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Poetic Genealogies: Paolo Valesio Reads
Gabriele D’Annunzio Writers and critics
alike have experienced difficulty in coming to terms with Gabriele
D’Annunzio’s works, especially in Italy, where D’Annunzio and
“dannunzianesimo,” as well as fascism, continue to be felt as
autobiographical phenomena. Our great poet seems to have acquired, over time,
a richer and more ambiguous interpretive dimension, absorbing an increasing
burden of questions and problems. It seems to me that
the relationship Paolo Valesio establishes with D’Annunzio in The Dark Flame, and which at first
appears a bit loose or imponderable, is firmly devoted to important issues of
ideology, poetics, and aesthetics. Valesio—who, incidentally, has contributed
highly to making D’Annunzio well known in the United States, through seminars
and conferences and through the organization of a successful International
Symposium at Yale in 1987—knows and understands D’Annunzio very well, very
deeply. This fact allows him to go beyond the obvious, and to isolate in
rather elegant, non-traditional ways, different ideas which find in D’Annunzio
a sort of connecting thread, and are of special interest to Valesio himself.
Thus, The Dark Flame should be
viewed as an original [re]presen-tation of specific moments of D’Annunzio’s
works and, even more, as a representation of Valesio reading D’Annunzio in
search of a personal definition of creativity. Here lies, perhaps,
the key to the understanding of a most interesting concept in the book,
recurring so often that it could be considered a true parola scarto: the concept of danger, of daring, and of risk
taking. If Valesio devotes attention to this notion, it is also because
writing, and writing criticism in particular, is seriously risking, since, in
his eyes, the one who writes must always “adhere to the spirit of one’s own
time and [must] identify explicitly—beyond fashion and eclecticism—those
features of the spirit of the times that are essential. In making this
choice, he or she is fully aware that the risk is of being isolated among
one’s contemporaries” (173). Consequently,
Valesio’s book rejects the traditionally accepted vision d’ensemble to propose a series of surprising inquiries
into semiohistory, poetic genealogies,
semiotic signs and living ideas:
the main living idea being the poet himself whose image, Valesio feels, still
needs to be purified of all superficial labels. But the desire to burn, to
purify, and to reshape D’Annunzio’s legacy, is, in itself, a living idea, a dark flame that is not perfectly understood, that is still
turbulent, and that has to be accepted as risk as suggested by the beautiful
title of the book. The extraordinary visual effect of the image[1] conjures up all the symbolic value of a
possible journey from darkness to light. This is the essence of mystical
experience where darkness refers to
the cloud of unknowing which always
stands between the mind and the mystery, while flame is symbolic of the intent to love and to understand. The
paradoxical quality which makes the oxymoron so suggestive of metaphysical
abjection and illumination is a first indication of another basic structural
element linking the different sections of the book. In every chapter of The Dark Flame we encounter, in fact,
a dual perspective: the presence of two models, of two ideas at times
opposite, more often complementary: literature of politics, literature and
politics (chapter 1); poetry and drama (chapter 2, 3); poetry and criticism
(chapter 4, 5, 6); poetry and prose (chapter 7); and within each one of these
categories we face the presence of two dimensions: surely light and darkness,
but also the aesthetic and the ethic; the sacred and the profane; mortality
and immortality; regeneration and degeneration. Generally speaking, however,
the book works from the awareness and offering of oppositions towards their
progressive mediation into a unified whole, into an idea which stands at
mid-point between the two polar terms, retaining something of that duality
and deriving from it an equivocal and charming character. To give an example,
one of the most compelling chapters of the book is dedicated to the figure of
the Miles Patiens, the archetypal victim
of all socially justified crimes, whom Valesio finds in many pages of the
dannunzian Notturno and in
Ungaretti’s well known poem: I fiumi.
