Kitabı oku: «Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie – Studienausgabe», sayfa 16

Dante’s addresses to the reader (1953/54)

Rudolfo BultmannBultmann, R. septuagenario

There are some twenty passages in the Commedia1 where DanteDante, interrupting the narrative, addresses his reader: urging him either to share in the poet’s experiences and feelings, or to give credence to some miraculous occurrence, or to understand some peculiarity of content or style, or to intensify his attention in order to get the true meaning, or even to discontinue his reading if he is not duly prepared to follow. Most of the passages concerned are highly dramatic, expressing, towards the reader, at the same time the intimacy of a brother and the superiority of a teaching prophet. Professor Hermann GmelinGmelin, H., who has listed and discussed them in a recently published paper,2 is certainly right in saying that the addresses to the reader are one of DanteDante’s most significant style patterns, and that they show a new relationship between reader and poet.

Indeed, it is difficult to find anything similar in earlier European literature. Formal address to the reader was never used in classical epic poetry, such as VergilVergil’s or LucanLukan’s. Elsewhere, it was not unknown, but almost never reached the level of dignity and intensity present in DanteDante. OvidOvid addresses his reader fairly often, mostly in the Tristia,3 apologizing, asking for pity, or thanking the reader for his favor which promises the poet eternal glory. These addresses are still more frequent in Martial’s Epigrams;4 MartialMartial creates an atmosphere of witty and polite intimacy between the public and himself. There are, indeed, a few passages on his literary fame which have an accent of earnestness and solemnity;5 but everywhere he considers the reader as his patron, and his attitude is that of a man whose main object is to win the reader’s favor. There are some casual addresses in ApuleiusApuleius’ Metamorphoses6 and in Phaedrus;7 that is all, as far as I know. One may perhaps add certain funeral inscriptions such as the famous epitaphEpitaph of a housewife: hospes quod deico, paullum est, asta et pellege …8 All these examples have little in common with DanteDante’s style.

In the Middle Ages, addressesMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader, or to the listener, were rather frequent in poetry, both Latin and vernacular. But there, too, the form was mostly used somewhat casually and without much emphasis: asking for attention, announcing the content, apologizing for deficiencies, sometimes moralizing or asking the reader to pray for the writer. Examples from medieval Latin poetry can easily be found in the anthologies or in Raby’sRaby, F. J. E. History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages.9 As for vernacular poetry, GmelinGmelin, H. has quoted (pp. 130–131) some introductory passages from ChrétienChrétien de Troyes de Troyes’ Cligès and Ivain, and from the Chanson d’AspremontChanson d’Aspremont (Plaist vos oïr bone cançun vallant …). Such addressesMittelalterAnrede im MA are very frequent in the Chansons de gesteChanson de geste,10 as they are in ancient Germanic poetry. One may add the beginning of the Passion of Clermont-FerrandPassion v. Clermont-Ferrand, or of Aucassin et NicoleteAucassin et Nicolete. In this latter poem, there is also the recurrent formula si com vos avés oï et entendu. Observe, finally, that the first chronicler in vernacular prose, VillehardouinVillehardouin, G. de, constantly addresses his narrative to the reader, using phrases such as: Or oiez … or Lor veïssiez. Most of these forms are not very emphatic; they help give to Villehardouin’s prose that air of solemn story-telling which is one of its charms. The tradition continued with many later chroniclers in the vernacular; it may have some importance for our problem, since VillehardouinVillehardouin, G. de was, like DanteDante, a man who tells the story of a journey to those who have remained at home.11

There appears in the Middle Ages another type of address to the reader, less casual and more urgent: the religious appeal. It is, obviously, nearer to DanteDante’s style than anything we have hitherto encountered. For if DanteDante’s sublimity is VergilianVergil, his urgency is AugustianAugustinus.12 Most of the medieval examples are not addressedMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader as such; but to mankind in general, or to the hearers of a sermon. They are very numerous, typical specimens are Bernard of Morlaix’sBernhard v. Morlaix De contemptu mundi or Alexander Neckham’sAlexander Neckham De vita monachorum. Similar forms occur also in the vernaculars. One may recall the beginning of Marcabru’sMarcabru crusade-song, basically nothing but the usual call for attention; however, the subject confers upon it much greater intensity:

Pax in nomine Domini !

