In a passage studded with the name “Virgilio” and written in language taken from Vergil’s own texts, Virgilio now “leaves us deprived of himself” ( Purg. In this case, while the content denotes an absence, the form works to make a presence - with the words that are addressed to one who cannot hear them, with the appropriation of Dido’s verse from the Aeneid, and with the incantatory invocations of a repeated name: “Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi / di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, / Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi’” (But Vergil had left us deprived of himself, Vergil, most sweet father, Vergil, to whom I gave myself for my salvation) ( Purg. Because of its will to force us to live its lesson of loss, to experience the shock of bereavement for ourselves, to feel it as the death of a beloved parent whose presence is still palpable, the text works at cross-purposes to itself, achieving the same kind of dialectical “living” textuality that, for instance, confounds us by both celebrating Ulysses and damning him. 157):ĭante thus inscribes his sweet father indelibly into the very syntax that tells us he is gone. Than one drop of my blood that does not tremble:Īs I wrote in “Does Dante Hope for Vergil’s Salvation?” (p. Quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto,Ĭonosco i segni de l’antica fiamma’. ( Purg.
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