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Giordano Bruno’s Geometry o f Language
A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of
Yale University
in Candidacy for the Degree o f
Doctor o f Philosophy
by
Arielle Saiber
December 1999
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UMI Number: 9954363
Copyright 2000 by
Saiber, Arielle
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Abstract
Giordano Bruno’s Geometry of Language
Arielle Saiber
Yale University
figurative; that is. to the figures o f both classical rhetoric and Euclidean geometry.
demonstrate that certain geometric figures echo and complement Bruno’s use of the
figurative idiom.
for the paucity of scholarship on Bruno's geometry and on the relationship between
his language and his mathematics. In the body o f the dissertation. I isolate three
categories o f geometric form— the curve, the angle, and the straight line—and three
(such as oxymoron) and in “axial” tropes (such as chiasmus) that revisit Bruno’s
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critique o f pedantic thought in the Candelaio through manifestations o f rhetorical
In Bruno’s writing, word and image intersect and clamor for recognition.
this intersection. In so doing, we also open a door onto the larger question o f how
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Giordano Bruno’s Geometry of Language
Acknowledgements
Introduction______________________________________________ 1-20
Chapter 2: C urves_________________________________________ 46
Chapter 3: A ngles__________________________________________103
Bibliography______________________________________________207
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Acknowledgements
universe is all center," it said, "with its circumference nowhere.” My fourteen years
of living had not yet prepared me for such a thought. I copied down the sentence on
a scrap of paper and taped it to the wall over my desk; it stayed there through my
senior year. It was not until my junior year o f college that I happened once again
upon this “G. Bruno.” In a course on memory and metaphor at the Universita di
Bologna, the same sentence appeared, but this time in Italian. In a flash I made the
occasione it was that introduced me to Bruno’s thought when I was fourteen, and a
chance to thank Bruno for his courage and abandon in thinking the “unthinkable.” I
hope what I have written would have pleased him, though I imagine its inevitable
pedanteria would, instead, serve to fuel his polemical spirit and elicit tremendous
blows.
But thanks are always due to those who crack the whip o f criticism. To the
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I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have a number o f mentors
throughout this project and my graduate studies, and I profoundly thank Professors
Anna Botta, George Hersey, Nuccio Ordine, and Paolo Valesio for their
who have contributed greatly to my research and scholarship and to whom I owe
particular gratitude and admiration are Professors Giovanni Aquilecchia. Wai Chee
Dimock, and Deanna Shemek. A special thanks also goes to the professor o f
Bruno’s geometric diagrams. There are so many others whom I have met at
conferences and over the course of my work in Italy that I would like to
acknowledge as well.
Friends, how many friends I must thank! As many enemies as Bruno had, 1
am blessed with friends. First and foremost. 1 thank Jenny Davidson for her
communicate to her a boundless universe o f gratitude, but she is far too sensible to
Tonolo, G. Trone, M. Truglio, and A. Ulanov. And to DK, who patiently worked
From the friends that have enhanced my thesis, to an institution that has
nurtured it, I thank the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples, Italy. I am
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grateful not only for the generosity o f the 1ISF in giving me summer fellowships to
when humanistic study is in decline is unparalleled. He has been among the most
important figures o f my academic career to date, and I aspire to continue his project
Heyman, who have cheerfully and conceitedly followed my academic pursuits since
I wrote a paper on Russian nihilism in ninth grade. They have earnestly puzzled
over my thesis, perpetually clipped and sent me articles about mathematics and
and have listened to my melodramatic moments with as much love and support as
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Introduction
his literature attempt to reflect the universe, to intersect it. Curves, angles, lines,
and points are drafted into the lexical shape o f his thought. His words move as
The specific aim o f this dissertation is to trace how Bruno brings about a change in
oppositorum, and multiplicity. This task involves unraveling the convergence that
Bruno's writing shows an author with a tenacious grip on pure number and
form. Geometry was, for Bruno, a profitable nomenclature for articulating his
thoughts and theories; and it served a creative function in his lexicon similar to that
Christianity’s Trinity, and Vico’s verum ipsum factum principle. With geometry,
Bruno denoted the infinite, and by doing so, mimicked it. He configured the
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mathematicos. There are forty-two diagrams appended to the text that speak o f
subjects both within and beyond the bounds o f Euclidean geometry— they take on a
metaphoric power. What is more, they invite the reader to observe that just as
Bruno's geometry is replete with metaphor, his literary metaphors and language are
thereby giving a prototype of the geometric readings to come. I reserve for the first
rhetoric; through isolating Bruno's knowledge and peculiar use o f geometry; and
candelaio. What we will see emerge over the course o f these geometric readings is
linearity o f a linguistic list. Bruno wrote figuratively, both in the verbal and visual
figures that populate his complex universe emerge into new clarity, revealing key
geometric reading o f literature, showing why such a reading is not only valid, but
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J
valuable to the work o f literary critics. Using Bruno as a point o f departure, I show
ways in which readers o f literature might employ this kind o f analysis to other
works o f prose or poetry, expanding the scope o f figurative language and enriching
textual interpretation.
truly theoretical always means to be practical, and the unity o f theory and practice
offers a way out o f dualisms. Therefore, in Brunian spirit, I now turn my attention
But it is also, and even more importantly, an outlet for Bruno to promote the
elaborate in the Frankfurt poems.2 O f the forty-two diagrams that he includes in the
text, some appear stolidly geometric, such as those illustrating the golden section,
(figs. 1,2,3). Others seem hardly geometric at all. such as those representing a
' The full title o f the treatise is Articuli centum et sexaginta adversus huius tempestatis
mathematicos atque philosophos. By "mathematicos” Bruno is referring specifically to
mathematicians, and not to learned men in general, unlike the “mathematicos” o f Sextus Empiricus
in his Adversus mathematicos.
2 See especially, Bruno De monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii, 332-334. All citations from Bruno’s
Latin works are from the following edition: Opera latine conscripta, ed. F. Fiorentino et al., 8 vols.
(Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1962).
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4
3 All images from Articuli adversus mathematicos are from the following edition: Prague: Georgii
Dacziceni, 1588. The examplar consulted is from the Biblioteca comunale di Como, Sala Benzi 7.6.93.
The images are reproduced from Ubaldo Nicola, 11sigillo deisigilli. I diagrammi ermetici, trans. Emanuela
Colombi, ed. Ubaldo Nicola (Milan: Mimesis, 1995).
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5
however, are surrounded by what one might call "ornamental frames,” found also
in Bruno’s De m inim of but nowhere else in his works. What is more, these
ornamental frames often bleed into the geometric diagrams themselves, decorating
the open interstices. Such a blending o f ornament and diagram in a printed work is
highly unusual in the Renaissance, considering the trend at the time in Europe for
The only modem edition of Bruno’s Articuli has. unfortunately, treated the
the only four surviving first editions reveals something that the 1889 Tocco-Vitelli
edition o f the Articuli does not: the first six diagrams o f the forty-two are actually
included within the body o f the text itself.6 The other thirty-six diagrams are
placed at the end o f the text, perhaps due to an impatient printer who wanted to set
the letter presses and continue printing the text before all the diagrams were ready,
or due to a lack o f folio space. But given the importance of the first three diagrams
4 Bruno. De triplici minimo et mensura (Frankfurt: Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer, 1591).
5 For information on the history' o f the printer’s ornament and examples thereof, see especially
E.P. Goldschmidt, The Printed Book o f the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1950); Arthur Hind, Introduction to a History o f Woodcut, 2 vols. 1935 reprint (New York: Dover,
1963); Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison, “ Printers’ Flowers and Arabesques.” Fleuron
Anthology, ed. Francis Meynell and Herbert Simon (Boston: David R. Godine. 1979): 1-30: Dale
Roylance, Printers' Ornaments (New Haven: Carl Purlington Rollins Printing Office o f Yale
University Press, 1967): John Ryder, Flowers and Flourishes (London: Mackays. 1976); and
Frederic Warde, Printers' Ornaments Applied to the Composition o f Decorative Boarders. Panels,
and Patterns (London: Lanston Monotype Corp.. Ltd., 1928).
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6
in the opening pages of the Articuli. it seems problematic to include them only at
the end o f the text— as Tocco and Vitelli have done— with the other diagrams. This
There is, for example, a serious concern regarding the manner in which
Tocco and Vitelli have "edited” Bruno's diagrams (fig. 7). A comparison o f
Bruno's original woodcut (on the left) with the version printed by Tocco and Vitelli
(on the right) reveals that these nineteenth-century editors considered extraneous
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Given that Bruno made these woodcuts himself, what would be the sense in
eliminating parts of them?7 What the revised diagrams gain in clarity, they lose in
the overall meaning. Bruno must have had a motive more substantial than mere
The most obvious clue to the importance with which Bruno endowed these
throughout the diagrams of De minima (figs. 9,10). What relevance might these
M O a
m
Figure 9: Various diagrams from Giordano Bruno, De minimo (Frankfurt: Johann Wechei &
Peter Fischer, 1591).
7 The printer Johann Wechel’s introductory note to De minimo reveals that Bruno made the
woodcuts for De minimo himself. Because these diagrams are nearly identical to those o f the
Articuli, we can infer that Bruno is likely to have made the Articuli's diagrams. See W echel’s
introduction written by Wechei to De minimo in Op. Lai., vol. I.iii, 123-124.
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symbols have to mathematics?
aktic. c o n t. w i g .
ftm txeeffm Jen differentia terminnm indi- Bruno tells us that the three symbols
m. VtrtSnm bifxrism diaidnm ? mu
lti extrtmerum ciuumfiuxu fd S i,fi fu n S i
luterftStinh tm um ftrenti* in pnnSnm ip~ together embody a •'tripartite
djttnm flnsty tunc bifftSiinh pnnSa in rtS d
ibieSd tndudbit ,vr f d t tt in reSd A B- pit S i o
principle o f formation." We know
I ttrtnmfiuente (tntrnm Aycircule S C A B ,
i p nnSt A circumfluentt tennnm S ,pu n S i
I, ciuuli A C D A vbi: punSum Cfiuens in that a circle with a point in the
uiSum D , rtSdm A £ biffitat in pnnSi O.
j. Vt ptrptndituldjm i ddtipunQ i ducum?
tin pnnSi pojiti ctntrt,dtq, difiuntid, pur: center is the astrological-alchemical
'tbitSd riSd arrumfinxn timprehenddtar,&
npnnSS itUrn bijfrSd ddtnm pnnSnm fludt: symbol for the sun and for gold, and
ft ftper rtSd A S i ddti pnnSi C,p*fitt ctn-
in C & (iunmflnxn A B a , ftper pun Sum
M tSiinn O, pnnSnm C fiudt. ldem fit ia that a crescent moon is the symbol
tttrmd tx ) f i d pnnSi Untd U . & t t cintin-
(tutn A, in ten m m ducutur reSd A d. i+V t
iitd rtS d lin ed 0 A S ip n n S i in td d d ti O
for the moon and for silver. The
rtSim liitdm 4d dnguhs r tS it e x titd b i.
(idem qui pnxim e fnpra p d S i. if. Vt fa- five-pointed star, on the other hand,
}*ddti puSi 0 O lintdm ddunguium re S i
txtitdbi ? Eidtm f d S t <jue perpenduuUrtm.
Item, vt in } fuper pnnSnm A in reds li- is not an astrological-alchemical
•(4 a A perptndiculdrem & ddreSam angu
(in H A fnftipidm. Ipfi 4 A dqauli dtftan- symbol, but may recall the “morning
tia
the star with love. The five-pointed star might also represent magic, the
implicitly carry the weight o f the mythological tradition o f antiquity. Bruno often
dot (which he calls “mind") we could immediately associate with Apollo, and the
star (which he calls “ love”) with Venus. The moon (which he calls “intellect”) is
somewhat perplexing, as the moon is usually associated with Diana, while the
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9
suggests, however, Bruno’s trend in associating the moon with Minerva. Giovanni
"Atrium Minervae,” and "Atrium Apollinis”) are nearly identical to the first three
geometrical diagrams (or principal figures) of the .4/7/cm// (figs. 11.12, 1 3,14,15,
16).10 In De minimo. Bruno identifies the three atria as figures from which all
others can be derived.11 With this piece of data in hand, we can deduce two
additional statements: first, given that the two sets of geometrical diagrams are very
minimo are transferable to the unnamed principal figures in the Articuli: second,
given that the three little symbols—circle, moon, and star—o f the Articuli display
Minerva, and Venus (mind, intellect, and love), the little symbols are conceptually
By making these connections, I hope to show that these three symbols serve
as a shorthand for Bruno— not only as abbreviations for the first three geometrical
diagrams of the Articuli, but also as reminders of the qualities o f mind, intellect,
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10
Figure 11: First diagram. Giordano Bruno, Figure 14: “Atrium Apollinis.” Giordano
Articuli adversus m athem aticos. Bruno, De m inim o.
Figure 13: Third diagram. G iordano Bruno, Figure 16: “Atrium M inervae.” Giordano
A rticuli adversus mathem aticos. Bruno, De m inim o.
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11
He says that these three symbols are fecund with reference not only to geometry but
to all forms of knowledge.12 Furthermore, their tripartite nature also recalls the
which the geometric point, the metaphysical monad, and the physical atom are all
symbols throughout the text, thereby recalling three triads: those o f Mind, Intellect,
and Love: of Apollo. Minerva, and Venus; and o f the point, the number one. and
Another interesting fact about the three little symbols is that they are all
celestial', sun, moon, and star. In the diagrams, however, these celestial symbols
12 Bruno, Articuli in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 21. See also John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica, which
uses very similar symbols with an equivalent meaning.
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12
“decorations” are not merely floral. He seems to consciously bring the terrestrial
and the celestial together in the frames and interstices o f the geometric figures. In
his dedicatory epistle to Rudolf II, Bruno speaks about how mathematicians have
broken the laws o f love and nature by separating mathematics from the celestial and
the terrestrial worlds. Thus, by encoding his geometry with the celestial motifs of
circle, moon, and star, as well as with numerous terrestrial motifs, Bruno may have
been trying to effect a reconciliation between mathematics and the world outside it.
Tocco and Vitelli's decision to have their technical designer. Federico Renzetti,
trim these symbols from the diagrams interferes with the very intention, as well as
What is more, the three motifs placed within and around the geometric
diagrams o f the Articuli represent quite possibly a move on Bruno's part to invite
his readers to engage the figures on multiple levels: to see geometry as part o f an
organic and divine expression linked to the terrestrial and celestial worlds, rather
Eroici, Edward Gosselin and Lawrence Lemer propose that the incompleteness and
incongruities o f the diagrams in the Eroici may have been intentionally orchestrated
to fill in what has been left out, to re-direct one’s vision to seeing the relationship
13 The typographic arabesque derived many o f its patterns from what was used in lace-making.
Such “inter-lacing” motifs could hardly have gone unnoticed by someone like Bruno with an eye
for symmetry, proportion, and patterns with infinite recursion. See especially Stanley Morison and
Esther Potter. The Splendour o f Ornament and Specimens Selectedfrom the Essempio di recammi
o f Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (London: Lion & Unicom Press, 1968).
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13
between text and image in a different way.14 This notion works equally well for
Bruno’s geometric figures and the supposed ornamentation in and around them. He
calls the mathematicians and philosophers o f his time "blind” : blind, perhaps, to
what one might see within, around, between, and beyond the lines drawn by a
and circles, the doubling o f areas, and a Figure 18: “Geometra." Giordano Bruno,
A rticuli adversus mathematicos.
division into quadrants. Perhaps the
does not talk about "Geometria” anywhere in the text o f the Articuli. How. then, do
we account for the diagram to which Bruno assigned such a specific, pertinent
more rigorously about what Bruno was trying to prove, to say about geometry,
about the mathematicians and philosophers o f his time. It is not likely that Bruno
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14
meant to put errors into his diagrams, and we know he was his own most
and oversights, but in other cases, omissions and incongruities might offer forms of
provocation; we know Bruno was fond of provoking other to alter their thinking.
term from Frances Yates— as well as illuminate his use o f figurative language.16
They are part and parcel o f his revision of mathematics, religion, and human
How would cae describe Bruno's mathesis'? The Greek etymology refers to
meant by mathesis, though he generally seems to use it as any Latin speaker o f the
calls his own revision o f mathematics a mathesis. In the Triginta sigilli. Bruno
includes mathesis as one o f the four guides o f religion— love, art. and magic being
the other three. I take this inclusion to mean that for Bruno, mathesis is a
completes this aesthetic-esoteric tetrad. The link between mathematics and all the
15 See Johann Wechel, Introduction to De minimo in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 123-124.
15 See Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 1964 reprint (Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1991), 324.
17 Bruno, Eroici. 1118. All citations from Bruno's Dialoghi italiani are from the following
edition: Dialoghi italiani. ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence: Sansoni. 1983).
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15
Frances Yates understood Bruno’s mathesis to be the natural force that lies
18
in between mathematics and physical things. I see it, instead, as containing
expand Gatti's term to say that Bruno's mathesis is “meta” in that it points both
beyond itself and to itself; it is both self-aware and aware o f its role in God's
through mathematics (or mathesis) that the first principles can be accessed, pointed
application of mathesis.
Still the question remains: why did Bruno go to the trouble o f carving the
little celestial and terrestrial shapes only to intersperse them in the text o f the
Articuli and in the diagrams o f both the Articuli and De minimol If they were
pertinent to his mathematical project, why did he not include them in the geometric
diagrams o f his other works? Before the Articuli, Bruno wrote a number o f books
19 Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1999), 146. Though not directly related to Bruno, Sarah Voss’s study, What Number is God?
Metaphors, Metaphysics, Metamathematics, and the Nature o f Things (Albany: SUNY Press,
1995) offers a detailed discussion o f mathematics as a language, pointing out what is inherently
“meta” about it.
20 See Angelika Bdnker-Vallon, Metaphysik und Mathematik bei Giordano Bruno (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 1995).
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16
Frankfurt poems (of which the first poem also contains the little motifs) and De
localized use o f motifs in Bruno’s geometry. Perhaps he had more leisure time
while in the court o f Rudolf II to carve these detailed figures. Perhaps the printer.
George Daczicen, was more willing to wait for Bruno to complete these intricate
woodcuts than the printers Gourbin and Chevillot had been before, or Wechel
possible that by the time Bruno began writing the other two (which also contain
numerous geometric diagrams), he had less time to continue such detailed work. It
is also possible that the woodcuts he had already made were lost, either by himself
or by the printer. I have looked at other geometrical treatises o f the mid- and late
sixteenth century printed in Italy. France. Germany, and England, and have found
surrounding and filling geometric diagrams.22 Equally, in the other works printed
21 For the exemplars o f Bruno’s works to which I allude, see the section entitled “Giordano
Bruno: Early Exemplars Consulted” in the Bibliography. Although I have not seen exemplars of
Praelectiones geometricae ( 1587) and Ars deformationum (1587), Giovanni Aquilecchia has told
me that their geometric diagrams do not have the little symbols.
221 have looked at Roger Bacon, The Mirror o f Aichimy (London: Richard Olive, 1597);
Girolamo Cardano, Ars magnae, trans. and ed. T. Richard Walker (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968);
Nicholas Chuquet, Triparty, ed. Cynthia Hay, Graham Flegg, and Barbara Moss (Dordrecht: D.
Reidel Publishing, Co., 1985); Jean Cousin, Livre de perspective (Paris: Jean le Royer, 1560);
John Dee, The Elements o f Geometrie o f the Most Ancient Philosopher Euclide o f Megara, trans.
H. Billingsley (London: John Daye, 1570); G.B. della Porta, Elementorum curvilineorum libri
tres. In quibus altera geometriae parte restituta, agitur de circuit quadratura (Rome:
Bartholomaeum Zannettum, 1610); Thomas Digges, A Geomtrical Practise, Named Pantometria
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by Daczicen and Wechel. I have not been able to find similar "ornamentation.”23
Perhaps the printers of the Articuli and the De minimo did not want to take the time
to set the omate metal-plate fleuron arabesques to decorate the text as Bruno would
have liked, and decided to let Bruno make his own, simple version of such designs.
Yet this still does not account for the fact that it is more time-consuming to print
metal-plate moveable type and woodcuts together on one page. This would explain
why the diagrams follow the end o f the text and are not integrated.
The question as to why these little symbols are included only in the Articuli
and De minimo would require a much longer discussion— one that would give a
engage the question of why Bruno might have chosen in the first place to include
impetus for his effort. I believe, and as I hope to have shown, originates in the
(London: Henrie Byneman. 1571); Euclid, Euclidis Elementorum, libri XT (Lutetian: Gulielum
Cavellat, 1558); Francesco Feliciano. Libro di arithmetica e geometria speculative/ (Venice:
Francesco Nindoni & Mapheo Pasini, 1427); Oronce Fine. Opere di Orontio Fineo divise in
cinque parti: aritmetica, geometria. cosmografta, e orivoli, trans. Cosimo Bartoli (Venice:
Franceschi, 1587); Fine, Quadratura circuli (Paris: S. de Colines, 1544); Fine. De re & praxis
geometrica libri tres (Lutetiae: Aegidium Goubinum. 1556); Juan de Ortega, Tratado subtilissimo
de aritmetica y de geometria compueslo y ordenado (Seville: n.p., 1542); Luca Pacioli, Summa de
arithmetica. geometrica. proportioni et proportionalita (Venice: n.p., 1494); and Francois Viete,
The Analytic Art. trans. and ed. T. Richard Winner (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press,
1983). A very few diagrams in the works o f Omoce Fine, however, have copperplate fleurons
scattered here and there in the geometric diagrams (see Opere di Orontio Fineo. 68, 70). though
they seem incidental to the diagrams and more like true ornaments.
231 have not been able to find any other works printed by Daczicen, but Wechel also printed
Dee’s Monas Hieroglvphica (1564) and Della Porta’s Physiognomonica (1591), which contain no
similar celestial-terrestrial motifs.
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18
mathematical work without considering language and rhetoric (as critics tend to do)
disconnected mode o f thought he deplored. Equally, and even more important for
this dissertation, looking at Bruno's language and style without taking into
mathematical notation, and the peculiar tectonics o f data organization (as critics
also tend to do), is to see only part o f the picture, and, I believe, to miss the point.
One must have some familiarity with Bruno's geometry in order to appreciate his
twists and turns o f phrase, his iconographic descriptions, his mnemonic and
magical devices, and his struggle to apprehend, in language, the infinity o f the
universe. In the same way. one must search for the metaphors, symbols, and tropes
mathesis concerns itself with maximizing links between the mundane and the
combination o f number, shape, and word, Bruno aims not only to demonstrate, but
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19
circumlocution describing a
memory wheels, like the one that circumscribes the five vowels in Cantus Circaeus
(fig. 19); in the kabbalistic gematria o f letter and number in the Sigillis sigillorum
and De imaginum com position; and in the names he gives his geometric
diagrams— names such as Spider Web, Garden of the Sun, Juno’s Mitre, and
Theuth's Circle.24
universe. Geometry and language— measuring and naming— reflect each other’s
ultimate inability to measure and name the incommensurate and the unnamable.
24 Regarding the Egyptian god Theuth, see also the “Abacus o f Theutis,” De imaginum in Op.
Lat., vol. Il.iii, 280-281.
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20
pervasive in his geometry; the dissertation that follows is an attempt to prove the
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Chapter One: The Axioms
was young, he looked at the distant Mount Vesuvius from his village in Nola and
thought it an arid, barren mountain. When he finally got close to Vesuvius he saw
it was lull o f life, covered with olive trees and grapes. His initial perception had
been illusory. Bruno’s geometry is like the distant volcano enveloped in mist: a
mammoth structure decked with fruits the untrained eye cannot perceive from far
away. The mountain of geometry must be approached and scrutinized before the
obscure can be apprehended. This chapter aims to take a few steps towards the
surrounding fog to disperse and the reality o f his mathematical knowledge, skill,
and application to emerge. I will begin with an overview o f the commerce between
discussion o f Bruno’s interest in and use o f geometry. I will close with a look at
the paucity of scholarly contributions made over the last 400 years with regard to
Bruno’s geometry.
1 I would like to cite George Hersey’s Pythagorean Palaces: Magic and Architecture in the
Italian Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), 49-50 for alerting me to this passage.
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books, sixty-four chapters, and 216 lines per chapter. Twenty-seven is, o f course,
the cube o f three, sixty-four the cube o f four, and 216 the cube o f six.2 Vitruvius,
organize words and allocate them for memorization.4 Given this notion, it was not
: Twenty-seven, the cube o f 3. is also the sum o f the consecutive odd numbers 7. 9. and 11; 64.
the cube o f 4. is the sum o f the next four consecutive odd numbers: 27 + 64 = 91; add 91 to 125 (the
cube o f 5) and you get 216, the cube o f 6. See Vitruvius, bk. V and Barbara's 1556 translation. /
died libri dell'architecture! di M. Vitruvio tradutti et commentati da Consignor Barbaro (Venice:
Francesco Marcolini, 1556), 128: “Si come cubo si chiama quel corpo che 6 di sei lati e di sei
quadrati e eguali faccie come un dado, cosi cubo si chiama quel numero che di sei numeri piani
contento per ogni verso tiene eguali dim ensioni.. . ” Barbaro also comments on Vitruvius’
observation that Greek comedy abides by the same Pythagorean ideal o f textual cubes: "lo non ho
trovato ancora, come i Greci facessero le parti, che io atti chiamerei con ragioni cubice non
trovandosi forse quelle favole a quel modo compartite, che si trovavano al tempo di Vitr. Ma e
bisognovo o che gli atti fussero otto, o vero otto science per atto, o vero il numero de versi d ’una
scena, o d’un atto fosse cubico, ma pare che Vitr. accenni gli intermedii delle favole fatte di numero
cubo perch6 gli attori e recitanti si riposassero.. . ” ( / died libri dell'architectural 129). The first
edition o f Vitruvius was printed in 1486 by the circle o f Leto. Fra Giocondo’s illustrated edition
came out in 1511, and Cesare Cesariano published the first Italian translation in 1521, before
Barbara's in 1556.
4 For the history o f the “architecture” o f memory, see the following studies: Frances Yates, The
Art o f Memory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966); Lina Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria:
Modelli letterari e iconografici nell'eta della stampa (Torino: Einaudi, 1995); Lina Bolzoni and
Pietro Corsi, eds., La cultura della memoria (Bologna: II mulino, 1992); James McConkey, ed.. The
Anatomy o f Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
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claim to proof and certainty that drew the interest o f the humanists. Literary
scholars and orators saw the integration o f geometric proportions and proofs into
their writing as a means o f enhancing its persuasiveness. Geometry, with its claims
dialectic, rhetoric, or even the trompe I 'oeil intarsia cabinets in Urbino and
wisdom, a prism o f figures— geometric and rhetorical— was refracted onto the
languages together in an attempt to address the human, the natural, and the divine.
