Dante and Derrida: Face to Face

On the Pre-text or As a Pre-face

ix On the Pre-text or As a Pre-face “How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is the secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one. It’s perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn’t belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret.” (GD, 92) Truly, I do not know why I must write this book, so I must begin by asking for your forgiveness for having done so without knowing why and therefore, necessarily, without knowing how. Having said this, I have in effect said in a different way all that I believe the book truly has to say. So if you read further, it is your responsibility and it will be for the sake of that difference, to decide whether or not you believe it truly makes a difference and, more precisely, how. For myself, I believe that the difference the book makes is this: it traces and remarks in the texts of Dante and Derrida two episodes in the history of forgiveness. These episodes appear as the signs of an “autobiographical” element that figures decisively in these texts, specifically in the confessional voices in which they are written. As confessional autobiographies the texts of Dante and Derrida that this book considers are religious in character. In these texts “religion” signifies a passionate concern for constant conversion to personal responsibility instigated by the need for forgiveness. The religious experience of the need for forgiveness is the context for all questions of personal identity and responsibility. But this experience is problematic in the strongest sense: it locates both the necessity and the impossibility of love in the face of the “Other,” that is, in the face of death. The experience of the necessity and impossibility of love in the face of the Other/death marks the texts of both Dante and Derrida as religious scriptures. These texts reveal the truth of forgiveness without yielding knowledge of it by soliciting faith and encouraging hope to do that truth in love. The religious “way”of life, marked by faith, hope, and love in the face of the Other/death inscribes the texts of Dante and Derrida within the history of scripture and the scripture of history as revelations without knowledge of the truth of forgiveness done in love. “ . . . TA N T O PA D RO N E , ET PA D RE ” Shortly after arriving in Fiesole for the spring semester at Villa Le Balze, Georgetown University’s Study Center outside Florence, I learned of an exhibition in progress at the Casa Buonarotti that was shortly to conclude. With my wife, Deborah, I visited the exhibition, entitled “Daniele da Volterra, amico di Michelangelo,” on the day it was to close, January 12, 2004. To my surprise and delight, the exhibition included the original drawing by Daniele Ricciarelle designated, Studio di figura femminile piagente per la Deposizione Orsini, from the collection of the Musée du Louvre. Jacques Derrida had chosen this drawing, referred to as Woman Weeping at the Foot of the Cross, as the final work displayed in the exhibition Memoirs of the Blind, which he had been asked to curate at the Louvre as the first in a new series of exhibitions entitled Parti Pris, “Taking Sides.” This exhibition was held from October 26, 1990 until January 21, 1991. In viewing the exhibition in Florence, I learned the reason for its title. Daniele da Volterra had indeed been an intimate friend of Michelangelo, so much so that when Michelangelo fell gravely ill with a fever that would...