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Literature for the PlanetAuthor(s): Wai Chee DimockReviewed work(s):Source: PMLA, Vol. 116, No. 1, Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies (Jan., 2001), pp. 173-188Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463649 .

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i 6. I

Litera ture f o r t h e P l a n e t

WAI CHEE DIMOCK

HEYEARWAS1934, A YEAR N WHICHOSIPMANDELSTAM

lived in constant error.Just a few monthsbefore,he hadcommit-

tedpoliticalsuicideby recitinga satiricalpoemon Stalin, eaturing"the ten thick worms his fingers"and"thehuge laughingcockroaches

on his top lips."Thepoemconcludes:

He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,

One for the groin, one the forehead,temple, eye.He rolls the executions on his tonguelike berries.

He wishes he could hug them like big friendsfrom home.1

Mandelstam's arrestcame as expected. On the night of 13 May 1934,

aboutone in the morning,came a knock on the door. Mandelstamwas

takenby the secretpolice to theirheadquartersn the LubiankaPrison,

interrogated, nd latersentenced o threeyearsof exile in Cherdyn.2Since the arrestwas not a surprise,Mandelstamat leasthad the lux-

uryof preparingor it. Hispreparations ere recordedbyNadezhdaMan-

delstam(a"pre-Gutenberg"igure,as SeamusHeaneycalls her ["Osip"

74], safeguarding er husband'spoems by committing hemto memory):

WAICHEEDIMOCK,rofessor

ofEnglish

at YaleUniversity,s the author of Em-

pireforLiberty:Melvilleand the Poetics

of Individualism(PrincetonUP, 1989)

and ResiduesofJustice:Literature, aw,

Philosophy Uof California ,1996). Lit-

erature or the Planet" s her new book

project,an extensionof her 1997PMLA

essay,"ATheoryof Resonance."

M. obtained an edition of the Divine Comedy n small format andalwayshadit with him in his pocket,just in case he was arrestednotat homebutin

the street. Youcould be arrestedanywhere-sometimes theycame foryouatyour place of work,andsometimesyou were lured out to anotherplaceon a false pretextandno one everheard of you again. [.. .] When M. went

to Samatikha theplacewherehe was arrested he second time),he left his

pocketDante in Moscow andtook another, athermorebulkyedition. I do

notknow whetherhe managedto keep it until he reached the transitcampatVtorayaRechka,nearVladivostok,wherehe died. I somehow doubt it:

? 2001 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 173

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174 Literatureor the Planet

in thecampsunderYezhovandStalin,nobodycouldgive any thought o books.

(HopeagainstHope 228)

In a momentof extremepoliticalterror,Mandel-

stam-Russian and Jewish-saw fit to immerse

himself in a medieval Christianpoem. The im-

mersion did not save him. Within fouryearshe

was dead,on his way to a laborcampin eastern

Siberia.Still, in spiteof this overwhelmingbio-

logical fact, it was not trivial that the medieval

poem was still around,after hundredsof years,and in the Soviet Union no less. Its very exis-

tence gave Mandelstam a different reference

point, dimensions of space and time not re-ducible to the armof the Sovietgovernment.3Mandelstam's ove of Dante-the physical

presence of the poetry inside his pocket-sug-

gests thatthere is muchto be said for literature

as a continuum.This continuumextendsacross

space and time, messing up territorial sover-

eignty and numericalchronology.Authors cen-

turies and thousandsof miles apartcan turn out

to be inseparable.Theiradjacencystems from a

linguistic bond and has little to do with the met-

rical structurearticulatedby numbers,whetherthesenumbers aketheform of latitudesand on-

gitudes or whetherthey take the form of dates.

For the remoteness or proximity of linguisticevents does not lend itself to uniform calibra-

tions. It cannotbe expressedas a numerical on-

stant: as one hundred years or one thousand

miles. Literaryspace and time are conditional

andelastic;theirdistancescanvary,canlengthenor contract, depending on who is reading and

what is being read.No mileage can tell us how

farone author s fromanother;no dates can tellus who is close to whom.

This nonnumericalstructureof space and

time might be described by way of a conceptfromEinstein:"relativityof simultaneity."Ein-

stein uses this to challenge the notion of a uni-

versal present, a now everywhere enforced, a

temporal plane that synchronizes the entire

globe, putting it under a unified chronology.There is no such synchronizedplane, Einstein

says, because space and time are not absolute

givens but operational effects, deriving their

lengths andwidths from the relativemotion of

the frames in which measurements are taken.What s simultaneous n one framemightnot be

simultaneous n another;whatregistersas now

in one might not so register elsewhere. Of

course,for Einsteinrelativityof simultaneity s

strictlya mathematicalconcept:it is a descrip-tion of the geometry of space-time.4I have ar-

gued elsewhere that this concept can also be

understoodnonmathematically,that it can be

transposedto describe the temporaleffects en-

genderedby reading.

Transposedn this way, relativityof simul-

taneity highlightsthe existenceof different ime

frames in any populationof readers.The appar-ent unityof the chronologicaldategives way to

a pluralityof operativenows. These nows are

not discretelyor uniformlyslotted;they do not

all line up on the same synchronicplane. Theyowe their shapes to the irregularcompass of

words: words with differentantecedents,differ-

ent extensions of meaning. Nows are different

becausereading

habitsare,because the strengthof linguistic bonds can have a drastic effect on

the distance between any two users of words.

Twothousandyearsand two thousandmiles can

sometimes register as near simultaneity; ten

years andten miles can sometimes pose an un-

passable gulf. Thanksto this elasticity,the now

experienced by any reader s idiosyncratic,un-

like anyoneelse's. It has its particularadii,par-ticular genealogies and coevals. Its relational

fabricis separatelycut, stretchingandbulging

in odd places. It is not synchronized with thenumericalnow on anystandard alendar.

Understood in this sense-as the temporal

disunityamongreaders-relativityof simultane-

ity suggeststhat hecontinuum f literatures an-

archic: mpossible to regulateorpolice. Where

literarybonds are ntensifiedby circumstances-

ashappenswithMandelstamandDante-spaceand timecanundergo he most astonishingcon-

traction, an turna standardizedmetricalunit nto

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WaiChee Dimock 175

a virtualzero, bringing supposedlyremoteob-

jects into directcontact.Spaceandtime,in short,

havenoabsoluteurisdictionwhen itcomestothe

bond betweentexts and readers. Not a preas-

signed grid, they are molded insteadby the ac-

tions andpassionsof words.Theycan behave ike

"a kindof fan,"as Mandelstam ays("On heNa-

ture"73).This fancan be foldedup, puttingItalyin the immediatevicinity of Russia andmaking

strangebedfellows out of the fourteenthandthe

twentiethcenturies.The now thusbegottendoes

notin the leastresemble henowlegislatedbythe

Soviet government.Stretchingacross hundreds

of yearsandthousandsof miles, it is temporally

andspatiallywayward,out of stepwithany partyline,anymechanical lockof progress.

