Welcome to the podcast An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul. Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli. Today we will talk about a poem called “The Courtesan” which narrates the story of a hetaira -this is the ancient Greek word for “courtesan”- by the name of Myrrhine. Like all poemi conviviali, this poem, too, draws on classical myth and Greek literature, but it also touches upon a very controversial theme at the time of Pascoli, even today, to an extent: that of abortion. My guest today is Professor Giovanni Barberi Squarotti, who teaches Italian literature at the University of Torino in Italy. A classicist by training, Professor Barberi Squarotti has written extensively on the influence of classical authors onto modern literature, especially on 19th- and 20th-century Italian authors such Giovanni Pascoli. And in fact, in 2009, Professor Barberi Squarotti produced an annotated edition of Poemi Conviviali and of other works by Pascoli as well. He is the President of the Board for the National Edition of Giovanni Pascoli's works. So he really is an expert on Pascoli and I'm very, very happy that he's here today to talk about “The Courtesan”. You will hear the poem in the translation by Deborah Brown, Richard Jackson and Susan Thomas, published in 2010 by Red Hen Press. The poem is read by Victoria Punch. The music is by Giovanni Tardini, played at the Celtic harp by Arianna Mornico.

ELENA

So welcome Giovanni, and thank you very much for being here.

GIOVANNI

Thank you.

ELENA

So “The Courtesan”’s main character is a Greek hetaira called Myrrhìne or Mýrrhine, as you like. Both pronunciations are accepted. Hetairai were, so to speak, high-class prostitutes in ancient Greece. The most famous one probably was Aspasia, Pericles’ favourite concubine. However, hetairai weren't just sex workers, but they were also very skilled in music, poetry and conversation, and they generally served as entertainers for wealthy men, aristocrats mainly. They were also the only women to be allowed to participate in banquets, like listeners know from episode 1, when James and I talked about “Solon” and banquets in ancient Greece. Well, in this episode, Myrrhine has just died, and we see a group of men gathered around her tomb late at night after a banquet. Those were probably her former lovers. They remember her rather fondly. They remember her beauty. And one of them, Evanus, is so in love with her that he actually forces the coffin's lid to see Myrrhine's body one more time. But what this poem is really about is the destiny of Myrrhine's soul after her death. In fact, the poem begins with the image of a butterfly, and if you've listened to episode 10 on “Psyche”, you will know that the butterfly or moth ( in Greek psyche ) symbolises the human soul. Anyway, Myrrhine is dead and her soul, like any other soul after death, is looking for the way to the Underworld. Looking for the demon to lead her to the river Lethe, where all souls drink from its water and are purified before going to the underworld. Well, sadly, she cannot find the demon. She's lost in the limbo between death and the final place for souls. This is definitely an echo of Plato's dialogue Phaedo which describes the vicissitudes of the soul after death. So Myrrhine asks other souls to help her find a way, but everyone shuns her. She even meets the soul of Evanus, so we understand that he actually killed himself when Myrrhine died, but fatally, even Evanus, shrinks away from her. Let us listen to the first three stanzas.

ELENA

And Giovanni, what can you tell us about the theme of this poem?

GIOVANNI

First we must consider that the courtesan is a quintessentially late-19th-century character. Everybody, I think, knows Emile Zola’s Nana. She embodies the type of the cocotte or femme fatale whose lovers and patrons killed or ruined themselves over her as Evanus does over Myrrhine. By the way, the character of Nana was inspired by a real person, British-born Cora Pearl, who became a famous courtesan in France during the second French Empire and who counted princes and dukes among her lovers. Besides, in the group of men remembering Myrrhine, we can see a depiction of the male upper class that were the very reason why courtesans existed. They enjoy their company as a commodity. The life choices of a prostitutes stem from certain social expectations of their customers, which include the refusal of maternity. And the refusal of maternity may imply abortion and infanticide, which are thematised in this poem. Myrrhine being avoided by everyone in the Underworld, even by Evanus who had loved her is revealing of the status of the courtesan in 19th-century society. Her condition expresses a sort of paradox: being desired by any man and at the same time despised.

Cora Pearl, from www.wikipedia.com

ELENA

Right. Well, as you mentioned, in fact abortion is one of the main themes of this poem and when Myrrhine is in the Underworld, she meets the souls of her unborn children, the children she had conceived and then aborted with the help of some poisonous concoction. Pascoli's description is extremely graphic, especially for the time this poem was written. Let us listen to it.