The fusion o f geometry’s rigid methodology with rhetoric’s flourishes and sleight
intersect? Is it with Pythagoras and his idea that “all is number”? A medieval
Christian might argue that the two were bom simultaneously and exist
symbiotically, because God, the geometer, created the universe through the word.
in Hebrew, as the word for text (sepher i d o ) and the word for number
God Theuth as the inventor o f mathematics as well as the alphabet.5 Aristotle in his
Posterior Analytics talks about the similarities between geometric reasoning and
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24
was enthusiastic about mathematics’ role in training the orator, and Cicero had as
terms that will later come to be used in rhetorical manuals. In Book V o f the
Elements, the terms Euclid uses to define the transformation o f ratios, such as
permutation, conversion, and division (defs. 12-16), are echoed in the rhetorical
expressions which twist, flip, cut. and distort syntax, much in the same way as
numbers combine and recombine, and as points, lines, planes, and solids shift to
treatises shows that the names for the tropes hyperbole-parable-ellipsis developed
independently of these geometric terms. It is, nonetheless, worth observing that the
tropes refer to the same spatial concept: hyperbole refers to something that is
6 Quintilian, Ins. Ora. 1.10. Around 75 B.C.. Cicero found Archimedes' neglected tomb in
Sicily near one o f the gates o f Syracuse; see Cicero’s Tusc. Disp. V .23.64-6. In In Verrem
(11.4.131.3-4), Cicero calls Archimedes a man o f "great genius and learning.” In De republica
(1.21.9-10) Cicero evokes the "glorious name o f Archimedes,” as he does in De naturum deorum
(11.88) and Tusc. Disp. (1.63.7-1.64.1).
7 See Sir Thomas Heath’s explanation o f these definitions, in Euclid, The Elements o f Geometry,
ed. Thomas L. Heath, 3 vols. (New York: Dover, 1956), 135-136. He gives as an example for
composition (or compounding) the ratio o f A to B transforming into A+B to B (adding original
antecedent to original consequent): separation : A-B to B; conversion: A to A-B (A being greater
than B).
8 For the purpose o f this dissertation, 1 will be considering the "parable” as a trope, even though
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25
comparable to; and ellipsis to something that is left out, or is in deficit. Both
geometry and rhetoric are arts o f demonstration and persuasion. They are figurative
the editing and translating frenzy for which the humanists are renowned.
Quintilian’s Institutio was found in 1416, Cicero's De oratione in 1421, and the
Rhetorica ad Herennium in 1491. Among the many mathematical texts that were
discovered, edited, and translated into Latin for the first time were the works of
Archimedes (by Niccolo Tartaglia. 1543) and Apollonius' Conics (by Commandino
in 1566). Most o f the great patrons o f Italy were actively involved in encouraging
the pursuit of mathematical knowledge. The Sforza, the Medici, the dukes of
Urbino, the Greek Cardinal Bessarion. and two Popes (Pius II and Nicholas V) all
This support by Italy’s most powerful leaders facilitated the move in the
fifteenth century of the center o f mathematical study from Paris to Padua.9 At the
great minds who passed through the University, Nicholas o f Cusa and Copernicus
it is more commonly categorized as a genre. I do this in order to include it among the tropes o f
hyperbole and ellipsis, and as a parallel to the conic section, “parabola."
9 See John Herman Randall, Jr., The School o f Padua and the Emergence o f Modern Science
(Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1961), 21. Major fifteenth- and sixteenth-century scholars o f science and
mathematics include Paul o f Venice (d.1429), Cajetan ofThiene (d.1465), Jacopo da Forll (d. 1413),
Hugo o f Siena (d.1439), Agostino Nifo (d.1506), Bemardinus Tomitanus (d.1576), Bernardo
Telesio (d.1588), and Cesare Cremonini (d. 1631).
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26
among them. In the next century, Padua’s halls hosted Galileo, who brilliantly
fused the trivium with the quadrivium in such works as II dialogo sopra i due
Many o f the Italian humanist authors with whom we associate great literary
genius were passionate about mathematics and what it could do for rhetoric and
civic life. For example: Petrarch, like Cicero, held Archimedes in the highest
mathematics;11 Pico della Mirandola echoed the Pythagorean belief that through
Poetics into Latin and a champion o f Ciceronian rhetoric— was also among the first
Leon Battista Alberti dedicated a book of his Intercenales to the great Florentine
mathematician Pier Paolo Toscanelli; and the poet Angelo Poliziano was an avid
Trecento Tuscan as the best tongue for literature, was deeply interested in math, as
10 See Paul Lawrence Rose. The Italian Renaissance Mathematicians: Studies on Humanists
and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1975).
11 See especially Ficino’s work on Plato's "fatal" or •‘nuptial” number in his commentary on
Plato's Republic VIII.
12 See Valla’s section on geometry in his De expetendis acfugiendis opus (Venice: Aldo
Romano, 1501).
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27
we can see from his attendance at Luca Pacioli's lectures on Euclid.14 Just a half a
century later, we find the prolific writer Torquato Tasso teaching mathematics at
the University o f Ferrara. It is also worth including in our list the eccentric French
philologist and utopian thinker Guillaume Postel, who was in Venice from 1547-
49.15 Postel published a text in 1553, the De o rig in ib u s . in which he discusses how
words derive from a point, line, and triangle.16 Others—and many Italian
humanists— shared this notion: Luca Pacioli. Felice Feliciano, Damiano Morille,
and Sigismondo de’ Fanti, as well as the Englishman, John Dee, among them.17
The extensive commerce between geometry, rhetoric, literature, and language in the
14 Pacioli held the lectures in Venice in 1508. See Paul Lawrence Rose, The Italian Renaissance
Mathematicians, 11.
15 See Giuseppe Ellero, “Postel e Venezia," in Guillaume Postel. ed. Guy Trddaniel (Paris:
Editions De la Maisnie, 1985): 23-28.
16 See Postel, Guillaume, De originibus, seu, De varia et potissimum orbi latino ad hanc diem
incognita (Basel: Ioannem Oporinum, 1553).
17 See, for example, Luca Pacioli’s rules on the geometrical proportions necessary for perfect
lettering in Summa de arithmetica, geometrica, proportioni et proportionalita (1494). John Dee
talks about the geometricality o f words in his Monas Hieroglyphica ( 1564).
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“archididascali.’"19 Bruno used little arithmetic, let alone any o f the trigonometry
and algebra offered by his contemporaries.20 The extent o f his mathematics was
lent itself more profitably to conveying his beliefs on the nature o f such paradoxical
entities as the minimum and the infinite. What is more, as I have already alluded to
briefly and as we shall see in greater detail later on. geometry also served his
you can represent disproportionate area ratios or measurement ratios with figures
that you cannot with numbers (n is a good example). Such a property must have
furthered Bruno's confidence that through the language o f geometry, not only could
18 Most critics, when discussing Bruno as mathematician, have pointed out his shortcomings,
though without accounting for his ardent resistance toward traditional mathematics. Some critics,
such as Wayne Shumaker, deny Bruno’s significance as a mathematician altogether: i do not intend
to condemn Bruno as a man or to deny his intelligence, but only to say emphatically that esteem for
him ought not be grounded on the mistaken supposition that he assisted in the growth o f science”
Natural Magic and Modern Science (Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies.
1989). 67.
19 For “teoremisti,” see De I "mfinito. 466; for "archdidascali,” see De la causa, 219, 241; and
the Cabala, 916. All citations from Bruno’s Dialoghi italiani are from the following edition:
Giovanni Aquilecchia, ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1985).
20 Major algebreists and trigonometers o f the time were Regiomontanus, Niccolo Tartaglia,
Girolamo Cardano, and Francois Vigte.
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29
the incommensurate, but perhaps even the truly un-measurable— the ineffable— be
represented.
the mere 384 published from 1591-1620, and the 640 published from 1531-1560.22
The year Bruno published his Candelaio, De umbris idearum, and Cantus Circaeus
(1582) more mathematical works were printed in Italy than in any other year since
the invention o f the press and up through 1664. One could say that this significant
or with the shift to Averroist Padua from Ockhamite Paris as the center of
Italy until well after Descartes puts forth his principles o f coordinate geometry in
1637. With Descartes, the center o f mathematical production returns to France, and
happened to be publishing during a time when Italy was still the stronghold of
21 See Giovanni Campano (1482), Giorgio Valia (1492), Bartolomeo Zamberti (1505), Luca
Pacioli (1509), Boezio (1516), Giambattista Politi (1529), Tiburtino Platone (1537), Niccold
Tartaglia (1543-5), Angelo Cajani (1545), Giambattista Benedetti (1553), Francesco Barozzi (1560),
Ognibene da Castellano (1561), Francesco Maurolico (1570), and Federico Commandino (1572).
22 See Pietro Ricciardi’s detailed study, Biblioteca matematica italiana dalla origine della
stampa aiprimi anni del secolo XIX , 2 vols. (Modena: Soliani, 1870-86), H, xv-xx.
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30
mathematical study. As Bruno was not one to follow the majority, it is no wonder
that he had such polemics with the mass productivity o f “hums tempestatis
mathematicos atque philosophos.” From Bruno’s perspective, what was old hat in
mathematics was merely being regurgitated by archididatv. and what was newly
devised by the teoremisti. only served to amplify mathematics’ abstraction from the
natural world.
For Bruno, geometry was a language that explicitly served his philosophical
project. He considered it as strong if not stronger a way to speak about the world
around us as natural language or any other system o f signs and signifies. We know
from cultural anthropologists such as Karl Menninger the complex history of the
symbols and words used to denote numbers.23 Often, words and numbers have
shared the same symbols or symbolic origins. We can see this most immediately in
the texts of the kabbalah, where aleph means both the number one and the letter A.
The relationship between number, form, and word is a theme that expresses itself
time and again in Bruno's works, whether he is doing mathematics, talking about
mathematics, or neither.24
number, form, and word. We need only look at his mnemonic wheels and charts to
23 See Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols, trans. Paul Broneer (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1969).
24 Though this may be open for debate, I would say that Bruno’s most mathematical works are
the Articuli, De minimo, De monade, Praelectiones geometricae, Ars deformationum, and his two
works on the compass ( Dialogo duo). Many o f his metaphysical works, however, contain
geometrical figures and mathematical functions, whether they be refutations o f Aristotelian theories
o f motion, maner, measurement, or cosmos; or descriptions o f such phenomena as the minimum and
the terminus. His “dialoghi morali” are also infused with mathematics—the Spaccio's discussion o f
squaring a circle comes immediately to mind, for example.
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31
open one's mind, onto all knowledge. In De imaginum, Bruno writes that words
themselves have neither form nor figure, and that there is no necessary link between
the form o f a word and its meaning (a foreshadowing o f the semiotic and semantic
debates of the following centuries).25 This allows words to don and dispose of
infinity o f mental associations; and his mathesis, which accounts for an infinity o f
It is well documented that Bruno did not consider the dialectician Petrus
Ramus in a favorable light. '"At the heart o f the Ramist enterprise." Walter Ong
notes, "is the drive to tie down words themselves, rather than other representations,
the opposite drive: to liberate words from their patterns and allow them to roam in
27 So as not to burden the text with distracting references, I will simply note that Bruno read the
"plurilinguistic” poetry and theater o f his time and that preceding it. We need only recall Folengo,
Colonna, il Ruzzante, Aretino, and Doni as stock examples o f maccheronica and multi-languaged
texts.
28 Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method and the Decay o f Dialogue (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1983), 89.
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words, numbers, shapes, and symbols into the minima, which can then be set free to
The vision Bruno has of a linguistic, numeric, symbolic, and geometric ars
combinatoria (one might even say "ethical’' as well, in light of the mixing and
matching he does when shaking up the heavens in the Spaccio) is linked, as most
generally thought that Bruno derived his knowledge o f the kabbalah from such
Francesco Doni. Francesco di Giorgio, and Guillaume Postel.30 While Bruno's use
o f number symbolism may have primarily been based on the Pythagorean theories
29 See Pico’s Conclusiones nongentae ( 1486); Reuchlin's De arte cabalista (1517); Agrippa’s
De philosophia occulta (1533). The few scholars who have discussed Bruno’s knowledge o f
kabbalah maintain this thesis. See Lewis McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark.
1903), 131; Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 1964 reprint (Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1991), 258; Martin and Sarah Goodman’s introduction to Johann
Reuchlin’s De arte cabalistica (Lincoln: University o f Nebraska Press, 1983); and Karen Silvia de
Leon-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets. Magicians, and Rabbis (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1997).
30 See Doni’s / numeri (1562); Di Giorgio’s Trattato di architettura civile e militare (1520); and
Postel’s translation and edition o f the Sefir Yetzirah (1552).
31 The texts that use or speak o f number symbolism that Bruno probably knew would have been
those available in Latin in the first half o f the sixteenth century. The earliest texts on number
symbolism he could have had access to might have been the works o f Philo ( De opificio mundt),
Nicomachus ( Introduction to Arithmetic, translated by Apuleius between 148-153), Pseudo-
Dionysius (De mystica theologia). He may have know the third-century works o f Plotinus
( Enneads), Diogenes Laertius ( Vitae Philosophorum), Porphyry (Life o f Pythagoras), and
Iamblichus (Theologoumena arithmeticae); the fifth-century works o f St. Jerome’s commentaries,
Olympiodoros, Proclus (commentaries on Plato, Euclid, and Pythagoras’ "Golden verses”), Thieny
o f Chartes (commentary on Boethius), Macrobius (In somnium scipionis), Augustine (De musica, De
civitate, De trinitate), and Martianus Capella (Nuptiis Philologia et Mercurii); the sixth-century
works o f Boethius (Institutione arithmetica); the seventh-century works o f Isidore o f Seville (Liber
numerorum); the eighth-century works o f the Venerable Bede (De comptu vel loquela digitorum );
the ninth-century works o f Rabanus (De numero); the twelfth-century works o f Hugh o f St. Victor
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tradition with both kabbalah and his own breed o f natural philosophy (which some
might call Hermetic, but which I would hesitate to define as such). The reason the
kabbalah was particularly interesting to Bruno, and the reason it is essential for any
examples o f the fusion o f number, shape, and word in Western literature. One o f
the kabbalah’s main expressions o f this fusion is the tree-like figure that contains
the ten sefirot {sefirah, singular) (fig. 20). The stem o f the word sefirah is related
to saper, sapir, safar, sephar, and sefer. Super means "to express or
Figure 20: The sefirot tree according express God's greatness. Secondly, they are
to The Ari, from the Sefer Yetzirah:
The Book o f Creation, ed. Aryeh
Kaplan (York Beach, ME: Samuel kelim, vessels that limit and delineate God’s
Weisner, 1993), 29.
infinite light, bringing it into the finite realm
{Practical Geometry); the thirteenth-century works o f John Peckham {De numeris misticis); the
fifteenth-century works o f Nicholas o f Cusa {On Wisdom and Knowledge), Luca Pacioli (Summa
arithemetica; De divina proportione), Francesco Colonna (Hypnerotomachia Poliphili); and how
own century’s John Dee {Monas Hieroglyphica). Petrus Bongus (Numerorum mysteria), and Roger
Bacon {De speculum alchemiae).
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God’s infinity. They make it possible for "an infinite and transcendental God to
interact with His creation, for they allow us to speak o f what He does, without
thoughts on the ladder between the Divine and man and the "shadows o f ideas”
which allow man to interact with Him. Though I would not say that Bruno directly
modeled his De umbris on the kabbalistic theory o f the sefirot, he definitely knew
about the sefirot, as we can see in Saulino's long monologue in the Cabala del
cavallo pegaseo.iA The sefirot, the concept of Ein sof, and the orders o f angels and
uniquely Bruno's, however, is the notion that the ass is symbolic o f knowledge.
Nuccio Ordine has discussed this concept at length in his Cabala dell ’asino, as
have Karen Silvia de Leon-Jones and Michele Ciiiberto.36 This long passage
32 Aryeh Kaplan, Inner Space, ed. Abraham Sutton (New York: Moznaim Publishing Co.. 1990),
40.
33 Ibid.. 39.
34 I will quote only part o f the passage here: “.. .ma nel profondo abisso del sopramondo ed
ensofico universo: per la contemplazione di quelle diece Sephiroth che chiamiamo in nostra lingua
membi ed indumenti, penetromo, veddero, concepimo quantum fas est homini loqui. Ivi son le
dimensioni Ceter. Hocma, Bina. Hesed, Geburah, Tipheret, Nezah. Hod, lesod, Malchuth: de quali
la prima da noi e detta Corona, la seconda Sapienza. la terza Providenza. la quarta Bonti, la quinta
Fortezza, la sesta Bellezza, la settima Vittoria, la ottava Lode, la nona Stabilmento. la decima
R egno.. . Or contemplate qua, che secondo la cabalistica revelazione Hocma, a cui rispondeno le
forme o ruote, nomate Cherubini, che influiscono nell’ottava sfera, dove consta la virtu
dell’intelligenza de Raziele, I’asino o asinita e simbolo della sapienza.” Bruno. Cabala, 865-866.
36 Nuccio Ordine, La cabala dell'asino (Napoli: Liguori, 1987); de Leon-Jones, Giordano Bruno
and the Kabbalah, chapters 7, 8, and 9; and Michele Ciiiberto, Giordano Bruno (Rome-Bari:
Laterza& Figli, 1990).
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35
and kabbalistic metaphysics. Though Bruno did not know Hebrew and was not
working knowledge o f the tools it offered for describing the indescribable and
interacting with the infinite. The learned circles in the Renaissance that dabbled in
esoterica knew of the basic kabbalistic techniques of gematria. that is, giving
numeric values to letters and calculating hidden meanings in words and texts; and
temurah. the permutation and combination o f letters. Some may have even known
about the practice o f notarikon, in which the first, the median, and the last letters o f
a word are permuted and calculated. Johannes Kepler claimed to have written a
small book called Geometrical Kabbalah in which he talks about how geometric
In Italy there was a small contingent o f kabbalists who viewed the kabbalah
* 38
through Neoplatonic eyes and helped to diffuse it among Christian humanists.
Among these scholars were the well-known Rabbi Menahem Recanati. Rabbi
Yohanan Alemanno, Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Yehudah Abravanel, and the well-known
Rabbi Abraham Abulafia. The works o f the great Rabbi Isaac Luria, founder o f the
Safed School o f kabbalah, came to Italy in the sixteenth century in the Hebrew
version o f Israel Sarug and were greatly influential on kabbalistic thought.39 Many
37 See Kepler’s letter to Dr. Joachim Tanckius o f Leipzig, May 12. 1608.
38 See Moshe Idel, Kabbala: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 3,
45; and Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations o f the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in
Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Martelle Gavarin, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 188. There were other Italian Jewish intellectuals
who rejected both Neoplatonism and Kabbalism, such as the fifteenth-century Aristotelians Rabbi
Elijah del Medigo, Rabbi Obadiah Sfomo, and Rabbis Yehuda and David Messer Leon.
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36
One o f the fundamental kabbalist texts is the Zohar (the Book o f Splendor),
was first printed in Italy in the sixteenth century, with editions appearing in Hebrew
in Mantova and Cremona from 1558-60.42 The early Christians who knew Hebrew
or were acquainted with the Zohar and other kabbalist works, tried to parallel its
interpretations and techniques with the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin, the
name of Jesus, Original Sin. and so forth. The first time that the term sefirot
kabbalist text, the Sefir Yetzirah (the Book o f Creation), written in Palestine
between the second and sixth centuries by an unknown author who was influenced
greatly by Greek sources.43 Rabbi Alemanno advised his students, one o f whom
was Pico, to begin their studies o f the kabbalah with the Sefir Yetzirah.*4
40 Ibid.. 189.
41 Idel attributes the authorship o f the Zohar to another twelfth-century rabbi, Simeon bar Yohai.
See his Kabbala: New Perspectives, 3. It is certain, however, that Rabbi de Leon wrote the Midrash
ha-Ne’elam in 1275-80, the Zohar's earliest stratum o f Torah commentary.
42 See Daniel Matt’s introduction to the Zohar (New York: Pauiist Press, 1983), 9-11; and Aryeh
Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1982), 188. See also
Gershom Scholem, Origins o f the Kabbalah, trans. Allan Arkush. ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) for a look at how kabbalistic studies moved into
Aragon and Castile in the first quarter o f the thirteenth century. It is also worth noting that the
earliest traceable kabbalist text is not the Zohar , but the Bahir (the Book o f Brightness).
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The Sefir Yetzirah is a poem on the ten sefirot, the emanations or
and Ein s o f are a unit, or rather, a unity, along with the twenty-two letters o f the
Hebrew alphabet. The Sefir Yetzirah says that when God engraved the twenty-two
elemental letters, he ''carved them, weighed them, permuted them, and transposed
combinatoria, is what animates the universe. It is also what constitutes the totality
o f existence. The ten sefirot are described in the Sefer Yetzirah as ten directions
that “define a path to the Infinite Being who is beyond His creation.”46
5
The ten sefirot plus the twenty-two Hebrew letters equal thirty-two, or 2 ,
of space, one o f time, and one o f spirit) in which the thirty-two paths correspond to
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38
47
the number o f apexes in a five-dimensional hypercube. The Sefer Yetzirah
from De
47 The symbolism o f the number thirty-two goes back to Pythagoras, who noted the number’s
greatness because o f its multiple divisors. Gnostic documents also speak o f this quality, [del claims
that Cornelius Agrippa was the first author to note the semblance between Gnosticism and kabbalah.
See Agrippa, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (1527); and Idel, Kabbala. New Perspectives,
5-6, 123.
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39
a r c h e t y p v s .
1 n p a P y D y 0 2 a b 3 * 0 n t a a 2 3 0
I 2 V P B 0 a 3 0 r a 2 K P P 0 0 a 3 0 t a 2 K
, 3 a D 2 3 n a 3 V i 0 b a i 2 n P y a » t a 0
4 P 0 3 t 2 V 9 a 0 a H P 0 3 i 2 p 9 a 0 a n
5 t 0 n 2 a 0 * a 9 b r 3 P ) a a p y 3 1 0
6 B 3 a P D e 2 P a ? II 9 3 a p a a 2 p 0 t 0
7 y 0 3 D * 2 y 3 a P b a a a i p 2 1 n 0 n 0
8 0 1 P a a P 3 1 0 0 0 e r p a a P 3 2 9 O 0
9 a 9 a n 0 a 9 a r s 2 y a 3 3 0 » n
P
10 a 2 0 a 9 P 0 V 3 K 0 2 0 a 0 T P 0 P 3 0
Figure 26: The
tl b (* b K b K b 0 b 0 b K b it b 0 b II b N b 0
3 P 0 P f • a 0 2 a 0 3 p a P t 0 a D 2 0 0 T etraktys. A triangular
i 12
! 13 * p 0 3 3 a f y 2 b P a 0 a a n o y a 2 K arrangem ent of circles,
14 0 D 2 3 P a 0 V i 0 0 a 0 2 3 P a o p r 0 N from G iordano Bruno,
' 15 n 0 n r ) P t 0 a a P b a 3 y 2 • 9 3 0 y «
t 0 D a 3 9 t K a P 2 0 0 P a 3 9 0
De m inimo. Bruno calls
i 16 P 1 0 V
17 t 3 y p a D i P 3 ? 9 S a a * a a 2 n a y 0 this figure the
I 18 a 0 a » r 2 r 3 e P .a 0 0 a 9 p 2 f 3 0 P * “ Isocheles Deomcriti.”
19 a r • a y P n 2 0D s » V 3 a n 3 2 0 a 0
20 a r 0 3 0 D D P V 2 0 a T 0 3 a D 9 P P 0
i 21 3 2 a a 1 t n 0 * 3 s a 2 0 y 9 y P a P a 0
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twenty-two points on a circle, which are connected by 231 lines; Bruno’s “Seal of
Seals” (Sigillus sigiilorum) resembles this figure (fig. 25).49 The twenty-two letters
are grouped in such a way as to form a united whole, and each of the ten sejirot is
inseparable from the preceding and following one inseparable from the preceding
that is otherwise angular. This is a reversal o f another figure dear to Bruno: the
(fig. 26).
Form, number, and word: these are the fundamental components o f Bruno's
geometry, we must know what he knew about geometry, understand how it served
his philosophical project, and see how he used it, alongside numbers and the word,
studies which examine Bruno's language are numerous, though limited to a handful
49 “Twenty-two Foundation Letters:/ He placed them in a circle like a wall with 2 3 1 Gates./ The
Circle oscillates back and forth,” Sefer Yetzirah. 2:4, trans. Kaplan, 108.
30 The most rigorous and in-depth studies o f Bruno’s mathematics are the studies o f Ksenija
Atanasijevic, The Metaphysical and Geometrical Doctrine o f Giordano Bruno, trans. George Vid
Tomaschevich (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1972);and Martin Mulsow, Introduction to De monade,
ed. and trans. Elisabeth Von Samsonow (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1991). Angelika Bttnker-
Vallon’s Metaphysik und Mathematik bei Giordano Bruno (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995) sounds
promising, but turns out to treat Bruno’s mathematics quite superficially.
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41
of subjects. There are essays which trace Bruno’s poetry to the mocking of
Petrarch;51 essays which point out Bruno’s word-games;52 some which speak o f his
’'anti-aesthetics”;53 and a few which discuss how Bruno's writing ties his scientific
however, there is no study on i f and how Bruno’s knowledge of geometry and his
contributed to his literary style. Giancarlo Maiorino has perhaps entered into this
discussion more than anyone else in his "The Breaking o f the Circle: Giordano
Bruno and the Poetics o f the Immeasurable Abundance,” though even he hardly
discusses Bruno’s mathematics.55 Furthermore, few Bruno scholars have given any
thought to the highly perplexing geometric diagrams Bruno draws in the Articuli?b
52 Jo Ann Cavallo, “The Candelaio: A Hermetic Puzzle,” Canadian Journal o f Italian Studies
25 (1992): 47-55: and Laura Sanguineti White. "In tristitia hilaris in hilaritate tristis: Armonia nei
contrasti,” Quaderni d'italianistica 5 (1984): 191-203.
54 Silvio Ferrone, "11 Candelaio-. Scienza e letteratura." Italianistica 2 (1973): 518-43: and a
number o f papers given at the Convegno di Storia del teatro: Filosofia in commedia, Giordano
Bruno e il teatro europeo. Rome, Nov. 1996. Many critics who discuss Bruno’s language and
scientific thought in the same breath do not mention his mathematics. Take, for example, A. Buono
Hodgart, Giordano Bruno: The Candle-Bearer An Enigmatic Renaissance Play (Lewiston, New
York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997); Michele Ciliberto, "Filosofia e lingua neile opere volgari di
Bruno,” Rinascimento ll.s.29 (1978): 151-179; R. Tissoni, "Appunti per uno studio sulla prosa della
dimostrazione scientifica nella Cena di Giordano Bruno,” Romanische Forschungen 73 (1961): 347-
388.
55 Giancarlo Maiorino, "The Breaking o f the Circle: Giordano Bruno and the Poetics o f
Immeasurable Abundance,” Journal o f the History o f Ideas (April-June 1977): 317-327.
56 See Ksenija Atanasijevic, The Metaphysical and Geometrical Doctrine o f Giordano Bruno ;
Higgens and Dora, Introduction to On the Composition o f Images, Signs and Ideas; Martin Mulsow,
"La geometria applicata nell’opera di Bruno,” Giordano Bruno: Gli anni napoletani, ed. Eugenio
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42
In the last hundred years, the interpretations have ranged from dismissive to wacky.