Valesio studies carefully all the variants used to describe the man of
suffering; outlines the distinctive features of the sermo humilis, so new in the aristocratic D’Annunzio, so natural
in Ungaretti. In so doing, he weaves a tight balancing rope between the two
artists, with the supporting threads of Palazzeschi, Govoni, Pascoli, and
Vittorini and invites us to follow him in an acrobatic flight across space
and time, between water and air, after the suggestive trail of rich symbolic
images: giocoliere, acrobàta, acròbata,
saltimbanco, giullare, funambolo—to the much broader theological and
iconographical figure of the Christus
patiens, the Word-made-flesh of the Gospel, exalting death to the point
of the ultimate sacrifice. Consequently, we reach the mediating living idea of Christian solidarity
and the complementary living idea
of a poetry which, like that of D’Annunzio, was meant to be a nationalistic
and elegiac alternative to fascism. The idea of
mediation, between opposite sides of the same ideology, or concept, or
person—or between opposites tout court
is explored also in Chapter 6 (Pasolini
as Symptom), dedicated to the literature of politics, where Valesio links
and juxtaposes Pasolini’s ideology to the Vergini
delle rocce, perhaps the most original of the dannunzian novels. In this
chapter the critic also outines the distinction between scrittore e scrivente as the one between the active sign, or
interpreter of all forms of the surrounding reality, and the passive symptom,
or victim of it. “The writer renders his or her whole life a gift,” Valesio
says, and, in this sense, he becomes profoundly altruistic. This is surely
true for the critic who explicitly confronts otherness or alterity from his
own position in time, even when he attempts to escape his own historical
limitations. The only way to recompose the dualism is, once again, a
dialectical collaboration and brotherhood.
As stated already,
D’Annunzio—his works, his life, his heroism in battling the evil of time, and
in struggling against Christ and destiny—is, for Valesio, someone who does
not have to be explained. The reader desirous of clarifications and final
definitions of D’Annunzio’s adherence to and detachment from positivism, late
romanticism, impressionism, or of D’Annunzio’s mysticism, and fruitful
experimentations within the new compensatory suggestions of symbolism and
decadentism, is well advised to look elsewhere. Valesio’s D’Annunzio, is,
rather, someone who appeals to the universal and immutable constants of
nature and of mankind, and someone who, most of all, invites one to try
thoughts out and to experiment. To keep renewing one’s expectations as well
as one’s experiences and desires, simply means not giving up, ultimately not
accepting death. And perhaps creativity has no other motivation. An example of
Valesio’s cogent interpretive skills is found in chapter 1: The Beautiful Lie. Heroic individualism.
In this chapter fascism is seen as a corrupted poetic idea while
“individualism is a strategy that runs (with different intensities in diverse
ethical implementations) through several divergent poetic ideas” (32). This
is quite an extraordinary passage on the mythological roots of Stelio
Effrena’s heroic dream, delving into the complex interrelevance of
concepts—both linguistic and cognitive concepts—of the anti-Christ (or
Nietzschean), ante-Christian (or heroic, i.e. pagan), and anti-Christian, or beyond the Christian experience.
