Samperi writing Dante: or reflections on poetry's pure heart

no wonder then being humble is then pain, and being pure is then faith (Frank Samperi)

Claudia Samperi-Warren has graciously given me, along with Frank Samperi's three main works Quadrifariam, The Prefiguration and Lumen Gloriae, her father's entire translation of Dante's La Divina Commedia: Paradiso. Claudia's gift of a work it cost the great poet many years of patient study & academic labour to produce deserves from me a careful reading and literary appreciation, at least. I think perhaps it's time for me, through an appreciative look at Samperi's translation of Canto I: Proemio del Paradiso (only the 'argument' and 'invocation' sections) to align myself clearly with a notion of poetry's pure heart that I've been drawn to most of my life. (I'll be following my old Italian edition of Dante's work edited by Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio, Le Monnier, 1978 for textual & critical guidance). Purity is a fit subject of poetical analysis. Samperi's wonderful translation is one set on its own intensely personal search for the divinity inside all things. In the era of the Objectivists, Fluxus and "Language" poets the call to follow Dante must have seemed peculiarly autre chose.

With no formal academic training (none that I know of), Samperi's mastery of the Commedia had been mainly a self-taught one. Translation is always a type of writing, & the purer the motive and the truer the translator's poetic heart, the closer, indeed, does translation work get to the glory of subject matter. Samperi must have been led by this same vision translated into contemporary language, and for that a type of purity is requisite. Purity means the Dantesque vision of the poetic Empyrean (l'Empireo) to which the poet and Paradiso text aspire: the very realm of intellectual light, love, & joy. Both text as translation & poet-translator try for a paradisaical place where God, angels and the blessed reside. Samperi's task, given his devotion to Dante and his own innate spirituality, was to reconcile epic quest with the abject secularism of writing itself.

It's here Samperi chooses purposely to reside, freed in translation work, at least, from the spectacle and daily disappointments of mundane life. Perhaps translation dulls momentarily the melancholy of memory itself. It's in reading Samperi's Paradiso that his own life-narrative can be most keenly felt. (Claudia's poetfranksamperi blog is a valuable chronicle of her father's struggles: the Cid Corman-Samperi correspondences, in particular, are instructive of the way Samperi continually defined himself & his work in relationship to a largely unappreciative literary world). Perhaps the poet, through Dante, has written his own life and via the imperfect medium of language is taking the mystic's own path to the divine. As in Donne poetry is both canonical (doctrinal) — Samperi had given as much careful attention to the biblical &Thomistic theology that undergirds Dante's poetics— and intensely lyrical. Perfection of spirit (the 'purity' of heart I've referred to) conjoins here with hard won skill. I believe, in a word, it gave him the impetus to acquire the language, skill & tough spirituality for work as Dante translator.

The first twelve lines (in the Proemio, preface section of Canto I) make up the argument, the next twenty-four the invocation to the god of poetry, Apollo, the whole containing the essence of the entire third cantica, section that is the Paradiso: first the Italian, then Samperi's translation with reflections of my own

La gloria di colui che tutto move
   per l'universo penetra, e risplende
   in una parte più e meno altrove.
Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende
   fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire
   né sa né può chi di là sù discende;
perché appressando sé al suo disire,
   nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
   che dietro la memoria non può ire.
Veramente quant' io del regno santo
   ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
   sarà ora materia del mio canto.

The glory of him who moves all
   penetrates thru the universe and shines
   in one part more and less elsewhere.
I was in the heaven which takes more
   of his light, and saw things which to repeat
   one neither knows nor is able who descends from there;
because our intellect, approaching
   its desire, deepens itself so much
   that the memory cannot go behind.
Nevertheless, as much of the holy reign
   as I could treasure up in my mind,
   I'll now make the material of my song.

In language worthy of the divine author "who moves all" the argument establishes the "glory" of both poetry & the spiritual quest it initiates (as Samperi envisioned, wrote & indeed lived it as poet-translator). The image of the divine artisan & source of the verses Dante, and then Samperi, record is cast in pure light: in fact, God is light and the intellect capable of approximating to its divine source is, to that degree, intellectually brilliant.No terrestrial impurity can pose any sort of challenge to the verses and versifier establishing God as source.  But, of course, language that attempts to repeat the original vision will necessarily fall short, & Dante's saying so— "saw things which to repeat\ one neither knows nor is able who descends from there"—recalls the recusatio trope (or feigned self-deprecation of the author) in the face of his daunting task. It's from this perceived failure that, while perhaps a poetical conceit in Dante, may be the cause of real literary angst in Samperi. One with which Samperi's friend, mentor & advisor is particularly sympathetic.

