Augustine on figure

Right at the beginning of On The Trinity Augustine sets forth a theory of the mode of the Bible. It is made for little people, even children. It has not avoided words from any class or level of speech or style; it runs the gamut from humble materiality to transcendent divinity, and it speaks of both corporeality and spirituality. 

Augustine is essentially describing the Biblical mode of speaking as unlimited in range, capable of speaking of anything -- much as Erich Auerbach has noted, particularly in the first chapter of Mimesis. Th Bible's books, unlike the stately aristocratic artifice of Homer, Pindar, or the Greek tragedians, does not impose any linguistic policing upon style or content. It depicts God, man, creation and history without suppression or privilege.

In order, therefore, that the human mind might be purged from falsities of this kind, Holy Scripture, which suits itself to babes has not avoided words drawn from any class of things really existing, through which, as by nourishment, our understanding might rise gradually to things divine and transcendent. For, in speaking of God, it has both used words taken from things corporeal, as when it says, "Hide me under the shadow of Your wings;" and it has borrowed many things from the spiritual creature, whereby to signify that which indeed is not so, but must needs so be said: as, for instance, "I the Lord your God am a jealous God;" and, "It repents me that I have made man."

Vt ergo ab huiusmodi falsitatibus humanus animus purgaretur, sancta scriptura paruulis congruens nullius generis rerum uerba uitauit ex quibus quasi gradatim ad diuina atque sublimia noster intellectus uelut nutritus assurgeret. Nam et uerbis ex rebus corporalibus sumptis usa est cum de deo loqueretur, uelut cum ait: Sub umbraculo alarum tuarum protege me. Et de spiritali creatura multa transtulit quibus significaret illud quod ita non esset sed ita dici opus esset, sicuti est: Ego sum deus zelans, et: Poenitet me hominem fecisse. (De Trinitate 1.2)

There is, however, one thing -- or order of things -- that's off limits:

But it has drawn no words whatever, whereby to frame either figures of speech or enigmatic sayings, from things which do not exist at all.   

De rebus autem quae omnino non sunt non traxit aliqua uocabula quibus uel figuraret locutiones uel sirparet aenigmata. 

Note that what is translated as "frame" is the verb figurare -- to form, fashion, shape -- which happens to be cognate with the Italian verb figurar that Dante uses in speaking of his own modes of representation. Upon reaching the stars, having made a leap beyond the spatio-temporal bounds of realism, naturalism, historical mimesis, the poem states that it now cannot speak except in figure -- there is no possibility of literal, or proper, representation, except in the sole instance of this precise metapoetic, or metalinguistic statement. To say "all is figure" is a proper, literal description of the condition and predicament of being unable to speak properly or literally.

One philological sidenote: Augustine says that the Bible uses no words, whether as locutions or enigmas, drawn from things that have no reality whatsoever. There is no Chimera, for example. Curiously, the manuscript uses a word that has puzzled commentators: sirparet (or scirparet) is not, as far as anyone seems to find, an actual Latin word. One suggestion that has been accepted by some is that the text is corrupt, and that Augustine meant to write spissaret -- literally, to thicken or condense, which could here be used figuratively to describe the semantic opacity of enigmatic expressions.

The Bible, says Augustine, would not use enigma where the actual sense or referent of the enigma does not in fact exist. This would appear not to rule out enigmas concerning things that do exist. Of course, given that either way it's enigma, the difficulty of ascertaining whether the ontological status of the mystery hidden beneath a given enigmatic speech can properly be decided might at times be problematic.

To be sure, the author of a 15-book treatise on the Trinity -- surely one of the greatest enigmas of the Judeo-Christian tradition -- would understand the importance of being able to tell the difference between a real enigma and a Chimera. The status of his own text in fact requires him to be rigorously clear about it. The point of this brief post is not to unravel that complexity in Augustine, but rather to suggest that Augustine's precept about the representational, figural, and allegorical range of Biblical language does appear a worthy description of the robust vernacular Dante chose as the vehicle for his own journey. As we proceed from the stars to realms even further from Nature, we should be prepared for locutions, figures and perhaps enigmas that go beyond what the Commedia has hitherto employed.

