Kaleidoscope III Dante

1
Kaleidoscope III Dante Kafka

• Session 1
• Dante Alighieri, Commedia Inferno

2
Dante Alighieri 1265-1321

• Low aristocracy
• Florence commercial and cultural centre, city
  state cf. Merchant of Prato (letters) gtgt city
  life (contacts, machinations) vs. rural life, cf.
  Decameron
• Military exploits battle in 1289
• Complicated society gtgt factions
• Church vs. State
• Pope vs. Emperor
• Guelfs vs. Ghibellines
• White (Cherchi family) vs. black (Donati) Guelfs
  in Florence

3
Dante, the politician

• Active from 1295, becoming guild member allows
  political activity, rises to be priore
  june-august 1300
• Exiles number of Blacks and Whites in attempt to
  restore peace
• Afterwards revenge? Dante exiled himself, lives
  in the North, supported by patrons/mecenae
• He tries in vain to return (coups) until death in
  Ravenna

4
Dante, the writer and thinker

• Treatise on the use of the vernacular De vulgari
  eloquentia gtgt emancipation vs. latin
• Proof poetry already written (Vita Nuova,
  biographical prose poetry), new work Convivio
  (philosophy, thoughts about mans place in the
  universe and about God)
• 1307-8 starts writing the Commedia, Paradiso
  finished at the end of his life
• Mss http//www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/m
  edieval/mss/holkham/misc/048.b.htm

5
Dante, the lover

• Béatrice Portinari
• Dante (9) sees her, when she is 7, falls in love
  gtgt love poetry in Vita Nuova (emotion limerence)
• Dante (18) meets her, but she does not greet him
  gtgt depression
• Poems praise her, celebrate her beauty
• She dies (23, in 1290), while married to merchant
• Returns in Paradiso, love sublimated

6
Commedia comedy?

• Written 1307-1321
• Theme status animarum post mortem (also, in
  Inferno Gods justice in its dreadful operation,
  Canto XIV, l. 6)
• Inferno-Purgatorio-Paradiso
• Happy ending, like comedy, also low style
  (register), and written in vernacular
• Dream? Vision? Mental Journey, reality?
  Jenseitsvision
• Canto 1, l. 1-18 map timing Good Friday, time
  between crucifixion and resurrection
• 3 beasts (sins, correspond to regions of Hell,
  maps) prevent return, detour through underworld
  greyhound??
• Terza rima (cf. Omeros), 100 cantos (133, 33,
  33) in 3 cantiche length of the canti differs

7
Terza rima
8
Guide and Pilgrim

• Fellow poet Virgil (70-19 b.C) becomes D.s
  guide, on Béatrices request, until she takes
  over and leads him into the heavenly spheres
• Precursor of Christian faith, yet heathen and
  thus in Hell (Limbo), allowed free movement (lt-gt
  the souls)
• Represents wisdom, reason reassures the
  emotional and upset pilgrim (D.) during Inferno
  and Purgatorio
• D. is homodiegetic narrator (eyewitness!), there
  is a difference in time between pilgrim and
  author (story told afterwards author knows what
  is to come), cf. XX/1-3, 19-21 XXVI/19-24
  XXXIV/22-27
• The pilgrim has to undergo the confrontation with
  mans sins and do penance, before he can be shown
  Heaven

9
layout
10
Sins punished

• Gate Abandon all hope! Lasciate ogni speranza gtgt
  Hell is eternal, meeting with D. is final contact
• Hierarchy of Sins (medieval scholasticism),
  sinners from all times until Ds day (historical
  figures, real and fictive, lots of Florentines!
  Enemies in Inferno, friends in Purgatorio VIPs
  like Ulysses XXVI Tiresias XX, 40-42))
• Example Paolo Francesca lustful like Tristan
  and Isolde true story (Ravenna Boccaccio)
• Canto 5, ll. 124 vv. gtgt Lancelot Guinevere,
  plus Galehot/aut (not Galahad!)
• Far worse punishments priests who gain money
  from selling clerical positions (simony) are
  buried upside down, with burning feet gtgt
  inversion
• Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
• Concept of contrapasso punishment corresponds to
  sin (retribution). Other examples? I Slothful in
  mud of Styx, P Acedia gtgt running)

