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Dante: Poet of the Secular World, by Erich Auerbach
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AND.. We are set to begin a buddy read of this very soon.This thread will do just fine (now that I've found it).
Maybe starting a week from today, but if anyone has read it, or wants to start early...
We are considering this an introduction to Dante, so no intimate familiarity with the Divine Comedy is presupposed.
Chris are you feeling ready for this? I see six chapters, plus an introduction. What do you think of a chapter a week? I'll probably try to knock out the introduction this evening.
Sounds good. I will try to start the introduction tonight, too.
I made it through the introduction (not too hard) and the first chapter (about one par with Aristotle, for me).I'll be happy to take this very slowly. I'll want to read over the first chapter again--a lot of terms with which I have a very hazy understanding.
I meant to be more inclusive earlier--if there is anyone else who is interested in reading this, please join in. I'd be happy to hear other thoughts on this.
The arc of chapter one is fairly clear--how we got from Homer to Dante. Understanding Auerbach's links is another question entirely.
Starting on page 1 and to the first para on page 3, we get the classical conception of man and his fate--or at least Homer's insights. "Ever since its beginning in Greece, European literature has possessed the insight that a man is an indivisible unity of body...and spirit...and that his individual fate follows from that unity, which like a magnet attracts the acts and sufferings appropriate to it. It was this insight that enabled Homer to perceive the structure of fate."So, right off the bat, I'm having trouble. When Auerbach uses the term insight, I think of it as a solution, as in this insight revealed a hidden truth. Auerbach is writing in 1929--did European literature still possess this insight, and does it now? What are the alternatives?
In the classical sense, a man was predestined to a certain end because of this unity. A man's fate was custom made for him and him alone. (At least this is what I understand Auerbach to be saying.) A "conviction that every character is at the root of his own particular fate and that he will inevitably incur the fate that is appropriate to him."
The critical thing it seems that Auerbach is trying to get across in this section is that Homer didn't achieve this by observation or reason, but "like myth from the conception of figures...whose unity is present even before observation begins. [...] Thus Homer's portraiture is no mere copy of life, not only because he tells stories that could never happen...but because he has a conception of man that experience alone could not have given him."
I think I get this okay, but like I said earlier, the way A phrases this, it almost sounds as if he's claiming that European literature still thought of man's fate in this way, though throughout this chapter, he shows how that conception changes, so I guess I'm misreading.
Anyway...Epic myth=unity of body and spirit that is subtly different than the sum of its parts. This unity predestines a man to a certain fate. Homer's 'realism', so to speak, had less to do with the possibility or credibility of the events which he described, but in conforming the narrative to the arc of a character's fate.
From page 3 to 4, or from classical tragedy to Plato.(BTW: These musings of mine are just that--It helps me to jot down notes...helps me to think it through.)
"The moment of doom." Gosh, that has a ring to it. Okay--so: Homeric epic myth need not follow a man to his end; to be realistic, it is only necessary to conform to the arc of the character's fate, and any moment of his life is material for the epic. But tragedy, in finding it's own singular approach, is concerned with that moment when the character becomes aware of his fate.
Man, this is slippery stuff! Each time I think I get a handle on what Auerbach is saying, I find I've lost it again. It seems to me that A sees tragedy's modifications to the depiction of man in a harsh light. In the epic, there was still opportunity for the man to be an individual, but in tragedy, man abandons the traits that make him an individual as he battles against his fate--if I'm understanding this right, because his actions are dictated by the necessity of the fight, he no longer has the freedom of action that he once had. "All that remains of him is what is most universal, a man on the way to his doom, squandering and exhausting his store of vital energy, which can no longer bear fruit."
Later, in the Sophist enlightenment, analysis and rational interpretation broke down the idea of a character's unity--the specific two things that epic myth was able to synthesize. Comedy played its part as well, discrediting "the notion of a priori unity of character."
Okay--that ends the easy stuff. On to Plato and Aristotle next!
I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up my end of the conversation.I read the introduction and the first chapter, but I don't want to ponder each claim made in this sweeping summary of Western mimetic tradition.- like Homer, Plato, Aristotle, the gospels, Augustine, the second half of the first millennium...
It is carried on at a pretty abstract level, and some more examples would enable the reader to 'check' what Auerbach is claiming.
I happen to be reading Irenaeus on the Gnostics, so I know something about the Neoplatonist disregard of the mimetic aspect of the gospels- for instance the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment became the aeon Sophia grasping at the barrier to the Pleiroma.. (?) something like that. In other words, everything 'human,' 'irdisch'(= secular, more literally 'earthly') became a cosmic allegory.
