[lbo-talk] in which lbo-talk defends 'the sopranos'

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Oct 6 08:29:34 PDT 2004


Ted Winslow wrote:
>
> Justin wrote:
>
> > The Divine Comedy is based in
> > premises most of us reject.
>
> " [clip] And when there are more souls above who love,
> there's more to love well there, and they love more,
> and mirror-like, each soul reflects the other."


> Dante, The Divine Comedy [Mandelbaum translation], Purgatorio, Canto XV

Justin said "based on premises," which does not (necessarily) include every passage. True propositions/images can be grounded in false premises.

The passage you quote is not one I would choose for my argument, but I believe it does, at least glancingly, include the Aristotelian/Scholastic premise that nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses -- which would rather leave out, for example, 25-dimensional spheres.

And one of the finest passages in the inferno, re the souls who remained neutral, was cited recently on some list (this one?) in defense of a political premise I find positively offensive. I don't think one shifts millions of americans from reflex patriotism to anti-imperialism by calling them willfully ignorant. The ordinary resident of an atomized capitalist social order has a perfect right to stay out of the crossfire and mind his/her own business without being put in the same ante-room with Celestine V:

And he to me: "These miserable ways

The forlorn spirits endure of those who spent

Life without infamy and without praise.

They are mingled with that caitiff regiment

Of the angels, who rebelled not, yet avowed

To God no loyalty, on themselves intent." .......

I, who looked, beheld a banner all a-strain,

Which moved, and, as it moved, so quickly spun

That never a respite it appeared to deign.

And after it I saw so many run,

I had not believed, they seemed so numberless,

That Death so great a legion had undone."

Hell [Binyon translation], III, 34-57]

That last line reverberates through the reactionary poetry of T.S. Eliot. (That's not a slam at Eliot but a mere observation.)

Carrol

P.S. The 20th century aversion to inverted syntax in verse goes back to Pound, who had nasty things to say about those who used that criterion to object to Binyon.



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