Plato’s Magnet and Gikatilla’s Stream: Alessandro Farra on Furore Poetico

This chapter explores poetic frenzy primarily in Alessandro Farra’s Settenario dell’humana riduttione (1571), through a close reading of the text and through a thematic reconstruction. First, I illustrate Farra’s syncretic account, dovetailing divine frenzies into a broader emanationist framework, where Neoplatonism and Cabala are merged in a Christian vein. There, Farra presents Christ as the World of Ideas, both the origin and goal of the soul’s mystical journey. Next, I assess Farra’s twofold explanation of poetic frenzy: as a universal process occurring across divine, intellectual, and angelic realms, and as the outcome of individual psychosomatic states. Finally, I consider Farra’s poetic allegoresis and how, for him, poetic frenzy eventually yields to higher forms of mystical union. By focussing on poetic frenzy and related themes, I identify and considers many of Farra’s proximate and remote sources, both acknowledged and unacknowledged—such as, Orpheus, Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Avicenna, Maimonides, Gikatilla, Recanati, Ficino, Pico, Paolo Ricci. Through these layers, Farra presents us with a multitudinous, syncretic—perhaps untimely—account of poetic frenzy and mystical ascent, the full significance of which my chapter begins to illuminate and situate within late Cinquecento Italian culture.