Pagina 45 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THE IMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 45
ent content about which to think, one which might operate as the basis
for the development of religious and cultural beliefs86.
9. Since these remarks are moving in a direction far removed from
much of the tenor of current debate on poetic characters, it is necessary
now to consider more directly what is to be said on the other side of the
issue. I shall do so by considering some aspects of the highly influential
interpretation put forward by Verene87, and supported by Battistini88and
Cantelli89.
Verene starts from the point that the imaginative universal is «an ide­
al portrait [...] which took the form of the fable, a description of a par­
ticular reality»90. In support of this he quotes Vico’s remarks about po­
etic truth and the example with which Vico illustrates them:
Poetic truth is metaphysical truth, and physical truthwhich is not in con-
formitywith it should be considered as false. Thence springs this important
consideration in poetic theory: the true war chief, for example, is the God-
frey that Torquato Tasso imagines; and all chiefs who do not conform
throughout to Godfrey are not true chiefs of war91.
Through this identification of poetic truth with metaphysical truth,
Verene argues, the poetic character, or fable, becomes the reality and, as
such, constitutes ‘thè conditions of reality for poetic mind’. Since Verene
follows Vico in taking the example of an imaginative universal of the
heroic age, I shall discuss his view in relation to that example, though it
must apply also to the imaginative universals of the divine age92.
86 This, of course, is to set aside the difficulties raised in the previous section.
87 It should be noted that Verene (op. cit., pp. 68-69) is among the few to acknowledge
Croce’s criticism, but he then disregards it on the grounds that Croce follows Hegel in failing
to have a theory of the mythical consciousness as a kind of mentality from which conscious-
ness itself develops. But this is not entirely fair to Croce for, as the quotation given at the start
makes clear, Croce thought that the imaginative universal required, but denied, the necessity
for the mediation of some sort of universality, without which it could not function as Vico in-
tended. In other words, Croce’s criticism is independent of his lack of a theory of mythical
consciousness and remains to be answered.
88 G. Vico, Opere, cit., voi. II, p. 1491 note 3.
89 G. C a ntelli , Mente corpo linguaggio, cit., pp. 83-84, note 75. See also G. P atella , Sen­
so, corpo, poesia. Giambattista Vico e l’origine dell’estetica moderna, Milano, 1995, pp. 52-53.
90 V erene , op. cit., pp. 73-77.
91 Sn44, § 205.
92 Verene later assigns a different metaphysical function to the imaginative universal: that
of being an image through which the flux of particulars to be found in sensation can be given
a permanent resting point. But to show how it does this he also has to claim that «through
fantasia the particular is formed as a universal» (Verene , op. cit., p. 82). For if the particular