11
Through Earths core

• Satan ( Judas in one of 3 mouths, Brutus) is the
  centre, Dante slips past his body (somersault),
  and then comes to mount Purgatory (no information
  on transportation) gtgt Southern hemisphere
• Mount Purgatory gtgt concept of 12th century
  (LeGoff St. Brendan legends) slow ascent to
  heaven, penance (again contrapasso!), support
  through prayer of the living.
• Heaven Béatrice takes over, and leads D. into
  the circles of saints and the overwhelming
  presence of God (light)

12
Memento mori

• Hell hell, until the end of time (and from its
  beginning)
• Only an exemplary life brings man to heaven what
  you do wrong on earth will be visited upon you in
  hell, and if you are lucky in Purgatory
  (contrapasso!)
• Heaven is bliss God is light
• Secondary message reckoning by God, according to
  Dantes sympathies/opinions

13
The author, ms Holkham, is he asleep?
14
Paolo Francesca meet Dante and Virgil
15
Souls on their way to Heaven from Purgatory
16
Béatrice and Dante speak to Venus, with Taurus
and Libra
17
(Bernard of Clairvaux and Dante see) the Virgin
Mary in a Rose, surrounded by saints
18
Trinity (cf. Lucifer), Bernard shows Dante
19
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo Francesca, 1862
20
G. Doré Paolo Francesca(1861)
21
LancelotGuinevere first kiss, BN 118
22
(No Transcript)
23
William Blake, The whirlwind of lovers(1825-7)
24
Doré, harpies,CantoXIII, suicidesare
trees,having destroyedtheir own bodies
25
Session 2 Kafka

• Prague, July 3, 1883 Vienna, June 3, 1924
• Czech, writing in German, Jewish background
• Novels and short stories (very short, sometimes,
  example)
• Publications and fame mostly posthumously (Max
  Brod, cf. role Ezra Pound in Eliots case)
• Very influential (cf. Paul Auster, George Orwell,
  Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, W.F. Hermans)
• Situations may be described as pure Kafka
  (Catch 22), when the system overrules the
  individual also HP V

26
Alas, said the mouse, the world is growing
smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big
that I was afraid, I kept running and running,
and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away
to the right and left, but these long walls have
narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber
already, and there in the corner stands the trap
that I must run into. You only need to change
your direction, said the cat, and ate it
up.Tr. D.F. Wallace

• Small Fable

27
Works

• Realistic stories about absurd things (Die
  Verwandlung man wakes up as a huge bug)
• Tales of frustrating and destructive bureaucracy
  (Der Prozess Das Schloss) the small man
  succumbs to invisible power structures the
  system wins
• Inspired by Eastern European bureaucracy?

28
Machines

• Kafka worked for insurance company for industrial
  workers, visited factories in Bohemia, knew the
  injuries machines could inflict
• In the Penal Colony written oct. 1914,
  beginning of WWI, war in which young men
  sacrifice themselves on the battlefield to
  machines like machine gun, artillery, tanks

29
Penal colonies

• Penal colonies, islands were common, cf.
  Papillon isolated, specialized punishment
• Hell on earth, places of no return (gt Dante)
• Hope for release Messianic tradition in Jewish
  fate. The Redeemer will come
• Cf. Grailquest

30
Tasks/presentations

• J
• Which of the following statements is the more
  persuasive (and why)?
• 1. The old system of justice in the penal colony
  comes straight from the Middle Ages and shows
  many features that are characteristic of Dantes
  system of sin and retribution.
• 2. The old system in the penal colony is a hollow
  mechanism that serves no moral purpose.
• K
• Some scholars have advanced the view that the
  regime of the old governor represents the rule of
  God. Are there passages in the story that support
  this interpretation? If there is something to
  this view, in what light should we see the new
  governor and his regime?
• L
• A peculiar figure, quite uncommon in Kafkas
  work, is the outside position of the
  traveler/explorer (in German Forschungsreisender
  and Reisender) who is asked to pass judgment
  on the course of justice on the island.
• Does he fulfill his function?
• How should we interpret the last scene when the
  traveler chases the condemned man and the soldier
  away?