Leo Olschki, for example, thought the diagrams were merely mnemonic devices;37
Atanasijevic called them bizarre figures;39 Yates hypothesized that the diagrams
were either magic talismans, or a ciphered language that Bruno developed while in
Germany.60
Martin Mulsow, on the other hand, has suggested that the diagrams are
philosophy.61 Similarly suggestive and not dismissive are the three jarring
asserts first that the diagrams could be archetypal mandalas that appeared to Bruno
Canone (Cassino: Universita degli Studi, 1992); Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
Tradition; Helene Vedrine. "L'Obstacle realiste en mathematiques chez deux philosophes du XVIe
siicle: Bruno et Patrizi,” Platon et Aristotle en la Renaissance, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin and Pierre
Aquilon (Paris: Vrin, 1976): 239-248. There is nothing in Angelika BOnker-Vallon. Metaphysik und
Mathematik bei Giordano Bruno\ or in the excellent essay by Walter Pagel, “Giordano Bruno: The
Philosophy o f Circles,” Journal o f the History o f Medicine and Allied Sciences 52/310 (1951).
Carlo Monti, though referring to the Articuli as a forerunner o f De minimo, says nothing about the
diagrams they share, nor does he offer any comments on the “ornamentation." Hilary Gatti. in her
new book. Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, has a chapter on Bruno’s mathematics, but
she, too, neglects the AniculT s diagrams altogether.
59 See Ksenia Atanasijevic ( The Metaphysical and Geometrical Doctrine. 88), who says that
Bruno’s geometry was “decorative,” mythological, and often wrong or unjustified. She also writes
that Bruno “accumulates nomenclatures, bizarre figures, and superficial analogies till the last chapter
[of De minimo]" (93), and that “A spirit exclusively intuitive, Bruno loses his way wherever a
logical or mathematical deduction is necessary” (94).
60 Frances Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 324; see also 313 and 444.
52 Ubaldo Nicola, Giordano Bruno. II Sigillo dei sigilli, i diagrammi ermetici, trans. Emanuela
Colombi (Milan: Mimesis, 1995).
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43
in meditation; second, that Bruno’s passion for geometry seems to have taken off
after his meeting with Mordente in 1586, whereupon he first encountered a new
compass; and third that the diagrams might have been inspired by some
phosphenes. When you stare at a light and then shut your eyes, you see
phosphenes, luminous little shapes that often take the form o f dots, stars, flowers,
and squiggles. Such images can also be triggered by migraines or by certain drugs.
Nicola concludes that Bruno may have made his diagrams and little symbols based
note the dearth o f serious attempts to decipher the diagrams in the analysis of
Bruno's geometry. Even Tocco has said little about these figures. In his study on
Bruno’s Latin works, the only comment he makes on the diagrams is that they all
have mythological names, which is not even true, as seventeen have descriptive
names such as "Expansor” or “Specula.” and twelve are not named at all.63 With
Yates and Ubaldo Nicola have had something to say about them.64 Clearly, at
present, there is no final word as to the nature and purpose o f these celestial-
63 See Felice Tocco, Le opere latine di Giordano Bruno esposte confrontate con le italiane
(Florence: Le Monnier, 1889), 124.
64 Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 444; Nicola, “I diagrammi ermetici
dell’Opuscolo di Praga e Del triplici Minimo,” Giordano Bruno. II Sigillo dei sigilli.
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44
Archimedes to Luigi Lagrangia (d. 1813), omits Bruno’s Articuli, but places De
minimo under the category' of “Poemi geometrici,” along with Pier Paolo
Caravaggi’s In geometria male restaurata (1650) and Pietro Mengoli’s Via regia
mathematician:
scholarship and just two years before the statue o f Bruno was placed in Rome’s
Campo de’ Fiori. And yet even with this encomium on Bruno’s importance to
mathematics which, I believe, is integral to his writing and his thought as a whole.
66 Ibid., 197-199. Similarly, Guillaume Libri, in his history o f Italian Renaissance mathematics,
says about Bruno’s mathematics, “malgre des imperfections qui iui sont communes avec tant
d’autres philosophes, on doit reconnaitre en Bruno un des hommes les plus remarquables de son
stecle.” See Guillaume Libri, H'tsloire des Sciences mathematiqves en Italie depuis la renaissance
des lettres jusqu'a la fin du dix-septieme siecle (Paris: Renouard, 1838-41), 145.
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o f Italian humanism, and critics such as Umberto Eco have explored the
the literature and rhetoric o f the Italian Renaissance. There is no question that it is
reading any text o f the Renaissance. A continued investigation into the connections
made between these two languages in the early Renaissance is necessary, not just
for the study of Italian humanism and for Bruno scholarship, but also in order to
develop tools for geometric readings o f literature before and after the Renaissance.
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Chapter Two: Curves
A Repertoire of Curves
moebius strips: these are just a few o f the kinds o f curve designated by geometry.1
There are countless others, many named for the general idea their form suggests,
nephroid, and two snail-shaped figures— the lima?on and the cochlioid.2 In art and
architecture we see forms like the mandorla, the cupola, the arch, and the rotunda,
to list but a few. In nature, the horizon, the track o f a meteor, a waterfall, the
curves. In music there are fugues and rounds; in poetry, the corona and the rondo.
The array o f named curvilinear shapes is staggering, and the number o f all possible
follows, I will focus on only four kinds o f curve: the circle, the hyperbola, the
ellipse, and the parabola. By making this selection I do not claim that there are no
other curvilinear forms in the text, but rather wish to highlight the importance of
1Other beautiful and complex curves are catalogued in E. H. Lockwood, A Book o f Curves
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). See also a manual published by Bruno’s fellow
Neapolitan and near contemporary, Giambattista della Porta, Elementorum curvUineorum libri tres
in quibus altera geometriae parte restituta, agitur de circuit quadratura (Rome: Bartholomaeum
Zannettum, 1610).
2 The lima^on was named by Albrecht DQrer in 1525, the cardioid by Philippe de La Hire in
1708, the astroid by Leibniz in 1715, the nephroid by Proctor in 1878, the cochlioid by Bentham and
Falkenburg in 1884.
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Few geometrical and rhetorical terms are more closely related than the pairs
and Latin glossaries, early manuals of rhetoric and geometry, and contemporary
kinship of these terms; nor does such consultation reveal which set o f terms (the
rhetorical or the geometric) was first employed.3 The most likely conclusion is that
the two sets o f terms developed independently from one another, leaving the
Europe.4 The dialogue begins by recounting the difficult journey that the Nolan
(Bruno himself) and a few friends undertook on Ash Wednesday, 1583, from
Castelnau's house to Sir Fulke Greville's house for a dinner-debate with two
Oxford professors. At the meal, the Nolan and his adversaries scrutinize a number
of astronomical phenomena: the axial motion o f the earth and other celestial bodies;
3 For the etymological dictionaries, Greek and Latin glossaries, early manuals o f rhetoric, and
contemporary books o f rhetoric I consulted, see the section entitled “Rhetoric, Language, and
Etymology” in the bibliography.
4 See Roberto Tissoni, “Appunti per uno studio sulla prosa della dimostrazione scientifica nella
Cena di Giordano Bruno,” Romanische Forschungen 73 ( 1961): 359, who also cites Leo Olschki
and Antonio Corsano as holding this view.
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the circular orbits of planets around the sun; how to measure the size o f luminous
stars; the infinite circumference o f the universe; infinite worlds; life on other
planets; and the distance between heavenly bodies. Bruno’s belief in a heliocentric
universe, as well as his critique o f scholastic physics, are the main scientific forces
at work in the Cena. On another level— that of moral philosophy— the Cena offers
certain Protestant doctrines, pointing out the errors in reading the Bible literally or
scientifically. On the aesthetic level, he subtly alludes to the issue o f the reciprocity
between word and image. On a candidly personal level, Bruno offers an unabashed
In addition to these and other elements present in the text, I would suggest
that Bruno's Cena is full o f figurative language—and more specifically, figures that
circumlocution in the circuitous journey to the supper and in the circular argument
between the Nolan and the Oxford professors on the physics and metaphysics o f the
heliocentric universe. There are hyperbolic exaltations in the dedicatory epistle and
the first dialogue; the parable o f the pilgrimage in the second dialogue; and the
elliptical speech and confounding geometrical figures o f the final three dialogues.
Bruno’s imitates the form o f its content. He seems to have deliberately constructed
In his “Dedicatory Epistle,” Bruno writes that while reading his text we
should visualize it; “leggete e vedrete quel che voglio dire,” conflating the reader
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and the spectator.3 What is more, Bruno tells us that every word o f the Cena is
significant. Even in the passages that seem most unlikely, he says, "non v’e parola
importanza, forse piii la dove meno appare" (15). For a dialogue that is filled with
such oblique tropes as circumlocution, hyperbole, ellipsis, and parable,6 this is quite
a claim indeed. What is more, Bruno points to how the Cena contains comedy,
works. The Cena is a tightly organized narration o f a journey and a discussion (or a
from the more fragmentary schemata o f his mnemonic works and mathematical-
metaphysical poetry. It is also unlike either the staccato, speedy scenes o f the
Candelaio or the dreamy lyrics o f the Eroici. And yet, even within its overarching
unity, the Cena has a series of inconsistencies and quandaries. Bruno's reasoning is
principles are frequently wrong, as he attempts to fit these principles into his
mathesis even at the cost o f incoherent and illogical results. At other times,
3 Bruno, La cena de le Ceneri in Dialoghi italiani, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence: Sansoni,
1985), 11,15. All citations o f the Cena and Bruno’s other Italian dialogues are from this edition.
6 The parable is often categorized in present day as a genre, but would not have been considered
as such in Bruno’s time. I will therefore include it in the loose category o f rhetorical tropes for this
dissertation.
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however, Bruno seems to be unclear precisely in order to protect the essence o f his
ideas from those unwilling or unable to make the effort to understand them.
The sympathetic reader of the Cena must face head on Bruno's complicated
argument for logical knots and kinks. It helps us to envision Bruno's vision o f the
circles, peaks and troughs, ovals and spirals— we come to see how' these curvilinear
forms not only give the text its shape, but are the vehicles for the scientific, ethical,
Circumlocution-circle
more, he might have saved himself from the hands o f the Inquisition. But
do not want to, or cannot, reveal something for what it actually is. Take, for
example, the very opening phrase of the Dedicatory Epistle o f the Cena, in which
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After reading such a winding list o f "is-nof s” and "is"s." I do not believe any
reader would be able to say with confidence what the Ash Wednesday Supper
attended by the Nolan actually was like. Perhaps only the generic "a bit o f
think that the "cena” itself stands for something beyond the actual convito and
conversation. Does this passage subtly mock the theology and liturgy o f Ash
Wednesday, aggrandizing and belittling it at the same time? Is the meal in and o f
position because it suits you at the moment? We know from a colorful, satirical
come.
We can see an extensive circumlocution in the very path the Nolan and his
entourage take to get to the Ash Wednesday Supper. It is a muddy, dark, unguided
trek which leads the group back to its point of departure: the Nolan’s residence.
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Teofilo cries, in regard to this circular detour, "O varie dialettiche, o nodosi dubii, o
a means by which Bruno lambasting English society for what he perceives as its
scholastic pedantry. Bruno indicates these issues obliquely under the cloak o f more
his concept of the circle, as it is the most prominent form in his mathematics,
physics, and metaphysics alike. If we first take the time to consider the nature of
the circle, we will then be able to expose and appreciate the "circularity" o f the
Cena. Variations on the word “circle” show up in all eight o f Bruno's Dialoghi
et mondi, and the Cena. Using Michele Ciliberto’s Lessico di Giordano Bruno for
7 Michele Ciliberto, Lessico di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1979).
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variations” are terms that occur often enough in Bruno's Italian lexicon to warrant
study, and yet, with the exception o f Walter Pagel's article for the Journal o f the
History o f Medicine and Allied Sciences, no one has given the concept o f the circle
see them in his geometric diagrams, in his discussion of celestial orbits, in his
notion of minima as the form-givers to matter, in his memory wheels, his wheel o f
fortune, his wheel o f time, his wheel o f metamorphosis, his wheel o f elocution, in
the notion o f a circular movement o f all things in nature, and in his intuition o f the
“perfect” circle— impossible to see or understand—as the basis o f all form.‘, That
Bruno also maintains a notably “circular” rhetoric throughout his Italian dialogues
and Latin works is not surprising. His discussion o f the circle's power and nature
8 Walter Page!. “Giordano Bruno: The Philosophy o f Circles and the Circular Movement o f the
Blood.” Journal o f the History o f Medicine and Allied Sciences. 52/310 (1951): 116-124. Georges
Poulet. in his Metamorphoses o f the Circle, trans. Carley Dawson and Elliott Coleman (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), does talk about Bruno’s fascination with the circle, but only
briefly, and does not consider Bruno’s geometric diagrams.
9 All the citations from Bruno’s Latin works, except for Praelectiones geometricae e Ars
deformationum. Testi inediti, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Rome: Editore di Storia e Letteratura,
1964), are from the following edition: Giordano Bruno, Opera latine conscripta, ed. F. Tocco, et al.
8 vols. (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1962). For geometric diagrams, see especially the
Articuli and the Frankfurt poems; for a discussion o f celestial orbits, see the Cena, the Causa, and
the Infinito; on the minimum, see De minimo; for memory wheels, see De umbris idearum, Cantus
Circaeus, and Explicatio triginta sigiilorum; for the wheel o f fortune, see the Eroici and the
Spaccio; for the wheel o f time, see the Eroici, 1089 and Michele Ciliberto’s La ruota del tempo
(Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992); for the wheel o f metamorphosis, see the Eroici, 1003; for the wheel
o f elocution, see Artificium perorandi in Op. Lat., vol. Il.iv, 380-381; for circular motion in nature,
see De rerum principiis and the Causa; and for the circle as the basis o f all form, see especially De
minimo, De monade, and De immenso.
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appears in 1582, in his first mnemonic text, De umbris idearum .l0 By the time
Bruno was writing his Dialoghi italiani in 1583-4, he was already speaking of the
circle as the figure o f all figures, almost like the “Seal o f seals,” which is also,
coincidentally, a circle (see fig. 25). In the Spaccio, Bruno writes that “si possono
far tutte l’altre figure uguali ad altre figure con l'aggiunto e relazione del circolo,
also a comment on the perfect spherical “minima” that move matter into the forms
and shapes it ultimately takes within a universe that is at once all center and all
circumference.
causa principio et urxo (1584), he writes that the “linea retta infinita venga ad essere
circolo infinito.” Earlier still, in Sigillus sigiilorum (1583), he speaks o f the three
faculties of the mind in a similar light: sense, which he envisions as a straight line;
the intellect, as a circle; and the imagination, as an oblique line neither straight nor
circular.13 Though at first glance, one might seem to see Nicholas o f Cusa's wise
12 Bruno, Articuli in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 25; see also De minimo in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii.
13 Bruno, Causa, 336; Explicatio triginta sigilli in Op. Lat., vol. II.ii, 21.
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has taken the rhetoric of the ineffable to another level. When he writes that the
Writing about the invisible and the incommensurate also requires a language that
can bend and twist itself around the unnamable and the inexplicable in a kind o f
circumlocution. It is useful to recall that the word tropos itself implies a “twisting"
published in 1612 by John Henry Alstedt under the title o f Artificium perorandi,
Bruno speaks of the complex, twisty rhetoric needed to “measure” the infinite
14 Thomas Browne, Hydrioiaphia (London: Hen. Brome, 1568), as cited by Eve Keller, “The
Certain Sign: The Language o f Geometry in Seventeenth-Century English Literature,” (Ph.D. Diss.,
Columbia University, 1991), 101.
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This use o f paradox and circumlocution to address the Divine— that is, the
infinite— harks back to the via negativa o f thinkers such as Pseudo-Dionysius and
Thomas Aquinas: God is all that remains after we determine that which He is not.16
considered a return to a point o f departure, as in the case o f the initial journey o f the
For Bruno, the circle is the matrix of all form and motion: all other forms
derive from it, and all forms in nature, he says, move circularly.17 The Brunian
and at times a sphere. It is simultaneously all and part; beginning and end; all o f its
dimensions are “uguali” and “medesime.” 18 All the circles and spheres that we
see— the moon, an orange, a plate, a drawing by a compass— are not, however, as
Bruno tells us, perfect. The perfect circle or sphere is infinite, hence invisible to the
human eye and inconceivable to the human mind.19 The perfect circle is a paradox,
one and the same measure. Thus the circumference would be the diameter, and the
16 See Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology; Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles. See also the
Cloud o f Unknowing.
19 Bruno, Articuli in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 24, 145. See also the Heraclitan idea o f panta rei in De
minimo in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 148, 152, 155.
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infinite circle would be a line. In infinity, the line is the circle and the circle is the
which animates the mineral, natural and spiritual worlds.22 Atoms, fluids, the
imitation of the heavens and with the purpose o f sustaining life. In Bruno’s
lifetime, Kepler had not yet proved that the planets moved in elliptical paths, and
thus spherical-circularity was still considered the basis for all motion, heavenly and
natural. The planets moved in circles, the heavenly spheres moved in circles, as did
the soul, the winds, and everything that was alive. Bruno even envisioned the
frenzied hero’s ascension toward the Divine as a circular passage.23 He wrote that
all turns in a circular line and imitates the circle: to walk, to swim, to fly. to grow,
to feel, to comprehend, to endow with life, to live, to die is a circle.24 What he says
from innumerable medieval and Renaissance sources that such forces as love, for
20 Cusa, Idiota de sapientia, 11.42. See also Bruno, Causa, 336; Infinito. 390; and Articuli in
Op. Lat.. vol. I.iii. 59.
21 De minimo in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 63; Articuli in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 25.
22 For circum sphaeraliter, see Bruno, De magia in Op. Lat., vol. Ill, 419. See also Bruno’s
ideas on the circular motion o f nature in Sigillus sigiilorum in Op. Lat., vol. H.ii, 192-193; Eroici,
1002: Infinito, 4 5 0 ,4 8 7 ,4 9 0 ; Cena, 75, 173; De principiis rerum in Op. Lat. vol. Ill, 521 ; De
monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii, 309.
24 Bruno, Articuli in Op. Lat., vol. I.iii, 53,60; see also De monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii, 308.
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example, move in a circle, and “il cielo e un cerchio e anche l’animo e un circolo
Bruno’s reflections on the circularity o f form, motion, and time seem to have
their origin in Heraclitus’s theory o f perpetual flux (panta rei) and Plato's theory o f
quale noi siamo, che tal volta non debba esser nostra, come non e cosa la quale e
nostra, della quale non doviamo talvolta essere, se una e la materia-’ (55-56). And
yet, this cycling and recycling are not to be taken in a deterministic sense. They are
dinam en: the swerve o f an atom that provokes the creation o f a form, situation, or
in its cycles and order—and that there is room for chance and free will. These ideas
are consistent with Bruno’s discussion o f the constant vicissitudes o f the world
25 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Heptaplus, ed. Alberto Cesare Ambesi (Camagnola: Arktos.
1996), 75.
26 Though the idea o f panta rei is more o f an epistemologica! theory, its first premise, which
deals with the metaphysics o f form and matter, is very much akin to Bruno’s philosophy (see
Bruno’s discussion o f vicissitudes in De minimo in Op. Lat., vol. II.v, 151). Given Heraclitus’s
dictum that you can never put your hand in the same river twice, Bruno writes that it is impossible to
reproduce the same figure twice (see De minimo in Op. Lat., vol. II.v, 152). In Plato, see the
Timaeus, 4 lab.
27 See Lucretius, De rerum naturae, 11.216ff and II.290ff. See also Harold Bloom’s chapter on
'“Clinamen or poetic misprision” in The Anxiety o f Influence: A Theory o f Poetry (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1973).
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notes in his book on the Metamorphoses o f the Circle?9 Poulet places Bruno
among the most '‘circle-obsessed” o f the sixteenth century, alongside the Huguenot
scientific poets such as Maurice Sceve, Jacques Pelletier du Mans, Guy Le Febvre
Englishman Thomas Traherne, and the German Jacob Boehme. I find it telling that
one of the early editions of the Cena was bound together with two o f Boehme’s
Bruno was among the loudest voices of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to
pronounce the circle as the source o f all forms.32 Though he never specifically
circles, he uses it nonetheless in much the same way he uses circles in his geometric
metaphysics lies a supremely circular entity: the "minimum.” The minimum has no
form or parts, and yet is the origin o f all forms and parts.33 Minima are the
J° See Cambridge University’s Emmanuel College edition (S. 10.5.40), as cited by Rita Sturlese.
Bibliogrqfia censimento e storia delle antiche stampe di Giordano Bruno (Florence: Olschki
Editore, 1988), 44.
31 Jacob Boehme, The Key, trans. William Law, ed. D.A. Freher (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press,
1991), 22.
32 Others include Campanella, Pico, Patrizi, Charles of Bovelles, Pelletier o f Mans, Ramus, La
Boderie, Yves o f Paris, Mersenne, Paracelsus, Kepler, Eckhart, Boehme, Kircher, Leibniz, the
Cambridge Platonists, and the English metaphysical poets. See Poulet, Metamorphoses o f the
Circle, xxiv.
33 See De minimo in Op. Lat.. vol. I.iii, 284. For an excellent discussion o f the concept o f the
minimum, see Martin M uslow’s essay in the German translation o f De monade , trans. and ed.
Elisabeth Von Samsonow (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1991), 181-271.
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invisible building blocks o f matter; like atoms, they are circular, but unlike atoms,
they are infinite in number. What Bruno calls the minimum for geometry and all
forms o f nature, is parallel to the classical notion o f the "monad” for number. The
monad is the elusive source from which all numbers proceed. Like the minimum,
minimum transcends all figures, the monad transcends all numbers— the minimum
and the monad circumscribe figures and numbers respectively, and are everywhere
inscribed in them.34 Though the minimum and the monad are points o f departure,
neither the minimum nor the monad is or has a discernible center. Centers are
constantly shifting. The human soul— perfect in its own right— is bom from one
center, becomes another center, then, via metempsychosis, goes to yet another
center.35 Every geometric shape also has a kind o f center, and yet the true
geometer, who is also a philosopher o f nature, knows that "a” center is not “the"
The Brunian universe has its circumference nowhere and its center
circumference, and all-center are key to his metaphysics and the epistemology o f
3,1 See, for example, the comprehensive Pythagorean list o f the m onad’s qualities in lamblicus’s
The Theology ofArithmetic: On the Mystical, Mathematical, and Cosmological Symbolism o f the
First Ten Numbers, ed. Robin Waterfield (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988), 35-40.
35 See Plato, Timaeus; Plotinus, Enneads VI.9-8; Augustine, Liber de spiritu et anima (which is
thought to be falsely attributed).
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the poem to lauding the circle: he exalts its equivalence to the great monad; speaks
of its symbolic value o f oneness and its freedom from plurality; and points out that
it is actually the ultimate "a-gon”—a figure without angles. In the circle, he writes,
opposites coincide: chord, arc, spike, point, end, nothing, everything... right and
left, arriving and returning, movement and rest.37 The coincidence o f opposites,
Not surprisingly, Bruno was as obsessed with the instrument used to draw
he came across in Paris in 1586 that he dedicated two entire dialogues to it and its
ability to see the myriad o f possibilities o f this compass and he wrote Dialogi duo
not only as a praise o f the instrument’s merits and use, but as a critique o f its
38
inventor’s inability to understand the greatness o f what he had created. When the
responded with rage and indignation. Bruno retaliated promptly and in no few
words.39
37 Bruno. De monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii, 335-345. See also Praelectiones and Articuli.
38 See Bruno’s Dialogi duo de Fabricii Mordentis Salernitani prope divina ad inventione ad
perfectam cosmimetriae praxim (Paris: Petri Chevillot, 1586).
39 See Bruno’s reactions in Idiota triumphans (1586) and De somnii interpretatione ( 1586).
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What exactly was this compass that inspired such ardor in Bruno (fig. 27)?
Galileo in 1598), and that in the same year Fabrizio Mordente published an
intcigliato in Venice announcing a new kind o f compass, though he did not describe
how to build it.41 Rose cites the correspondence between Commandino's student.
Guidobaldo del Monte, and the Venetian patrician Jacomo Contarini, which
sconosciuti e due nod, as well as in his 1990 essay ’’Bruno e la matematica a lui
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intagliato was printed by Paolo Forlani in 1567 and draws his information from the
Bruno met Mordente in Paris in 1586 and was immediately struck by the
admired Mordente, and because his compatriot did not know Latin well, he decided
to announce the invention to the Latin-speaking world. But Bruno did not merely
reprove Mordente for his limited vision, for his inability to see the compass's full
potential, much in the same way Bruno claimed in the Cena to understand
a fusion o f number, figure, religion, love, art and magic.44 I have spoken at length
about Bruno's mathesis in the Introduction. What we need to recall here is that
mathesis is Bruno’s “figuration" o f the universe's nature, its functioning, and its
parts. That Bruno appropriated Mordente’s compass as his own is indicative o f his
44 See Bruno’s Sigillus Sigillorum, Op. lat., vol. I.iv, 255; and Yates, Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition, 296.
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desire to vivify infertile fields such as logic and dialectic and infuse them with a
greater purpose. The compass— its function o f drafting circles and reducing or
geometry and thought. Understanding why Bruno had such a hostile attitude
appreciate further his special affinity for geometry, and in particular for the circle.
Had Bruno been a more able mathematician and technician. I do not doubt that he
Aquilecchia concludes that he did so in order to position himself for a job in the
mathematics department at the University o f Padua, which had been left open after
the death of Giuseppe Moletti in 1588.45 Bruno did not get the position and it
remained vacant until 1592 was given to Galileo. It is also worth noting, as
Leonardo Olschki did. that Bruno came upon Mordente's compass when he was
developing his theory of the minimum and was thinking about the mathematical
and physical limits o f divisibility.46 This information further strengthens the idea
that Bruno respected traditional geometry enough to teach it and use it in the
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certain numbers had a circular quality. Numbers such as six, sixty, and 360 show
up often in Bruno’s work, not the least in the Certa. In a regular hexagon inscribed
in a circle, in fact, each of its six sides (with six angles o f 60° each) is equal to the
radius. Six is a “perfect” number, according to the Pythagoreans (it equals the sum
o f its factors, 1, 2, 3), and it is a circular number, for when multiplied by itself it
(forward, backward, up, down, left, and right). Also according to lamblicus. the
number six is the “form of all forms,” in that, like the circle, all forms (that is.
numbers) derive from it. since it is the product o f the first female number [2] and
the first male number [3].47 Bruno confirmed this in De monade, much in the same
In nature, we see that the snowflake always has six comers (as Kepler
48 See Bruno, De monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii. 421. See also Cornelius Agrippa, De philosophia
occulta, bk. II.
49 See Johannes Kepler, De Niue Sexangula (Frankfurt: Godfrey Tampach, 1611). Kepler was
not able to explain the physical cause o f six-sidedness in snowflakes; it was another 200 years before
the mystery was solved by crystallographers. Kepler concluded that the reason for this six-fold
symmetry had to be found in a universal Galenic facultas formatrix (or an anima terrae or Lucretian
daedala tellus). Though Bruno never spoke o f hexagons in terms o f planar tight-packing, he did
explore the minimum number o f spheres circumscribing another sphere, which he found to be six.