Valesio, originally and convincingly, finds the basic dialectical anthithesis
of Il fuoco, not between Stelio and
the crowd, but between Stelio and the elitist group of disciples which
surrounds him—“an elite of the twilight—of modern sophisticated poets,”
where, we suspect, Valesio would rightfully place himself. Perhaps it is not
by chance that this chapter concludes on a speculation on the absence of
Divinity in a literary genealogy. Art and life according to Valesio, and to
D’Annunzio, are subject to the same fundamental rule, which is summarized in
the last pages of “D’Annunzio versus Dante” (In Chapter 4, where Valesio
presents a systematic analysis of the ways in which Dante is present in D’Annunzio’s
work, as a most inspiring and solid sub-text). It could be said that
each chapter of The Dark Flame is
meant to outline a history of the imagination while documenting Valesio’s
full committment to thinking, writing, and teaching. This is why his display
of undeniable erudition and philological virtuosity (thoroughly enjoyable
even when it appears somewhat ad
captandum) should be read as the testimony of a spirit attentive to the
significance, the function, and the value of the poetic act. (I think, for
instance of the pages dedicated to the “gelida
virgo prerafaelita” in the Introduction
of the book as an example where consummate critical ability combines
erudition and passion). In fact, while the genealogies traced in each section of the book tend to reconfirm
the right to subjectivity in literary studies, Valesio ultimately
acknowledges, through them, the desire and the nostalgia for a time when the
poetic act enjoyed immense prestige and the presentiment, however
courageously rejected, of a time of prose
which threatens to exile the romantic dream. Not by chance, then, his genealogies move freely among poets
who are fully cognizant of their mission, men and artists who exposed
themselves to all risks on the violent side of life: military, political,
social, and artistic. Dante, Whitman, Ungaretti, and Pasolini,
notwithstanding enormous differences, believed in life as dangerous and risky
experimentation, as certainly did D’Annunzio who lived his “inimitable life”
in a radical and restless fashion. D’Annunzio was, indeed, a prodigious and
unsettling irregular, who constantly remained aware and yet unconcerned about
common taste and common practices; aware and yet unconcerned about the
linguistic as well as the ideological biases of a culture maniacally devoted
to the construction of a strong and recognizable order. For the complexity
and the depth of his poetic vision he definitely can claim for himself a link
in the genealogical chain connecting the major figures of our literary
tradition. This genealogical chain, tying and transmitting at the same time,
forms the structure and the focus of The
Dark Flame. I also see it as a magnificent protective system where the
author finds secure refuge. It is important to remember, however, that the
network of texts Valesio establishes becomes the condition from which new
poetic languages can emerge. Valesio well remembers Baudelaire’s exhortation:
“Sois toujours poète, même en prose!” and sees it as the central mode of
D’Annunzio’s writing. Perhaps we could extend it to include Valesio’s own
ambition: to be a poet even when writing criticism! It is a fact that
D’Annunzio is recognized and admired in every chapter for the “realization of
a rhythm in which the prosaic is not opposed to (rather it is united with) solemnity”
as is the case of Walt Whitman whose poetic voice—his phonetic-psychological
rhythm—is certainly the expression of a collective and national experience.
Whitman and D’Annunzio, beyond the general and valid distinction of their
poetic gaze—the vertical (therefore embracing time, history and tradition)
vision of the one and the horizontal (therefore embracing immense and
unlimited space) vision of the other—are connected in many different ways: by
the glorification of the poetic first person -narrator, by the prophetic (and
nostalgic) belief in the invigorating force of literature as the only ethical
means to exercise power on the world, by the spontaneous vitality, rather
than vitalism, of their life and work, by their pride and respect for their
own creativity. In Chapter 7 of The
Dark Flame we are presented with some of these ideas, while the analysis
of a territorial imagination,
filled with philological details, brings us to a much more important problem
of literary history: the definition of poetic prosing. It is here that we see
most clearly that the duty of the critic may become that of the poet: that of
going beyond the data, of enlarging them. Poets like D’Annunzio are modern or
high modern because they are aware
of the multidimensional aspects of our emotional, perceptual and conceptual
life. Only what is beyond, what is transitory, or engaged in a process of
metamorphosis, can enrich the present. (We know that D’Annunzio favored all
the moments in between, the ever-changing colors of things; the river running
between two banks; all those images which, because of an internal law of
mutability, or duality, suggested the poetics which stood behind them: the
idea that poetry has to succeed in balancing itself between life and death.) In The Dark Flame, each chapter is a
logical circle or spiral; in each chapter Valesio concludes his
confrontations with a huge amount of linguistic and stylistic evidence. Nor
does he appear to experience embarassment about using whatever seems
relevant, and in various languages. He brings together knowledge from
literary history and from diachronic linguistics making full sense of the
combination “language and literature” which baffles so many of us.
