In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER THREE Purgatorio: Re-turning to the Scene of Forgiveness Chapter 3 takes up the aporia of forgiveness as the precise “turning point” through which the process of constant conversion must always pass so as to begin again. Dante locates this turning point in the Resurrection of Jesus, the secret encrypted in the sign of the Cross. For Derrida, this figure of constant conversion traces the movement of life passing over into a new beginning by passing through the Gift of Death. The Purgatorio traces this movement in the ascent of the mountain by Dante and Virgil interpreted as a “school of contemplation,” in which the pilgrim learns to sustain the suffering of the arrival of the “Other/woman,” the one who is to come, the one whose eyes and mouth, whose face bears the secret promise of the death of love forgiven. In the Purgatorio, Beatrice’s herself is the mountain, the “high place” of the Other, and the resurrected one who comes again in the peak experience of Resurrection to repeat the experience of Genesis, of always beginning again. She is Eve to Dante’s Adam, allowing him to begin again the history of love as feeding and eating and to repeat the history of original sin as substitution with a difference. The poetry of Beatrice’s eucharistic encounter with Dante in the Earthly Paradise reveals in writing that with which Derrida concerns himself in the essay, “To Forgive.” This essay, read alongside the text of the Purgatorio, configures the aporia of forgiveness in the face-to-face encounter in letters of Jankélévitch with the young German who invites him to face up to the arrival of the other who has recognized the need for forgiveness . This encounter revisits the scene of forgiveness marked out by Dante and Beatrice, Adam and Eve, and reconfigures the encounter of Derrida and Georgette in Circumfession within the space of the arrival of the Gift of Death, so as to situate the aporia of forgiveness against the horizon of the question of crimes against humanity as the “Unforgivable,” and of original sin as the crime of existing. 117 ACC EP T I N G F O RG I V EN ES S : S EEI N G I N S E C R E T T H RO U G H T H E E Y ES O F T H E O T H ER  WO M A N  Textual Reflection To course over better waters the little bark of my genius now hoists our sails, leaving behind her a sea so cruel; and I will sing of that second realm where the human spirit is purged and becomes fit to ascend to Heaven. But here let dead poetry rise again, oh holy Muses, since I am yours; and here let Calliope rise up somewhat, accompanying my song with that strain whose stroke the wretched Pies felt so that they despaired of pardon. (Purg., i, 1–12) The second Cantica begins on Easter Sunday morning, just before dawn, with a plea and a prayer of hope—for a resurrection in writing! “But here let dead poetry rise up again!” Having passed through the turning point, the point of conversion, where death and life hang in the balance, suspended in the instant of decision, Dante has passed on through poetry and in writing. Carried through and over and beyond by Virgil, clinging to the back of Virgil, Dante has passed over the final death promised in passing through the Gate of Abraham. He has passed through death given as a gift marked in its refusal by Satan, the structure of the “No!” converted into the ladder of the “Yes!” By which they now climb up through death, through the turning point where in death, as death, through death, the “No!” turns into “Yes!”They climb through the rock, the rock of the heart turned to stone, through the bedrock that supports the sleep of the dead, the rock of the tomb. Having arrived on the shore of Mount Purgatory, they issue out into a light that is beginning to dawn, a light that is changing from night into day, the light of the night transforming itself into the light of the day: Sweet hue of oriental sapphire which was gathering in the serene face of the sky, pure it even to the first Circle, to my eyes restored the light as soon as I issued forth from the dead air that...

Share