[Italian version] *
Had Gérard Genette had this research on the relationship between the Divina Commedia and the Lectura super Apocalipsim by the Franciscan friar Petrus Iohannis Olivi (1248-1298) amongst his Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1982), whilst studying paratext, he would have certainly assigned an important place to this case and identified a new type in the numerous hypertext case studies. Therefore, Dante would have shared the front row with the multitude of palimpsest authors (who had transformed or imitated in various ways previous works) with Corneille, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Joyce, Borges and others.
1. Philologically comparing the two works, one in Latin, the other in the vernacular, as presented in this research, the illustrious literary theorist would have chanced upon intertextualities that are not immediately evident (for example, Rev. 1:16; 4:2-5; 5:8; 6:8; 8:8-9; 11:18; 16:15). Were they just due to common parlance? How could this be so, since they are found repeatedly in different passages of the two texts? Such a widespread phenomenon could not be established by comparing the Commedia with works that Dante knew well such as the Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas or De Civitate Dei by Saint Augustine. Specific references to other texts by Virgil, Ovid, Lucan or Boethius are always limited. Was it really something that could be called ‘intertextuality’?
Examining the relationship between the two texts, Genette would have noticed the following rules that bind B (the Commedia) to A (the Lectura super Apocalipsim):
a) Groups of words in the Lectura are found again close to one another, though freely placed in various ways, in the Commedia, as if they were threads taken from one warp and twisted with others in order to weave a new cloth. The use of identical words in Latin and in the vernacular within a small amount of text is too frequent to be a mere coincidence. These are not isolated words as they are placed in groups in a way that is neither commonplace nor expected. There is no calquing or rewriting. No phrases have been transferred – as they could not be from prose to poetry – only semantic elements which are highly rhetoric signs of the theological meaning. The co-presence is evident insofar as the vocabulary of the Commedia derives from Latin, as latinisms or terms already used in the Florentine dialect. Even the Florentine terms of all social classes or those drawn from other Italian dialects, Gallicisms, Arabisms and neologisms correspond to the apocalyptic exegesis, at times due to phonetic similarity, surrounded by signs (keywords) that appear to lead readers to the other text.
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Through a systematic analysis Genette could have verified how, in hundreds of cases, starting from single words in the same or adjacent verses, others are found that refer to the coincident (when the vernacular derives from Latin) or concordant (when they are replaced) semantics, in the same passage of the Apocalypse and also in the exegesis thereof. Moreover, these semantic juxtapositions do not occur between words that can be compared on account of common parlance, such as water and baptism or fire and smoke, yet rather between distant elements: “tres … immundos … inducentes … familiares – famiglia … m’indussero … tre … mondiglia (Rev. 16:12-13)”; “prestet … emendare – rimendo … ne presti (explicit)”; “venerit discessio – verrà … disceda” (Rev. 13:18); “exierunt … pungentium … traxerunt – tragge … n’esce … ponta” (Rev. 9:3), and so forth. He would have further highlighted this fact by conducting another investigation of the hapax legomena found in the Commedia (since they are rarer or planned words).
b) An identical passage in the Lectura leads to several passages in the Commedia (and vice-versa) through the presence of the same words; unity becomes plurality, referring to that which is united. This means that the same exegesis of a passage in the Apocalypse was used at different stages during the composition of the poem, such as in 7:3-4; 21:16; 22:1-2 (where by analysing one verb only – derivare– many instances may be found). |
c) Several passages of the Lectura may be collated according to an analogical procedure typical of the distinctiones used by preachers. However, since the Apocalypse contains expressions, such as Leitmotive, which are repeated several times, the choice is not casual as it is determined by the scriptural text. As suggested by Olivi, especially in the Prologue, in order to make the meaning of the text more intelligible, the choice is made through key-words that link the passages to be collated, a ‘mutua collatio’ of parts of the Lectura enriches the meaning associated with the words and makes thematic development possible. c1) Collation is prompted by the scriptural text,
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d) Although the Lectura maintains the same sequence of the twenty-two chapters in the Apocalypse, Olivi suggests a different way of understanding and grouping the text, based on the seven periods of the history of the Church, as prefigured in the Old Testament.
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We may deduce from the above that the text of the Lectura was rearranged twice. The first time on the basis of Olivi’s instructions according the exegetical material ascribable to each period of the Church (see for example the third period of Church history). The second time following the principle applied in the distinctiones used by the preachers, according to analogically collated lemmas. |