See De monade in Op. Lat., vol. I.ii, 250.
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mysticisms; the Greeks and Neoplatonists were not alone, and even Descartes had
some ideas about the divinity o f mathematically simple forms. Six is associated
with the ring finger on the left hand, on which the wedding band is placed (the
finger was believed to have a vein running through it leading directly to the heart;
sixty, by the way, is Plato’s “marriage number”).30 The first finger-counting book
in the west. Venerable Bede’s De computo vel loquela digitorum, shows the ring
finger being bent down on the left hand to indicate the number six, as does the
also called the “Amphitrite,” for it yields two separate triads (amphis, meaning
separate or two, and trite, implying three), and we know that Bruno often referred
30 See Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols, trans. Paul Broneer (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1969); and Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystery o f Numbers (New York: Oxford
University Press. 1993).
31 Venerable Bede, De computo vel loquela digitorum, eighth century A.D.; Luca Pacioli,
Summa de Arithmetica (Venice: n.p., 1494).
32 For other references in Bruno to Queen Elizabeth I as “Amphitrite,” see especially his Eroici.
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Ovid’s Metamorphoses describe the goddess Amphitrite as the wife o f Ocean and
the fountain o f all numbers.53 This fits well with both the symbolism o f the number
six, and the image o f Queen Elizabeth as queen o f the seas and abundant lands.
Sixty, like six, is "circular.” We find sixty minutes in the cycle o f an hour,
sixty seconds in the cycle o f a minute, 360 degrees in a circle. Sixty was the first
“great unit” used in Babylon, and the sexagesimal system was more popular than
the decimal system in the Middle East and Far East for centuries. Sixty, as Bruno
shows, is also a number that can be easily used to create a numeric and geometric
4 6 6 f 6 o o o o o o
7 7 7 6 0 0 0 0 0
would have been conceptually and 1 1 9 6 0 0 0 0
a 1 6 0 0 0
proceed out from the minimum. He does not explain his "ladder o f succession,” nor
does he include numeric ladders like this one anywhere else in his works. We
should note, thus, the privilege he gives sixty as an "expansor”— the gnomic
expansion o f figures that share the same center (like concentric circles) or do not
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share the same center but repeat the same form (like the figure Bruno names
"Expansor” in the Articuli\ see fig. 3). This flexibility and re-flexibility was
wish to negate the circularity of other numbers. The number one, for example, is
the monad, a point or "perfect circle” from which all other numbers spring. The
number nine is a round number: when multiplied by any number it will produce a
number whose digits equal itself (9x2=18, 1+8=9; 9x3=27, 2+ 7= 9...). In the
musical octave, eight notes complete a cycle. Bruno uses the numbers fifteen and
thirty in many o f his memory wheels, and the number five often shows up as a
Following in the tradition of Agrippa and Leonardo, Bruno also drew an ideal man
Why then even bother to talk about the link between the circle and number
in Bruno if it is so prevalent? After only reading a few pages o f Bruno's work, the
question becomes, rather, how we can not consider this link. The very frontispiece
to the first edition o f the Cena heralds the presence o f numbers and number-games
in the text to follow (fig. 29).56 Five dialogues, four interlocutors, three
considerations on two subjects, dedicated to the sole refuge o f the Muses, Michel
de Castelnau. This echoes Bruno’s metaphysics o f cycling between the Many and
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69
LA
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as the initial journey o f the Nolan and his group to the Ash Wednesday Supper. It
57 “Tertii ordinis ad dexteram adstat similitudo rivi, cui adest Gratia, Lenitas, Liquiditas,
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58 i
and “circumscriptio” also turn up among Mercury’s characteristics. There
medicine, and thievery and the fastest orbiting planet around the sun. Though
Bruno never established the relation between the circle and to Mercury explicitly, it
is clear in his description o f the god that language and circumlocution are intimate
companions.
present in the Cena in the form o f the journey, in the careful tiptoeing around
critiques o f English society, in the indirect manner o f describing the nature o f the
mind the notion o f the “infinite circle” and the circle as a matrix for all forms when
reading the Cena, we will see how his language invites us to envision worlds (and
worlds o f words, as Bruno’s friend John Florio might have put it) that could
The following figures that I consider are all conic sections. Although they
are not figures that Bruno discussed or made in his woodcuts, they are conceptually
present in his writing. I will, once again, use the Cena as a model for this
Celeritas, Argutia, Amoenitas vag, dulcis Conspicuitas, iucunde labens Oratio, Dissertio,
Concinnitas, Facundia, Periclea Argutia, nectareum Eloquium, suave stillans Tersitudo,
Flexanimitas. emoliens Culture, Nestorea Lingua, aurea C o p ia.. . ” See Bruno, De imaginum
compositione in Op. Lat., vol. Il.iii, 227.
58 Ibid., 232,237.
59 It has been documented that John Florio and Bruno were friends. See, for example, Roberto
Tissoni’s article, “Appunti per uno studio sulla prosa della dimostrazione scientifica nella Cena de le
Ceneri di Giordano Bruno,” 55.
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“figurative” analysis o f curves in Bruno’s writing, but want to note that these
rhetorical figures can be found in all o f Bruno’s Dialoghi and in nearly all o f his
Hyperbola-hyperbole
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, we find the first appearance o f the word as a figure o f speech.
Demetrius and Strabo, and finally, in the comprehensive manuals o f the Roman
60 From the CD ROM program fbicus I was able to find hundreds o f occurrences o f this general
sense o f the word hyperbole in classical Greek texts. Though for an in-depth study o f the origins
and development o f the term all o f these entries would be essential, I shall not undertake such a task
in this dissertation, for my intention is merely to discuss how the “figure’’ o f hyperbole is expressed
rhetorically and geometrically in Bruno. I would, however, like to note some o f the authors who
used the word most frequently, as it might be useful for gleaning a quick insight into who was most
instrumental in the term’s genealogy o f meaning: Aeschines (iv B.C.), Dionysius Halicarnassus (i
B.C.), Aelius Aristides (ii A.D.), Herodianus (ii A.D.), Longinus (iii A.D.), Libanius (iv A.D.), and
Themistius (iv A.D.).
62 Hippocrates (v B.C.), Viet. 2.65; Plato (7425-328 B.C.), Protagoras 356a; Aristotle (384 -322
B.C.), Meter. 342b 32, and PA 668b 14: Philostratus (ii-iii A.D.), Im., 2.19; Archytas Tarentinus (iv
A.D.), 1.
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throws itself beyond the topic. The former conceals and the latter— in its
thrown above and beyond itself is, however, not easy to envision. Looking at the
geometric hyperbola may help us to graph the shape o f this figure in our minds.
The hyperbola is a conic section, a curve that is created when a cone is sliced in a
Quintilian. Institutio Oratorio. trans. and ed. H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press. 1966). 339. In his Institutio Oratorio Quintilian talks about hyperbole, but not about the
figures o f parable or ellipsis. What do these lacunae indicate about the development o f the three
tropes and about the nature o f the rhetorical manual? I would not like to hazard any guesses here,
but rather to recall that since the birth o f rhetoric and oration, there have been debates about
terminology , the prioritizing o f oratorical skills, and the purpose o f rhetoric itself. Almost every
manual— even those we find in bookstores today—has its own method o f instruction, grouping o f
devices and tropes, interpretation o f the an. and so forth. It would require a massive investigation o f
Quintilian's Institutio and the history o f rhetoric to understand why he includes the trope o f
hyperbole, but not those o f parable and ellipsis. 1 must leave the question unanswered, and as one
for turther study.
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which he did not find). In Greece, the next mathematicians to discuss conic
sections at length were Aristaeus (ca. 320 B.C.), Euclid (ca. 300 B.C.), and
Apollonius of Perga (ca. 225 B.C.). It was Apollonius, however, who first
discovered that one did not have to cut sections perpendicular to the element o f the
cone to obtain the three conic sections; instead, one could get the conic sections by
varying the inclination of the cutting plane. Apollonius was also the one who
Even more relevant to our discussion, however, is this: it was Apollonius (perhaps
upon the suggestion o f Archimedes) who gave the three conic sections the names
hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse. Before him. the figures had been generically
66 See, for example, Carl Boyer, A History o f Mathematics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1991), 93-95.
67 Ibid., 145-146. E.H. Lockwood supposes that the lost works on conics by Aristaeus and
Euclid only considered a single branch o f the hyperbola, and that Apollonius was the first to treat it
as a double-branched curve. See Lockwood, A Book o f Curves, 32-33.
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It was not, however, until Kepler’s time that the fascinating principle o f
conic section continuity emerged. This principle shows that when one o f the
hyperbola’s two foci moves farther away from the other, eventually becoming
Subsequently, when that focus moves beyond infinity and approaches the fixed
focus from the other side, an ellipse will form until the two foci coincide at the
the three conic sections and the circle. It was also Kepler who invented the term
“focus” (which derives from the Latin term for “fire” [focum], or “hearth”) for the
Bruno died before Kepler named the “focus” and gave geometry the
principle of conic section continuity, and he would not have had full access to
Apollonius’s Conics, as it was not translated into Latin until 1710 by Edmund
Hailey. He probably got his information on the conic sections from Giambattista
69 Ibid., 325. See also Steven Schwartzman, The Words o f Mathematics: An Etymological
Dictionary o f Mathematical Terms Used in English (Washington, DC: Mathematical Association o f
America, 1994).
70 Memo’s text on Apollonius, Apolloni Pergaei, was printed in 1537 (Venice: Bemardium
Bindonum), Commandino’s in 1556 (Venice: Aldi Romani and Ioanis Pietri Vallae). See Pietro
Riccardi, Biblioteca matematica italiana dalla origine della stampa ai primi anni del secolo XLX, 2
vols. (Modena: Soliani, 1870-86) for more information about the diffusion o f these texts.
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around 1270, and Giorgio Valla wrote about conics in 1501.71 That Bruno knew
about conics is almost certain— he knew Euclid, o f course— and he taught Johannes
not evident that he was particularly interested in this subject, in spite o f his desire to
Bruno’s diagrams, nor does he ever talk about them. Consequently, Bruno does not
mention the "coincidental” similarity between the mathematical terms and the
rhetorical devices.
hyperbola and the rhetorical hyperbole is present in Bruno’s work, especially in the
include here:
Or che dirro io del Nolano? Forse, per essermi tanto prossimo, quanto io
medesmo a me stesso, non mi converra lodarlo? Certamente, uomo
raggionevole non sara, che mi riprenda in cio. atteso che questo talvolta
non solamente conviene, ma e anco necessario, come bene espresse quel
terso e colto T ansillo... [How shall we honor this man] che ha ritrovato
ii modo di montare al cielo, discorrere la circonferenza de le stelle,
lasciarsi a le spalli la convessa superficie del firm am ento?.. . II Nolano.
per caggionar effetti al tutto contrarii, ha disciolto l’animo umano e la
cognizione, che era rinchiusa ne 1’artissimo carcere de Faria turbulento..
. Or ecco quello, ch’ha varcato l’aria, penetrato il cielo, discorse le stelle,
trapassati gli margini del mondo, fatte svanir le fantastiche muraglia de
le prime, ottave, none, decime ed altre, che vi s’avesser potuto
aggiongere, sfere, per relazione de vani matematici e cieco veder di
71 Giorgio Valla, Placentini viri clariss: de expetendis. elfiigiendis rebus opus (Venice: Aldo
Romano, 1501).
72 See Canone, ed. Giordano Bruno: Gli anni napoletani (Cassino: University degli Studi,
1992), 80.
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yet, this hyperbole is not intended to make the Nolan a spiritual savior: rather it is
intended to glorify his knowledge o f the cosmos and his ability to enlighten his
interlocutors (adversaries, in this case) about the true structure o f the universe.
That it is Bruno writing the words o f Teofilo, who is speaking about the Nolan,
praises himself through two figures, both his mouthpieces. Teofilo muses that it
might not be appropriate for him to praise the Nolan, since the Nolan is as close to
that one must praise oneself when praise is due. Teofilo’s hyperbole is like the
wrote the Cena. With Teofilo at the focus, one branch praises the Nolan while,
simultaneously, the other praises Bruno. There could not be a more precise and
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constructed.
Few other hyperbolic passages in the Cena can match Bruno’s exaltation o f
truth, he also says— along with Aristotle— that we should be "the first to blame our
own hyperbole.”73 I assume he means we should be careful when using this trope
of exaggeration, given its ring of implausibility and sarcasm. But what would
Quintilian have thought about Bruno’s hyperbolic encomium o f him self through a
character who was meant to represent him, recited by another character who was
sarcastic, as are most of his hyperbole, and as is his other self-laudation in the
the Cena we can immediately detect an irony, or a critical bend to the hyperbolic
branches. Take, for example, Bruno's praise o f English women. It begins tamely
as a list of their beautiful features and qualities, but develops into a raving
aggrandizement o f their effect on him. Clearly, this is the very hyperbole that
73 See Quintilian, Ins. Or., Vll.iii.37, 231; and Aristotle, Rhet., IIl.vii.9.
74 “L’autore. si voi lo conosceste, dirreste ch’ave una fisionomia smarrita: par che sempre sii in
contemplazione delle pene dell’inferno, par sii stato alia pressa come le barrette: un che ride sol per
far comme fan gli altri: per il piii, lo vedrete fastidito. restio e bizzarrro. non si contenta di nulla,
ritroso come un vecchio d’ottant’anni, fantastico com’un cane ch’ha ricevute mille spellicciate,
pasciuto di cipolla. . . ” 31.
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Quintilian warned against, but the kind that many orators and writers often use
Altre, altre sono che m ’hanno incatenata I’alma. A voi altre, dunque,
dico, graziose, gentili, pastose, morbide, gioveni, belle, delicate, biondi
capelli, bianche guance, vermiglie gote, labra succhiose, occhi divini,
petti di smalto e cuori di dimante; per le quali tanti pensieri fabrico ne la
mente, tanti affetti accolgo nel spirto, tante passioni concepo nella vita,
tante lacrime verso da gli occhi. tanti suspiri sgombro dal petto e dal cor
sfavillo tante fiamme; a voi. Muse dTnghilterra, dico: inspiratemi,
suffiatemi, scaldatemi, accendetemi, lambiccatemi e risolvetemi in
liquore, datemi in succhio, e fatemi comparir non con un picciolo,
delicato, stretto, corto e succinto epigramma, ma con una copiosa e larga
vena di prosa lunga, corrente, grande, e soda: onde, non come da un arto
calamo, ma come un largo canale, mande i rivi miei. (26)
Teofilo does not want to be inspired by the Greek muses, who as foreigners, he
English muses, who are stunning and visible (unlike those from Mount Olympus).
He wants to be able to see his muses, and have them inspire him through their
beauty, not through their genius. In fact, this is one o f the most explicitly sexual
me,” he pleads, “warm me, ignite me, distill me into a liquor, turn me into juice.”
This is not a chaste list o f requests from a former Dominican monk. He wants the
English muses to help him produce a text that is '‘abundant, broad, lengthy, and
fluent,” with a prose that is like “a series o f rivers fed by a large channel.” This
expressions that Bruno so harshly critiques in the Eroici furori and in the
Candelaio. Though it is probable that he, too, like Erasmus and John Florio, felt
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the sway o f English women’s beauty, Bruno is once again mocking those who lose
their heads over such diversions instead o f directing their minds towards the Divine
Diana, knowledge o f the supreme truths o f nature and the universe.75 This ecstatic
prayer is, on the surface, directed to the vision o f beauty and sensuality. Beneath
the surface, it condemns just such a vision. As such, Bruno has crafted this
But a curiosity now arises. Why does Bruno use the device o f hyperbole
with such abandon in Dialogue I? A quick answer might be that the other dialogues
are more focused on explicatio (of the Copemican universe) than eloquatio. It is in
Dialogue I that Bruno describes the participants o f the dinner-debate (the Nolan.
Nundinio, and Torquato), and it is in this arena that Bruno can laud himself as the
Nolan, can lustfully and ironically exalt English “muses,”’ and can sarcastically
diminish the power o f his Oxford adversaries. Dialogue II, on the other hand,
describes the circum-stances involved in the journey to the supper. Dialogue III is
Nundinio’s debate with the Nolan, and Dialogue IV is Torquato’s debate with the
Nolan— both o f which are more elliptical and parabolic than the first two dialogues.
shows his disdain for the “doi dottori” from Oxford. Teofilo expounds on how they
75 See Aquilecchia’s footnote (Cena, 26) citing Vincenzo Spampanato’s documentation o f the
“fancy” in the Vita di Giordano Bruno, 368. See also the Anonimo Gesuita’s account, Giordano
Bruno: scene storiche-romantiche del secolo XVI (Rome: Edoardo Perino, 1890), anastatic copy by
Anieilo Montano (Naples: Istituto Grafico Editoriale Italiano, 1998).
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must be great scholars because there were two o f them, and the number two is. as
This bestial hyperbole is replete with donkeys, Jews, fake relics, and pyramids
engraved for eternity with the names o f such ignoramuses as the two doctors being
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‘"praised.” In fact, the only thing the two Oxford doctors are actually being praised
the same manner as Teofilo did in the Cena.lb For Pecham, lamblicus, and the
numbers, the dyad indicated differentiation and duality.77 It had the characteristics
of formlessness and the feminine— in other words, of matter and receptivity (the
monad being the source o f all form and number, and masculine). The dyad had to
do with opinion, with truth and falsity; and with dichotomy and divisibility. It was
Pythagorean numerology, two is not the first even number (four is. as three is the
first odd); in fact, it is not a number at all, for it is not actual, but potential, like the
monad. We know that 2+2 = 2x2. two being the only number besides zero (if you
consider zero a number) whose sum and product equal each other. In this respect,
the dyad was considered perfectly balanced, or a midpoint. And two, as it is the
76 “ De binario iuxta numerum numeratum plana sunt sacramenta in moribus enim duo caritatis
mandata. Hem: duplex vita Rachel et Lia. Hem: duplex popuius circumcisio et preputium; duo
scilicet viri portantes botrum. Hem: duo talenta intellectus et operatio. In scientialibus duo
testamenta que sunt duo seraphim clamantia Dei magnalia et duo cherubin obumbrantia
propitiatorium: que sunt dup ufera capreis comparata. Irem: in credendis duo sponsi omamenta,
scilicet candor et rubor, id est articuli divinitatis et humanitatis. Hem: in naturalibus corpus et anima
que sunt duo minuta in gazophilacium mittenda. Hem: duo oculi sponse intellectus et affectus; nel
due partes anime, scilicet rationaiis et irrationalis. Et huius modi infinita.” John Pecham, De
numeris misticis, ed. Barnabas Hughes (Rome: Coilegio San Bonaventura, 1985), 360-361.
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first manifestation o f length and divisibility (as the line is from the point), was also
Bruno was aware o f such symbolism, having himself written many pages
* * 78
on the dyad similar to those o f lamblicus and Cornelius Agrippa. What, then, do
we make o f this sarcastic hyperbole for the number two? Perhaps the double
branched hyperbola will remind us o f the dual nature o f the rhetorical trope o f
hyperbole: praise and criticism. Perhaps also noting how the pedant Prudenzio
argues against calling a four-person dialogue a t//-alogue, and would rather call it a
quatrologue, will give us a bit more insight into the sensitivity Bruno demonstrates
with regard to duality (24-25). Duality implies fragmentation from the whole. One
must find identity in diversity, Bruno reminds us in the Sigillus. and one must
remember that all partakes o f the “unum, ens, verumque, bonumque.’*79 On the
other hand, it is through duality in the form o f coincident ia oppositomm that all
forms, numbers, and situations come about.80 “Pars totum. simplum duplum,
sursum, atque deorsum./ Ante retro, internum externum, dextrum atque sinistrum;/
Millia quae mox sunt positis fundata duobus/ Millia quae secum advectat substantia
bini”— all contraries exist because o f duality, and it is through duality that we come
78 See Bruno’s De monade in Op. Lat.. vol. I.ii, 349-357; and Agrippa’s De philosophia occulta,
bk. II.
80 Bruno gives a hefty list o f the initial divisions o f an entity. He provides fifty-five contrary
terms, ranging from “absolute-relative” to “hidden-evident,” in two groupings. The first group is
numbered with only odd numbers (1-55), as these divisions emanate from the monad. The second
group is numbered with only even numbers (2-56), as these divisions emanate from the dyad.
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to understand unity and infinity.81 There is division within unity and finitude
within infinity.
o f the planets includes forward and retrograde motion, shadows and light.83 Duality
is natural and the necessary resolution o f unity (for how can one know unity
excellent model for duality and for the dual nature o f the trope hyperbole. By using
the number two to poke fun at the Oxford pedants, Bruno not only points to the lack
o f unity in their thought, but to the fact that they do not know how to search for
unity, only how to play with c//-alectic. Frulla’s animalocentric di-version on the
number two is a further critique o f their kind o f ignorance, o f those who think they
are unified (pairs o f animals; the donkey who carries Christ on his back and thinks
the people who are bowing are bowing to him; the Jews and their /woflo-theism; the
inasmuch as it detracts from the ebb and flow between unity and plurality, the
prime number and all numbers, the infinitely one and the infinitely many. In the
Cena. he even makes sure that the readers know that the Nolan sees the world
through his own two eyes, neither those o f Copernicus, nor those of Ptolemy (27).
82 See especially De monade in Op. Lat., vol.I.ii., 537; De imaginum compositione, in Op. Lat.,
vol. Il.iii, 31-32.
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hyperbole are clear figurations o f duality. Hyperbola and hyperbole display a kind
o f the hyperbola that reach out toward infinity, and the words o f hyperbole that
throw themselves out into the beyond are figures that wind around the characters o f
the Cena. Their excesses, teach us about balance and how to see the double nature
Ellipse-ellipsis
however, the antithesis to hyperbole is not ellipsis, but litotes, and the antitheses to
words. Given the fact that the tropes o f hyperbole and ellipsis do not have a
directly inverse relationship, one cannot consider ellipsis in terms o f its contrast to
ellipse, as the two inverse conic sections help to define one another. In the Cena, as
we will see, the relationship between the ellipse and ellipsis, though covert, is
striking. But first, to facilitate this discussion o f the pair o f terms in the Cena, a
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We see ellipses in the orbits of the planets around the sun, in cathedral domes, in
the distorted illusion o f a circle viewed from any perspective but straight on, in the
has two foci. If, however, the two foci o f an ellipse are so close together that they
coincide, they become the center point o f a circle (fig. 31). The Greek word ellipse
means “to fall short or leave out" (e«=in; leipein=lo leave out). “Eclipse" is a
related word, literally referring to what happens when the sun is “ left out” o f its
usual activity because it is blocked by the moon. The ellipse was given its name by
Apollonius to describe the conic section that results when “a square constructed on
Figure 31b: Slice of a cone into less than one (distinguishing it from the
an elliptical section.
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hyperbola, which has an eccentricity greater than one; and the parabola an
eccentricity equal to one).83 An ellipse similarly results when the cutting angle o f a
less than) the angle between the xy plane and an element o f the cone. I present all
o f this information to show how inherent in the geometry o f the ellipse is a “falling
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short” or "leaving out” o f something relative to the other conic sections.
Though Kepler’s 1602 discovery o f the elliptical orbit o f Mars with the
87
sun at one focus was not anticipated by Bruno, it is worth mentioning. It comes
only a few years after Bruno’s death and most likely would have been embraced by
him, especially since it supports his belief that there are no “perfect circles” to be
found in the sensible universe, and— as he wrote in the Cena—that the planets do
not actually move in perfectly circular orbits (166). Newton's discovery— that the
earth itself was not a perfect sphere, but rather an ellipsoid— would also have been
geometrical figure. Though the words have come to be spelled differently, and both
have been spelled “eclipsis” by rhetoricians such as Philip Melancthon and Richard
86 On the ellipse meaning “falling short by an area,” see, for example. Plato, Meno 87a and
Euclid 6.27.
87 Kepler did not publish his discovery until 1609. It was Newton in 1680, however, who proved
that the elliptical orbit was a consequence o f his inverse square law o f gravitation and could only
occur with such a law present in our universe.
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Sherry, they share the same fundamental meaning.88 In pre-Roman literature,
which is used also by Lysias, Plato, and Eustatius.89 In Plotinus it came to mean
short.”90 Athenaeus and Apollonius Dyscolus are among the first to use ellipsis to
88 See Philip Melancthon, Elementorum Rhetorice Libri Duo (Paris: Simonen Colinaeun. 1532),
114; Richard Sherry, A Treatise o f Schemes and Tropes (London: John Day. 1550).
89 Theoghis (vi B.C.), 1.120; Lysias (v B.C.), Oration 12.99; Plato (427-328 B.C.), Timaeus 17b,
Republic 362d, Craytlus 43 lc-d, Philibus 18d; Eustatius (xii A.D.), 66.24.
90 Plotinus (b. 205 A.D.), 1.3.6; Aristophanes (448c-380 B.C.), Plutus 859; Aristotle (384-322
B.C.), Nich. Eth 1108; Polybius (202-120 B.C.), Rhet. 15.3.5. There are many fewer instances o f
the word ellipsis in ancient Greek literature. The three authors I have found who use the term most
often— and primarily in the sense o f deficiency or lack— are Aristotle (esp. in Eudemian Ethics,
Nicomachean Ethics, Magna Moralia, Metaphysics, and Rhetoric), Herodianus, and Themistius (in
his discussion o f Aristotle’s De anima).
91 Athenaeus (ca. 200 A.D.) 14.644a; Apollonius Dyscolus (ii A.D.) Synt. 117.19, Pron. 56.28.
92 See George Puttenham, The Arte o f English Poesie (1589); and Henry Peacham, The Garden
o f Eloquence (1577).
93 Martianus Capella, The Marriage o f Philology and Mercury, trans. and ed. Richard Johnson,
William Harris Stahl, and E. L. Burge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 199-203.
Like Quintilian’s inclusion o f hyperbole but omission o f ellipsis and parable, this is a matter for
further philological research.
