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6. Ecstasy of Agapic Love
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6 Ecstasy of Agapic Love AFTER LAUDA 34 Iacopone abandons the battle of two contrasting forms of love.The pacification of carnal and agapic love opens the way for an increased presence of divine love in the collection.From this point on,the poet’s ascetic progression includes a more positive outlook on love,which is no longer viewed as a negative inclination to be exorcized,but seen as a healing,transforming force. Love descends from God and returns to God after drawing human beings closer to God.Most of the laude on spiritual love (what Iacopone has so far also defined as “infused love”) are assembled in the second half of the collection.They are prayerful poems that, in a less didactic and more dramatic tone than the poems heretofore considered, implore God to bestow the gift of love on the poet. God is no longer an alternative to human love,but the sole addressee of the poet’s prayerful invocations.In some instances he remains a silent interlocutor forAnima’s heartfelt pleas to obtain a sign of his presence; in other instances he rebukes her, reprimands her, or simply converses with her, either in a dialogue or in epistolary form.The emphasis on matrimonial union in the second section of the canzoniere at times acquires the connotation of a sublime ceremony;at other times it gives Christ and Anima the intimacy and ease of two human spouses who bicker and argue before reconciling.The theme of matrimony comes to Iacopone from Bonaventure.1 But his insistence on the topic also suggests a reading in light of the Book of Revelation, in which the establishment of God’s Kingdom is signified by“the marriage of the Lamb.”2 The theme of matrimonial union is introduced in Laude 45 and 46, and its increasing importance makes it the thematic focal point of the second half of the collection.The poems that follow will intensify the idea that conjugal love is the most fitting image for the mystical union of God and humankind, by adding elements to express its complexity and intricacy .The theme of matrimonial union presents a poetic challenge; the growing complexity of the canzoniere reveals Iacopone’s effort to find a rhetoric capable of conveying the peak of mystical askesis.The increasing technical and rhetorical difficulty of the collection accompanies the thematic ascent and, one could speculate, the poet’s own spiritual climb.3 Poverty,music,and total (spiritual and physical) assimilation with Christ are the ingredients of Iacopone’s exposition of the theme of matrimonial union.The introductory unit to the theme of divine love comprises Lauda 59 to Lauda 65.The theme is then developed in a more diluted fashion in the next section.After two laude on poverty (59 and 60), and two on Francis (61 and 62), Laude 64 and 65 deal with the Nativity but include themes common to all poems in this section, such as poverty, harmony, the opposition of clothes and nudity,and divine love as expressed by matrimonial union.4 The theme of marital consummation will be explored in Lauda 67 and Lauda 68.The climax will finally be reached in Lauda 71 with ecstatic union likened to sexual encounter. Laude 59 and 60 present the theme of poverty,which is the most important Christian virtue in the Franciscan lexicon. In Lauda 59 poverty is synonymous with freedom.The Franciscan idea of possessing nothing revives the joy of possessing all existing things without becoming attached to any of them. Only then does the paradox of the “riches” of poverty become understandable.The poor possess all of creation, by right of not appropriating any of it and simply enjoying the whole of it.In Alvaro Cacciotti ’s view, Lauda 59 resembles, in structure and theme, Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun.”5 In the first section, Iacopone’s more geographic outlook has the same result as Francis’s cosmic praise of all creatures.Iacopone lists countries and peoples:“Francia . . . Inghilterra . . . Sassogna . . . Guascogna ...Borgogna ...Normandia ...Medi,parsi ed elamiti,—iacomini e nestoriti,/ giurgiani,etiopiti,—India e Barbaria”(“France ...England . . . Saxony . . . Guascogne . . . Burgundy . . . Normandy . . . Medes, Persians, Elamites, Syrians, and Mongols, / Georgians, Ethiopians, Indians , and Moslems”). He reserves a more general list of cosmic creatures for the latter part of the poem: Terra, erbe con lor colori,—arbori e frutti con sapori . . . Acque, fiumi, lachi e mare,—pescetegli en lor notare, aere, venti, ucel volare . . . Luna, sole, cielo e stele. . . . Land, fields full of...