Sonnet VI
in Shelley's beautiful sonnet, which translates it:
in Robert Duncan's version from among the sodomites:
Robert Musil
A completed foundation of humanity should, however, signify the definitive elimination of the sacrificial mythogema and of its ideas of nature and culture, of the unspeakable and the speakable, which are grounded in it. In fact, even the sacralization of life derives from sacrifice: from this point of view it simply abandons the naked natural life to its own violence and its own unspeakableness, in order to ground in them every cultural rule and all language. The ethos, humanity's own, is not something unspeakable or sacer that must remain unsaid in all praxis and human speech. Neither is it nothingness, whose nullity serves as the basis for the arbitrariness and violence of social action. Rather, it is social praxis itself, human speech itself, which have become transparent to themselves-
Giorgio Agamben, Language and Death
'So!' Jack Spicer said, early in our friendship, `you're one of those who eat their God.'
1945
in unmapped America, the Puritans had a ferocious time with omniscience, which proposed predestination of human nature, one by one-now, when you get down to brass facts, who in this community should be allowed to receive the body and blood of Christ?-the answer: the successful-speaking in the voice of-the coherence of-capitalism-
in ESTHETIQUE DU MAL, Wallace Stevens writes: The death of Satan was a tragedy/For the imaginationand asks, What underground?-it was a dismissal from usefulness-with the shift of Hell to the surface of our own task, Purgatory and Paradise also shift to the imagination of the irreparable-
like you, I walk in contemporary culture-the movement of perpetual departure-I walk the forest of innumerable soundsI talk with a haunted tongue-how does the body get form?-and clothe itself-
phrases from Michel de Certeau
the entire Comedy, Philippe Sollers writes, is an apprenticeship in thought, vision, and writing-from the frozen silence to a new poetry-The Purgatory, in fact, is a continuous image of the poetic condition-Dante walks and questions-perhaps the poetic condition is a matter of interrogationcertainly, it is for us, as it was for him-he walks as if he were in the place of language-in Sollers' words, to the discontinuity that rediscovers the silence and otherness of a new language-the spontaneous, intimate language that is opposed to Hell-and approaches, through successive ruptures the `umana radice' (human root)-in other words the root of a language exempt from guilt-there in the place where love dictates-I enter with you la divina foresta spessa e viva-the divine forest green and densein apprenticeship-so, Robert Duncan would celebrate Dante's seven hundredth birthday in 196 5, writing of `the sweetness and greatness' of the Divine Comedy-
Purgatorio XXIV. c4-56
Inferno XXVI
Purgatorio XXIX. z z
we have been walking and climbing all the days of our lives in a forest fire of language-one calls for the good of the intellect-it is existentially givenanother calls for the grace note time can be in order to know oneself-when suddenly a voice calls, '0 voi'-O, you there in your little barc-as one might from the upper deck of a liner call, `You there in your dinghy, watch your shores before you lose your bearings'-we enter the Odyssean language of the Paradiso -L'acqua ch'io prendo gid mai non si corsein waters that have never been sailed before-we are warned that we may become lost in the waves of the marvelousamong the light substances, if we do not have the intelletto d'amore, as through smooth and transparent glass, this discourse with cosmos-the glorious wheel, the radiance speaking, horizon brightening, a swift fire in a cloud, the sun-struck rubies of conjugated souls-the ladder of splendours- (La mente, the qui luce, in terra fumma- the mind, which shines here, smokes on earth) -the mind that is the sky ensapphired-crystalline, where the sewer of blood and filth is not forgotten but absent-suddenly, Dante looks down to see the earth-il varco folle d'Ulisse-my mind looks back, as Dante's did, to Ulysses in the Inferno, clothed in that which burned him-who tells us, 'I could not conquer within me the passion I had to gain experience of the world and of the vices and worth of men'-he talked his companions into making wings of their oars for their mad flight-until, as he says, `the sea closed over us'in the Purgatorio, the siren in Dante's dream sings of Ulisse mid-sea-here, in the Paradiso, Dante looks back through the dangers of language traveling, Odyssean, eager, and infinite-come all'ultimo suo cias- cuno artista-as with every artist at his or her limitliving sparks, rubies, the river of topazes-the laughter of flowers-to find this rose in the farthest petals, which Charles Olson calls the longest lasting rose-
Paradiso XXX.33
Paradiso XXX. i 17
Dante's Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are signpostsof tradition, which implicates us-of shifts in their landscapes, which implicate us-in imagination of language-Hell, where we are lost in the unredeemable time of our own century-Purgatory, renames the poetic condition-the experiment of writing-the feel of writing-Paradise, where words wander in the wildwood-Dante's Paradiso remains in the arms of Beatrice-for hers is the first name of the love that moves his language among the stars-this is, of course, heresy, as the Dominicans recognized when they condemned him in t 335-
The gods prevent the supreme undecidedness of man; they close off his[/her] humanity, and prevent him[/her] from becoming unhinged, from measuring up to the incommensurable.... The gods forbid that man should be risked further than man. And most serious of all, they take away his death.
Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community
What there is to say here can be said very simply: religious experience is exhausted. It is an immense exhaustion. This fact is in no way altered by the upsurge in the political, sociological, or cultural success of religions ( . . . Jewish, Islamic, or Christian fundamentalism; sects, theosophies, gnosis). There is no return of the religious: there are the contortions and turgescence of its exhaustion. Whether that exhaustion is making way for another concern for the gods, for their wandering or their infinite disappearance, or else for no god, that is another matter: it is another question altogether, and it is not something that can be grasped between the pincers of the religious, nor indeed between those of atheism.
coming upon the inability of man, who is lost in time, to take possession of his own historical nature
Agamben, Infancy & History
poets who took the initial steps into our uncovered Hell ran wildly into a dark forest-una selva oscura, say,
Shelley, living at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in 18 2 2, starting to write The Triumph of Life-beautiful terza rima in honour of Dante-bring him into a vision-he thinks he sits beside a public way where he sees 'a great stream / Of people there ... hurrying to and fro, / Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam'- `one mighty torrent'-a chariot comes 'on the silent storm of its own rushing splendour'-and in it sits 'a Shape, as one whom years deform'-and the charioteer, 'A Janus-visaged Shadow,' drives the `wonderwinged team'-whose shapes are lost 'in thick lightenings'-'a triumphal pageant of a captive multitude' that becomes a `sad pageant'-half to himself, he asks, `And what is this? Whose shape is that within the car? And why-'-when suddenly a voice answers, `Life!'-so,
this is Jean Jacques Rousseau-displacing the fierce dignity of Virgil in Dante's Comedy-Rousseau, whom Shelley had revered as emblematic of `political and metaphysical transition'-of originary language-of revolutionary possibility-of human liberty through oppositional writing-of the stake in desire of any one of us-
In Shelley's vision, we see the Chariot herd, tether, and roll over the wise, the famous, age and youthnow, Rousseau insists upon this endless passing on of life-but Shelley interrupts:
Rousseau replies with the story of his own lovewhen `the bright omnipresence/ Of morning ... / And the sun's image radiantly intense'
Rousseau tells us that he asked that she `Pass not away upon the passing stream'-she offers him a cup to `quench his thirst':
shadows, phantoms, ghosts-'like small gnats and flies'-`like discoloured fla
kes of snow'-which the youthful glow melts and the snow extinguisheseven Dante, whom the poem honours with its rhyme, is seen on the `opposing steep' and will be swept away as the chariot climbs-Rousseau continues:
again Shelley cuts into this continuous flow of despair, leaves us and the poem with only his own question in six words-
before he drowned-
Shelley and Rousseau-like many of us-were enamoured of an absolute-the universal from which human freedom might escape into a community of meaning-
the shift of Hell to our own surface changes the beginning and the end of time-the sacred powerline of our totalies-alpha and omega reverse-unredeemed-into our own responsibility-the task of a community of meaning-
Philosophical Investigations 19
I think of Wittgenstein: 'to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life'and of his remarks to the heretics' club: `and now I shall describe the experience of wonderment before the existence of the world, with these words: the world thus is experienced as a miracle. I am now tempted to say that the correct expression for the miracle of the world, albeit as expressing nothing within language, is the existence of language itself.' and I ponder Giorgio Agamben's reply: `... if the most appropriate expression of the wonderment at the existence of the world is the existence of language, what then is the correct expression of the existence of language?
Infancy & History
`the only possible answer to this question is human life, as ethos, as ethical way. The search for a polis and an oikia befitting this void and unpresupposable community is the infantile task of future generations.'
in this task of Hell-indebted to Dante-I hear Ezra Pound's magnificent, poetic interrogation of the great crystal-stained by anti-Semitism and twentieth-century political shame-among us now, as if they owned a percentage of the human mind of-this viscid Western paradigm-transmuted into silence-
'To what is the poet faithful?' Agamben asks, uncovering a vocation-faithful to the immemorial, for which we have used the word gods-faithful to the emptiness of language-faithful to what is first in mind, word by word and daily yet unformed-
in 1963, an Italian reporter named Luigi Pasquini met Pound in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini:
`When I reach him he is standing in the sacristy of the church, a tiny room that formerly housed its relics. Above the door is Piero della Francesca's fresco depicting Sigismondo Malatesta as he kneels before his patron saint. Pound is standing beneath it, surrounded by people.