Fetz Marcabrus lo vers e’l so.

Auiatz que di !

Before ending this rapid inventory, let me say a few words regarding ancient and medieval theories of rhetoricRhetorik. The theorists have never described or listed the addressMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader as a special figure of speech. That is quite understandable. Since the ancient orator always addresses a definite public – either a political body or the judges in a trial – the problem arises only in certain special cases, if, with an extraordinary rhetorical movement, he should address someone else, a persona iudicis aversus, as QuintilianQuintilian says. He may, in such a moment, call on somebody who is present, e. g. on his opponent, as did DemosthenesDemosthenes with AeschinesAeschines, or CiceroCicero with CatilineCatilina – or on someone absent, e. g. the gods, or any person, living or dead – or even an object, an allegorical personification – anything suitable to create an emotional effect. This rhetorical figure is called apostropheApostrophe,13 and it very often has the character of a solemn and dramatic invocation,14 which interrupts a comparatively calmer exposition of the facts. The classical apostrophe no doubt exercised a deep influence on DanteDante’s style; it was in his mind and in his ears. But it is not identical with the address to the reader; this address constitutes a special and independent development of the apostrophe.

Nor did the medieval theorists mention the addressMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader as a special figure of speech, for they did nothing but imitate or adapt their precursors in Antiquity to their needs and to their horizon. They do describe the apostrophe; one of the most important, Geoffroi de VinsaufGeoffroi de Vinsauf, devoted some two hundred verses to such a description.15 He considers the apostropheApostrophe as a means of amplification and uses it for moral purposes: his examples are meant to serve as an admonition against pride and insolence, as an encouragement in adversity, as a caution against the instability of fortune, etc. They are highly, indeed pedantically, rhetorical; the purpose of ‘amplification’ is unpleasantly evident throughout. But they are put in the second person, and thus directly addressed to the persons or groups or countries which are supposed to invite criticism or admonition (Geoffroi uses the word castigare). In this respect they closely resemble ‘addresses to the reader’.

DanteDante’s address to the reader is a new creation, although some of its features appear in earlier texts. For its level of style, i. e. its dignity and intensity, it is nearest to the apostrophe of the ancients, – which, however, was seldom addressedMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader. The compositional schema of DanteDante’s addresses recalls the classical apostrophe, especially the apostrophe of prayer and invocation (Musa, mihi causas memora …). In both cases the basic elements are a vocative and an imperative (Ricorditi, lettor, or Aguzza qui, lettor). Both may be paraphrased and, in some instances, replaced by other forms. The most frequent paraphrase of the vocative is the solemn invocation known from classical poetry: O voi che …, or its humbler variant, the simple relative clause: (Immagini) chi bene intender cupe (much as in the Old French introductions Qui vorroit bons vers oïr). The vocative is an essential element of the address to the reader as well as of the apostrophe in general; the imperative is not essential. The ancient invocational apostropheApostrophe can be complete without any verbal addition (μὰ τοὺς Μαραϑῶνι προϰινδυνεύσαντας …). The address to the reader may be introduced into any discourse or statement whatsoever. There are passages in DanteDante where the imperative is paraphrased by a rhetorical questionRhetorische Frage or by some other expression of the poet’s intention, as in the following verses from the Vita Nuova:

Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,

i’ vo’ con voi de la mia donna dire, …

Others are even without any imperative intention at all (Inf. xxv, 46: Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento; Purg. XXXIII, 136: S’io avessi, lettor, più lungo spazio …; Par. XXII, 106ff.: S’io torni mai, lettor. …). But these passages too possess the specific intensity of DanteDante’s addresses.

There are two passages in the Commedia where DanteDante uses the noblest and most suggestive pattern, the O voi che form with the imperative: one in Inf. ix: O voi ch’avete li intelletti sani, and the other in Par. II: O voi che siete in piccioletta barca … / Voi altri pochi che drizzaste il collo. … It is definitely a classical pattern; DanteDante knew many passages (apostrophesApostrophe, not addresses to the reader) from classical Latin poets which may have inspired him. There are frequent examples in earlier medieval Latin poetry also (see fn. 9), but DanteDante’s Italian verses have much more of the antique flavor and of what was then called ’the sublimesublimitas’ than any medieval Latin passage I happen to know. DanteDante has used this form long before he wrote the Commedia, at the time of his youthful Florentine poetry. The earliest example seems to be the second sonnet of the Vita Nuova (7). It is not addressed to the reader (no readers are mentioned in the Vita Nuova; the corresponding addressesMittelalterAnrede im MA in this work are either the Donne amorose or, more generally, the fedeli d’amoreFedeli d’amore, and, on one occasion, the pilgrims who pass through the city of Florence). This second sonnet begins as follows:

O voi che per la via d’Amor passate,

attendete e guardate

s’elli e dolore alcun, quanto ’l mio, grave.