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or words needed to complete the sense o f the sentence. It differs from aposiopesis
one in which a word or words are still implied. Ellipsis is also different from
adynaton, a device in which the speaker breaks off to say that words cannot convey
to the evolution o f its meaning and use as a rhetorical device: its relationship with
the number zero. The earliest symbolic representation o f zero has been traced to
Indian Brahmi numerals o f the eighth century A.D. The “0” from the Greek ouden
(meaning “nothing”) was used in 150 A.D. by Ptolemy as a sign for a missing place
value.94 The Brahmi numeral was not a “0,” but rather a dot or a point, a sunya
bindu. In the European Middle Ages, the zero was not readily assimilated due to its
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market forces and mathematical advancement saw the utility o f the zero, adopted it,
and derived its name from the Arabic assifr, which came to be zefintm, then
cephirum, and the Venetian zero.95 The three dots that ellipsis uses to indicate a
missing word or words originate from the zero as standing for an empty numeric
value. Unlike the n-dash, which indicates a missing letter in words that should not
Ellipsis is, thus, simultaneously empty in its lack o f words, and full in its
linguistic possibility. In set theory, ellipses are used as a kind of abbreviation. For
example, the set o f all odd numbers between one and 101 is (1 ,3 ,5 , 7 . . . 101). The
twentieth century mathematician George Cantor, who developed the set o f infinite
quantities that the dots stand for are not, as Cantor noted, determinable; we cannot
write them out. What would we write between one and infinity (0, 1. . . «)? Here
the symbols used to indicate an infinite series are indeterminate, both linguistically
and mathematically.
separates the rhetorical ellipsis and the geometric ellipse. While the rhetorical
ellipsis, as we have seen, implies both a falling short and a “boundlessness,” the
95 Ibid., 401.
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geometrical ellipse and set theory ellipsis designate a falling short and a
“boundedness.” The oval-shaped conic section is a bounded figure and the dots
enclosed in a set are by nature representative o f a finite group. The three sequential
ignore the possibilities. What continues to tie these two terms together, however, is
Looking at early editions o f the Cena (the manuscript o f the Cena was lost,
ellipsis. Yet the modem definitive edition o f the Cena incorporates many ellipses
into the text.96 Why? The editor. Giovanni Aquilecchia, o f this modem edition
offers no explanation o f his choice to use this particular punctuation, and to use it
with such abandon. He felt that there did not need to be an explanation, as the
“elliptical sentences” are conceptually apparent when you read the text.97 The
modem type-setter o f the Cena edition used the three dots to represent a break in a
sentence, as that is the graphic punctuation with which the modem reader is
familiar. In the 1584 Charlewood edition, however, there are no ellipses or dashes.
In fact, besides a dash or a blank space, there seems to have been no formal graphic
QO
96 There are thirty-nine extant exemplars o f the first printed edition o f the Cena (London: John
Charlewood. 1584). See Rita Sturlese, Bibliografia censimento. 44-50. I have consulted the
editions o f the Cena held in the following collections: University o f Glasgow (Db.3.19) and
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek (BE.2.T.6).
98 Ibid.
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nearly thirty authors whom he consulted, and who had written on punctuation.
and Quintilian.100 I assume that these authors, too, had little or nothing to say about
ellipsis were, and impossible to retrieve his manuscripts to see if and how he used
passages in the Cena. They are worth investigating in order to determine how
the themes of the text. If we break the kinds o f ellipses into categories, we might
a thought meant to continue on indefinitely. The ellipses (three dots) that we find
in the Belles Lettres edition of the Cena, however, are only o f the first and second
99 See Orazio Lombardelli, L'arte delpuntar gli scritti, formata, ed illustrata (Siena: Luca
Bonetti, 1585). The punctuation marks he addresses in his study are the sospensivo [,], mezopunto[;],
puntodoppio[:], punto mobile [sort o f period], interrogativo [?], affettuoso [\], parentesi [()],
apostofo ['], [and] periodo [.].” There is no ellipsis mentioned, nor is there a discussion o f the then-
in-use "etc.,” the dash, or forms o f quotation marks.
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Prudenzio. Lubentissime.
T eofllo.. . . il Nolano avendo aspettato sin
dopo pranso, e non avendo nuova alcuna, stimo quello gentil’uomo per
altre occupazioni aver posto in oblio, o men possuto proveder al
negocio: e sciolto da quel pensiero, ando a rimenarsi, e vistar alcuni
amici italiani; e ritomando al tardi dopo il tramontar del sole...
Prudenzio. Gia il rutilante Febo avendo volto al nostro emisfero il
tergo, con il radiante capo ad illustrar gli antipodi sen giva.101
eight out o f the other eleven occurrences o f this kind of ellipsis. The other four
can make the connection between ellipsis as interruption and the pedant as an
edition of the Cena is a segment o f a quotation signaled by italics and three dots:
the Trivulziana 1584 edition. These variants between the exemplar o f the Cena and
the modem editions must be attributed to the changes in punctuation over the
101 Bruno, Cena, Les Belles Lettres edition (Paris, 1994), 77. In Aquilecchia's 1985 edition (51-
52), the first ellipsis is not included, but the second is. For the Charlewood 1584 edition, see the
anastatic reprint by Michele Ciliberto o f the copy held in the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan (Pisa:
Giardini, 1994), 24-55.
102 Les Belles Lettres edition, 205; Aquilecchia’s 1985 edition, 128; the Trivulziana edition, 88.
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centuries, and to the editors’ belief that it would be better to “adjust” the text to suit
a modem reader’s eye. If one wants to speak about the notion o f ellipsis in Bruno’s
writing, however, such editorial decisions prove misleading and need to be revised.
speak English. He responds to this feeling o f “deficiency” with vigor in his critique
might say that he also responded by writing the Cena—the first o f his Dialoghi— in
Italian, to prevent most English readers from having access to his thought, thus
his diagrams about which he speaks in the text. In Dialogue III, for example, Bruno
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talks about number “4” and letter “D,” neither o f which happens to be in the
diagram, but with little trouble one can figure out where they should be (fig. 32).103
Bruno made these woodcuts himself, as well as corrected the proofs, and one would
think that he would have made sure that the text and the image corresponded.
Apparently not. This has led a number o f Bruno scholars, such as Edward Gosselin
between text, image, and idea. This diagram, like many others, is in itself a visual
There are a number o f other conceptual ‘'lacks” in the Cena. For Bruno,
out” the idea of infinity and infinite worlds. With even more disdain, Bruno saw
as insufficient the literal readings o f the Scriptures because they “leave out” the
Similarly, we could point to the argument o f the Nolan, or to those o f any o f the
interlocutors in the Cena. and note their elliptical thought, their voli pindarici. and
leaps in logic.
double-edged exaggeration, but rather about that which is missing, that which is not
said, that which is possible and potential. The Cena is steeped in the
103 Aquilecchia’s 1985 edition, 95; Les Belles Lettres edition “corrects” the diagram, 140-141.
In the Trivulziana edition, see 56.
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this will encourage us to read the text constructively, to look for lacunae and
Parabola-parable
In Latin, the word for the geometric parabola and the rhetorical parable are
one and the same: parabola. The Greek terms para, meaning "beside.” and b o lh ',
allegory and analogy. From parabola has also come the word parola, meaning
short and lucid illustrations of a larger issue, used for religious or didactic purposes
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hanging chain. Its two arms (n.b. not branches, like the hyperbola) form a parallel
structure resembling railroad tracks— two lines that will never meet, not even in
infinity (fig. 33). Unlike the ellipse and the hyperbola, which can vary in shape, the
parabola does not. The parabola partakes o f the nature o f the hyperbola in that it is
made with one focus, but if placed on an infinite axis, its "other focus” would be at
infinity.
meaning that it has today.107 In his Italian-English dictionary. Bruno's friend John
• 108
Florio cites both the parabola's designations, as both a trope and a conic section.
104 See, for example, Plato, Philibus 33b: Aristotle. Top., 104a 28 and Rhet., 1420a 4. 1393b 3;
and Isocrates, 12.227.
105 See Iamblicus (iv A.D.), Myst., 9; Proclus (ii or v A.D.), Timeaus, 3.146d; and Plotinus (iii
A.D.), Enneads, 3.1.5.
106 See Diophantus (iii A.D.), Arithmetica, 4.22; Nicomachus (ii A.D.), Arithmetica, 2.
108 See John Florio, A Worlde o f Wordes (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1598), 256. Florio explains
that the parabola is "a parable, a similitude or comparison, a resemblance. Also a certain crooked
line comming (sic.) o f the cutting o f a cone or cilinder.”
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Kepler’s principle o f continuity, and how when one o f the parabola’s foci moves
beyond infinity and approaches the fixed focus from the other side, ari ellipse will
form until the foci coincide to form a circle. The conceptual, invisible foe is at
infinity is the point at which the two parallel arms o f the parabola will meet to form
an ellipse. That two parallel lines can meet is. o f course, impossible; and thus their
intended to parallel another, more significant one. The two together are supposed
to teach us something: they point to a distant meaning which lies beyond both the
parallel stories, or, rather, arms o f the parabola. "Meaning,’” when elusive, is like
an invisible focus at infinity. In the same vein, the two stories are but two
can see this throughout his works. In De umbris idearum and the Eroici. for
misunderstandings.
We know from passages in Bruno’s writings that his stance on the use o f
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pedantic attempt to be clever and mysterious. Such is his position in the very first
sentence o f Dialogue I o f the Cabala, “E il peggio che diranno che metti avanti
tratti misterii, matichi tropologie.” 109 At other moments, he seems to hold parable
in high esteem, such as in the introductory epistle to the '•heavenly” cleansing about
Parable, when used for sacred purposes, is an acceptable and even “divine” device.
But when parable falls into mere parabolare. it becomes a flurry o f useless words
Clearly, Bruno believes that his use of parables will benefit humankind,
In the Cena, the Eucharist and the Last Supper, however, take on a
parablesque role and a dangerous intricacy. They become inversions o f this divine
111 See the Spaccio, where Bruno condemns pedants and “parabolani” in the same breath, 659.
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heretical.112 What is worse, one could even construe Bruno's placing o f the
archpedant Torquato to the left o f the Nolan (that is, himself) at the dining table—
and the Nolan himself at the center o f attention, guiding his fellow diners to
much like the hyperbolic monologue on the Nolan in Dialogue 1 (82). Whatever the
case, the parable is there; the Nolan’s experience parallels that of Christian
In another parable— that o f the passing o f the wine cup— we can see Bruno’s
condemnation o f the quarrels between the Christian sects over the precise meaning
o f the Eucharist:
112 See Luigi Firpo, 11processo di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1993) for a
discussion o f the accusations o f the Inquisition and Bruno’s subsequent execution, as well as for a
rich collection o f documents o f the trial. With regard to the accusation that Bruno did not believe in
the miracle o f the Eucharist, see especially Giovanni Mocenigo’s pronouncements o f May 23-26,
1592 (143-8) and Document V: Circa transubstantiationem et sacram missam (264).
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The common practice of passing a cup o f wine around a dining table, which
parallels the drinking o f Christ’s blood in church, is used here as a blatant parody o f
the belief in transubstantiation. But how are we to read this parable-parodyl Are
further, in the Cena Bruno scolds people who read the Bible in terms o f the "truth,"
and also scolds those who read metaphorically where no metaphors lie (124). If
Bruno does not permit us to read the Bible literally, and does not permit us to read
it metaphorically, how are we to read it? In her essay on the Cena and Galileo's
Dialogue o f the Two Major World Systems, Hilary Gatti argues that according to
Bruno, the Bible should be read as "a moral message for the masses, and not as a
If we agree with Gatti, as I do. we can deduce that Bruno's parables are to be read
in the same way. This "moral” reading would then account for his derision o f
transubstantiation and the Last Supper, in which the first transubstantiation was
In paralleling the short story and the teaching— the two branches o f a
which is the moral. But he does not do only this. He also points to a fourth
113 Hilary Gatti, "Giordano Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and Galileo's Dialogue o f the Two
Major World Systems," Bruniana & Campanelliana 3, no. 2 (1997), 286.
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101
the grasp of human comprehension, like the invisible second focus o f the parabola.
This designation o f two kinds of meaning for the respective foci is not arbitrary—
the tacit, didactic moral meaning is accessible, it is locatable at the place in which
the two arms o f the parabola (the two stories o f the parable) meet. The elusive
meaning, on the other hand, must lie somewhere beyond our visual and conceptual
referring to how possibility and reality coincide in infinity.114 Elusive meaning and
the moral converge with the short story and the teaching.
grasp. Bruno would say that we can never fully grasp the '"true” meaning o f
mysteries such as the Eucharist and God’s being; we can only approach their
shadows. Though the parabola, like the hyperbola-hyperbole and the ellipse-
and reappears throughout the Cena in the form of the parallel story, or parody, and
Conclusion
our reading winds back from the point o f departure to the point o f arrival. His
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hyperbolic passages lift us into two coterminous realms, one o f praise and one o f
sarcasm— we can choose to follow one branch or the other, but both asymptotic
branches extend out simultaneously in the flight o f exaggeration. His ellipses, with
their two foci, indicate emptiness, but they also imply a universe o f possibilities.
the directrix and the ineffable meaning on the focus point at infinity. Bruno uses a
conic section rhetoric in which to speak around, beyond, incompletely, and next to
By noticing the twisting and turning tropes of Bruno's writing along with
their graphic origin, we can see the text take shape and metaphoric meanings
emerge that might have been invisible before. Using geometry as a stencil, we can
trace out patterns in the text, following the undulations o f Bruno's linguistic
expression. The imperfect circular motion of the earth, the sense o f boundedness
and boundlessness, the parallel tales linked by elusive meaning— these curves and
swerves decorate the language and thematics of Bruno's Cena. Seeing the
rhetorical tropes o f circumlocution, hyperbole, ellipsis, and parable in the Cena for
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C hapter Three: Angles
Bruno wrote the Eroici in 1585. toward the end o f his stay in England. This
final Italian dialogue is also one o f his longest and most poetic. It is divided into
two parts with five dialogues per part. The first part treats the contrariety inherent
within the hero as he desires the divine and discusses the hero’s quest, mannerisms,
characteristics, and state o f frenzy. In the second part, Bruno extends a discussion
of why the hero searches for the divine, why he suffers, and why he must succumb
to love. The last dialogue of Part I and the first of Part II— the two middle
Bruno includes a dialogue between the Eyes and the Heart (cognition and appetite).
Through these two interlocutors, he shows how each comes to agree that the one's
suffering derives from the other’s; he also shows how the mind must eternally
strive for truth in the same way that desire must eternally strive for the good. Bruno
follows this exchange with his presentation o f the Nine Blind Men, who represent
nine reasons for the limits o f the “umano squardo,” that is, for man’s inability to
understand the Divine. Bruno calls the final dialogue o f the Eroici an allegory as
well as an argument. Here he introduces Circe, once again, as the mother of matter,
and the one who demonstrates that the interplay between generation and corruption
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The last o f the Dialoghi italiani, the Eroici shows a heightened interest in
proposes an infinite universe, and the Cena focuses on proving the Copemican
earth and the infinity o f worlds— the Eroici describes a relationship even more
difficult to quantify: that between a human soul and God. The most intimate and
the most elusive, the distance between the hero and the Beloved is immeasurable.
It is as if God and man were part o f the same line. There is no "right” angle o f
approach, and yet the impassioned hero wishes to strategically align himself with
the Divine, at the correct angle o f inference, in order to intersect Him and obtain
knowledge o f Him. The Nine Blind Men, examples o f frenzied heroes, are
unsuccessful in their attempts to unite with the Beloved. If there is a frank message
in the Eroici. it is this: there is no way for man to unite with God because He is
paradoxically beyond measure and is all measure. No matter which angle one
chooses to approach God, God will never reveal Himself in His entirety. For
Bruno, this is not a defeatist stance, nor a cynical conclusion. Instead, this shows
his conviction in God’s infinity. He grants man the capacity to approach God
inclination, and vectors derive from opposing origins and coincide momentarily
before being flung in opposing directions. These angulations jut out like peaks on a
topographic map. Without a single diagram, chart, wheel, or design, the Eroici is
one of Bruno’s most visual texts. Bruno spotlights vision through the Actaeon
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myth, through the dialogue between Eyes and Heart, and through the Nine Blind
“inference”; it displays the ways in which the frenzied hero infers the journey
toward the object o f desire. Ultimately, Bruno’s hero will come to understand that
the object o f his desire lies on an ever-vanishing horizon line. He will never obtain
his goal; all he can do is continue to advance toward the Beloved (that is, God)
from ever-changing angles o f approach. The impassioned hero o f the text comes to
realize that the Beloved can only be perceived as a diffracted image, a fragmentary
the lover attempts to infer the Beloved. The Nine Blind Men are examples o f those
who cannot escape the prison o f their desire, and whose goal will never, and can
never, be attained. The angle o f inference— the point o f view— between oneself
and God cannot be measured, for it is infinite. To explore this paradigm o f the
What does it mean to say that the Eroici is an “angular” text? Simply put,
elaborating on this notion, a quick look at the nature o f the angle is due. An
“angle” is the number o f degrees that results when two straight lines meet at a
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point, or when two planes meet along a line. An angle can be a vertex, or an axis.
angle formed by the relation o f the sun to an object. Bruno’s definitions o f an angle
are in precisely these Euclidean terms, as we can see in his mathematical poem. De
minimo.'
comer, a forking path, a bend, or a branch. When two “lines o f thought” coming
from different directions encounter one another, they form an angle o f discourse or
debate. Actually, two lines o f thought cancel each other out when they meet. If
two lines are coming from precisely opposite directions, the angle at which they
coincide will be zero degrees (or 180°). They will unite to form a single line. This
Bruno, De minimo in Opera latine conscripta, ed. F. Tocco et al., 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Friedrich
Frommann Verlag Gunter Holzboog, 1962), I.iii, 286. All citations o f Bruno’s Latin works, except
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collide and then “run away” from each other, Bruno says in his De magia, their
motion forms a straight line, like smoke ascending from fire, or vapor from water.2
angulation.
unattainable. It investigates the degrees that separate the frenzied hero from his
Beloved, and celebrates the hero’s freedom to desire and to seek the Beloved
eternally. The notion that man should measure himself against the Infinite Godhead
instead o f against dogma is one o f the most ardent forces driving Bruno’s
philosophical and linguistic project, both in the Eroici and throughout his other
works. This chapter will offer a consideration of the “rhetoric o f angles” in the
symmetry, and vision. It will also consider the symbolic and structural
contributions certain numbers make to the Eroici's rhetoric. The Eroici is, as I
hope to show, replete with rhetorical devices that syntactically simulate the
semantic idea of “co-incidence” or “union.” This is. ultimately, what the Eroici is
about— the attempted, though ultimately futile, union o f lover with the Beloved. I
have selected only a few of many possible tropes with an angular quality: oxymoron
and syneciosis for their direct merging o f contrary terms; chiasmus and syllepsis for
for Praelectiones geometricae e Ars deformationum: Testi inediti, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia
(Rome: Editore di Storia e Letteratura, 1964), will be from this edition.
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their criss-cross syntax; and anaphora, epanados, and traductio for their
The Eroici, like a polyhedron, is a work with many faces. These faces are
textual: prose, dialogue, verse, mottoes. They are symbolic and iconographic, as
we see in the twenty-eight emblems described in I.v and in n.i. They are
numerological: there are seventy sonnets, two canzoni. nine sestine (eighty-one
Such groupings are not random. It seems clear that Bruno intended this multiplicity
in the Eroici reflects themes o f division, separation, fragmentation, and unity. The
text fragments itself structurally in order to unite itself conceptually. Here, in the
fragmentation and unity. Echoing this format through metaphor is the Diana-
attempt to unite with his beloved, is tom to pieces by the very thought o f his
beloved.4 The pull towards unification— which will never happen, as there remains
3 Eight sonnets in I.i; two in I.ii; six in I.iii; seven in I.iv; one in H.ii; eight in II.iii; nine in II.iv.
Two canzoni in II.v; and nine sestine in II.v.
4 See Bruno, Eroici, 1123-1126 in Dialoghi italiani, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence:
Sansoni, 1985). All citations will be from this edition. Hilary Gatti notes the ongoing debate as to
whether Bruno’s Diana in the myth is meant to represent a vision o f a fleeting and unattainable
divinity, or an authentic representation o f God as Nature. She cites Octavio Paz arguing the former,
and Michele Ciliberto as arguing the latter. See Octavio Paz, Apariencia desnuda: La obra de
Marcel Duchamp (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1973); Michele Ciliberto, “Bruno, Duchamp, Paz,”
Rivista di storia della filosofia 49 (1994): 315-21; and Hilary Gatti, “Giordano Bruno's Ash
Wednesday Supper and Galileo's Dialogue o f the Two Major World Systems." Bruniana &
Campanelliana 3 no. 2 (1997): 283-300.
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emblem “Hostis non hostis” (in which a fly is attracted to a flame, the very thing
that will kill him, should he get too close), that which can destroy us is both an
enemy and not an enemy (1036-1038). The hero’s journey in the Eroici focuses on
the goal o f unification, which can only begin— and will never actually end—
oppositora, the reader must have at hand Bruno’s ideas about how contrary, or even
merely contrasting, entities coincide and what happens when they do. The Eroici is
full o f rhetorical devices that appear like angles on a finely cut gem— edges that
journey through the Eroici, like the hero on his, depends on his or her angle of
approach.
battle within him self o f contraries: love and hate, hot and cold, joy and sadness, and
so forth. The stage is set immediately for mental coincidentia oppositorum. The
poet Tansillo says that ‘tutte le cose constano de contrarii.. . se non fiisse l'amaro
piacere nella congiunzione.. .un contrario e caggione che l’altro contrario sia
bramato e piaccia” (974), and that ‘*il fine d’un contrario e principio de l’altro, e
things o f the universe, and are especially striking in the battling hero.
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coincidentia oppositorum to the infinite. He says that the infinite is where 'Tunita
e l’infinita son la medesima cosa” (1084). The infinite is the ultimate expression o f
joined opposites. It is the One and the Many, the Minimum and the Immense. This
the third poem: a phoenix burning in the sun. The accompanying motto is neque
simile, nec par. The phoenix, representing the hero in his process o f
similar nor equal to that with which he is uniting. This image, I believe, gives
support to the notion that Bruno was not a mystic. The mystic experiences union—
or believes one can experience union—with the Divine while still alive. Bruno,
but no fusion. The phoenix does not become the sun, though it is transformed by it.
A lover does not merge with the beloved, but is transformed by her. Two lines
meeting on a plane do not become one and the same line, but an angle, a joining of
discrete vectors. Bruno's frenzied hero will never become one with his Beloved,
never entirely merge with infinite perfection. Through his longing, however, he
may intersect the Beloved, and thereby create an angle that transforms him from his
When contrasting forces coincide, they produce change. The infinite could not be
infinite without the existence o f the finite, nor the finite without the infinite.
Bruno’s metaphysics allows for both the minimum and the infinite. His language,
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thus, must somehow accommodate this system. Language, too, must have its
Divine— the infinite angles o f inference through which to attempt to deduce the un-
deducible. The hero infers the journey toward obtaining the object o f desire
The very nature o f the frenzied hero, like that o f any lover (though Bruno
makes it clear that his hero is in love with the Divine and not with another human
being), is oxymoronic and syneciotic.$ Tansillo explains that the hero is “morto
v o [quoting from the poem he is glossing]. Non e morto, perche vive ne l’oggetto;
non e vivo, perche e morto in se stesso: privo di morte, perche parturisce pensieri in
quello; privo di vita, perche non vegeta o sente in se medesimo” (980). The hero is
monk who became Lutheran and then Calvinist, but claimed only to love the
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methods, and devices; a lover o f mankind who showed such disdain for so many
subjects, and in his rhetoric must be taken into account when analyzing his thought
and expression. The motto o f the wheel o f time (Emblem V. Il.i), concisely
portrays the contradictory nature not only o f the hero’s struggle to obtain what he
desires, but of Bruno’s own struggle to put into words (or into diagrams,
standing fixed I am moved” (1089). Motion coincides with stillness, with “quiete,”
as Maricondo explains to Cesarino (1089). The wheel o f time, “che si muove circa
(1089), and yet it is also linear. Tansillo explains, “[I]l tempo a l’etemita ha
eternity, a line. Time is, thus, both a point and a line. It is an oxymoron.
Maricondo elucidates this paradox, saying that “nel moto orbiculare sopra il proprio
retto” (1089). Stasis coincides with dynamism, as pain coincides with joy, as a
forces that physical or psychic motion can occur, and only through the play of
6 On Bruno’s claims to be devoted to the Catholic religion, see especially the documents to his
trial in Luigi Firpo, II processo di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1993).
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and only through pu l l ing language that infinity can be addressed with the finite
The Nine Blind Men in Il.iv serve to demonstrate the impossibility o f the
human being to obtain his goal, if that goal is knowledge of, or fusion with, the
Divine. These Blind Men exemplify "le nove raggioni della inabilita,
divine” (942) and Tansillo, the mouthpiece for Bruno, says that, in fact, the infinite
The hero finds himself in the paradoxical position o f desiring and approaching, and
yet never attaining or arriving. He is, essentially, running in place. The ailing soul,
Tansillo says, “corre dove non puo arrivar. si stende dove non puo giongere, e vuol
abbracciare quel che non puo comprender; e con cio perche in vano s’allontane da
lei, mai sempre piu e piu va accendendosi verso 1’infinito” (1011). And yet, despite
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together in one breath. Two differing ideas, like two vectors originating in different
places, converge at a particular point, forcing the reader or auditor to infer the
degree of incidence, that is, the angle created by this encounter. An example o f
syneciosis is the quotation from Horace that Bruno places in the opening
"Argomento” to the Eroici: “delfini su gli alberi de le selve, e porci cinghiali sotto
gli marini scogli” (932).7 Dolphins on treetops and boars under the sea—
uses this syneciosis to describe carnal love. He is implying that this kind o f love is
an absurdity. Here, syneciosis poses a great contrast to the nature o f the frenzied
hero's love for the Beloved, a love that is not in the least carnal.
</og.s” (1120). These objects (soul, spirit, ingenuity, and hypothesis) are paired with
adjectives with which they are not usually associated. A "fat soul”? A "fecund
joining these terms in a moment o f satire, poking fun at both poets and
reader to reckon the angle (that is, the meaning) these two diverging categories
create when they are joined. What, then, is the meaning of these curious pairs?
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They are examples o f ineffectual combinations— like a tepid, lazy love— that will
Bruno says that the images in his poems are supposed to make the reader
search for knowledge, search for '‘occolto sentimento” (933). In referring to the
from the Song o f Songs: "occhi di colombe, quel collo di torre. quella lingua di
latte, quella fragranzia d’incenso. que’ denti che paiono greggi de pecore che
descendono dal lavatoio, que' capelli che sembrano le capre che vegnono giu dalla
or simple, unique or hackneyed, will always impair the image o f the object being
described. The reader can only see as much as the metaphor allows, for the
The reader’s interpretation o f the metaphor is a step further removed, and thus even
more distorted. Bruno anticipates the reader’s misconceptions o f his metaphors and
provides a disclaimer:
Ma pensi chi vuol quel che gli pare e piace, ch’alfine, o voglia o non, per
giustizia la deve ognuno intendere e definire come I’intendo io e
definisco io, non io come 1’intende e definisce lui: perche come gli furori
di quel sapiente Ebreo hanno gli proprii modi, ordini e titolo che nessuno
ha possuto intendere e potrebbe meglio dechiarar che lui, se fusse
presente; cossi questi Cantici hanno il proprio titolo, ordine e modo che
nessun puo meglio dechiarar ed intendere che io medesimo, quando non
sono absente. (934)
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he did, nor can we presume to grasp with ease their subtleties o f meaning. Yet
Bruno wishes us to envision and comprehend his images and intentions; provoking
To read the Eroici furori one must take a “heroic” approach, a sort o f
hovering point between what one knows and what one does not know, between
what is human and what is divine. The hero himself is a hybrid o f contraries: he is,
by nature, part human and part divine.8 In addition, Bruno’s hero is one who lives
in a precarious balance between perpetual joy and agony: in the point at which two
opposing lines (of thought, o f feeling, o f intention, o f forces, etc.) meet. The hero's
describe his state well: he who is propelled by the encounter o f opposite forces to
continue his journey toward an unattainable goal. It does not matter whether we
end. These two degrees are inverses o f each other, lying along the same line.
