Aissi L'enverse

A dominant theme of"Così" is, we have argued, the tempering of lover and lady in a sexual commixtio oppositorum. This pattern is prepared by a pattern of reversals and inversions.^[36] What in "Amor, tu vedi ben" is the lover's petition for a transformation in the lady is replaced in "Così" with the lover's shift from victim of the lady's refusal to agent of retaliation. This narrative reversal is one of a series of inversions at several levels of the poem's organization. The speaker's original assumption of the parlar aspro is both in emulation and in opposition to the lady's attack: the poem is an extended antiphrasis—predicated, ultimately, on the assumption that the aggression of the petra is itself an inversion of love. The astronomical reversal and rhyme-word inversions in the other petrose are replaced in "Così" by the gradual reversal of physical and psychological domination. And the elaborate exchange of weapons between speaker and lady is matched at the expressive level by an exchange

of metaphor, as the speaker reclaims, so to speak, the figurative language associated early in the poem with the lady. Finally, the most challenging and problematic inversion in the poem is the implicit claim that the poem's violence is in the service of reconciliation, "quia bellum est propter pacem."^[37] We turn first to the inverted stanza structure and narrative reversal in the poem, subsequently to the treatment of figurative language (especially the centrally placed personification of Amor), and finally to the poem's emphasis on return, by means of the aspro language itself, from discord to peace.

The reversal of roles in the poem is mirrored in the shifts in the poem's stanza form from disjunction to harmony of content and form. With respect to the construction of the stanza, "Così nel mio parlar" differs significantly from "Io son venuto," where the depressed "subdiesis" suggests the constraint on the speaker. In "Così," however, Dante's manipulation of the stanza gives the effect of rapid movement toward a goal, working first against the thematic emphasis on inward movement (thus, for example, the tormented syntax of the pedes in stanza 3) and subsequently in synchrony with the poem's movement out and away from the speaker's inner life.^[38] The single settenario of "Io son venuto" is expanded in "Così" to three, symmetrically disposed (lines 3, 7, and 11 of thirteen), rendering the stanza less weighty.^[39] The rima baciata that closes each settenario, combined with marked consonance and alliteration, reiterates the impression of agility.^[40] The stanzas are rounded out with four consecutive rime baciate, unique in Dante's practice.^[41]

Subtleties in the stanza structure, however, temper the effect of speed. The consecutive couplets, emphasizing forward motion, are answered by the settenarii, symmetrically disposed, which establish a dominance of the center.^[42] As Momigliano noted (Dante 1946 166), the sirma repeats the structure of the pedes, adding only the third endecasillabo, so that the stanza falls into three units, each built around a settenario. The sirma (CDdEE), moreover, is equal in weight to the first five lines, outside the series of couplets, and symmetrical with it. Thus the principle that brought the pedes down into the sirma in "Io son venuto" by having the first three verses of the sirma duplicate the form of the pedes works in "Così" to shift the point of articulation back above the diesis, to the center of the stanza.

The stanza in "Così" thus balances great dynamism with underlying stability. In terms of the stanza as a complexion of parts, Dante's practice in "Così" tests, but does not violate, the licentia poets may claim in

fashioning the stanza, and mirrors, in its tensions, the exacerbated complexio of the speaker.^[43] It alludes to the topics of descort but remains an orthodox canzone.^[44]

The overlap of descent and return in the stanzas extends through the canzone. Dante continues the subject matter of each sirma into the pedes of the following stanza.^[45] The effect is notable. Over stanzas 1 and 2 the lady's blows ("spezzan ciascun arme," 1.12) also shatter the speaker's shield ("ch'ella non mi spezzi," stanza 2.1). Over stanzas 2 and 3 the topic of internal corrosion (lima, scemi, rodere ) recurs at the diesis of the next stanza (denti, manduca, bruca ). Still more thorough is the progress of Love's killing blows in stanzas 3–4; struck to the ground at the diesis of stanza 3, the speaker must face Amor again at beginning, diesis, and end of stanza 4. In a decisive turn for the poem's narrative, this last blow is imagined striking the lady at stanza 5.1, thus carrying the topic of Love's blows into the next stanza, where the persistence of the topic becomes part of the scheme of retribution for the lady's violence ("dà nel sol quanto nel rezzo," 57). In stanzas 5–6 the lover's grip on the lady's hair is carried through the next stanza in terms of the sferza, the lady's braids as Love's whips.