Aiding and abetting this population of

nows, all unsynchronized,literaturestandsac-

cused as the enemy of the state. Its projectiveandretrospectivehorizonsplayhavoc withterri-

torialsovereignty.Toeach of its readers t holds

out a differentmap, a different time scale, pre-

datingandoutlastingthe birthanddeath of anynation. Morphologically speaking, literature

might turnout to be one of the most robust in-

habitants of the planet, a species tougherthan

most. We can thinkof it as an artificialform of

"life"-not biological like an organismor terri-

torial like a nation but vital all the same, and

durable or thatreason. Its recedingandunfold-

ing extensions make it a political force in the

world. To acknowledge this force, we need to

stop assuminga one-to-onecorrespondencebe-

tween the geographic origins of a text and its

evolving radius of literary action. We need to

stop thinking of national literaturesas the lin-guistic equivalents of territorialmaps. For the

continuumbetweenDanteandMandelstamells

us (if nothing else) thatthe nation-state is not

all, thatwhen it comes to theextended ife of lit-

eraryobjects,the inscriptionalpowerof the state

is notcomplete, ust as itsjurisdictionalpoweris

notabsolute.An emergingandglobalizingread-

ershipundermines t on both fronts.Theorized

as the consequences of this global readership,

literaturehandilyoutlives the finitescope of the

nation.Itbringsinto play a differentset of tem-

poralandspatialcoordinates.It urgeson us the

entireplanetas a unitof analysis.This is a minority view. The study of na-

tional literatures is currently dominated by a

differentpremise-dominated, in fact,by an al-

most automaticequation between the literaryandthe territorial.5Nothing betterexemplifiesthis premisethanthe influentialwork of Bene-

dict Anderson.ForAnderson the advent of mo-

dernity s markedby therise of the nation-state,

a political entity whose "sovereignty is fully,

flatly,andevenlyoperativeovereachsquare en-

timetreof a legally demarcated erritory"26).6This territorialovereigntyproducesculturalar-

tifactslikewise territoriallypredicated, ikewise

boundedby the geopolitical map. Literature s

one such artifact. Since state sovereignty, ac-

cordingto Anderson, s no less fully, flatly,and

evenly operative in this domain, literature be-

comes a necessaryinstrumentas well as a nec-

essaryepiphenomenon f thenation.Along with

the newspaper fromwhich it turnsout to be in-

distinguishable),iteraturenforcesthe standard-

ized time of print, a territorial imetable.This

territorial ime is "homogeneous,empty time,"

measuredby clock andcalendar.It is a regimeof "simultaneity," indingall its citizens to the

sametemporalplane(30-31).

I argue ora conceptionof literature irectly

oppositeto Anderson's. nsteadof upholding er-

ritorial overeigntyandenforcinga regimeof si-

multaneity,iterature,n my view,unsettlesboth.

It holds out to its readersdimensions of space

andtime so far-flungand so deeply recessionalthattheycanneverbe made to coincide withthe

synchronicplaneof thegeopoliticalmap.This is

a riskyproposition,but it canbe testedwithanynumber of texts having a prolongedlife and a

global following. In whatfollows I do so, usingas my primaryevidencethe extensionandtele-

scopingof spaceandtimebroughtaboutby one

literary encounter, betw,en Mandelstam and

Dante.Thatextensionandtelescopingare all the

116. i

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more remarkable or taking place in anextreme

form of thenation-state,one that fitsAnderson's

descriptiono a fault. The SovietUnion,offering

itself as thesuccessor o capitalism-the finalacton the world stage-had always been a fervent

exponent of an official chronology, an official

schedule of progress.It had tried to rationalize

time, tried to bind its citizens to a revolutionarytimetable: a regime of simultaneity, ust as An-

dersonsuggests.That timetablehappenednot to

be Mandelstam's.His love of Dante-his adja-

cency to Dante-put him in a continuumof his

own. That continuumextendedfromfourteenth-

centuryItalyto twentieth-centuryRussia.Itput

the twopoetssideby side,in defianceof chronol-ogy,and n doingso it alsodenationalizedach of

them, makingeach Italian and not Italian,Rus-

sian andnotRussian.

This shared denationalizationbegan with

Mandelstam's attemptto learn Italian to read

Dante. He wasjoined by AnnaAkhmatova,an-

otherfan. The two poets would comparenotes,

testing each other's memory, savoring everywordfromthatalientonguethathad ceased tobe

alien."Poetry tself is one enormousquotation,"Akhmatovawould aternote.7Mandelstammighthave said the same. One would tauntthe other:

"Do you remember his line?" "Didyou notice

thatwonderfulbit?"Thentheywouldsettle down

to read"aloud ogether,pointingoutthepassages

they liked best, sharing their finds with each

other"N. Mandelstam,HopeagainstHope223).

Spendingso muchtime amongthese barelydo-

mesticatedwords-so muchtime awayfromhis

supposedlynativetongue-Mandelstam ended

uprelivingthefate of his father: hefate of a lin-

guistic alien, denied citizenship by every lan-

guage, fully athome in none.Suchan alien

had absolutelyno language;his speechwas

tongue-tieand anguagelessness. heRussian

speech faPolishJew?No.Thespeech fa Ger-manJew?No again.Perhapsa specialCour-landaccent? neverheard uch.A completelyabstract, ounterfeitanguage, heornateandtwisted peechof anautodidact,wherenormal

wordsare ntertwinedwiththeancientphilo-

sophicalerms f Herder, eibniz, ndSpinoza,thecapaciousyntax faTalmudist,heartificial,notalways inishedentence:twasanythingn

theworld,butnot alanguage,neitherRussian

norGerman. (O.Mandelstam,oise85)

Neither Russiannor German.And for Mandel-

stam,onemightadd,neitherEnglish,norFrench,

norItalian.Toembraceone of theseadjectives s

to be fullynaturalizedn onenational ongue.That

fullnaturalizationas neverMandelstam's. lin-

guistichybrid-partlybytemperamentutmostof

all throughhe habitof reading-he was a "trans-

latorby calling, by birth,"a"foreign emissaryfrom a non-existentphonetickingdom" 0. Man-

delstam, "Onthe Nature"79). Translationwas

whathe didfor a livingwhenhisofficialstatusasa

pariahbarredhimfrom all other obs. Buthe also

lived off it in adeepersense, as ClarenceBrown

suggests,consigninghimself to it as to "asort of

intellectual iberia"Mandelstam0).This intellectualSiberia is not a Soviet ad-

dress. tsterrain,ikeitsprovenance,annotbe ex-

clusively localized in one nation.Tobe sure,the

intellectualSiberiahassomething o do with theterritorialSiberia,but this territorialalignment

mightnot be theprimaryone and s certainlynot

theonlyone. Twoframesof reference,at east,are

involved here, each playing on andrelativizingtheother.For thepresenceof aforeigntongue-themeaningfulnessof thattongue-already sug-

gestsacounterpointotheentitycalledthenation,

showingupitslimits, tsfailure odictateanexact

matchbetweenthe linguisticandtheterritorial.

Every ntellectualSiberia s anaffront othe sov-

ereigntyof the state. It points to dimensionsof

spaceandtime notfullynationalizedbecausenot

fullyrationalized,paceandtime notconformingto an officialnumber,notintegratedby aunified

metric.Translationurnsaforeignlanguage nto

Russianand,in the samemeasure,unsettles the

nativetongue (Benjamin,esp. 73): alienatesit,

putsit intoperspective, hrows t into alinguisticcontinuummore urbulent ndmorealivethan he

inert inesof ageopoliticalmap.

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II6. I

This linguisticcontinuum s the basis for a

limited freedom. It is the freedom of an alien

life-form: a form of extension and durationnot

matchingthose of the nation and

perhapsnot

comingto an end with the nation's demise.This

alien life-form sustains every author andevery

translator,as Mandelstam makes clear in "To

theGermanLanguage":

Destroyingmyself,contradicting yself,likethemoth lying nto hemidnightlame,

suddenly ll thatbindsme to our anguage

temptsmeto leave t.

