does not suffice to sustain the stability of any given word or any language, as we learn from Adam before the close of this same canto. Authority from one perspective may be absolute, but from another it is built on the drifting sand of the perishable voce . T h e reader is left with a tension that is close to an aporia. One way to resolve it would be to study not the linguistic theory but the poetic praxis of the poem and the canto. Adam's statement of the pure conventionality of the signifier has already been quoted.
O p e r a naturale c h ' u o m favella; m a c o s i cosi, n a t u r a l a s c i a p o i fare a voi s e c o n d o c h e v'abbella. then leaves you to f o l l o w y o u r o w n pleasure.]

[Par.

26.130-32]

[It i s a w o r k o f n a t u r e that m a n s h o u l d s p e a k , b u t w h e t h e r i n t h i s w a y o r that n a t u r e

[Par.

26.16-18]

[ T h e g o o d t h a t satisfies t h i s c o u r t i s a l p h a a n d o m e g a o f a l l t h e s c r i p t u r e that l o v e r e a d s

T h i s is a metaphor that praises the divine Source and End of inspired discourse while valorizing the poet's own writingand by implication all writing of similar inspiration and similar obedienceas accessible to the intervention of the original Word on earth, in time. But the metaphor also valorizes obliquely a third element of the linguistic act: not only the " S o m m o Bene" and not only the writing directed toward it, but also the elemental signs, the actual letters that composed the record of the incarnate Word's appearance in history. T h e metaphorical equivalence between the godhead and the letters Alpha and O m e g a not only points to the supreme circularity of Source and End; it not only exalts human language in its rudimentary alphabetical constituent; it also dramatizes an enduring continuity of linguistic usage and communication through time. In endowing the mortal writer with the capacity to signify divine truths, G o d has permitted the survival of his very signi fiers, and their elements across the millennia, from well before the time of Christ up to the present. T h i s implicit demonstration of continuity is strengthened by the appeal to ancient textual authorityautoritmade by Dante during his examination and later echoed approvingly by his questioner, Saint J o h n (authoritadi, line 47). T h e prestige accorded these terms in medieval thought is reenforced by a cognate term applied in this same canto to the voice of G o d addressing Moses, as reported by scripture: "la voce del verace autore' ' (line 40). T h e author (auctor, actor, autor) at a medieval university was a writer whose work had commanded respect for so many centuries as to have become an authority (autorit), to be read as an authentic source of knowledge. T h e term autorit and its cognates imply that unflawed capacity for patriarchal communication and instruction through time which few if any medieval men perceived as problematized by history. T h e faith in authoritative continuity, both verbal and doctrinal, clearly rested on the belief in G o d as the ground and goal, alpha and omega, of human language.

This doctrine of conventionality can be traced back to Aristotle through Aquinas (Summa Theol. II, II, q. 85, l) and Boethius. But in Dante's formulation, one alien word draws attention: the verb abbella. T h i s verb was unknown in any Italian dialect, and Dante evidently coined it from the Provenal. In fact the reader of the Commedia has already met its root form (abellis) in the speech of Arnaut Daniel in the Purgatorio:
T a n m ' a b e l l i s vostre cortes d e m a n q u ' ieu no me p u e s c ni voill a vos cobrire. nor w o u l d conceal myself f r o m you.

[Purg- 26.1 10-41]

[So m u c h does y o u r c o u r t e o u s q u e s t i o n please me that I neither c a n ]

Abellis/abbella literally means "pleases," although there may be a p u n n i n g secondary meaning in Adam's discourse: to become or to appear beautiful. T h i s little example is worth p a u s i n g over because it fails to fit comfortably either of the two linguistic destinies we have already distinguished. It does not on the one hand conform to a doctrine of absolute semiotic continuity excluding all slippage and drift of significations from a millennial traditio grounded in the one Word. For here, in this half-punning adaptation and partial recasting of a foreign verb, that precise kind of slippage is occurring which undermines all fixity of signification, a slippage which, in Oderisi da Gubbio's phrase, "changes name because it changes place" ("muta nome perch muta lato"Purg. 11.102). And yet on the other hand this slippage does not proceed from pure accident or astral influence or popular whim; it proceeds from the tasteful, perhaps playful, in any case carefully manipulated appropriation of a word whose earlier capacity for a certain noble courtesy has already been deftly established. T h e relation between abellis/abbella is not analogous to that between I/El. T h e leaf has not fallen from the branch to be replaced by an altogether new one. An errancy is taking place that is not purely random or destructive because it is observable within a specific cultural-historical situation and under the control of a self-conscious artistic intelligence. T h i s emergence of a linguistic tertium quid in our examination of a single word becomes more striking if we consider a slightly larger unit, that image of the leaf

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upon a branch, which seems to carry the ephemerality of the vocable. For this image is not of course in the conventional sense " o r i g i n a l " with Dante; it depends on a subtext from a well-known passage of Horace's Ars poetica.
Ut silvae foliis p r o n o s m u t a n t u r in annos, p r i m a c a d u n t ; ita v e r b o r u m v e t u s interit a e t a s , et i u v e n u m ritu florent m o d o nata vigentque. debemur morti nos nostraque: . . . m u l t a renascentur q u a e i a m cecidere, c a d e n t q u e q u a e n u n c s u n t i n h o n o r e v o c a b u l a , s i volet u s u s , q u e m p e n e s a r b i t r i u m est e t i u s e t n o r m a l o q u e n d i . [60-63, 70-72] [ A s f o r e s t s c h a n g e their l e a v e s w i t h e a c h y e a r ' s d e c l i n e , a n d t h e e a r l i e s t d r o p o f f : s o w i t h words, the o l d race dies, a n d , like the y o u n g o f h u m a n kind, the n e w b o r n b l o o m a n d thrive. We are d o o m e d to d e a t h w e a n d all t h i n g s ours. . . . M a n y terms that h a v e f a l l e n o u t of u s e s h a l l be b o r n a g a i n , a n d those s h a l l fall that are n o w in repute, if U s a g e s o w i l l it, i n w h o s e h a n d s lie t h e j u d g m e n t , t h e r i g h t a n d r u l e o f s p e e c h . ] 1 9

aimlessly," but on the other hand "to take one's origin, to derive." Derrida himself unwittingly points to this second meaning when he derives his coinage from a Latin word derived in turn from a Sanskrit word, thus demonstrating a verbal capacity for millennial continuity. 2 1 How are we to understand this continuity, in view of his theory? I submit that it results from the progressive, concrete, and incomplete experience through which the word installs itself in a culture as in an individual mind. T i m e may be the element in which words are eroded but it is also the element in which, for each of us, they acquire accumulatively their being and their wealth. We understand any usage of a word as the last in a series which possesses coherence; the word's relative stability now derives from the stability of that series, just as our feeling of its gathering potency grows out of that series' provocative complexity. T h e origin of the series, our first encounter with the word, is likely to be lost to us. But the word contains its problematic power because it derives from a flexible but continuous chain of concrete occasions that we organize automatically as we speak and listen. Benveniste has argued in a well-known essay that language is the source of human subjectivity because "it permits each speaker to appropriate the entire language in designating himself as I."22 He goes on to show how much of a languagedeictic pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, verb tenses, and so onis defined only in reference to the specific utterance in which these elements appear and to the speaker of that utterance. But in an ulterior sense all words, whether or not they are ostensibly deictic, are understood in any given utterance as positing a present moment, as emergent from a past without a beginning which the speaker and listener separately construct at the moment of utterance. Whatever the problematic relation between signifier and signified, that relation is carried along in a linear progression which has a history, a history both for the individual and for his language group. At either level, the full history cannot be known and remains a construct; even the linguist, Benveniste admits in another paper, is reduced to using his intuition in reconstructing derivations. T h e derivation at both levels is ultimately a kind of etiological myth, an explanation of how the given word has come to be what for us it is, but it is a myth which provides that measure of stability enabling language to function. It was one of Wilhelm von Humboldt's profoundest insights that linguistic study must necessarily deal with a " m i d p o i n t , " an insight that rendered obsolete the eighteenth-century quest for linguistic origins.
Neither a nation nor a l a n g u a g e a m o n g those k n o w n to us m a y be termed original. S i n c e each has received material transmitted by earlier g e n e r a t i o n s f r o m a prehistoric a n t i q u i t y u n k n o w n to us, . . . intellectual activity . . . is constantly directed t o w a r d s o m e t h i n g already given; this activity is not purely creative but rather modifies the heritage.25