Convien saltar: Leaping past mimesis in Par. 23

“Tu se' sì presso a l'ultima salute,”
cominciò Bëatrice, “che tu dei
aver le luci tue chiare e acute; 

e però, prima che tu più t'inlei,
rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo
sotto li piedi già esser ti fei;

sì che 'l tuo cor, quantunque può, giocondo
s'appresenti a la turba trïunfante
che lieta vien per questo etera tondo.”

"Thou art so near unto the last salvation,"
  Thus Beatrice began, "thou oughtest now
  To have thine eves unclouded and acute; 

And therefore, ere thou enter farther in,
  Look down once more, and see how vast a world
  Thou hast already put beneath thy feet; 

So that thy heart, as jocund as it may,
  Present itself to the triumphant throng
  That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether." (Par. 22:124-132)

This is the moment in Paradiso 22 when Beatrice explains to Dante why he must look back and take in all that he has experienced up to this point, at the threshold of the stars. Before you "in yourself further," (tu più t'inlei), she tells him, his eyes must be clear and sharp, so that having looked back upon all below, Dante's heart can present itself to the coming throng "as jocund as it may" -- quantunque può, giocondo.

The pilgrim's look back, then, is related to the capability of his heart to be giocondo as he turns to the joyous throng coming towards him. Giocondo suggests happiness, light-hearted ease. Its etymology goes back to a mixture of something that is both helpful and delightful - a playful lightness of being:

The poet describes the world beneath his feet as his vision gathers it in -- it seems one vast organism. When he turns back to the oncoming joyous throng, his vision again fails him. It's only when the "sun" (Christ) removes itself to a great distance that Dante begins to see. What is is about to see is the human mother of God. But it is a curious sort of seeing:

Il nome del bel fior ch'io sempre invoco 
e mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse 
l'animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco;  

e come ambo le luci mi dipinse 
il quale e il quanto de la viva stella 
che là sù vince come qua giù vinse,  (23:88-93)

 The name of that fair flower I e'er invoke
  Morning and evening utterly enthralled
  My soul to gaze upon the greater fire. 

And when in both mine eyes depicted were
  The glory and greatness of the living star
  Which there excelleth, as it here excelled,

The poet doesn't say "Maria" here, but describes what the "name of the beautiful flower" does: it constrains him to gaze intently at "the larger fire." His experience of beginning to see Mary proceeds from her name, which, we learn, he invokes every morning and evening. The power of this word is such that "the quality and quantity of that living star, that conquers up there as it did down here, depicted itself upon both my eyes."

The strangeness of what's happening here bears noting. We have depiction - the greater fire's quality and quantity paints itself upon both his eyes. We could simply "see" this as another quaint flourish of poesy, but if we look closely, it's harder to say what's going on with this inversion. Instead of the poet's eyes, "unclouded and acute," presenting what is before him, that which is before him represents itself upon both (ambo) his eyes. The commentators appear to agree that what the poet "means to say" here is that his eyes reflect (rispecchiare, i.e., "mirror") what is before him. But if that's so, then we ought to be able to say what is being reflected. Here we are somewhat at a loss. Is it a beautiful flower, a greater fire, a living star, or . . .? Our commentators seem better prepared to state what the poet means to say than they are able to say what his saying actually means.

Instead of a mere reflection of a thing, we have something painting (dipinse) itself upon the eyes. Whatever else this suggests, it reverses the act of representation -- displaces the copyist, painter, or mirror from the eye, mind, memory and poetry of Dante to that which is standing before him. If anything, his eyes, rather than unclouded windows, are now the canvas, slate, or page upon which something is representing itself. And that's not the worst of it. That something in front of Dante could be fire (maggior foco). Fire is the necessary enabling condition of depiction, but what would it mean for fire to depict, i.e., re-present, itself? I'm sure I'd forego the risk of fire representing itself upon both my eyes.