[.........]Analien anguagewillbemyswaddlinglothes.

Longbefore dared o bebornI was a letter f thealphabet, verse ikeavine,I wasthebook hatyouall see indreams.8

Under political repressionthe only life a poetcanhave is nonbiological.WislawaSzymborska,

writing n Poland n 1970, made thesamepoint:

When ndangerhesea-cucumberividestself

in two

[ . . . . . . . .]

Weknowhow odivide urselves, ow rue,we too.

Butonly ntoabodyandan nterruptedhisper.Intobodyandpoetry.9

The latteralone has a chanceforrebirth n a dif-

ferent tongue. Of course, thatchance dependson eventsaltogetheraccidental:the luck of for-

eign translators'adopting the poems, the luck

of foreignreaders'pickingthemup. Haphazardas this sequencemight seem, many of Mandel-

stam's poems were indeed translated,wrappedin swaddlingclothes made in England,France,and the United States, long before they were

published in the Soviet Union. He is in this

sense the obverseof a nationalpoet. "Ofcourse

he was a Russian, but not any more so than

Giotto was an Italian,"says Joseph Brodsky,who shouldknow a thingor two aboutthatpre-dicament. There is a morphologicalmismatch

between literature and the nation, between the

WaiCheeDimock 177

dynamic expanse of a linguistic continuumand

the finite borders of a territorialregime. The

swaddling clothes of foreign languages high-

light that fact. They highlight whathappenstoofficial borders and official timetables when

texts are born again and again, into different

countries,differentcenturies. For literature,as

Brodsky says, "speakingboth metaphoricallyandliterally[.. .] is translation.The wanderingof a Greekportico nto the latitudeof the tundra

is a translation"139).

The morphologyof literature annotbe de-

scribed by one set of space-time coordinates.

Withluck, translationswill dispersea momen-

tarilyassembledgroupof words,will turnevery

seemingly bounded text into something far

morerandom, catteredby circumstancesacross

the centuries and across the entire planet. The

life of literaturedepends on such randomiza-

tions. Not stuck in one national context-and

saying predictable hings in that context-a lit-

erarytext becomes a new semantic template,a

new form of the legible, each time it crosses a

nationalborder.Globaltransitextends,triangu-

lates, and transforms its meaning. This factalonechallengesthepowerof the territorial s a

determining orce in literature.The space-timecoordinatesof any text are not only fluidwhen

they firstcome into being, poorly captured bythe map of geopolitics, they are also subse-

quentlyandunforeseeably evisable, nducedbytheirtemporalandspatialdisplacements o playnew tricks with the static bordersof the nation.

Witheverynew translationhey puncha hole in

those borders;they create abump,

aslope,

an

inclinethatrollsoutward:

Theearth s at itsroundest nRedSquareAnd tsunchainedurve s hard,

On RedSquareheearth s at itsroundest

And tscurve, ollingallthewaydown o

thericefields,

IsunexpectedlyxpansiveWhile herearestillanyslavesontheearth.10

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178 Literatureorthe Planet

Political repression, its incontestable might in

one locale, forces the mind to think globally.

The earthon Red Squareis roundestbecause,

for anyone who does not wish to be chained tothat spot, this bit of earth must be taken as a

curve,anarcof a largercircumference.That cir-

cumference, insteadof being a slavish copy of

its origins, is an off-center set of vibrations,

chaotic and tangential-expanding with the

more or less randomaccretionof signifyingmo-

ments,emergingat varioustemporalandspatial

removes.Literature, nderstood s theserandom

radii linking a text to an ever more dispersed

readership, is extraterritorialin every sense.

Russianpoet is, strictlyspeaking,anoxymoron.Nor s thisonlyatwentieth-century henom-

enon. As instancedby Dante, hequarrel etween

literature ndthenationhas theweightof historybehindit. Again, forMandelstamandBrodsky,Dante is a world poet-claimable as an ally

againstnational egimes-because he both s and

is notFlorentine,because, ndeliblymarkedashe

is by his native city, he is noticeably not swal-

lowedup by it."Dante,perhaps till the most cel-

ebrated xile inWesternhistory,s also the first o

call attentionto anasymmetry,a mismatch,be-

tween the literaryand thegeopolitical.In his let-

ter to Cangrandedella Scala, Dante famouslydescribeshimself as "aFlorentinebybirthbutnot

in character."12nd in De vulgarieloquentia,his

vigorous defense of the vernacular,he makes a

pointof chidingthelinguisticpatriot,one whois

"so misguided as to think that the place of his

birthis the most delightful spot under the sun

[and who] may also believe that his own lan-

guage-his mothertongue, thatis-is preemi-nentamongall others[...]":

Tome, however, he whole world s a home-

land, ike the sea to fish[...]. Andalthoughor

myownenjoymentorratherorthesatisfac-

tionof myowndesire), heres no moreagree-able placeon earththanFlorence,yet when

I turn hepagesof the volumes of poetsand

otherwriters,by whom heworld s described

as a wholeand nitsconstituentarts, ndwhen

I reflect nwardlyon the various ocationsof

placesin theworld,and theirrelations o the

two poles and the circle at the equator, am

convinced,andfirmlymaintain,hat hereare

manyregionsandcitiesmorenoble andmore

delightfulhanTuscany ndFlorence,where

wasbom andof which amacitizen,andmanynationsandpeopleswhospeaka moreelegantandpracticalanguagehando theItalians.13

For Dante the centrifugalforce of literature s

deeply at odds with the vainglorioustalk of fa-

therland.14o yield to this centrifugal orce is to

yield to an onslaughtof space andtime, an on-

slaughtunavoidablybrutal,centered on no one

nationand tenderto no one nation.Dante,poetof thatcentrifugal orce,recklessin his embrace

of space and time, is thus interchangeably a

reader,a writer,and a translator.Forif writingmustend up being a formof translation notal-

ways voluntary) from the here and now, it is

readingthat initiates thatprocess.Readingush-

ers in a continuumthatmocks the form of anyfiniteentity.It mocks the bordersof the nation,

just as it mocks the life span of the individual.

As a global process of extension, elaboration,andrandomization, eadingturns iterature nto

thecollective life of theplanet.Coextensivenei-

ther with the territorial egimeof the nation nor

with the biological regime of a single human

being, this life derives its morphology instead

from the motion of words: motion effected

when bordersarecrossed,when a new frame of

reference is mixed with an old, when foreign

languages urna nativetongueintoa hybrid.

Motion, indeed, is whatMandelstamcele-

brates in his remarkableessay "ConversationaboutDante,"writtenone yearbeforehis arrest.

"Both heInfernoand, n particular,hePurgato-rio glorify the humangait, the measureand the

rhythmof walking, the footstep and its form.

[...] In Dante philosophy and poetry are con-

stantlyon the go, perpetuallyon theirfeet." For

Mandelstamt is a literaryquestion,anda serious

one, to ask, "Howmany shoe soles, how manyoxhide soles, how many sandals did Alighieri

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I 6. I

wear out duringthe course of his poetic work?"

(254). Mandelstam's Dante is, in fact, a strange

figure, often unrecognizableto others (Bethea

52-60; Cavanagh210-14).I

arguethat this is

a Dante denationalizedin a particularway-aDante both Italianand not Italian,Russian and

not Russian-a figureborn into the world at the

same time that a denationalizedMandelstam s.

