Alberti’s sermonic syntax

Political commitment in Alberti is foreshadowed by his antipathy towards religion which prompts his adoption of a rebellious poetic mode. Sermones y moradas [Sermons and Dwelling Places], I have suggested, is characterized by Alberti’s imitation of a religious register, that of sermonic discourse. This bears superficial resemblance to Aleixandre’s mystic style, but, in keeping with his subversive intentions, Alberti appropriates different linguistic traits. As to subversion, it will be clear that to mock a religious register is to strike at the heart of religion itself, for, as David Crystal says, there is a ‘close relationship… between language and religion’, especially ‘a register as formalized and tradition-based as Catholicism’. Religious writing, traditionally understood, is imbued with divine authority: Moses’s tablets were written by ‘the finger of God’ (Exodus 31: 18); the term ‘Holy Writ’ equates with the Scriptures and the phrase ‘for it is written’ denotes an unchallengeable truth. Speech, similarly, was thought to have a divine source and, as Crystal points out, the metaphor ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God’ (John 1: 1) was ‘very effective in displaying the fusion of Christ and his Gospel’. This sense of a theophoric or God-bearing language is no less evident in liturgy, words being indispensable to prayer and to many kinds of ritual – blessings, litanies, invocations, doxologies – all prominent in Catholicism. Liturgical language must command respect, says Crystal, and it does so by distancing itself from standard language, its unfamiliarity serving to alert us to its ‘exceptional purpose’. Even today, liturgical language is marked, he says, by its formal style, complex sentences, archaisms, formulaic utterances and its avoidance of colloquialisms. With these points in mind, we look again, briefly, at Alberti’s use of this register, notably his syntax.

If Aleixandre’s syntax is characterized by telegrammatic compression, giving on occasion a sense of mystical awe, in Alberti the opposite happens. Here it is not a question of communicating an individual’s intuitive or irrational experience of union; rather, the poet adopts the role of explicator, his task being to show others what they should do and think in conformity with the system he represents.