8 Critical discussions on the nature o f the hero are extensive. See for example John Geerken’s
“Heroic Virtue: An Introduction to the Origins and Nature o f a Renaissance Concept,” Ph.D. diss.,
Yale 1967; and Mark Rose, Heroic Love: Studies in Sidney and Spenser (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1970). Bruno’s notions o f the term “hero” would have come from commentaries
on Plato’s discussion in the Cratylus, where he links the etymology o f the word “hero” to that o f
“eros” (398c). This false etymology was accepted as true throughout the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, scholars such as Isidore o f Seville in his Etymologiae VIH.97-8 perpetuating this idea.
Other sources from which Bruno would have gained a sense o f the hero’s “daemon-like” nature,
halfway between human and divine and linked to love, would be, for example, Plato’s Symposium;
Proclus, Lessons on Plato's Craytlus; Pico, De hominis dignitate; and Leone Ebreo, Dialoghi
d'amore.
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The chiasmus is a trope that gets its name from the Greek letter chi and
literary and linguistic angulation. Zeugma uses one word to yoke two objects or
subjects, and has them agree both grammatically and semantically. Syllepsis, while
it yokes in the same way, only causes the two particles to agree in one way: either
grammatically or semantically. The “yoking word” o f syllepsis, thus, can have two
different senses, one asserted and one implied, like a double-entendre. The angles
multiple meanings, with ambiguity, and with puns and hence the attraction to a
trope like syllepsis (as opposed to zeugma). In this section on “axial tropes,” I will
focus on the figures o f chiasmus and syllepsis and how they further Bruno's
called the device antimetabole or commutatio, and the Latin transliteration o f the
Greek term did not appear until rather late.9 So while Bruno would have known the
9 See George Tate’s research, “Chiasmus as metaphor The ‘Figura Crucis’ Tradition and ‘The
Dream o f the Road,’ ”Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978): 116.
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device o f chiasmus, he most likely did not know its Greek name, and thus its
connection to the Greek l e t t e r ^ But as chiasmus was a vehicle for conveying such
notions as homo-deus, deus-homo, Bruno would have seen many occurrences in the
Ralf Norrman, in his book on chiasmus in Samuel Butler, suggests that the
the form as in the content o f Butler’s work. He argues that chiasmus is not
that "both creates and frustrates the longing for fusion.” 11 He defines chiastic
symmetrical and stops there. I think, however, we need to give the symmetrical
“Apollo.” Instead o f defining the chiasmus as A-B as B-A. I think we should think
of it in terms o f analogy, like this: Ai:Bj as Bi:A 2. Graphically, then, the chiasmus
10 Nils Lund, “The Presence o f Chiasmus in the Old Testament,” American Journal o f Semitic
Languages and Literatures 46 (1930): 104-26.
11 Ralf Norrman, Samuel Butler and the Meaning o f Chiasmus (London: Macmillan Press,
1986), 23.
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i (Bacchus) .2 (crow)
The X shape o f the chiasmus contains four angles and together they form a
symmetrical motif with a fourfold rotocenter. With four terms we get four right
angles: AiOBi, A iOB2, B|OA2, and B2OA2. The relationship between A| and B|
(grape and Bacchus) is equal in measure to that o f B2 and A2 (Apollo and crow).
The 0° (or 180°) angles o f A iOA2(grape and crow) and B iOB2 (Bacchus and
Apollo) coincide to create this X. this chiasmus. Yet A|OB2 (grape and Apollo)
and B|OA2 (Bacchus and crow) also have a relationship that is equal in measure.
Can we say that these unrelated entities, too, have a relationship? Are they the fifth
and six angles created by the X? Can we deduce six relationships from four terms?
Bruno thought that readers could, and should, ask questions about language in this
way. Bruno’s rhetorical tropes, numerics, and textual structure provoke and
challenge the reader to think spatially, graphically, and figuratively. Even the
simple chiasmus, the crossing o f analogous terms, can challenge the very structure
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and limits o f language. It can force us to revise our view o f symmetry in language,
example, the phrase "Gelate ho spene e gli desir cuocenti” (973) turns out to have a
triangular form. "Spene” and "desir,” hope and desire, are synonymous here—one
and the same thing at the vertex o f the chiastic axis— and yet “gelate” and
grapes and crows are neither synonymous nor antinomial (though Bacchus and
Apollo can certainly be considered opposing forces), this chiasmus has a central
axis and a different structure. If we assume that spene = desir (thus they are one
term. B), then A:B {gelate is related to spene) in the same way that B:C (desir is
A:C (gelate is related to cuocenti). Are these opposing terms meant to be related in
some way? Given that spene and desir can be considered one thing (and thus one
term and like the "yoking word” o f the syllepsis) it loses its fourfold symmetry, and
becomes a triangle:
B (spene/desir)
A (gelate) C (cuocenti)
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In 1.5 o f his Elements, Euclid gives a name to the theorem which states that in an
isosceles triangle the angles opposite the two equal sides are equal: pons asinorum,
the bridge o f asses. He chose this name because the proposition is difficult for
trying to prove it. In the chiasmus we have just considered— in which two terms
collapse into one, thereby creating a triangle instead o f a cross— we should think
about how it relates to the pons asinorum. The two equal sides o f the isosceles
triangle create a bridge over a base, and figuratively the pons asinorum represents
something to be crossed over before proceeding. We know that Bruno knew his
Euclid, and we know from studies such as Nuccio Ordine’s Giordano Bruno e la
cabala dell 'asino that the donkey is a complex symbol o f negative and positive
and cuocenti, actually create a bridge. This bridge is as much another example o f
knowledge. Bruno wanted the heroes o f the Eroici, as well as its readers, to attempt
12 The first translation o f Euclid in Latin was by Bartolomeo Zamberti, Euclidis megarensis
philosophu platonici. . . (Venice, 1505). See Margaret Daly Davis, Piero della Francesca's
Mathematical Treatises: The “Trattaro d'abaco ” and “Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus ”
(Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1977), 6-7. For Nuccio Ordine’s study on donkeys, see Giordano Bruno
e la cabala dell’asino (Naples: Liguori, 1987).
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limit ourselves to defining its structure as simple bilateral symmetry. The chiasmus
is not merely a dualistic, antithetical figure for Bruno, but rather one which extends
to a variety o f mental angles. Bruno’s use o f chiasmus, like his use o f oxymoron
and syneciosis, pushes us to see relationships between things that are not apparently
coincidence o f opposites, not of similarities, that fuels our actions and the motion
the Divine and the confluence o f opposing forces that move the hero toward the
Divine. The angles o f approach and the meeting o f opposites are many; in fact,
infinite. Bruno's language in the Eroici is angular and flexible; it mirrors the hero’s
to two other words in different senses, ‘i o da Cupido. hai tu da Febo il foco,” says
verse 5 o f Emblem Vi’s poem (1042). Here the vertex is fo co , one axis is “lo-
Cupido,” the other “tu-Febo.” These two contrasting axes converge grammatically
at a vertex. foco. Semantically, however, the word “foco” implies two different
fires. This verse illustrates the motto to the emblem o f a boy’s face burning in
flames and a flying phoenix, with the inscription, Fata obstant. Their fates run
contrary; one is burning in Cupid’s amorous flames, the other transmuted by the
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sacred flames o f Apollo. Though the fires may seem different, and their fates
contrary, Bruno shows how two opposing entities coincide in the general concept o f
In the following sentence from the “Argomento del Nolano,” Bruno applies four
structure:
Here Bruno says his Eroici will contain material that is ‘Vergato in carte,”
“rinchiuso in libri,” “messo avanti gli occhi,” and “intonato a gli orecchi.” These
items are “noises” o f emblems, mottoes, letters, sonnets, epigrams, books, and the
like, accompanied by cries, laments, and desirous sighs for the female anatomy.
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Perhaps Bruno’s sentence is too long and involved to be considered a syllepsis, and
perhaps because it lacks a single word for a vertex it cannot be plotted in an axial
format. Yet the question o f this sentence’s visual, graphic nature remains. How
shadow, a ghost, a dream, a Circean spell— all o f which trick us into thinking
something is beautiful. Bruno alludes to the notion that terrestrial beauty, after
which the mundane hero pines, is a false vision. The truly frenzied hero, who pines
for the sublime beauty o f the Divine, is not tricked into thinking he knows what
beauty is, but rather knows that he can never fully know it. In the same way, this
“sylleptical” sentence shows a structure that associates the apparent content o f the
text with the traditional interpretations o f a lover’s terrestrial desire. It cautions the
reader not to interpret the hero’s desires and laments as terrestrial or carnal, but
rather as subtle and exalted. The reader must shift his angle o f interpretation,
Another set o f devices Bruno uses to give an angular shape to his text falls
under a rubric I would call “tropes o f symmetry.” While chiasmus and syllepsis
have a distinctly axial quality to them, and oxymoron and syneciosis a flat angle o f
0° or 180°, both groups display simple bilateral symmetrical aspects. The tropes o f
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'‘repetition”. As a concept, anaphora does not itself imply any sort o f spatial
division. The etymology of the word, however, does prove visual. It indicates a
words. Anaphora means “carrying up or back” (ana= up. back + pherein= to carry).
another parallel vector moving in the parallel opposite direction. In this case, the
Bruno uses anaphora in a variety o f ways in the Eroici, each time for
The “perche” is carried up and back— it is mirrored and rotated in each subsequent
verse. Another simple use o f anaphora in the repetition o f a short phrase; in this
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Not only are the words doubled, but their constructions communicate the idea that
each person’s perception o f the sun relative to the time o f day and his or her
position on the earth. One word translates (tempiDtempi) and then the structure o f
translatory symmetry. Words are directly transposed along a line (a verse) without
One word slides to the right and appears again. At times the part o f speech
changes, but the word “looks” the same. At other times, a prefix is removed and a
meaning altered. But the effect is the same: a canyon o f echoes, or a doubling o f
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verbal motifs that amplify the struggles the hero encounters in his upward (monte,
Yet another curious use o f anaphora is the pattern o f alternation that Bruno
establishes between two pronouns, “lui” and “lei,” love and jealousy respectively,
in this stanza:
XY
YX
XY
YX
This looks, graphically speaking, like a snaking pattern or a braid. In geometry, the
symmetry o f this pattern would be considered rotational and translatory. The motif
XY rotates 180° to yield YX, but then repeats in its original form. “This thing” and
“that thing” work both against each other and together in dynamizing the hero's
psychomachia.
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The repeating words ‘‘terra,” “mar,” and “diva,” are accompanied by alternating,
contrary prepositions o f direction: “di” / “da” and “a.” We see “di terra” and then
“a terra”; ”al mar” and then “dal mar”; “dalla mia diva” then “a mia diva.” This
pattern, like the previous one, is one of rotational and translatory symmetry. It
conceptually refers to the same psychomachia inside the hero as we just saw in the
previous exampie. What is particularly interesting about this sonnet is its pointedly
spatial imagery. Its “going to” and “returning from” is like an endless cycle, an
keep the “mistiero” (of the “diva,” o f nature) intact and the desire perpetual. The
way Bruno uses anaphora in the Eroici is peculiar to his vision o f the world of
contraries. Anaphora becomes a figure not only o f repetition, but o f rotation and
inversion.
The trope of epanados, which repeats a word or phrase at the beginning and
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In showing how “monte” represents the heart o f the hero, “Muse” the beauty of his
desired object, and “fonte” his teary eyes, Bruno uses a translatory symmetry
again— three times, to be precise. This repetition takes on the form o f a prayer on
the part o f the hero to “fatemi poeta,” to become a famed poet who writes o f death,
cypress trees, and multiple hells. There is something distinctly supplicatory about
epanados.
Bruno also uses the symmetric nature o f epanados to assert some ethical
Pero ora che siamo stati nella feccia delle scienze, che hanno parturita la
feccia delle opinioni. le quali son causa della feccia de gli costumi ed
opre, possiamo certo aspettare de ritomare a meglior stati. (1073.
emphasis mine)
Cesarino's scourge is graphic in more ways than one. Here, the “feccia” o f the
sciences leads to the “feccia” o f opinions, which consequently leads to the "feccia”
interesting about this example, however, is that in each case the “feccia” o f one
entity is the cause for the “feccia” o f the next, with the Platonic idea, if you will, o f
if the subsequent “feccie” were augmented in force, though not in form. Somehow,
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130
the linear progression no longer seems entirely linear, but rather like a spiral in
which each subsequent set o f coordinates increases the spiral’s measure both
vertically and horizontally. Once again, the issue of angles arises. Are the “feccie”
increasing or decreasing in size? Is the “feccia” o f the sciences less fetid then the
This sort of “graphic” analysis not only shows that a rhetorical figure can be
interpretation); it also forces us to think about Bruno’s ethics. Which does he view
as the greater evil: that of science, or that o f a society that builds itself on the
that he finds science and society equally culpable— both vectors arising from the
same source o f ignorance, and both feeding o ff each other? In his hands, the trope
its ending (case, part o f speech, mood, or tense). Here again, what seems like a
oppositorum, to leave the reader (and the hero) continually aware o f change and
possibility.
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G G
G G G
G G
If we consider the “G” at the center as the initial motif, each o f the
surrounding six "G 's” is a translation, in six different directions. The distance
between each progressive "G” is 60°. We can measure the translations in terms o f
original word (or motif) does not change its orientation when translated. In a sense,
it allows for replicas, or "‘shadows” o f itself, but never its real self, and never a
Emblem XIV (I.v.) (a burning dart surrounded by a noose) bears the motto,
Tansillo to explain how “I’amor come istante o insistente, inste” (1067). How does
discussion on the nature o f the instant and how it is simultaneously eternal and a
point in time. You need instants in order to have time, he says, as you need points
in order to have a line (1067). Yet contained within the instant, Tansillo explains.
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is all time, just as “io son medesimo che fui, sono e sard” (1067). Agreeing
generally with Aristotle’s idea that all o f eternity is an instant, Tansillo indicates
Though the beginning o f this poem sounds much like Ecclesiastics 3, the
tone and person change at precisely the middle of the sonnet, verse 7. The poem is
now in the first person. It is the hero— noosed and burning with desire— who
speaks. There is no longer the sense o f the positive, the joyous, the respite offered
relationship to time. Initially the hero believes that in time, the goal will be
attained; later, he realizes that he is destined to suffer eternally, that each instant is
as painful as the last and as painful as the one to come— all instants are one in
eternity. Love is what makes one persist in the instant, and equally, persist in the
relationship between an instant and persistence, and on the heroic lover’s status as
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keeping the stem but changing the ending a kind o f symmetry? The motto builds
on itself, like the atria o f a shell growing larger, or a flight o f steps seen rising into
the distance, or like the “feccie” in Cesarino’s speech above. I see epanados as a
one, the original word grows proportionally but keeps its same shape (fig. 34). If
Figure 34: A gnomon. Here, each additional figure (in this case, a
square) that is added to the original figure (a golden rectangle) does not
change the original shape. Only magnitude increases as the figure
expands. This particular gnomon is a representation of the growth of a
logarithmic spiral.
we look at the example in which Tansillo notes that the apostrophized words in the
poem of Emblem VII (I.v.) leave the words open for a variety o f possibilities, we
might begin to see the “gnomonic symmetry” o f traductio. “Mi scald’, accend’.
.. .in virtu di quelle apostrofl, che son nel verso ottavo, possete leggere
mi s c a l d o, a c c e n d o, a r d o , a v a m p o ; over, s c a l d i, a c c e
ndi, a r d i , a v a mp i ; o v e r , s c a l d a , a c c e n d e , a r d e , a v v a
m p a. Hai oitre da considerare che questi non son quattro sinonimi, ma
quattro termini diversi che significano tanti gradi de gli effetti del fuoco.
II qual prima scalda, secondo accende, terzo bruggia, quarto infiamma o
invampa quel ch’ha scaldato, acceso e bruggiato. E cossi son denotate
nel furioso il desio, I’attenzione, il studio, Taffezione, le quali in nessun
momento sente variare. (1047)
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Beyond simply considering what person the four verbs should be in, Tansillo
explains that the four kinds o f “burning” are not mere synonyms, but four entirely
incommensurate Beloved.
to poem XI (II), Maricondo says, “perche non e cosa piu retta ch'il dritto, non e
cosa piu bella che la bellezza. non e piu buono che la bonta, non si trova piu grande
che la grandezza. ne cosa piu lucida che quella luce, la quale con la sua presenza
oscura e cassa gli lumi tutti” (1107). Adjectives turn into substantives in an attempt
the kabbalah, when combining the four letters o f the name o f God, YHVH, in order
to arrive at fuller expression o f His essence, one alternates the position o f one letter
at a time. YHVH goes to YVHH, then to YHHV, and so on. In the same way. the
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in order to indicate the greater essence o f the word— a word that cannot be fully
explained
Shadows are measured by the angle o f incidence between the sun and the
opaque body blocking the sun's rays. The hero, like the Nine Blind Men, comes to
recognize that that for which he is striving as a mere shadow. The Beloved is a
uni- but infinitely-lateral symmetry, much like the "line” we will consider in the
next chapter.
the thought needs multiple angles o f approach. In the final section o f this chapter I
will discuss a few o f the recurring numbers in the Eroici, showing how they, too,
emblems, ten interlocutors, and Nine Blind Men). I will now look at a few numbers
that recur with notable frequency in Bruno's Eroici—as well as throughout his
other works— and will highlight their symbolism and relevance to a discussion o f
angular rhetoric in the Eroici. Like Boccaccio and Ariosto, who praised their
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136
female readers and asked their pardon for shocking content, Bruno includes an
“Iscusazion del Nolano alle piu virtuose e leggiadre dame” immediately before the
first dialogue o f his Eroici. Especially relevant to the discussion o f angles is the
angular rhetoric of this sonnet, and the sonnet’s hinge in verse 9. Though Bruno
addresses all women, he had a specific woman in mind when he wrote the
while in England.
Verse 8 contains a chiasmus: “E siete in terra quel ch’in ciel le stelle”; so does
verse 14: “Qual’e tra voi quel che tra gli astri il sole.” Here the crossing o f the X
traces its path between earth and sky, between English women and stars. The
vertex between the earth and the sky, however, is the sun— Queen Elizabeth I. She
is the hinge o f the sonnet, the “belta sovrana” o f verse 9, reigning over the poem’s
center.
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throughout the Eroici. Recall the Nine Blind Men and their nine sestine, the nine
intelligences (946-947), the nine muses (946-947), the nine spheres (943, 946-947),
and the nine dialectics o f Pietrus Ramus that Bruno discusses in the final dialogue
of the Eroici (1115). Is it pure coincidence that there are eighty-one poems in the
The meaning of the number nine in the Eroici is clarified and complicated
Muses, then with Diana and the mind . 14 Nine is the number, he says, that expresses
knowledge o f Divine reality. He calls the ennead a triple hierarchy o f the number
three, and relates nine to— among many other things— the nine strings o f Apollo's
lyre, the nine cognitive powers, the nine ways in which the word of God manifests
through the mind. In De umbris idearum and De magia. Bruno proposes a nine-
creates memory atria that are divided into nine loci. 15 The shape and organization
o f these atria, in fact, is as significant as the images they frame. The following
15 See De imaginum in Op. Lat., vol. Il.iii, bks. I.ii.6 and I.ii. 13.
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Bruno explains:
Septen Atri i M er i »
Sit figura loci ut eius membra ad TRIO I mago DIES
aequalitatem et conformitatem eorum.
quae ulterius iuxta nostram viam
apponuntur (qui in univeris numerum
trigenarium observamus), sufficere A n gv- O cci- A ngvl .
lvs Se DENS 0 c c i«
possint; ut in proposito atrio ab angulo pten. DENTIS
utroque ad utrumque oppositum
duplici coniecta diametro quatuor in
intervallorum medio, quae a centro et
angulo quadruplici aequaliter distent.
sedes et adiecta intelligantur. in centro fig u re 35: "Forma Atrii.” Giordano Bruno,
vero duobus adiectis dexteram
,o
sedem T ([ r‘n,™n
Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer, 1591).
atque sinistram tribue.
Scrinium Stabulum
Scapha ALTARE Fruges
Solium Fumus
17 Tocco and Vitelli’s version uses lines to separate each angle. The English translation does
not. The first edition, published in Frankfurt in 1591, also has lines to separate each angle. See De
imaginum compositione (Frankfurt: Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer, 1591), from the Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, The Hague, 1709 E 36.
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These nine orientations provide the framework for cataloging and memorization.
The directional angles not only enhance the multiplicity o f the text’s meanings, but
support the mnemonic project. The relationship between the number nine and
In the Eroici, Bruno notes that the number nine is. according to many
Agrippa recalled that Jesus died in nine hours on the cross. 19 Nine in Pythagorean
doctrine is also the number o f the ephemeral horizon— an image that is implied in
the hero’s journey toward the ineffable, as the ineffable is by nature fleeting like a
horizon.
nine. Bruno also associates the Queen with Diana, the chaste goddess who
exemplifies the goal of the hero’s contemplation and possesses the power to
Elizabeth and Diana. The Diana-Actaeon myth is central to the Eroici—cited time
and again by Bruno. It is analogous to the hero’s desire to envision the Divine, and
fully seen. The numerology o f Diana, the fact that there are twenty-eight emblems
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in the Eroici, is a hidden clue to a force that drives the text. Twenty-eight is one o f
Diana’s numbers: she is the goddess o f the moon, which completes its cycle around
the earth in twenty-eight days. And Diana, the moon, reflects the light o f Apollo,
the sun—yielding a light that is not a perfect one, but one that man can view
lover into the beloved. Twenty-eight is a "perfect” number, as it equals the sum o f
its factors (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14).21 There are also twenty-eight times (for love, for
Eroici, Bruno suggest that the hero’s desire to envision/unite with the Beloved
should be perfect in the same way as the number twenty-eight is perfect. If the
desire is perfect and infinite, the journey will follow suit. The problem with the
Nine Blind Men is that their desire for the Beloved is flawed. Motion along the
journey comes through the coincidence o f opposing forces; as in the phases o f the
moon, however, one force leads to the revelation o f the next, ad infinitum. The
moon mediates between the earth and the heavens, as does the "belta sovrana” o f
Bruno’s “Iscusazion”; and the hero, he who also hovers between the human and the
20 Nine is a factor o f sixty-three, the year o f the “Grand Climacteric,” a supposedly important
year in Elizabethan numerology— Queen Elizabeth I actually died in her sixty-third year. Queen
Elizabeth I was called the “Amphitrite” by her court, and Bruno calls Diana by the same name in the
Eroici (II.v). In Lampas triginta statuarum he describes the Amphitrite as being the one, the monad,
and that which is reflected in each human soul (Op. Lai., vol. Ill, 59).
21 Albertus Magnus said that the mystical body o f Christ appears in the Eucharist in twenty-eight
phases.
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Just as the phases of the moon fall into four groups, so the Eroici's second
most frequent number is four. Both numbers are perfect squares and what the
Pythagoreans termed planar reflections .22 Many o f the twenty-eight emblems are in
groupings of four. The first of the emblems consists o f a shield with four colors
(I.v); the second is also a shield with four colors (I.v); Emblem XII (I.v) is
described as a head with four faces that blow in the four comers o f the sky,
crowned with two stars: Emblem IV (II.i) is a fire in the form o f a heart with four
wings. The dialogue between the Eyes and the Heart (Il.iii) includes four
The number four is often related to the four directions (north, south, east,
west) and, in the biblical tradition, to the four angles through which God's power
extends over the word. Adam’s name consists o f four letters in Greek (anatole,
dusis, arkto. mesembria), which are also the words for the four directions, showing
Adam to be a microcosm o f the universe. There are four extremities to the cross.
The Pythagoreans considered four, in the form o f the holy tetraktys (tetra =
••quatemity.” act is = "beam’’: as Johann Reuchlin puts it, a ‘'sunbeam” or "my own
beam”23), as the starting point for all other numbers, the basis o f the perfect number
ten (the sum o f the first four numbers equal ten: 1+2+3+4 = 10).24 Neo-
23 Johann Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica (1517), bk. II. See the translation by Martin and Sarah
Goodman (Lincoln: University o f Nebraska Press, 1983), 155.
24 On the divinity o f the tetraktys, see Pythagoras, The Golden Verses, verse 45. See also, for
example, Plato’s Republic, 10.617b; Porfiry’s Life o f Pythagoras, Par. 20; Macrobius’ Insomnim
scipionis, ch. 6; and Augustine’s De musica, Bk. 6. On the number ten as the sum o f 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ,
see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 966a 8-10; Aetius, 1.3.8; Theon o f Smyrna’s Mathematics Useful fo r
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Pythagoreans and Neoplatonists attributed to the number four qualities such as the
four elements, the four humors o f the body, the four seasons, the four ages o f man
(childhood, youth, adulthood, old age).25 The number four represented the harmony
o f the spheres: the tetrachord. Four was also symbolic o f stability and solidity, as it
was considered to be the first number to display these characteristics in the shape o f
Hermeticism attributed the number four to the god Hermes. Hermes' day is
the fourth day of every month: the ithyphallic, four-corned herm is his symbol:
quatemity is a constituent o f his image .27 A statue o f Hermes was often placed in
the square cut of crossroads to watch over the intersection. Martianus Capella in
his De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii speaks of Hermes as the quadratic god. And
in the kabbalah, the world is divided into four parts: atsilut (world o f emanation),
beriah (creation), yet sir ah (formation), and asiyah (visible things), and God’s name
< )0
Understanding Plato: Sextus Empiricus. Adversus Mathematicos, 4.3; Lucian, Vitarum Audio. 4;
and Hippolytus’ Refutatio omnium haeresium , 12.8-9.
25 See Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1938), 31; and Iamblicus, The Theology o f Arithmetic, 59.
27 See Karl Kerenyi, Hermes Guide o f Souls, trans. Murray Stein (Dallas: Spring Publications,
Inc., 1992), 22. See also Monica Fintoni’s discussion o f Hermes in “Images o f Mercury between
Guillaume Bude and Giordano Bruno,’’ Bruniana & Campanelliana 1-2 (1995): 103-20.
2S YH VH = yod. heh. vav, heh. Arych Kaplan notes how the four Hebrew letters o f the Name
contain the mystery o f charity: mm yod is like a coin, heh a hand that gives and
receives, vav an arm that reaches out to give. See Aryeh Kaplan, Inner Space, ed. Abraham Sutton
(New York: Moznaim Publishing Co., 1990), 10.
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Four is the number o f the tetrad, the square, the tetrahedron (the Platonic
solid with the fewest angles and faces). There are four geometric progressions:
point, line, plane, and solid. Iamblicus associated the number four with
astronomy .29 Empedocles was the first to speak about the four humors as parallel
to Plato’s four cosmic substances (fire, water, air. earth), and four was considered
the cosmic substance o f fire . 30 Galen called the four humors and the four cosmic
man thought in four groups o f five, using his fingers and toes on which to
calculate.32 From the Indo-European word quetrum, meaning “peak,” and not
quattuor, came the Latin quadra, meaning “square” or “cross .”33 A squadra is a
bound into sixteen pages; a quarry a place where rocks are broken into little
squares. In Greek, the word for four is tessera, from which came the terms for dice,
31 See Leo Spitzer, Classical and Christian Ideas o f World Harmony (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Press. 1963), 65.