These lines constitute one of the few surrenders to powerful feeling throughout Horace's epistle, and the eruption of this feeling is all the more remarkable because it is irrelevant to what immediately precedes and follows. Briefly the pathos overflows its argument, but by the end of the digression, the pathos gives way to the reassurance of the classical norm. Usage, " u s u s , " the caprice of linguistic fashion, is first presented as the source of destruction but then is revalorized as the " n o r m a loquendi," the source of propriety, judgment, and decorum. Dante interweaves the Horatian image into a fabric that transforms it, dropping the appeal to a norm, radicalizing the sense of transience, extending the loss of the word to the loss of an entire language, and setting the statement of transience in tension with a statement of divine grounding. Yet the image does undeniably call attention to its Horatian derivation: the Italian " u s o de' mortali" corresponds to the Latin " u s u s , " just as " f r o n d a " corresponds to "foliis." 2 0 T h i s very introduction of a historical passage, a cultural flow from one text and one civilization to another, qualifies the thematic argument: the h u m a n signifier may rise and fall with time, but its destiny is not totally aleatory. It finds a provisional ground in culture and cultural history. T h e ceaseless drift of the word, the utter instability of human artifacts asserted already in De vulgari eloquentia, proves, in the case of this little example, to have limits, boundaries that are not metaphysical but temporary and fabricated, not of theory but of praxis. Dante's text thus allows us to discern not two but three incipient versions of linguistic history, and it is the third version, nonthematized but dramatized, that is the most helpful in dealing with the problem of Derrida's iterability, the question how linguistic alteration permits language to function at all. What is the structural element that informs the word and the text with whatever stability they succeed in achieving? T h e word for drift in Derrida's French is derive. T a k i n g our cue from his etymological play, we can note that the cognate French verb deriver possesses two meanings almost opposed to each other: on the one hand, "to float

We always write and speak "in the middest," and we are able to tolerate this fundamental linguistic ignorance because we habitually build up significations in

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time that carry so to speak their causal structures with them. T h e word carries with it a story of its development, its evolution. I shall refer to this process of creating signifying constructs as "etiology" and instances of the process as "etiologies." To point to this etiological basis of language is not to challenge its ultimate groundlessness and historicity. These are reaffirmed. But the contingency is perceived as one element within the word, a force for alteration playing against a stabilizing, retrospective fabrication that can be studied and described. Out of that interplay between drift and evolution, between derive and derivation, each word acquires its unique itinerary. Just as an amnesiac recovers his identity with his memory, so it is with words; we learn them as they acquire a past for us. T h i s is true even though a future experience of a word may prove to be in certain respects novel, just as a person's identity may be altered tomorrow by an exercise of freedom. Even a nonce word, a coinage by Rabelais or Lewis Carroll or Joyce, depends on our recognition of familiar fragments freshly combined. Orphaned the word may be, but its progress through space and time doesn't really resemble the helpless errancy of some Dickensian child-hero; it acquires a kind of ubiquitous foster parent in the presence of the maternal culture that has adopted it. Without our cultural and personal derivation, our etiology, the sound of the word has no meaning. Given the etiology, the word acquires a kind of ballast and tendency in its drift.

their intertextual makeup as a constitutive structural element, texts that reflect an awareness of their historicity and build upon it. T h e Commedia was perhaps the first text in our millennium to possess something like a genuine historical selfconsciousness. If we examine the intertextuality of medieval poems before Dante, if we consider particularly the estrangement from antiquity they reflect, then we do not find any historical construct because the awareness of estrangement was very restricted. No one before Dante could have described Virgil as hoarse from long silence because no one was capable of measuring his own anachronistic distance from Virgi1. No one, so far as I can judge, neither Abelard nor Bernard of Chartres nor J o h n of Salisbury, was fully sensitive to the fact of radical cultural change that would be glimpsed by Dante and then faced in all its overwhelming force by Renaissance humanism. T h u s the use of elements from Virgil and Ovid found in the Roman de Thebes or the Roman d'Eneas does not provide an etiological construct to deal with cultural discontinuity, to connect subtext with surface text; they fail to provide this because they fail to register the discontinuity. They lack historical self-consciousness just as the Iliad lacks it. We know from many of Dante's writings the construct by means of which he dealt with his historical estrangement from the Augustan Age: the universalist myth which assigned a parity to empire and church, which saw imperial R o m e as completed by Christian Rome, which saw in ancient poetry a set of norms for all poetry, and which saw in modern Italian only an extension of Latin. Dante refused to see his historical estrangement as inevitable or providential or accidental; he saw it as shameful, as a token of moral decline, and he represented the character Virgil as hoarse from long silence because he thought that Christendom had unforgivably neglected its sources of wisdom. For him the failure to repeat ancient history was a tragedy of sin, and his own poem, his own language were calculated to reverse this tragedy and to repair the gap. T h u s the imitations of Virgil and Horace and other Latin poets in the Commedia must be read as fulfillments of a superior historical necessity that actual history has disgracefully betrayed. For Dante, all of that history was played out within a single cultural and linguistic unityLatinitas. Dante's imitations then are justified in context by a theory of history; they depend not so much on a primary etiology of the word as on a secondary etiology of the image, a visible construct that sketches a certain itinerary through time. We are made aware of an emergence out of a past, and the itinerary concluding with this emergence is a myth that imposes a kind of order on the passage of centuries. T h e historically self-conscious text is that temporary shelter where the word finds a kind of lodging in its errancy through time, because the text assigns it a history, an identity, that solace its orphanhood. T h i s history can never be complete and it can never be in any verifiable sense accurate, but it will provide that fabrication of a provisional source which the word needs to function. When an allusion is organic rather than ornamental, when it is structurally necessary, then it begins to sketch a miniature myth about its own past, or rather about its emergence from that past.

T h e description of the itinerary of the single word is the province of the linguist and the lexicographer. We as students of literature are interested in chains of wordsimages, sentences, passages, texts. In our province, the interplay between change and stability can be located most clearly in a work's intertextualitythe structural presence within it of elements from earlier works. Since a literary text that draws nothing from its predecessors is inconceivable, intertextuality is a universal literary constant. Tynjanov and Jakobson pointed out in the twenties that "Pure synchronism is an illusion, since every synchronic system has a past and a future as inseparable structural elements of the system." 2 4 T h i s is clearly true, but it must be added that some systems, some texts, make greater structural use of these elements than others; some insist on their own intertextual composition, but not all. T h e Aeneid does but not the Iliad; the Orlando Furioso does but not the Chanson de Roland. When a literary work does this, when it calls to the reader's attention its own deliberate allusiveness, it can be said to be affirming its own historicity, its own involvement in disorderly historical process. Allusions in these cases might be regarded as secondary etiologies, constructions of meaning connecting the past to the present. T h e healthy interplay of linguistic change and stability requires these shared constructions. 25 Something like this interplay occurs in all texts that can be said to possess historical self-consciousness, texts that manipulate or dramatize or incorporate

