from Part I - The Literary Vision
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2021
The grammatically analyzed mode in which language is presented in Dante’s written vision illustrates the proclivity of writing to shiver and splinter meaning. Writing tends to partition and fissure the presumed wholeness of sense as it occurs originally in oral communication and in the indivisible event of intuitive understanding. It is precisely the mechanical and material, the artificial and mediated aspects of language – particularly its grammatical composition out of differentiated and coordinated parts of speech – that become conspicuous in Dante’s inspired vision of the transcendent “speech” of Scripture.Astonishingly, this anatomization of writing is plied to mediate an authentically divine vision. Endless mediation of the whole by its parts, in Dante’s vision of language, provides a plausible image of the infinity and eternity of God. Yet Dante’s deconstructive vision of writing anatomized into its parts and even disintegrating into apparent chaos opens a vista driving beyond the visible altogether. If the vision of God is presented concretely in the infinite mediations of language that Dante places on display, the logic of writing (écriture) is to dis-identify the object of the vision with anything positively given. Only the differences created by representation open a perspective upon the unmediated and the unrepresentable. Realizing an apophatic logic of ineffability, Dante claims an immediate vision of divinity in what these mediations are not – in the Im-mediate. He gives us an immediate vision of the divine Word in Scripture but dissolves it, then, into infinite mediation, leaving us oriented to the source of synthesis of the endless mediations in which our existence consists.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.