As I said in a previous post, I attended a fascinating event about embodiment and Dante’s Divine Comedy. It made me think a lot about the complex ways in which a reader needs to work to simulate bodily experience in this poem. One problem for us today is understanding the significance of postures and gestures across time; well-informed delegates debated whether a certain crossing of arms was a common way of praying in Dante’s Florence, or not. Readers of any era are challenged by the different kinds of bodies found in Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The kind of bodily simulation I alluded to in that earlier post – understanding the prideful through enacting, inwardly, the submissive posture – is enriched but also estranged by the knowledge that these are very special bodies, different from the earthly ones with which we hold the book, and embody our own pride. Knowing other people is hard enough; nothing’s precisely the same however consistent the neural structures may be. Knowing these presences, who have gone beyond the brain, is even harder.
      I want to write about one particular aspect of this even though it juxtaposes poetry and science rather starkly. I’m not trying to offer a serious account of a great, great passage in Inferno. However I am trying to catch a few sparks that seem to me to fly from the combination.
      Vittorio Gallese talked about ‘echopraxis’ as an interesting facet of the field of ‘embodied simulation’. This is a disorder, caused by deterioration of the anterior frontal lobe, in which sufferers mirror the actions of other people – they cannot help themselves repeating actions. In his way of thinking, this internal replaying of others’ actions happens all the time; it contributes to our understanding of others, and our assessment of what is happening in the environment. In general, some ‘internal brakes’ prevent unruly repetitions, but under certain circumstances, these fail. So echopraxis is not a presence of an aberrant characteristic, but the absence of restraint.

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Rimini and her lover Paolo Malatesta, in the 5th canto of Inferno (where we meet the lustful), was raised at the conference in relation to imitation, but not (I think) explicitly to echopraxis. The point here is not to diagnose the disorder, absolutely not – but to see how motor resonance is something Dante thinks about deeply. Francesca explains how she and Paolo first kissed (with Mandelbaum’s translation, taken from the ‘Digital Dante’ site ).

Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.

One day, to pass the time away, we read
of Lancelot – how love had overcome him.
We were alone, and we suspected nothing.

They suspected nothing; but anyone else might: reading romances with your husband’s brother is a misinterpretable act. Someone might get the right idea. In the canto the ensuing quasi-echopraxis seems like an excuse, up to a point.

Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.
Galeotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse:
quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante

When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
this one, who never shall be parted from me,
while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
A indeed, that book and he
who wrote it, too; that day we read no more.”

The understatement, ‘that day we read no more’, alongside the sarcastic reference to Gallehault, veil the ten-year affair, leading to the deaths of both lovers, that is initiated by this kiss. Perhaps it is not veiled: here in the circle of the lustful, whirled around, Francesca and Paolo embody the consequences of the kiss. In relation to echopraxis, of course, the point is that the kiss in the book and the kiss in the world follow one from the other. Paolo’s trembling is a sign of significance but also of lowered boundaries. And so embodied simulation of literary gesture gains two of its most famous casualties.
      The bodily simulation is not finished. It turns out the Dante has been completely rapt in the story, responding perhaps, as it goes on, to the building eroticism. At the end, though, there is also an echoic response to a sigh of pity:

Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse,
l’altro piangea; sì che di pietade
io venni men così com’io morisse.

And while one spirit said these words to me,
the other wept, so that – because of pity –
I fainted, as if I had met my death.

Dante claims that the pitiful weeping is the response that carries him along with it. This could be read as a cover-up – the ‘death’ at the end might be the speaker succumbing to the sexual thrill of the story. Either way, or perhaps (best of all) in a combined response, Dante lets himself go, finds himself over-responding.
      Sin and imitation are related here and more broadly: there are lots of evil things to echo, and patchy mechanisms for avoiding them. Dante seems to me to explore this at an automatic, almost sub-personal level (in his characters at least; the scene itself seems dazzlingly considered).