'I approach him slowly, nervously, until I am directly before him, face to face. I look him in the eye, and inquire: "Ezra Pound?"
'He does not respond. He stares at me, silent, and his mouth hints at a smile.
'I insist, and repeat his name. He gazes at me, arching his eyebrows for a moment, but says nothing.
'I fear I must be mistaken and address my glance to the woman beside him. She peers up at him, then nods, reassuring me that it is him.
'I offer him my hand, and he takes it in his own. I do not tell him my name, but I make clear that I know his books.... He understands, it seems. He gives a sign of assent, but continues to remain silent.
'Our hands are still clasping each other. "This is the hand of the great American poet," I offer. ("La mano del grande poeta americano!")
'And at last his voice emerges, his first words, uttered in a tranquil Italian accent without a trace of an Anglo-American inflection: "I am not great." ("Non grande.")
'Swiftly I reply: "-you are among the greatest." ("Grandissimo.")
'But the conversation falters, and I grow uncertain. Through friends I had heard that he was living in Rapallo, but a stray remark from Miss Rudge indicates they have just come from Venice. I try to take up the topic: "Where are you living now: in Rapallo? Or in Merano with your daughter, or in Venice?"
'He will not reply. He looks at me again, with a mocking gaze.
`I persist: "Rapallo, Merano? Venice, Rome?"
'Nothing. He is still silent, his gaze fixed on me, like someone playing a guessing game.
'I press on: "So where are you living now?" I continue, "Where?"
'At last he lowers his head, slowly, and put his mouth to my ear so that no one can hear us. His voice is a whisper, rasping: "I live in hell."
`This leaves me bewildered. Here we are in church, in a sacristy in fact (even if it is the sacristy of a paganizing temple) -in a place, in short, as far as possible from Erebus or the underworld of Lucifer. And yet he says we're in hell. I fail to understand and want to pursue it: "Which hell do you mean? The hellish tourism? The inferno of the war, here in Rimini? The hell of Rome? Of Italy? Of the world?"
'He is silent again. At last he moves his hands: he places them before his stomach, and slowly lifting them to the level of his heart, as the traces of light in his pupils become like glowing coals, he whispers a suffocated scream. "Here is hell. Here."'
cited in L. S. Rainey, Ezra Pound: The Monument of Culture
25 August 1997
A Note
on my use of the word `territory'-territorio, zona-to indicate the largeness each of us enters upon, which in contemporary terms seems to me mapless. We enter a territory without totalities of God, without totalities of spirit, Hegelian or otherwise, and without totalities of materiality on the record of Marxist practice in the loth century. We have, as Lyotard has argued, paid far too much in terror for our totalities. The contemporary resurgence of religion, at least in North and South America, is exceedingly corrupt, and in its own terms blasphemous. This aging Roman Catholic looks across at the three great religions of Abraham-the Christian, the Jewish and the Muslim-and fears they are dying into violence. It is as if we were repeating the second century, ANNO DOMINI.
Dante is our contemporary in the Comedy and our guide to a poetics of interrogation. The Comedy is our greatest poem of interrogation, and the language of the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso is Ulyssean. Although Dante did not know the Odyssey except through Virgil, Odysseus haunts him even in his dreams.
1997
Revised 25 January 2006
6 March 2ooi
27 March 2001
i o April 20o i
12 April 2001
i S April 2001
20 April 200 1
22 April 2001
23 April 2001
24 April 2001
24 April 2001
for Mikhail Gorbachev, 1991, when he was `worthy of Chekhov'
25 April 200 1
27 April 200 1
28 April 200 1
29 April 2ooi
29 April 2ooi
3o April 200
i May 200
2 May 2001
2 July 2001
6 July 200 1
13 July 2001
7 August 200 1
1 3 August 2001
14 September 2001
i November 200 1
6 November 2ooi
6 November 200 1
19 November 20o i
2002
1 7 January 2002
for Tomas Marquard and Ilonka Opitz
29 January 2002
13 February 2002
a real dream
2 March 2002
1 6 March 2002
21 March 2002
i i April 2002
3 July 2002
8 August 2002
1 3 August 2002
1 3 August 2002
1 7 August 2002
21 August 2002
after reading Agamben on Spinoza, Levinas, Keats and Pessoa, for Peter Quartermain.
i September 2002
2 September 2002
28 December 2002
29 December 2002
29 October 2003
22 October 2003
for Stan Pettigrove
2 1 September 2003
2 November 2003
2003
2003
24 January 2004
`venery' from James Lipton
25 January
2004
29 January 2004
`abstract monotheism and monism, which is its secularization as social philosophy, reveal a common totalitarian trend'-Corbin
29 January 2004
8 February 2004
2004
2004
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