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Pain and Sexual Pleasure in Dante Alighieri and T. S. Eliot

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Pain and Sexual Pleasure in Dante Alighieri and T. S. Eliot LOVE' S TORMENT: PAIN AND SEXUAL PLEASURE IN DANTE ALIGHIERI AND T.S. ELIOT by Maria A. Romano A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 1997 Copyright by Maria A. Romano 1997 11 LOVE'S TORMENT: PAIN AND SEXUAL PLEASURE IN DANTE ALIGHIER1 AND T.S. ELIOT by Maria A. Romano This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Priscilla M. Paton, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory com­ mittee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Thesis Advisor v/ ~~~ c2 L Chairperson, Department of English r ~ ~ / V1A e -td ./__, _ ~ ~£; 4 ' ~ - I?- 27 D ~f~uate Stud:saJ1~ Research d Date \II ABSTRACT Author: Maria A. Romano Title: Love's Torment: Pain and Sexual Pleasure in Dante Alighieri and T.S. Eliot Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Priscilla Paton Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1997 Sexual pleasure, for the male writer, has been accompanied by pain for centuries. Italian poet Dante Alighieri presents a paradoxical treatment of lust by exploring pain and pleasure in Canto XXVI of "Purgatory" in The Divine Comedy. Over four hundred years later, Dante's sexual ideology would evolve into misanthropy and misogyny in T.S. Eliot's poetry. The poetry's aggression towards women begins with "The Love Song Of 1. Alfred Prufrock," escalates in "La Figlia che Piange" and "Gerontion," and reaches a violent pinnacle of misanthropy in "Sweeney Erect." Although T.S. Eliot attempted to emulate Dante's passion, his contorted visionary work chose the language of renounced, rather than consummated, sexual desire. Eliot's poetry seeks to mimic Dante's philoso­ phy on love and pain expressed in Canto XXVI of "Purgatory," but all that emanates is a sense of pity, loss, and disgust. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER !. ..................................................................... .. Dante's Concept of Pleasure and Pain CHAPTER II ........................................................................ 13 The Evolution of Pleasure and Pain in T.S. Eliot EPILOGUE............................................................................ 28 WORKS CITED...................................................................... 30 v For my Mother and Father CHAPTER I Dante's Concept of Pleasure and Pain The sexual relationship between a man and a woman has enchanted and puzzled the male writer for centuries. Within the modernist tradition ofliterature the conflict between spirit and flesh, and the attempt at their ideal fusion, perplexed Thomas Sterns Eliot. The peculiarly tension-wrought sexual libido expressed throughout Eliot's work has sources in the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Dante lays the groundwork for the mod­ ernist paradoxical treatment of lust by exploring the interrelations of pain and sexual pleasure in Canto XXVI of"Purgatory" in The Divine Comedy. Centuries later T.S. Eliot would create his own interpretation of Dante's sexual ideology concerning the relation of pain and sexual desire. Dante's exploration of the relationship between pain and sexual pleasure, as well as the effects of desire on man, would evolve over four hundred years later as misanthropy and misogyny in T.S . Eliot's poetry. Dante was indisputably a man of enormous intellectual energy. Critic Wendy Benge states Dante was impelled "to find his happiness in discovering the raison-d' etre of his existence" (13). The bond between desire and knowledge in Dante is aptly described by the theories of Jacques Lacan in L' acte psychanalytique , his unpublished seminar from 1967-1968. Lacan refers to the three poles that constitute knowledge. The third pole Lacan describes applies to Dante's quest for knowledge: The third (pole) is the object which may be described as a falling of a piece of the real onto the vector which runs from the symbolic to the imaginary... The third pole that is knowable, then, is what emanates from this object a, jouissance. Lacan envisioned the analyst at a delicate point in the middle of jouissance, knowledge (an imaginary function of idealization), and truth, at the place of a hole in knowing, being, and feeling he called the place of desire. (Ragland-Sullivan 2) The Italian poet spent his lifetime in search of truth or the "falling piece of the real," finding his desire could only be satiated once he was placed in "a hole" of knowing. For Dante, like Lacan, the concept of truth was linked to desire which was repeatedly found in the presentation of the bodies of his fictional souls. The souls he depicts in The Divine Comedy in Canto XXVI of"Purgatory" places the reader in the "delicate point in the 1 middle ofjouissance, knowledge .... and truth." Realization of the truth that we are all fallen souls makes the reader feel uncomfortable as one honest spirit reveals: And ours was a hermaphroditic sin, but since we did not act like human beings, yielding instead, like animals, to lust, when we pass by the other group, we shout to our own shame the shameful name of her who beastialized herself in beast-shaped wood.1 ("Purgatory," Canto XXVI, II. 82-87) Each of the souls depicted is "a falling piece of the real." Dante's powerful imagery evokes our own shame. Desire and the drive to obtain knowledge become connected through the poet's narrative, which runs as Lacan would say, from "the symbolic to the imaginary." In Body Works: Objects of Desire in Narrative Literature Peter Brooks states: The desire can be a desire to possess, and also a desire to know; most often the two are intermingled," sometimes indistinguishable. The libido amandi, the libido dominandi, and the libido capiendi (lust for love, for power, for knowledge)---,-have always been closely allied in Western philosophy and literature. (Brooks 11) Benge continues to state Dante's "joy was in knowledge, in the apprehension of truths of all kinds, proving unbounded and insatiable . The Divine Comedy is Dante's testa­ ment of how he momentarily attained that divine goal, quenched that insatiable thirst, while still in life" (13-14). It becomes apparent to the reader that Dante's ability to satiate his thirst for knowledge and desire is the quality that attracted Eliot to Dante as the mod­ em writer struggled with his concept of sexuality. Dante's relentless desire for knowledge ultimately links itself to sexuality. Similar to a child's first "epistemophilic impulse," or the urge to know, Dante researched the confines of language in order to find the exact formula to express emotions (Freud 13). For Dante, the best way to explain emotions was to liken them to bodily sensations. 1Dante, Alighieri. The Divine Comedy Vol. II: Purgatory. trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin, 1988. 2 Sensations of pleasure and pain, although experiences every human understands, are gen­ erally thought to exist outside language-emotions so powerful they can rarely be accu­ rately captured by words. Peter Brooks explains: In modern narrative literature, a protagonist often desires a body (most often another's, but sometimes his or her own) and that body comes to represent for the protagonist an apparent ultimate good, since it appears to hold within itself-as itself-the key to satisfaction, power, and meaning ... Desire for the body may appear to promise access to the very raison d'etre of the symbolic order . .. Narrative seeks to make such a body semiotic, to mark or imprint it as a linguistic and narrative sign. If the plot of the novel is very often the story of success or failure in gaining access to the body-and the story of the fulfillment or disillusionment that this brings-the larger story may concern the desire to pierce the mysteries of life that are so often subsumed for us in the otherness of other people. (Brooks 8) Brooks' theories of modem narrative literature may be applied to "Purgatory" in Dante's The Divine Comedy. The souls of the lustful in Canto XXVI desire bodies and through their uncontrollable lust they find penance and an "ultimate good" through suffering. Through their intensely unfulfilled desire they are able to "access" what Brooks terms "symbolic order." Brooks may be borrowing from Jacques Lacan's first "pole that consti­ tutes knowledge." Lacan explains: "The first (pole) is the symbolic order signifier that joins the world of language to that of images and objects, creating a subject" (Ragland­ Sullivan 1). Through Dante's narrative plot in Canto XXVI, the souls attempt the "suc­ cess" of redemption, even though they have experienced the "failure" of being in "Purgatory." Dante's richly detailed descriptions link language to tangible emotions every human has experienced, and therefore enhance identification with the souls. Dante's fluidity of language is exemplified by the account of a soul on the Seventh Terrace first encountering Dante Poet:" I'm not the only one- all of us here/ are thirsty for your words, much thirstier/ than Ethiopes or Indians for cool drink" ("Purgatory," Canto XXVI, ll . 19-21). The narrative plot in Canto XXVI offers each reader a chance to piece together the mysteries oflife through the misfortunes of the souls on the Seventh Terrace. Dante is able to illustrate the pain of the souls' desire through the allegory of thirst. Like Dante's drive to know, the souls on the Seventh Terrace are satiated only through their drive for possession. The Italian poet found a linguistic formula that 3 enabled him to seemingly unravel the "mysteries of life" for his reader. Five hundred years later modernist writers like T.S .
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