BRUNO'S GAG

Myths, potent and even fertile as they are, must also be subject to revision.  What I mean by myth, in this case, is story or frame, a compelling narrative about how something happened, in general or particular.  I'm not talking about Greek myth or Jungian archetypes or, in fact, anything that refers to itself as myth.  I'm talking about accepted accounts of something, which can be as conventional as stereotypes and clichés--a time-worn, easily-handled, available way of comprehending something,.  Yes, it is compelling; it would not have survived without a general, popular appeal.  In a way, myths of this kind are processes of smoothing phenomena into unresistant accounts which survive because of their accessibility. If one is interested in the texture of things, if one believes in the truth of the particular, as I do, then much is lost when unwieldy phenomena are reduced to available frames.

A ready example is how childbirth is treated in American movies.  Up until recently, this story was told with a bed, an agonized face, a multitude of bed-sheets, a man waiting outside a closed door, a cry.  The story was told from outside the door, for the most part.   In the last few decades, a new story has risen to the surface: the waters break, a mighty fluster, rushing to the hospital, a speeding car, woman in the back groaning and roaring, loaded into wheelchair at hospital, race to delivery, laboring woman now coached and cheered by (sometimes fainting) husband whose perspective still, as in the earlier narrative, shapes the account.  The prevalent account has drama, action, fast cars, traffic, noise, excitement, a lead part for a male actor, but it doesn't actually describe how most babies are born (unassisted rupture of membranes occurs in less than 10% of pregnancies).  It's a way of telling which works because it grabs the imagination of those who are invested in it, who own the narrative of how babies are born in the movies, at this point in time.

I'm trying to address Jennifer's question, as I understand it, about the fertility of myth, how it might not matter whether they're factual or not; the fact that they're generative is enough.  I think this is true, because stories are built on the backs of stories.  The Greek myth of Adonis, and his birth from a tree (his mother Myrrha having been turned into a myrrh tree and there's more ...) may be said to have produced 16th Century Italian painter Bernardino Luini's graphic depiction of the scene,

which may be said to have produced Frida Kahlo's representation of the birth of the artist in acutely human terms,

Frida Kahlo. My Birth. 1932. Oil on metal. 31 x 35 cm. Private collection.

which may in turn have contributed to the production of the current Hollywood birth narrative.

I have come a long way from Bruno's gagged mouth.  I will return to that crux, leaving you with

divers accounts:

What must Bruno have thought during those final hours? Did he despair, finally? Did he reach the conclusion that he has been wrong all along? Or did he feel vindicated, confident that his thoughts would survive the flames? Did he perhaps wonder if, far away on the alien worlds he imagined, other creatures burned their dreamers too?

At 5.30 a.m. on 19 February, a Thursday and a feast day in Rome, Bruno was led in chains from San. Ursula. He was dressed in a white, ankle-length robe illuminated with the cross of St. Andrew and dotted with painted devils holding their long, barbed tails against a backdrop of crudely daubed crimson flames. The route was crowded with the virtuous and the curious. Much has been made of this burning. A primitive form of newsletter, avvisi e ricordi, had even been printed to inform people of the occasion: “An entertaining judicial burning was expected,” it declared. According to this tabloid of the day, “Bruno has declared he will die a willing martyr and that his soul will rise with the smoke to paradise.” Copies of the newsletter had been passed throughout the excited crowd and trampled upon along the wet road.

As the parade moved on Bruno became animated and excited. He reacted to the mocking crowds, responding to their yells with quotes from his books and the sayings of the ancients. His comforters, the Brotherhood of St. John, tried to quiet the exchange, to protect Bruno from yet further pain and indignity, but he ignored them. And so, after a few minutes the procession was halted by the Servants of Justice. A gaoler was brought forward and another two held Bruno’s head rigid. A long metal spike was thrust through Bruno’s left cheek pinning his tongue and emerging through the right cheek. Then another spike was rammed vertically through his lips. Together, the spikes formed a cross. Great sprays of blood erupted onto his gown and splashed the faces of the Brotherhood close by. Bruno spoke no more.

from The Pope and the Heretic: the True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Deny the Roman Inquisition, by Michael White, qtd here.

And from youtube (59) "before he was taken to his place of execution, the jailers stopped his tongue with a leather gag and put him on a mule."

And wikipedia (note 17)

"II Sommario del Processo di Giordano Bruno, con appendice di Documenti sull'eresia e l'inquisizione a Modena nel secolo XVI", edited by Angelo Mercati, in Studi e Testi, vol. 101; the precise terminology for the tool used to silence Bruno before burning is recorded as una morsa di legno, "a vise of wood", which will hopefully be noted and put to rest the sensationalistic claims (as though being burned alive were not sensationalistic enough) that his tongue was pierced with an iron spike.

And the account with which we are familiar:
 

The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died, 
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

 
from "What He Thought," by Heather McHugh

 

Giordano Bruno, by Ettore Ferrari, in Campo de' Fiori, Rome, where he was executed in 1600

Is this what he said?

Is this what he thought?