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Likeness, Bewilderment, and Sweetness: the Italian Pathway to Lyrical Science

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Likeness, Bewilderment, and Sweetness: the Italian Pathway to Lyrical Science LIKENESS, BEWILDERMENT, AND SWEETNESS: THE ITALIAN PATHWAY TO LYRICAL SCIENCE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Antonio Di Fenza May 2018 © 2018 Antonio Di Fenza LIKENESS, BEWILDERMENT, AND SWEETNESS: THE ITALIAN PATHWAY TO LYRICAL SCIENCE Antonio Di Fenza, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 Scholars have defined Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti philosopher-poets, and yet, they have overlooked the implications of such articulation. In my dissertation, I clarify how these authors articulate philosophy and poetry into a single one discipline – a lyric science – devise its thinking tools, and urge us to consider love as the defining experience of human life, and the gateway to knowledge. The results of this experiment can be summarized in four key-terms which name the different chapters of my dissertation: likeness, bewilderment, sweetness, and excess. Chapter 1. “Irresistible likeness: Al cor gentil rimpaira sempre amor” is dedicated to Guinizzelli’s poetical manifesto, in which he challenges the primacy of logical argumentation by devising a mode of thinking based on resemblance, likeness. Chapter 2. “Bewildering love: Donna me prega” deals with Cavalcanti’s response to Guinizzelli’s manifesto, in which he devises a theory of bewilderment, an experience of love as destructive, disconnecting, and eventually mortal. However, Cavalcantian love also works positively, since it manifests the basic structures of human’s intellect. Chapter 3 “Unfinished praise: Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” analyzes how Dante lays out the ground work to connect Cavalcanti and Gunizzelli’s approaches into a comprehensive doctrine of love. Lightness and sweetness are Dante’s provisional solutions to transforms the deadly experience of love into a positive and salvific one, eventually lay the ground for his opus magnum, the Comedia. In chapter 4, I investigate the use of the term superchio (“excess”) in Michelangelo’s poetry in relationship to grace, love, and art. Over the course of the analysis two important traits of Michelangelo’s poetry emerge: the use of analogy to structure his verses, and the use of highly antithetical – if not contradictory – logic to express his key concepts concerning art, grace, and love. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Born and raised in Naples (Italy), I left my hometown in my twenties, and went out to see the world. My life is a catalog of the cities I lived: Milan, London, Berlin, Rome, Lewisburg, Pittsburgh, and Ithaca. As every respectable “Ulysses,” after more than ten years of wandering, I finally found my Ithaca (NY), and after seven years I’m ready to embark for a new enterprise and see where my life will take me next. I received my bachelor’s and my first master's degrees in Philosophy, with two theses on Martin Heidegger: the first one on Heidegger’s concept of tradition (2007) and the second on his use of authenticity (2009) in his early writings and his opus magnum, Being and Time. On May 2014, I was awarded with a second Master's, in Italian Literature, from Cornell University. v A mia madre, che m’insegna ogni giorno un significato nuovo dell’amore. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee for being there for me during these years, for helping me shape and conclude this impossible project, for their support throughout these incredible seven years. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to prof. Marilyn Migiel for her kindness, her passion, and her formidable scholarship: thank you for turning me into the best scholar I will ever be! Thank you, Bill Kennedy, for your availability, your friendship and your graciousness, and for leading the writing and the publishing of my first article. Thank you prof. Dubreuil for going “against me” every time there was a need (Κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεως ἔλεγχος). My gratitude goes also to some of the professors and mentors that helped me make it to Cornell: prof. Sebastiano Maffettone, prof. Pietro Maffettone, prof. Stefano Bancalari, prof. Antonello D’Angelo, prof. Paola Rodano, prof. James Swindal. Special thanks to prof. Gary Steiner, for his patience and guidance in shaping the statement of purpose which eventually led to my acceptance here at Cornell. I am deeply obliged to my family, for their support, their love and presence. For making me feel accepted, respected, and special, no matter what. Thank you mamma, babbo, Anna, Lello, Lisa, Giovanni, Gaia, Nausicaa e zio Salvatore, zia Linda, Antonio, Enrico, Veronica, and Genny (Gennariiiii!). And now, a long list. I am going to acknowledge all my chosen family, my