Dante, it seems, can take on Russian features,

features legible only to this Soviet reader. Ex-

traterritorialityactivates a special register of

meaning,calls fortha specialkindof resonance.

Such resonancepointsto the importanceof

environmental"backgroundnoise"as a genera-

tive force in literature.Acting as a stochasticbooster, backgroundnoise puts an amplifyingmechanism-a kind of accentualcushion-un-

der some words but not others, bringing them

intorelief,pushing hem above a thresholdof de-

tectability(Dimock).15The Soviet Union was an

environment ich in noise injust thisway.It was

anenvironment hataltered he hearable requen-cies of words, sharpening he ears of readersto

an unbearableacuteness. Such readers could

nothelp singling outwords,underscoring hem,

hearingin them Soviet echoes, accenting them

alwayswith that earedknock atone in themorn-

ing.It is notsurprisingheDivineComedy hould

resonatein such a context. And it resonates be-

cause it has been denationalized,because it has

been actedon by a new,overwhelming,but also

unforeseeableconjunctionof circumstances.It

hasbecome a partiallyRussianpoem,no longer

strictlyItalianyet notgrandlyuniversal.Switch-

ing to a differentmetaphor,we can also say that

denationalizationhas randomized the poem byturning t into a temporalhybrid,a hybridacci-

dentallyborn nto theworldthrough heacciden-

tal unionbetween fourteenth-centuryItaly and

twentieth-centuryRussia.Sucha hybrid s singu-lar. It resembles none other. It cannot be repro-ducedanywhere lse.

Here it is helpful to contrastMandelstam's

DantewithanotherDante,alsohybridized round

thesametime,parentedby areaderwho, though

Wai Chee Dimock 179

a chronological coeval of Mandelstam's, was

clearlynot his coeval nanydeepsense:T S.Eliot.

In his well-known essay Dante (1929), written

threeyears

before Mandelstam'sessay,

Eliotof-

fersupapoet"universal"o allreaders, equiringno translation.ThisuniversalDante,Eliot says,writes n an Italian hat s an effectiveEsperanto:

Dante'suniversalitys not solely a personalmatter. heItaliananguage, ndespeciallyhe

Italiananguagen Dante'sage, gainsmuchby

being he mmediateroduct f universal atin.

There s somethingmuchmore ocal about he

languagesn whichShakespearendRacine ad

toexpresshemselves. his s nottosay,either,

thatEnglish ndFrench re nferior,svehiclesofpoetry,o Italian.But heItalian ernacularf

the late middleages was still very close to

Latin[,which]had hequality f ahighlydevel-

opedand iteraryEsperanto.. . .] Someof the

characterfthisuniversalanguageeems ome

toinherenDante'sFlorentinepeech. (17)

Ignoring the fact that Italian was a vernacular

chosen by Dante as a clear alternative o Latin,

Eliot insists on its linear descent from that uni-

versal language.This descent gives it a heredi-tarypower: hepowerof centralizedurisdiction,the power to bind one word to one meaning.Dante's Italian, so described,is a language ho-

mogeneousbecausehegemonic.It will not toler-

ate foreignnuances. It means the same thingto

anyreaderanywheren theworld.

Eliot's Dante, in short, is a Dante blessed

with anabsolutesovereignty.Thatsovereigntys

notonly wieldedby a Latin-likeItalian, t is fur-

therconsolidatedby one particulargenre, alle-

gory,a genrethatdictatesa unityof response,asingle,predictable, nd rresistible low of visual

data."Allegorymeansclear visualimages,"Eliot

says; t alignsoureyeswiththepoet's; t "make[s]us see what he saw."TheDivine Comedy s able

to bind all its readers o a singleregimeof mean-

ing because "Dante'sis a visual imagination."Thatvisual maginationmakesthepoettheunop-

posed rulerof his poem, for "speechvaries,but

oureyes are all the same" 22-23).

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I80 Literatureor the Planet

"There s a ster and didacticprofileto the

Dantewhom Eliotconjuresup,"SeamusHeaneynotes. This orthodox Dante tells us something

about the context in which he is read,for whatEliot is looking for (and what he eventually

finds) is Christianfaith: "salvationby conver-

sion"(Heaney,"Government"8). Mandelstam's

Dante s verydifferent.Orthodoxyhas no appealto this reader,for unlike Eliot he is gleefully a

lost soul, gleefully unregenerate,not Christian,

and not entirelyJewish.16Havinghadhis fill of

the stern anddidacticlanguageperfectedby the

Soviet government, he has no wish for more.

Mandelstam'sDante,as Heaneyalso pointsout,

is a Dante beloved for his imperfect authority,his failure to bend his lips to an official shape:"not an allegory-framerup to his old didactic

tricks in the middle of the journey, but a lyricwoodcuttersinging in the darkwood of the lar-

ynx"(95).ThislyricalDante, nvokedby a reader

who knows somethingabout the eyes of Stalin,

is not a visualpoet at all. He is decidedlyaural.

And he is auralbecause, for Mandelstam,the

ear is the most unruly (and therefore the least

tractable)of all ourorgans.An auralpoet, onewho writes withthe earand who is in turnheard

with the ear,has no supervisorypower,no con-

trol over the reader, a handicap Mandelstam

translates nto a gift:

It seems to me thatDantemade a careful

studyof all speechdefects, istening loselyto

stutterersnd ispers, o nasal wangsand nar-

ticulatepronunciation,and that he learned

much rom hem.

Iwouldvery

much iketospeak

about heau-

ditory oloration fCantoXXXIIoftheInferno.A peculiar abialmusic:"abbo"-"gabbo"

-"babbo"-"Tebe"-"plebe"-"zebe"-"converrebbe."t's as if a nursehadpartici-

patednthecreation f phonetics.Nowthelips

protruden achildishmanner,owtheyextendintoaproboscis.

The labialsformsome kindof "numbered

bass"-basso continuo, namely, the chordal

basis of harmonization.They arejoined by

smacking, uckingandwhistlingsounds,and

alsobydental"zz"and"dz" ounds.

I pulledouta single threadatrandom: a-

gnazzi-riprezzo-guazzi-mezzo-gravezza.Thetweaking,smackingandlabialexplo-

sives donot ceasefora singlesecond. .. .]

Suddenly,or no apparenteason,a Slavic

duck begins quacking: Osteric, Tambernic,

cric(theonomatopoeicord orcrackling).

("Conversation"75-76)

The quackingof the Slavic duck in the Divine

Comedyis not surprising.It shows how shakythepoem is on the territorialront,how tenuous

andindefensible its Italianness. The poem was

Italian o beginwith,butthere s nothingto stopit frombeingheardsubsequentlywith a Russian

accent, for the ear is a domain in which native

andforeignsoundscanmeet,canrecombine, an

tradeattributes,edrawing honeticand semantic

maps as they go. No walls can be thickenoughhere to block off suchhybridizingspirals.To a

Russianreadercomingacrossthe wordsOsteric,

Tambernic, and cric (Inferno 32.25-30), the Di-

vine Comedycan indeed sound Russian. And

even though such aural crossovers are inter-

mittentrather hansystemic,they indicatewhat

happensgenerally when a text becomes extra-

territorial,when it is acted on by the literal and

metaphoric translations"f aforeignear.17

Aurality s a dynamicprocess.Mandelstam

links it in particularto one activity, reading.