It's a distinction Samperi refers to in his correspondences with Cid Corman (in "1/12/78", parts of which are reprinted with permission). In a discussion about Canto XIII, Samperi establishes the triad of humility, pain and the purity of faith:  "no wonder then being humble is then pain, and being pure is then faith..... but Dante is secure in his Art - unitively - beyond the distinction and so are we then any of us - in orientation: given up to the reception, i.e. as readers". Here's acknowledgement of the humility, and then pain, attendant upon a study of poetry as "unitively" majestic as Dante's. Sensing this inner anguish caused by the scope of his Dante project Corman, who's ever a paternal influence, promises a return home & some sanguine advice for his friend. "Perhaps my returning to America will be of some use to you and others: I like to think so - though it is best to temper hopes in the face of what we know is THERE and has to be "dealt with"somehow." The "THERE" in Corman's admonition is probably a literary milieu entirely dominated then by Zukofsky, Olson, & Creeley, and an American milieu he knows is not given to thinking of verses in Thomistic terms & will treat Samperi's efforts with scorn.

The rather lengthy invocation to Apollo (lines 13 to 36) may be seen not just as a vindication of the powers of poetic influence but, within the Paradiso's Christian framework, a kind of prayer, a humble & contrite petition to Apollo father ("padre") for skill ("divina virtù") and the gift of the laurels ("le foglie") if successful. The poet as vessel ("vaso"), a Pauline image, is worthy of the laurels the more completely he allows Apollonian influences to work inside him:

O buono Appollo, a l'ultimo lavoro
   fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso,
   come dimandi a dar l'amato alloro.
Infino a qui l'un giogo di Parnaso
   assai mi fu; ma or con amendue
   m'è uopo intrar ne l'aringo rimaso.
Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue
   sì come quando Marsia traesti
   de la vagina de le membra sue.
O divina virtù, se mi ti presti
   tanto che l'ombra del beato regno
   segnata nel mio capo io manifesti,
vedra'mi al piè del tuo diletto legno
   venire, e coronarmi de le foglie
   che la materia e tu mi farai degno.
Sì rade volte, padre, se ne coglie
   per triunfare o cesare o poeta,
   colpa e vergogna de l'umane voglie,
che parturir letizia in su la lieta
   delfica deità dovria la fronda
   peneia, quando alcun di sé asseta.
Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda:
   forse di retro a me con miglior voci
   si pregherà perché Cirra risponda.

O good Apollo, for this last labor,
   make me so complete a vessel of your power,
   as you require from the gift of the belovel laurel.
So far the one peak of Parnassus
   was enough, but now with both
   it is necessary to enter the remaining arena.
Enter my breast, and inspire
   in the same way you drew Marsyas out
   of the sheath of his members.
O divine power, if you grant me yourself
   so that I may manifest the shadow
   of the blessed reign marked upon my mind,
you'll see me come to your beloved tree
   then to be crowned with those leaves
   which the material and you make worthy.
They gather rarely, father,
   for the triumphs of caesar or poet,
   fault and shame of the human will,
that the peneian leaf should bear
   joy upon the joyful delphic deity,
   when anyone thirsts for it himself.  

If I have to try to get inside the poet-translator's own head, & heart, reflections like mine might seem fanciful. But reading Dante is reading Samperi. The enormity of Samperi's task, as Corman and his friend both knew, was bound to be the cause of the course of "humility, pain and purity of faith" the poet would have to follow. Dante is a very fitting travelling-companion. Samperi may have seen in the invocation the forces of divinity & savagery that could serve as outlet for his own gnawing frustrations. Spirituality without guts is meaningless: it must be a triumphal procession of "poet or caesar".The god of the Muses may be enough to win his soul completely ("Entra nel petto mio") but without the ruthlessness to flail opponents alive ("e spira tue/sì come quando Marsia traesti/ de la vagina de le membra sue") the road ahead would have seemed even more unbearable. Or perhaps Dante may have meant to establish himself as gatekeeper of poetic purity & guard against the enemies of the time (as were the secularist poesy of the Objectivists, "Language" schools, etc. in Samperi's day). It's tempting to suggest that both Corman & Dante played similar roles as protector of poetic skill and integrity in regards to Samperi himself.

I'm not suggesting that parallels, even the few I've discovered in only 36 lines of Canto I, between Dante & Samperi can be consistently drawn. To find any at all requires a great deal of literary & biographical contextualization that will certainly give pride of place, among other things, to the rather extensive Corman-Samperi correspondences. But Dante's a figure with whom Samperi felt a literary and spiritual kinship. And Samperi's a poet with whom I share a love of Dante & its classical (old school) Thomistic underpinnings. To reflect on a work of translation undertaken almost as devotional will show where the poet's sympathies, interests & personal vulnerabilities lie, and it's to these I'm led as I read a fabulous translation. I suppose, even with limited exposure to a body of work, I find myself already writing Samperi.