32 See Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Svmbols, trans. Paul Broneer (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1969).
33 Ibid., 148.
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Figure 36a: Giordano Bruno, Figure 36b: Giordano Figure 36c: Giordano
A rticuli adversus mathem aticos. Bruno, A rticuli adversus Bruno, A rticuli adversus
m athematicos. mathematicos.
In his study o f the principle o f quatemity, Robert Berner suggests that the number
Trinity.34 Jung talks about the Trinity's “missing fourth,” though by the fourth he
means Satan and the dark, repressed material world .35 I do not believe that Bruno
would have thought that the Trinity was missing a fourth element,36 but he certainly
34 Robert Berner, The Rule o f Four: Four Essays on the Principle o f Quaternity (New York:
Peter Lang Press, 1996), ix, 39.
36 Bruno does not mention the Trinity in his numerologic-geometric poem, De monade, in the
chapter on the number three.
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145
was attracted by the solidity of the number four, and considering his theory o f
shadows, he might not have been adverse to Jung’s idea that the opposite of
Divinity, evil, should be part of the mystery o f a triune God. Cornelius Agrippa
noted that many cultures name God with four letters: YHVH (Hebrew); Thet
(Egyptian); Alla (Arabic); Sire (Persian); Orfi (Magian); Agdi (Maomettan); Oeos
listing “ IeOVaH et ADONai enim Hebraeis. 0 EUT Aegyptiis. ORSI Magis. SIRE
Persis. 0 EOS Graecis. DEUS Latinis. ALLA Arabibus. GOTT Germanis. DIEU
fourfold, as are many other things: generation, the ways reason moves to
comprehend the infinite, the worlds (divine, archetypal, spiritual, and corporeal),
mathematical, rational).
The occurrences o f the number four in the Eroici are more symbolic of
direction than anything else—a major theme o f this work being the movement of
the hero toward the Divine from different angles o f approach. With regard to the
fourfold argument between the Eyes and the Heart, it is possible that Bruno was
guided by still another quality o f the number four: the fourfold faculties o f the mind
gnoseology, the mind is divided into these four discrete “atria” through which
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146
thought passes.39 Though Bruno never diagrammed these atria, his other atria were
quadrilaterals (squares and rectangles), and a good model for Bruno’s atria o f the
mind is one o f concentric squares. With the faculties o f the mind in such an
arrangement, there is more freedom for each faculty to move a thought into the
preceding or succeeding square than if there were only one "doorway” or access
thought between the faculty of sensation and that o f insight— from the heart to the
eyes— is a fourfold process. Thought does not jump from discrete faculty to
discrete faculty in a linear fashion, but rather moves into each from the preceding
one from a variety of possible angles. The "mind” for Bruno is both heart and
intellect. The hero is both human and divine. The journey to the Divine is both
glorious and torturous. The hero’s mind, the hero's journey, and the hero himself
There is one final number in the Eroici that Bruno uses liberally: three.
Although one might immediately think o f the Christian Trinity, I believe that in the
Eroici three holds other symbolism, a symbolism primarily related to Diana. The
(respectively) earthly, lunar, and infernal realms. Perhaps Elizabeth I, the "belta
sovrana,” would have liked to think o f herself as a sovereign with such a far-
40 On the figure o f Trivia, see Virgil, Aeneid VI.20-55; Horace. Ode 22; Fulgentius, H.xvi;
Martianus Capella, The Marriage o f Philology and Mercury, Vl.341-5: Macrobius. Saturnalia,
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147
critique o f the “triviality” o f the Trinity. The word “trivial,” which came into
English usage in the sixteenth century, is based on the idea o f the trivium as
common, everyday knowledge. The term “trivium,” on the other hand, originates in
the idea of three roads meeting (tri via). This again makes us think o f the three-fold
and Janus at a bridge or threshold (twofold). Associating Hermes with the number
four, Janus with two. and Diana with three, one might think o f Janus as planar (2-
d). Diana as solid (3-d), and Hermes as a hypercube (4-d). Interestingly, in his
Saturnalia, Macrobius cites Nigidius as saying that "Diana” derives from "Jana,”
the feminine of “Janus” (the addition o f the letter “d” to the letter "i” for the sake
of euphony ).41 If this is so, then we can imagine Diana arising from Janus; and
What else is Bruno communicating with his use of the number three in the
EroicP Is Bruno saying that the Trinity somehow reflects the pagan Trivia? Is he
saying that there is something insufficient or trivial about the concept o f the
related to the nature o f Diana or the Christian Trinity? Though I do not want to
discount these possible interpretations o f the connection between the number three
and the Trinity in Bruno, I will not focus on any of them here. Instead, let us look
l.ix.8; Isidore o f Seville, Etymologiae, VIlLxi.; and especially Dante, Divina Comedia , XXM.25-7,
•‘Quale ne’ plenilunii sereni/ Trivia ride tra le ninfe etteme/ che dipingono lo ciel per tutti i seni.”
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148
at a few triple sequences Bruno includes in the Eroici. He includes, for example,
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149
and
These incessant triples are grouped into categories, much like the groupings we see
throughout Bruno's mnemonic charts and wheels. The groups are at times
sequence— "quel che feci, faccio ed ho da fare.” Triples seem to be inherent in the
hero's project— perhaps because o f the binding power o f the number three, perhaps
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150
Conclusion
between Filenio and a pastor (a tormented lover), which is in the form o f a sonnet
Figure 38: Giordano Bruno, De g li eroicifu ro ri in D ialoghi itaiiani. ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence:
Sansoni, 1985), 981-982.
however, if Bruno had the idea o f “triviality” in mind when he used this waterfall o f triples, and
whether he was “trivializing” the symbolism o f three as he did with respect to the number two in the
Cena.
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Consultation o f one o f the first editions o f Bruno’s Eroici shows that, in fact, this
angular arrangement does not at all resemble the shape that Bruno originally gave
to his sonnet-dialogue.
DialogoSecondo.
The sonnet looks, fiuleck wife 1‘inferno impiomba : oade
trouandofi tabncnte poggiar, et dcfcendcxc,
ftntencl' ilma ilpiu gran diffidio chcftn-
instead, like this (fig. ni fi poffa. Etcoofufo ridunc per la ribdli-
on del fcnfo.che lo brona la d'oadcla raggi
on laaffrcna, et per il concrario.
45). The lattice-work 11 mcdefimo afEuto fidimoftr* ad Laft.
gucnte ftotenxa doue la Raggione in nome
deFileniodinunda, ctilFurioforifpondc
structure of this ranomediPaftoretdieallacuiadcl gregge
6armento dcfuoi penfieri £ trauagia • quii
pafee in oficquio et feruiggio de la baain&,
exchange is like a eb'dl'allcttioae di qneiT oggctto alia cni
offentanza i fauo cauioo.
question and answer
to read: it forces one's eyes to move not only horizontally but vertically, to keep
most curious that Aquilecchia and later editors o f modem editions o f the Eroici
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152
have chosen to lay out this exchange in such a peculiarly angular way. The format
the hero's journey; that is, the angles o f inference, angles o f approach, and angles of
vertiginous itinerary conceived by the likes of a Zeno. The reader joins the ranks of
Orlando, but it is without a thread, a map. or help from the gods, sorceresses or
friends that he must plot the path to his goal. He is led into a textual labyrinth, full
mottoes, and incantations. In each textual space there are numbers with which to
tinker, and paradoxes to unravel. The language o f this palatial maze is visionary,
and it is visual. The discourse between Eyes and Heart is not limited to H.iii. but
radiates through the whole work. Bruno's Eroici is a colloquy between vision and
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Chapter Four: Lines
Delineations, lists, and inversions o f direction line the com edy's pages in the guise
dimensionality of the characters is the best point from which to enter a discussion
personae who serve one o f two purposes: to ridicule, or to be ridiculed. During the
single night in Naples in which the comedy weaves itself, the characters stretch
across the stage, crossing over one another, at times tying knots, at times just
the three most incorrigible o f these characters— parallel one another in terms of
love for alchemy, Mamfiirio's love for pedantic knowledge. In a sense, all three are
"candlestick bearers.” holding an unwavering flame for their beloved. They are
rigid columns, inviting the antagonists to punish, or rather, bend them, tease them,
trick them, reveal to them their narrow-mindedness. Through trickery and ridicule
they are violently forced to widen their tunnel-vision. or slacken their linear stance.
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NOTE TO USERS
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UMI ®
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clear, however, that even after these tortures, they will modify their uni-dimensional
natures.
Similar to the protagonists, the cast as a whole portrays linearity in the way
they use and abuse o f language. They all have a tendency to make awkward lists
The Candelaio satirizes the kind o f rectilinearity that is always on the straight and
others (not telling the “straight’' truth), and includes passages that move non-
linearly from one thought or situation to the next. It is precisely Bruno's critique of
manipulations exemplified in the Candelaio. but the tropes Bruno employs most
often in this text will clarify the nature o f his contention with uni-directional
rectilinearity. I will look at brachylogia and systrophe under the rubric o f “lists” : at
philosophy o f the multi-valenced. But first, I will give some background on two
topics that serve as a point o f departure for my geometric reading o f the Candelaio:
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an overview o f Candelaio criticism, and a discussion o f the nature o f the line and
rectilinearity.
neologisms, his use of multiple registers and languages, his obscenity, his linguistic
Folegno. Bemi, Aretino. Belo, Doni. Franco, Bandello. Machiavelli, and Ariosto,
and o f his challenge to Aristotelian poetics and Donatus' outline for classical
comedy. Also typically mentioned are the play’s critiques o f Petrarchan poetry, o f
1 So as not to weigh down this recapitulation o f past criticism with names and footnotes. I will
list here the major studies on the Candelaio that have provided the material for my summary: Mario
Apollonio, Dtionario delle opere e deipersonaggi (Milan: 1956); Giovanni Aquilecchia.
“Giordano Bruno.” Storia della Leiteratura Italiana, ed. Enrico Malato (Roma: Salem o. 1997);
Alan Bar, “ Extension and Excision: Imagistic and Structural Patterns in Giordano Bruno's
Candelaio." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 13 (1971): 351-363: A. Buono Hodgart,
Giordano Bruno's The Candle-Bearer: An Enigmatic Renaissance Play (Lewiston, New York:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1997); Jo Ann Cavallo, “The Candelaio: A Hermetic Puzzle,” Canadian
Journal o f Italian Studies 15 (1992): 47-55; Sirio Ferrone, "11 candelaio: scienza e letteratura,”
llalianistica 2 (1973): 518-543; Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana (Naples: D.
Morani, 1871); Isa Guerrini Angrisani, Introduction to Giordano Bruno: Candelaio (Milan: BUR.
1988); Luigi Russo, Compendio storico della letteratura italiana (Messina-Florence: G. d ’Anna.
1961); Laura Sanguined White, “ In tristitia hilaris in hilaritate tristis: armonia nei contrasti,”
Quaderni d'italianistica V (1984): 191-203; Vincenzo Spampanato. Antipetrarchismo di Giordano
Bruno (Milan: Enrico Trevisini, 1900); Roberto Tissoni, “Saggio di un commento stilistico al
Candelaio." Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 37 (I960): 257-267.
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Gioan Bernardo the painter, orchestrator o f the evening’s buffoonery. They also
note how the "Academico di nulla Academia” and the “ Fastidito” (Bruno’s self
proclamation at the play’s beginning and in the Antiprologo) are titles that signal
Bruno’s intent o f parodying the religious/pedantic world he has just left and the
itself, a common concern has been the term "candelaio” and its relationship to the
also been conceived as a figure that illuminates the "shadow o f ideas." Finally,
critics discuss why Bruno decided to set the play in Naples and why he chose
commoners for all the characters. Responses have ranged from his nostalgia for a
city he loved, to the notion that these common folk and thieves represent the
educated society.
Squarotti. one o f two scholars to have provided a modem, fully annotated edition o f
the play, and A. Buono Hodgart are among the authors o f this more provocative
Bruno's Candelaio— posits that there is a “prophetic” quality to the Candelaio and
that Bruno intended the text to serve as a forecast for the ominous future o f
2 See Candelaio , ed. Giorgio BArberi Squarotti (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), and Isa Guerrini
Angrisani’s edcition (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976).
3 See Squarotti’s preface to the Candelaio (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993).
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century society than a doomsday prediction o f what society might become if certain
changes are not made. Bruno is a visionary, without being a prognasitcator, the
all o f the play is redeemable; no one serves as a lighthouse directing the dissolute
play anticipates the theater o f the Baroque, Buono Hodgart outlines the impact it
has on Baroque authors. She details the way in which the Candelaio breaks with
Caracciolo. and Braca). Oddly, Buono Hodgart notes that both the Candelaio and
the Spaccio are part o f Bruno's "critical phase.” while the Cena and the Eroici are
part o f his “constructive phase.”3 Though it is true that the Candelaio and the
Spaccio attack social mores, it does not seem necessary to call this mode a "phase.”
The Candelaio was written in 1582 and the Spaccio in 1584. The Cena was
published in between, and the Eroici following on the heels o f the Spaccio. What is
more, the Cena and the Eroici can hardly be called non-critical and merely
5 Ibid.. 9.
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criticism both by her detailed account o f Bruno’s borrowings from Aretino and
Bemi and by her analysis o f Bruno’s neologisms. Regarding the latter. Michele
work available; thus her synthesis o f the play's Italian and Latin neologisms is
much appreciated.6 She writes convincingly about the desecration and corrosion of
the text's language— plebian and pedantic. She argues that Bruno's attack on
observation, it is an important one, and one that she treats meticulously and at
length.
Having sketched this arc o f criticism. I now diverge from it. My discussion
o f the Candelaio will not touch on most o f these issues; instead, I focus on the
argue that the comedy's characters, themes, language, structure, and underlying
delineations. If pedantry has to do with the “foot” (ped). then its positive, non-
his Cabala del cavallo pegaseo why the hand is an appendage that distinguishes
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man from other beasts, and gives him superiority.8 He links true intelligence to the
Bruno may very well have thought o f ‘"pedant” as deriving from the term
ped, meaning ‘‘foot,” or perhaps even from the word "child” (given the pederasty o f
Mamfurio would have it. means “Pe. perfect os, —Dan, dans, — Te. thesauros..
Bernardo (79).9 The pedant is thus associated, in Bruno's mind, with the obstinate,
pedestrian, unintelligent thinker. The range o f things one can do with one's feet is
minuscule in comparison to what one can do with one's hands. The pedantic is
multi-directional.
opposed to a curvilinear line, which is. obviously, a curvy line. Besides being one
8 See Bruno, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, 732, 887. See also Michele Ciliberto, La ruota del
tempo: Interpretazione di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992).
9 All citations from the Candelaio refer to the following edition: Candelaio, ed. Giorgio Barberi
Squarotti (Turin: Einaudi, 1964).
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the number two (as the point does to the number one, the plane to three, and the
solid to four). Pythagoras is said to have claimed that 216 lines o f words form a
textual cube.10 This "cube” was supposed to be a perfect form for text and an aid
for memory.11 Daniele Barbara, in his 1556 translation o f Vitruvius* Ten Books o f
the literary. Barbara related the geometric line to a line o f text, the point to a word,
added another rubric to this relationship o f number, form, and text: "quality.**
According to Ficino. the line represented "being” (as did the point "essence,” the
plane "virtue,” and the solid "action”).12 Though rather abstract, this concept does
not represent a departure from Pythagoras* hierarchy, nor from that o f Vitruvius,
nor even from the architecture o f a classical column, in which the line is associated
with a "bounding step” (just as the point is associated with a column base, the plane
with an order [Corinthian. Doric, Ionic], and the solid with the whole structure).13
11 See George Hersey, Pythagorean Palaces: Magic and Architecture in the Italian Renaissance
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1976). 49.
12 Ibid., 33.
13 Idem.
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seems a logical progression from the point as “primary,” the word, the base o f a
Ficino, and Barbara is not certain, as Bruno had no library o f his own that we can
consult. He never mentions Vitruvius and Barbara in his writings, and the
“Libreria” o f San Domenico Maggiore. which Bruno used, does not appear to have
had copies o f either author.14 He knew Ficino's works— he was even accused by
professors at Oxford o f plagiarizing from them— and we can assume that through
numeric and geometric associations are relatively straightforward, and the leap to
The “line” in Bruno's thought has two expressions: one as a closed system.
of line (the latter o f the two types) is also associated with the "in between.” It is
preceded by the formlessness o f the point (monad, minimum) and followed by the
multiplicity o f all forms. The line is a limen. hovering between no form and all
forms. In fact, it is like Ficino’s idea o f “being,” which rests between essence and
virtue/action. It is like the "bounding step” between a colum n's base and its
14 O f course it is difficult to reconstruct the exact library o f San Domenico Maggiore at the time
Bruno was living there. Professor Eugenio Canone, Maria Rosaria Grizzuti o f the Biblioteca
Nazionaie di Napoli, and Vincenzo Trombetta o f the Biblioteca Universitaria di Napoli have done a
laudable jo b o f putting together a list o f the manuscripts, incunabula, and sixteenth-century texts that
are now at these two libraries but were housed at San Domenico Maggiore during Bruno's stay.
Others have collaborated on this impressive reconstruction as well. See Giordano Bruno e gli anni
napoletani, ed. Eugenio Canone, 199-245.
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manifest order. It is the one-dimensional form that shares qualities with both the
another sequence o f words. The line can stand on its own, like the sentence ”Nihil
sub sole est novum,” one of Bruno’s favorite one-liners. It can join a series of
sentences to form a text, and is bom from the magma o f all possible words. The
An exploration o f the rectilinear line in Bruno’s thought must begin with the
observation that all of his diagrams, with very few exceptions, are made up of
straight lines and circles or parts o f circles. In De minima. Bruno defines the line as
paralleled.15 Though he does not speak directly o f its dimensionality, the fact that
he conceives of it (in its pure state) as something that has extension and is in itself a
it lacks depth and serves as a demarcation between other figures. Bruno says in the
because it is what distinguishes two things on a plane, much in the same way as two
15 Bruno. De minimo in Op. Lot., vol.l.iii, 284. See also the section entitled “Problemata de
linea” in Praelectiones geometricae where he looks at how to draw parallel lines and perpendiculars,
and to divide perpendiculars, 39-47.
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different colors, allow an observer to distinguish between one figure and another.16
Furthermore, to Bruno, while the infinite line is an infinite circle in infinity, the
finite line is implicitly straight. In the Artictili, Bruno gives a long and involved
description o f the nature and function o f the line.17 Here, he adheres to the
generally accepted notion that the line is composed o f many parts but cannot itself
be considered a part. He agrees that it has longitude but not latitude. He does not.
however, follow Zeno and Aristotle in the notion that a line is infinitely divisible.
micro/minimum is very difficult to unpack; hence the crux of the issue is that while
minima are infinite in number, they are finite in form. A line that is not infinite in
extension (in other words, all lines in the natural world) will perforce have a finite
In the exploration o f lines and the linear in the Candelaio that follows, I will
springs from the dimensionless point and gives rise to the multiplicity o f forms.
Curvilinear lines were treated in Chapter Two. All lines discussed in this present
chapter, unless otherwise noted, refer to straight lines— both as uni-directional and
diagonals. Very few things in nature, on the other hand, are truly rectilinear. Even
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light rays, which seem to move in straight lines, have been shown to share
properties o f waves and particles rendering them non-linear. The straight line is
actually an "approximate” form, like the circle, as Bruno theorized. Only the
infinite line is perfect, he said; but then again, the infinite line is a perfect circle, for
• 18
in infinity the line and the circle are one and the same thing.
text, a line o f thought, a linear (or non-linear) thematic progression, a story line,
reading between the lines, or even liner-notes. Writing and reading in their
technical sense are linear acts. Lines o f text, however, cannot be considered
rectilinear lines in the strictest sense, as a geometric rectilinear line has only one
dimension, and letters— even if they are "lined up” with each other—must
between them. And yet. lines o f texts move rectilinearly— left to right, right to left,
the straight line is the only form a text can take; hopefully, my preceding chapters
the negative connotations attached to the notion o f the straight line— narrowness,
rigidity, and uni-directionality. Bruno puts forth this critique in order to indicate
that rectilinearity does not have to have such characteristics. Instead, it can partake
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Bruno is a list-o-maniac. Each one o f his works contains myriad lists: items
and/or rules for memorization, human qualities and characteristics, the gods'
slanders, emblems, paths to wisdom, and so on. Why, we may ask, so many words?
Why does Bruno use twelve adjectives to modify a noun instead o f one or two? I
think the answers lies, in part, in his desire to reach out toward all knowledge o f the
infinite universe and catch it in his mnemonic net. In part it lies in the opposing
awareness that all cannot be “‘recalled” (a la Plato) or known, and certainly not
understood, or expressed in language. This being so, he is never satisfied with just
a few descriptive words— he needs to employ many terms in order to feel like he is
unspeakable, Bruno talks around things, winds innumerable words around them,
epistle, Bruno offers a summary o f the characters and their roles, but no simple list
o f the characters followed by a few words o f description, which would have helped
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the reader keep track of the nineteen characters.19 This lack aside, the Candelaio is
as filled with as many lists as any o f Bruno’s works. What is different about these
lists is that they satirically exemplify people who do not understand the ideal
leading the lister to view the world from multiple perspectives. The Candelaio's
a long list of single words or phrases one after the other; systrophe, o f a long list of
19 There is no «uch list in the 1582 editions I have consulted (Biblioteca Universitaria
Alessandrina, Rari 13; and Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, GG.III.205), nor in any o f the modem
editions. All o f Bruno’s manuscripts either lost or destroyed, we will probably never know if he
intended there to be such a list. For the sake o f easy reference for the reader, 1 will construct the
absent list here. This list, o f course, is neither an expression o f brachylogia, nor o f systrophe. A list
o f characters is merely pragmatic, not rhetorical.
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aforementioned tropes— and that Bruno also uses— but 1 will limit my discussion in
this section to these two. I hope that my analysis o f the tropes will not seem like a
tedious, indeed.
list-like format. These tropes evoke images o f the repeating arches o f an aqueduct
indeterminate extension. Like the definition o f the line that Bruno provides in De
minimo, these rhetorical devices serve to extend an idea, and are neither beginnings
nor ends in and of themselves. They act, instead, as “fillers," and in this they are
like termini, whose function is to fill in the space between minima and hold them
and minima particles, and his use o f these rhetorical figures echo Sebastiano
Serlio’s linee occulte. Sebastiano Serlio, the sixteenth-century architect, coined the
term “linee occulte” in his 1584 work, On Architecture, to describe the unmarked
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Serlio conceived of these lines as resembling those influssi which linked different
concept o f vinculi, developed in his works on natural m agic.24 Invisible lines, linee
occulte, and vinculi are implicit in a line o f text, the function o f which is to connect
rigorous enforcers o f this function, stringing together words or phrases into a linear
or the spaces “between the lines.” George Hersey discusses how the lines Bruno
21 Idem. See Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture, trans. and ed. Vaughan Han and Peter Hicks
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 458.
24 Bruno’s works on magic consist o f the following texts, composed in 1589-90 and published
posthumously: De magia, De vinculis in genere, and Theses de magia.
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structures of the cosmos and its worlds.”25 I agree with this observation and wish
Bruno’s lines. I believe that implicit within Bruno’s geometric drawings— his
combinations of circles and lines, for that is primarily what they are— lies his
larger vision of the architecture o f the universe. Bruno’s geometric lines, his
invisible termini, his vinculi— like Serlio’s linee occulte— serve as the "imagined
scaffolding” for much o f Bruno’s thought. Equally, I believe, his lines o f text— in
Frankfurt poems.26 At other times, as in Bruno’s mnemonic works, the lists are
suggestions of things to organize into given memory wheels and chambers. At still
other times, as in the Spaccio, they manifest as enumerations o f traits, actions, and
roll-calls. In the Candelaio, the primary purpose of lists is that o f satire: the use of
lists indicate people who misunderstand the quality o f the line, viewing it as merely
systrophe serve to exaggerate and amplify, to pile words and phrases together in
26 For example, see Bruno’s long lists o f the mathematical, mythological, physical, metaphysical,
and symbolic qualities attributable to the first ten numbers in De monade.
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He repeats this sort o f self-critique in a much more positive light, though, in the
audience.
somewhat like Serlio’s architectural linee. In parodying himself, as he does all his
critique.28 Bruno’s “systrophic vector,” if I can call it that, points toward the
“fastidito,” the rebellious young man who has just shed his Dominican habit and is
dissatisfied with everything around him: the religious life, the pettiness o f society,
un-enlightened academe, and so forth. He pokes fun at his own peevish character,
28 See Squarotti’s introduction to the 1993 Les Belles Lettres edition o f the Candelaio (the
Chandelier), Ixxviii.
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as he knows that he, too, is inescapably part o f life’s intrigues and vicissitudes. He
thus makes his audience aware that he is— though invisibly so— part o f this teatro
mundi.
Similarly, Bruno brings another invisible character into the script: Signora
Morgana B., the recipient of the dedicatory letter (invisible like the fata morgana1?).
We know nothing about her; perhaps she is no one in particular. And perhaps it is
because she is no one in particular that Bruno could freely fill the letter with
quel che dal sirio influsso celeste, in questi piu cuocenti giomi, ed ore
piu lambiccanti, che dicon caniculari, mi han fatto piovere nel cervello le
stelle fisse, le vaghe lucciole del firmamento mi han crivellato sopra, il
decano de’ dudici segni m ’ha ballestrato in capo, e ne l'orecchie interne
m’han soffiato i sette lumi erranti? (21)
This sentence— one of the many grandiose, parodic gestures of the letter— along
with the self-satirization of the author, and the sonnet that opens the play, “A gli
abbeverati nel Fonte Caballino,” should leave no doubt that the scaffolding o f satire
is firmly in place.
Eccovi avanti gli occhi ociosi principii, debili orditure, vani pensieri,
frivole speranze, scoppiamenti di petto, scoverture di corde, falsi
presupposti, alienazion di mente, poetici furori, offuscamento di sensi,
turbazion di fantasia, smarrito peregrinaggio d’intelletto, fede sfrenate,
cure insensate, studi incerti, somenze intempestive e gloriosi frutti di
pazzia. (32)
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And again, though this time in a more brachylogic fashion and with a marked slant
on the Petrarchan terminology o f a suffering lover (which all the three main
Bruno continues this list of the lover's torments for another two pages. There
seems to be no end to the lover’s suffering (or to Bruno's list), and yet there is. In
the Eroici Bruno will discuss how desire (love) for something o f the natural world
is limited, as the natural world and all its components is finite (recall his idea that
while there may be infinitely many parts to something, each part is finite and that
you cannot divide a line infinitely). But if you desire something infinite, i.e. the
Divine, then you will desire and suffer infinitely: such is the fate o f the frenzied
unlimited. The fact is that he is homosexual, and his love can never be true or real
for this woman. Bruno is poking fun not only at Bonifacio, but at all mundane
lovers. Equally, Bartolomeo’s love for the material product o f alchemy and the
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Mamfiirio’s love for pedantic knowledge and young boys are ridiculed by Bruno as
29
finite passions o f mundane lovers.
that is, in the dedicatory letter, in the multiple prologues, and in the initial
encounters with two o f the three protagonists. As the play progresses, the intrigues
develop and the space for long lists dissipates. Even the monologues contain less
The extensive lists, systrophic and brachvlogic, that line the initial pages o f
the comedy are not complex figures, but rather simple tropes intended to amplify
the pointed satire. Bruno even has Mamfurio, the supreme pedant, say that lists are
closed systems. Once a list is finished, he lectures, you must not add a single more
thing to it: '"factae enumerationis clausnlae non est adponenda unitas” (61,
clearly parodying the notion o f the list as finite. Ottaviano, a thief who studies with
otherwise been a simple “si.” He nods, “ Utique, sane, certe, equidem, utique,
29 Bartolomeo’s wife laments his devotion to the laboratory, and in ll.i, Mamfurio describes his
young students with the ample systrophic exaggeration o f a p e d o p h i l e : . .di pueruli, di teneri
unguicoli, lenium malarum, puberum, adolescentulorum: eorum qui adhuc in virga in omnem valent
erigi, flecti, atque duci partem, primae vocis, apti al soprano, irrisorum denticulorum,
succiplenularum carnium, recentis naturae, nullius rugae, lactei halitus, roseorum labellulorum,
lingulae blandulae, mellitae simplicitatis, in Jlore, non in semine degentium, claros haberuium
ocellos, puellis adiaphoron." (57) Emphasis by Bruno.