Readingallows theear to comeintocontactwith

tonguesnot spoken n its vicinity, o hear oreignechoes in the midst of nativespeech.To a prac-ticed readerthe hearableworld is nothing less

than theplanet

as awhole,

thickwith soundshumanbeings have made across the width of

the globe andacross the length of history.It is

the habitof reading,then, thatmakesDante an

auralpoet:

What s Danteanrudition?

Aristotle, ike a double-wingedutterfly,s

edgedwith heArabianorder f Averroes.

Averrois,he il gran omento eo

(Inferno, IV, 144)

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I6. I

Here the Arab Averroesaccompanies he

GreekAristotle.Theyarebothcomponents f

thesamedrawing.Theycanboth indroomon

the membrane f a singlewing.The conclusion f Canto Vof theInfernos

trulyanorgyof quotations. findherea pureandunalloyeddemonstration f Dante'skey-board f references.

A keyboardtrollaround he entirehorizon

of Antiquity. omeChopinpolonaisen which

anarmedCaesarwith a gryphon's yesdances

alongsideDemocritus,who hadjust finished

splittingmatternto atoms.

("Conversation"55)

The orgy of quotations s not only Dante's hall-mark, t is Mandelstam'sas well. Quotationsdo

not have to be foreign,buttheycanbe. No border

patrolcan stop them.This breach of territorial

sovereignty s the startingpointfor a globalcon-

tinuumof words. It is thepoint wheretemporalandspatialdistancesbreakdown,wherechrono-

logical jumbles andjurisdictional umbles pro-duceweirdoffsprings.DantespeaksRussian,and

he speaks some fifty other languages.18These

translations-all differentand all denationalized,

not governedby any one regime-make up the

global phenomenoncalledthe Divine Comedy.The globalization of Dante is, in part,the

workof time in the centuriesafterhis death.But

even from the beginning,fromthe extraterritor-

ial leapspropelling ts "keyboard f references,"the Divine Comedyhas always been global, as

global as a fourteenth-centurypoem can be.

Mandelstamhere singles out threeforeign lan-

guages crucialto its making:Greek,Provencal,

and Arabic. These languages he identifies bywayof fourhuman igures,some obvious,others

not: Aristotle, Democritus, Chopin, andAver-

roes. Dante's debts to Aristotle are, of course,

largeandacknowledged,beginningwiththe ex-

travagant ributesin the Convivio (whereAris-

totle appearsas the masterof humanreason and

the perfectionof ethics [Lansing162-63; 4.6])

and modulating, in the Divine Comedy, into

somewhatmoretemperedallusionsto theEthics,

WaiChee Dimock I81

the Physics, and the Metaphysics.19Likewise,

the troubadoursare familiar figures in Dante:

Bertrande Born, ArnautDaniel, and Girautde

Borneil are named in De vulgari eloquentia(2.2.7-8) andreappeareven more dramaticallyin Purgatorio, n the formof nearlythreetercets

of Provencalspoken by Arnaut.20Finally (and

in keeping with the intellectual fermentof the

Middle Ages), Arabic scholarshipalso has an

importantpresencehere, showing up in the per-son of Averroes, the twelfth-century philoso-

pherwho appears wice in the Divine Comedy21

and whose influenceon Dante is sometimes said

to be comparableo Aristotle's.22

For Mandelstamthis Islamic presencein a

Christianpoem sums up the politics of "erudi-

tion."The DivineComedy,according o his often

unshared udgment,is as shakyon thereligiousfront as it is on the territorial.23Nor is this all.

Whatmakesthepoemeven shakier s thetempo-ralheresyit espouses,thewayit incitesadjacen-

cies, creatingcoupleswhohave no chronologicalreason to be seen side by side. "Havingcom-

binedtheuncombinable,Dante altered hestruc-

tureof time."Whatresults is a "synchronismofevents, names and traditions severed by cen-

turies" "Conversation"82). Mandelstampaystribute o this temporalheresy by writingoff the

fifteenhundredyears separatingAverroesfrom

Aristotle. The two arepairedup, both of them

contemporaries f Dante's n thefourteenth en-

tury.To add to theoutrage,he throws n Chopin,not exactly around when Dante was alive but

eventuallyto be born,the supposedFrenchness

of whose music he tracesto Florentineorigins.And he does notstopthere.Forgood measurehe

also throws n Democritus, nvokedby Dante in

Inferno 4.13624 and catapultednow from the

fifthcenturyBC to the fourteenthandonward o

thetwentiethandbeyond.Heretical s too mild a

wordfortheDivine Comedy huscreated,a tem-

poral monstrosity that, to quote Mandelstam

again, features "[s]ome Chopin polonaise in

which an armedCaesarwith a gryphon'seyes

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I82 Literature or the Planet

dancesalongsideDemocritus,who hadjust fin-

ishedsplittingmatter ntoatoms."

This might seem a bizarredescriptionof a

medieval poem, but Mandelstam is trying tohighlight a giddy voluminousness peculiar to

Dante,innocentof anything hatmightbe called

chronological decorum. Balloonlike, Dante's

metaphorsyoke togethertermsso disparate,so

perilously strung out, as to leave the poem

hangingby a hairacross vast temporalandspa-tial distances. Somethingof thatgiddiness can

be seen in thesefamiliar ines fromParadiso 12:

As two concentricrcsofequalhue,

areseen astheybend hroughhemistycloudswhenJuno ells herhandmaidoappear-

theouter rom he nneroneanecho,like to the ongingvoice ofherwhom ove

consumed smoring sunconsumes hedew-

andreassurehepeopleherebelow

thatbythe covenantGodmadewithNoah,

theyhavenoneed o fearanother lood-

evensothosesempiteralroseswreathed

twingarlandsound s as theouterone

was ovingly espondingo the nner.5

Dante seems to see nothingwrongwith mixingGreekmythology andbiblical allusions, men-

tioningJunoand herhandmaid, ris,goddess of

the rainbow, n the samebreathas Noah andthe

Flood. Also in the same breath he mentions

Echo, consumed by her love for Narcissus as

dew is consumed by the morning sun, until

nothing is left of her but her "longing voice."

Jupiter'sheavens andJehovah'sheavens seem

to have merged into one. The same rainbow

brightensthe horizonsof both.And nimblefig-ures of speech move from one to the other:

Echo is boththename of a nymphandthename

for the mutuality of the blessed revolving in

theirconcentriccircles. Thanksto Dante, cen-

turies of readershave swallowed such temporalheresieswithbarelya gulp.26

ForMandelstam uchtemporalheresiesare

the largestgifts poetryhas to offer,to readerand

writeralike. This claim is not the familiar one

about the "timelessness"of literature.Mandel-

stam'spointis muchmoreinteresting han that.

Tohim the"anachronism"f theDivineComedy

("Conversation" 82) comes about not becausethepoem is timeless butbecause it is timeful.It

is full of time, denselypopulated,home to each

of the centuries bearing signs of human life.