Verisimilitude -- realistic or probable resemblance to any thing or act we can visualize or imagine -- here fails. The only actual thing the passage indisputably gives us is an indirect reference to a sound, the name of Mary. What appears upon his eyes unfolds from a name. The rest is figuration - but upon what ground?

Ground is missing here. Part of the lightening of being, the condition of giocondità, is the jettisoning of gravity.

We have been prepared for this. Dante told us earlier in the canto that his poem has to make a leap to even begin to speak of what's coming in the final ten cantos of the Paradiso:

e così, figurando il paradiso, convien saltar lo sacrato poema, come chi trova suo cammin riciso. (23:61-63)

Mere representation, mimesis, is out of the question. What's coming cannot be described, painted, represented. His first apprehension of the mother -- the human being who became the queen of heaven -- presents us with this impossibility via a passage so strange and difficult to read as to defy mimetic interpretation. And, being Dante, this undoing of representation is performed through the the language of mimesis:

The word depinse is used here not to depict anything, but to turn representation inside out.

Nothing is quite what it seems here amid the stars. Vision is made possible by the removal of light. Properties of entities -- il quale e il quanto -- paint themselves. One's finger burns before it's put into the flame. Nothing comes before or after; representation and presence intermingle. Fire leaps up, pursuing a greater fire.

Mothers, suns, and figural leaps in Paradiso 23

The stunning figure of the bird that opens Paradiso 23 speaks of ardent expectation - of light, which will enable this mother to see the aspetti disiati, the longed-for sight, of her nestlings, and then have visibility to go find food for them.

The overall thrust of the passage lies in the anticipation, through the long night "that hides things from us," of the enabling light. The bird will not be given food,;she will be given the sight of her newborns, and sufficient light to find food for them.

Many critics hear echoes of Paolo and Francesca -- of the disiato riso they were reading about; of the lovers now endlessly in flight, but coming at a call like a bird to her nest. John Freccero pointed out that for the damned lovers, there was no nest, no point of closure. Unlike the lovers, the bird of the simile will return to the nest, but only after having garnered food. She is giving life, as mothers do.

There's a more chilling echo here, perhaps less noted. Through the night, this mother cannot see the faces of her chicks, who are hungry. This blindness is temporary, unlike the hunger-blindness of Ugolino, when, after he and his starving sons hear the tower door nailed shut, he gropes in the dark, saying nothing to the children who beg him to eat them so he might live.

===============

Beatrice is the bird, ardent even before she sees the light that sets her face aflame. The sky lightens, and she tells him what is coming:

                            “Ecco le schiere
del trïunfo di Cristo e tutto 'l frutto
ricolto del girar di queste spere!”

There are schiere, bands or ranks of troops -- and the fruit harvested (ricolto) from the wheeling of these spheres. Here, we have no idea what Beatrice is actually seeing, but her figures bring together the instruments of triumph and of triumphal procession, and the image of a bountiful harvest.

The harvest builds upon the imagery of millstones, threshing floors, and bread woven throughout the canticle, prefiguring this moment. When the poet, at Beatrice's word, turns to see, we get more similes -- at first the bright sun making all the stars shine:

vid' i' sopra migliaia di lucerne
un sol che tutte quante l'accendea,come fa 'l nostro le viste superne;

Saw I, above the myriads of lamps,
  A Sun that one and all of them enkindled,
  E'en as our own doth the supernal sights,

We might recall that on Jupiter, this figure of the sun illuminating the stars appeared at the opening of Paradiso 20. But now it's not a simile, yet it is still a figural sun brightening the starry sphere. This Sun not a "real" sun; this shining substance (lucente sustanza) too powerful for the poet's eyes is emanating from Christ, and the harvested fruits are souls. Are they also, here in the starry sphere, stars?

