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Modern Italy
Journal of Modern Italian Studies
RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI
Anno XXII , n° 1, Giugno 2004 ( Contributi ) pag. 101-122
PURGATORY AND REMEMBRANCE:
MONTALE AND KORE-EDA IN THE LIGHT OF DANTE
GREGORY M. PELL
Hofstra University,
Hempstead, N. Y.
Bringing a Japanese filmmaker into a discussion of Eugenio Montale's written style and thematics may seem to bend some traditional borders in terms of culture and media, but often in the humanities such ventures prove worthwhile. In addition, by including Dante, one will not only note the interconnectedness of the two styles of narrations and themes but also how they connect with issues that seem to have transcended through
the centuries and continue to be very dear issues to the Humanities. In comparing Montale's short story, Sul limite, with Hirozaku Kore-eda's film, Afterlife, east meets west in a reinterpretation of an age-old question: what happens when we die? Though the question here is not whether one goes to heaven or hell; rather how does one make the transition into the afterlife? How is existence preserved through memory? How do objective record and subjective recollection differ? In Montale's Sul limite (Farfalla di Dinard) and in Kore-eda's film Afterlife, whether intentional or not, there is a
reworking of the Dantean Purgatory. In each work, film is integrated into the storyline as a means by which one may re-view one's life before passing into the afterlife. Hence, while the passers-through of these modern purgatories are self-reflexive, so does the artistic medium of film itself work into the textual self-reflexivity -- better known as meta-cinematic experience.
(Because film has only been around for about 100 years -- of which only the last 50 or so have legitimized it as a true art medium -- while other media have evolved over centuries, it is little wonder that two stories which explore the afterlife in the post-modern period refer to and analyze film with regards
to the notions of recognition of one's life with all its bitter-sweetness.) Both the short story and the film take into account remembering life as a way of taking responsibility for it; in both, the recording of a life on film facilitates the notion of re-living and making amends in the purgatory. Furthermore, memory is treated in terms of its being objective record versus subjective
recollection.
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