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When in other words intertextuality becomes self-conscious, it tends to become etiological, and we are able to analyze the function of the subtext in terms of a specific retrospective vision. Most texts since Dante do in varying degrees construct implicit versions of history. We need to consider further the structure of these versions. T h e word as an etiological construct has a dual structure. There will always be a prehistory, whose origins fray out into the unknown, and there will be a more or less dramatic emergence out of the prehistory. T h e intertextual allusion has a comparable duality; it contains an emergence out of a history which, in the cases of many topoi, can be extremely long and complex, but which in certain echoes of a specific text can be short and apparently simple. It could be argued that the structure of the allusion is fundamentally different from the word's because the source of the subtext can be known. T h e allusion after all q u a allusion does specify some concrete, knowable origin in the form of the so-called source to which it points. Whatever the iterability of the passage, whatever the wound inflicted by the signature, the signed anterior text remains a public fact unlike the unknowable origins of the single word. T h i s distinction has to be granted. But the allusion that concerns us is one that has already a historical itinerary behind it, one already subject to an estranging iterability, one which has to be felt as other because it reaches us from a remote culture. T h e etiology of the allusion, like the etiology of the word, originates in ignorance, in the inevitable slippage of understanding that divides us from our past, and not least the past we revere and use. T h e past from which writer and reader derive an etiology will remain in some measure anachronized; the projection of a prehistory stretching out behind the allusion cannot escape the vulnerability of a construct. T h e security of the emergent usage depends on a fabrication that is always open to question, as for example Dante's vision of a universal Latinitas is preeminently open to question. Derrida insists on the absence in all writing of the original context, which includes the intention of the supposed author. "Pour q u ' u n contexte soit exhaustivement determinable . . . , il faudrait au moins que l'intention consciente soit totalement prsente et actuellement transparente elle-meme et aux tres." 26 Since the full intention behind any given text is unknowable, the original context is necessarily subject to loss: "Il n'y a q u e des contextes sans aucun centre d'ancrage absolu." 2 7 T h e force of history is a force that deracinates, a "force of rupture" that privileges no context and blurs all intention. T h e utterance, like the breath of fame in Dante, changes its resonance as it changes place and lime: " m u t a nome perch muta lato." From this perspective, an etiological allusion fabricates a context that is itself of course subject to alteration, distortion, anachronism; it provides only a semblance of rootedness, an artifice of eternity. Still, I submit that it represents a limited means, a human means, for dealing with the force of rupture. It fails to satisfy the demands of exhaustive and endless knowledge, but it qualifies that basic ignorance of origins, "cette inconscience structurelle," which Derrida sees as essential to all utterances. T h e allusion pretends to knowledge; that pretense may

some day come to be forgotten, but for a century or a millennium the text will not look altogether unconscious; it will carry with it the simulacrum of a context. It is true that the ostensible allusion, the "official" allusion, may point to only one of many genealogical lines. Virgil may allude most visibly to Homer, Shakespeare may allude, say, to Plutarch, Racine to Euripides, Joyce again to Homer, yet the intertextual roots of each masterpiece are infinitely more entangled than the official advertisement would indicate. T h e unconfessed genealogical line may prove to be as nourishing as the visible, once revealed by a deconstructing analysis. All major works grow from a complex set of origins. But this proliferation must not obscure the special status of that root the work privileges by its self-constructed myth of origins. Racine's Phedre may draw upon Augustine and Arnauld, Seneca and Gamier, Descartes and Corneille, but this polysemous intricacy does not decenter the Hippolytus as the acknowledged, pervasive subtext, whose presence as subtext an integral reading is compelled to acknowledge. We distinguish many presences with Racine, including the presence of Euripides; beyond all these, we recognize the explicit adoption of Euripides, and that adoption is itself a unique structural element that must be dealt with. T h e text adopts its legitimate progenitor, of course, not without certain risks. As individuals, we have to recreate our origins in our memories and imaginations. If we are to stay sane, we have to pattern images of our origins that simplify and distort them. But certain kinds of distortion, or excesses of distortion, turn out to be destructive. There has to be a healthy circular interplay between our patterning of our beginnings and our free action as we try to move out from them. T h e interplay is never free from the risk of a pathological turn. Perhaps there is also an intertextual pathology. T h e past, as Augustine said, does not exist, but our editing of the past, our imaging, our violence upon itthese are the most powerful of our activities, and our destinies turn on the strength, the direction, the anguish, and the wisdom we draw from or against those versions of reality. T h i s drama of each individual history attaches itself also to literary language. T h e poetic word achieves its brilliance against the background of a past which it needs in order to signify but which its own emergence is tendentiously and riskily shaping. 2 8
5

Renaissance imitation at its richest became a technique for creating etiological constructs, unblockingwithin the fiction of the workthe blockages in transmission which created humanist pathos. Imitation acts out a passage of history that is a retrospective version or construct, with al 1 the vulnerability of a construct. It has no ground other than the " m o d e r n " universe of meanings it is helping to actualize and the past universe it points to allusively and simplifies. It seeks no suprahistorical order; it accepts the temporal, the contingent, and the specific as given. But it makes possible an emergent sense of identity, personal and cultural, by demonstrating the viability of diachronic itineraries. To analyze adequately the

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potentialities of the word to act out such itineraries, we would need a diachronic linguistics which at present we do not possess. But what is meant by the phrase "universe of meanings"? T h e remainder of this chapter will be devoted to this question. I want to argue that the meaning of each verbal work of art has to be sought within its unique semiotic matrix, what might be called a mundus significans, a signifying universe, which is to say a rhetorical and symbolic vocabulary, a storehouse of signifying capacities potentially available to each member of a given culture. In an archaic society, what Lvi-Strauss calls a " c o l d " society, these capacities are few and more or less enduring; 2 9 in a complex, " h o t " society, they are immensely numerous and constantly in flux. T h e mundus significans for most literate societies is a vast, untidy, changeful collection of techniques of meaning, expressive devices feasible for communication, a vocabulary grounded in the spoken and written language but deriving its special distinctness from the secondary codes and conventions foregrounded at its given moment. Only through them, and within the limits they allow, reflecting as they do the epistemological and other shared assumptions of their community, can a subject express himself into existence and individuate a moral style. T h e major author declares himself through his power in extending and violating the mundus, a power so dynamic and fruitful as to alter it irreversibly. Yet even his violations have to be understood in terms of the norms they challenge. T h e remote text of a major author remains remote to us partly because its affront to its mundus has lost, for us, its shock. T h e peculiar disadvantage of reading at our own particular historical moment is that we are losing our capacity for that kind of shock. T h e resources of most literate societies (and doubtless of many illiterate) are so rich that its mundus significans at any given moment might well require a considerable literature to be fully described. But the beginnings of a catalogue can be sketched by way of rough example. T h e mundus of English culture in 1590 would include a polysemous allegorical tradition, dream vision, pastoral eclogue and elegy, emblems and emblem books, devices {imprese), "hieroglyphs," a vast and confusing body of mythographic materials, elements of liturgical and sacramental symbolism, interpretations of the " B o o k of Nature" including hermetic correspondences, astrological, mathematical, and scientific speculations, various typological and symbolic codes applied to holy scripture, beast fables, prose romance, native and Petrarchan conventions of love poetry, a number of Anglican and Puritan exegetical modes, Euphuistic examples from natural history, an a m o r p h o u s and still unstable body of prosodie habits, a number of imitative conventions based on classical genres, a new, dense, exclamatory, metaphoric style and melodramatic theatrical technique developing in the nascent theater of Marlowe and Kyd while challenging older traditions of miracle, morality, and neoclassic comedy and tragedyall of this set against the dominant intellectual disciplines embodied in the trivium. T h i s list of what Daniel called "England's native ornaments" is far from complete, even after nonverbal signs are excluded, but it can serve to suggest how broad and disorderly a semiotic universe will necessarily appear. Yet each of the items in this list shares in varying degrees a c o m m o n

element: each requires of the reader or auditor a particular set of mental transactions that are understood to belong to the particular mode or convention or subgenre or intellectual sphere. To each modus significandi corresponds a modus intelligendi. T h e acquisition of a set of responses is of course an important part of each individual's education, in the broadest sense, and since education and experience vary, it is understood that only a few if any will c o m m a n d all sets. They are not in any case our sets, and we can only approach them by the exercise of our historical imaginations. What is most remarkable about such a mundus is its way of combining immense conservatism and immense flexibility. Already in 1600, after ten years had passed, the later works of Sidney and Spenser, the works of Shakespeare, Nashe, C h a p m a n , Marston, Drayton, the early Donne and J o n s o n and others would have transformed profoundly the mundus just described without however absolutely obliterating any single traditional element. Only from such a shifting and tangled matrix of semiotic reserves, it seems to me, can the episteme of a given culture be derived. And only from the tracing of microcosmic and macrocosmic shifts in the semiotic universe can a true literary history be written. "Literary evolution," remarks Jonathan Culler, "proceeds by displacement of old conventions of reading and the development of new." 3 0 To read in terms of a mundus is not to close off the polyvalence of the text, but to seek its potency within the richness of the writer's play with his own codes. T h e codes themselves moreover cannot be isolated from the usages and structures of the language that supplies their counters. T h e mundus can be thought of as foregrounding certain semiotic potentialities against a background of neglected potentialities coextensive with the language. T h e mundus focuses that power in language to shape and respond to our mental activity. "What language expresses," wrote Durkheim, "is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts of experience." One strong if controversial current of twentieth-century linguistics has enlarged his insight. T h u s Whorf: "Every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness." 3 1 Doubtless the matter is not so simple. For Whorf, language tended to be primary and culture secondary. But in fact, lang u a g e is enmeshed in a total cultural complex wherein its structures are "felt" or manipulated differently in different periods. T h e causal process works in two directions, or rather in a labyrinth of causalities. T h e extreme position toward which Whorf's unguarded thinking led him might be called "the fallacy of linguistic primacy." T h e conception of a mundus significans evades this fallacy because it supples a mediating space where the variable forces of history, culture, and language can interpenetrate. 32 It is the transitory character of the literary code as it plays u p o n language that requires the exercise of the historical imagination. To read a text, we have to know not so much what as how the words mean, and this how depends on experience