Thisis a homenotnumberedby a metric,notse-

quenced by a chronologicalaxis. A continuum,

it grantsadjacencyto any two points in spaceand time. And since it goes forward as well as

backward,it stretches the life of every finite

pointto a potential nfinity.Thisis whyAristotle

andAverroesarebothhere,whylatecomers uch

as Chopin can be included, andwhy Democri-

tus, exponent of an ancient "atomictheory"in

the fifth centuryBC, can be said to have lived

out his extended ife through he extended ife of

thepoem, survivingwith the help of theDivine

Comedy o splitmatter nto atoms in the twenti-

ethcentury.27

An "anachronistic"poem, as Mandelstam

uses the term,is one thatmakesthe worldboth

cumulative and nonsequential. It gathers to-

getherall

coordinates,all

pointsin the life of

theplanet, payingno attention o theirsupposedre-

moteness or proximity. In this way, the human

species articulates tself across space andtime,its signaturecoterminouswith its habitat. As a

formof durationandextension, iterature s thus

a heresy,aninsult andan affront o thefiniteness

that s the normof biologicalorganismsand ter-

ritorial urisdictions.This heresyallows human

beings to have a collective life, not identicalto

the life span of a perishable individual or of a

perishablenation.Againsttherobustcontinuumof the Divine Comedy,eitherof these life spans

mightlook like "lessthan a winkof theeyelash"

(O.Mandelstam, Conversation"54).

Mandelstam,who learned about Einstein

during his stay in Kharkov (N. Mandelstam,

HopeAbandoned74; Brown,Mandelstam97),

mighthavereferred o thiscontinuumas therela-

tivityof simultaneity.Hein factbeginsone of his

essays,"On heNatureof theWord,"withan ex-

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plicittribute o Einstein:"Due to thequantitative

changein the contentof eventsoccurringovera

given time interval, he conceptof a unitof time

hasbegunto falter,and t is no accident hatcon-temporarymathematical science has advanced

theprincipleof relativity"73). Toanyone ivingunderStalin,relativityof simultaneity s not an

esoteric dea.It is a livingfact,apolitical act,the

only recourseagainstthe absolutetyrannyof an

absolute ynchronicplane.A long pastanda longfuturearesignsof hope.Andhopelessness,con-

versely, s to be trappedn a timeslot,changelessanddimensionless.Beingthustrappeds thecon-

dition of hell. Buthell, Mandelstamalso insists,

is no more thana temporaleffect, the effect of anow that has everythingunder its thumb. That

thumbshrinks n size the moment we canbringto bear on it a different ime scale, differentverb

tenses. This, for Mandelstam, is the central

meaningof Inferno 10,a meaningthatpits him

notonly againstStalin butalso againstDante the

Christianpoet.Againstbothhe readsInferno10

as a canto driven by contrary"forms of verb

tenses:theperfectiveandimperfectivepast,the

subjunctivepast,even thepresentand thefutureare all categorically and authoritatively pre-sented"("Conversation"256). This jumble of

tenses is occasionedby Dante andVergil'svisit

to thesixthcircle of hell,thecircle of theheretics.

Among these none is moreheretical thanFari-

nata, that proud and unregenerateGhibelline,

who, hearing heFlorentine peechfromDante's

tongue,cannothold his own tongue.

Dante, alreadyfrightened,drawscloser to

Vergil.Now the presenttense enters the scene,

in a little cry of annoyance. Vergil has no pa-tience with Dante's slinkingandshrinking,and

he is not too ceremonious n his response:"Turn

around:Whatareyou doing?"'Volgiti:che fai?'

(my trans.;10.31).Most readerswould see this

as anoffhandrebuke.Mandelstamurns t into a

capsulesummaryof hell, hell as a verbtense:

Thehorror f thepresent enseis givenhere,some kind of terrorpraesentis. Here the unal-

loyed present s takenas a signintroduced o

wardoff evil. Thepresent ense,completelyisolatedfrom boththefutureandthepast,is

conjugatedikepure ear, ikedanger.

("Conversation"56)

The horrorof the presenttense is perhapsmore

vivid to Mandelstamhan o Dante.Still, evenfor

the latter,hell is hell becauseits time is overde-

termined,because its tormentshave an iron ne-

cessity,a hereandnow fromwhich all doorsare

closed. What is strikingaboutFarinata, hough,is that for him the doors arenot closed, at least

not thedoorto thepast.It remainsopen,andthe

trafficthrough t is constant anduninterrupted.Farinata's ove for Florenceis as lively as ever;

its familiaraccentsstirhim even in hell. Indeed,

it soon becomes clear thatFarinata s "in"hell

only in the weakestpossible sense. No full con-

tainmentcomes with thatpreposition.His heart

and mind are elsewhere, still caught up in the

past, a Florentinepast in which he takes great

prideandwhichforhimremains he eternalref-

erencepoint. It is fromthatreferencepointthat

he asksDante,"Whowereyourancestors?"Chi

fuor li maggiortui?' (my trans.;10.42).Hereof

all places ancestryis still the firstthing to find

out.The questionis rude,crude,effortlesslyin-

sulting,becauseFarinata, reatnobleman hathe

is, still has therightto exact thatbit of informa-

tion andinjust thattone of voice.Whentold,he

lifts his eyebrowsa little,half in recognitionand

half in disdain. And he persists in both veins:

"Bitterenemies of mine they were / and of myancestorsandof myparty; I hadto scatter hem

notonce buttwice."28Even in hell whatmattersthemost to Farinatas thememoryof thatscatter-

ing, thegrimsatisfaction f it, notoncebuttwice.

Thatmemory s untouchedby hell and s forever

untouchable. orFarinatas his memory:a mem-

oryprior ohellandexternalo hellandenfoldinghimforever n thatpriority ndexternality.

To Mandelstamthe powerfulpast tense of

"Chi fuor li maggior tui?" explodes "like a

mighty tuba."29Hell does not exactly crumble

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with thatsound,but it is no longer what it was.

Its eternalpresenthasbeen punctured, hownto

be not sovereign, not absolute, not even gov-

erned by a single verb tense. It cannot banishthe echoes of an alien tongue, and it cannot

erase the memories of an earthly city, both of

which make a mockery of its less than unified

now. Indeed,hell does not even have the powerto inflict the worst suffering on its inmates.

When told by Dante that the Ghibellines have

been defeated and sent into exile but,unlikethe

Guelfs, have not "learned he art"of returning,Farinata ounterswith this lament:"Iftheyhave

badly learned thatart,[. . .] it is worse torment

to me than his bed [. . .]."30 ustas he lovesFlor-ence the best, so he is painedthe most by what

he sees as its reverses.Nothingin hell can com-

pete with that.Farinatawill neverbe anythingother than what he was: a Florentine, a Ghib-

elline, someone who lived by the sword and

reveredonly the sword.No lengthof sojourn n

hell wouldmake him a well-behaved nmate.

Surprisingly, he powerof the past tense is

not evenuniqueto Farinata, o haughty, o mag-

nificent,and so obviouslya heretic.Canto 10 is

not the sole habitat of one individual.Another

Florentine is there. This turns out to be Caval-

cante,father of Dante'sbest friend,Guido. Lis-

tening for some time to the exchange between

Dante andhis neighbor,Cavalcante can finallystand it no longer.Suddenlyraisinghimself up,he looks aroundeagerlyto see if anyoneis with

Dante.Not findinganyone,he criesout:

"Wheres myson?Why s henotwithyou?""Idonot come

alone,"said o

him,"that newaiting ver hereguidesmethroughhere,

theone,perhaps ourGuidoheld nscorn."

[. . . . . . . . .

Instantly,e sprangohis fullheightandcried,"What idyousay?Heheld? s henot iving?TheDay'ssweet ightnolonger trikes iseyes?"