I think at the end of the chapter he disputes the standard divide between the classical or pagan age and the Christian, and says the neoplatonist tendency was just as classical as it was Christian, or that the Christian tradition had as much 'mimetic' 'worldly' elements as the classical.
This is true. One of the key battles of the church fathers was that the world, as a creation of a good God, was good- that the body was not evil.
Auerbach uses the term 'vulgar spiritualism' several times before saying it is a term he has just coined. He is not too specific about it.
"and some more examples would enable the reader to 'check' what Auerbach is claiming"Yes--that's what I wish he'd done. A lot of these references are things I'm not overly familiar with--hence a lot of my posts, trying to sort it out in my own mind.
Well--I'm going to re-read the section on Plato again, to see if it clicks any better this time around. I did a little extra reading to brush up on Neo-Platonism--the extra reading really just confirmed the few ideas I had about it, but didn't shed much light on what Auerbach is saying.
Re-reading the section on Plato was more illuminating this time, for me, though I still think it's slippery. At least, I'm having a hard time summarizing it in my mind. So Plato condemns art in general as a copy of reality which in itself is only a copy of the celestial realm of Ideas. But it is his very talent at mimesis that gave others the notion to strive, 'by the imitation of appearance, to arrive at [the object's] true essence, and to show its insufficiency measured by the beauty of the Idea.' According to A, Plato's skill at mimesis was because 'man's universal end did not conflict with the individual nature and destiny of men, but was shaped and expressed in them...[a] unity of essence and destiny', which seems to be a return to the Homeric tradition. A goes on to say that Plato replaces fate with truth.
With zero justification, he also goes on to say that later generations moved the concept of the Idea from the celestial realm to the soul. I don't necessarily doubt this--maybe A thought it was too obvious to have to explain--but it does seem like a jump to me. But with this change, an artist's work then became a reflection of the idea--no longer a copy of a copy--instead a place where the Immanent Idea met reality through the conduit of the artist. "Consequently the notion of mimesis underwent a extreme spiritualization...a belief in the sublimity of art." Though ultimately this gave rise to a new duality--the aspect of the work of art as a copy of the archetype residing in the artist's soul.
No need to reply--I'm just trying to break this down so I can grasp the thread of A's argument. I'll have to re-read the section on Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists as well.
I jumped the gun on accusing A of having no justification for later generations who moved the concept of the Idea to the human soul. This next section on Aristotle does just that.
My goodness, this thing just keeps piling it on.How well I understood chapter 1, with its tracing out of the representation of man from Homer through the Proveçal poets, is questionable, to say the least, but I don't know that I was able to take in chapter 2 any better. At first, I almost sighed in relief--Dante's early work in comparison with the other poets of his age was not exactly clear to me, but I thought I followed A's line of argument fairly well. The conclusion of the chapter is something I'm going to have to revisit though.
So, we're starting ch. 2?
Weren't we going to tackle a chapter a week? Coincidentally, we started this on April Fool's day, which is about on par with how Auerbach makes me feel.
There's always Swinburne.
Swinburne is in love with the sound of his own voice.
I did like this from the first page of ch. 2 (p.24):"Even today if we frequent a group of young men who profess to have devised their own new form of spiritual life, we find that among them certain words and constructions cast off their customary meanings and take on implications and tonalities that are well-nigh incomprehensible to the profane and utterly impossible to translate into everyday language."
Even today, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right
So, Bryan, did you move on to chapter three?I checked, and I still have about thirty pages to go in ch. 2, which I hope to get to tonight.
Not yet--If I have time and inclination, I might try to read some tonight. I see I had the idea of revisiting part of chapter II--I haven't done that either. I'm slacking. On the plus side, this tour of duty is almost done, and I'm on my way home in about 48 hours. I hope.
Any luck finishing chapter 2? I got through chapter 3 this morning--I've just about come to the realization that this is a tad too academic for me. I know I'll go on to finish the rest, because I am learning things, but I really can't follow A's arguments as to why Dante is so singular. Something about putting a poetic cap on the Thomist rational approach to the world. That and a mixture of being so far ahead of his contemporaries as a poet.
Bryan wrote: "Any luck finishing chapter 2? I got through chapter 3 this morning--I've just about come to the realization that this is a tad too academic for me. I know I'll go on to finish the rest, because I a..."No, but I did finish the Dawn Powell, so there is a chance I will get to it soon... like, tonight.