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which is lost to us. Culture teaches us what to expect of a (contemporary) reader when we write, and how to translate into meaning the ambiguous contemporary constructions we read. At a deeper level it provides, or tries to provide, an explicit or intuitive theory of relationships to justify our translations. T h u s it provides a certain vertical metaphysics to justify medieval allegory. A culture tells us how to understand the commerce between words and other words, things and other things, and between words and things. A reader's decoding of a message will necessarily be guided by his assumptions about this commerce, even (or especially) when they have never themselves been put into words. It is this shared but largely silent agreement about relationship and about signification that bedevils the estranged understanding. Clearly no modern reader will fully master the competence to read medieval allegory, a competence affective as well as conceptual, with the spontaneity of its early readers because we have not internalized those assumptions and intuitions in which the allegory is grounded. Any theory of reading that ignores this historicity of the word and the code is incomplete. 3 3 Any theory is suspect which attributes to the text a Utopian simultaneity and a Platonic permanence. To deny the text its particularity and its solitude is to obscure those intuitions of relationship at work even in those works which want to challenge them. Each cultural moment, each writer, each poem asks us to learn its tropes all over again, and each learning is unique because each trope is unique. Each trope of a remote text violates our logic in its own peculiar way, and its violation must never defeat our patience even if ultimately we fail to defeat all of its resistance. In the very existence of that resistance lies a kind of security. For in this stubborn trope that will never yield entirely to our s h a p i n g minds we discover a radical entity that is nondeconstructible, a semiotic building block that is fiercely and distinctively whole. We cannot fathom its unreason; we cannot unravel its contingent being; it reaches us as a semiotic shard which is that it is. It will suffer our inquisitions but it will not allow us productively to unpiece its integrity. To take it at all, we have to take its irreducible and alien integrity. T h e remoteness, the alterity of the remote trope is likely to be undervalued by the naive reader because the part of speech most subject to instability is the part that looks most continuousnamely, the copula. T h e copula looks continuous because the activities of predication and analogizing have remained durable mental and verbal habits, if not necessities. But in fact the force, the logic, the range, the tyranny of the copula vary with the society, the mundus, the creative mind, and the context it seems tamely to serve. Its essential variability is of particular hermeneutic significance because a copula is present explicitly or implicitly in most, though not all, metaphors. 3 4 T h e naive, unhistorical reading of remote texts attributes an identity of structure and force to the metaphors they contain which does not exist. T h e structure of the metaphor depends on the operation of the visible or invisible copula, and the copula in turn depends most directly of all parts of speech on the intuitions of relationship conceivable within its culture. T h e variability of these intuitions is clearer when one considers a body of

literature outside our own tradition. Here Phillip Damon's work on ancient modes of analogy provides valuable clarification.
In t h e f o r m u l a r y u t t e r a n c e s of The Book of the Dead t h e r e a r e m a n y r u d i m e n t a r y c e i p h o n e m e s w h i c h s e e m t o b e d u e less t o s t y l i s t i c a r t i f i c e t h a n t o a s p e c i a l u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the category of relation. T h e logically i n a p p o s i t e details in s u c h c o m p a r i s o n s as: T h y navel i s the T u a t [the u n d e r w o r l d ] w h i c h i s o p e n , a n d w h i c h sends forth light i n t o the d a r k n e s s , a n d the o f f e r i n g s o f w h i c h a r e ankham f l o w e r s , T h y two h a n d s are like a p o o l of water in the s e a s o n of a b u n d a n t i n u n d a t i o n , a p o o l f r i n g e d a b o u t w i t h the d i v i n e o f f e r i n g s o f the w a t e r g o d s , were p r o b a b l y c o n d i t i o n e d to a large extent by practical, pre-poetic notions a b o u t the m e a n i n g o f s i m i l a r i t y . I n f u n e r a r y texts d e s c r i b i n g m e t e m p s y c h o t i c t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , there is a s t r o n g a n d natural tendency to pile up r a n d o m t h e r i o m o r p h i c i m a g e s after the c o p u l a m ( t h e " a s " o f i d e n t i f i c a t i o n ) i n o r d e r t o i n s i s t w i t h m a x i m u m r h e t o r i c a l f o r c e that t h e d e c e a s e d h a s r e a l l y b e c o m e a n a n i m a l . F o r i n s t a n c e : I fly a n d I alight as a h a w k w h i c h has a back four cubits wide, a n d w h o s e w i n g s are l i k e m o t h e r o f e m e r a l d o f the s o u t h .

This k i n d of e l a b o r a t i o n , w h i c h h a d a p r o p e r f u n c t i o n in assertions of identity, a p p e a r s to have exerted a c o n c e p t u a l pressure on assertions of similarity, a n d to have e n c o u r a g e d an e x t r a l o g i c a l a c c u m u l a t i o n of s e n s u o u s detail even w h e n , as after the c o p u l a " i s , " there w a s n o q u e s t i o n o f c o n s u b s t a n t i a l i t y . T h e m o t i v e s b e h i n d this p r e s s u r e are p e r h a p s to be s o u g h t in . . . the p r i m i t i v e tendency to see q u a l i t i e s as e x t e r n a l d i m e n s i o n s o f e s s e n c e a n d t h u s t o feel t h a t , i n s u f f i c i e n t l y f o r m a l i z e d c o n t e x t s , similarity i m p l i e s identity.55

Damon's commentary is helpful and plausible, but of course it remains a hypothesis about something which we cannot know and which modern English might even be incapable of communicating. A mode of analogy is not finally reducible to cognitive apprehension or analysis because it is grounded in communal intuitions as well as doctrines of relationship. This imperfect expressibility of communal intuition is the root cause of the historicity of the signifier. Our obvious removal from ancient Egypt should not blind us to the discontinuities within our own tradition, ruptures that are traceable in the various successive pressures placed on the copula. In a sense the copula is the most neutral, the most empty, most meaningless part of speech which nonetheless is necessary for meaning to exist. T h i s emptiest of words has to be filled up by its context in the process of signifying, and in an extended context, the copula begins to acquire a character, a habitus, a signifying force of its own, which survives any single usage and begins to reflect meaning back on its context. As in Damon's examples, the copula may lead most directly to the intuitions of relationship, of knowing and being, which invisibly govern the discourse in which it participates. Vico thought

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the verb sum contains "all essences, which is to say all metaphysical entities" (New Science, #453). We need a history of metaphor, which would involve at least tacitly a history of the copula, to teach us to wonder at the rhetorical shifts that punctuate our tradition. Horace opens his Ars poetica by granting some license to poets and painters but not, he says, too much: "not so far that savage should mate with tame, nor serpents couple with birds, lambs with tigers."
sed n o n ut placidis coeant i m m i t i a , n o n ut serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.