friends, those people who have been there during these years, the people who pick me up every time I fall. Since they are many, I will divide them in “zones”, with respect to the places I lived during these past years. So, thank you to my Neapolitan friends: vii Valentina “la fenice” Galliero, Ilaria De Santo, Marcello di Sangro, Raffaele ‘Lele’ Napolitano, Alfonso Campanile, Claudio Collinet, Fabio Ferreri, Ettore Nigro, Valeria Orfeo, Marco Baldassarre. Thank you to my “Milanese” friends: Miguel Selvelli (“la potenza si compie nella debolezza”), Alberto, prof. Pigi Gatti (grazie Pigi!). My “Roman” friends: Marco Di Michele (my best friend in Rome, with his rock-solid, unshakable presence), Francesco ‘Ciccio’ lo Dico, and Francesca d’Errico (“volo ut sis”, ti ricordi?). Special guest from London, Fabrizio O’ nonn’ Caputo (I love you!!!!) Now, the Ithaca crew: thank you to my fellow musketeers: Andrew Harding (my beloved SP), Ismail el-Baggari (mon bel amie), Jena Chapman (my gorgeous twin), my Italian- American sister Julia Felice, Eddy Camacho, Kasi Dean, Esmeralda Arrizon-Palomera, Magdala Jeudi, Enrique “chiquilin” Mallada, Josefina Iannello, Jarrett Anthony, and Geoffrey Hill. Last but not least, my BRB friends and family: Kris Corda, Sander Oosterom, Steve Halabj, Francisco Diaz Klaassen, and Yagna Nag Chowdhuri. I extend my gratitude to a very special friend, an incredible woman and phenomenal scholar who has done so much for me in these days of illness and hardship: Grace Catherine (per aspera ad astra, damn it!). A separate thank you goes to: Ilaria, Eliana, Sanna, Vera, Aurora, Patrizia, Francesca, Olivia, Camille, Shalette, Elke-Esmeralda, Oneeka, Cindy. (You know who you are.) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v ACKNOWLEDGEMNTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I. THE QUEST FOR LYRICAL SCIENCE 1. IRRESISTIBLE LIKENESS: Al cor gentil rimpaira sempre amor 16 2. INTERMEZZO 1 76 3. BEWILDERING LOVE: Donna me prega 77 4. INTERMEZZO 2 152 5. UNFINISHED PRAISE: Donne ch’ avete intelletto d’amore 154 6. INTERMEZZO 3 188 PART II: EXCURSUS 7. EXCESSIVE POETRY: The use of superchio in Michelangelo’s verses 191 WORKS CITED 220 ix Introduction 1. Can there be a philosophical poetry, a poetical philosophy? Can there be a space for the articulation of prose and verse, especially in light of the fact that since Plato, these two realms of language have been seen as mutually exclusive? But what happens – or to be more precise, what happened – when philosophy and poetry simultaneously acted within the same discipline? In his Preface to Stanze, Giorgio Agamben writes that the poets of the Duecento thought about the «stanza» of a poem as a «receptacle» that contained the “joy of love” (joi d’amor).1 As he wonders about the content of such joy, he realizes that the understanding of this question is hindered by a fundamental, though forgotten, “schism” (scissione) at work in western culture since “its very inception.” This schism underpins “our entire culture” and concerns nothing less than the opposition between philosophy and poetry, between the “philosophic word” and its “poetic” counterpart (respectively, parola pensante and parola poetica).2 Questa scissione è quella fra poesia e filosofia, fra parola poetica e parola pensante, ed essa appartiene così originariamente alla nostra tradizione culturale, che già Platone poteva ai suoi tempi dichiararla «una vecchia inimicizia». […] [L]a scissione della parola è interpretata nel senso che la poesia possiede il suo oggetto senza conoscerlo e la filosofia lo conosce senza possederlo. La parola occidentale è così divisa fra una parola inconsapevole e come caduta dal cielo, che gode dell’oggetto della conoscenza rappresentandolo nella sua forma bella, e una parola 1 Giorgio Agamben, Stanze: la parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (Torino: Einaudi, 1977), xii. 2 Giorgio Agamben, Stanze: la parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale, xiii-xiv. 1 che ha per sé tutta la serietà e tutta la coscienza, ma che non gode del suo oggetto perché non lo sa rappresentare. […] In quanto accettano passivamente questa scissione, la filosofia ha omesso di elaborare un proprio linguaggio […] e la poesia non si è data né un metodo né una coscienza di sé. The schism in question is the one between poetry and philosophy, between the poetic word and the word of thought. This split belongs so fundamentally to our cultural tradition, that already Plato at his times could declare it an «old enmity». […] [T]he schism of the word is interpreted in the sense that poetry possess its object without knowing it and philosophy knows it without possessing it. The western word is therefore divided between a word that is oblivious as though fallen from the sky, a word that enjoys her object of knowledge representing it in its beautiful form, and a word that
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