The South African folle volo: Dante’s Ulysses reinvented

From Firenze University Press Book: A South African Convivio with Dante

Sonia Fanucchi, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

The myth of Ulysses is especially flexible, for the hero is not a single character but a figure that has undergone various iterations throughout the ages and has come to represent more than himself. Indeed, Ulysses is frequently used as a mirror, drawn into a complex relationship with the psychological and cultural context of writers (Bryant 1985, 18). Of all the figures in the Commedia, Dante’s Ulysses appears to bear the closest resemblance to Dante himself: his folle volo (Inf. 26.125) is echoed throughout the pilgrim’s journey and seemingly offers a glimpse into the psyche of his creator.

Among South African youth the myth of Ulysses is not widely known, but Dante’s myth nevertheless resonates powerfully with our born free generation. This is because of its connection to Dante the poet, an elusive figure who seems to straddle the boundaries between human and myth, and who, like the mythical Ulysses, offers young South Africans the opportunity to ‘converse’ with him, and, in the process, to rework and reimagine him in their own context.

In this chapter I examine four creative pieces — Chariklia Martalas’s A Mad Flight into Inferno Once Again, Ross Smith’s My Discovery of Dante and the apocalyptic crisis: My Dantesque, Ulyssean Return to the Commedia, Thalén Rogers’ The Lodestone and Helena van Urk’s The Storm. In these pieces Dante’s Ulysses becomes an avenue through which the young writers can take ownership of personal and political debates, which are developed and refined through a conversation with the poet. I shall argue that this involves appropriating Dante’s voice and symbols, as the folle volo is transformed into a thoroughly South African experience.

In the pages of his Commedia, Dante the poet reinvents himself as an archetypal hero akin to Ulysses (Mazzotta 2007, 1). This process of mythologising himself associates him with the romance of fiction, and has, in consequence, inspired quasi-fictional rewritings of his life: most notable among these is Boccaccio’s Life of Dante which blends the marvellous with the personal, creating an impression of Dante as simultaneously human and extraordinary. The impression created by the biography is consistent with the effect of the Commedia itself: it is difficult to deny the power of Dante’s human, personal voice, drawing on the passionate appeal to intimate emotions of Augustine’s confession narrative and inviting his readers to read themselves into the pilgrim’s experience in the powerful phrase nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (Inf 1.1).

But these allusions coexist with the poet’s loftier claims to be a prophet — an epic and moral hero, blending the characteristics of Aeneas and St Paul.3 In Inferno 26 Dante rewrites the Ulysses myth, blending it into his own mythological journey. The original ending of the myth where Ulysses returns home is powerfully revolutionised, so that Ulysses chooses to leave the responsibilities of home behind him and instead to follow his desire to know, becoming a symbol for the dangers of the over-adventurous spirit that so seduced the poet (Stanford [1963] 1985, 181– 2). In this way Dante subsumes fictional, epic and autobiographical elements. Just as Dante’s Ulysses is a “pure fiction” onto which Dante can project his own “procedures and aspirations” (Kirkpatrick 1987, 174), so Dante — both hero and poet — is fictionalised in the born frees’ attempts to appropriate and reinvent the personal, heroic and ethical dimensions of his self-presentation.

In A Mad Flight into Inferno Once again. The Dream or The Ghost of Ulysses Chariklia Martalas, an aspiring young writer, modernises and parodies Dante’s claims to moral heroism by emphasising his celebrity status. Although Dante is cast in the role of a therapist in this exchange, he is also defined by his fame: his first action is to go to the desk and “begin […] signing copies of the Commedia” (sup., p. 41). This associates him with the more questionable qualities of his own Ulysses who, consumed by his arrogance, does not deign to address the pilgrim and boasts that his orazion picciola was effective enough to move his men to join him on a mad quest to their deaths (Inf. 26.122). In the original Commedia the parallels between the pilgrim’s moral quest and Ulysses’ mad adventure expose the moral depravity of the latter, so undermining his authority. Martalas similarly parallels her own visionary quest with Dante’s, drawing on the implications of the Ulysses voyage and distancing herself from both Dante and Ulysses, in an attempt to discover her own authentic feminine voice.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/978–88–5518–458–8.10

Read Full Text: https://fupress.com/capitoli/the-south-african-ifolle-volo-i-dante-s-ulysses-reinvented/9491