Horace's strictures actually circumscribe the deeply conservative copula that he is willing to countenance, a copula dependent on congruence, convention, and decorum, resistant to paradox, oxymoron, and metaphoric daring. His conservatism and his intolerance contrast, perhaps are meant to contrast, with the rhetorical radicalism of another composer of odes, Pindar. But all of our literary history offers us nothing but constrasts. T h e structure of metaphors in a ceremonial society of medieval Europe must diverge from the structures of more modern metaphors.
D o n e i s a battell o n the d r a g o n b l a k !

interplay between tenor and vehicle, the proportioning of their intermixture, depends on their unique particularity as well as on their unique context. But in a metaphor like Dunbar's, the product of a ceremonial society, things possess a wholeness which resists fragmentation and a location which resists displacement because determined by vertical references to a source of unity. Here the copula serves to bind likenesses which already have a rapport in the scheme of things, and the transaction to which it invites us is a ratification of evident concordance. Dunbar's line establishes an emblematic security which leaves both dragon and devil their cognitive stability. T h e presumed sensibility that produced the metaphor is transparent, impersonal; its meaning is firmly bounded; it produces no fresh perception but leaves rather an openness to participation. T h e signifier points to its signified with the repose of millennial repetition. T h e implicit copula c arries no pulsation, fragments no unity, unveils no fragile epiphany; it carries with ceremonial solemnity and the weight of a hierarchy a scriptural correspondence that depends on each member's integrity. But the most intimate reverberations of this Paschal copula have to be listened for on the far side of a liturgical silence. Part of the precious mystery of a remote text lies in its copulative insinuations. 3 6 This mystery is not simply the result of history; it is inherently poetic, and yet for the alerted reader, temporal distance deepens the promise as well as the obscurity, thickens an opacity which is at once dense and seductive. At the dawn of the medieval lyric, Guillaume d'Aquitaine writes abruptly and enigmatically, " T o t es niens" (All is nothing). One wants to sound the troubled undercurrents of that illogic, to gauge the tension that strains its little quiet-seeming bond. There is nothing ceremonial presumably about this copula, but it will not quite abide our inquisition; if it did, perhaps, we would understand better not only its context but some of the almost unimaginable nuances within its signifying universe. But how to approach those delicate flutterings of meaning without an instrument that translates, which is to say anachronizes? T h e mystery and the seduction are not limited to this most ancient poetry of the postclassical era. T h e mind must be very still to begin to register the force of the copula, expressed or unexpressed, that speaks from any mundus significans not our own. Here is Blake:
T h e H u m a n D r e s s i s f o r g e d Iron, T h e H u m a n F o r m i s a f i e r y Forge, T h e H u m a n Face, a F u r n a c e seal'd, T h e H u m a n H e a r t its h u n g r y G o r g e .

T h e opening line of Dunbar's great resurrection hymn introduces a metaphorical equation (dragon blakSatan) that has to be read as essentially unlike the equations of a modern poet, even a devotional poet like Hopkins.
N o t , I'll n o t , c a r r i o n c o m f o r t , D e s p a i r , n o t f e a s t o n thee: N o t u n t w i s t s l a c k they m a y b e t h e s e last s t r a n d s o f m a n In me or, m o s t w e a r y , cry I can no more.

Modern metaphor presumes a strong tension of fragmentable terms which sacrifice their ontological wholeness, their "purity," their integrity to allow the formation of an unstable, unsituated, unbounded opening into temporary coherence, a sudden bolt of perception, transient, electric, and composite. T h e image of feasting on carrion is never allowed to reach a vividly visual level because it is too quickly fragmented, partially abstracted, to form a unit with fragments of the moral state of despair, just as in the following line the superb " s l a c k . . . strands of m a n " forces the reader to choose only those elements of humanity relevant to "strands." T h e capitalized personification "Despair" is not permitted to assume the stability of an allegorical figure characteristic of an older rhetoric but is drawn into the dense labyrinth of imagistic transformations. T h e implicit copula linking Despair with carrion exists as a brief, fragile pulsation before an explosion. Modern metaphor requires us to select elements from tenor and vehicle to create a tertium quid which is the product of their combination. When we encounter Hopkins's image "Natural heart's ivy, Patience," we have to conceive of an entity which is composed of both virtue and plant, an ad hoc creation which each reader reaches on his own. No two " m o d e r n " metaphors are identical because the given

Donne:
S h e ' i s all S t a t e s , a n d a l l P r i n c e s , I , N o t h i n g else is.

Mallarm:
H i l a r e o r d e c y m b a l e . . . l e soleil.

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Chaucer:
H i s herte, w h i c h t h a t i s h i s brestes eye.

Herbert:
P r a y e r the C h u r c h e s b a n q u e t , A n g e l s a g e . . . T h e Christian p l u m m e t s o u n d i n g heav'n a n d earth; E n g i n e a g a i n s t th' A l m i g h t i e , s i n n e r s t o w r e , Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear . . . T h e m i l k i e w a y , the b i r d of P a r a d i s e . . .

Scve:
Tu es le C o r p s , D a m e , et je suis ton u m b r e .

excludes the metaphor. But the deepest wisdom may lie in a thoroughgoing rhetorical nominalism. " T h e m i n d , " wrote I. A. Richards, ". . . can connect any two things in an indefinitely large number of different ways." 3 8 T h i s variability extended across history only increases the estrangement of the remote text. As leaders and interpreters we try to mitigate this estrangement by a faculty that might be termed the "philological imagination." (Although some scholars today believe that our hermeneutic instruments are more enlightened than in the past, we should be wary of self-congratulation.) 3 9 T h e literary work, when its subtexts are remote, contrives to deal with their estrangement through its chosen intertextual strategies. T h e remainder of this study is devoted to these strategies in the poetry of the Renaissance.

Pope:
R o u n d h i m m u c h E m b r y o , m u c h A b o r t i o n lay, M u c h future Ode, a n d abdicated Play; N o n s e n s e precipitate, like r u n n i n g L e a d , T h a t s l i p ' d t h r o ' C r a c k s a n d Z i g - z a g s o f the H e a d .

Rilke:
G e s a n g ist D a s e i n .

William of Shoreham:
M a r y e , m a i d e , m i l d e a n d fre, C h a m b r e of t h e T r i n i t . . . T h o u art t h e b o s h e of S i n a i . . . T h o u art t h e s l i n g e , thy s o n e t h e s t o n , T h a t Davy slange Golye u p o n . . . T h o u art the t e m p l e S a l o m o n .

Nerval:
Je s u i s . . . Le Prince d'Aquitaine la T o u r abolie.

Beneath its surface limpidity, each " i s " conceals profundities of unreason. How does one fathom copulative depth? We have no g a u g e for that, or any system on which to base a taxonomy of the copula. Many pages would be required to circumscribe the implications of each unique act of predication. And the fuller the explication, the higher the risk of a modernizing falsification. To recognize the variability of the copula is to call into question the stability of the term metaphor, a stability assumed by most rhetoricians across the centuries; since Jakobson it has been a cornerstone of modern linguistic thought. 3 7 T h i s modern view may derive from Nietzsche, whose essay " O n Truth and Falsity in their Ultramoral Sense" argues for a nominalism that oddly and inconsistently

Notes

Chapter
1

1.

Introduction

F r a n c o S i m o n e " L a c o s c i e n z a d e l l a r i n a s c i t a n e g l i u m a n i s t i f r a n c e s i , " Rivista di lettera-

ture moderne 2 (1917): 236. Chapter

1 Quotations from

2.

Historical

Solitude
from the e d i t i o n by Natalino Press,

t h e Divina Commedia a r e t a k e n

S a p e g n o ( F l o r e n c e : L a N u o v a Italia, 1957). E n g l i s h t r a n s l a t i o n s are f r o m J o h n I). S i n c l a i r , Dante's Purgatorio a n d Dante's Paradiso ( N e w 1961). 2 A d a m ' s p h r a s i n g o f the s h i f t o f the n a m e for t h e g o d h e a d f r o m " I " t o " E l " f a i n t l y recalls a p a s s a g e in the Purgatorio e v o k i n g a n o t h e r shift e q u a l l y the result of the v a g a r i e s of f a s h i o n . T h i s i s the d i s c o u r s e b y O d e r i s i d a G u b b i o o n the m u t a b i l i t y o f a r t i s t i c f a m e , a d i s c o u r s e w h i c h , d e s p i t e its a p p a r e n t m o r a l s u p e r i o r i t y , d o e s n o t lack a c e r t a i n inexp u n g i b l e p a t h o s . " I n p a i n t i n g C i m a b u e t h o u g h t t o h o l d the f i e l d a n d n o w G i o t t o h a s t h e c r y " (Pnrg. 11.94-95). T h i s d i s c o u r s e is f r a m e d by i m a g e s of n a t u r a l decay w h i c h a n t i c i p a t e A d a m ' s b l o s s o m that falls a n d i s r e p l a c e d : Oh vana gloria dell'umane posse! c o m ' p o c o verde in su la c i m a d u r a ! [ 11.91-92] [ e m p t y g l o r y of h u m a n p o w e r s , h o w briefly lasts the g r e e n on its t o p ! ] L a vostra n o m i n a n z a c o l o r d'erba, c h e viene e va, e q u e i la d i s c o l o r a per c u i ella esce della terra acerba. w h i c h it s p r i n g s green f r o m the g r o u n d . ] T h e term " n o m i n a n z a " anc h o r s the c o n c e p t o f f a m e i n the act o f speech; t h e p a r a l l e l terms a n d m e t a p h o r s a l s o insist o n this basis i n the v o i c i n g o f the s p o k e n w o r d : N o n i l m o n d a n r o m o r e a l t r o c h ' u n fiato di vento, c h ' o r vien q u i n c i e or vien q u i n d i , e m u t a n o m e p e r c h m u t a lato. C h e voce avrai tu p i . . . ? [11. 100-03] [ T h e w o r l d ' s n o i s e i s but a b r e a t h o f w i n d w h i c h c o m e s n o w this w a y a n d n o w that a n d c h a n g e s n a m e b e c a u s e i t c h a n g e s q u a r t e r . W h a t m o r e f a m e shalt t h o u h a v e . . . ?] L i n e 102 p o i n t s direc tly a h e a d to the d i s c o u r s e of A d a m . At a certain level of a b s t r a c t i o n b o t h d i s c o u r s e s w o u l d s e e m t o b e a b o u t the s a m e t h i n g , a b o u t the p a t h o s o f the 295 [11.115-17] [ Y o u r r e n o w n is the c o l o r of g r a s s w h i c h c o m e s a n d g o e s , a n d that w i t h e r s it by York: O x f o r d University

