Emilie Seris. Les Etoiles de Nemesis: La rhetorique de la memoire dans la poesie d'Ange Politien (1454-1494).

(Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 359.) Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 2002. 494 pp. index, illus, tbls. bibt. n.p. ISBN: 2-600-00624-9.

The idea of the "posthumous life of pagan culture" was one that was dear to Aby Warburg's scholarly heart. It implied that the transmission and survival of classical antiquity during the Renaissance involved stylistic and formal solutions on the part of artists. But these solutions were in essence ethical decisions by the age concerning the received historical patrimony. Moving beyond art, the transmission and survival of the past through the "history of the word" points at once to a culture's history and to the articulation of its "specific vital problem" (see Giorgio Agamben, "Aby Warburg and the Nameless Science," in Potentialities [Stanford, 1999]). In Emilie Seris' book on the role played by memory in the writings of Italian humanist-poet, Angelo Poliziano is an interesting exemplification of the posthumous life of the past, with the dynamic interplay between transmission, reception, and polarization. As we read in the introduction, the author places her study under the sign of the goddess Nemesis, who is a figuration of the tension between transmission and mnemonics. In the most general sense, the book deals with the functions of human memory, and the titles of each the three parts provide a sense of the variety of mnemonic experience we are dealing with: namely, political commemoration, ethics, and reminiscence, the memorization of a poetics. Seris considers Poliziano's verse and prose writings at some length, but she also heeds careful attention to their links with the artistic production of his age.

Seris explains in a great amount of detail the extent to which Poliziano's poetry operates as a means to monumentalize the lives and deeds of princes. One of her main points is that Poliziano makes use of specific rhetorical/philosophical strategies to poetically remember important political events. The author also focuses on the places and images that characterize what she terms Poliziano's "ethical memory." The conclusion reached is that Polizano is not interested in elaborating "a system of coherent and doctrinal moral allegories" (20). If anything he is more inclined in his poetry to stimulate a state of felicity; moreover, his lyric production aims to become a therapy of the soul. At the same time, for Poliziano poetry has a cathartic effect on the reader as it places before his/her eyes positive and negative exemplifications of the effects of human passions. Thus, the rhetorical strategy implied in ethical memory is one that seeks to engage the logic of the reader's passions, rather than to persuade. It is for this reason, Seris suggests, that Poliziano distances himself from the Ciceronian mnemonic model. A central aspect of Poliziano's movement away from ancient mnemonic strategies in general is to be found in the manner in which her organizes the loci. Rather than constructing a mnemonic edifice established on "things" that attempt to evoke programmed ideas or sentiments, Poliziano, Seris emphasizes, produces myths, accounts, and linguistic expressions that are meant to be verbalized and reinvented.

Another type of memory identified by Seris is of the literary variety. The author acknowledges the accepted critical assessment according to which Poliziano made use of Quintilian's theory of improvisation and Statius' calor subitus. However, Seris observes, Poliziano stresses that literature's pedagogical directive pivots on what are in essence the cognitive and epistemological properties of poetic utterance. This is so because the memorization of literature requires a specific disposition of the soul and a didactic capacity which only poetry is capable of providing. The Sylvae (Poliziano's poeticological introductions to his university courses), Seris reminds us, are the most significant exemplification of this fact. To be sure, they constitute for Poliziano the most important point of reference for literary memory.

This book gives evidence of an enormous amount of research as it deals with a number of significant issues that would require a considerable amount of typographic space. The only shortcoming of this study is that the author is often repetitive and the book could have been curtailed in length. However, the verbal cornucopia does not detract from the many convincing and useful insights dealing with specific aspects of Poliziano's poetic thought. In essence, Seris' study is to be praised for the manner in which it critically articulates Poliziano's relationship with ancient texts. We are presented with a figure who is in active dialogue with the lyrical voices of antiquity. But the "conversation" is one which involves not slavish imitation, but instead a vibrant reorganization of rhetorical and poeticological patterns that Poliziano discovered in the ancients texts. If it can be said that Poliziano's writings provide a figuration for the "posthumous life of pagan culture," it is one where antiquity encourages him to meditate upon ethical choices regarding his poetry making. Yet, the choices become all the more complex and dynamic once we realize the extent to which the meanings of the ancient works are not encased in a transcendent immunity from change, but they are rather tentative and provisional.

PAUL COLILLI

Laurentian University