This maintenance of logical units of sentenza across the division between stanzas is much more than an extension of the troubadour techniques for linking stanzas with repeated elements (coblas capfinidas, capcaudadas ).^[46] New subjects are begun in the sirma and continued into the pedes of the next stanza, so that the synchrony of topics and formal units is displaced by the measure of the sirma; since topics are so often introduced in the sirma (or cauda, "tail"), it becomes in a sense a frons, or head. With an effect similar to that of consecutive couplets, the stanza appears to be out of temperament—inverted, in fact. The overlapping of stanzas is one of several patterns guiding the overall movement of the canzone. Boyde (1971 143) notes a comprehensive pattern dividing the poem into three main sections: stanzas 1–3, in which the speaker is attacked by the lady and her image; stanza 4, the center of the canzone, where the speaker faces death; and stanzas 5–6, which turn the tables.^[47] The divisions are well marked. A proliferation of negatives characterizes stanzas 1–3, culminating with the denial of the speaker's plea for mercy by the god of love ("messo al niego," 39).^[48] The scene of the speaker's subjection to Amor is defined by anaphoric reference to love at formal articulations (sirma, pes, sirma in stanzas 3 and 4): E', Egli, Elli. And the last section is characterized by the optative and conditional forms describing the speaker's fantasy, from Così vedess'io to renderei.^[49] They coun-

terbalance, in the expression of a hypothetical satisfaction of desire, the negatives of stanzas 1–3; in some cases explicitly, as the speaker denies his previous timidity: "e non sarei pietoso né cortese" (stanza 5.6).

In these larger patterns we can see how the disjunction of logic and form in stanzas 1–3 is countered in stanzas 5–6 by an opposing tendency returning the stanzas to harmony. The shift toward re-alignment of the pedes and sirma with logical units begins with the repetition of Elli, Love's pronoun, introduced in the sirma of stanza 3 and then repeated in the first pes and the sirma of stanza 4. Thus the anaphoric—or perhaps we should say antistrophic—repetition returns the poem to a normal relation of pedes and sirma, reasserting the movement of the Same.^[50] The last instances ofEgli (stanzas 3.9, 4.9) center the poem, for their center is the central verse of the text, where rhyme, consonance, and assonance on –e(r)so dominate: "esto perverso / che disteso a riverso." This stanza also marks the return to the harmonious relation of pedes and sirma by being internally unified, linked at its extremes by identical instances of elli alza (1, 11) and by the antithesis of alza and giuso. Stanzas 3–4 are thus the zone of overlap, or crossing, between the domination of the petra and the domination of the speaker, the crisis preceding the decisive reversal of roles; by the same token, they mark the crossing of domination between Other and Same, for it is as the death blow is about to fall, between stanzas 4 and 5, that the speaker imagines Love's sword striking not himself, but the petra.

The return to harmony of stanzaic form is underlined by the return in stanza 5 to the opening words of the canzone: "Così vedess'io," optative, expresses the desire that is the poem's efficient cause (Vallone 1974 259). The related beginning to stanza 6, "S'io avessi," identifies stanzas 5–6 as parallel. In fact, the two stanzas restate the idea of retaliation at corresponding points:

la crudele che'l mio squatra    (5.2) 
che fatte son per me scudiscio e ferza    (6.2) 

per me, com'io per lei    (5.8) 
io mi vendicherei di più di mille    (6.8) 

ch'Amor per consumarmi increspa e dora   (5.12) 
per vendicar lo fuggir che mi face     (6.12)

The persistence from sirma to pedes of the topic—here, the lady's braids—serves to bind the parallel stanzas together, so that the impetus created by the overlap of logic and form is redefined, by the dominance

of the Same, as a return to rather than a departure from harmony. These parallel instances of retaliation in the last two stanzas also mark the lover's withdrawal from violence and are thus crucial to the attempt to transform the poem's ethos as it nears its conclusion (see below).

Beyond the relation between the speaker's imbalance and the imbalance of the stanzas, the inversion of the stanza is linked to the content and movement of the poem as a whole. The topic overlapping each stanza division is related to the warfare between speaker and lady, specifically to penetration: the lady's colpi, the ferocious denti d'Amor, Love's blows, and the speaker's gestures, seizing the lady's hair and ambiguously "pleasing" her, are part of a single series of gestures suffered by the lover in stanzas 1–4 and by the lady in the fantasy of stanzas 5–6. The formal dynamism of the poem thus prepares the prosopopoeic metamorphosis, in the congedo, of the canzone into an archer who fires the lover's words into the lady's heart.^[51] The production of the poem as an arrow aimed at the lady is the last step in the lover's emergence from the blocked expression of the early stanzas: it represents the ultimate turning outward and rendering audible of his speech in the form of actual publication. The reversal of roles and the lover's emergence from the depth and inwardness of his perilous nadir are thus closely related. In the terms of the opening verse, he has found the parlar aspro that can match the aggression of the petra, and the rima that can balance his own negative tendency ("tal che non potrebbe adequar rima," 21).

At the stanzaic level, the friction of constant forward insistence and centric symmetry restates the thematic tension between descent and return, inwardness and publicity, initial violence and final peace. In the terms of the Timaeus, "Così" risks a maximum degree of departure into the Other—giving irrationality a maximum of scope, both in lexical choice and formally in the gremium of the stanza—to return, finally, within the dominant circle of the Same. In terms that resonate with the final stanza of "Io son venuto," "Così nel mio parlar" is an occasion for the lover both to give maximum scope to the violent sexual contest with the petra and to bring to the surface what is Other, and potentially most dangerous, within himself.