"Il tremolar della marina" ou la contribution de Dante à une poétique moderne de la Méditerranée

• Main Author: Christophe Imbert
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires du Midi 2017-12-01
• Series: Caliban: French Journal of English Studies
• Subjects: tremolar; tremblement; lumière; notation coloriste; Romania; Dante (Alighieri)
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/5133

Oscar Wilde in The Decay of Lying assumes that "at present, people see fogs, not because they are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects." We would like to demonstrate that the quivering of the sea with the light of dawn, expressed by so many authors in the 19th and 20th centuries, was made visible only through the ancient and magnificent veil of Dante’s words. Such is the case, probably, for Lamartine, and surely for Carlyle, Ruskin, or Augustus Hare, author of so many traveller’s guides. The memory of this verse by Dante is still present and active in a poem by D’Annunzio when suddenly the shepherds coming from the hinterland perceive the sea and in Moreas’ poetry and Maurras’ thought at the time when they were founding the Ecole Romane. This quivering stretch of sea is ultimately a real part of Ezra Pound’s mosaic in his Cantos (Canto XCII), far beyond any picturesque touch. Quite obviously, Dante’s skill is deeply responsible for the making of a modern poetics of the Mediterranean.