Does this discourage you from reading Dante?
Christopher wrote: "Bryan wrote: "Any luck finishing chapter 2? I got through chapter 3 this morning--I've just about come to the realization that this is a tad too academic for me. I know I'll go on to finish the res..."No--I have another guide I plan on reading with the Dante that I hope will help as well: The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy.
You'll have to let me know what you think of the Auerbach. I feel like sometimes I can follow along with him, but if anyone asked me to recapitulate what the book was about, I'd probably give them a blank stare and say, ' ...Dante.'
Bryan wrote: "You'll have to let me know what you think of the Auerbach. I feel like sometimes I can follow along with him, but if anyone asked me to recapitulate what the book was about, I'd probably give them a blank stare and say, ' ...Dante.' ..."
Do you remember that pop quiz on Cultural Amnesia? "What does he say about Alan Moorehead?"-Uh, um...
There's no reason the gist of an essay should stick in your mind any more than the plot of a novel. Especially as it's an introduction to something you haven't read, meaning the whole discussion will be abstract.
I kind of think we have to take Clive James's word on these Austrian cafe wits, because he's the only person who still reads them.- just to pick one example.
Egon Friedell I got, and Karl Kraus I'd heard of before. Can you name the others? The "Was ist so nur?" guy?
What's the emoji for a blank stare?Yeah--most of that stuff is gone, though at least I have the feeling that I followed it pretty well as we were reading.
Actually, the main thing I think I took away from the Clive James book was less about any particular personality than that the subject was a spur for Clive James to riff on things he was interested in. Sometime that was just Clive James. I still enjoyed the overview though.
You know, I took that book out to the boat and left the dust jacket at home and when I got back, the jacket was gone. Still haven't found it. So, now I keep an eye out for another copy of Amesia when I'm out book hunting.
Christopher wrote: "Egon Friedell I got, and Karl Kraus I'd heard of before. Can you name the others? The "Was ist so nur?" guy? "Peter Altenberg. 'What's so "only"?'
Totally off-topic, but I love that comment, and I believe it to be an absolute truth. And you can add Alfred Polgar to the list. Along with Egon Friedell (his sometime collaborator, apparently), Polgar was the supreme wit and talent of all of them.
I should probably add that Cultural Amnesia is like a secular bible to me.
Even if it was a vanity piece for Clive James, it examined so many names that were completely unfamiliar to me that I learned more in a single reading of that book than I ever did from so much of the nonsense that is peddled as "literary criticism" or worse, so-called literary "theory" (an oxymoron if ever their was one... emphasis on 'moron').
Pillsonista wrote: "Peter Altenberg. 'What's so "only"?"There it is. Chris and I were part of a group that read through that...last year? I think? Last year or the last part of '16, one of the two. Very enjoyable, though unfortunately I obviously didn't retain as much as I would have liked to.
Are you considering on joining in with the Auerbach? The more the merrier. If not, that's okay too--no need to worry about being 'off-topic'. If there's one thing I learned from reading Cultural Amnesia, it's that if you look hard enough, everything's connected to everything else. In that sense, there is no 'off-topic'. Good to hear from you
Bryan wrote: "Pillsonista wrote: "Peter Altenberg. 'What's so "only"?"There it is. Chris and I were part of a group that read through that...last year? I think? Last year or the last part of '1..."
I'd love to join, and actually I pulled my copy of Auerbach's Dante off the shelf this morning after reading this thread.
Incidentally, if you can get your hands on a copy of his masterwork, Mimesis, he writes about Dante, particularly the episode involving Farinata and Cavalcante, and why it's so significant to the history of Western literary representation. It's still academic, but I think it's much more concise and accessible to the general reader than his book-length treatment of the Commedia. It might help give you a better idea of what he's talking about (at least it did for me).
Die Menschen glauben viel leichter eine Lüge, die sie schon hundertmal gehört haben, als eine Wahrheit, die ihnen völlig neu ist.Alfred Polgar
(Men will more readily believe a lie they have heard a hundred times before than a truth that is completely new.)
I agree with Bryan that it's OK to go off topic. As he said, we had a big Cultural Amnesia 'convo' on the old Book Forum, all of which is gone with the wind.
It was a good book, though. Full of 'nooks and crannies.' No one should be fooled by its encyclopedic appearance, or its mix of obscure and famous names.
One thing I've wondered is whether these authors, Friedell, Stefan Zweig, et al, aren't a little more middlebrow than they seem. It would be a 'blow' to realize that Polgar was just the George Jean Nathan of old Vienna.