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exaggeration o f the peremptory and the closed. It is worth asking why Bruno uses
thieves such as Ottaviano, who later in the play actually masquerade as other
thieves, to take part in satirizing the notion that lists are closed systems— uni
duplicity, and deception, rather than the strict “straight and narrow”? Is it because
rules over rhetoric), a thief is bound to be more “curvy," indirect, and persuasive
Bruno throws the same satirical device at us again a few pages later when
Barra, another thief, relays the manner in which a woman refused to sleep with him:
“no, no no, non non. non, none, none, none. nani. nani, no n e.. .va’ via. va' via. via,
via, via, via. via, via. via, mal uomo” (67). Barra muses that if the woman had only
said “va’ via” once, then perhaps he would have been more convinced that she
meant it. By saying “no” and “go away” so many times, he sensed that she actually
wanted to sleep with him. For Bruno, these brachylogies are examples o f
statements that actually end up saying nothing, or even the opposite o f what they
imply. Ottaviano’s “utique” is actually a “no,” and Barra’s woman’s “no” actually
a yes. The two thieves seem to read truth more successfully than the pedant or the
protesting woman. Why? Because in their art o f duplicity, they see more than one
meaning at once.
We know that Bruno did not envision a world o f closed systems, and
equally that his lists are not meant to be closed systems. For Bruno, lists are
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Mochione, yet another one o f the thieves and certainly not a fount o f wisdom, says
that bad things happen in series and never one at a time (120). This displays, once
again, not only exaggeration, but the idea o f a series as a fixed, pre-ordained
system. One bad thing following another—a chain reaction or domino effect— is
not the same as envisioning a line o f infinite possibilities. It is closer to the image
of blow-by-blow events that have happened, than events that will or could happen
in the future. Gioan Bernardo looks back on the events o f the one night in Naples
and relays how “da cqua tutti gli altri svariamenti sono accaduti 1’uno dopo l’altro.
come figli e figli di figli, nipoti e nipoti di nipoti” (152). The “line-age” o f events
growth. Through his satirical use o f lists in the Candelaio. Bruno pointedly
repertoire of instruments that Bruno uses to critique the straight and narrow, the
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idea force thought to travel along only one path. Ideally, lists can encourage multi
directional rectilinearity, transcend stifling geometry, extend far into the realm o f
the potential and possible. The true Brunian list can move from the pedantic limes
Inversion: Hyperbaton
"Sia, voga; voga sia,” says the announcer o f the Antiprologue in reference to
the drunkenness of Bonifacio (30). He depicts the image o f a man pushing and
man in love with a female prostitute, he does not know which direction to go. This
floating boat, in the open space between shores, is tossed by the waves in
unexpected directions.
employs both rhetorical and conceptual figures o f inversion. There are numerous
disguises: the “master scholar” is made to look like a fool, thieves like lawmakers,
a prostitute like a wise woman, and a “bidello” like an omniscient herald. Bruno
altogether. He inverts roles, the traditional format o f a play, and the order o f words
themselves.
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178
thought is broken and re-directed. It is a liberation from the "straight and narrow”
o f the closed system, a redirecting o f the expected and pre-conceived. It is the flip,
still have that something, but in a state that implies what it is and is not, at the same
re-arranges that which is already there, already implicit. Inverting a line effects a
change in its direction, while maintaining its dimensionality and its extension.
The rhetorical trope o f hyperbaton transposes words from their usual order.
Bruno uses hyperbaton in the very opening quotation to his play: “In tristitia hilaris,
in hilaritate tristis.” While on the one hand the phrases "'sadness in cheerfulness”
on the other hand they imply that cheerfulness follows sadness in the same way as
sadness follows cheerfulness (it is not simply that there is some o f the one in the
other, but that one follow s the other). This relationship o f reciprocity and sequence,
which fills the pages o f the Candelaio, is not always easy to stomach. While we
like the idea o f cheerfulness in or following sadness, the inverse is generally not
appreciated. In one o f the more dreamy moments o f the comedy, Vittoria muses on
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how “i savi vivono per i pazzi, ed i pazzi per i savii” (64).30 Why would the mad
live for the wise and vice versa? What is Bruno saying here? Can we only judge
universe o f contrasts such as Bruno’s, the answer to the questions is yes. We can
conclude with Vittoria, thus, that Bruno perceived all things to be conglomerates o f
see the “ideal” line as simultaneously moving in different directions— like the
vicissitudes o f divine, natural, and human motion— we can imagine a universe that
transcends the traditional constraints o f time and space. To think in an “ideal linear
Gioan Bernardo speaks to this multiple nature o f time and space when he
teases Bonifacio for doing something that he had never done before:
Voi dite di gran cose. E possibile che quello che hai fatto oggi, abbi
possuto far ieri o altro giomo, o voi o altro che sii? O che per tutto
tempo di vostra vita possiate dare quel che una volta e fatto? Cossi, quel
che facesti ieri, non lo farai mai piu; ed io mai feci quel ritrattro ch’ho
fatto oggi, ne manco e possibile ch’io possa farlo piu; questo si, che
potro fame un altro. (47)
thought, and action are not finite, pre-ordained, or linearly constrained. They are,
30 This notion o f one thing existing because its opposite does shows up frequently throughout
Bruno’s works. Cesarino, in the Eroici, says, “Bisogna che siano arteggiani, meccanici, agricoitori,
servidori, pedoni, ignobili, vili, poveri, pedante ed altri simili: perch6 altrimente non potrebono
essere filosofi, contemplativi, coltori degli animi, padroni, capitani, nobili, illustri, ricchi, sapienti ed
altri che siano eroici simili a gli dei,” (1113-1114).
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180
matter, or the Second Law o f Thermodynamics: ”‘il tempo tutto toglie e tutto da;
ogni cosa si muta, nulla s’annichila” (22). This conceptual hyperbaton, this
in a way not dissimilar from his confounding diagrams, "Theuti radius” and “Theuti
m
character is two characters at once;
m
Figure 41: “Theuti circulus.” Giordano Bruno, into something else. By seeing their
A rticuli adversus m athem aticos.
realize how the three main characters actually intertwine. We see the “artificiosa
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181
testura” that Bruno describes in the “Argomento.” The insipid lover, he writes,
goffo, ed il goffo [Mamfurio] non e men sordido ed insipido che goffo” (23). Each
character shares characteristics o f the other two. As the intrigue progresses, so does
them— and this is what they need to learn. They are more than lust, greed, and
authority alone.
predictable. Gioan Bernardo, the most positive force in the play, argues in the last
act that Fortune is actually fond o f irony, which is by nature a device o f multiple
meanings:
Fa onorato chi non merita, da buon campo a chi nol semina, buon orto a
chi nol pianta. molti scudi a chi non le sa spendere, molti figli a chi non
puo allevarli, buon appetito a chi non ha che mangiare, biscotti a chi non
hadenti. (150)
She gives to people precisely that which they cannot, or will not use. Bruno, via
Gioan Bernardo, does not explain why Fortune chooses to do this, but a long
and cruelty, which undoubtedly Gioan Bernardo attributes to her. In part, Bruno
may be responding to his own fate, in part to the fate o f the poor he saw around him
in Naples and who populate his play. But more profoundly, perhaps, Fortune’s
o f the Brunian universe. Everything has the potential o f going one way or another.
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182
In the Spaccio, which Bruno would compose just a few years later, he clearly
professes his position on Fortune. He has her describe herself as “aperta aperta”
and “occolta occolta.” She says that “con incerta successione e raggion irrazionale,
che mi trovo (cioe sopra ed estra le raggioni particolari) e con indeteminata misura
volta la ruota, scuoto l’u m a ... .”31 She is the embodiment o f vicissitudes. She
asks that her companions be Wealth and Poverty, Annoyance and Joy, Happiness
and Unhappiness, Toil and Rest, Appetite and Satiety, and many other binary pairs.
Tu, Occasione. camina avanti, precedi gli miei passi. aprime mille e
mille strade. va incerta. incognita, occolta, percioche non voglio che il
mio advenimento sia troppo antiveduto. Dona de sghiaffi a tutti vati,
profeti, divini, mantici e prognosticated. A tutti quei che si attraversano
per impedime il corso nostro, donagli su le coste. Togli via davanti gli
miei piedi ogni possibile intoppo. Ispiana e spianta ogni altro cespuglio
de dissegni che ad un cieco nume possa esser molesto. onde
comodamente per te, mia guida, mi fia definite il montare o il pioggiare,
il divertir a destra o a sinistra, il movere, il fermare, il menar ed il ritener
de passi. lo in un momento ed insieme insieme vo e vengo. stabilisco e
muovo. assorgo e siedo, mentre a diverse ed infinite cose con diversi
mezzi de l’occasione stendo le mani. Discorre, dunque da tutto, per
tutto, in tutto, a tutto: quivi con dei, ivi con gli eroi; qua con gli uomini,
la con le bestie.33
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183
In this remarkable and powerful passage, Bruno reveals his frustration with
Fortune’s brutal maneuvering and his sense that she is inevitable and all-pervasive.
destroys the mystique o f chance, and may alter how someone plays out his or her
fortune. But what this unforgiving image o f Fortune ultimately says is that she and
Occasion, like matter, course through everything and are everywhere. The
another means for Bruno to express his notion o f linear inversion and multiplicity.
through Bruno's works, and especially the Candelaio, as a device to illuminate the
Conclusion
thought are elastic, he creates a language which exhibits such a trait. There is a
format, or rather, into a linear format with multiple directionality implicit within it.
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184
The straight and the rhetorical— the retto and the retorico— have much in
and uni-directional, in fact, both can be seen as containing multiple directions and
Dante in his letter to Can Grande. The dual nature of the line expresses itself in
Bruno’s geometry, metaphysics, his prose and his poetry. While Bruno favors the
“hyperlineariy" in his writing and thought. As such, one avoids the pitfall o f
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Conclusion: The Point
show that Bruno’s use o f geometrical language is a means by which he reflects and
intersects his philosophy o f nature, man, and the universe. As geometry aims at
understanding and imitating the symmetry and harmony of the world, Bruno’s
language imitates geometry. This is why, I believe, his work must be read with
might arise: could a geometric analysis work for any literary’ text; could it be as
valid and significant as it is for reading Bruno; does all language reflects geometry
in some way? To each one of these questions I would answer, “Yes.” What
There are three techniques that authors seem to use with frequency
graphic, the litdic, and the metaphoric. Together these techniques form what I call
a Three-fold display o f geometry in literature. I use the word “fold” with the rubric
o f rotational symmetry in mind, but also as a nod to both Deleuze’s idea o f the
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186
it. 1
Before I address these three folds, I want to discuss two distinct components
axioms and principles, the interpretation o f data, and the doing o f proofs.
Expression, on the other hand, consists o f actual geometric shapes and notation.
certain facts about squares and triangles in the Me no, he is using geometric
application to prove that we are bom with knowledge o f certain truths that can be
recalled. When, however, in the last canto o f the Divina Comedia Dante talks
about squaring the circle, he is using geometric expression— shapes and a classical
1 See Gilles Oeleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis:
University o f Minnesota Press, 1993); Nicholas o f Cusa, On Wisdom and Knowledge, trans. and
ed. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1996).
2 We need to be responsible in our understanding o f geometric theoiy and the ways in which
we talk about it, so as not to become unwitting perpetuators o f the Alan Sokal scandal; see his
article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics o f Quantum
Gravity,” Social Text 46/47 (Spring 1996); and his subsequent expose, “A Physicist Experiments
with Cultural Studies," in Lingua Franca (July-August 1996).
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God’s effulgence. Geometry serves each text in different ways— in the Meno's
symbol, for the ineffable. Generally, when literature uses geometry, it uses
and that upon which I have based the notion o f the Three-fold display o f geometry
in literature.
The graphic
technographic .3 For Italianists, the first examples o f graphic text that might come
diverged from such French symbolist forms o f pattern poetry as the calligramme
and ideogram, however, in their attempt to explode syntax and linear constraints in
order to allow for a structure that would communicate revelry, noise, subversion,
and expansion. The “geometric splendor o f speed,” as they defined their aesthetic,
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188
“shaped poetry ”),4 has its roots in the Middle Ages, with sacred literature presented
particular shows a
shapes associated with religious iconography and toward more abstract motifs—
shapes for shape’s sake. With the Scientific Revolution already in motion, and
mannerism’s passion for fine and fantastical detail, it is not surprising that
4 Graphic poetry is generally called pattern poetry, visual poetry, or concrete poetry. It is also
referred to as optic, chromatic, permutational, kinetic, plastic, and spatial. In the twentieth century
we see such poetry coming from the Futurists, Cubists, Surrealists, Dadaists, the Lettrists, Group
63 and Group 70, etc. Carlo Belloli is supposed to have first used the term “concrete” to refer to
graphic poetry in 1943, and to have given it its name in 1948. See La Biennale di Venezia: Mostra
di Poesia Concreta, ed. Dietrich Mahlow and Arrigo Lora-Totino. (Sept. 25 - Oct. 10, 1969).
5 Scholars such as Giovanni Pozzi have written at length about graphic text and its evolution
in European literature. See Pozzi’s Laparola dipinta (Milan: Adelphi, 1981); see also Emmett
Williams, Anthology o f Concrete Poetry (New York: Something Else Press, 1967); Friedrich W.
Heckmanns, ed., Visuelle Poesie, Westf&lischer Kunstverein, Mflnster, Jan. 29 - March 9, 1969;
Lamberto Pignotti and Stefania Stefanelli, eds., La scrittura verbo-visiva: Le avanguardie del
novecento tra parola e immagine (Italy: Espresso Strumenti, 1980); Vincenzo Accame, Pittura
come scrittura (Milan: Spiral!, 1998); and Johanna Drucker, Figuring the Word: Essays on Books,
Writing, and Visual Poetics (New York: Granary Press, 1998).
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189
Descartes.
Simultaneously,
M ACELEBRATA
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geometric expression o f
some cases, geometric shapes can even enhance the hermeneutic and heuristic value
of the poem. Take, for example, Severo Sarduy’s “Espiral Negra” (fig. 45),
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190
which disorients the eyes and the expected path o f reading. Beginning, end, and
center are uncertain. The “centro negra” seems to be the vortex around which all
the words swirl and into which they are being pulled. Language is at the mercy of
emptiness. The graphic display o f geometry in literature extends even toward the
taking on a whole new meaning: technology and the written word are merging in
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191
The ludic
The ludic fold has to do with geometry as a medium for play, for games, and
for hidden patterns in a work o f literature. The Oulipo group, a literary movement
geometry I just discussed, does not look to reveal the measurement and division o f
structures and themes. We need only recall Georges Perec’s La vie: Mode
of contents o f Calvino’s Le citta invisibili (fig. 46). Clearly, this table o f contains
Could the sixty-four chapters (fifty-five cities and nine dialogues) merely be an
employed. One way to decipher this constraint is to graph the dialogue chapters
against the city rubrics (memory, desire, signs, thin, trading, eyes, names, dead, sky,
continuous, and hidden) and order the numbers o f the cities formulaically, as
6 Georges Perec, La vie: Mode d ’emploi (Paris: Hachette, 1978); Raymond Queneau,
Exercises de style (Paris: Gallimard, 1979); Itaio Caivino, Se una notte d ’inverno un viaggiatore
(Turin: Einuadi, 1979). For a discussion o f the concept o f the ludic in literature, see Giuseppe
Mazzotta’s The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), and his chapter on “Theologia Ludens” in Dante’s Vision and the Circle o f Knowledge
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993): 219-241.
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192
m VI
Figure 46: Table of contents, Italo Calvino. Le cittd invisibffl (Turin: Einaudi, 1972).
25-39.
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193
CU'Hi 6nk*
Figure 47: Michael Palmore, “ Diagramming Calvino’s Architecture.” Forum Italicum 24 (Spring
1990), 28.
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194
A zig-zag pattern thus emerges. The index shows itself to be a construction, not a
list: it is a diagonal range o f cities beginning with city yi (Diomira) and ending with
city Z5 (Berenice). If we extend this algebraic analysis, we will actually see that it is
These cities are, then, in the strictest sense, “invisible.” New cities, however,
cannot be added to the extremities o f the text, but must be woven into the text
itself. Where would we put a new city, (z+l)^? We could not just tag it onto the
last city in Chapter 9 (Berenice), as that would disrupt Calvino’s strict pattern of
Berenice, but before the invisible city (z+1)s Thus we would also have to add
(z+l)i, (z+ l) 2, (z + l) 3, and (z+l)s if we were to add (z+l).». Calvino did not create a
closed galaxy o f cities, but rather a dynamic spiral. In fact, the first edition of
Calvino’s invisible cities had a nautilus shell on the cover, and furthermore, spirals
contents, the hugely important figure o f the spiral would be lost, as would
expression o f the spiral hidden inside the geometric expressions o f graphs and
recursive series. We thus augment and deepen our reading o f this text by engaging
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195
The metaphoric
The final fold I will examine has to do with what happens when literature
takes something from geometry and places it inside its framework, making it
figurative, metaphoricizing it. Even if an author simply lifts the geometric element
from its mathematical context and puts it into a fleeting discussion, the geometry is
clarifying an idea, adding prestige to it, condemning it, exalting it, or mutating it,
and so on. We see this borrowing in such works as Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones,
point.
metaphors, but uses a geometric expression as the foundation o f the text itself.9
The figure o f the “line” in this novel about the meeting o f two airplane
1 Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1944); Lewis Carroll, Alice in
Wonderland (London: 1865); Edwin Abbott, Flatland (London: Seeley & Co., 1884); Julio
C ortizar, Rayuela (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1963); Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star
(New York: Knopf, 1976); Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (New York: Viking Press, 1973).
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196
enthusiasts— one an author and one a physicist— is expressed in the parallel and
contradictory lines o f thought these two friends share. Del Giudice uses the word
wrinkle lines, lines o f thought, lines o f footprints, trajectory lines, lines o f sheet
Interestingly, Lines o f Light is the title the English translators gave to Atlante
that can be straight or curved. Light, as we know from nineteenth- and twentieth-
century physics, is also both straight and bendabie, due to forces o f gravity, and due
to its complex dual nature, which exhibits both wave-like and particle-like
properties of light and lines into a metaphor for the geometry o f life: intersections,
geometry o f the line to line his text, and to underline the importance o f viewing the
* * *
10 Daniele Del Giudice, Lines o f Light, trans. Norman MacAfee and Luigi Fontanella (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
" Thomas Young (late eighteenth, early nineteenth century) was the first to consider light
wave-like (see his double-slit experiment). Einstein was the first to note the particle-like
characteristics o f light (he called these light particles “photons,” packets o f energy sufficient to
knock o ff an electron); he also thought that it was not light that bends, but space. Richard
Feynman, in his book QED: The Strange Theory o f Light and Matter (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 198S), defines light as composed o f particles with wave-like characteristics.
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197
I want to point out that while many French critics have theorized about
Umberto Eco, with his interest in signs and codes, has dedicated much thought to
the presence o f geometric shape in language and literature. While Italian literary
theory has responded to linguistics and the geometry o f generative grammar, while
it has become active in the ‘‘spatial discourse” o f hypertext and cyberculture, and
while it has— as all literatures do— a rich history o f authors who have used
Bruno, who strove to integrate word and image. It is time that Italian scholars re
discover the radical novelty o f this geometric tradition. I hope that through a
o f shape and space in Italian literature will begin to evolve. It is precisely the lack
geometric language, but champions a renegade style and philosophy o f the infinite
As mathematics takes us into the realm o f fractals and the fourth dimension,
our conception o f the world around us changes, forcing us to create new metaphors.
12 The few titles o f Italian criticism that seem to promise some discussion o f geometry in
literature are deceptive. See Remo Bodei, La geometria delle passioni (Milan: Feltrinelli, 19 9 1).
One would think that the critics who work on the poetry o f Maria Luisa Spaziani, Geometria del
disordine (Milan: M ondadori, 1981) and Leonardo Sinisgalli, Ellisse (Milan: Mondadori, 1974)
would also be interested in such a consideration o f shape and space.
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198
This is what language has done since, as Giambattista Vico theorized, the first
human upon noting the rumbling o f thunder in the sky, became aware o f something
big and mysterious, and by pointing to it, made the first sign . 13 Nature’s patterns
fill the world in which we live: the Fibonacci series o f seed-packing in sunflowers
and daisies, hexagonal beehives, concentric circles on a disturbed lake, the perfect
sphere o f a soap bubble. We imitate this geometry in our architecture, in our art,
and express it in the symmetry o f our own bodies— why should it not also be in our
feminist, psychoanalytic, or political lens, we can just as well read it through the
the printed page, the more we will see language’s geometric heritage, its implicit
13 See Giambattista Vico, La scienza nuova, ed. Fausto Nicolini (Milan: Mondadori, 1992), §
377ff.
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List of Figures
Note: A ll fig u res from G iordano B ru n o 's Articuli adversus mathematicos are from the
fo llo w in g ed itio n : Prague: G eorgii D acziceni, 1588. T h e ex em plar consulted is from the
B ib lio teca co m u n ale di C om o, Sala B enzi 7.6.93. an d the im ages reproduced are from
G io rd an o B runo, II sigillo dei sigilli. Idiagrammi ermetici, trans. E m anuela C olom bi, ed.
U baldo N ic o la (M ila n : M im esis, 1995).
Introduction
7. On the left, Bruno’s woodcut ("Lucifer seu reportator”) from the Articuli
adversus mathematicos; on the right, the version in Giordano Bruno, Opera
latine conscripta, ed. F. Tocco and G. Vitelli, (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann
Verlag, 1962), vol. I.iii.
8. Sun, moon, and star motifs. Giordano Bruno, Articuli adversus mathematicos.
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200
Chapter One
20. The sefirot tree according to The Ari. from Sefer Yetzirah: The Book o f
Creation, ed. Aryeh Kaplan (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1993), 29.
22. Another sefirot arrangement, from Leo Schaya. The Universal Meaning o f the
Kabbalah (Baltimore: Penguin. 1973), 29.
24. Chart. Giordano Bruno. Explicatio triginta sigillorum (n.p.. 1583). from the
Bibliotheque nationale de France, Res. PR 746.
Chapter Two
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201
29. Giordano Bruno, La cena de le Ceneri (n.p., 1584), from the University o f
Glasgow, Db.3.19.
30. A hyperbola.
31. An ellipse.
33. A parabola.
Chapter Three
34. A gnomon.
37. Squaring the circle— drawings done for modem edition. Giordano Bruno,
Spaccio de la bestia trionfante in Dialoghi italiani, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia
(Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 756-759.
38. Giordano Bruno, De gli eroici furori in Dialoghi italiani. ed. Giovanni
Aquilecchia (Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 981-982.
39. Giordano Bruno, De gl 'heroici furori (Paris: Antonio Baio, 1585), from the
University o f Glasgow, Cm.3.26.
Chapter Four
Conclusion
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202
45. Severe Sarduy, “Espiral Negra,” Big Bang (Barcelona: Tudquets Editor,
1974), 43.
46. Table of contents. Italo Calvino, Le citta invisibili (Turin: Einaudi, 1972).
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Glossary of Mathematical Terms1
asymptote: a curve that approaches a straight line but never touches it; hyperbolae
have asymptotes.
duplication of the cube: also called the Delian problem, the ancient puzzle
of how to construct, using only a straightedge and a compass, the edge o f a
cube having twice the volume o f a given cube; it is impossible.
eccentricity: the ratio, for a point on a conic section, o f its distance from a
fixed point (the focus) to its distance from a fixed line (the directrix).
golden section: a division o f a line into 2 segments such that the ratio o f the larger
segment to the smaller segment is equal to the ratio o f the whole line to the larger
segment; the ratio is approximately 1.618.
1 Definitions are modification o f those in the Penguin Dictionary o f Mathematics, ed. John
Daintith and R.D. Nelson (London: Penguin Books, 1989).
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204
gnomon: a portion o f a figure which has been added to another figure so that the
whole is o f the same shape as the smaller. The logarithmic growth that we see in
the expanding chambers of a nautilus shell is an example.
non-Euclidean geometry: a geometry that does not depend on the fifth postulate o f
Euclid (that only one line can be drawn through a point outside a line that is parallel
to that line). The postulate cannot be proved, and mathematicians since the early
nineteenth century have been developed new axioms and new geometries (see
Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Gauss, Riemann) in an attempt to account for the parallel
postulate.
orthocenter: the point of intersection o f three lines drawn from each o f the vertices
of a triangle perpendicular to the opposite sides.
parallel postulate: the fifth postulate o f Euclidean geometry which says that for a
given point not on a given line, only one line can be drawn through the point that is
parallel to the given line; this has been disproved in non-Euclidean geometry.
polygon: many angled- (must have more than 3 or more vertices), many-
sided figure.
skew lines: lines in space that are not parallel and do not intersect; they cannot lie
on the same plane.
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205
symmetry2
Translation
Rotation
2 Definitions (modified) and images from Peter Stevens, Handbook o f Regular Patterns: An
Introduction to Symmetry in Two Dimensions (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 4.
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206
Mirror
Glide
• • •
• • • • • •
3 • • • • • •
6 • • • •
10
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A Select Bibliography
1. Giordano Bruno:
Collected works
Universitatsbuchhandlung, 1888-9.
2. Giordano Bruno:
Early Exemplars Consulted (ordered by year of publication)
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208
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• Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, 1709 E 34.
De triplici minimo et mensura. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer, 1591.
De monade numero et figura. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer, 1591.
De innumerabilibus, immenso, & infigurabili. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel & Peter Fischer.
1591.
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210
3. Giordano Bruno:
Modern Editions and Translations
1995.
De umbris idearum. Translated and edited by Nicoletta Tirinnanzi. Milan: BUR, 1997.
On the Composition o f Images, Signs and Ideas. Translated by Charles Doria. Edited by
e gli innumerevoli. Translated and edited by Carlo Monti. Turin: UTET, 1980.
Le Souper des Cendres. Translated by Yves Hersant. Edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia and
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