Literature and language are the only medicines against the evil of time passing. “Literature
unsettles every rationalistic criticism and in particular that secular
sanctification of time that is historical criticism” (66), and “rhetoric is
the principal structuring element of all aesthetic knowledge, the way in
which language questions every ontology” (68). Language and literature, that
is, originate from the same need: the need to believe and to make sense of
the psyche as well as of the world. Thus, rhetoric truly becomes the
mediating element between life and art, between action and reflection. These definitions
seem to resolve the contrast which, since the beginning, separated mythos from logos, “the pure story-telling not compelled by the need to
persuade” (Kerényi, Ancient Religion)
from the almost magical art of the word capable of charming the soul because
of the secret relations between the psyche and the harmony of language. The
two words, however, notwithstanding divisive scholarship, did not indicate
contrary meanings, and Plato himself, who first made the distinction, used
them interchangeably. What is important is that myth, i.e. poetry, is both,
verbal expertise in the present, and evocation of past events, since it
alludes to the connection of past and present. The specific and relatively
subjective terms with which Valesio orders his genealogies are then an
indication of the objective ties between the whole of the mythopoeic
imagination and the temporal world. When the myth becomes strong in literary
creation, it excludes temporal sequences in favor of the immobility of an
eternal present. In turn, when the epic moment, the mythological time par excellence, fails, or simply ends,
the mythical experience becomes an element of tragedy or is distanced in the
realm of philosophical speculation. In D’Annunzio’s case, as Valesio points
out, (chapters 2 and 3), the Laudi,
the total modern poem “on account
of the totality of its perceptive assault on the real” are followed by the
long theatrical season and by the speculative inquiries of the “prosa notturna.” In summing up, it
appears evident that the greater part of the essays composing The Dark Flame could not have been
written but by a philologist, a lover of the word, and a scholar of rhetoric,
capable of giving full relevance to the dannunzian style(s) and to challenge
traditional preconceptions. Modern criticism has not yet fully abandoned the
reductivist judgments of authorities like Croce and Borgese who strongly
dissected D’Annunzio and presented the double image of the poet and/or the
rhetorician; the poet and/or the narrator. Croce’s generalizations never
considered the poetic value of rhetorical elements nor did he, the
self-proclaimed arbiter of literary facts, ever stop to investigate the
concrete single elements of the greater part of the dannunzian work
confidently rejected as non-poetry. In his philological
mission to bring back to life what has not been noted, as well as what has
been forgotten or removed, both in the linguistic and in the cultural and
historico-political scene, Valesio does exactly the opposite and finds true
aesthetic and ethical value (the author never loses track of the two
dimensions he considers central in any literary analysis) behind the dead weight
of what was commonly considered artificial gesture: gesture the virtue, la bontà, gesture the metaphysical
anguish, gesture the suicide. Valesio reproposes and redefines D’Annunzio’s
stylistic merits never detaching them from a more global understanding of
what poetry is. And here the field of work, both theoretical and critical, is
truly vast and a lot of what has been done could be done over, in order to
establish new links between rhetoric and poetry. (I am thinking especially of
the political orations.) The Dark Flame
is a step in this direction and rightfully the author claims to have brought
D’Annunzio on the European and international stage, while studying his
relationship with all the cultural trends of his time. It is less important
to accept or to reject, fully or in part, the genealogies that Valesio proposes. (At any rate the concept of genealogy as a moving, living force
which always suggests something beyond, is much more vital and more interesting
than that of demonstrated and fixed sources.) What Valesio establishes is the
role of Homo Aestheticus that D’Annunzio
plays in the midst of European culture at the end of the century. What he
adds to this image is the ethical dimension of the man of literature, the
writer, and the soldier, still alive and active at the end of our century.[2] University
Center at Binghamton, SUNY |
[1]I think also of the masterful page Spitzer dedicates to the analysis of the “flamme si noire” which torments the dark heart of Phèdre: “Racine’s shining Phèdre is a torch that flames only for a moment before going cold; a child of her ‘brilliant’ family, she takes after Helios (the sun-god) as much as she resembles Minos. And the black/light opposition is symbolic on the one hand simply for good/evil, and on the other for conscious/unconscious.” (Leo Spitzer, “Racine’s Classical ‘piano’,” Essays in Seventeenth Century French Literature [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983] 100.)
[2]Paolo Valesio. Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Dark Flame. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1992. Pp. 269.