풍경은 어떻게 내면화되는가. : 단테와 보카치오, 레오파르디의 내면과 상상의 지리학

Abstract

It is a nature of landscape that the subject(viewer) can build a relationwith the object of his or her observation. In other words, a landscape existsin the way in which it comes into the viewer’s inner world so as tobecome a part of it. This happens insofar as landscape allows the viewer’sfree perspectives by virtue of its vast scale whereas still life tends to makethe viewer’s perspective fixed in a limited point. This process of relatingthe subject and the object can be called internalization that occurs in thesubject’s mind. This paper aims to highlight the processes ofinternalization by comparing three Italian writers Dante Alighieri,Giovanni Boccaccio and Giacomo Leopardi, who apply their experiencesof seeing landscape to their writings. In his poem “L’infinito”, Leopardi shows how landscape enters into thepoet’s mind so as to become a part of it and at the same time remains,as an object, apart from it. This dialectics of the subject and the objectgenerates a sense of infinite space and deep silence in the poet’simagination of landscape so that he opens up the landscape boundlesslylocated behind the fence. In comparison with Leopardi, Dante conveys thelandscape he perceives into his mind. They may look different from eachother but they in fact share the common ground insofar as they end upmaking their minds participate in the landscape that they perceive anddescribe. This is so particularly because they create their landscapesthrough acoustic images rather than visual images. Here it is veryimportant to observe that a landscape created through acoustic images canmake us involved into itself more efficiently by virtue of its innated natureof time. The nature of time existed in landscape makes the viewer’s experiencesof perceiving or imagining landscape boundless to anything which is againconnected with the viewer’s reflective visions. The writer Dante classifiesand locates endlessly hell, purgatory and paradise according to his ownmovement of reflective vision as the pilgrim. In this vision, all the divineworlds are intermingled with each other; Dante’s return to this world ismade from that intermingling power. Here we may understand that thesalvation Dante intends in this Comedy becomes undeniably realistic andsecular. We may say the same about Boccaccio. The garden he postulates inDecameron is absolutely peaceful insofar as it is isolated perfectly fromthe outside where the black plague are rampant. It looks so similar withDante’s paradise in that both are perfect places for building up aself-sufficent world which, however, maintains itself by its own relevancewith the world of outside. Thus the self-sufficency in Dante and Boccacciomay never indicate a sort of self-completeness; it maintains itself andsimultaneously changes always, as Griffin shows itself at the summit ofpurgatory. This is exactly the common way that Dante, Boccaccio and Leopardidescribe landscapes; landscape forms their inner world by making themdescribing it in the way of internalizing it. In order to explain this point,I pursue the textual analyses about those writers in this paper.