dante's dream

 

Scholars continue to study the beautiful love letters that were exchanged between the young Ibn Arabi and his Lady in the window. A rich and glorious tapestry of love and the exquisite color of their desire; I admit that I too cannot get them out of my mind. And, I am particularly taken with a phrase that our young hero would repeat to his Lady: If I hand you my heart, you won't drop it, will you?

Most of you, Dear Readers, will agree I am sure that it is the Medieval romantic trope par excellance. This image of the Lover ripping out his beating and bleeding heart and presenting it to the Beloved-- we see it over and over again in Medieval literature. A "macabre literalization of the metaphoric seat of love: the heart itself," says Robert Harrison in his book the Body of Beatrice.

The heart.

We forget now in our age of mind and reason that for a long time it was the heart that was thought to be what really mattered.

It all reminds me of Dante's dream from La Vita Nuova.

Exactly nine years had past since he had first caught glimpse of her as a nine year old child. Now aged 18, she walks in lovliness and in virtue. And, passing him on the street one day, she turned to greet him (salute as greeting, salute as "saving," in Italian).

Dante was overcome. And fell into sweet sleep.

Dreaming, the room became infused with a flame-coloured light as the God of Love, the Lord of Amor 愛神 appeared before Dante's eyes. Veiled in deep red, sighing and in great longing, Dante sees that in Amor's arms is his beloved, Beatrice, also draped in crimson.

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold
my heart in his hand, and held in his arms
my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.
Then he woke her, and that burning heart
he fed to her reverently, she fearing,
afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

Vide cor tuum: Look upon your heart. Thus commands Amor. And Dante looks and sees there that his heart, held tightly in Amor's fist, is red and on fire. Then, in fascination and amidst many sighs, the Lord wakes Beatrice and commands that she eat the Lover's heart. Amor feeds this heart to Beatrice as Dante watches in red. The act completed, Amor unexpectently turns sad. And gathering tightly to his chest the Lady held tightly in his arms, he thereby acsends to heaven in tears.

A mystery to be sure, even in Dante's lifetime, people were puzzled by his dream. Robert Harrison, in his book, describes how Dante's contemporary Cino da Pistoia interpreted the dream that Amor sought to show Dante that true love sees the lover desiring to have his heart be uttrely known to the Beloved. And he shows this by offering Dante's heart to Beatrice for consuming.

Another contemporary, however, advises that Dante try and "wash his testicles with plenty of water to disperse the noxious vapors that bring on the delirium of such visions."

恋愛.

I personally think (and I am basing this on my reading of Ibn Arabi's letters-- themselves so full of longing and sighing) that Amor begins to weep because he knows this is as close as Dante will ever get to his Beloved-- as she is doomed to die. For as Barthes says,

Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -- whatever its cause and its duration -- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment

This is seen in both the tears of God and the sighing of the poet. Like a Tibetan prayer wheel sending up a prayer to heaven with each turn of the wheel, so too do sighs and tears express the movement of inner to outer; the transcendence of our immediate and bodily felt sensual or spiritual desires upward.

Barthes:

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels.

And as Dante sighs, Dante is deeply and forever moved by love:

From then on I say that Amor governed my soul, which as soon so soon wedded to him and began to acquire over me such certainty and command, through the power my imagination gave him, that I was forced to carry out his wishes fully.

What is so fascinating about this is that Dante admits that everything that came to pass did so through the free will of his own heart. That is, Dante freely surrendered to Amor. 

Heart can only count to one.

It surrenders or it doesn't.

And, in an age which no longer prioritizes heart and where imagination hardly stands a chance, I have wondered in my darker moments, about the state of love. Do you think-- if we turn off our TVs-- we are still able to fall in love like Dante did-- in longing and amidst great sighs?  

**

Here is Patrick Cassedy's inspired version of the Sonnet, Vide Cor Meum and even as joy becomes bitter tears, the poet is at peace; for "see my heart," he says.

Chorus: And thinking of her
Sweet sleep overcame me
I am your master
See your heart
And of this burning heart
Your heart
(Chorus: She trembling)
Obediently eats.
Weeping, I saw him then depart from me.
Joy is converted
To bitterest tears
I am in peace
My heart
I am in peace
See my heart 

 

 

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Comments

[Gregg Turano]

Thanks for that Peony!!
I will admit, I am not much of a scholar on Dante, patchwork at best. But your writing made me look at Romeo and Juliet in a new light.

Yes, they were at about that age - pure, innocent. 14ish and dying for love.
But OK then, if Romeo and Juliet is in a classical sense a tragedy, what was their tragic flaw - their love? Othello had jealousy, Macbeth had lust for power... all leading to their downfall.
Could Shakespeare be implying that such young, reckless love is a fatal flaw? Or was it their youth?

I don't think Shakespeare himself felt that way about love in general - judging from his sonnets:
-----------
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith, being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight

And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow;
And yet, to times, in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
----

He doesn't seem to be upset with love here - he seems willing to acknowledge our inevitable mortality and time's cruel effect on beauty, but not willing to relinquish love to the scythe. He wants it to be eternal through his pen.

Who knows, maybe his team of writers convinced him to go with the 'tragic love' take on it in R&J... (yep, I think he may have had a team of writers, just like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart - the bards of our time). They knew what would sell, draw a crowd, get people talking (for nearly 500 years).

But if you don't accept the premise that their love was a flaw, you can not call it a tragedy. It's just a sad story.

So from a Dante perspective - Yes, I agree, I think they did 'choose' their love despite the obvious consequences of that love, and it was free will and the fact that their love was taboo that made the emotions they felt that much more intense. So yes, perhaps that was their sin and perhaps they got what they deserved.

Maybe my answer then is a Dante-esque comedy then rather than a classic Shakespearean tragedy.

No, wait though - there really was no chance of redemption for them - the only righteous path was to deny their love from the beginning and thereby avoid the hell of their final existence. But can we honestly expect that of 14ish year young people experiencing their first love?? Love was not the problem - their tender age was. Is that a sin? No....

So nooowwww, I'll say that youth was their tragic flaw - R&J is a classic tragedy.
They were just too young to know what to do and how to feel and how to manage the politics and history we all have to deal with as adults in love...

Help!!

Long live love !!
(I wrote a book - sorry)

[peony]

Gregg, I have had a smile on my face and this song playing in my head ever since I got your comment. Thank you! Have you see this movie ? I really wanted to see it when it came out but-- like with so much-- missed it. I am going to rent it when I get back to LA next month.

I am no expert on Dante nor Shakespeare....however, I asked an expert!! lol
And, just concerning Dante, he says,

"In Aristotle's Poetics, tragedy is linked to hamartia, often translated as "tragic flaw," but better translated as "guilt," or human fallibility. Hamartia is the word for "sin" in the Greek Bible. It was translated as peccatum in Latin."

And, I think that with the above in mind, human falliability in the face of fate/destiny/the gods is what is at issue.

In that way. I don't think, it is a tragedy because of any character flaw of the characters-- quite the opposite. The ancient Greeks believed (in Heidegerrean terms) that fate was one's character plus the world that one is thrown into... and what separates a tragedy from a comedy is perhaps only that things worked against them; that is, that the play ended in tears (a comedy of errors??)

But like with so many stories like this (I've been re-reading some of Osip Mandelstam's poetry this week), even though it ends in tears, still whenever we see the triumph of the human spirit over advertisty, we don't want to label it a tragedy, do we? Because no one would argue that the two lovers, in the end, were triumphant-- staying true to their feelings?

My friend recommended this book as well, but too expensive for now... 泣。

I really liked the sonnet too. 感謝。