This is, obviously, not a classical inspiration, but a paraphrase, or even a translation, of a passage from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1, 12): O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus. Indeed, DanteDante has in some way diverted its meaning from the prophet’s original intention; he does not address everyone who happens to pass, but only those who pass by the rather esoteric way of love: the fedeli d’ AmoreFedeli d’amore. But a little later, in the final chapters after the death of Beatrice (29 and ff.), when he again quotes the Lamentations (Quomodo sedet sola civitas …), the development leads to a new address and apostropheApostrophe, this time directed to a much larger group of persons: Deh peregrini che pensosi andate … (Sonnet 24, ch. xli). And after many years, or even decades, he again several times chose to quote the motives of the first chapter of the Lamentations: in the apostrophe to Italy, Purg. VI, 78ff. (non donna di provincie, ma bordello), and in the Latin Epistola VIII written in 1314 to the Italian cardinals. In the meantime, his horizon had widened; he had long since ceased to address his verses to an esoteric minority. The range of his ideas now comprehended the whole world, physical, moral, and political; and he addressed himself to all Christians. The lettore in the Commedia is every Christian who happens to read his poem, just as the passage in the Lamentations was addressed to everyone who happened to pass through the streets of Jerusalem. DanteDante had reached a point where he conceived his own function much more as that of a vas d’elezione, a chosen vessel, than as that of a writer soliciting the favor of a literary public. Indeed, from the very beginning, he never had the attitude of such a writer. Although he expects glory and immortality, he does not strive for it by trying consciously to please the reader; he is too sure of his poetic power, too full of the revelations embodied in his message. Already in the Vita Nuova, his charm is a kind of magic coërcion; even though much of this work is an expression of grief and lamentation, his voice very often sounds no less commanding than imploring: calling up those who have intelletto d’amore, and ordering them into the magic circle of his verses (recall also the Casella episode in Purg. I).

But only in the Commedia does the accent of authoritative leadership and urgency reach its full strength – and it is there linked to the expression of brotherly solidarity with the reader. The Favete linguis of HoraceHoraz, the musarum sacerdos (Carm. I, 3), may be comparable to DanteDante’s addresses for its authoritative sublimity – still, it remains quite different. It lacks DanteDante’s actual urgency; DanteDante is much nearer to the reader; his appeal is that of a brother urging his fellow brother, the reader, to use his own spontaneous effort in order to share the poet’s experience and to prender frutto of the poet’s teaching. O voi ch’avete li intelletti sani, / mirate … It is as sublime as any ancient apostropheApostrophe, but has a distinctly more active function: incisive, straightforward, upon occasion almost violent, yet inspired by charity; a mobilization of the reader’s forces. To be sure, the imperative echoes VergilianVergil apostrophes, but these were not addressedMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader; VergilVergil did not, as DanteDante does, interrupt an extremely tense situation by an adjuration, the content of which, in spite of its urgency, is an act of teaching. Inciting emotions and teaching were separated in ancient theory and very seldom combined in practice.16 DanteDante’s mirate presupposes the Christian vigilate; it presupposes a doctrine centered around the memory and the expectation of events. It occurs at a moment of present danger, immediately before the intervention of Grace – just as another passage, comparable in many respects, though lacking the figure O vos qui: Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero (Purg. VIII).17

Other addresses to the reader are less dramatic, but almost all contain an appeal to his own activity. Very often, the imperative is pensa (pensa per te stesso; pensa oramai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno:18 in other passages it is ricorditi, leggi, immagini chi bene intender cupe, per te ti ciba, and so on. The pedagogical urgency is sometimes very strong, as in one passage just mentioned (Inf. XX, 19ff.):

Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto

di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso.

or in the following encouragement to the reader confronted by an example of very severe and deterrent punishment in the Purgatorio (X, 106ff.):