Page 28 - GALIET EXILE: Dante IV+

Galiet & Galiet
roundness of the living light that all things surround (Par. 31, 43- 46).
Hence, forever divorced from self, land, safety and all familiarity, Dante must recur not to the memory of farewells, but to sublime poetry of praise, he must escape fortune, change and contingency and seek utopia in that transcendental other: the stranger’s stair. He must learn there to hear, that which, in what depths of his neglected soul, we shall never know, the syllables of the hereness of here: that singing song of presence that eludes most, that blinding spark of Beatrice and of God. Lost, he must seek refuge in the sound of the spheres, that inner voice that begins, in his exiled heart, as broken whisper and ends as a maddening shout. Incomprehensible and intermittent call, absent and present, thorn and petal, fleeing against the windy storms of being, heard only in the agony of the Hototogisu. And as the Poet hears his beckoning call, he responds with the only thing he knows: words drowning in pools of tears and tears. As he sings, he bleeds. As he sings, he becomes the Hototogisu: poet and pilgrim, song and substance, perched equally on the loftiest thorn as on evergreen leaf. Poetry as Resurrection, as Salvation.8
Here, too, dead poetry will rise again. For now, O sacred Muses, I am yours. So let Calliope, a little, play her part,
8 Octavio Paz and Dante. To both, Paz and Dante, “Poetry is Resurrection.” Indeed, Poetry is filled with presence and it is a form of resurrection of the soul which agrees with the poetic philosophy of Heidegger. Paz, Octavio. La Otra Voz y Poesía y Fin de Siglo. Madrid: Seix Barral, 1990. Heidegger. Poetry, Language and Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Collins, 2001
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