The fact that this light, as powerful as it is, is not the actual vision of Christ is underscored by the simile that introduces it - the "Sun" is introduced figuratively as the moon -- as Trivia, linked with Diana, accompanied by shining nymphs:

Quale ne' plenilunïi sereni
 Trivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne
 che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni,

As when in nights serene of the full moon
  Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal
  Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs,

Beatrice describes what Dante is not able to look at as "a power (virtù) from which there is no shelter." This is the power, and wisdom, acting in human time,

ch'aprì le strade tra 'l cielo e la terra
 onde fu già sì lunga disïanza.”

that opened the roads between heaven and earth
for which of old there had been such long desire.

To connect roads that had been blocked, broken, cut off implies that at one time the way was intact. Before the Fall, heaven and earth were linked, and now, thanks to Christ, the road is restored. The introductory figure of Trivia now becomes legible in a new way: just as the goddess Hecate linked the three realms (Tri-via) of the pagan world (as Cynthia, Diana, and Persephone), so Christ acted in time to open the way for the children of men to return to their true home.

To bring together disjunct realms within sacred history is much what poets do with metaphor: they unite, though the exchange of attribute, disparate entities. The poetic function of figure, whether simile, metaphor, or other trope, yokes unlike things. If David the singer of Psalms was the archetypal poet-ruler, Christ is the new David, re-joining earth and heaven in his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

===============

What's remarkable is that after speaking of this irresistible power that restored a path for men to go from earth to heaven, the poet undergoes a metamorphosis. He can't remember it, but he knows it took place because he is stronger. Without trauma, he looks at Beatrice, who is smiling.

He then goes on to say how, had he the inspirations of all the muse-suckled poets who ever sung, he could not begin to describe the beauty of Beatrice's smile, and, since this is the case, he is at an aporia with regard to "picturing Paradise."

 e così, figurando il paradiso, 
convien saltar lo sacrato poema, come chi trova suo cammin riciso.

And therefore, representing figuring Paradise,
  The sacred poem must perforce leap over,
  Even as a man who finds his way cut off;

In becoming able to see his guide fully, the poet has become stronger, but this very strength enables him to see his weakness -- the inadequacy of his ability to represent her smile. He has more than that to "figure" -- there is il paradiso. For that, the poem must "leap," like a man whose path is cut off. The poet does not have a way to do what he must do, what the savior did -- convey us, in figure, to il paradiso. Yet Beatrice tells him to turn from her and see:

Quivi è la rosa in che 'l verbo divino
carne si fece;

There is the Rose in which the Word Divine
Became incarnate;

The "battle of the feeble brows" begins again - and he begins to figurar il paradiso.

What form does this figuration of Paradise assume? When he turns from Beatrice, the poet resorts to simile: sunlight breaking through clouds, rendering vibrant a meadow; so far, it's a simile "like" his actual experience of Matilda in Eden. But then, he sees a Rose that is a living star, the mother of Christ, regina coeli. Is he now seeing Mary in her glorified flesh?

Certainly brilliant readers do see it this way. Instead of dwelling on it, however, the poet speaks of how this could occur: It's possible, he says, because Christ has "leapt" up far enough -- a distance so vast that the poet is no longer blinded by his light.

O benigna vertù che sì li 'mprenti,
 sù t'essaltasti per largirmi loco
 i li occhi lì che non t'eran possenti.

O power benignant that dost so imprint them!
  Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope
  There to mine eyes, that were not strong enough.  (23:85-87)

The sacrato poema proceeds because the Sun recedes. If in sacred history Christ advanced to restore the road, here he allows the sacred poem to jump the aporia by retreating. He performs a sacrifice of light that empowers vision rather than annihilating it.

This ought to alert us to read the next passage with particular care. The poem has made a leap. If we take it "at its word," then something other than the customary tropes could be at work. We'll see.