296

NOTES TO PAGES 6-8

NOTES TO PAGES 9 - 1 6

297

w a n d e r i n g w o r d , t h e f r a g i l e a n d d e c e n t e r e d h o m e l e s s n e s s o f the " v o c e , " the " n o m e , " the "lingua." 3 See Richard Foster Jones,

v i s i t e d b y a n a n c i e n t a r c h i t e c t w h o a d m i r e d its m a g n i f i c e n t w a l l s , c o l u m n s , a n d c e i l i n g s , but f o u n d only fragments of marble underfoot a n d went on to m a k e a beautiful p a v e m e n t f r o m t h e s e f r a g m e n t s . T h e n A l b e r t i c o m p a r e s a n t i q u i t y t o this t e m p l e a n d p i c t u r e s m o d e r n w r i t e r s a s s t e a l i n g f r a g m e n t s f r o m i t t o p i e c e t o g e t h e r their o w n p i t i f u l s t r u c t u r e s , a s t h o u g h n o t h i n g truly n e w c o u l d b e s a i d : i n T e r e n c e ' s p h r a s e , " N i h i l d i c t u m q u i n p r i u s d i c t u m " ( n o t h i n g s a i d w h i c h h a s n o t a l r e a d y b e e n s a i d ) . Opere

The

Triumph

of

the English

Language

(Stanford,

Cal.:

S t a n f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1953), p p . 263ff. 4 Samuel Daniel, "A D e f e n c e of R y m e , " i n Elizabethan

Critical Essays, e d . G . G r e g o r y

S m i t h ( O x f o r d : O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1959), 2:384. 5 " I l [ n o t r e l a n g a g e ] e s c o u l e t o u s les j o u r s d e n o s m a i n s . " M i c h e l d e M o n t a i g n e , Essais, ed. A . T h i b a u d e t ( P a r i s : P l i a d e , 1940), p . 9 5 3 . 6 S e e C l a u d e - G i l b e r t D u b o i s , Mythe et langage au XVIe siecle ( B o r d e a u x : pp. 67-81. 7 D a n t e A l i g h i e r i , De vulgari eloquentia, e d . 1.9, p. 72. E n g l i s h version from . P a n v i n i ( P a l e r m o : A n d o ' E d i t o r i , n . d . ) , Ducroz, 1970),

volgari, ed. C e c i l G r a y s o n , 2 : 1 6 0 - 6 2 .
12 Q u o t e d by E m i l i o B i g i , La cultura del Poliziano ( P i s a : N i s t r i - L i s c h i , 1967), p. 81. ( M y translation) 13 A n g e l o Poliziano,

Miscellaneorum centuria seconda, ed.

V.

Branca and

M.

P.

Stocchi

( F l o r e n c e : A l i n a r i , 1972), 1:53. 1 4 " S i q u i d e m m u l t i s i a m s a e c u l i s n o n m o d o n e m o l a t i n o l o c u t u s est, s e d n e l a t i n a q u i d e m legens intellexit." 15 A n g e l o E. G a r i n , ed.,

The Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri, ed. a n d t r a n s .

R o b e r t S . H a l l e r ( L i n c o l n : U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s k a P r e s s , 1975), p . 14. 8 D a n t e h a d a l r e a d y u s e d the t e r m opus i n t h i s a r c h i t e c t u r a l s e n s e e a r l i e r w i t h i n t h i s treatise, f o l l o w i n g c o m m o n a n c i e n t u s a g e . 9 I t i s c l e a r t h a t D a n t e d i s t i n g u i s h e d p e r i o d styles b o t h a t t h e m i c r o c u l t u r a l level ( h i s d i s t a n c e f r o m B o n a g i u n t a d a L u c c a , f o r e x a m p l e ) a n d a t t h e m a c r o c u l t u r a l (his d i s t a n c e f r o m a n t i q u i t y ) . B o n a g i u n t a ' s m o s t f a m o u s p h r a s e ( " d o l c e stil novo") b e a r s w i t n e s s t o a c h a n g e i n p e r i o d style, a s d o e s h i s a c c e p t a n c e o f t h e f o r m u l a t i o n d e f i n i n g t h e n e w school's novelty: Io v e g g i o ben c o m e le vostre p e n n e d i r e t r o a l d i t t a t o r s e n v a n n o strette che delle nostre certo n o n avvenne.

Prosatori latini del Quattrocento ( M i l a n a n d

(Pisa: Gratiolius, 1784),

Naples: (My

R i c c i a r d i , n . d . ) , p . 598. F a b r o n i , Laurentii Medicis Magnifici vita 2:279. translation) 16 Q u o t e d by M a r t i n H e i d e g g e r in On the Way to Language, t r a n s . P e t e r D. H e r t z ( N e w York: Harper and Row, Humboldt, 1959), p . 129. A n o t h e r v e r s i o n c a n b e f o u n d i n W . v o n trans. G. C. Buck and

Linguistic

Variability

and Intellectual Dei'elopment,

Minuit, R.

F . A . R a v e n ( C o r a l G a b l e s : U n i v e r s i t y o f M i a m i P r e s s , 1971), p . 65. 17 J a c q u e s D e r r i d a , Marges de la philosophie ( P a r i s : 18 D e r r i d a , Marges, p. 378. trans. H. Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass.: 19 H o r a c e , Satires, Epistles, and Ars poetica, H a r v a r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1966). 2 0 D a n t e a l l u d e s t o this H o r a t i a n p a s s a g e i n the Convivio 2.13.10. 21 My c o l l e a g u e E d w a r d Stankiewicz i n f o r m s me that to be precise it w o u l d be m o r e accurate to s p e a k of a c o m m o n root than a derivation. 22 E m i l e Benveniste, "Subjectivity in p. Language," 28. in 1972), p. 376.

[Purg.

24.58-60]