Andwhenheheard hesilenceofmydelayrespondingohisquestion, ecollapsedintohistomb,nottobeseenagain.31

LikeFarinata,Cavalcante s Florentine,but he is

almost the opposite of his compatriot.Mandel-

stam is not the only one to notice the relation

between these two heretics. Erich Auerbach,writingMimesis n Istanbulafterhis banishment

from Nazi Germany, s also struckby the pair-

ing of FarinataandCavalcante.32 orAuerbach

canto 10 is structuredby threeabrupt nterrup-tions: first the interruptionof Vergil andDante

by Farinata,then the interruptionof Farinata

and Dante by Cavalcante, and finally the re-

sumptionof Farinata's peech, as if Cavalcante

hadnot spoken.Each of these shifts is so violent

that "its connection with what precedes is not

mere juxtaposition but the vital relationshipof counterpoint."Farinata's firm and weighty

words, the stately balance of his syntax, give

way to Cavalcante's "irregularandplaintively

thronging questions" (Auerbach 156, 158).33

The civic and military glories of Florence are

now set aside, leaving a single tie, an affective

tie, in the foreground.Cavalcante oves Guido,

believes in his genius, andwants him to be still

alive, his eyes bathed in the sweet light of Tus-

cany.He wants him to be Dante's honoredcom-

panion n this tourof hell. But Guido s nowhere

in sight. Not seeing him and catching Dante's

words-"held in scorn" 'ebbe a disdegno'-hecan only repeatthat verb in dumbterror:"What

did you say?He held?Is he not living?" 'Come

dicesti:"Egliebbe"?non viv'elli ancora?'

Ebbe,a slip of a word,will travelacrossthe

centuries, coming home to Mandelstam as the

sound of the "fatedpastperfect."34 s in the ex-

changewithFarinata,he humandramahere re-

volves around a dramatized verb tense. Thekinshipbetweenthe two inmates is all the more

significant in the light of their obvious differ-

ence. For Farinata he wordfuor is summoned

with all due deliberation; for Cavalcante the

word ebbe falls like a bolt from the sky. Still,the two are the same:bothtemporalheretics. In

his single-mindeddevotionto his son and in his

devastation at the (mistaken)news of Guido's

death,Cavalcanteturnsout not to be a slave to

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WaiChee Dimock

the now of hell, just as Farinata s not a slave.

Cavalcante'sreferencepoint too remainsante-

rior and exterior. He too will never be anythingother than what he was: a

weakling,too

easilybroken,too easily given to despair,butpriorto

hell in just thatweakness, not a full-time resi-

dent of the sixth circle.

Farinata ndCavalcante, ne larger han ife,

the othernot,togethergive voice to theheresyof

an unofficial timetable. This heresy infiltrates

andpermeateseven where it does not altogetherliberate.Bursting hrough he supposedlyclosed

doors of hell, it clashes as a "mighty tuba" or as

"an oboe or clarinet" (0. Mandelstam, "Conver-

sation" 257). Either way, it lets loose the force oftheunsynchronized,herelativityof simultaneity.Thatforcebreaksuptheterritorialovereigntyof

hell. It also breaksup anotherkind of territorial

sovereignty.The Soviet Union had never been

airtight:Mandelstam nd Dantemade t less so.

NOTES

l "TheStalinEpigram" BrownandMerw

Ero TOJICTbIeaJIbubI, aKqepBs, )KlpHbI

[.........]

TapaKaHbHMeioTcaycmima

[.........]KaKHnoaKOBbIyeT3a yKa3OMKa3

KoMyBnax, KOMy jio6, KOMy 6poBb,I

LITOHl Ka3Hby Hero, - TOMaJIMHa

1MlIPOKag rpyAb oceTlHa.

"TheStalinEpigram,"never writtendown bt

to a small gatheringof friends,mustbe read i

with a laterpoem, an ode apparentlyn praise

the latter, ee Brown,"Into heHeart";Coetze2N. Mandelstam,Hope againstHope4. F

umentation ee Maggs;Shentalinsky.3No doubt for this reason,the Divine Cot

importantto many other Soviet authors, inl

Akhmatova,JosephBrodsky,andAleksandrS4

"Relativityof Simultaneity"s the title o

stein'sRelativity:TheSpecialand theGenerai

5Fora generalcritiqueof this territorial

Gilroy;for a specificcritiqueof the "insularit

toricism, its "nationalandmonolingual"bias

xiii-iv. It is useful to recall,as Gellnerdoes, t

in 70).

andsocial organizationare universalandperennial.States

andnationalismsarenot"(5).

6For a suggestive critique of Anderson, see Bhabha,

esp. 157-61.7

The line "No,mozhetbyt', poeziia sama- / Odna ve-likolepnaiatsitata" s from Akhmatova'spoem "Ne povto-riai- dusha voiabogata" Pollak4).

8BrownandMerwin65.

Ce6a ry6s, ce6e npoTliBopeqa,KaKMOJnbIeTITHa oroHeKnOJIHOqHbIH,

MHe xoqeTca yRiTH 13 Hamefi peli

3a Bce, qeMsio6al3aHi 6eccpoqHo.

[. . . . . . . . .

'Iyxaa peqb MHe yaeTo060IosIKoi,

M1MHOropeKace,qeMafCMeji oj,lTbCI,16yKBoii6bIJI, bIJIB4HorpajHOiCTpoIKofi,

A1KHlroii6biJI,KOTOpaaaMCHMTCa.

("K HeMeuKoiie'iM"; MaHaeJbmITaM9-70)9 W niebezpieczeistwie strzykwadzieli sie na dwoje

[ . . . . . . . ..]

Potrafimy ie dzielic, och prawda,my takze.

Ale tylkona cialo i urwanyszept.Na cialo i poezje.

10 . Mandelstam Greene68).

Ha KpacHoiinjioinaAwBceroKpyrJieireMJi1

1 cKaT e TBepgeeT o6poBoJIbHbIi.

Ha KpacHoiinjioinaMi3eMJiaBceroKpyrJIei,1 CKaTe HeIaaHHHoa3aoJIbHbIfi,

OTKH,bIBaScbHM3OpMCOBbIXojieii,-

roKyga Ha 3eMJIe ocjieaHIHimKBHeBOJIbH4K.(MaH,eJIbmITTaM1)

11Forthe importanceof Dante to Brodsky,see Bethea

52-73.

12Latham187;"Florentinus atione non moribus" Epi-stola xviii).

KOMYrJIa3. 13Botterill 11, 13; 1.6. "Nam quicunquetam obscene

rationis est ut locum sue nationis delitiosissimum credat

(McDuff130) esse sub sole, hic etiamprecunctisproprium ulgare icetur,idest maternam ocutionem [...]. Nos autem, cui mundus

recited nlyest patriavelut piscibus equor [...]. Et quamvisad volup-

nconjunctlon tatem nostram sive nostre sensualitatis quietem in terris

amenior ocus quamFlorentianonexistat,revolventeset po-

:e. etarumet aliorumscriptorum olumina,quibusmundusuni-orfurtherdoc- versaliter et membratim describitur,ratiocinantesquein

nobis situationes varias mundi locorum et eorum habitu-medywas also dinem ad utrunquepolum et circulum equatorem,multascluding Anna esse perpendimus irmiterque ensemus et magis nobiles et

;olzhenitsyn. magis delitiosaset regiones et urbesquamTusciam et Flo-*f h. 9 of Ein- rentiam,undesumusoriunduset civis, et plerasquenationesITheory. et gentesdelectabilioriatqueutiliorisermoneutiquamLati-

paradigm,see nos"(Botterill10, 12). Dante thengoes on, in 1.15.2,to sin-

y"of new his- gle out for praise the poet Sordello, who, though born in

s, see Wallace Mantua,abandoned his native tongue and wrote in Pro-

that"[c]ulture venqal,when composingnot only poetrybut any discourse

I85i 6. I

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i86 Literature for the Planet

whatsoever("qui,tantuseloquentievirexistens, non solum

in poetandosed quomodocunqueoquendo patriumvulgare

deseruit" Botterill34]).14Bloch sees paternityas a sovereign tropein Dante's

model of linguistic derivation(43). While De vulgari elo-quentiadoes arguefor a single "illustrious talianvernacu-

lar" 'latiumvulgare illustre' (Botterill 46-47; 2.1.1), this

illustriousoffspringis parentedby multipleand decentral-

ized local dialects. In De monarchia,Dante likewise argues

for a world government, working against sovereign states

andespecially againstthepope (Henry).15 Theconceptof noise is also importanto many scien-

tificdisciplines.See Moss andWiesenfeld;McClintock.