GIOVANNI

It’s important to underline the striking originality of the foetus as a poetic subject at the time when Pascoli wrote “The Courtesan”. As a precedents, I count only a baroque sonnet by Bartolomeo Dotti “Per Un’Aborto Conservato in Un’Ampolla d’Acqua Artificiale” that means “for an abortion conserved in an ampulla of artificial waters”, and two poems belonging to the Italian Scapigliatura, “Lezione di Anatomia”, “A Lesson of Anatomy” by Arrigo Boito, and “A un Feto”, “To a Foetus” by Emilio Praga. Anyway, these texts deal with freaks conserved and alcohol in an anatomy cabinet. In “The Courtesan”, they are instead the figures moving on the scene, provided with a sort of posthumous life. If we take a look at the historical context of the poem, we find that abortion and infanticide were much-debated topics in the late 19th-century society and in Italy as well. Criminologists, jurists, doctors, sociologists and anthropologists, including Cesare Lombroso, especially discuss the matter of the culpability of women who aborted or killed their children. They often mention as typical the case of the not-married woman, a poor servant, for instance, or a schoolteacher, or even a prostitute who resorts to abortion or infanticide in order to preserve her reputation or not to lose her job. In short, it is a question of social conditioning and socialisation. Cesare Lombroso, in particular, goes as far as saying that women who abort should in most cases not be punished, as abortion is the result of a mistake, a woman falling prey to her passion and of the attempt to restore herself in the eyes of society. However, we must remember that Lombroso regards prostitutes as criminals, as such women lack maternal instincts and are therefore degenerate.

ELENA

Yes, that's, that's very interesting. And so, just to add that Cesare Lombroso was a very famous Italian anthropologist and criminologist, coming up with a very interesting theory about the cranial and skeletal features of criminals.

GIOVANNI

The left wing, the socialist press, to which Pascal certain looks, explicitly connects the theme with the female condition and with social equity. Sexual repression is the culprit of such acts, and there is no other measure to be applied to women who are forced by society to abort than that of solidarity and compassion. Moreover, it is worth noting that abortion was taken into consideration as an acceptable practise in the context of the neo-Malthusian theories of birth control that spread in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century.

ELENA

Thank you. This is so very interesting. And can we know? I'm curious, what was Pascoli's position on abortion?

GIOVANNI

Well, definitely he sees women as victims. This poem shall be considered as a response to the debate on abortion, although the classical disguise makes it harder to detect the author's positions. But we must not forget that “The Courtesan” is part of the triad “Poems of Ate”. So invoking this concept may help us clarify Pascoli's position on the debate over women's culpability. Is abortion a crime?

ELENA

Yes. Well, again, listeners may not be very familiar with the concept of “ate”. So what did “ate” mean in the context of ancient Greek tragedy?

GIOVANNI

Ate is a state of mind involving temporary madness and obfuscation of one's rationality, which may have dire consequences. As a consequence, being prone to ate is in mitigating circumstance when evaluating culpability. It is interesting to note that in Aeschilus’ tragedy, The Libation Bearers or Coephorai it is mentioned that the power of ate is particularly strong when it comes to crimes committed against kin, as it is the case for Myrrhine and her unborn children. The Poemi Conviviali are a journey through the classical world, and “Poems of Ate” are meant to refer to Greek tragedy. Well, in Greek tragedy, individuals are often caught between contrasting forces and they are often powerless to prevail. So the audience was brought to feel pity for them and terror for what can in fact happen to anyone. Myrrhine is a tragic character, as her choices are dictated by necessity and social conventions. And besides, she embodies the contradiction of being both the object of desire and an outcast in life and in death. So we see how Pascoli uses a framework taken from Greek tragedy to state his views on the contemporary debate, still contemporary to us. In fact, compassion comes before justice, as we read in 1801's socialist lecture L’Avvento: “la giustizia non comincia se non dove giunge la pietà”. That means “justice can only begin from a place of compassion”. This point seems to be confirmed by an unwritten note that we find in Pascoli's archive in his house in Tuscany. Here we read that his Poemi Conviviali deal with, I quote, “ancient themes filled with new and profound meanings”. And in the same note, he mentioned a text called The Infanticide, which we can safely assume to be the initial draft of “The Courtesan”. In conclusion, I believe that it is time to debunk the idea that “The Courtesan” is only an art-deco fresco or a version of the archetype of the woman, mother, prostitute, or another expression of the theme of the relationship mother/child. It is to be read, in fact, as a document of Pascoli's care for the social issues of his time.

ELENA

Yes, I find this reading very convincing and I was fascinated by the talk you gave on it, which I had the pleasure to attend. That was a couple of months ago. The idea of using classical mythology or literature as a code, as a disguise for themes that are not only universal but actually current to Pascoli and obviously to us, is one of the many things, I think that make this poem so compelling. And I also chose the name of this podcast, which is “an ancient language for a modern soul” thinking of classical Antiquity as an alphabet, as a language or a shell, if you like, for modern content. I really want to allow listeners to enjoy the full track of the poem. So thank you very much again, Giovanni, for being a guest of this podcast.