Poetic Numerology

Following up Agamben’s discussion: Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez ( Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime petrose , 269-70) explain the hexameral structure of the sestina by reference to both philosophical and biblical sources:

“In both form and content, Dante’s sestina exemplifies—manifests—the temporal cycles described in the cosmogony of the Timaeus : ‘in this manner and for these reasons day and night came into being, the period of the single and most intelligent revolution’ (39c [Cornford 1937 115] ). Dante’s sestina, with its initial juxtaposition of poco giorno and ombra , echoes the Platonic creation story as well as the hexaemeral account of Genesis 1, in which light is first divided from the dark (’ appellavitque lucem diem et tenebras noctem’ ) and the luminaries are subsequently created to mark times and seasons (’ et praessent diei ac nocti et dividerent lucem ac tenebras’ ). Time . . . is coeval with light and motion, but also with number: Plato called it an ‘everlasting likeness [of eternity] moving according to number’ (37d [Cornford 1937 98]). Dante, after Aristotle, understood time as the ‘numeration of continuous movement’; in the same passage of the Physics , Aristotle observes that time is generally thought to be a circle. The cosmic perspective of Dante’s sestina—including shadow, hill, lady, vegetation, and stone—and the turning of time ( volta di tempo ) with the seasons are in both these traditions . . . .

“The cosmological importance of the number six should not overshadow its intrinsic numerical interest; indeed, they are related, since the ‘perfection’ of six, as Augustine maintains, is the reason for its choice by the Creator for the number of days of creation and for the number of ages ( De trinitate 4.4.7–8; PL 42.892). If time is the number of motion, six is the number of time. Six is perfect because the sum of its aliquot parts is equal to their product: 1 × 2 × 3 = 1 + 2 + 3. Augustine’s description (which would be repeated by Isidore and thus become standard in the Middle Ages) parses the aliquot parts as both addends and factors in a kind of imbrication: ’ Sexta ergo eius unum est; tertia, duo; dimidia, tria’ (thus 1/6:1; 1/3:2; 1/2:3). ’ Unum autem et duo et tria consummant eumdem senarium (PL 42.892). The imbricated form of Augustine’s division suggests the double sequence, with inversion, of the displacement of rhyme–word order in the sestina (615243 = 6,5,4; 1,2,3). Six is thus also a kind of reversible number.”

The numerological dimensions of the poetic form open up cosmic dimensions: “six in the sestina is one of a series—61 52 43—of numbers that express the apportionment of zodiacal houses to the planets and luminaries. As Macrobius . . . notes, moreover, the ‘zodiacal’ order is (more or less) Plato’s order, in which the sun is placed below Mercury and Venus, making it the sixth planet, counting from outside in. Thus the sestina, whose scheme depends on the zodiacal order of the planets, also alludes numerically to the sun—which is in any case the marker of time and principal cause of the seasonal cycles—as a sixth planet.”

As microcosm, man is a six, and “Dante often alludes to the Adamic six . . . . The sixth canto of each cantica is devoted to one of the collectives of the human city, in increasing order of comprehensiveness: Florence, the divided city of Inferno 6; Italy, abandoned by the emperor, in Purgatorio 6; the flight of the Roman eagle—of Empire—in Paradiso 6. Dante probably derived from Augustine the view that history was divided into six ages, analogous to the days of creation ( De trinitate 4.4, 7–8; De civitate Dei 22.24), and that the sixth age, which had begun with the Incarnation, was nearing its close ( Convivio 2.14.11–13), to be followed by a time of rest and peace. Thus the sestina, in its move to the seventh unit, the tornata, adumbrates the completion of temporal cycles in the eschaton . . . ; implicitly, the invisible (or nonexistent) eighth unit is a resurrection or a judgment. As the number of man (Apoc. 13.18) and of human history, six is therefore also the number that signifies the immortal soul embedded in time.”

Poetic form and rhythm thus imitate cosmic and human form. And in the absence of confidence in the latter, there seems little impetus to maintain the former.