[ I see w e l l h o w y o u r p e n s f o l l o w c l o s e b e h i n d the d i c t a t o r , w h i c h a s s u r e d l y d i d n o t h a p p e n w i t h o u r s , a n d h e t h a t sets h i m s e l f t o e x a m i n e f u r t h e r sees n o t h i n g e l s e between the o n e style a n d the other.] It is i m p o s s i b l e m o r e o v e r to e x c l u d e this a w a r e n e s s of stylistic succession f r o m Oderisi's s p e e c h thirteen c a n t o s earlier. W h e n O d e r i s i says " S o h a s the o n e G u i d o taken f r o m the o t h e r t h e g l o r y o f o u r t o n g u e " ( P u r g . 1 1 . 9 7 - 9 8 ) , h e m e a n s b y t h i s taking t h a t s u p e r s e s s i o n of a p o e t i c i d i o m by a n o t h e r w h i c h is m o r e than j u s t the e c l i p s i n g of a p e r s o n a l i t y . D a n t e w a s by no m e a n s the o n l y m a n of his a g e sensitive to m i c r o c u l t u r a l shifts like this o n e , b u t t o m y k n o w l e d g e h e w a s the o n l y m a n t o e x t e n d h i s a w a r e n e s s i n t o s o i m p o s i n g a g r a s p of b r o a d historical process. He s a w the c o m i n g a n d g o i n g of g e n e r a t i o n a l c h a n g e , t h e s u c c e s s i o n o f G u i d o s ( " e r b a , c h e v i e n e e v a "Purg. 1 1 . 1 1 5 - 1 6 ) a s a m i n o r case of m a j o r millennial c h a n g e ( " c o m e fronda in r a m o , che sen va e altra v e n e " s e e above). 10 M o r r i s B i s h o p , e d . a n d t r a n s . , Letters from Petrarch ( B l o o m i n g t o n : I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1966), p . 68. I n h i s " L e t t e r t o P o s t e r i t y , " P e t r a r c h w r o t e : " I d e v o t e d m y s e l f , t h o u g h not exclusively, to the study of ancient times, since I a l w a y s disliked o u r o w n period; so that, if it h a d n ' t been for the love of those dear to me, I s h o u l d h a v e preferred b e i n g b o r n i n a n y o t h e r a g e , f o r g e t t i n g t h i s o n e ; a n d I a l w a y s tried t o t r a n s p o r t m y s e l f m e n t a l l y t o other times." 1 1 L e o n a r d o B r u n i , c o m p a r i n g the m o d e r n s t o t h e a n c i e n t s , w r o t e : " W e p e o p l e o f t o d a y a r e c l e a r l y d w a r f s [ " h o m u n c u l i " ] , a n d e v e n i f w e w e r e n o t d w a r f s i n s p i r i t , o u r lives h a v e n o t t h e s t u f f n e e d e d f o r l a s t i n g g l o r y . " Q u o t e d by H a n s B a r o n , The Crisis of the Early

Problems

in

General Linguistics,

t r a n s . M . E . M e e k ( C o r a l G a b l e s : U n i v e r s i t y o f M i a m i P r e s s , 1971), p p . 2 2 3 - 3 0 . 23 H u m b o l d t ,

Linguistic

Variability,

2 4 " L e s y n c h r o n i s m e p u r s e t r o u v e tre m a i n t e n a n t u n e i l l u s i o n : c h a q u e s y s t m e s y n c h r o n i q u e contient son pass et son avenir q u i sont des lments s t r u c t u r a u x insparables du systme. " J. T y n j a n o v a n d R. J a k o b s o n , " L e s P r o b l m e s des tudes littraires et l i n g u i s t i q u e s , " in Theorie de la littrature, e d . T. T o d o r o v ( P a r i s : S e u i l , 1965), p. 139. 2 5 A n a n a l o g y c a n b e f o u n d i n V i c o ' s a n a l y s i s o f R o m a n law. T h e c h a l l e n g e t o all j u r i s p r u d e n c e , for Vico, w a s the r e c o n c i l i a t i o n o f a u t h o r i t y a n d liberty. A u t h o r i t y w a s m a i n t a i n e d i n S p a r t a b y L y c u r g u s ' s i n s i s t e n c e that l a w s n o t b e w r i t t e n d o w n , b u t w i t h the p a s s i n g of eight centuries a n d the attendant c h a n g e s in the l a n g u a g e , the l a w s p r o v e d r i g i d a n d a n a c h r o n i s t i c , l a c k i n g the f l e x i b i l i t y t o e n s u r e p e r s o n a l l i b e r t y . I n A t h e n s , o n t h e o t h e r h a n d , l a w s w e r e r e w r i t t e n every year; liberty w a s e n s u r e d b u t a u t h o r i t y w a s lost. I n R o m e , b o t h d a n g e r s w e r e a v o i d e d . T h e l a w o f t h e T w e l v e T a b l e t s g u a r a n t e e d liberty but the p a t r i c i a n class retained the p o w e r of interpretation, a n d since the l a n g u a g e k e p t c h a n g i n g , t h i s p o w e r g u a r a n t e e d the m a i n t e n a n c e o f a u t h o r i t y . I n t i m e , f u r t h e r t o p r o t e c t t h e r i g h t s a n d l i b e r t i e s o f t h e p e o p l e , t h e office o f p r a e t o r w a s e s t a b l i s h e d , a n d its h o l d e r w a s c h a r g e d w i t h t h e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y o f c o n s e r v i n g i n t a c t t h e force o f the T w e l v e T a b l e t s a s times a n d l a n g u a g e altered. T h e praetor a c c o m p l i s h e d this, a c c o r d i n g t o V i c o , b y h a v i n g r e c o u r s e t o f i c t i o n s (fictiones). A s a s h i e l d a g a i n s t the rigidity of law in a c h a n g i n g society, the praetor pretended that certain t h i n g s h a d

Italian Renaissance, rev. e d . ( P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s ,

1966), p. 282. F o r

A l b e r t i , see t h e p r o l o g u e t o h i s Della pittura. E l s e w h e r e h e e v o k e s s o m e g r e a t t e m p l e

298

NOTES TO PAGES 18-25

NOTES TO PAGES 26-28

299

o c c u r r e d w h i c h i n fact h a d not occurred, a n d vice versa, T h i s a c c o m m o d a t i o n o f the l e g a l text t o r e t r o s p e c t i v e c o n s t r u c t i o n s h e l p e d t o e n s u r e the e n d u r a n c e o f t h e R o m a n s t a t e f o r s o m a n y c e n t u r i e s b e c a u s e i t p e r m i t t e d t h e text t o a d j u s t t o s o c i a l a n d v e r b a l v a r i a b i l i t y . S e e J u l e s C h a i x - R u y , Vico ( P a r i s : S e g h e r s , 1967), p p . 5 0 - 5 2 : a l s o V i c o ' s D e

coitus. O n t h e b r o a d e r r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n l a n g u a g e a n d s e x u a l i t y , see G e o r g e S t e i n e r , After Babel,

pp. 38-45. 3 7 S e e h o w e v e r the s u g g e s t e d r e v i s i o n s i n r h e t o r i c a l t a x o n o m y b y G r a r d G e n e t t e , Figures I ( P a r i s : S e u i l , 1966), p p . 2 5 1 - 5 2 . S i n c e t h e t r a d i t i o n a l t a x o n o m y still s t a n d s , i n s p i t e o f s u g g e s t i o n s l i k e G e n e t t e ' s , a n d s i n c e n o a l t e r n a t i v e r h e t o r i c a l v o c a b u l a r y e x i s t s , I s h a l l c o n t i n u e t o refer t o " m e t a p h o r s " a n d other c o n v e n t i o n a l tropes in this study w h i l e a t t e m p t i n g whenever feasible to u n d e r s c o r e the s p e c i f i c i t y o f e a c h i n d i v i d u a l i n s t a n c e . 38 The Philosophy of Rhetoric ( L o n d o n : O x f o r d University Press, 1971). p. 125. 39 It m a y be true, as J o s e p h Mazzeo h a s stressed, that we no l o n g e r regularly allegorize p a s t texts to d e f e n d received d o g m a a g a i n s t their alterity. " W e are no l o n g e r r e q u i r e d to translate e v e r y t h i n g that time or distance h a s rendered s t r a n g e to us into o u r o w n preferred mythology."

uno universi iuris principio et fine uno, c h a p s .

26 D e r r i d a , Marges, p. 3 8 9 . 2 7 I b i d . , p . 381.

166,

182,

184.

