ABSTRACT
In Dante’s Manfred, wounds work as anti-representation, as interrupting the symbolic order of representation by means of the material facts of a violent history. Manfred’s disfigurement by his historically inflicted wounds, even as he encounters Dante in the other world, and specifically in the realm of salvation on the shores of Purgatory, in one sense speaks evocatively to the wide-spread myth of his heroism. This myth can be followed forward all the way to Lord Byron’s 1817 dramatic poem Manfred. But Manfred’s mutilation also speaks even more profoundly against the Church’s condemnation of him. The punishing wounds inflicted on the excommunicated prince, in fact, have not denied Manfred passage to Purgatory, and thus the judgment against him by the ecclesiastical authorities is belied by God’s accepting him, wounds and all, into the land of salvation. The wounds signify in a way that reaches beyond the symbolic order established by humans and even contradicts it by God’s writing with events rather than words. Materiality and violence in history have a significance of their own that exceeds symbolic representation. This is one crucial aspect of the ultra-semiotic meaning of Manfred’s wounds. A comparable level of signification is attained also by Celan’s disfigurements of language in witness to the violence of history, specifically the Shoah.
