ABSTRACT
Repetition has emerged as an eminent way of reactualizing origins. In his treatise on the vulgar tongue, Dante approaches the origin of language “historically” by speculating on the original language of Adam. Accordingly, Dante treats language not only as a mythical theme in his representations of its origins. The art of poetic representation, as practiced in the radically searching and experimental mode of Dante’s Paradiso, enfolds a constant effort to discover and disclose the sources of representation. Even more momentously, a certain quest for the origin of language as built into Dante's overall project is made manifest specifically in his meticulous practice of writing. Refracting the origin of language turns out, for him, to belong to the most essential purposes of poetry. The present reading of the Paradiso attempts to follow Dante's theological presentation of self-reflexivity as disclosing the origin of language. Lyric discloses the origin of language in what has no articulable content.
