Page 20 - GALIET EXILE: Dante IV+

Galiet & Galiet
binding, and thus also of confining. Thus, Sordello tells Virgil that will is knotted in powerlessness (Inf. 7, 57). Its contrary is one of patient undoing, freeing and thus of releasing. There’s rarely mention of ‘cutting through the knot’ as an unconventional, yet most direct path to one’s goal. The negative image of the knotted ‘selva oscura’ and of the suicide forest suggests confinement and entanglement. Just as de la Vigna’s figurative knotting, knotted are, too, the damned souls of villains and thieves (Inf. 24, 94-96 and Inf. 25, 7-9), knotted are, too, the wrathful who must unknot their wrath (Pur. 16, 22-24), knotted are, too, subjective ideas and poetry’s sweet new style (Pur. 24, 55-57). Praised, too, is the skill required to untie ties (Pur. 9, 124-126). Praised, too, is the liberation from the knot as an expression of peace (Inf. 10, 94-96). Praised, too, is the process of unknotting as one of elucidation and of untangling minds and thoughts from density (Inf. 11, 94-96; Par. 28, 58-60; Par. 32, 49-51; Par. 33, 91-93). Dante’s journey shall encompass the whole: knotting and unknotting. The dexterous tying and untying of exile, doubt and riddle; revelation, poetry and their fiddle; subjectivity, objectivity and their middle. Dante the Pilgrim shall, too, untie the Poet. And in so doing, imitate Christ who frees humanity from sin’s knot. Dante’s homecoming begins with the knotted waist-cord of reeds symbolizing his Christian vows.
The thick and knotted forest of exile recalls the post-Edenic toils and its double-edged vane: its great grief and bliss (Inf. 8). Dante’s splitting the bough from Romeo’s tree replays Eve’s hubristic picking of the apple from the tree of Knowledge, action that leads not only to man’s exile, but to death and suffering and the loss of absolute language, a metaphoric mixing of words with blood, as in de la Vigna, Romeo and Cain. Words loose their enchanting purity and become profane and violent. Eventually words and blood will
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