I kind of stalled reading Friedell's Return of the Time Machine, but it was 'good so far.'
The Return of the Time Machine
Die Rückkehr der Zeitmaschine
Pillsonista wrote: "I'd love to join, and actually I pulled my copy of Auerbach's Dante off the shelf this morning after reading this thread."Great! And I agree with you about Mimesis--it's fantastic, and the chapter on Dante is what sent me looking for this book. I got more out of reading that single chapter in Mimesis than any other source when it comes to the Comedy.
I did get through chapter IV the other day, so I'm still on pace. This chapter was all about the structure of The Comedy, and I thought it was a lot easier to read than some of the earlier chapters. I don't know that reading this is going to do much for my appreciation for The Comedy one way or the other. There's only two chapters left, and so far, I'm still a bit blank on what it is A is driving at. I got more out of the single chapter in Mimesis than I have so far in half of this book. I feel as though it may be aimed at Dante scholars, of which I am not.
Well, bear in mind that Auerbach wrote this before he wrote Mimesis, so as an author, he may have had less command of conveying his intentions to the reader.I was just finishing ch. 2, so I am behind.
Christopher wrote: "Well, bear in mind that Auerbach wrote this before he wrote Mimesis, so as an author, he may have had less command of conveying his intentions to the reader..."I thought of that, though I didn't look up the dates. I read a book a long time ago that was a posthumous collection by W.G. Sebald, and his early published stuff was dry academic-ese too, whereas he came into a completely different style later.
Well, I did finish today. I think my biggest mistake was thinking that this was an introduction to the Comedy, but really it isn't--it's about what made Dante unique. I'm a bit disappointed, especially considering how much of an eye-opener Auerbach's chapter on the DV was in Mimesis. Still, he had some interesting things to say--it's just too bad that I don't have the background to appreciate it all.
Bryan,Here's another book I bailed on, not even as long as Zeno, but just one that was all too easy to put down.
My question is, should we start a "99 days of Dante" thread on the Book Forum, starting June 1st.? The deck will be relatively clear, with no Conrad or James until July.
We can, though it'll be about 2 weeks before I get home. I was hoping to read my supplement at the same time, but the opening to The Inferno is relatively clear enough, I think, that I can probably absorb it without too much trouble. Plus you'll be there to give me a hand.I'll have to look for a kindle edition
Well, here's the freebie:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
I read over Canto 1--I don't know if I can take this guy or not. I read Longfellows translation of Purgatory a while ago--that was pretty easy compared to this (Cary) translation
I'll have to look around google books for a Longfellow translation. Cary is a bit too much for me.
Bryan wrote: "I'll have to look around google books for a Longfellow translation. Cary is a bit too much for me."Honestly, after reading the Hollander translation, I cannot read any other. Like, it doesn't even come close.
Admittedly, I haven't read Ciaran Carson's translation for the NYRB, but I've tried to read Longfellow's and it doesn't even come close.
Pillsonista wrote: "but I've tried to read Longfellow's and it doesn't even come close. ..."I'm not surprised. But what you may not know is that I'm a cheapskate. Free is good. :)
I'll keep an eye out for the Hollanders--it's possible I might run across it somewhere.
NYRB Classics
Books mentioned in this topic
The Inferno (other topics)The Return of the Time Machine (other topics)
Die Rückkehr der Zeitmaschine (other topics)
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (other topics)
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Robert Hollander (other topics)Peter Altenberg (other topics)
Peter Altenberg (other topics)
Peter Altenberg (other topics)
Alfred Polgar (other topics)
Publication Date: January 16, 2007
Pages: 202
Introduction by Michael Dirda.
Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim.
Originally published in 1929.
Erich Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World is an inspiring introduction to one of the world’s greatest poets as well as a brilliantly argued and still provocative essay in the history of ideas. Here Auerbach, thought by many to be the greatest of twentieth-century scholar-critics, makes the seemingly paradoxical claim that it is in the poetry of Dante, supreme among religious poets, and above all in the stanzas of his Divine Comedy, that the secular world of the modern novel first took imaginative form. Auerbach’s study of Dante, a precursor and necessary complement to Mimesis , his magisterial overview of realism in Western literature, illuminates both the overall structure and the individual detail of Dante’s work, showing it to be an extraordinary synthesis of the sensuous and the conceptual, the particular and the universal, that redefined notions of human character and fate and opened the way into modernity.