16In his youth, to sidestepthe Jewishquotaandgainad-

mission to the Universityof SaintPetersburg,Mandelstam

had converted o Christianity.As Brownpointsout, suchan

opportunisticmove hardlysignalsany deepfaith of Mandel-

stam's(Mandelstam 6). For Mandelstam's omplicatedne-

gotiationswith his Jewishness,see Cavanagh104-45, 193-

214; Pollak.17Translationheory s a broad ield. See esp. Steiner.18The Divine Comedyhas been translated nto at least

these anguages:Albanian,Arabic,Aramaic,Armenian,Azer-

baijani,Basque,Catalan,Chinese,Czech,Danish,Dutch,En-

glish, Esperanto,Finnish,French,Georgian,German,Greek,

Hebrew,Hungarian,celandic, rish,Japanese,Korean,Latin,

Latvian,Lithuanian,LowGerman,Macedonian,Moldavian,

Norwegian,Pahlavi,Polish,Portuguese,Provenqal,Roman-

ian, Russian, Sardinian,Serbo-Croatian, lovak,Slovenian,

Spanish,Swedish,Ukrainian,Urdu,Welsh,andYiddish.

19 n Inferno4.131-32 Aristotleappearsamongthe vir-

tuous pagans. Furtherreferences to him appear n Inferno

11.79-84, 11.101-05; Purgatorio 3.40-43; Paradiso

24.133-35, 26.37-39.

20Araut's Provenqalspeech is perhapsthe most obvi-

ous instance of multilingualism n the Divine Comedy:"So

muchdoes yourcourteousquestionplease me that I neither

can nor would conceal myself fromyou. I amAraut, who

weep and sing as I go. I see with grief past follies and see,

rejoicing, the day I hope for before me. Now I beg of you,

by that goodness which guides you to the summit of the

stairway,o takethought n due time for my pain."

Tanm'abellis vostre cortesdeman,Qu'ieuno me pueseni voill a vos cobrire.

Ieu sui Amaut,que plore vaucantan;consirosvei la passada olor,

e vei jausenlo joi qu'esper,denan.

Ara vos prec,per aquellavalor

quevos guidaal som de l'escalina,sovenha vos a tempsde ma dolor!

(Sinclair342-43; 26.140-47)

For the relation between Dante and Arnaut, see Barolini

112-14. For Bertran de Born, who appearsin Inferno 28,

see Mazzotta92-95.

PMLA

21Inferno4.144: "Averroes,who made the greatcom-

mentary" Averois,che '1grancomento feo' (my trans.).In

Purgatorio 25.63-66 Averroes is referred to indirectly:

"which once made a wiser than thou to err,so that in his

teaching he made the possible intellect separatefrom thesoul,becausehe did not see anorganappropriatedy it."

che pii savio di te fe gia errante,

si che persua dottrina e disgiuntodall'animal possibileintelletto,

perchedalui nonvideorganoassunto

(Sinclair326-27)

In De monarchia, discussing the multiplicity of creatable

things,Dantesays, "With his belief Averroesaccords n his

commentaryon the treatiseConcerningthe Soul" 'Ethuic

sententie concordatAverrois in comento superhiis que de

Anima' (Henry13;1.3).

22In the Middle Ages Averroes was known primarilythroughhis commentaryon Aristotle. See Walzer 1-37. For

Dante's "Averroism" ee Gilson 126-27, 157-58, 168-71,

259-62. Mazzotta discussses Purgatorio 17 and the Vita

nuova in the context of Aquinas's critiqueof Averroes(12,

122-27).23For a persuasive account that contradicts Mandel-

stam's,one that sees the Divine Comedyas centrallystruc-

turedby an anti-Islamdeology, see Menocal.

24 "Democritus, who ascribed the world to chance"

'Democrito,che '1mondoa caso pone' (mytrans.).25Musa 144-45; 12.10-21.

Come si volgon perteneranubedue archiparallelie concolori,

quando unonea sua ancella ube,

nascendodi queld'entroqueldi fori,

a guisadel parlardi quella vagach'amorconsunsecome sol vapori;

e fannoqui la genteesserpresaga,

perlo pattoche Dio con Noe pose,del mondo che gia maipiunons'allaga;

cosi di quelle sempiterne ose

volgiensicircanoi le dueghirlande,e si l'estremaall' intimarispose.

(Sinclair 174)

26

Of course, it is Christian heology-Christian teleol-ogy-that enables Dante to see the entire courseof time on

the same synchronicplane.In this sense Dante is not hereti-

cal at all.27

By "atoms"Democritusmeans small nvisibleparticles

differingfrom one anotheronly in size, shape,and motion.

The moder atomic theory is farmoreelaborate,assigningto atoms an internal structurewith neutrons,protons,and

electrons.

28Musa 160; 10.46-48. "Fieramente uroavversi a me

e a miei primie a miaparte, si che perdue fiate li dispersi"

(Sinclair134).

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I 6.I ]

29"Conversation"257. He makes a slight errorhere,

misquoting he line as "Chifuo li maggiortui."30"S'elli hanquell'arte[.. .] male appresa, ci6 mi tor-

mentapiuche questoletto"(Sinclair137; 10.77-78).

31Musa 160; 10.60-63, 10.67-72.

mio figlio ov' e? perchenone ei teco?"

E io a lui: "Da me stesso non vegno:colui ch'attende a perqui mi mena,

forse cui Guidovostro,ebbe a disdegno."

[. . . . . . . . .]Di subito drizzatogrido:"Come

dicesti: 'Egliebbe'? non viv'elli ancora?

non fiere li occhi suoi il dolce lome?"

Quandos'accorse d'alcunadimora

ch' io facea dinanziallarisposta,

supinricaddee piunonparve ora.

(Sinclair134, 136)

32ForAuerbach'syearsin Istanbul, ee Lerer.33Auerbachpoints out that Cavalcante's lines "might

have been modeled after Andromache's inAeneid, 3, 310,

that s, aftera woman's amentations"158).34"Conversation" 57. "[E]bbea disdegno"are three of

the most puzzled-overwords in the Divine Comedy.For a

readingof these words, see Singleton.Durlingsumsup the

ambiguityof the verb tense: "inaddition o its meaningas a

past absolute (Guido habituallydisdained), a passato re-

moto (Guido at a specific time did indeed disdain), or as a

passato prossimo(Guido ust now disdained),"t also stands

"as aperfect(Guidono longerdisdains)" 24-25).

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