{"id":7628,"date":"2021-09-08T09:48:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T09:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7628"},"modified":"2022-02-08T17:27:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T17:27:23","slug":"john-goodby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7628\/john-goodby\/","title":{"rendered":"John Goodby: Paradiso X 133 – 148"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dante does not always allocate souls a place in the afterlife strictly according to their deserts, as many have pointed out. Not only does he vengefully visit torments on his personal enemies, but he will locate souls to suit his symbolic and narrative requirements rather than those of divine justice. So, Manfred, a hardened libertine who repents with his last breath, makes it to Purgatory, while the inoffensive Francesca di Rimini, who slipped just once, and seems the kind of woman who said her prayers every day of her life, is damned forever. As a result, the Commedia<\/em> is riddled with contradictions, although they never quite destroy it; indeed, it’s arguable that these contradictions, and the genuine doubts Dante allows for, such as the justice of condemning virtuous pagans, actually strengthen his work for modern readers.<\/p>\n

Dante allowed for such doubts and disagreements even in Paradise, the best example being the figure of Siger of Brabant (?1226-?1284), a philosopher who taught at the University of Paris. Siger was indebted to the Arabic philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rush, 1126-1198) and defended logical method. He was ferociously attacked by Thomas Aquinas, condemned by the Church in 1277, and murdered in 1283. Nevertheless, in Canto X, in the sphere of the Sun, Siger appears as one of the twelve souls of the Wise and Learned who present themselves to Dante as a circle of whirling lights. This may be Dante celebrating the joys of scholarship and theology, one of his own great pleasures, but like much else it makes this canto unsual. Although Aquinas is the presiding figure of the sphere (and he gets the next canto all to himself), here he has to share equal billing with one who was his bitter opponent in life. Commentators have accounted for his presence by arguing that among Siger’s condemned syllogisms Dante suspected there were some that even Aquinas secretly coveted, or that Dante approved of Siger’s Averroist emphasis on the value of political justice in the secular world – or that he recruited him merely to confound Siger’s rejection of the immortality of the soul.<\/p>\n

My own reading inclines towards the positive motives, and in addition to Siger’s attractive abberrancy, I was drawn by the way at the close of the canto Dante compares the sound and motion of the shining souls to the movement of a great clock – this, incidentally, is one of the first ever references to mechanically chiming clocks in Europe, and I imagine Siger and Aquinas to be like the figures found on a giant medieval timepiece, who whirr and slide forward on the hour to strike the bell in unison. As one of his Penguin editors, Mark Musa, notes, Bride (Church) and Bridegroom (Christ) are entirely appropriate in the religious context, but Dante goes out of his way to sexualise them; ‘the terms used to suggest the physical workings of the clock carry strongly erotic overtones’ and the theological and sensual aspects ‘create surprising interplay within the metaphor’. For Musa, this is ‘the most spiritually erotic closing to all of the one hundred cantos of the Divine Comedy’<\/em>, and it seems to me to realise and instantiate the erotic potentials hinted at in passing or invoked only to be dismissed elsewhere in the Commedia<\/em>, time and eternity fused together as in the sexual act.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paradiso X 133-148<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

i.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

so: passing out of the night-shadow cast by the earth<\/span><\/p>\n

perfectly epicentred in its Ptolemaic space<\/span><\/p>\n

because now arisen to the sphere of the Sun<\/span><\/p>\n

suddenly \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to be surrounded by 2 rings of lights<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

12 rotating lights more dazzling-bright<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 themselves than the Sun<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 clockwise ((( & counter-clockwise )))<\/p>\n

alternately together horizontal vertical &<\/p>\n

dazzling as Spectrolab nitesun XPMs slung from circling Apaches<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 singing & turning like pedagogo girls in precise ballata<\/em><\/p>\n

so that Beatrice was driven for the 1st & only time from my mind<\/p>\n

which was \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 smilingly just\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0as she wished<\/p>\n

I heard the voice\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 held \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0beheld \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the radiance of the Wise<\/p>\n

& bedazzled light-blind I saw among them finally<\/p>\n

that spirit who taught in the Alley of Straw<\/p>\n

subtle Averroean\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 defender<\/p>\n

of philosophical method<\/p>\n

Siger de Brabant<\/p>\n

who dared doubt the immortality of the soul<\/p>\n

who believed the world had existed from eternity<\/p>\n

who stressed political justice in the secular world<\/p>\n

exposing or is it espousing<\/p>\n

\u00a0insidiously logical truths<\/p>\n

silogizz\u00f3 invidiosi veri<\/em> \u00a0who earned the wrath<\/p>\n

& Dante suggests \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the likely envy too<\/p>\n

of the holy dottore<\/p>\n

himself his 219 propositions condemned as heretical<\/p>\n

who was besieged on all sides<\/p>\n

who mourned that death should be so slow to come<\/em><\/p>\n

and was murdered by his secretary<\/p>\n

probably some kind of put-up job<\/p>\n

& who Dante eclectically sets side by side with Aquinas<\/p>\n

his old adversary<\/p>\n

on top of his clock<\/p>\n

to strike<\/p>\n

ding-dong<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ii.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

& now as the tower-clock summons us will call<\/span><\/p>\n

at the hour when the Bride is roused from her bed<\/span><\/p>\n

mussed with her matin\/g song her Bridegroom love<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

woos as one part pulls & other part pushes in<\/span><\/p>\n

chiming not a tin note but soul-sweet tingel-tangel<\/span><\/p>\n

that now the spirit (s)well & ready does tumesce–<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

so in its full splendour I was witness to that wheel<\/span><\/p>\n

gyring & rendering voice to voice ply on play<\/span><\/p>\n

& in a sweet conchord that never can be grasped<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

except there \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 where ecstasy in-evers all<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Goodby recently became\u00a0\u00a0Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a poet, critic, and translator, and an authority on the work of Dylan Thomas, whose\u00a0Collected Poems<\/i>\u00a0he edited in 2014. His poetry books include\u00a0Illennium<\/i>\u00a0(Shearsman, 2010) and\u00a0The No Breath<\/i>\u00a0(Red Ceilings, 2017), and he has published translations of Soleiman Adel Guemar (with Tom Cheesman), Heine, Pasolini and Reverdy. With Lyndon Davies he ran the Hay Poetry Jamborees 2009-12 and edited the anthology\u00a0The Edge of Necessary: innovative Welsh poetry 1966-2018<\/i>\u00a0(Aquifer, 2018).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dante does not always allocate souls a place in the afterlife strictly according to their deserts, as many have pointed out. Not only does he vengefully visit torments on his personal enemies, but he will locate souls to suit his symbolic and narrative requirements rather than those of divine justice. So, Manfred, a hardened libertine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[61,65,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/images-2.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-1Z2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7628"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7655,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628\/revisions\/7655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}