28 B o t h F r e u d a n d Erik E r i k s o n considered the c a p a c i t y for retrospective r e s h a p i n g to be a m a r k of m a t u r i t y . To be an a d u l t E r i k s o n r e q u i r e s precisely the ability to create a s t r o n g p e r s o n a l e t i o l o g y . " T o b e a n a d u l t m e a n s a m o n g o t h e r t h i n g s t o see o n e ' s l i f e i n c o n t i n u o u s perspective, both in retrospect a n d in prospect. By a c c e p t i n g s o m e definition a s t o w h o h e i s , . . . t h e a d u l t i s a b l e t o selectively r e c o n s t r u c t h i s p a s t i n s u c h a w a y that s t e p f o r s t e p , i t s e e m s t o h a v e p l a n n e d h i m , o r better, h e s e e m s t o h a v e p l a n n e d it. I n this s e n s e , we do c h o o s e o u r p a r e n t s . " Young Man Luther ( N e w Y o r k : N o r t o n , 1958), p p . 1 1 1 - 1 2 . F r e u d , i n h i s s t u d y o f L e o n a r d o , d r a w s a n e x t e n d e d a n a l o g y b e t w e e n the d e v e l o p i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n of the p a s t in i n d i v i d u a l s a n d in societies. The m a t u r e individual, like the d e v e l o p e d society, " e l i c i t s " m e m o r i e s a n d interprets t h e m to create a c o n s t r u c t e d s t o r y . E v e n t h o u g h t h e m e m o r i e s a r e h e a v i l y e d i t e d , they d o h a v e v a l u e . " I n s p i t e o f a l l t h e d i s t o r t i o n s a n d m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s , they still r e p r e s e n t t h e r e a l i t y o f the past." Sigmund Freud,

Varieties of Interpretation

(Notre

Dame,

Ind.:

U n i v e r s i t y of

N o t r e D a m e P r e s s , 1978), p . 69. I t i s t r u e t h a t a l l e g o r e s i s i s n o l o n g e r s o p o p u l a r a d e f e n s e , a l t h o u g h i t l i n g e r s still i n t h e s c h o o l o f D . W . R o b e r t s o n . T h e p r e f e r r e d m o d e m d e f e n s e i s i r o n y . W e n o l o n g e r a l l e g o r i z e t o s a l v a g e m o s t texts that t h r e a t e n u s ; w e i r o n i z e them. Swift c o u l d not possibly have a d m i r e d the H o u y h n h n m s , nor More his U t o p i a , n o r R a b e l a i s his abbey. T h e m o d e r n intelligence is easily d i s p o s e d to find o u t the lapses, w h i c h i s t o s a y t h e d i v e r g e n c e s o f a p a s t m o r a l i d e a l f r o m its o w n , a n d w h e n i t s u c c e e d s , it h a s at h a n d the interpretive i r o n i z a t i o n that will n u l l i f y the l a p s e a t the risk of a n a c h r o n i s m . W e shall s o o n have a n ironized r e a d i n g o f that u n b e a r a b l e w i n d b a g a n d b l u e s t o c k i n g , B e a t r i c e . M a z z e o ' s c o n f i d e n c e i n t h e d e t a c h m e n t o f the s o p h i s t i c a t e d

Leonardo da

Vinci and a

Memory of his Childhood,

1962), p p . 3 0 9 - 1 0 ) .

trans.

A.

T y s o n ( N e w Y o r k : N o r t o n , 1964), p . 34. 29 C l a u d e L v i - S t r a u s s , La Pense sauvage ( P a r i s : P i o n , 130. 31 B e n j a m i n Lee Whorf, 3 0 J o n a t h a n C u l l e r , Structuralist Poetics ( I t h a c a , N . Y . : C o r n e l l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s 1975), p . M.I.T.

m o d e r n interpreter is r e a s s u r i n g but unjustified.

Language,

Thought,

and

Reality

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

P r e s s , 1956), p. 252. 3 2 " C ' e s t t o u t u n d c o u p a g e d u m o n d e q u e l e l a n g a g e i m p o s e , t r a v e r s ces f i g u r e s d e r h t o r i q u e . C e l a relve-t-il d u style? d e l a l a n g u e ? N i d e l ' u n n i d e l ' a u t r e ; i l s ' a g i t e n vrit d ' u n e i n s t i t u t i o n v r i t a b l e , d ' u n e forme d u m o n d e , a u s s i i m p o r t a n t e q u e l a r e p r s e n t a t i o n h i s t o r i q u e d e l ' e s p a c e c h e z les p e i n t r e s . " R o l a n d B a r t h e s , Sur Racine ( P a r i s : S e u i l , 1963), p. 55. Fredric J a m e s o n suggests a Hegelian-Marxist version

Chapter

3.

Imitation

and

Anachronism

1 S p e a k i n g of v e r n a c u l a r poets, D a n t e writes: D i f f e r u n t t a m e n a m a g n i s p o e t i s , h o c est r e g u l a r i b u s , q u i a m a g n i s e r m o n e e t a r t e r e g u l a r i p o e t a t i s u n t , h i i v e r o c a s u , u t d i c t u m est. I d c i r c o a c c i d i t ut, q u a n t u m i l l o s p r o x i m i u s i m i t e m u r , t a n t u m rectius p o e t e m u r . U n d e n o s doctrine operi intend e n t e s , d o c t r i n a t a s e o r u m p o e t r i a s e m u l a r i o p o r t e t (De vulgari eloquentia, 2.4.2). [ T h e s e p o e t s , h o w e v e r , d i f f e r f r o m the g r e a t p o e t s , t h o s e w h o f o l l o w t h e r u l e s , i n t h a t the g r e a t o n e s h a v e w r i t t e n p o e m s i n a l a n g u a g e a n d w i t h a n a r t w h i c h f o l l o w s r u l e s , w h i l e t h e s e , a s I s a i d , d o s o i n t u i t i v e l y . F o r t h i s r e a s o n i t h a p p e n s t h a t the m o r e c l o s e l y w e i m i t a t e t h o s e g r e a t [xx'ts, t h e m o r e c o r r e c t l y w e w r i t e p o e t r y . A n d therefore, where we intend to write works in a learned m a n n e r , we s h o u l d follow their 2 Charles learned poetic

oiamundus sigmficans:

"One

m i g h t i m a g i n e a d i a l e c t i c a l Rhetoric, i n w h i c h t h e v a r i o u s m e n t a l o p e r a t i o n s a r e u n d e r s t o o d not absolutely, but as m o m e n t s a n d figures, tropes, syntactical p a r a d i g m s , of o u r r e l a t i o n s h i p t o t h e real itself, a s , a l t e r i n g i r r e v o c a b l y i n t i m e , i t n o n e t h e l e s s o b e y s a l o g i c t h a t l i k e t h e l o g i c o f l a n g u a g e c a n n e v e r b e f u l l y d i s t i n g u i s h e d f r o m its o b j e c t . "

Marxism and Form ( P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s ,

hermeneutics: T h e C a s e of S h a k e s p e a r e ' s Maynard Sonnet 129,"

1971), p. 374. in

33 An o u t l i n e of my o w n view of r e a d i n g a n d interpretation can be f o u n d in "Anti-

(The Poet

Literary as

Criticism

of

Dante and

Alighieri, the

ed.

and

trans.

Poetic

Traditions of the

R o b e r t S . H a l l e r [ L i n c o l n : U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s k a P r e s s , 1975], p . 38). Trinkaus,

English Renaissance, e d .

Mack a n d G e o r g e deForest L o r d (New H a v e n and

The

Philosopher:

Petrarch

Formation

of Renaissance

L o n d o n : Y a l e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1982). 3 4 O n t h e s p e c i a l c h a r a c t e r o f the c o p u l a i n m e t a p h o r s , see P a u l R i c o e u r , L a mtaphore

Consciousness ( N e w H a v e n a n d L o n d o n : Y a l e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s ,

1979), p . 9 1 .

3 Cassirer's d i s c u s s i o n of the use of p e r i o d terms r e m a i n s pertinent. He p o i n t s o u t that " M i d d l e A g e s " a n d " R e n a i s s a n c e " a r e n o t strictly s p e a k i n g the n a m e s o f h i s t o r i c a l p e r i o d s but of ideal types, a n d that there c a n be no clear d i v i s i o n between periods. " N e v e r t h e l e s s t h e d i s t i n c t i o n itself h a s a real m e a n i n g . W h a t w e c a n e x p r e s s b y i t . . . i s t h a t f r o m t h e b e g i n n i n g o f t h e f i f t e e n t h c e n t u r y o n w a r d t h e balance b e t w e e n t h e p a r t i c u l a r f o r c e s s o c i e t y , state, r e l i g i o n , c h u r c h , a r t , s c i e n c e b e g i n s t o s h i f t s l o w l y

vive ( P a r i s : S e u i l , 1975), p p . 31 Iff.

35 P h i l l i p D a m o n ,

Modes of Analogy

in Ancient and Medieval

Verse ( B e r k e l e y :

University

o f C a l i f o r n i a P r e s s , 1961), p p . 2 6 5 - 6 6 . 3 6 I s t h e s e x u a l i m p l i c a t i o n o f t h i s a d j e c t i v e e x t r a n e o u s here? I n t h e p a s s a g e f r o m t h e Ars

poetica q u o t e d a b o v e , t h e p r i n c i p a l p a r t s of H o r a c e ' s first v e r b a r e coeo, coire, coii,