ABSTRACT
The thinking involved in the true use of images is not representation of an object so much as a form of repetition of the real. Language's self-transcendence, accordingly, as Dante discloses it lyrically in the Paradiso, needs to be understood in terms of repetition rather than of representation. Representation is best understood as itself grounded in the more primordial function of repetition. Performativity turns out to be a dimension of all language, including constative language. Self-reflection operating in the form of repetition springs open closed systems of representation. Applications of such repetition radiate throughout the domains of culture and symbolic representation. An unrepresentable "source" or "ground" can be accessed only through repetition. From the beginning of the Inferno, Dante inscribes his poem expressly into a time repeating the creation. Paradoxically, poetry must abandon itself completely to time so as to have no exteriority to time.
