James T. Chiampi 70 PAOLA RIGO MEMORIA CLASSICA E

James T. Chiampi
70
PAOLA RIGO
MEMORIA CLASSICA E MEMORIA BIBLICA IN DANTE
Firenze: Olschki, 1994. 152 pp.
Rigo's study is composed of five chapters: "La discesa agli Inferi nella
Vita Nuova" "Tempo liturgico nell'epistola ai Principi e ai Popoli
d'Italia," "Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno'," "Consorte degli dèi," and
"Prenderò Ί cappello," several of which have appeared before in
scholarly journals. This study is a joy and illumination to read: Rigo
writes on the breadth of the Dantesque corpus with equal parts of
sensitivity and erudition: she is no less at home with patristics than with
medieval philosophy and science; no less at home with the antichi
commentatori than with classical myth and tradition, and her grasp of
modern scholarship is refreshingly cosmopolitan. Moreover, her grasp
of the Commedia could truly be called synoptic, but therein lies her
major fault: Rigo hears so much reverberating in each verse that she
cannot set the interesting aperçu aside, even if it distracts the reader
from her announced theme. Of course, if she had been a sterner editor
of her work, it would not have been as abundantly provocative of new
insights.
In "La discesa agli inferi nella Vita Nuova" Rigo establishes a
continuity in the status and use of knowledge between the Vita Nuova
and the Convivio: the former not only includes the worldly knowledge
of the Convivio, but includes as well the knowledge revelation offers
that confers on this world its final meaning; thus, she argues, the
Convivio glosses the Vita Nuova without reducing its meanings to the
univocal. As Rigo puts it: "Anche il poeta può avere qui, nel mondo, un
anticipo della rivelazione completa, anch'egli può entrare negli inferi
della conoscenza e riemergerne con perfetta parola poetica" (14). Rigo
uses the comedere volumen of Ezechial 3 and the divorare [...] librum
of Apocalypse 10 to gloss the first dream of the Vita Nuova, wherein
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the fearsome lord of love forces the "donna de la salute" to eat the
poet's heart. Applying these metaphors for the understanding of
Scripture to the Vita Nuova, Rigo concludes that Love, like the biblical
God, is dictator both of knowledge and of speech, and that the horror
the poet experiences suits one whose wit lacks the technical competence
to raise him to a sublime task of utterance. On account of this, Dante
will close himself in the "silenzio di preparazione dei profeti e degli
apostoli dopo la rivelazione e prima della parola" (19), one step in a
movement that concludes in the "parlare felice dell'intelletto" (20). Rigo
passes to the "scena del gabbo" of the Vita Nuova wherein Dante,
trembling with love at the presence of Beatrice, leans against a frescoed
painting. Rigo finds among its antecedents Aeneas's tarrying, which
leads her to the conclusion that among the origins of the work are the
Aeneid, and Ezechial 8.9-10 with their commentaries. While I find this
striking and ingenious, the gloss from Ezechial, with its weight of
condemnation, does not seem to me to fit the relatively innocuous
situation of a lover at a wedding banquet. A useful study would contrast
the notion of comedere volumen, as Rigo treats it here, with the notion
of the cibus grandium in Paul and Augustine.
The brief chapter, "Tempo liturgico nell'epistola ai Principi e ai
Popoli d'Italia," makes the interesting and provocative point that the
various biblical passages cited in the epistle taken together allude to
Advent, making Arrigo a figura Christi.
"Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno'" is the longest study in the collection,
the most rewarding, and the most trying. At times it seems more
zibaldone than essay, its wealth of ideas moving in so many directions
at once. The study begins with observations recalling that the liturgical
year recapitulates the life of the individual, and that Dante's voyage
takes place during the high point of the liturgical year. In short, liturgy
conditions the narrative. Thus, Rigo compares the appearance of Statius
in Purgatory to the Resurrection (87). This seems to me to require some
qualification, since although Statius has been released from his
penitence, his body has not been restored to him, and, of course, the
"gloria in excelsis" that accompanies Statius's liberation associates it
with Christmas. When Rigo studies the episode of the Princes from
ante-Purgatory, she claims that this time suggests Lent, suspended
between fear and hope, as when the serpent appears. I confess myself
unconvinced: what suspense can there be if the serpent appears every
night and is incapable of tempting these future penitents who are saved?
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In the last part of the essay, Rigo takes the crane image of Inferno V
as her point of departure and offers a skillful study of the influence of
elements and humors on temperament. Continuing to the Ulysses
episode, Rigo notes that in the tradition of the Church fathers ingegno
is associated with fire and warmth. She makes the telling point that the
fate of Ulysses glosses antithetically that of Elijah, who was understood
to have been transported live to the Earthly Paradise. Rigo's collateral
insights into the relationship between the political and religious are
telling. Less brilliant — and restless — commentators than Rigo would
have gotten three chapters out of this.
"Consorte degli dèi" relates the transformation of Glaucus from the
Metamorphoses directly to the increasing beauty of Beatrice in Paradise
and antithetically to Adam's loss of transparency when he was expelled
from the Earthly Paradise. Studying Glaucus's interior change from
human to divine, Rigo finds the word "consorte" echoed in Ambrose
and other Church Fathers where "consors divinae naturae" refers to the
repristinization of the imago Dei that had been darkened by sin. Critics
might argue that Rigo does not distinguish between the reformatio in
pristinum and the reformatio in melius, which is the difference between
Adam in Eden and Adam in Paradise. Following the same line of
argument, Rigo takes up the fate of Marsyas and sets it in negative
antithesis to salvation, when one loses the scorza of Paul's sinful vetus
homo. This is among the strongest essays in the collection and here
Rigo writes with particular power and profundity.
"Prenderò Ί capello" studies the Poet's address to the reader in
Paradiso XXV when he imagines the return to the baptistery of
Florence that will be won by the "poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano
e cielo e terra" (1-2). There the Poet will receive "il capello," which
Rigo relates to the civic and religious traditions of manumission: i.e.,
that this translates the notion of sumere pilleum — which Boccaccio
himself translates as capello — the gesture by which the servant in
ancient Rome was freed from bondage by his patronus. Her conclusion:
"Come per fede Dante diviene e si conferma cittadino della città celeste,
cosi per poesia egli spera di confermarsi cittadino della città terrena"
(142). Rigo suggests that if Dante had simply meant to allude to poetic
coronation, he would have used such words as corona or serto.
However, I find myself wondering that if this is manumission pure and
simple why earth and heaven set their hands to the poem and not to the
poet, as in the above quotation? Let me add that throughout the poem
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the place where earth and heaven meet is first Eden then Calvary, where
the wounds inflicted by Eden were healed, and finally Purgatory itself,
so the poem participates in their figuration as in their task. It should be
clear by now that virtually every page of Rigo's study contains some
novel and unique insight. She raises important questions and offers
important contributions to their resolution.
JAMES T. CHIAMPI
University of California at Irvine,
Irvine, California